The original documentation that describes the village’s location is
Bref récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI, which
Cartier gave to
King Francis I of
France in 1545. A plan exists titled
La Terra de Hochelaga nella Nova Francia, which illustrates, in the European manner of the period, Cartier's original visit.
Giacomo Gastaldi illustrated Hochelaga in the third volume of
Delle navigationi et viaggi, a work done in
Venice between 1550 and 1556 by
Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The perfect, regular arrangement of the houses, conforming to the urban ideal of the
Italian Renaissance, as well as the boards covering the village's palisade, were probably his own fabrications. If the plan faithfully illustrates the notes of the French explorer, it offers little resemblance to
ethnohistorical reality. A reproduction of
La Terra de Hochelaga by
Paul-Émile Borduas decorates the walls of the
Grand Chalet of
Mount Royal Park. The town, surrounded by a wooden palisade, had around fifty houses made of wood and bark, mostly
longhouses, both rectangular and rounded. the population is estimated to have been approximately 3,000 inhabitants. It was doubtlessly destroyed afterwards, as it was not mentioned by Jacques Cartier on his return visit to the island in 1541. He spoke about two villages, but only one,
Tutonaguy, was named. War, possibly with
Stadacona, has been suggested to be the cause of the disappearance of Hochelaga. The inhabitants' disappearance has spawned several theories, including their migration westward toward the shores of the
Great Lakes, devastating wars with the
Iroquois tribes to the south or the
Hurons to the west, or the impact of
Old World diseases. However, according to
Archéobec, the abandonment of the village following a cycle of land exhaustion would have been the main reason. At the time of
Samuel de Champlain's arrival, both
Algonquins and
Mohawks hunted in the
Saint Lawrence Valley and conducted raids, but neither had founded any permanent settlements. The custom of moving villages is a possible explanation as to why the exact location of the Iroquois settlement remains a mystery in the present day, despite the numerous hypotheses that locate it close to
Mount Royal.
William Douw Lighthall maintained that Hochelaga was located at the Dawson site, discovered in 1860 close to
McGill University. The site appears to correspond to a village preceding the foundation of
Ville-Marie by one or two centuries, but which lacked a palisade and seemed to be too cramped. Another proposed location is
Outremont, north of the mountain, which would be more likely if Cartier had arrived via the
Rivière des Prairies. The urbanist Pierre Larouche, based on the topometric data deduced from the Gastaldi illustration, has proposed that the village was situated on the
summit of the mountain. This hypothesis is not well-supported, as
La Terra de Hochelaga is a second-hand reconstruction. Furthermore, Cartier states clearly that the mountain was "adjacent to their said village", that Hochelaga was "close to and adjoining a mountain", and that he went to Mount Royal a distance of a quarter-
league of the site, the distance that, in fact, separates the basin of Mount Royal from the surrounding hills dominating it. Archaeological excavations undertaken recently on the summit of the mountain, around the basin, and in the
Jeanne-Mance Park east of Mount Royal have come up empty. The exact location of Hochelaga remains unknown. ==European contact==