Osheaga

The Osheaga were the westernmost St. Lawrence Iroquoians, farming and fishing people who spoke Laurentian and lived in palisaded villages along the upper St. Lawrence. Their principal settlement, Hochelaga — Osheaga is a variant of the name, possibly meaning big rapids after the Lachine Rapids — stood on the Island of Montreal and may have held around a thousand inhabitants, who grew maize, beans and squash.

Jacques Cartier was welcomed there in October 1535, naming the hill behind the village Mount Royal. The Osheaga were distinct from both the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee, though in contact with both.

Within a generation the villages of the St. Lawrence valley were gone: when Champlain returned in 1603 he found only abandoned sites. Archaeology and later accounts point to Mohawk raids, European epidemics and survivors scattering among neighbouring nations.