Travelling back in time is easy on the imagination at Huronia Museum's Huron Ouendat Village in Midland.
On the grounds of the museum is a recreated village within palisade walls representing life of the Huron Ouendat in the 1500s, or pre-European contact. There's a longhouse, sweat lodge, gardens, fish drying racks, a wigwam and more.
Tours are self-guided but interpretive staff are on site daily to answer questions.
The village is a marvel. Based on an archaeological site in the region, it was built by William Jury and opened in 1956. Not only is it one of very few recreated longhouses in the country, it's been lovingly maintained for 68 years.
“It’s a fixture of Little Lake Park and part of the town. Everyone knows its here,” says Bryan Piitz, executive assistant for the museum.
“People might not think about it everyday but if the village disappeared people would say it’s really important to them."
There was a fire in the village in 2007. The longhouse, a classroom, an exhibit and much of the infrastructure was lost, Piitz says.
“It was a reminder to them of what the village means in the park and the town. So, I think what we do here is really important."
Maintenance manager Calvin Watts said the village would have housed 100 people, all with jobs growing and gathering food and maintaining the village.
So the tasks for his team of three are endless. They do palisade repair, structure repair and give the village life through the Three Sisters and tobacco gardens and a central fire.
“There always something to take care of and it’s an extensive job for sure,” says Watts, who makes the most of summer students, high school co-op students and volunteers.
The crew has gathered new cedar poles and burnt the ends, which prevents them from rotting. Now they have to stand them up, with the burnt ends buried, to repair a section of the palisade wall, lost during a storm.
“There’s no handbook to build a palisade wall,” joked Watts. “It’s a unique maintenance task at all times.”
The 16 Three Sisters gardens of corn, beans and squash are outside the palisade walls, as would have been the case for an active village.
“Their gardens would have been a whole lot bigger than ours because they had to feed a village.”
The Ouendat were farmers and that gave them a lot of advantages in terms of resources and trade," said Watts. They would have traded excess produce with other tribes for fish and meat and other needed items.
Women were the farmers and they would live in wigwams in the fields for the growing season to protect the crops from rodents and other pests. If the crops were left alone, they would be destroyed within days, he says.
Even the corn grown today is ravaged by rodents and insect larvae. However, in a good year, Watts has been able to donate squash to the local food bank.
Men would also go on hunting and fishing parties and build wigwams for temporary accommodation.
The village would have a cache underground where food would have been stored over the winter and dogs would be the protector of the caches, Watts says.
People should visit both the Huron Ouendat Village and Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, says Piitz, because they represent pre-contact and post-contact periods. Sainte-Marie represents the 1630s from the French Jesuit perspective.
"It tells a fuller story to see both,” Piitz said.
The museum is located at 549 Little Lake Park and is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with the last admission at 3:30 p.m.
Admission is $12 for adults, $8.50 for seniors, $7.25 for youth (ages 6 to 17).
For more information, call 705-526-2844, email [email protected] or visit huroniamuseum.com.
