Exploring
the Great Wall
of Hant’s Harbour
A Theory of Early Aboriginal Presence in the Area
Acknowledgements
This document is the result of many years of exploration by a few dedicated souls of the
Hant’s Harbour area. It started when a group of young boys found interesting rock structures in their wanderings through the local hills. It continued as these boys became men
– Winston Tuck, Carl Smith and Grant Tucker – as they relentlessly explored their subject
through a wide range of interesting new sources, both academic and experiential.
In recent years, Grant Tucker has led the charge quite admirably, making the Great Wall
of Hant’s Harbour his retirement project, while Winston, Carl and others continued to
support the effort.
Thanks to all these men for bringing this information to light, and to the Willow Tree
Heritage Society for its continued support.
Special thanks to Grant Tucker for his ongoing dedication to the project. It is his theory
and largely his research that is presented here.
Concept Developer and Project Leader: Grant Tucker
Writer and Graphic Designer: Michael G. Holmes
Editor: Patti Giovannini
Cover Art: Randy Pinhorn
Photos: Grant Tucker and friends, unless otherwise noted
Copyright ©2015 Grant Tucker
All rights reserved
Newfoundland Early Days
On the island of Newfoundland 3000 years ago, caribou migrated in the millions across this
barren, rock-strewn land. It was the time of the Priora Oscillation, a climate phenomenon in the
late Holocene period that lowered temperatures as much as three degrees centigrade. Not a lot
perhaps, but enough to drive forests deeper inland, away from the coast, leaving not much more
than tundra moss and short grasses clinging ruggedly to the naked lands along the shore.
In this prehistoric time the sea level was lower than it is today, the water having receded back to
the Arctic as ice, and the ground itself was still springing back from the almost 100,000 years it
spent buried beneath kilometers-thick glaciers.
On the northwestern spur of the Avalon Peninsula’s distinctive H formation, the Bay De Verde
peninsula jabs up between Conception Bay and Trinity Bay. Here, thousands of caribou ranged in
a loose flow up and down the peninsula throughout the year on their endless cycle of migration.
Pursued by wolves and infested with flies that bred beneath their skin, the caribou frequently
burst out of the interior to escape their torments and find relief in the wind and waters of the
coast of Trinity Bay – a far easier coastline than the precipitous cliffs of Conception Bay.
Virtually amphibious, the caribou leapt
from the land’s edge and swam vigorously to small rocky islands not far from
shore. These islands are not apparent
today, as they sunk back beneath the
waves when sea levels rose again and
the land settled back onto itself. But
3000 years ago, the little islands of
Trinity Bay were paradise to innumerous seals and birds drawn to the shallow shoals of abundant fish, and to the
much harried hordes of caribou seeking
refuge from their tormentors.
Twice a year the caribou migrated through the middle of the peninsula, in the spring and again
in the fall. They followed the lay of the land, the paths of least resistance that led them to where
they needed to be. Along valleys, cuts and ravines, they followed gentle slopes to the sea and
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there they lingered on their rocky outcrops to breed in the fall or to protect their wide-eyed
spring calves from the ravages of wolves.
The little islands were ideal for protection. The prevailing southwest wind blew away the incessant flies and carried the scent of approaching wolves. And should the predators come near,
the caribou would flee from island to island, or across small harbors to the next point of land,
leaving the hunters frustrated on the stony beaches.
This situation worked well for the caribou, who returned century after century to rest on the
little islands in the middle of the bay, amid the barking legions of seals and the clamorous din of
endless birdlife.
Source: Painting produced by Vidéoanthrop Inc., Montréal, under contract with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Painted by M. François Girard
using sketches and technical information compiled by M. Marc Laberge and the author. See more detail at Canadian Museum of History
First People Ashore...
Some 5000 years ago, the Maritime Archaic Indians crossed the Strait of Belle Isle from Labrador
to the Great Northern Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. These people hugged the coastline where food was abundant, and they frequently migrated along the shore in their canoes.
Sometimes they would settle and build. There was precious little wood in this barren landscape,
and what little there was went for warmth or into poles for tents, hafts for spears, or the shafts
of arrows. The wood was too thin and too scarce for much else. Stones, however, lay all about.
Unlike today, where rocks and stones are held fast by soil and buried in underbrush amid thick
forest, the stones of the Priora Oscillation sat in the open and simply waited to be gathered up for
human purposes.
The Maritime Archaic Indians had their ways as all people do, and they made use of these stones.
For one, we know they buried their dead, entombed beneath mounds of rock, their beloved arrayed in their finest and laden with gifts for the afterlife.
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Left: The 7,500-year-old burial mound of a Maritime Archaic boy at L’Anse Amour, Labrador. Right: One of the larger rock mounds in Hant’s Harbour.
The oldest known grave in the New World resides in L’Anse Amour, Labrador and it is the tomb of
a twelve-year-old child. What remains of the child’s life was miraculously preserved by unusual
geological circumstance, buried beneath a mound of stone twelve metres in diameter.
There are some 180 known Maritime
Archaic Indian archaeological sites scattered across the island of Newfoundland and possibly many more to be
discovered in the undergrowth.
The vast majority of burial mounds do
not contain artifacts or any living matter
– even bone – since it has long passed
to dust. The artifacts in L’Anse Amour
were preserved by a freak of geology,
but all other Maritime Archaic mounds
are no more than a pile of rocks. Yet
they still tell a story.
As the people settled and their numbers
grew, many left their homes to search
for a greater abundance of food. The climate was cooling and this led to changes in food supply. The Maritime Archaic
peoples headed south, deep into the
huge bays of Newfoundland, their tiny
vessels at the mercy of ocean currents
as they hunted and explored.
The Labrador current that flows into
Trinity Bay is cold, deep and strong. It rushes down the center of the bay until it collides with the
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land. Then the current turns back along the east and west shores of the bay to return to the wider
ocean. As it moves along the coast, it is warmed by the land and ripples across shoals where fish
gather to feed.
When the returning current hits what is now Hant’s Harbour Head, it is deflected somewhat back
into the bay and away from the shore. This creates a relatively calm and warm place just outside
the harbour, in and around shoals and rocks known to the local fishing folk as the Rip Raps, near a
small promontory called Little Islands.
When the Maritime Archaic peoples moved south for better hunting, the Rip Raps archipelago
emerged well above the waves as the sea level then was nearly three meters lower. And these
little islands teemed with life. Fish were drawn to the calm and warmer shallows to feed, and they
in turn enticed seals and birds of prey with their ready abundance.
There too, peering out at the approaching canoes from the safety of their small island refuge,
stood hundreds if not thousands of caribou.
New World Explorers Arrive
More than 2500 years later, this same
natural abundance brought the Europeans
to Hant’s Harbour. The Maritime Archaic
peoples had long since passed, succeeded
by the Palaeo-eskimos and then the Recent
Indians, the last of whom we knew as the
Beothuk.
The land itself had changed from the barren
tundra during the Maritime Archaic period.
Beware the Indian Graves
As a boy growing up in Hants Harbour I recall my grandmother telling me not to go up on Capelin Cove
Head because there was an Indian buried up there and his ghost would get me! I believed her then and
was afraid to go there. As I became older I figured her story was just a myth told to keep us away from
the dangerous cliffs of the cove. In fact, my cousin Winston Tuck and I spent a lot of time exploring and
climbing the cliffs of the Head, always keeping a watch for the Indian grave.
In the Fall of 1966 my wife Brenda and I went up around the Head to pick berries. Vegetation had just
begun to return after the fire of 1961 when much of the ground cover had been burned. Just inland from
Hants Harbour Head we found rock piles covering two depressions in the bedrock. It appeared to be two
graves.
It seems the story passed on by my grandmother and the older residents of the cove may indeed have
been based on fact.
Grant Tucker
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The Europeans found dense boreal forest, all the better to hew their ships, boats and homes, and
feed their fires. The Rip Raps had mostly descended beneath the waves by this time, but their
shoals were still rich with cod.
Like the Maritime Archaic, the early Europeans lived close to the sea. The population was quite
small initially, centered around Little Islands and the western side of Hant’s Harbour. Fisher folk
had no interest in rowing their boats any further than necessary to reach the fishing grounds. It
was a hard life, with little time for much more than fishing, cutting wood and clearing what few
fields might be handy for vegetables.
In some ways, not a great deal changed in Hant’s Harbour over the next 150 years. The town
itself slowly boomed as the Newfoundlanders built boats and made good on the cod stocks, but
the way of life didn’t differ much over time. Trees were still felled by axe, and the fields cleared
by hand. Rocks were plentiful and firmly embedded in the shallow soil, under the cover of dense
underbrush, and it was back-breaking work to move them at all.
No wonder boys, playing far into the woods, marveled at the sight of large stone mounds and
other curious structures they found there. Far away from the rest of the settlement, on a side of
the harbour not much used by the locals, the solemn stone mounds and structures stood unexplained, amid old Indian ghost stories and near impenetrable brush.
When the first Maritime Archaic Indians saw what was to later become Hant’s Harbour, they may
well have dropped their paddles. Birds, seals and caribou virtually standing on top of each other
on the beaches and islands, all ringed by shoals of fish.
Immediate occupancy was almost certain, and they probably hurried ashore. Over time, as these
people explored Trinity Bay further, they found other locations that suited their seasonal needs
as they followed their food on its migrations. But at least twice a year they returned to Hant’s
Harbour – near the middle of the bay – to fish and hunt the caribou as they came and went along
the Bay de Verde peninsula.
Tracking the Scent of Caribou
One of the boys who came across those mysterious stone structures in the woods so long ago
later went on to hunt caribou in Labrador. He saw the high Northern barrens, and he studied how
the caribou lived and moved, and learned how the natives had hunted them for millennia.
What Grant Tucker also saw in these northern lands were caribou drive lanes, built by the aboriginals since prehistoric times and still used to some extent to this day. The ancient drive lanes,
Grant learned, were made of stone, piled atop each other to form low walls.
The caribou’s hooves are curious things. Larger than a moose’s hoof, and splayed, they are designed to suit the caribou’s most natural defensive strategy – swimming. When threatened, car-
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Caribou drives lanes on Victoria Island, Nunavut, with aerial and ground-level views.
ibou won’t hesitate to leap in the water. Their hairs are hollow, and this makes them sufficiently
buoyant. Wolves and flies, the perennial afflictions of the caribou, are not so aquatic. The wolf
pack tires easily and loses its advantage of speed in the water. Flies drown, or are otherwise redirected by coastal breezes.
While these great paddling hooves are a boon to the caribou, they come with a cost. Uneven
stone surfaces frustrate the animal’s footing and are consequently avoided. Caribou can clamber
to an extent, but they will turn away from unsure slopes and will not leap over obstacles unless
maddened by fear. Indeed, like many bovines, they have a peculiar fondness for fences, or linear
barricades, and tend to hug them as they move along.
This odd inclination has not gone unnoticed by those people who hunt caribou, hence the native
drive lanes. They are often made of felled trees in more southern climates, but stone drive lanes
have been used by northern native hunters since prehistoric times.
A comprehensive study of native stone drive lanes in Nunavut by Jack Brink demonstrates the
complexity and utility of these structures, describing in detail how these structures were used.
Native drive lanes were designed and used over generations with the utmost cunning. They took
into account the prevailing winds, how the caribou moved across the land, what drove them in
one direction or another, and why. The people who built them knew the caribou intimately, their
every urge and their every fear.
A Theory Emerges
As Grant Tucker recalled the stone structures he and his friends had uncovered in their youth, he
began to see distinct similarities between the northern caribou drive lanes and the mysterious
structures around Hant’s Harbour. He searched the hills of home again and studied the configurations of the structures against the lay of the land.
What eventually emerged in Grant’s mind, through a combination of his experience and studies,
was a vast complex of stone structures spread along the shore from Lead Cove to New Perlican,
with a prehistoric killing field centered in Hant’s Harbour.
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One of his first thoughts was the sheer volume of rock involved. Thousands of tons of rock had
been moved and carefully placed. This might not seem so impossible today, but in the 1950s
when Grant was a boy and residents of Trinity Bay led a life very
similar to the early Europeans, the notion of unearthing so much
stone and moving it about in the dense forest was patently absurd.
Local elders agree that no one would move that much rock. There
was no reason for it, and no time to do it, not with the other necessities of survival dominating their lives. Furthermore, few of the
stone structures bear any relation to well known European settlement patterns in the Hant’s Harbour area. Where they do, it seems
to Grant that the stone structures had been taken from, not added
to, for the purposes of building cart tracks and house foundations.
The stone structures around Hant’s Harbour are indeed numerous and mysterious. Many are rock mounds like the ancient burial
mound uncovered in L’Anse Amour – and they extend up and down
the shore. There are also the structures that resemble stone fox
traps, commonly used by prehistoric peoples.
Then there are the rock walls, plentiful and of varying heights that
lie in various states of disarray around the east side of Hant’s Harbour. Some lead out to Little Islands towards the Rip Raps. Others
are embedded in the terrain, where the land’s natural wall-like
characteristics seem to be augmented by carefully laid stones.
Tales of the Indian Path
Several living residents of Hant’s
Harbour grew up with their
grandparents’ stories of Indians
in the area. Many of the stories
centered around the ‘Indian
Path’ that wound its way along
the shore from Hant’s Harbour
through Winterton, Turk’s Cove
and Heart’s Content. In more
recent memory, the route of the
Indian Path was known as the
Old Road. Explorers of this path
have revealed more isolated rock
features, mainly stone mounds
in Lead Cove, New Melbourne,
Capelin Cove, King’s Head Cove,
Turk’s Cove and New Perlican.
There is also a report of an ochre
deposit near Green Cove along the
shore between New Melbourne
and New Chelsea, due for further
exploration soon.
It’s easier in some places to see where the European and possible
Maritime Archaic structures co-mingle, such as on the east side of
the harbour. Either the stone walls there are well-aimed discards
from European efforts at now abandoned foundations, or the caribou drive lane walls were scavenged by Europeans for the initial
building of those foundations.
As one moves further east towards Big Hill, the land grows steeper.
An old path that was first used by animals, then by people, meanders inland towards the next community of New Chelsea. Older
people of Hant’s Harbour knew this as Indian Path, so we can assume it preceded the Europeans.
The path had obviously evolved over time to accommodate horse carts, using flat stones in some
areas. But were the path and the many large rock mounds lying about directly related?
If indeed the original path preceded the Europeans, the size of the rock mounds and the amount
of stone used for the track don’t add up. There is far too much stone, piled in such careful
mounds. Europeans building or modifying the track might well have shifted the occasional boul-
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der and laid the odd stone to firm the pathway – but large mounds of stone? In the middle of
dense woods, hauled out of the reluctant sod?
It was suggested that these efforts were an early incarnation of a government make-work program in the 1850s. But locals don’t believe this is true. All records of that time clearly state that
government relief projects in the area happened on the other side of the Harbour, with the construction of a bridge near Capelin Cove.
The track leads on to a long abandoned garden, which Grant is the first to admit is of European
origin. The land is flat and the soil deeper than any of the surrounds, and archeologists found bits
of European tools and rubbish mixed throughout, confirming everyone’s assumption. The garden
lies not far from the remnants of house foundations a little further north on the path.
A side step off the path leads to the next and most stunning feature – what has become known
as The Great Wall of Hant’s Harbour. Far thicker than it is tall, the wall-like structure strikes boldly
up a steep incline. Actually, there are two walls running parallel and roughly ten feet apart. At the
bottom end of the structure, towards the harbour, each wall takes an exact ninety degree turn
away from the middle and extends out at least twenty meters.
Facing east towards the Big Hill, the parallel structures lead upwards and then fade out as they
come to the base of a cliff. Here, the natural terrain combines with the stone structures to form
a sloped amphitheatre in the shadow of the cliff. Near the center of this space, at the end of the
structures, a single tall stone stands at shoulder height to an adult. Grant calls it Altar Rock.
The stone is striking. Anyone with a sense of how gravity works might suggest it’s a natural rock
fall from the cliff nearby. However, Altar Rock lies a little too far from the cliff to have tumbled
so much. And when the base of Altar Rock was inspected by an engineer, he found smaller rocks
Left: Grant Tucker and friend examine the Great Wall. Right: Altar Rock.
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A Question of Origins
Locals don’t believe the rock walls and
mounds make any sense in a European
context. With less than 200 years of significant European occupation in the area, the
patterns of settlement are well engrained
in living memory and the stone mounds and
structures just don’t fit the pattern. Records
show that a mere 29 souls called Hant’s Harbour home in 1800. The population grew only
after the 1830s, when permanent English
settlement began and a ship-building trade
took root in the community soon after.
behind and underneath it, clearly intended to support
the rock in what is an unnaturally upright stance.
In the Northern caribou drive lanes that Jack Brink
examined, a consistent feature was the Inukshuk.
Roughly translated, Inukshuk means `like a person,’
and Brink noted that these people-like structures occurred at the end of drive lanes in order to bring the
caribou to an abrupt stop. While the caribou tried to
reverse themselves from the apparent threat, hunters
would fall on them, spears moving with intense precision as they fatally stabbed the paralyzed creatures.
Brutal indeed. But native hunters in fact had great
reverence for their prey. The caribou was life itself,
and the kill was the culmination of much planning,
patience, and no little prayer. The wind had to be favorable to drive the caribou along the lanes, and the
hunters had to be extremely well disciplined not to
startle the animals into premature flight.
It was not a wild chase, but a carefully orchestrated dance across many kilometers. From the
commanding heights of the Big Hill behind the Great Wall of Hant’s Harbour, the hunters could
see the caribou approach their refuge from inland.
The slope to the harbour was gentle through the valleys and along the streams, and the shores
were not too confounding for the caribou’s picky hooves. While other places along the shore have
good slopes or favorable shores, none has them both, as Hant’s Harbour does.
The wind blows most often inland from the sea, putting the hunters upwind where the caribou
can’t detect them. The caribou are alive to any movement, ready to bolt at a flutter in the distance. The hunters must be still, except for the merest gestures that direct the hunt, and the
slightly more gregarious outburst of the beaters who subtly drive the caribou forward without
trying to panic them.
The Lay of the Land
If the stone walls around Hant’s Harbour were set up as drive lanes, then they must follow the
land as the caribou would, towards the sea, along the lines of least resistance that animals have
always used. And the stones do just that.
There are three lines of entry to the harbour, each following a natural course of the animals. All
of these points of entry lead to the stone wall structures, which combine with the land’s natural
features to funnel the caribou to distinct killing zones.
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The first line comes through a wide valley, along a stream and into the harbour. The animals here
would have been driven into a bowl-like depression, turned around and driven into the harbour
waters to meet the spears and entanglements of the hunter. This bowl is surrounded by steep
natural slopes, reinforced in places by stones where the slopes were insufficient to the task.
Unfortunately, this site is closest to the modern town of Hant’s Harbour, and it is believed the
original stones were dismantled for foundations and garden walls. Nonetheless, there are enough
convincing remnants to support Grant’s thesis.
Similar Structures
Many of the stone structures in and around Hant’s Harbour are remarkably similar to other Aboriginal finds
in northern Canada. If early Aboriginal peoples migrated here and stayed for an extended period, it is not
surprising to find similar structures for hunting, housing and other practical needs, assuming the same materials were plentiful in both locations.
The stone structure on the left appears in the Little Islands area of Hant’s Harbour. It is very similar
to the structure on the right, identified by MUN archaeologists as a fox trap in Forteau, Labador.
The image on the left shows what appears to be a collapsed stone shelter, located in the woods near Hant’s Harbour.
On the right is a photo of a rock igloo in the early 1900s, from S.K. Hutton’s book Among the Eskimos of Labrador.
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The second line of entry goes behind Big Hill to the northeast of the harbour, over a saddle of land
between Big Hill and Soper’s Hill. Here, the caribou are driven straight into the Great Wall and the
ominous Inukshuk. As the animals move into the
amphitheatre and are confronted by the upright
stone, the hunters would have emerged from the
hollow space between the two lines of stone that
form the Great Wall.
Those animals not killed initially would have
moved along the wall, as caribou do, and been
speared accordingly. If any remained, the wall
ends abruptly and they were free to flee downhill
towards the water – their defensive strategy – and
into the first bowl-like kill zone.
The third and final line moves up along Soper’s
Hill itself. There is another low area of marsh before Soper’s Hill and then a gentle incline towards
a steeper ridge. Similar to the bowl-like kill zone
Soper’s Hill
near the harbour, it is augmented by rocks and
stones fitted into the landscape. The altered ridgeline would have driven the animals forward
towards the sea, until a final rush from the beaters would have sent the animals headlong over a
wicked and deadly precipice.
With a herd so large, many caribou would have escaped the first three traps, and headed determinedly towards the safety of the Rip Raps archipelago. A long, short wall of stones runs along
the approach to the Rip Raps, leading to the old European settlement of Little Islands.
The remaining caribou, now reasonably frantic to reach their islands, would have hugged the wall
on their hurried way and made easy targets for the Maritime Archaic people and their spears.
Those caribou that reversed course to seek the safety of the harbour waters, either from the
Soper’s Hill precipice or the Little Islands run, would have been funneled by the land back into the
bowl-like kill zone or up towards the second facing of the Great Wall.
Conclusions
Pricilla Renouf, a leading archaeologist on the Maritime Archaic peoples in Newfoundland and
Labrador, theorized that a great many as yet undiscovered Maritime Archaic sites would lay somewhat inland, in the middle of a bay arm, on a high point of land.
She was referring to sites on the Great Northern peninsula, but her assumptions are easily trans-
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ferred to the Bay de Verde. And Hant’s harbour fits her prediction perfectly.
Renouf suggests that an elevated location would be chosen primarily to monitor food resources, such as the coming and going of caribou. The middle of the bay on a fairly narrow peninsula
would allow the benefit of a caribou hunt in the spring as well as the fall, as the herd made its migratory circuit. Finally, like the caribou, people tend towards the line of least resistance, and such
a central location on the bay would offer the least transit time between either extremity of the
bay for seasonal exploitation of resources, be it the capture of capelin at the bottom of the bay in
the summer, or hunting seals on the ice up north in the winter.
There is no way to prove that the structures in Hant’s Harbour are ancient burial mounds and
caribou drive lanes. There are efforts to explain them in the European context, yet these theories
are also without proof and there is much circumstantial evidence against them. Most importantly,
the arguments for European origin lack the depth to explain in a holistic way this extensive series
of structures, so seemingly beyond the realm of practical purpose and common sense, and likely
beyond the capacity of early Europeans in this region.
The structures are far better explained in the context of a broader Maritime Archaic civilization
that dwelled near Newfoundland and Labrador coastlines for several thousand years from 75003000 years ago. We know these people depended on stone-works during the period of the Priora
Oscillation. Archaeologists say they spent time in this area. And we are confident they found easy
access to an abundance of food sources in the strategic location of Hant’s Harbour.
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