Atikamekw
Nation | Active
1500 CE to 2215 CE
The Atikamekw are the indigenous inhabitants of the area they refer to as Nitaskinan ("Our Land"), in the upper Saint-Maurice River valley of Quebec (about three hundred kilometers (one hundred and ninety miles) north of Montreal), Canada.
Their population currently stands at around seven thousand.
One of the main communities is Manawan, about one hundred and sixty kilometers (ninety-nine miles) northeast of Montreal.
They have a tradition of agriculture as well as fishing, hunting and gathering.
They have close traditional ties with the Innu people, who are their historical allies against the Inuit.
The Atikamekw language, a variety of the Cree language in the Algic family, is still in everyday use, making it therefore among the indigenous languages least threatened with extinction, but their home land has largely been appropriated by logging companies and their ancient way of life is almost extinct.
Their name, which literally means "lake whitefish", is sometimes also spelt "Atihkamekw", "Attikamekw", "Attikamek", or "Atikamek".
The French colonists referred to them as Têtes-de-Boules, meaning "Ball-Heads" or "Round-Heads".
A small number of families still make their living making traditional birch bark baskets and canoes.
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General Montcalm is able to secure the release of five hundred captives they had taken, but they still take with them another two hundred.
According to historian William Nester, a large number of tribal nations had been present during the siege, some represented by only a few individual warriors.
Some individuals are thought to have traveled fifteen hundred miles (twenty-four hundred kilometers) to join the French, coming from as far away as the Mississippi River and Hudson Bay.
Nester proposes that some of the atrocities, which included the murder and scalping of sick individuals and the digging up of bodies for plunder and scalping, resulted in many natives becoming infected with smallpox, which they then carried into their communities.
The devastation wrought by the disease in the following years will have a notable effect on native participation in the French campaigns of the following years.
The tribes that Nester lists are: Abenaki, Algonquin, Fox, Huron, Iowa, "Canadian" Iroquois. Menominee, Miami, Mi'kmaq, Mississauga, Nipissing, Ojibwe, Onondaga, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sac, Tetes-de-Boules, and Winnebago.
Montcalm decides, for unknown reasons, not to follow up his victory with an attack on Fort Edward.
Many reasons have been proposed justifying his decision, including the departure of many (but not all) of the natives, a shortage of provisions, the lack of draft animals to assist in the portage to the Hudson, and the need for the Canadian militia to return home in time to participate in the harvest.
The British (and later Americans) will never rebuild anything on the site of Fort William Henry, which will lie in ruins for about two hundred years.
In the 1950s, excavation at the site will eventually lead to the reconstruction of Fort William Henry as a tourist destination for the town of Lake George.