Hochelaga

Hochelaga was a sixteenth-century fortified St. Lawrence Iroquoian village on or near Mount Royal in what is now Montreal, best known from Jacques Cartier’s October 1535 visit. He found a palisaded settlement of roughly fifty wood-and-bark houses, surrounded by cultivated cornfields, and estimated its population at about 3,000. During that visit he named Mount Royal, from which Montreal later took its name. The village had vanished by Cartier’s return in 1541, and its fate and exact location remain uncertain despite many theories and proposed sites. Even so, Hochelaga remains central to Montreal’s early history and enduring place names.

Quebec · Canada