Fourth, Karmen discovers a rectangular mortise in the south wall log. This means the end walls were constructed using post-on-sill construction. The archival photos from the 1920s show a few houses with a vertical log on side walls that run from the base of the wall to the top of the gable.

South wall with central mortise.

Thursday, July 12:
The floorboards in Evelyn's unit appear to be much deeper than the floorboards in Erica's unit and what we think is the doorway. In Evelyn's unit, the floorboards are buried under approximately 35 cm of deposits; in Erica's unit, they are buried under a mere 10 cm. Either we have two floors—one buried under the other—or it is simply an illusion because the ground surface slopes downward from Evelyn's unit. We hope it is the latter but there is one simple way to determine that. We set up the transit and take elevation readings. The results: the floorboards and the tops of the wall logs in all the units are at essentially the same elevation, plus or minus a few centimeters which can be easily accounted for by the wood deteriorating and sagging under the weight of the overburden. At least now, we know we have only one floor to deal with. That still doesn't help us understand the mess of squared and notched logs in front of the door.

Two important things happen today.

First, we have a brief visit with Harold Kemp, Jr. His father, Harold Kemp, was the Revillon Frères manager at Stanley Mission in the 1920s. He wrote the book, Northern Trader, which has become our primary written reference for our research in the Old Village. Harold Kemp Jr. was seven years old when his parents left Stanley Mission and moved to Prince Albert, but he still has vivid memories of growing up in the village. In the brief time he spends at the site, he tells us lots of stories of people and events.

Elder Elizabeth Charles celebrating her 80th birthday.

Second, Elizabeth Charles, one of the Elders who has helped us so much, is celebrating her 80 th birthday today. There is lots of good food, and her grandchildren and great grandchildren entertain everyone by singing.

Friday, July 13:
Hot, sunny.

Not withstanding that this is supposed to be an unlucky day, we progress quite well at the site today. I'm still excavating through the fibrous matted layer, which I am beginning to think is a buried soil level consisting of matted grass roots, and started to encounter mottled clay. Karmen still isn't finding much either inside or outside of the wall. Evelyn and Bev finish excavating the fireplace apron and what remains of the surrounding flooring. The joist under the flooring is notched just at the corner of the apron, and another notched log is set into this notch, probably to support the first of the floorboards in front of the apron. Alas, the floorboards in front of the apron are gone.

The completely excavated fireplace and apron, showing floorboards and notched joists.

Our canoe ride across the river at the end of the day is rather exciting. A strong north wind blows up just as we hit the main current, and suddenly we are paddling through high (for us) waves with whitecaps. We tack back and forth, angling into the waves as much as possible, and arrive at the dock with only a little water in the bottom of the canoe. Evelyn, who is still not comfortable in a canoe, levitates out the canoe and onto the dock faster than I have ever seen her move.

Today is Bev's last day working with us. Tomorrow, she goes back to Regina.

Saturday, July 14:
Hot, sunny, and muggy. At times, we can wring the humidity out of the air.

I finish excavating the mess of squared logs and in the process discover three small rodent (mouse-sized) holes in the ground under the logs. I then begin the process of brushing all the accumulated dust and grass off the logs in preparation to photograph all three units—38N8E, 39N8E, and 38N9E. This also requires removing the last of the clay from the logs, and in the process I discover a few other things:

1) What appeared to be mere “sticks” turn out to be more squared logs, one of which has quite a space under it. I stuff a plastic bag under the log to prevent the fragile wood from collapsing.

2) A squared log just below the door has a thick compressed deposit of wood chips on top of it, looking for all the world like oriented strand board (OSB). This is truly worrisome. We don't know when OSB was first manufactured, but we assume fairly recently which would mean that this house existed very late in the history of the Old Village. This doesn't correlate with what people have told us so far or what we see in the archival photographs.

Possible OSB (oriented strand board) on log.

3) The door sill is very worn and polished, just as you would expect to see a piece of wood that has been walked on for a very long time. There are also 18 nails, both machine-cut and wire, nailed into the door sill, suggesting that it needed to be reinforced to stand up to some heavy wear and tear, also exactly what you might expect to see in a doorway.

Well-worn edge of log in doorway.

Karmen is still finding next to nothing in her unit. Evelyn finishes drawing the planview (map) of everything in the two units she has just finished excavating, and I set her to work opening up a unit on the north wall where we hope to find a corresponding mortise to match the one in the south wall.

Sunday, July 15:
Overcast for most of the day, almost pleasant working conditions.

I finish cleaning the east wall/doorway complex and photograph everything. My next mission is to excavate just outside the west wall to see if there is any evidence of an attached lean-to. Even though I am now fairly certain that this house is not Murdoch McKenzie's, we still need to test for the presence or absence of all that features that his house had—the lean-to on the west side, a doorway in the west wall leading from the main house to the lean-to, and a trapdoor and root cellar in the centre of the floor.

Evelyn has started to uncover the top of the log in the north wall, and finds there a carved caribou toe bone that is part of the bone or cup-and-pin game. The Cree here call it nawacâkan (which translates roughly as “the thing [pin?] that catches it”). Evelyn's mother, who is from northern Alberta, calls it oskan meetaweewin (literally, “bone game”). This is really exciting because it is the first thing we have found in the site this year that is truly Cree in origin and history.

Monday, July 16:
Today is a typical archaeology day—we dig, we find nothing out of the ordinary. Evelyn is finding scraps of floorboards adjacent to the north wall. Karmen is working in a unit that includes the southwest corner of the fireplace and the west wall. Sharon is finding more of the squared and notched logs in the mess east of the doorway. I'm digging through clay and woodchips.

The fish flies, which have been hatching, flying about, and mating for the past few days, are now dying, in the millions, floating up on the shores and beginning to decay. Not a pleasant smell.

Tuesday, July 17:
Terribly hot with only a few puffs of wind, which merely serve to bring us the less than pleasant smell of rotting fish flies.

Today is pretty much a repeat of yesterday. A machine-cut nail is embedded in one of the floorboard ends in Evelyn's unit, so a joist must still be present underneath them. Sharon is uncovering a lot of wood chips, but they are not compacted like OSB. Karmen is starting to encounter some large rocks from the firebox, but is also surprised to recover a very large bear canine tooth. I'm still digging through lenses of concrete-like clay alternating with fibrous deposits containing lots of wood chips, charcoal, some bone and a few artifacts, one of which is an incised stone “rod” of unknown use.

incised stone rod

Wednesday, July 18:
A strong southeast wind brought both hot weather and a lot of smoke from a forest fire. The smoke was thick enough in the early morning to make breathing rather difficult, but as the wind died down the smoke cleared.

There is a funeral at Holy Trinity Church today, so the men arrive in the morning to dig the grave by hand. Many of them, including Joe Roberts, come up to the site to see what we are doing. We ask Joe about OSB; he thinks it was first manufactured about 30 years ago. However, when we show him the layer on the log in front of the doorway, he tells us that wood chips were often packed in between the logs as insulation, and that was done at the Church when it was built. We are greatly relieved to hear this. Joe is also not surprised to see the mortise in the south wall and in one of the squared logs in front of the east wall.

Evelyn cleans off the top of the north wall log but no mortise is visible. We assume that it is in the unit immediately to the west, that is, if it exists at all. Karmen's stones are getting larger and take up an entire quadrant. Sharon is finding more wood chips. I'm finding more clay. In other words, situation normal.

This is the last day of this 10-day work period. We now have four days off.

Thursday, July 19:
This was supposed to be a day off, but Janette Hamilton of Saskatchewan Environment (which is responsible for Provincial Historic Sites such as Holy Trinity Church) arrives to meet with the Stanley Mission councilors. She asks for a tour of the site, and I oblige.

We go into La Ronge to buy groceries, make phone calls, and check e-mails. While on-line at the La Ronge Library, I search for information on the history of OSB and learn it was first manufactured in 1978 (www.osbguide.com/osbhistory.html). We are ecstatic. This definitely means that the wood chip deposit on the log is not OSB because the Old Village was long abandoned by 1978. Not that we doubted Joe; we just need to be very sure.