Teiaiagon

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “Je suis venu te dire que m’en vais” (I Just Came By to Tell You I’m Gonna Leave) by Serge Gainsbourg, and I started tracking down the chords. This was a bit of a hit and so I knew the chords would be posted. I found a couple of versions but I always look for four and then settle between them.

            I spent a lot of the day getting caught up on my journal.

            I had a cold pork chop with some cranberry sauce for lunch.

            I didn’t do my exercises in the afternoon because I had a deadline to meet for uploading four proposals of Indigenous places in Toronto to visit for my Indigenous Studies course. I’d previously bookmarked a map of indigenous archaeological sites in Toronto and spent several hours researching them. I wanted to find the closest ones possible. Two of them are across the Humber River from one another at Jane and Annette. Another is at Keele and Finch while another is at L’Amorough Park in Scarborough. There’s one way up in the northeast corner of Scarborough, but that’s too far for me. I ate a potato and a chicken leg with some gravy while I was working. It was after 22:00 by the time I uploaded my proposals, and the deadline was midnight. Here’s what I came up with:

Proposal number one:

Near the mouth of what the Anishinaabe called Cobechenonk for “leave the canoes and go back” and what is now called The Humber River was a trading post called Teiaiagon. Teiaiagon was a Seneca village from 1670 to 1690 on the east bank of the river. It is near the current intersection of Jane and Annette in the community of Baby Point. It was surrounded by corn, bean and squash fields and fortified by the banks of the valley. It was on the Toronto Carrying Place Trail or the Humber Portage which ran up the Humber from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe.

I propose visit the area and to research and present about the significance of this location as a Seneca trade route and agricultural site.

Proposal number two:

In 1690, the Anishnaabe ancestors of the Mississauga and New Credit First Nation, members of the Ojibway nation, were driven south by settlers from the north shore of Lake Huron to the mouths of rivers like the Humber. They drove out the Seneca and established a village on the opposite shore of Cobechenonk where they traded with the British and the French. 

            I propose to visit, research and present about the site of the Mississauga village at the Baby Point location. I am particularly interested in the idea that such villages were only settled for twenty-year periods for reasons of agricultural saturation.

Proposal number three:

            The Alexandra village site was on a small ridge overlooking what is now Highland Creek in L’Amorough Park on the north side of McNicholl Avenue between Birchmount and Kennedy. It was an active community in 1350 and had a population of 800 to 1000 of ancestors of the Huron-Wendat people. Seashell beads found indicated that they had trade with the east coast 100 years before European contact. They had fields of corn, bean, squash, sunflower and tobacco. The remains of sixteen longhouses, some sweat lodges and garbage pits have been uncovered. The artefacts have been removed and the area is a residential subdivision but there is a plaque commemorating the site of the village.

            I propose to visit the plaque, research and present about the Huron-Wendat people. I’m especially interested in the trade that they would have had with the indigenous people of the east coast.

Proposal number four:

            The Parsons site (AkGv-8) at Finch and Keele overlooking Black Creek was an Iroquoian amalgamation of smaller communities joined together for protection. It was twelve hectares, which is twice as long as other sites. It was active in the mid to late 15^th Century. There were ten longhouses, sweat lodges, four refuse areas and a defensive palisade. There was evidence of trade throughout southern Ontario.

            I propose to visit, research and present about the history of the Iroquois in this area.

            My preference would be if my TA were to pick the two sites on the Humber, since they only take half an hour for me to get to on my bike.

            I was relieved to be done with deadlines for a few weeks.

            I had yogourt with honey and strawberries with coffee for dessert and watched an episode of Wanted Dead Or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story Josh is escorting a man named Logan he’s captured for the bounty when he is confronted by a lynch mob that wants to take the prisoner away from him. Josh is ready for a fight but gets distracted when Logan tries to run and then Josh is hit from behind and knocked out. When Josh gets to town he finds that the sheriff is the one that led the lynch mob. Logan is wanted for murdering his own stepdaughter, who was the girlfriend of the sheriff’s son, Damon. Logan signed a confession while in a state of fear of the lynch mob, but the fact is that he does not remember having committed the murder. He had found that his stepdaughter Marnie inexplicably had $100, which he'd took from her after an argument and proceeded to get drunk. Josh goes to the local judge and tells him about the money, which was not mentioned in the trial. When Josh tells the judge that Damon is leading a lynch mob that plans to hang Logan that night he says he’ll stop it. Josh goes to Logan’s farm and finds from Logan’s wife that Damon had given her the money. When Josh returns to town he sees Logan hanging and finds the judge tied up. The judge says the sheriff jumped him. Josh has figured out that Damon must have murdered Marnie but as he takes him to the sheriff’s office he hears a gunshot from inside. The sheriff has committed suicide because he was the one that killed Marnie, as he loved her too.