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The Moatfield remains were reinterred shortly after the conclusion of the excavation. Six Nations hereditary faith keeper Barry Longboat officiated at the ceremony. It was not the first time such a ceremony had taken place in Toronto. The skeletal remains from the ancestral Wendat Tabor Hill ossuary in east Toronto were reinterred in October 1956. That ceremony was presided over by Hereditary Chief David Thomas, father of legendary Cayuga Chief Jacob Thomas, and attended by many other hereditary chiefs; there was national media attention.

Perhaps reflecting the Huron-Wendat creation story and the origin of life on Turtle Island, the placement on the floor of the Moatfield ossuary of a complete turtle effigy ceramic pipe is consistent metaphorically with the community resting on the ‘back’ of the turtle. It was at the very bottom and centre of the ossuary, sitting adjacent to the oldest male skull, and placed at the reburial ceremony in exactly the same place with the same skull. As they had in life, the Moatfield community members continue their journeys on the back of the turtle (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Complete Turtle Effigy Pipe from bottom of Moatfield Ossuary.

By about AD 1610, all of the ancestral Wendat communities along the north shore of Lake Ontario had moved northward, joining with other groups in present-day Simcoe County (between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay) to complete the formation of the Huron-Wendat confederacy (two nations had already joined in the fifteenth century). Some villages in the western GTA may have joined their brethren in the late sixteenth century to form the Tionontaté (Petun) confederacy, which was situated between the Nottawasaga River and Craigleith on Georgian Bay. While this movement of communities occurred over many generations, the final impetus was conflict with the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations Iroquois) of neighbouring New York State. Inter-tribal warfare with the Haudenosaunee during the first half of the seventeenth century, worsened by the intrusion of Europeans (and their diseases), ultimately resulted in the collapse and displacement of the Ontario Iroquoian-speaking confederacies and their Algonquian allies. In the 1630s, the Huron-Wendat lost about two-thirds of their population due to European-introduced epidemics that swept through their villages and those of their neighbours.

By the 1660s, the Haudenosaunee had established villages along the north shore, including two in Toronto near the mouths of the Rouge and Humber Rivers. They were only occupied until the 1680s, when hostility between the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabeg (and Wyandot allies) ended with Anishinaabeg occupation of Southern Ontario. It was with the Anishinaabeg that the treaties were signed by the new British colonial government, treaties that to this day affirm inherent Aboriginal rights on the land.