Beyond Bacalao: Indigenous Seafaring and Adaptations in Response to the Transatlantic Fisheries

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During the centuries before Europeans arrived in their lands, Indigenous societies around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence gradually renounced the long-distance exchange and mobility that had characterised their more distant past. Beginning in the Middle Woodland period, we may infer that the boundaries of large language groups and smaller subsistence territories stabilised. In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the availability of Basque sailboats, as well as new trade opportunities with fishing captains, greatly enhanced Indigenous seafaring and revived long-distance trade and mobility. In three areas of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Indigenous navigators sailing in Basque txalupak (chalupas) redrew the boundaries of their cultural map. This paper synthesises the results of the “Contact by Sea” project on Basque-Indigenous maritime contact, with a focus on understanding the common elements of Inuit expansion into Grand Bay, Mi’kmaw migration across Cabot Strait, and Iroquoian maritimisation down the Saint Lawrence Estuary.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow