Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700 –1300

Area 2: Saint John Drainage (see Figure 17.2)
In historic times, the Saint John drainage, along with
the Tobique and Témiscouata areas up to the St.
Lawrence River, were major portions of the Maliseet
territory (Erickson 1978:124). Archaeological research
in the New Brunswick portion of this area has focussed
on the confluence of the Tobique and Saint John Rivers,
the Lakes Region, and the mouth of the Saint John
River. Moorehead (1922:233-236) spent two weeks on
the upper reaches of the Saint John River during his
1914 expedition in search of “Red Paint” sites. He tested
several sites between Edmonston and Eel River, and
sank several hundred test pits for a 4 km radius about
the mouth of the Tobique River. After Moorehead, the
upper Saint John River area was left primarily to local
avocational archaeologists (e.g., Adney 1933;
Bradstreet 1996; Clarke 1968) with limited professional
survey and excavation work (Allen 1975, 1976;
Buchanan 1989; Ferguson 1982; Sanger 1967, 1971a;
Stoddard 1950:74-79; Turnbull 1990). In 1990 there were
only 22 sites known from the Tobique region, yet they
indicated a long prehistoric sequence (Turnbull
1990:25). In 1993 the Tobique First Nations community
sponsored fieldwork at the Bernard site with the help
of David Keenlyside, Curator for Atlantic Archaeology,
Archaeological Survey of Canada.
In the Lakes Region, along the central portion of the
Saint John River, a limited amount of survey and
excavation work was conducted during the late nineteenth
century (Bailey 1887; Kain 1902; Matthew 1896,
1900). Recent archaeological interest began in the
1960s with Pearson’s (1968a) survey, Davis’s (1971)
analysis of ceramics from the Key Hole site, and
Sanger’s (1971b, 1972) excavation of a Late Archaic
cemetery at Cow Point. Subsequent survey work at
Grand Lake (Turnbull 1975) led to excavations at the
Fulton Island site (Foulkes 1981). The recent Jemseg
Crossing Archaeological Project was a salvage operation
at the area of impact for the proposed crossing of
the Trans Canada Highway at Jemseg (Blair 1997a,
1997b, 1998). The nearby Meadows site was also
recently excavated (Varley 1999:43).
A series of surveys in the lower Saint John River
area (Burley 1975; Fisher 1964, 1965; Turnbull 1974a)
followed Harper’s (1956) excavation of a site at
Portland Point (also see Harper 1954), but no other
major excavations have been undertaken (Jeandron
1996). Unfortunately, there appears to be little surviving
evidence of prehistoric occupation at the
mouth of the Saint John River (Burley 1975). This area
has been heavily impacted by modern construction
activities. However, remnants of sites at Portland
Point, Marble Cove, and Bentley Street may yet provide
a glimpse of Late Prehistoric settlement patterns.
The Marble Cove site sits at the end of an
important portage route and Late Archaic remains
link this site with the sites at Portland Point and Cow
Point (Burley 1975:37-38). Recent testing at the
Bentley Street site has revealed a prehistoric occupation
dating back at least 3,000 years (Allen 1998).
Snow (1980) was the first author to give detailed
consideration of prehistoric settlement and subsistence
patterning on the Saint John River. He suggests
that ancestral Maliseet lived in semipermanent villages
located on saltwater. These villages could range
as far north as the Lakes Region, which sits at the
head of tide for the Saint John River. Snow’s (1980:45)
model involves logistical movements of small bands
from these villages into upstream forests in the winter
and coastal (residential) encampments in the late
spring and summer as important resources became
available. According to Snow (1980:47), winter campsites
were scattered along the shores of the river and
its ponds, lakes, and most tributaries, and summer
campsites were found on the coast. Snow feels that
the European fur trade had little effect on the
Maliseet, since they followed a relatively mobile and
diffuse settlement-subsistence pattern. He also suggests
that whatever incentive there was to adopt horticulture
disappeared with the intensification of the
fur trade (Snow 1980:46). Thus, semipermanent
villages, regular seasonal scheduling, and a dense
population led to development of a tribal sociopolitical
system for the Maliseet (Snow 1980:48). According
to David Sanger (1998, pers. comm.), Snow’s model
appears to be based primarily on Speck’s (1940) characterization
of the Penobscot in Maine, which he
applies wholesale to the Saint John River region without
adequate confirmation from archaeological evidence
(also see Sanger 1986).
In a recent detailed study of the major lithic source
areas at Témiscouata, Tobique, and Munsungun,
Burke (2000) reviewed the archaeological evidence for
settlement and subsistence patterning for the interior
of the Saint John River waterway. He considered three
possible scenarios, namely, that the population of the
waterway consisted of (1) two distinct groups with
little interaction; (2) two distinct groups with
considerable interaction and fluid group membership;
or (3) a coastal group occupying the interior on a seasonal
basis (Burke 2000:164). He eventually settled on
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