History of Richmond Hill, Ontario - First Nations

First Nations

The first humans to come to the area were probably Paleo-Indians between 9000 and 7000 BCE. The first archaeological evidence of their presence found was a single scraper found at the Mortson site near Leslie Street and Elgin Mills Road. A few more artifacts were later found east of Lake Wilcox at the Esox site and as of 1988, fourteen sites in Richmond Hill have produced Paleo-Indian artifacts. The people in southern Ontario at this time were organized in nomadic bands, and would have migrated through the area, establishing camps then moving on. The Silver Stream site, which is located on a tributary of the Rouge River west of Leslie Street, between Elgin Mills Road and Major Mackenzie Drive, has yielded 27 artifacts that come from peoples of the Paleo-Indian cultures, one of which was dated to 1800 BCE.

Eventually the regional cultural transitioned from Paleo-Indian to Archaic, and then from Archaic to Early Iroquoian. The oldest known Iroquoian site in Richmond Hill is the Wilcox Lake Site, on the east side of Lake Wilcox, which has been dated to 1300 CE. The site covers 12,000 square metres. Human habitation of the area became permanent settlements around this time, where it had previously been nomadic. Well studied is the Boyle-Atkinson Site, a Late Iroquoian settlement southwest of the intersection of Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive. The location was first identified as the remains of an old settlement by David Boyle in the late 1860s. The site was occupied from about 1450 to 1500 CE and was a large village in the area, with at least nine longhouses identified as well as two other buildings. Several other sites in Richmond Hill are known to be from Iroquoian peoples who lived in the area between 1300 and 1550 CE, including the McGraw, Murphy-Goulding, Orion, Reuben Heise and Watford sites. The arrangement of the sites suggest they represent a single community periodically relocating. Around 1550 tensions between the Iroquois of southern Ontario and the Five Nations Iroquois in New York led to their emigration en masse to the Huron Confederacy between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, and the archaeological evidence suggests the Iroquois inhabitants of Richmond Hill left the area about that time.

The area was uninhabited for at least 100 years after the exodus of the Iroquois. Sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century, the Mississauga Indians moved into the area from the north. The Mississaugas had a nomadic lifestyle, and moved seasonally across much of what is now York Region and the Golden Horseshoe.