Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/375259
GETAWAYS f a l l 2 0 1 4 | w e s t w o r l d 11 Secrets of South Branch House It's the hope of nding an arrowhead, a beaver button – maybe even a brooch – that keeps us digging . . . and digging . . . and digging story and photos by Liz Bryan I t's hot, humid and bugg y. Mosquitoes swarm under the white canvas roof that shades the checkerboard of eight partially excavated pits on the site of an 18th-cen- tury fur-trading depot. A ghost post, I think, listening to the wind moan in nearby pop- lars. Kneeling on the dry bare earth, trowelling nano-bits of soil into the smallest dustpan I have ever seen, I'm helping to uncover its secrets. And there seem to be many. A member of the Saskatchewan Archaeology Society, I have joined its fi eld school to excavate at the site of the Hudson's Bay Company's (HBC's) South Branch House, where three archaeology students are already at work. It is certainly an intriguing – even controversial – dig. Not even the archaeologists can agree that this is the right place. And it has a horrifi c history. Built in 1786 on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River midway between Batoche and St. Louis, the trading post had been occupied for nine years when it was attacked, ransacked and burned to the ground by raiding Gros Ventre natives. Only one of its occupants escaped. The place was then abandoned, its ruins eventually covered in poplars, high above the river. e wild prairie around it was slowly cultivated. Identified by historian Arthur Morton in 1944, South Branch House became Saskatche- wan's fi rst recognized historic site. But its ghosts would be left undisturbed for some 200 years (above) Canvas protects the South Branch site from the elements; (left) crew members Erica Owens (top) and Candice Koblun methodically excavate the old fort cellar.