DNA study challenges myth of widespread racial intermixing in early colonial Montreal

Intermingling between European settlers and indigenous and Afro-descendant populations was possibly not widespread in Montreal during the 17th and 18th centuries, concludes a study published by a researcher from the Université de Montréal.

The analysis of ancient DNA from 45 individuals who had been buried in Notre-Dame Cemetery between 1683 and 1796 revealed that they were all of European origin – and more specifically French, with one exception.

“The Notre-Dame cemetery was excavated over several years in Quebec, which is quite rare in archaeology,” explained Diane Martin-Moya, a visiting researcher in the anthropology department at UdeM. “This allowed us to have a fairly significant window into the time of the first French Canadians who arrived in Montreal and participated in the construction of the colony.”

The authors of the study compared the Notre-Dame samples to a reference panel composed of ancient and modern genomes, including 900 genomes from Europe, 751 genomes from West Africa and 673 genomes from indigenous groups in the Americas, it was detailed in a press release.

The analysis revealed exclusively French ancestry for the 45 individuals analyzed. The only exception was one individual who was apparently of Italian origin.

This discovery suggests that Indigenous and African-origin populations were marginalized in the urban colonial context of Montreal, which contrasts with accounts of cooperation and intermingling between French and Indigenous peoples.

“Previous bioarchaeological studies have led to conflicting interpretations regarding the presence of non-European or mixed-race individuals (in Montreal),” the authors write. “Our results show an exclusively French European ancestry. (…) These results challenge the narrative of the ‘mixed-race founding population,’ aligning with historical evidence of the marginalization of Indigenous and African-descended populations while highlighting the social inequalities that shaped this colonial urban cemetery.”

Martin-Moya clarifies, however, that it is impossible to generalize these conclusions to the entire Montreal population of the time, since the analysis focused only on a handful of individuals among the thousands who had been buried there over time.

“It’s interesting because it shows how, as a researcher, we can be influenced by variables that point to something; we tend to cling to the story, saying, ‘Ah well, that must be it,'” said Martin-Moya. “So, it also shows that science isn’t dogma; you really always have to dig deeper.”

After all, she points out, various measures had been put in place to promote the marriage of Indigenous women with French settlers, in addition to assimilation and acculturation policies. 

The analysis of genetic links also made it possible to identify “several multigenerational lineages extending over several areas and phases of burial in the cemetery, which suggests that the burials were not spatially organized into family concessions,” it was explained.

The authors believe that the genetic diversity within the cemetery likely reflects the arrival of settlers from many different regions. Furthermore, “the successive overlapping of burials and the disturbances caused by urban development testify (in their view) to the rapid population growth of the settlement.”

According to the authors, this analysis highlights the colonial inequalities of early Montreal.

“The wealthiest occupied the best positions in the cemetery,” said Martin-Moya. “They were able to be moved elsewhere when the cemetery presented hygiene problems. The others were left where they were (…), and for 300 years they were victims of modernity and urbanization, which meant that they were sometimes found completely destroyed by the construction of an aqueduct or a wall. Sometimes we weren’t even able to find the bodies intact.”

The findings of this study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews