Montreal: DNA from the Notre-Dame Cemetery Reveals No Colonial Mixing

A cemetery at the heart of colonial Montreal

The Notre-Dame Cemetery was laid out in Montreal in 1683 and served for Catholic burials until 1796. Earlier work on its skeletons did not agree on the origins of the people buried there: European, African, Indigenous or mixed. The question is sensitive, since many Quebec families readily claim an Indigenous ancestor, sometimes without documentary proof.

To settle the matter, the team led by Diane Martin-Moya, a biological anthropologist at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, sequenced the DNA of 45 individuals. They compared it with genomes from populations in Europe, West Africa and the Americas, in order to detect any traces of mixed ancestry. The method, known as ancient DNA analysis, makes it possible to study remains several centuries old and to reconstruct kinship links between individuals.

Results that contradict a familiar story

According to the study, the 45 individuals analyzed show French European ancestry, with no sign of recent mixing with Indigenous or African populations. For the researcher, this suggests that descendants of these populations may have been marginalized in 17th-century Montreal, which runs counter to the image of cooperation and frequent unions between colonists and Indigenous people.

The DNA also revealed several genetic lineages spanning multiple generations. Yet the graves were scattered across different sections of the cemetery, indicating that burials were not organized by family plots. According to Raquel Fleskes, a molecular anthropologist at Dartmouth College who did not take part in the study, relations between groups may have existed socially without leaving biological traces.

A limited sample, cautious conclusions

The authors stress the limits of their work. The sample is small and comes from a single cemetery: it therefore does not prove that such unions never occurred. It is, however, consistent with genealogical and genetic studies showing that the Indigenous ancestry of today's French Canadians is very limited.

Burial practices may also have skewed the picture. According to Diane Martin-Moya, people interred inside the church, mostly clergy and wealthier residents, were more often exhumed and moved, while the poorest, buried outside, remained beneath an expanding city. The remains studied may therefore largely belong to modest colonists, which limits the social reach of the results.

Indigenous and African presence in the city

Archives show that Indigenous people were buried in Montreal's Catholic cemeteries as early as the 17th century. But with the dispossession of land and the move of missions away from urban centers, their dead were more likely buried within their own communities. Enslaved people, Indigenous and African alike, were often buried on their master's property or in cemeteries reserved for the poor.

Diane Martin-Moya also points out that the absence of detected mixing does not mean these populations were absent from the city. She recalls that Indigenous belonging rests on kinship, community and connection to territory, not on DNA alone. Relations between colonists and Indigenous people were complex, marked by alliances, trade, conflict and sometimes family ties.