This is how the Outaouais was born. But what Outaouais? This is a question that generations of amateurs and scientists have worked on, gathering artifacts for museums and private collections while exploring sites along the Outaouais, the Gatineau and the Rideau rivers. 

In preparing a most revealing publication entitled Ottawa Valley Prehistory, the Outaouais Historical Society asked a variety of contributors under the direction of Jean-Luc Pilon, from the Canadian Museum of Civilization, to provide a fresh view of our past, between those first melting days and the arrival of Europeans on our land. 

The results are such that one would expect the short (113-page) bilingual publication to be found on every teacher's desk and on those of most of the students as well. 

I always marvel how, after decades of research, the meticulous and painstaking efforts of archeologists, digging by hand and screening minute portions of territory for entire seasons, generate fabulous visions of our past as this book does. 

When the ice cover melted, before the floor of the valley started rising, the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean covered everything south of Pembroke, including the Rideau Lakes, and reached the height of Kingsmere, at 690 feet above sea level. Consequently, 12,000 years ago, Indians could not reach most of the Outaouais, but they could advance gradually during the next 6,000 years as the vegetation started to come back over the warmer land and salt water gradually receded into the ocean. 

Reading the accounts of archeologists about those times, we encounter mammoths, mastodons, grizzly bears and several kinds of whales, porpoises and seals. 

It is fascinating to follow the writers through that period and immediately after, when they identify small groups of Indians (maybe 100 groups for a total of 2,500 Indians between Lake of Two Mountains and Lake Nipissing 6,000 years ago) and discuss their relationships with other populations. One of the most striking descriptions is their exploration of Morrison Island, site of 20 burials and several workshops. Archeologists describe the site as seasonally visited, probably before winter. The workshops speak of hunters, fishermen, sewers, wood and stone workers. The main surprise comes with the discovery on this island and on Allumette Island of the greatest amount of copper tools ever found for that period (around 5,000 years ago) on any site. The copper seems to have come from Lake Superior, 1,000 kilometres away. Archeologists use these findings to transport us to the daily lives of ancient people. 

This is just a short glimpse of a publication that also reviews the work done at many other sites over an area covering most of the territory defined as the Champlain Sea. This includes, of course, Lake Leamy where, after less than 10 years, the promises remain extraordinary, because of the way the numerous identified sites have been periodically flooded. The silt protected the remains of many populations which often carried distinct earthen pots, allowing for precise group and period identifications. 

The last pages are devoted to the The Bird's Rock, a 150-metre granite cliff along the Outaouais, above Allumette Island and across Chalk River. There, rock climbers can observe "the most interesting pictograms yet found in Quebec," eight paintings that have been tentatively dated as some 3,000 years old. 

A mythologist and a historian are making a combined attempt to provide a coherent and educated interpretation of what it may have represented for the Indians roaming the valley a millennium before Christ. This brings us closer to intuitive knowledge rather than to science, but it provides a fascinating end to a voyage in a world full of mysteries and clues.