4Teaching Control and Service: The Use of Military Training at the Mohawk Institute

Evan Habkirk

In 1896, at the Central Canada Exhibition in Ottawa, the militarization of the Mohawk Institute received national recognition when visitors were shown portraits of the victory of the Mohawk Institute Cadet Corps over their local rivals, the military-trained Brantford Collegiate Institute cadets, at Brantford’s Dominion/Gala Day competition.¹ Throughout the 1900s, the Mohawk Institute cadets’ fame continued to grow, especially after they were featured in the British military publication Navy and Army Illustrated in 1902.² For Principal Robert Ashton, these accolades marked the zenith of a twenty-year campaign to bring order and discipline to the Mohawk Institute, a mission he began immediately after his appointment as superintendent and principal in 1870. More importantly, what Ashton had created was a tool that he, and other administrators of the school, used not only to control Indigenous children, but to show the non-Indigenous public the positive effects the school was having on its Indigenous charges. No matter the internal failings of the school and the abuses and inadequacies of school administrators, to the Canadian public, the cadets and public displays of their drill showed the Mohawk Institute was fulfilling its mission to “civilize” and bring the school’s Indigenous youth into Canadian society.

Ashton and Military Drill

When he first arrived at the Institute, Ashton described the school as in a “general appearance of neglect,” noting that the boys of the schools were “the idlest and most disobedient boys I ever saw; they will not do a stroke of work but just when it pleases them.”³ He further noted that he

had to keep them all out of school one week to hurry in the harvest, but they had no idea of work, and when I attempted to show some, the others took the opportunity to slip off and I had to fetch them back again; if I left the field for a few moments they would do nothing until I returned. . . . The boys have been taught that they have no right to be set to work of any kind against their will; it has been the practice to coax a boy to do any little thing required of him.⁴

Ashton concluded that the reason for this insubordination was due to the lax attitude of his predecessor, the Reverend Canon Nelles, toward the children. As he told his superiors at the New England Company,

[Nelles] made the following remark to the boys in my presence on the night we celebrated our Harvest Home:—“That now the harvest is gathered in or nearly so, there will be no further necessity for keeping any of you from school to work in the fields; and as the objects of your coming here is that you may be educated,” etc.—“but now at harvest time, when there is a press of work, it is right that you should render what assistance you can, else the crops would spoil on the ground.”⁵

When Ashton asked Onondaga teacher Isaac Bearfoot why Nelles needed to make such remarks to the students about fieldwork, Bearfoot explained “that the prevailing idea among the boys’ parents was that the children came here to be educated only, and not to work unless they liked. He added that most of the boys would on leaving here follow farming, but that the manner of working this farm was so slovenly, they could learn how to farm better at home.”⁶

Once in control of the Institute, Ashton began his mission to change the behaviours he deemed unacceptable. He modelled the Institute after a British reformatory/industrial school education, like he had previously known during his time at the Industrial School for Boys in Feltham, England. At the base of this education was drills, routines, and uniforms. This system was found to be popular among many child reformers and educators in Britain and within the Canadian public school system. Social reformers felt that drill, found in boys brigades, cadet corps, and the Boy Scout movement, combatted the negative influences found in city slums and promoted Christian and Victorian values like discipline, duty, loyalty, honour, punctuality, and precision, while educators found that these groups aided in ceasing the potential feminization of young boys due to the growing number of female teachers in the public school system.⁷ These ideas would later meld with the growing patriotism and militarism found in non-Indigenous culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, making these movements very popular until the 1970s.⁸

At the Mohawk Institute, Ashton took these ideas and established strict routines and codes of conduct for his Indigenous charges. He instructed the children in drill and ensured that, every morning, students would fall into formation on the school’s parade square and break into squads before beginning their daily chores.⁹ When moving about the school, students were required to form lines and march to their destinations, be it the Mohawk Chapel, dining hall, or classrooms.¹⁰ Ashton would also create a strict military-styled disciplinary system that included good conduct badges, black lists, and a solitary confinement cell for students who misbehaved.¹¹ Ashton hoped that the use of this military structure would control and change the behaviour of his Six Nations students into that of the surrounding Euro-Canadian population.

By the 1890s, the school was beginning to look and operate as a military camp. In 1894, Ashton required the boys of the school to wear polished boots and grey uniforms tailored by the girls at the Institute.¹² Older children were also appointed as corporals and sergeants to monitor students in their squads, ensuring their general good behaviour and that their assigned duties were completed.¹³ Likely being drilled by his sons Ernest and Alfred,¹⁴ who were both serving as officers of the local militia regiment, the 38th Dufferin Rifles, Ashton organized displays of the students’ military drills for visiting officials and the Brantford public. A brass band was added to these shows in 1899.¹⁵

Distinguished guests were often introduced to displays of Ashton’s uniformed students, demonstrating the “progress” that the school, and therefore the Ashtons, were making in “civilizing” their Indigenous charges. For instance, when the Marquis of Lorne and Princess Louise stopped in Brantford as part of their 1879 tour of Canada, the students of the Institute were placed prominently on a grandstand erected for them and their teachers. This uniformed presence of the students showed the royal couple and the people of Brantford that “those dusky sons for the forest” were able to recognize and conform to the greatness of the British Empire.¹⁶ This uniformed conformity further showed non-Indigenous viewers that these children no longer represented the “savage,” but instead presented a picture of Indigenous people who could be trusted and employable upon leaving the school.¹⁷ These uniformed students were not only meant to impress the viewer, but to show them that they were serious and controlled people.¹⁸ Placing these students in uniforms for public events showed the non-Indigenous public a pacified and tamed image of Indigenous people, making them virtuous, aesthetically pleasing, and respected based upon Euro-Canadian and British values.¹⁹

The event that thrust the corps to fame, however, occurred when the cadets, drilled by Ernest Ashton, won top prize at Brantford’s Dominion/Gala Day celebrations at Agriculture Park in 1896, beating the non-Indigenous and upper-middle-class Brantford Collegiate Institute Cadet Corps. The judges declared the drill of the Mohawk Institute cadets “to be the best of its kind ever seen in Brantford.”²⁰ According to Robert Ashton, the cadets performed their drill “with a spirit which is found nowhere outside of the regular army. The marching was not quite up to the mark of former public performances, but at times the most complicated military movements were done with the utmost regularity.”²¹ On 7 July during a band concert in Brantford, the Mohawk Institute cadets were presented with a silver tankard for their drill by the city’s mayor.²² After this, the Institute’s cadet corps became central features of royal and viceregal visits to Brantford and the Grand River Territory. At a local fair in fall 1896, the cadets formed the honour guard for the governor general and Lady Aberdeen and then performed an exhibition of their drill for the honoured guests and fair spectators.²³ In 1901, they formed part of the honour guard for the Duke and Duchess of York and Cornwall when they visited Brantford. The cadets were also featured at the Duke of Connaught’s visit to the Grand River Territory in 1913 and were later inspected by the Prince of Wales when he visited Brantford in 1919.²⁴

When the British journal Navy and Army Illustrated published a full-page article on the Mohawk Institute cadets, including a photograph originally taken for the 1896 Central Canada Exhibition in Ottawa, the article’s title, “A Red Man’s Cadet Corps: Civilised Sons of the Wild West,” reinforced the school’s goal of assimilating Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture and the British Empire. It also extended the use of military drill beyond these efforts, tying it to the absorption of the students into state and military service. As the article states, the goal of the Institute and the cadet corps was to “cultivate the martial predications of the young Indians, so that they may form part of the dominion defence,” and that “after leaving the institute many of them enter the active militia, chiefly the 37th Regiment, Haldimand Rifles.”²⁵

Aside from the displays of the cadets, the Ashtons also used their connections at the school to place Indigenous students into local military units. In a December 1896 report to the New England Company, Robert Ashton “permitted” six senior cadets to attend extracurricular drill with D Company of the 38th Dufferin Rifles, commanded by Ashton’s son, E. C. Ashton.²⁶ A review of the 38th Dufferin Rifles’ nominal rolls from the period 1896–8 shows that the cadets who drilled with D Company were actually paid soldiers within the regiment.²⁷ This clearly was not an extracurricular activity bestowed on these cadets through the “goodwill” of Ashton or the regiment, but instead was a way to funnel students into military service for the Canadian state.

No. 161 Mohawk Institute Cadet Corps

When Robert Ashton retired in 1903, his son, A. Nelles Ashton, took over as superintendent of the school. In 1909, with the support of the Canadian government, Ashton officially established No. 161 Mohawk Institute Cadet Corps, which, through the Strathcona Trust, provided monies, uniforms, and equipment to schools with cadet and drill companies for physical training and education. By 1910, the Department of Indian Affairs began recommending drill and calisthenics exercises as physical education programs in Canada’s residential schools, producing an eighteen-page calisthenics and drill manual accompanied with many breathing exercises.²⁸ According to the manual, these exercises and drills were designed to foster the health of the students, but could also be used to assimilate them into Euro-Canadian society since the drills “assist in obtaining the attention and prompt discipline so necessary before real work can be commenced.”²⁹ As noted by sport historian Janice Forsyth, this regimen also retrained Indigenous children by teaching them the “proper” ways of moving their bodies in a “unified and orderly” manner for state service and manual labour.³⁰ This was publicly supported by The Brantford Expositor, which reported that “nowhere is the necessity for physical development along with the brain culture more readily recognized than in the Mohawk Institute, where drill and the cadet program taught Indigenous children ‘a wholesome regard for authority.’”³¹

Although the students had these exercises imposed on them by leaders at the Institute, they seemed to excel at cadet drill. This has led scholars, including myself and Janice Forsyth, to hypothesize that some children may have used cadets much in the same ways some residential school survivors used sports—as a way of surviving their residential school experience. Cadets may have provided students with an outlet to succeed and be rewarded, with some survivors claiming their participation in cadets gave them something to do in the evenings, extra time on the playground, or took them away from the school grounds.³²

Although the residential school system reinforced that Indigenous students were not equal to non-Indigenous people, cadet drill provided these students an outlet to prove themselves and outperform their non-Indigenous counterparts.³³ During their 1908 inspection and drill demonstration, the inspecting officer claimed that the Mohawk Institute Cadet Corps made a “very credible showing” and further noted that the corps received a commendation from the minister of militia and the Canadian Militia Council for their good conduct.³⁴ In their 1912 inspection, the corps placed first in the Central Ontario Cadet Competition, with The Brantford Expositor reporting that the corps was “awarded the place of honor by the inspector over the cadet corps of Toronto, Hamilton and practically central Ontario.”³⁵ That year they also won the No. 2 Central Ontario Military District rifle competition.³⁶ While the corps passed their 1913 inspection, their commanding officer, E. C. Ashton, hoped they could improve their score in the rifle competition.³⁷ This could easily be accomplished; by 1880, the Ashtons had established a rifle range on the grounds of the Institute that they regularly rented out to the Dufferin Rifles.³⁸ Positive accolades bestowed on the Mohawk Institute Cadet Corps from those who viewed their drill would continue into the 1920s, with their commanding officers noting that in advance of inspections or competitions, members of the corps would demand extra drill and practice time in order to outperform their non-Indigenous competitors.³⁹

Wartime

The First and Second World Wars did little to change the militarization of the Mohawk Institute. There has been some debate whether the militaristic environment found within residential schools, especially at the Mohawk Institute, led them to function as feeders into the Canadian Armed Forces during the World Wars. Officially, this claim as it relates to the First World War, remains uncertain due to the changing recruitment policies of the Department of Indian Affairs, which would, at times, grant some recruiters access to certain schools, while denying access to other schools without clear explanation or cause.⁴⁰ Locally, however, this did not prevent school or local department administrators from helping guide Six Nations men, and quite possibly students from the Institute, to enlist.

It would have been easy for the now Lieutenant Colonel E. C. Ashton and Major A. Nelles Ashton to use their connections with the Mohawk Institute to obtain recruits when they were recruiting a local company of the 36th Battalion.⁴¹ After being appointed second-in-command of the Canadian Mounted Rifles Depot in Hamilton, Ontario, Gordon Smith, superintendent of the Six Nations Territory, was also known to use his connections to gather Six Nations men for enlistment.⁴² A preliminary survey of the Canadian Mounted Rifles nominal rolls found four Six Nations men from the Grand River Territory, with a potential seven more, among the ranks of the Canadian Mounted Rifles. In 1916, military authorities even requested that Smith transfer some of these Six Nations recruits to the newly formed 114th Battalion when they were looking for First Nations soldiers to fill its ranks.⁴³ Smith and his wife would later be appointed as representatives of a citizens’ recruiting league in Brantford and Brant County.⁴⁴ It is no wonder that in a recent survey conducted for the Woodland Cultural Centre exhibit Warriors, Veterans, and Peacekeepers, Paula Whitlow and Tammy Martin found that 325 Haudenosaunee men and women enlisted in the First World War, with 86 of this total coming from the Mohawk Institute. Six of these former students were killed in action.⁴⁵

The militarization of the school continued in the wake of the First World War. As noted by historian Alison Norman, by the end of the 1920s, the Mohawk Institute was outfitted with Canadian Army hand-me-downs including cots, kitchen utensils, and clothing.⁴⁶ Residential school administrators purchased vast quantities of surplus materials, including bedding and uniforms that, with help of girls and the sewing room at the Institute, were cut down and refitted into dresses and uniforms for the children and other materials needed for the Institute.⁴⁷ In her July and August 1919 report, Boyce notes that the Militia Department gave the Institute “fifty-five returned men’s suits, which we will remake into school and work suits.” Students who attended the school in the 1940s recalled wearing these cut-down First World War uniforms to Sunday services at the Mohawk Chapel.⁴⁸ Ann Boyce, Ashton’s daughter, who had become principal by this point, also notes that the Department of Militia sent two collar and cap badges for fifty-five boys, showing that the military structure and rank system for students first established at the school by Robert Ashton was still intact.⁴⁹ Advancing the militarization of the school further, Boyce also noted that now Quartermaster General E. C. Ashton presented the cadet corps with German war trophies in 1923.⁵⁰

Although other cadet corps in Brantford disbanded in the 1920s due to the rise of anti-militarist sentiment in postwar Canada (especially within the Anglican Church),⁵¹ the Mohawk Institute cadets continued to remain active until 1925 under the direction of the boys’ instructor and Boyce’s husband, Sydney Rogers, who was also an officer in the artillery. He started a boys’ bugle band that was connected to the cadets in 1919. For girls, Boyce added Girl Guides and Brownies to the school’s extracurricular activities.⁵² This trend of replacing cadet corps with Boy Scouts and the establishment of Girl Guide troops was championed by many residential schools run by the Anglican Church. It was praised as a less militaristic alternative that still promoted British and Canadian citizenship among Indigenous students but continued the tradition of displaying Indigenous children in orderly uniforms, promoting their apparent acceptance of their place within Canadian society.⁵³

The memory of the war was also used to introduce and assimilate students into the values of British and Canadian society. Along with participating in events during the Prince of Wales’s tour of Brantford in 1919, there were many other reminders of the loyalty the students were required to show to the British Crown and its imperial order, manifested through military service. In July 1919, students took part in a reception for returned Six Nations soldiers at which, dressed in their school uniforms—girls in blue serge skirts, buff middies with blue trim, and blue straw hats with red bands, and boys in their cadet uniforms—they both marched and drilled for the veterans. After these demonstrations, the girls waited tables.⁵⁴ Later that month, they were also permitted to attend a military tattoo in Agricultural Park in Brantford.⁵⁵ Armistice and Empire Days were also readily celebrated at the Institute. Students and staff would assemble at the school and sing patriotic songs, while staff would also give patriotic addresses.⁵⁶ In 1923, Principal Sydney Rogers explained the effects this socialization was having on the children, reporting that during the school’s Empire Day celebrations, “the Victrola Record of the King’s speech was played. One interesting feature of this ceremony was the manner in which every boy stiffened to attention as soon as the record commenced playing the National Anthem.”⁵⁷

Outside organizations, seeing the good effect the school was having on its Indigenous students, were also willing to assist with these lessons of re-socialization. In 1924, the Remembrance Chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) purchased the portrait Canadian Foresters at Windsor Castle as a memorial for the Institute’s students to see and remember the role many Six Nations men played in pioneer and forestry corps during the war.⁵⁸ At the portrait’s dedication ceremony, the children saluted the British flag and sang patriotic songs.⁵⁹ The IODE was also involved with organizing the Girl Guide program at the Institute, with the Sarah Jeanette Duncan Chapter presenting the Mohawk Institute’s Girl Guide troop their flag in 1924.⁶⁰

These and other events demonstrate that pre-war messages promoting Indigenous subservience to the British and Canadian states continued to be a central theme of student education at the Mohawk Institute. By using events that celebrated the British Empire, Canada’s military, and the Institute’s military past, administrators of the school hoped to teach students to reject their own culture in favour of the Euro-Canadian way of life. This was especially true during the dedication of the Mohawk Institute’s honour roll for the First World War in 1925.⁶¹ During the dedication, the bishop of the Diocese of Huron, the Right Reverend David Williams, instructed students that the deeds of the older generation—mainly First World War veterans—were “instrumental in the building of a better Canadian citizenship.”⁶² According to Bishop Williams, the British entered the war because they had pledged their word to do so. In his summation, he told the children, “it is of the primary importance that you keep your word than it is to save your life.”⁶³ The bishop further instructed the students that they were

to defend and preserve the life of the empire itself. This was eminently worth while, as the British Commonwealth had done what no other nation, empire, or agency had done toward civilizing and Christianizing the world. . . . Canada’s life as a nation and as a constituent part of the empire was at stake. It is to your infinite credit and glory . . . that so many of your number took part in that great struggle against brute force. Remember the record of your countrymen made in the Great War and try to live up to it.⁶⁴

The bishop stated he hoped commemorative services would “be conducted each year to keep alive in the hearts of the coming generation the remembrance of those who fought and the great ideas for which they had been willing, if need be, to give their all.”⁶⁵ These lessons of continued military participation, assimilation, and obedience to the empire were further reinforced at this event with the students singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “Fight the Good Fight,” and “On the Resurrection Morning” during the dedication.⁶⁶

This constant messaging primed generations of students at the Mohawk Institute to be ready to participate in the Second World War. Although no honour roll for the Mohawk Institute exists for the Second World War, testimonies from Six Nations and other Indigenous veterans reveal that the shared stories of their relatives’ participation in the First World War influenced them to enlist in the war in both Canada and the United States.⁶⁷ Other studies show that Indigenous participation in the Second World War was influenced by the education and militaristic training Indigenous recruits received at Canadian residentials schools.⁶⁸ Unlike in the First World War, however, government officials were more than willing to recruit directly from residential schools, with a 1944 recruitment manual recommending this strategy to recruiters as the military-styled training and strict discipline students were subject to at residential schools was deemed to make the students great soldiers.⁶⁹ Due to racial biases and the limited education residential schools provided their students, most of these recruits were forced to serve in the army as opposed to other branches of service.⁷⁰

Postwar Transitions

After 1945, the trends of the First World War were repeated. Although the Second World War sparked a resurgence of cadet corps in Canada, budget cuts by the federal government in 1947 saw many of these units disband, especially with the elimination of cadet programs for children younger than fourteen years old.⁷¹ Although this elimination was unsuccessfully protested by the Department of Indian Affairs, the department still found ways to interject military drill into the schools by purchasing surplus copies of Ottawa’s and the British War Office’s manual, Pre-Service Physical Training and Recreation for Army Cadets, to serve as the basis for physical education programs in residential schools.⁷² Military surplus also made its way into residential schools, but quantities are difficult to track since the War Assets Corporation—the governmental body established to sell surplus military goods to civilian organizations—only tracked individual sales over $5,000. Notably, the Department of Indian Affairs did purchase $7,067 worth of coats, underwear, shirts, boots, and blankets from the corporation in 1945–6.⁷³

Like Ashton, postwar school administrators found that, even if the federal government was not going to provide as much funding or resources for cadet corps, they were still a visible way to ensure local and national publicity of the school’s “civilizing” influence.⁷⁴ In 1949, the school’s principal, the Reverend William Zimmerman, re-established the Mohawk Institute Cadet Corps. Although this organization—like many other cadet corps formed in the residential school system during this period—disbanded shortly after its formation, the school tried to again establish a cadet corps, this time a Sea Cadet Corps, in 1966.⁷⁵ Alongside the Sea Cadet program, the Mohawk Institute also ran Brownies, Girl Guides, Cub, and Boy Scout troops.⁷⁶ Although the Department of Indian Affairs provided limited funding for Girl Guide and Boy Scout programs, school administrators found that these programs—aside from having a hierarchical and military structure with uniforms, drills, and discipline—also provided lessons in the values of state service and citizenship, while also continuing the display of orderly and uniformed Indigenous children.⁷⁷

Although these programs provided students some relief and escape from the repressive nature of the school,⁷⁸ the Canadian government had a more sinister motivation. By the 1960s, the schools and federal government used these cadet programs to integrate and assimilate students into the Canadian body politic through their employment in the Canadian Armed Forces. Not only could students be employed by the Canadian military through summer programs, but “Indian Affairs and Northern Development had reached an agreement with the Department of National Defence that the military would seek recruits from the cadet corps at residential schools.”⁷⁹ As a result, many residential school survivors found their way to military service.⁸⁰ One student, who after leaving the Institute in the 1940s served seven years in the United States Marine Corps, stated that “the Mohawk Institute was a good training ground for the Marine Corps.”⁸¹

As with most residential schools in Canada, the military structure and cadet corps embedded at the Mohawk Institute only ended when the school closed its doors in the 1970s.⁸² For other schools, however, the military structure of the cadet corps remained a constant part of the residential school experience until 1996, Gordon’s Indian Residential School, transferred its award-winning cadet corps to the community of Punnichy, Saskatchewan, after it closed its doors.⁸³ Today, in many Indigenous communities, the Canadian government continues the mission of residential schools by training and funnelling Indigenous youth into the Canadian military or other forms of state service through government-sponsored cadet corps and sports programming.⁸⁴ Through these programs, organizations like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Armed Forces gain access to Indigenous children and train them for Canadian citizenship, with many of these young people seeing their futures within these federal services.

Conclusion

For Robert Ashton and other residential school administrators, cadet corps were more than a way to organize and train Indigenous youth. These students became living displays to a skeptical non-Indigenous public of the immediate “progress” of the school’s “civilizing” mission. Cadets and the military order they represent masked many of the inadequacies found in the school system and the abusive and other shortcomings found among school administrators. As seen in other chapters in this book, despite the evident realities that school buildings were insufficient, in disrepair, or crumbling and the standards of education and care were inadequate or non-existent, cadet corps were used to show any and all onlookers that the schools were supposedly working for the best interests of these students while instilling the ideals of duty, loyalty, patriotism, obedience, and the ability to submit to authority. These programs shielded the public from the emotional and physical trauma these children faced, while training Indigenous students to turn their backs on their culture and replace it with service to the Canadian state. For school administrators, the cadet corps and the military structure of the school were just two of the many tools created to control the school’s narrative, hiding from the public the truth of what the students experienced behind the school’s brick walls.

Notes

1. 1 Report of the Mohawk Institute to the New England Company, 16 September 1896, Truth and Reconciliation Files, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives, London, Ontario.

2. 2 “A Red Man’s Cadet Corp: Civilised Sons of the Wild West,” Navy and Army Illustrated 15 (1902): 112.

3. 3 R. Ashton, Report for the Mohawk Institute to the New England Company, 20 November 1872, in Report of the Proceedings of the New England Company for the Civilization and Conversion of Indians, Blacks, and Pagans in the Dominion of Canada, South Africa, and the West Indies, During the Two Years 1871–1872 (Taylor and Company, 1874), 157.

4. 4 Ashton, 157, 158.

5. 5 Ashton, 158.

6. 6 Ashton, 158.

7. 7 Frank Dawes, A Cry from the Street: The Boys’ Club Movement in Britain from the 1850s to Present Day (Wayland, 1974), and Evan J. Habkirk, “From Indian Boys to Canadian Men? The Use of Cadet Drill in the Canadian Indian Residential School System,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 30, no. 2 (2017): 230–1.

8. 8 Habkirk, “From Indian Boys to Canadian Men?,” 230–1.

9. 9 Other residential and boarding schools in Canada and the United States used military discipline and drill to organize and re-socialize Indigenous students, including the famed Carlisle Boarding School, founded by Richard Henry Pratt, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Ashton, Report for the Mohawk Institute to the New England Company, 158, and Martin Benson’s Report, 1894, in Elizabeth Graham, The Mush Hole: Life at Two Indian Residential Schools (Heffle Publishing, 1997), 90.

10. 10 Graham, 9, 23, and 40; Benson’s Report, 1894, in Graham, 90.

11. 11 Graham, 9–10, and 23; Benson’s Report, 1894, in Graham, 94; R. Ashton, Annual Report, 26 August 1896, in Graham, 96.

12. 12 Although it is likely that the girls of the Institute participated in calisthenic exercises and drills, the cadet corps was exclusively for the boys of the school. As noted by J. R. Miller, there is a deficit of information relating to extracurricular activities for girls at residential schools. The only records of similar training to cadets that the girls of the Mohawk Institute would have received was through the Girl Guide program, which was present at the Institute in the post–First World War years, but which really took off throughout the residential school system in the 1950s and ’60s. See J. R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (University of Toronto Press, 1996), 217–50. See also Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs, available at https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.846380/publication.html.

13. 13 Graham, The Mush Hole, 9; Benson, Report, 1894, in Graham, 93; and R. Ashton, Annual Report, 26 August 1896, in Graham, 96.

14. 14 It is unclear who was drilling the boys at the Mohawk Institute until the 1890s. Rev. Robert Ashton probably drilled the boys of the school from the 1870s to the 1890s. His sons, Ernest and Alfred, probably took on these duties in the 1890s, when they enlisted in the Dufferin Rifles, with Ernest becoming a second lieutenant when he joined in 1893 and Alfred also becoming an officer when he joined in 1895. We know that by 1896, Rev. Ashton reported that Ernest was in charge of drilling the cadets.

15. 15 Benson, Report, 1894, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 93; R. Ashton, Annual Report, 26 August 1896, in Graham, 96; and R. Ashton, Annual Report, 7 August 1901, in Graham, 97.

16. 16 “Vice Regal Progress,” Brantford Expositor, 16 September 1879.

17. 17 Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 3, 4, 34, and 106.

18. 18 Fussell, 4, 34.

19. 19 Fussell, 117–18.

20. 20 Report of the Mohawk Institute to the New England Company, October 1896, Truth and Reconciliation Files, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives.

21. 21 Brantford Expositor, 5 July 1898, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 96.

22. 22 The following names are engraved on the tankard: E. C. Ashton, Senior Sergeant O. Planter, Junior Sergeant A. Peters, and Corporals O. Montour, C. Cusick, J. Moses, and A. Leween.

23. 23 Report of the Mohawk Institute to the New England Company, 16 September 1896, Truth and Reconciliation Files, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives.

24. 24 Evan J. Habkirk, “Charting Continuation: Understanding Post-Traditional Six Nations Militarism, 1814–1930” (PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 2018), 170, 177, 267.

25. 25 “A Red Man’s Cadet Corp,” 112. Although there were three companies of the Haldimand Rifles made up of Six Nations men during this period, more work needs to be done comparing the attendance rolls of the Mohawk Institute to the nominal rolls of the 37th Haldimand Rifles to know if this claim is correct.

26. 26 Report of the Mohawk Institute to the New England Company, December 1896, Truth and Reconciliation Files, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives.

27. 27 Nominal Rolls of the 38th Dufferin Rifles, Brantford Public Library Local Reading Room.

28. 28 Department of Indian Affairs, Calisthenics and Games Prescribed for Use in All Indian Schools (Department of Indian Affairs, 1910), 3.

29. 29 Department of Indian Affairs, 5.

30. 30 Janice Forsyth, “Bodies of Meaning: Sports and Games at Canadian Residential Schools,” in Indigenous Peoples and Sport: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Issues, ed. Audrey R. Giles and Janice Forsyth (University of British Columbia Press, 2012), 23 and 25. For more on health and the control and retraining of Indigenous bodies, see Mary-Ellen Kelm, Civilizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health in British Columbia, 1900–50 (University of British Columbia Press, 1998). For more on how this training instilled British imperialism in children, see Anne Bloomfield, “Drill and Dance as Symbols of Imperialism,” in Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialization and British Imperialism, ed. J. A. Mangan (Manchester University Press, 1990), 74–93.

31. 31 “Souvenir Old Boys Reunion Edition,” Brantford Expositor, 28–9 December 1898.

32. 32 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (hereafter TRC), The Survivors Speak: A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015), 197–8, https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Survivors_Speak_English_Web.pdf.

33. 33 Habkirk, “From Indian Boys to Canadian Men?,” 227–48; Evan J. Habkirk and Janice Forsyth, “Truth, Reconciliation and the Politics of the Body in Indian Residential School History,” Active History, 24 January 2016, http://activehistory.ca/papers/truth-reconciliation-and-the-politics-of-the-body-in-indian-residential-school-history/.

34. 34 R. Ashton, Annual Report, 29 April 1909, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 105.

35. 35 Brantford Expositor, 6 January 1912.

36. 36 A. Nelles Ashton, Annual Report, 31 March 1912, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 106.

37. 37 A. Nelles Ashton, Annual Report, 31 March 1913, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 107.

38. 38 Report of the Mohawk Institute, 1 April 1880, Truth and Reconciliation Files, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives; A. Nelles Ashton, Annual Report, 31 March 1913, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 107; Gordon J. Smith to the Secretary of the Department of Indian Affairs, 18 November 1920, File 547,596, Vol. 3224, RG 10, LAC. According to this file, Robert Ashton, who was also the chaplain for the Dufferin Rifles, would take the rent of thirty dollars given to him from the Department of the Militia for use of the range and donate it back to the Dufferin Rifles for regimental use.

39. 39 “Mohawk Cadets Passed Inspection,” Brantford Expositor, 2 July 1920.

40. 40 For instance, although denying recruiters access to the Mohawk Institute and other schools in 1916, Scott would allow the commander of the 107th Timberwolf Battalion to recruit out of the Elkhorn and Brandon residential schools. See Department of Indian Affairs to William Hamilton Merritt, 26 May 1898, File 171,348, Vol. 2837, RG 10, LAC; Duncan Campbell Scott to Glen Campbell, 11 February 1916, File 452–13, Vol. 6766, RG 10, LAC; TRC, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, vol. 1, Canada’s Residential Schools, the History, Part 1, Origins to 1939 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 372.

41. 41 The author completed a survey of the 36th Battalion’s nominal rolls found at the Brantford Public Library Local Reading Room. Although no known Grand River Six Nations people were found on the roll during this survey, a more detailed exploration may find the names of other First Nations people who attended the Mohawk Institute. See F. Douglas Reville, History of the County of Brant, vol. 2 (Hurley Printing Company, 1920), 465.

42. 42 Reville, 2:601.

43. 43 Nominal Rolls of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, Brantford Public Library Local Reading Room; “We Remember: WWI Records Search” [database], Great War Centenary Association of Brantford, Brant County, and Six Nations, accessed 12 March 2025, http://www.doingourbit.ca/records-search; Richard Holt, “First Nations Soldiers in the Great War,” Native Studies Review 22, nos. 1 –2 (2013): 147n60.

44. 44 Reville, History of the County of Brant, 2:469.

45. 45 Mohawk Institute Honour Roll, St. Paul’s Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks. In a 12 June 1925 edition of The Brantford Expositor, Privates Charles Wesley and Fredrick Doxtator were added to the honour roll, bringing the total number of staff and students who served in the war to 88, 86 of whom were students.

46. 46 Alison Norman, “Race, Gender and Colonialism: Public Life Among the Six Nations Grand River, 1899–1939” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2010), 185.

47. 47 Norman, 185; and Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 298.

48. 48 Acting Principal Boyce Report, July and August 1919, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 121. See also “The Russ Moses Residential School Memoir” in this volume.

49. 49 Acting Principal Boyce, Report, July and August 1919, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 121.

50. 50 Although it is not known what these items were, other war trophies at Six Nations and Brantford included mortars, machine guns, and field artillery pieces. Rogers’s Quarterly Report, 30 September 1923, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 140.

51. 51 “The Cadet Movement,” Great War Centenary Association of Brantford, Brant County, and Six Nations, accessed 12 March 2025, http://www.doingourbit.ca/cadets; Evan J. Habkirk, “Masking the Support of War: The Anglican Church and the Expansion and Suspension of the Cadets in Brantford, Ontario,” Journal of the Canadian Church History Society 57 (Spring–Fall 2019): 32–55; Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 227.

52. 52 Boyce to D. C. Scott, 7 September 1919, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 28 and 121.

53. 53 Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 227. In Boyce’s July 1919 report, she briefly mentions students wearing a “scout hat,” meaning that there may have been a Boy Scout troop established at the Mohawk Institute as early as 1919. See Acting Principal Boyce, Report, 2 July 1919, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 121.

54. 54 Boyce to Secretary DIA, 2 July 1919, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 120–1.

55. 55 Acting Principal Boyce Report, July and August 1919, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 121.

56. 56 Boyce Report, November and December 1920, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 125.

57. 57 Rogers’ Quarterly Report, 30 June 1923, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 140.

58. 58 Norman, “Race, Gender and Colonialism,” 166.

59. 59 Norman, 167.

60. 60 The IODE also supplied the school children with books and other gifts at Christmas. See “The Russ Moses Residential School Memoir” in this volume; Norman, “Race, Gender and Colonialism,” 168.

61. 61 This honour roll was prepared and completed at the request of the New England Company in 1922. See Gordon Smith to Secretary of the DIA, 20 April 1922, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 135.

62. 62 “Memorial Unveiled at the Mohawk Church,” Brantford Expositor, 12 June 1925.

63. 63 “Memorial Unveiled at the Mohawk Church.”

64. 64 “Memorial Unveiled at the Mohawk Church.”

65. 65 “Memorial Unveiled at the Mohawk Church.”

66. 66 “Memorial Unveiled at the Mohawk Church.”

67. 67 Tom Holm, Strong Heart Wounded Souls: First Nations American Veterans of the Vietnam War (University of Texas Press, 1996), 101, 102, 167; Jim Powless and Mina Burnham, Warrior’s Symposium, 13 November 1986, Woodland Cultural Centre, tape 1; Austin Fuller, Warrior’s Symposium, 14 November 1986, tape 4.

68. 68 Although the TRC found, through interviews with former students, that students’ lived experiences at these schools, including participating in cadet corps, led them to enlist in the Second World War and the Korean War, other studies have shown that the reasons for military participation by Indigenous people is more nuanced and based on their varied cultural understandings and historical experiences. TRC, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, vol. 1, Canada’s Residential Schools, The History, Part 2, 1939–2000 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 484. For a Kainai (Blood) perspective, see Yale D. Belanger and Billy Wadsworth, “‘It’s My Duty . . . To Be a Warrior of the People’: Kainai Perceptions of and Participation in the Canadian and American Forces,” Prairie Forum 33, no. 2 (2008): 297–322. For a Haudenosaunee/Six Nations historical and cultural perspective, see Habkirk, “Charting Continuation.”

69. 69 R. Scott Sheffield and Noah Riseman, Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 113.

70. 70 See R. Scott Sheffield, “‘Of Pure European Descent and of the White Race’: Recruitment Policy and Aboriginal Canadians, 1939–1945,” Canadian Military History 5, no. 1, (1996): 8–15.

71. 71 TRC, The History, Part 2, 1939–2000, 485.

72. 72 Letter to Mr. Driscoll from Bernard F. Neary, 21 January 1947, File 1/25/2010, Vol. 10245, RG 10, LAC.

73. 73 Alex Souchen, personal communication, 26 May 2021. For more on the War Assets Corporation and the buying and selling of Second World War surplus, see Alex Souchen, War Junk: Munitions Disposal and Postwar Reconstruction in Canada (University of British Columbia Press, 2020).

74. 74 TRC, The History, Part 2, 1939–2000, 485 and various editions of the Indian School Bulletin, 1946–57. For more on the Indian School Bulletin, see Janice Forsyth and Michael Heine, “‘The Only Good Thing That Happened at School’: Colonising Narratives of Sport in the Indian School Bulletin,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 30, no. 2 (2017): 205–25.

75. 75 Graham, The Mush Hole, 28, and TRC, The History, Part 2, 1939–2000, 485.

76. 76 Graham, The Mush Hole, 28.

77. 77 TRC, The History, Part 2, 1939–2000, 488.

78. 78 TRC, 490; Kevin Woodger, “Whiteness and Ambiguous Canadianization: The Boy Scouts Association and the Canadian Cadet Organization,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 28, no. 1 (2017): 117.

79. 79 TRC, The History, Part 2, 1939–2000, 487.

80. 80 TRC, The Survivors Speak, 197–8.

81. 81 Albert Sault as cited in Graham, The Mush Hole, 399.

82. 82 Igor Egorov, “General History of Cadet Corps in Indian Residential Schools 1879–1996,” unpublished report (Ottawa, 2005), 34.

83. 83 Egorov, 58.

84. 84 For more on this, see Jordan Robert Koch, ‘“Iyacisitayin Newoskan Simakanisikanisak’: The (Re)Making of the Hobbema Community Cadet Corps Program” (PhD diss., University of Alberta, 2015).