Agriculture

Farmers, few in the 1930s, worked on the farm in the summer and cut firewood to sell for the winter. Many will cut wood or trap in the forest to support the family.

« We lived by hunting and fishing and after we were married, we sowed our land there, we cultivated the land. Then, when i went into the woods, at the construction site, I was living on a building site» (Elder of Mashteuiatsh).

It is only a small group of the community that lives on agriculture. This benefits everyone since exchange becomes common parctice. Farmers sell their products and trappers do the same, barter is commonplace at that time.

While agriculture is growing in the region, the reverse occurs in Mashteuiatsh. Many Ilnu families, now sedentary, do not necessarily adopt agriculture as a way of life.

The main road or rank A has the largest residential development. The shores of the lake were privatized, and the A-Rank, wich borders the lake, is almost continuously accupied between the limits of Roberval, the store of the HBC, and even beyond the point of the post.

The agricultural center formely near the limits of Roberval moves in the rank C near Saint-Prime. Although still present, agriculture is hardly more popular. In 1956, 21 growers lived there, their number decreased to 14 in 1961 and then to nine in 1966. The Pekuakamiulnuatsh were not the only ones to abandon the cultivation of the land, in 1968 the Oblate Fathers divested themselves of the farm. 
 

Nishk road.