igoi] SowTER — Prehistoric Camping Grounds. 141 



PREHISTORIC CAMPING GROUNDS ALONG THE 



OTTAWA RIVER. 



By T. W. Edwin Sowter. 



The evidences of Indian occupation that are met with along' 

 the Ottawa River, between the City of Hull and Pointe k la 

 Bataille, on Lake Deschenes, consist, for the most part, of the 

 prehistoric camping' grounds that occur at frequent intervals along 

 the shores of the lower part of the lake. 



Now, just at this point, ihe " practical man " as Huxley would 

 call him, comes forward with the very pertinent query : " How do 

 you know that these places were Indian camping grounds ? 



In the first place, it may be said that the grim warriors of our 

 brethren of the Indian race, who repose in their ancient burial 

 places on Lake Deschenes, regard not such poetic license as that 

 which elicited from a Newport skeleton the weird confession of an 

 armored viking ; but these lords of the forest have left behind 

 them such traces of their methods of living as cannot fail to be 

 profoundly interesting and widely instructive to those who wish to 

 study the conditions under which a primitive people were slowly 

 struggling, upward and onward, along the highway of civilization. 



In a former paper upon the ' 'Archaeology of Lake Deschenes, " 

 reference was made, among other places, to the traces of Indian 

 occupation that are met with at Raymond's Point, on the Ontario 

 side of the lake opposite Aylmer, Que. Let us take this place as 

 an example, and see if we can prove that it is the site of a pre- 

 historic Indian camping ground. 



At this point, following the water-contour of Raymond's Bay, 

 the lake shore consists of a well defined outcrop of Calciferous 

 limestone holding in great abundance the typical gasteropodean 

 fossils of that formation. 



Resting on this Calciferous outcrop, we meet with the 

 ubiquitous Laurentian boulder, which the merest tyro in geology 

 would recognize as the legacy of the great glacier which, in its 

 descent from the Laurentian highlands, traversed at this point at 

 least the present course of the Ottawa River. 



Where the alluvial soil has been washed away, at high-water 

 mark, the Calciferous rocks are thickly strewn with fragments of 



