Notes

Introduction: Where Histories Meet

1. 1 Sherry Lawson, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

2. 2 Before the pandemic, attendance was approximately 160,000 visitors a year.

3. 3 See Martha Stiegman and Jesse Thistle, dirs., kiskisiwin|remembering, National Screen Institute, 2016, https://nsi-canada.ca/film/kiskisiwin-remembering/.

4. 4 The village has also reached out to other groups excluded from previous historical interpretations.

5. 5 Kelly LaRocca, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, October 20, 2022.

6. 6 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

7. 7 Garry Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 13, 2022.

8. 8 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

9. 9 Rhonda Coppaway, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, October 20, 2022.

10. 10 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

11. 11 Margaret Sault interview.

12. 12 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

13. 13 Carolyn King interview.

14. 14 Vicki Snache, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

15. 15 Alan Corbiere, “Oral History Interview Report: Mississaugas of the Credit,” draft report, Changing the Narrative: Black Creek Pioneer Village Project, October 1, 2023, referring to Bruce Granville Miller’s Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 51.

16. 16 Any comments made in reference to Six Nations Haldimand Treaty (Haldimand Tract) and 1701 Nanfan Treaty Lands are “without prejudice” to Six Nations of the Grand River Band of Indians v The Attorney General of Canada and His Majesty the King in Right of Ontario, Court No. CV-18-594281-0000 current litigation.

17. 17 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

18. 18 The spellings of these ethnonyms are taken from Ange Loft, Victoria Freeman, Martha Stiegman, and Jill Carter, A Treaty Guide for Torontonians. 2nd ed. (Toronto: Art Metropole, 2022).

Chapter 1: Toronto’s Indigenous Name

1. 1 Elizabeth Simcoe, The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe, Wife of the First Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Upper Canada, 1792–6, with Notes and Biography by J. Ross Robertson (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1911), 187–88. Elizabeth Simcoe originally identifies the man as “Great Sail” and in a later diary entry as “Canise.” These could be two names for the same person or son and father; the lieutenant-governor encountered a Great Sail and visited the family of the recently deceased Canise on his journey to Matchedash Bay. It is not clear which Canise or Great Sail is the subject of the portrait of a Chief sketched by Elizabeth Simcoe (see page 21).

2. 2 Henry Scadding and John Charles Dent, eds., Toronto, Past and Present, Historical and Descriptive: A Memorial Volume for the Semi-centennial of 1884 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1884), 132.

3. 3 Another possible translation of the Mohawk word is “The place where we sunk our canoes.” The Wendat word “Tonrontonkh” (Land of plenty) has also been suggested, but recent linguistic research does not appear to support this theory.

4. 4 Mark Douglas, interview by Alan Corbiere, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, November 24, 2022.

5. 5 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

6. 6 Andrew Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

7. 7 Alexander Henry, Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the Years 1760 and 1776 in Two Parts (New York: I. Riley, 1809), 179–80.

8. 8 Percy J. Robinson, Toronto during the French Régime: A History of the Toronto Region from Brûlé to Simcoe, 1615–1793, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 150.

9. 9 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 255.

10. 10 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

11. 11 Alexander Macdonell, “Diary of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe’s Journey from Humber Bay to Matchedash Bay in 1793 by Alexander Macdonell, Sheriff of the Home District,” in Simcoe Papers, 2:70–72.

12. 12 Simcoe, The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe, 196.

13. 13 Simcoe, The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe, 196.

14. 14 Emerson Benson Nanigishkung, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

Chapter 2: Deep Time in the Humber River Watershed

1. 1 Fossilized footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have been dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. See Matthew R. Bennett et al., “Evidence of Humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum,” Science 373, no. 6562 (2021): 1528–31; cited in University of Arizona, news release, September 23, 2021, https://news.arizona.edu/story/earliest-evidence-human-activity-found-americas. Ancient lithic tools discovered in Chile suggest the presence of humans about 30,000 years ago, but some archaeologists do not accept these results. Archaeologist Lauriane Bourgeon has confirmed that extinct horse bones apparently worked by humans at the Bluefish Caves site in Yukon are about 24,000 years old. See CBC Docs, “New Discoveries Challenge Our Understanding of When the First People Arrived in North America,” February 9, 2023, https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-nature-of-things/new-discoveries-challenge-our-understanding-of-when-the-first-people-arrived-in-north-america-1.6733497. However, Indigenous archaeologist Paulette Steeves argues that the Americas may have been settled approximately 130,000 years ago. See Paulette F.C. Steeves, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021).

2. 2 These comments on the global context of Indigenous presence in the Americas are adapted from a lecture by Sean Kheraj of York University.

3. 3 “BCE” stands for “before the Common Era” and is used rather than “Before Christ” to indicate religious neutrality.

4. 4 Kate McCullough, “Discovery of Blood on Mastodon Tools First of Its Kind in Ontario,” Hamilton Spectator, December 31, 2022, https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2022/12/31/discovery-of-mastodon-blood-on-ice-age-tools-first-of-its-kind-in-ontario.html. For further information, contact Archaeological Services. See also Ronald F. Williamson et al., “New Insights into Early Paleoindian (Gainey) Associations with Proboscideans and Canids in the Niagara Peninsula, Southern Ontario, Canada,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 47, no. 103785 (2023): 8, figure 5; and Stephen C. Lougheed and Natalie Morrill, “Quaternary History of Eastern Ontario: Impacts of Physical Landscape and Biota,” Opinion Natural History: Physical and Biotic Environment at Queen’s University Biological Station, https://opinicon.wordpress.com/physical-environment/quaternary/.

5. 5 In 2022, research by McMaster University’s Collaborative Archaeologies, Decolonized Foodways project and the Office of Lands and Resources for Six Nations of the Grand River Elected Council found earlier evidence of corn in pottery from this general area, according to Tayler Hill of Six Nations Lands and Resources, but this research has not yet been published.

6. 6 Vicki Snache, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

7. 7 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

8. 8 L.A. Sandberg et al., “Re-connecting with a Historical Site: On Narrative and the Huron-Wendat Ancestral Village at York University, Toronto,” Ontario History 113, no. 1 (2021): 80–105. See also L.A. Sandberg, “Looking for the Huron-Wendat at York University?” Alternative Campus Tour, York University, August 12, 2021, https://alternativecampustour.info.yorku.ca/2021/08/looking-for-the-huron-wendat-at-york-university-l-anders-sandberg/; Lanna Crucefix, “The Parsons Site,” ASI Heritage, https://asiheritage.ca/publication/the-parsons-site/; and Claire van Nierop, “Revisiting the Parsons Site,” ASI Heritage, https://asiheritage.ca/revisiting-the-parsons-site/.

9. 9 For more information on this pivotal moment in the region’s Indigenous history, see Bruce Trigger, Children of Aetaentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988); Georges Sioui, Huron-Wendat: The Heritage of the Circle, trans. Jane Brierley (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000); and Kathryn Magee Labelle, Dispersed but Not Destroyed: A History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat People (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).

10. 10 See François Vachon de Belmont, “Histoire de l’eau-de-vie en Canada,” in Collection de mémoires et de relations sur l’histoire ancienne du Canada, ed. Société littéraire et historique de Québec, vol. 8 (Québec: Impr. de W. Cowan, 1840).

11. 11 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

12. 12 The Six Nations of the Grand River maintain that they had a continued presence on the north shore of Lake Ontario after 1700 and that the Nanfan Deed recognized this. The Misssissaugas of the Credit and other Anishinaabek maintain that the Nanfan Deed is not a valid treaty and does not serve as the basis for Six Nations rights in Ontario. To complicate matters, the Nanfan Deed has been recognized as a treaty in two lower Ontario Court decisions (R v Ireland and Jamieson [1991] and R v Barberstock [2003], while the federal government’s position is ambiguous. The Ministry of Indigenous-Crown Relations’ online article “Treaties of Peace and Neutrality (1701–1760)” mentions the Nanfan Deed (referred to as the Albany Deed of 1701) only once: “In some cases, First Nations agreed to sell lands of the Great Lakes to the British in exchange for their protection and the continued right to hunt and fish, as in the 1701 Albany Deed”: https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1360866174787/1544619566736. The Haudenosaunee do not agree that their intention was to sell the land. As of this writing, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation have been granted intervenor status in a key case brought forward by the Six Nations against the provincial and federal governments regarding lands granted through the Haldimand Proclamation in 1784. They intend to contest the validity and use of the Nanfan Deed to buttress Six Nations claims to land rights in Ontario. This may be a protracted legal struggle, possibly with appeals to higher courts.

13. 13 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

14. 14 Phil Monture, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2022.

15. 15 For a general introduction to the Dish with One Spoon, see Ange Loft et al., A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Art Metropole, 2022), 51–58. For discussion of the disputed meanings, see Dean M. Jacobs and Victor P. Lytwyn, “Naagan Get Bezhig Emkwaan: A Dish with One Spoon Reconsidered,” Ontario History 112, no. 2 (2020): 191–210. For its interpretation in 1840, see page 215.

16. 16 “Minutes of a General Council Held at the Credit River, 16 January 1840,” Library and Archives Canada, Paudash Papers, RG 10, vol. 1011, Part B: 60–92.

17. 17 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

18. 18 Monture interview.

Chapter 3: Trade and Colonial Rivalries

1. 1 V.B. Blake, Credit Valley Conservation Report 1956 (Toronto: Dept. of Planning and Development, 1956), 6, https://cvc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1956REPT.pdf.

2. 2 Louis Antoine, comte de Bougainville, “Mémoire de Bougainville sur l’état de la Nouvelle-France à l’époque de la guerre de Sept ans (1757),” Documents inédits sur l’histoire de la marine et des colonies: Revue maritime et coloniale (1861): 582, https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.28049/23?r=0&s=1.

3. 3 These were the people of Akwesasne, Kahnawà:ke, Kanesetake, and Oswegatchie. See D. Peter MacLeod, The Canadian Iroquois and the Seven Years’ War (Toronto/Oxford: Dundurn Press / Canadian War Museum, 1996).

4. 4 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

5. 5 “At a Conference with the Toughkinaioinan Indians on Saturday at Niagara, 28 July 1764,” in The Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol. 11, ed. Milton W. Hamilton (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921), 307–8. For a reading of the Covenant Chain and Twenty-Four Nations Wampum Belts eighty-eight years after the Treaty of Niagara, see “Petition from J.B. Assikinawk, October 10, 1851,” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Indian Affairs Superintendency Records, Northern (Manitowaning), Superintendence Correspondence (Manitoulin Island), 1851–55, vol. 613: 440–43. The original Belts have not survived but early drawings of them were reproduced in A.F. Hunter, “Wampum Records of the Ottawas,” Annual Archaeological Report 1901: Being Part of an Appendix to the Report of the Minister of Education Ontario, (Toronto: K. L. Cameron, 1902), 53. See Fig. 25, Belt No. 1 and Fig. 26, Belt No. 2.

6. 6 See Ferral Wade to William Johnson, September 22, 1771, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, Alexander C. Flick, ed., vol. 8 (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1933), 270–76.

7. 7 Toronto, “Baby Point Heritage Conservation Plan,” https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/planning-studies-initiatives/baby-point-heritage-conservation-district-study/study-finding/history-and-evolution. See John Clarke, “James Baby,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/baby_james_6E.html.

8. 8 Civil Secretary’s Letter Books, Upper Canada, April 2, 1830, LAC, RG7-G16-C, vol. 23:2, reel C-10,792.

9. 9 Robinson, Percy J., Toronto during the French Regime: A History of the Toronto Region from Brûlé to Simcoe, 1615–1793, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 210.

10. 10 F.R. Berchem, The Yonge Street Story, 1793–1860: An Account from Letters, Diaries and Newspapers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1996), 79. According to Kenneth Kidd, “War of 1812: The Story of Joseph Shepard Who Risked His Life in Battle of York,” Toronto Star, April 20, 2013, accessed February 23, 2023, https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/04/20/war_of_1812_the_story_of_joseph_shepard_who_risked_his_life_in_battle_of_york.html, the newspaper obituary for one of his sons, Joseph Jr., said that Shepard Sr. set himself up as a fur trader near the Toronto Carrying Place as early as 1775.

11. 11 See page 85, “The Fishers and Related Families.”

12. 12 Ferral Wade to William Johnson, September 22, 1771, Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol. 8, 271.

13. 13 See translated quote from François Vachon de Belmont, “Histoire de l’eau-de-vie en Canada,” in Bruce West, Toronto (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1967), 7. Original in Collection de mémoires et de relations sur l’histoire ancienne du Canada, vol. 8 (Québec: Société littéraire et historique de Québec, 1840).

14. 14 John V. Jezierski, ed., “A 1751 Journal of Abbé François Picquet,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1970): 369, and discussion of alcohol traders in Robinson, Toronto during the French Regime, 120–21, 146–49, and Peter S. Schmalz, The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 87–89, 95–96.

15. 15 Ferral Wade to William Johnson, September 22, 1771, Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol. 8, 272; and Schmalz, Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, 87–89.

Chapter 4: Early British Treaties

1. 1 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

2. 2 Phil Monture, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2022.

3. 3 “A Six Nations’ Meeting with the Mississaugas, May 22, 1784,” PRO, CO 42, vol. 46:224–5, reproduced in The Valley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents on the Indian Lands of the Grand River, ed. Charles M. Johnson, Ontario Series, vol. 7 (Toronto: Chaplain Society, 1964), 45. At the beginning of this speech, Pokquan says, “We the Mississagas are not the Owners of all that Land laying between the three Lakes, but we have agreed, and are willing to transfer our right of Soil & property to the King our Father, for the use of His people, and our Brethren the Six Nations.” According to the Haudenosaunee, this statement means the Mississaugas recognized that the Haudenosaunee retained rights to lands north of Lake Ontario. In contrast, Anishinaabek interpret Pokquan as saying that some of the lands in question were under the jurisdiction of other Anishinaabek, not the Mississaugas.

4. 4 The Six Nations do not consider this agreement a treaty because, in their view, the Mississaugas merely relinquished their interest in the land while the Haudenosaunee maintained their rights to it, recognized through the Nanfan Deed of 1701. This interpretation is contested by the Mississaugas, who note that it’s a treaty within the meaning of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. It was included and superseded in the Between the Lakes Treaty of 1792, which addressed problems with the original treaty boundaries (the land had not yet been fully surveyed in 1784). As noted, the Mississaugas of the Credit intend to challenge the legal status of the Nanfan Deed in a major Six Nations court case over Haldimand Tract lands, in which the Mississaugas have been granted intervenor status. In addition, there are disputed claims of treaty rights to the northern section of the lands granted through the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784. These lands were severed from the Haldimand Tract by the Simcoe Patent of 1793 (a move that was never accepted by the Six Nations). Six Nations says that this area is also covered by the Nanfan Deed / Treaty, while the Mississaugas of the Credit say it’s their treaty land under the Ajetance Treaty (Treaty 19) of 1818. This issue may also be determined through litigation.

5. 5 The Six Nations regard the Haldimand Proclamation and Deed as a treaty and their lands along the Grand River as treaty lands. The status of the Haldimand Proclamation and Deed is before the courts and will be determined through litigation.

6. 6 “A Census of the Six Nations on the Grand River, 1785,” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Haldimand Papers, B 103, 457, in Johnston, Valley of the Six Nations, 52. In 1787, it was reported that Mississauga Chief Wabakinine led 506 people at the Head of the Lake: “Return of the Missisagay Nation of Indians Assembled at the Head of the Bay De Quinte . . . September 23, 1787,” LAC, RG 10, vol. 1834, p. 197, reel C-1224.

7. 7 Gwen Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases, 1783–1788: A Strategic Perspective,” Ontario History 111, no. 1 (2016): 36–72, https://doi.org/10.7202/1059965ar.

8. 8 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

9. 9 John Butler was a Loyalist military officer who raised a regiment known as Butler’s Rangers, which fought alongside Britain’s Indigenous allies, including Joseph Brant, during the American Revolution. He was a senior official in the Indian Department of Upper Canada.

10. 10 “List of Gifts Given to the Mississaugas: Memorandum of Bales and Boxes Brought from Cataraque Brought by Mr. Lines to Toronto and Delivered to Colonel Butler,” in Percy Robinson, Toronto during the French Regime: A History of the Toronto Region from Brûlé to Simcoe, 1615–1793, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 251.

11. 11 Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases,” 62–70.

12. 12 Darin Wybenga interview.

13. 13 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

14. 14 Joseph Brant, quoted in Patrick C.T. White, ed., Lord Selkirk’s Diary, 1803–4: A Journal of His Travels in British North America and the Northeastern United States (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1958), 153.

15. 15 Lord Dorchester to Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, January 27, 1794, in Simcoe Papers, 2:138.

Chapter 5: Turning Indigenous Territory into Private Property

1. 1 Historical geographer R. Gentilcore, quoted in Donald B. Smith, “Augustus Jones,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jones_augustus_7E.html.

2. 2 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

3. 3 In “Yellow Head’s Answer to the President’s Request, 22 May 1798,” he states: “If you white people forget your transactions with us, we do not. The Lands you have just now shew to us belongs to you; We have nothing to do with it; We have sold it to our Great Father the King, as was well paid for it. Therefore make your mind at easy. There may be some of our young people who do not think so; They may tell your people that the Land is ours, but you must not open your ears to them, but take them by the arm and put them out of your houses”: The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, ed. Ernest A. Cruikshank and Andrew F. Hunter (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1932), 2:161.

4. 4 In May 1921, the Mississaugas of Rice, Scugog, and Mud Lakes, through the law firm O’Connor and Moore, wrote to the superintendent-general of Indian affairs (Charles Stewart) claiming that no confirmatory surrender had been executed for the “lands comprising the Townships of Uxbridge, Reach, Scott, Brock, Thorah, Georgina, and North Gwilliambury.” At the Williams Treaties hearings in 1923, four Chippewa and Mississauga witnesses testified that the townships south of Lake Simcoe had never been surrendered. See Gwen Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases, 1783–1788: A Strategic Perspective,” Ontario History 111, no. 1 (2016): 60–61, https://doi.org/10.7202/1059965ar.

5. 5 Peter Jones, July 9, 1852, “Rev. P. Jones Missionary Tour to Lakes Huron and Superior,” Christian Guardian, August 25, 1852.

6. 6 Naishenum is listed as Tubenahneequay’s mother in the New Credit Indian Mission book.

7. 7 Joseph Brant, quoted in Patrick C.T. White, ed., Lord Selkirk’s Diary, 1803–4: A Journal of His Travels in British North America and the Northeastern United States (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1958), 153.

8. 8 Elizabeth Simcoe, The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe, Wife of the First Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Upper Canada, 1792–6, with Notes and Biography by J. Ross Robertson (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1911), 141.

9. 9 According to Six Nations Lands and Resources Department research, these were considered life leases and a condition of the leases was that they were not to be sold to non-family members.

10. 10 For example, he was granted 999-year leases, signed by Brant (who was given a limited power of attorney for Six Nations in 1796), for 4,800 acres in Cayuga Township and for 1,200 acres in Brantford Township. Both grants were for the nominal annual rent of one peppercorn. Brant later overstepped his authority in 1798 by nominating purchasers for lands in Blocks 5 and 6 not included in the original power of attorney.

11. 11 “C 33 Resolutions of a Six Nations’ Council at the Onondaga Village, March 1, 1809,” Library and Archives Canada, Indian Affairs, Records and Correspondence of the Deputy Superintendent-General, vol. 27, 511–.], reprinted in Charles M. Johnston, The Valley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), 112. A trustee report was completed by Six Nations Trustees, Dunn, Hepburn and Markland in 1835. The report found very few leases confirmed. Augustus Jones’ lease was not on the list. Six Nations in Council questioned these transactions in 1811, 1819, 1833, and 1835. LAC, RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 103, 41–45.

12. 12 The situation was further complicated by additional land transactions after Brant's death, made in his name.

13. 13 This reason for Jones’ retirement is suggested in Alun Hughes, “Augustus Jones: The Life and Loves of a Pioneer Surveyor,” Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives Bulletin, no. 111 (Spring/Summer 2001): 10–11.

Chapter 6: Indigenous-Settler Encounters

1. 1 For details of the murder and trial, see “State of Case the King vs Charles McCuen for Murder Committed on the Body of Waipykanine an Indian Chief,” in The Town of York, 1793–1815: A Collection of Documents of Early Toronto, edited by Edith Firth (Toronto: Champlain Society / University of Toronto Press, 1962), 84–85; and Peter Russell to J.G. Simcoe, September 28, 1796, in The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, ed. Ernest A. Cruikshank and Andrew F. Hunter (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1932), 1:50 (henceforth Russell Correspondence).

2. 2 Peter Russell to J.G. Simcoe, September 28, 1796, Russell Correspondence, 1:50.

3. 3 Augustus Jones to D.W. Smith, Saltfleet, March 11, 1797, AO, Surveyor’s Letters, 28:137; and Peter Russell to Robert Prescott, April 18, 1797, Russell Correspondence, 1:165.

4. 4 Donald B. Smith, “The Dispossession of the Mississauga Indians,” in Historical Essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives, ed. J.K. Johnson and Bruce G. Wilson (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), 37.

5. 5 Duke of Portland to Peter Russell, September 11, 1797, Russell Correspondence, 1:277–78.

6. 6 Duke of Portland to Peter Russell, November 4, 1797, Russell Correspondence, 2:3.

7. 7 Enclosed in Peter Russell to Robert Prescott, August 9, 1798, Russell Correspondence, 2:233.

8. 8 Enclosed in Russell to Prescott, Russell Correspondence, 2:233.

9. 9 Leo A. Johnson, “The Mississauga–Lake Ontario Land Surrender of 1805,” Ontario History 82, no. 3 (1990): 244.

10. 10 Charles M. Johnston, The Valley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), xliv, xlviii-xlix.

11. 11 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

12. 12 For a detailed discussion of British strategy in the lead up to the 1805 “confirmation” of the Toronto Purchase, see Johnson, “Mississauga–Lake Ontario Land Surrender of 1805,” and Indian Claims Commission (ICC), Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Inquiry: Toronto Purchase Claim (Ottawa: Indian Claims Commission, 2003), 2, 29–31.

13. 13 Peter Russell to Robert Prescott, January 21, 1798, in Russell Correspondence, 2:68–69.

14. 14 For details, see ICC, “Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Inquiry,” 247–49.

15. 15 The British apparently prepared two different maps, and when the Mississaugas could not remember the exact boundaries agreed to, the larger map was used. One of the government’s critics, John Mills Jackson, alleged that the surveyor general had been dismissed because “he had shewn the Council their erroneous proceedings in a purchase of land from the Messessagua Indians, by necessarily shewing, in his official correspondence with them, how a false map had been procured, and the tribe thereby defrauded of seventeen thousand dollars”: John Mills Jackson, “A View of the Political Situation of the Province of Upper Canada,” pamphlet printed for W. Earle, London, 1809, 17. This discrepancy was a factor in the successful Toronto Purchase Special Claim of 2010, which awarded $145 million to the Mississaugas of the Credit.

16. 16 See Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Toronto Purchase Specific Claim: Arriving at an Agreement (Hagersville, ON: Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, 2001), https://mncfn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MNCFN-Toronto-Purchase-Specific-Claim-Arriving-at-an-Agreement.pdf; ICC, “Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Inquiry”; Canada, “Canada and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Celebrate Historic Claim Settlement,” news release, 2–3420, October 29, 2010, https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2010/10/canada-mississaugas-new-credit-first-nation-celebrate-historic-claim-settlement.html.

17. 17 “At a Meeting with the Mississagues at the River Credit,” Lieutenant-Governor’s Correspondence, August 1, 1805, Library and Archives Canada, RG 10, vol. 1, 295–96, reel C-10996.

18. 18 Johnson, “Mississauga–Lake Ontario Land Surrender of 1805,” 249.

19. 19 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

Chapter 7: Settlers on Indigenous Lands

1. 1 Sherry Lawson, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

2. 2 See notice from Upper Canada Gazette, December 29, 1798, and Acting Surveyor General Upper Canada, July 15, 1794, in Simcoe Papers, 2:323.

3. 3 Leo A. Johnson, “The Mississauga–Lake Ontario Land Surrender of 1805,” Ontario History 82, no. 3 (1990): 233.

4. 4 “Proclamation to Protect the Fishing Places and Burying Grounds of the Mississagas, December 14, 1797,” Upper Canada Gazette, December 30, 1797.

5. 5 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

6. 6 See, for example, “They are an unwarlike, idle, drunken, dirty tribe,” versus “I have often observed (but never had more reason to do so than to-day) that when the Indians speak, their air and action is more like that of Roman or Greek orators than of Modern nations. They have a great deal of impressive action, and look like the figures painted by the Old Masters”: Elizabeth Simcoe, The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe, Wife of the First Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Upper Canada, 1792–6, with Notes and Biography by J. Ross Robertson (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1911), 115, 213.

7. 7 Gwen Reimer and Jean-Philippe Chartrand, Historic Metis in Ontario: Georgian Bay, report by Praxis Research Associates submitted to the Native Affairs Unit, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 2000), 59, referencing Don Whiteside, An Annotated Bibliography of Articles in the Globe (Toronto), Related to Indians (Indians, Inuit and Half-Breeds) from Jan. 1, 1848 to Jan. 16, 1867 (Ottawa: Aboriginal Institute of Canada, 1980), 1–3. Although I am mindful of the current controversy over people of mixed heritage claiming Métis status in Ontario, Historic Metis in Ontario is a valuable study documenting the history of a specific group of people of mixed heritage who were descended from fur traders and Indigenous women and came from Drummond Island to the Penetanguishene area.

8. 8 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

9. 9 From the local magistrates, who issued the oath of allegiance and recommended newcomers for land grants, Surveyor General David W. Smith gathered data on the settlers, which he reported to the Executive Council in 1796. Of the 250 male immigrants who obtained land in Upper Canada between November 6, 1794, and December 31, 1795, about 71 per cent came from the United States, and 22 per cent from the British Isles. The Americans came mainly from New Jersey (54), New York (50), and Pennsylvania (29); smaller numbers came from New England (9) or the southern states (13). The majority were young men in their late teens or twenties (137); a smaller number were men in their thirties (59) or older (44). There were only two professionals, both low-paid teachers; 74 per cent were farmers, 18 per cent artisans, and 6 per cent labourers or sailors. Of the 719 male newcomers who took the oath of allegiance between 1794 and 1800 in the Home District, which included the Toronto area, 171 or 24 per cent made a mark instead of signing, which suggests an illiteracy rate three times higher than was the norm in the northern American states during the 1790s. Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 22n42: Upper Canada, Oaths of Allegiance, Home District, 1794–1800, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 1, Executive Council Office, Province of Canada, reel E-11, vol. 16. For the second, smaller register, see Robert Kerr, Register, February 23, 1793, LAC, RG 1, vol. 11, reel E-11.

10. 10 Lot 27 west of Yonge Street, according to F.R. Berchem, The Yonge Street Story, 1793–1860: An Account from Letters, Diaries and Newspapers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1996), 59.

11. 11 Dean Snow, “Searching for Hendrick: Correction of a Historic Conflation,” New York History 88, no. 3 (2007): 237.

12. 12 David. L Preston, “‘We Intend to Live Our Lifetime Together as Brothers’: Palatine and Iroquois Communities in the Mohawk Valley,” New York History 88, no. 2 (2008): 180.

13. 13 Markham Berczy Settlers Association, “Berczy Settlers,” https://markhamberczysettlers.ca/?page_id=14.

14. 14 Apparently, the name “Markham” was given to the village and township by Palatine settlers “in honour of Capt William Markham, a young relative of William Penn, who arrived in Pennsylvania with a number of colonists in 1681, to conciliate the natives and clear the way for the arrival of the great benefactor and proprietor himself [i.e., Penn]”: Mabel Burkholder, “Palatine Settlements in York County,” Papers and Records, Ontario Historical Society 37 (1945): 81.

15. 15 Gloria Lesser, “William Berczy’s Portraits of Joseph Brant,” National Gallery of Canada Annual Bulletin 6, 1982–83, 4, https://www.gallery.ca/bulletin/num6a/lesser4.html.

16. 16 Preston, “‘We Intend to Live,” 188.

17. 17 Nick Mika, The Village at Black Creek: Toronto’s Living History Village (Toronto: Natural Heritage, 2000), 28.

18. 18 Patricia Hart, Pioneering in North York: A History of the Borough (Toronto: General Publishing, 1968), 225–26.

19. 19 “Searching for the Stongs,” research paper held by Toronto Region Conservation Authority, author unknown, 22.

20. 20 Wellington Willson Cummer and Clyde Lottridge Cummer, Cummer Memoranda: A Record of the Progenitors and Descendants of Jacob Cummer (Cleveland: O.S. Hubbell, 1911), 22, from oral family tradition handed down to Walter Harris from his mother, Mrs. Rebecca Cummer Harris, and related to the author of Cummer Memoranda in 1910.

21. 21 Hart, Pioneering in North York, 167.

22. 22 Catherine A. Sims, “Exploring Ojibwa History through Documentary Sources: An Outline of the Life of Chief John Assance,” in Gin Das Winan: Documenting Aboriginal History in Ontario—A Symposium at Bkejwanong, Walpole Island First Nation, Occasional Papers vol. 2, ed. Dale Standen and David McNab (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1996), 36. For a more general discussion of the significance of presents, see Catherine A. Sims, “Algonkian-British Relations in the Upper Great Lakes Region: Gathering to Give and to Receive Presents, 1815–1843” (PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 1992), 1–22.

23. 23 See G. Elmore Reaman, The Trail of the Black Walnut (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1957); and Arthur G. Dorland, The Quakers in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Canadian Friends Historical Association / Ryerson Press, 1968).

24. 24 Ethel Willson Trewhella, “Yonge Street Quakers: The story of ‘The Friends’ in the Early Days of York County, Ontario,” originally published in 1937, republished in Canadian Quaker History Journal 76 (2011): 61.

25. 25 Taylor, “Late Loyalists,” 26.

26. 26 Taylor, “Late Loyalists,” 26.

27. 27 Kory Snache interview. Snache is a member of Chippewas of Rama First Nation but can trace his lineage to Chief Joseph Snake of the Holland River/Georgina area.

28. 28 Russell to the Duke of Portland, November 21, 1798, in The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, ed. Ernest A. Cruikshank and Andrew F. Hunter (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1932), 2:317–18 (henceforth Russell Correspondence).

29. 29 See James W. St. G. Walker, “Blacks as American Loyalists: The Slaves’ War for Independence,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 2, no. 1 (1975): 51–67; and Robert L. Fraser, “Richard Pierpoint,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003–, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/pierpoint_richard_7E.html. See also “The Long Family,” Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper, and Karolyn Smardz Frost, The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2005), 11.

30. 30 Shadd et al., Underground Railroad, 15–16; and Robin W. Winks and George Eliot Clarke, Blacks in Canada: A History, 50th anniversary ed. (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), 26, 34, 53.

31. 31 Shadd et al., Underground Railroad, 15.

32. 32 Kory Snache interview.

Chapter 8: The War of 1812 and Its Aftermath

1. 1 Janice Nickerson, York’s Sacrifice: Militia Casualties of the War of 1812 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2012), 23.

2. 2 Jean M. Constable, Stong Roots and Branches, Peel Family Histories (Toronto, 2001), 15; Susan Goldenberg, “Historic Stong Family,” North York Historical Society, January 20, 2014, https://nyhs.ca/historic-stong-family/; and Clara Thomas Archives, York University, “Inventory of the Stong Family Fonds,” http://archivesfa.library.yorku.ca/fonds/ON00370-f0000550.pdf. I have yet to locate an archival record of Daniel Stong’s militia service.

3. 3 “The Petition of Margaret Rousseau, of the Township of Ancaster,” Ninth Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario: The Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for the Years 1812, 1814, 1816, 1817, 1818 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1913), 503.

4. 4 Wendy Cameron, “Peter Robinson,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), vol. 7, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003–, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/robinson_peter_7E.html.

5. 5 Fred Blair, “Andrew Borland, War of 1812 Veteran,” Orillia Museum of Art and History News, June 9, 2021, https://www.orilliamuseum.org/andrew-borland-war-of-1812-veteran/.

6. 6 Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016), 43.

7. 7 Phil Monture, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2022.

8. 8 Quoted in Gerald Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968), 72.

9. 9 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

10. 10 Emerson Benson Nanigishkung, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

11. 11 Garry Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 13, 2022.

12. 12 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 5.

13. 13 “Musquakie,” DCB, vol. 9, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/musquakie_9E.html.

14. 14 See Six Nations Legacy Consortium, “Pledge of the Crown Wampum Belt,” http://images.ourontario.ca/Partners/SixNPL/SixNPL002690749pf_0001.pdf.

15. 15 Catherine A. Sims, “Exploring Ojibwa History through Documentary Sources: An Outline of the Life of Chief John Assance,” in Gin Das Winan: Documenting Aboriginal History in Ontario—A Symposium at Bkejwanong, Walpole Island First Nation, Occasional Papers vol. 2, ed. Dale Standen and David McNab (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1996), 38.

16. 16 Quoted in Alan Corbiere, “Mookomaanish: The Damn Knife (Odaawaa Chief and Warrior),” Active History, October 8, 2014, https://activehistory.ca/2014/10/mookomaanish-the-damn-knife-odaawaa-chief-and-warrior/.

17. 17 Alan Corbiere, “Anishinaabeg in the War of 1812: More Than Tecumseh and His Indians,” Active History, September 10, 2014, http://activehistory.ca/2014/09/anishnaabeg-in-the-war-of-1812-more-than-tecumseh-and-his-indians/.

18. 18 Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to Their Conversion to Christianity (London: A.W. Bennett, 1861), 209.

19. 19 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 2022.

20. 20 Duke of Portland to Peter Russell, November 5, 1798, in The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, ed. Ernest A. Cruikshank and Andrew F. Hunter (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1932), 2:300 (henceforth Russell Correspondence).

21. 21 Robert Surtees, “Land Cessions, 1763–1830,” in Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, ed. Edward S. Rogers and Donald B. Smith (Toronto: Dundurn), 112.

22. 22 Craig, Upper Canada, 141; and Peter S. Schmalz, The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 136, 141.

23. 23 Joseph Sawyer and John Jones to Sir John Colborne, River Credit, April 3, 1829, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 5:46, reel C-10997.

24. 24 Sawyer and Jones to Colborne, April 3, 1829.

25. 25 Darin Wybenga interview.

26. 26 “Treaty No. 16,” Indian Treaties and Surrenders from 1680 to 1890, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Brown Chamberlain Printers, 1891), 42–45.

27. 27 Robert J. Surtees, Indian Land Surrenders in Ontario, 1763–1867 (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Research Branch, Corporate Policy, 1984), 63–66.

28. 28 Gwen Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases, 1783–1788: A Strategic Perspective,” Ontario History 111, no. 1 (2016): 69, https://doi.org/10.7202/1059965ar; and William G. Dean and Geoffrey J. Matthews, Economic Atlas of Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), Plate 99, “Dates of the Original Township Surveys.”

29. 29 Ben Cousineau interview.

30. 30 Emerson Benson Nanigishkung interview.

31. 31 David Mills, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784–1850 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 35; and Craig, Upper Canada, 87.

32. 32 George de Zwaan, “Elite and Society: Newmarket, Ontario 1857–1880” (master’s thesis, Queen’s University, 1980); “Paddy Town Was Newmarket’s Little Ireland,” The Era, March 16, 1983, 54; Cecil J. Houston, Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement: Patterns, Links, and Letters (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 188–208; and W. Perkins Bull, From Macdonell to McGuigan: A History of the Growth of the Catholic Church in Upper Canada (Toronto: Perkins Bull Foundation, 1939), referenced in M.W. Nicolson, “The Irish Experience in Ontario: Rural or Urban?” Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire urbaine 14, no. 1 (1985): 41.

33. 33 Elizabeth Elbourne, “The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003): https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cch.2004.0003; and Theodore Binnema and Kevin Hutchings, “The Emigrant and the Noble Savage: Sir Francis Bond Head’s Romantic Approach to Aboriginal Policy in Upper Canada, 1836–1838,” Journal of Canadian Studies 39, no. 1 (2005): 115–38.

34. 34 Daniel G. Hill, “Negroes in Toronto, 1793–1865,” Ontario History 55 (1963): 74.

35. 35 Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper, and Karolyn Smardz Frost, The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2005), 18, 25; and J. David Wood, Making Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape Recreation before the Railway (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 47–48.

36. 36 In 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, eighty-three people of African descent lived in Etobicoke. Northwest of Toronto, forty-one individuals of African descent lived in King Township in 1861. See Shadd et al., Underground Railroad, 47, 53, 57; and Michael Wayne, “The Black Population of Canada West on the Eve of the American Civil War: A Reassessment Based on the Manuscript Census of 1861,” Histoire sociale / Social History 28, no. 56 (1995): 485.

37. 37 See Jones, Life and Journals, 58, 395; Jones, History of the Ojebway, 219; and Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 207; and “Council Held at the River Credit,” September 12, 1844, Council Minutes, 1835–48, LAC, RG 10, 1011, 206.

38. 38 See Archives of Ontario and Ontario Black History Society, “Sophia Burthen Pooley: Part of the Family?,” Enslaved Africans in Upper Canada (online exhibit), https://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/slavery/sophia_pooley.aspx. See also Ian Holryod, “Burlington Audience Hears Story of Slave Owned by Joseph Brant,” Burlington Post, February 21, 2014, https://www.insidehalton.com/life/burlington-audience-hears-story-of-slave-owned-by-joseph-brant/article_48ea7498-ecf0-5bb6-8d36-ce191da3af5d.html.

39. 39 See Bonita Lawrence and Zainab Amadahy, “Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada: Settlers or Allies?” in Breaching the Colonial Contract: Anti-colonialism in the US and Canada, (New York: Springer, 2009), 105–36.

Chapter 9: The Postwar Fur Trade along Yonge Street

1. 1 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

2. 2 Kory Snache interview.

3. 3 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

4. 4 Edward Roe, “Roe Arrived after the War of 1812,” The Era (Newmarket), June 4, 1975, https://www.uelac.org/events/2013-02-10-William-Roe.pdf.

5. 5 Ray Borland, descendant of Andrew Borland, personal communication, July 25, 2022. See also Philip (Ray) Borland, “Andrew Borland 1795–1860: A Brief Historical Sketch,” https://www.academia.edu/39820749/Andrew_Borland; and A.F. Hunter, A History of Simcoe County, vol. 1 (Barrie, ON: County Council, 1909), 24.

6. 6 Charles Pelham Mulvany and Adam Graeme Mercer, History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario, vol. 1 (Toronto: C.B. Robinson, 1885), 181, https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.07392/1.

7. 7 Canada Board of Registration and Statistics, Canada West Census, 1861, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), 13, https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1861&op=img&id=4108345_00211.

8. 8 The 1797 date is given in Mary Garbutt, Medonte, a Township Remembered (Oro-Medonte: Oro-Medonte History Committee, 2003), 252–52. However, the 1861 census lists Elizabeth Borland as fifty-five years, which would mean she was born in 1807 and married at age twelve.

9. 9 David J. Wood, Making Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape Recreation before the Railway (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 35; and Laura Peers and Jennifer S.H. Brown, “‘There Is No End to Relationships among the Indians’: Ojibwa Families and Kinship in Historical Perspective,” History of the Family 4, no. 4 (1999): 536.

10. 10 Gwen Reimer and Jean-Philippe Chartrand, Historic Metis in Ontario: Georgian Bay, report submitted to the Native Affairs Unit, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Praxis Research Associates, 2000, 61.

11. 11 Borland, personal communication.

12. 12 Reimer and Chartrand, Historic Metis in Ontario.

13. 13 Jean Baptiste Sylvestre’s narrative, in Alexander Campbell Osborne, The Migration of Voyageurs from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene in 1828, Papers and Records of the Ontario Historical Society, vol. 3 (Ontario Historical Society, 1901), 22.

14. 14 Mulvany and Mercer, History of Toronto and County of York, 1:181.

15. 15 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 91, June 22, 1827. A.F. Hunter identifies “Bolen” with “Borland” in A History of Simcoe County, vol. 1, 20.

16. 16 Borland, personal communication. The census lists Elizabeth Borland, widow of Andrew Borland, as “Indian” but her son John as “white.” Canada Board of Registration and Statistics, Canada West Census, 1861, Medonte Township, 13, https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1861&op=img&id=4108345_00211. The 1901 census for Tay Township lists many Borlands as “Chippewa half-breeds.”

17. 17 Albert Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

18. 18 Mary O’Brien, The Journals of Mary O’Brien, 1828–1838, ed. Audrey S. Miller (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968), 59.

19. 19 Wendy Cameron, “Peter Robinson,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), vol. 7, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003–, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/robinson_peter_7E.html.

20. 20 George Head, Forest Scenes and Incidents, in the Wilds of North America (London: J. Murray, 1829), 178–79.

21. 21 Robert Terence Carter, Stories of Newmarket: An Old Ontario Town (Toronto: Dundurn, 2011), 42.

22. 22 Julia Jarvis, “William Benjamin Robinson,” in DCB, vol. 10, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/robinson_william_benjamin_10E.html.

23. 23 See Nipissing First Nation, Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund, https://www.robinsonhurontreaty1850.com; and Aya Dufour, “Collective or Individual? The Key Question behind Distributing $10B Robinson Huron Treaty Settlement,” CBC News, April 24, 2024, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/payments-robinson-huron-treaty-first-nations-northern-ontario-1.7186587.

24. 24 Jones, Life and Journals, 167.

25. 25 George F. Playter, History of Methodism in Canada: With an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Work of God among the Canadian Indian Tribes, and Occasional Notices of the Civil Affairs of the Province (Toronto: A. Green, 1862), 355.

26. 26 Gerald Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968), 107, 109.

Chapter 10: Deforestation, Farming, and Milling

1. 1 David J. Wood, Making Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape Re-creation before the Railway (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 163.

2. 2 W.H Smith, Canada: Past, Present, and Future, vol. 1 (Toronto: Thomas Maclear, 1851), 273; and Wood, Making Ontario, xviii.

3. 3 Alexander Macdonell, “Diary of Lieut. Governor Simcoe’s Journey from Humber Bay to Matchedash Bay in 1793 by Alexander Macdonell, Sheriff of the Home District,” in Simcoe Papers, 2:71.

4. 4 Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to Their Conversion to Christianity (London: A.W. Bennett, 1861), 104.

5. 5 William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), quoted in Wood, Making Ontario, 13.

6. 6 Rhonda Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion, 1830–1840,” in Actes du trente-deuxième Congrès des Algonquinistes, ed. John Nichols (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2001), 569.

7. 7 Andrew Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

8. 8 Wood, Making Ontario, 22, 27.

9. 9 Wood, Making Ontario, 158.

10. 10 Wood, Making Ontario, 158.

11. 11 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

12. 12 William H. Smith, The Canadian Gazetteer Comprising Statistical and General Information (Toronto: H. Rowsell, 1846), 237.

13. 13 Wood, Making Ontario, 19, quoting Anne Wilkinson, Lions in the Way: A Discursive History of the Oslers (Toronto: Macmillian, 1956), 59.

14. 14 Chief Quenepenon, “Proceedings of a Meeting with the Mississagues at the River Credit, 1 August 1805,” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Lieutenant-Governor’s Correspondence, vol. 1, 294–95, reel C-10996.

15. 15 Andrew Big Canoe interview.

16. 16 Arthur Doughty, “Notes on History of Flour Milling in Canada,” November 24, 1936, Marilyn and Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre, Toronto Reference Library, John Ross Robertson Manuscript Collection, folder for Alfred H. Bailey.

17. 17 Wood, Making Ontario, 103; and City of Vaughan, “Importance of Mills,” https://www.vaughan.ca/explore-vaughan/vaughans-history/importance-mills.

18. 18 Gary Miedema, “When the Rivers Really Ran: Water-Powered Industry in Toronto,” in HtO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-Flow Toilets, ed. Wayne Reeves and Christina Palassio (Toronto: Coach House, 2008), 66–73.

19. 19 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

20. 20 In 1808, John Schmidt (Smith) established a sawmill on Black Creek near Steeles Avenue. It was taken over by the Dalziel family. Smith’s Edgeley mill (and another mill located on the property of his neighbour Richard Brown) remained in operation until the 1860s. Another sawmill on Black Creek operated on the Snider property east of Jane in 1851. The Fisher family ran a sawmill in 1820 and later a gristmill. John Dalziel’s sawmill was the centre of Kaiserville, which had an adjacent blacksmith shop, carpenter’s shop, and wagon shop. Jacob Stong, the son of Daniel Stong and Elizabeth Fisher Stong, erected a small sawmill where Black Creek crossed Jane Street in 1848. See Patricia Hart, Pioneering in North York: A History of the Borough (Toronto: General Publishing, 1968).

21. 21 Karim M. Tiro, “A Sorry Tale: Natives, Settlers, and the Salmon of Lake Ontario, 1780–1900,” Historical Journal 59, no. 4 (2016): 1005; and Kathleen Lizars, The Valley of the Humber, 1615–1913 (Toronto: William Briggs, 1913), 118.

22. 22 Augustus Jones, “Letter to Acting Surveyor-General D.W. Smith on July 7, 1796,” Archives of Ontario (AO), microfilm, MS 7433.

23. 23 Tiro, “A Sorry Tale,” 1013–14; Gilbert Allardyce, “‘The Vexed Question of Sawdust’: River Pollution in Nineteenth-Century New Brunswick,” Dalhousie Review 52, no. 2 (1972): 177–90; Peter R. Gillis, “Rivers of Sawdust: The Battle over Industrial Pollution in Canada, 1865–1903,” Journal of Canadian Studies 21, no. 1 (1986): 84–103; and Jennifer Bonnell, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 21.

24. 24 Tiro, “A Sorry Tale,” 1013.

25. 25 Speech of Chief Quinepenon, Upper Canada Civil Control, September 6, 1806, LAC, RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 451.

26. 26 Lizars, The Valley of the Humber, 126.

27. 27 See Wood, Making Ontario, 46; and Tiro, “A Sorry Tale.” See also Allardyce, “‘The Vexed Question of Sawdust’; and Gillis, “Rivers of Sawdust.”

28. 28 F.R. Berchem, The Yonge Street Story, 1793–1860: An Account from Letters, Diaries and Newspapers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1996), 40.

29. 29 City of Vaughan, “Thornhill,” https://www.vaughan.ca/explore-vaughan/communities/thornhill.

30. 30 Samuel Wilmot, “Diary of Samuel Wilmot,” 1806, AO, microfilm, MS 7438.

31. 31 V.B. Blake, Credit Valley Conservation Report 1956 (Toronto: Dept. of Planning and Development, 1956), https://cvc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1956REPT.pdf.

32. 32 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 64, April 28, 1826.

33. 33 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 206; and Wood, Making Ontario, 102.

34. 34 Donald B. Smith, Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 12.

35. 35 Tiro, “A Sorry Tale,” 1002.

Chapter 11: Indigenous Christianity

1. 1 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 39.

2. 2 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

3. 3 [William Warren Baldwin], “Thoughts on the Civilization of the Chippewa and Mississaga Tribes of Indians . . . ,” c. 1819, Toronto Public Library, William Warren Baldwin Papers, 15.

4. 4 Alfred T. Day, “The Legacy of John Stewart and the Wyandot,” Methodist Mission Bicentennial, https://methodistmission200.org/about-the-bicentennial/the-legacy-of-john-stewart-and-the-wyandot/accessed.

5. 5 Roxanne L. Korpan, “Scriptural Relations: Colonial Formations of Anishaabemowin Bibles in Nineteenth-Century Canada,” Material Religion 17, no. 2 (2021): 149.

6. 6 The Covenant Chain alliance between the English and Haudenosaunee was a successor to the early seventeenth-century alliance between the Dutch and the Mohawks. The English renewed the alliance when they took over Dutch-controlled territories in the colony of New York.

7. 7 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 46.

8. 8 George F. Playter, History of Methodism in Canada: With an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Work of God among the Canadian Indian Tribes, and Occasional Notices of the Civil Affairs of the Province (Toronto: A. Green, 1862), 355, 216.

9. 9 See Susan Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017), 46–52.

10. 10 Playter, History of Methodism, 216–17.

11. 11 Playter, History of Methodism, 218.

12. 12 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 62; Peter Jones, “Anecdote no. 33,” in Anecdote Book, E.J. Pratt Library, Victoria University Library, University of Toronto, Peter Jones Collection.

13. 13 Day, “The Legacy of John Stewart.”

14. 14 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 48.

15. 15 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

16. 16 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 8.

17. 17 For a biography of David Sawyer that also includes information about Joseph Sawyer, see Conrad Vandusen, The Indian Chief: An Account of the Labour, Losses, Suffering and Oppression of Ke-zig-ka-e-ne-ne (Avie Sawyer), a Chief of the Ojibeway Indians in Canada West (London: William Nichols, 1867), https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.25329/4 .

18. 18 Playter, History of Methodism, 247.

19. 19 Playter, History of Methodism, 268.

20. 20 Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada Conference, Missionary Society, First Annual Report of the Canada Conference Missionary Society, Auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Kingston, ON: Hugh C. Thomson, 1825), 14.

21. 21 Jones, Life and Journals, 36–37.

22. 22 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 70.

23. 23 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 53.

24. 24 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

25. 25 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 166.

26. 26 See Elizabeth Elbourne, “The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003): https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cch.2004.0003; and Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

27. 27 Kahkewaqonaby to James Givins, Grand River, June 17, 1825, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, Chief George Paudash Papers, Letter Book, 1825–42, vol. 1011, 86203, reel T-1456.

28. 28 Jones, Life and Journals, 37–38, July 12, 1825.

29. 29 Jones, Life and Journals, 38.

30. 30 Playter, History of Methodism, 251–52; and Jones, Life and Journals, 38–39.

31. 31 Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada Conference, Missionary Society, “New Market Branch Missionary Society: Extract from the Letter of William Law, Secretary,” First Annual Report, 20.

Chapter 12: Yonge Street Camp Meetings

1. 1 George F. Playter, History of Methodism in Canada: With an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Work of God among the Canadian Indian Tribes, and Occasional Notices of the Civil Affairs of the Province (Toronto: A. Green, 1862), 166, 193.

2. 2 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 70.

3. 3 Jones, Life and Journals, 73.

4. 4 Methodist Episcopal Church, Second Annual Report of the Canada Conference Missionary Society, Auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (St. Catharines, ON: Hiram Leavensworth, 1826), 16–17.

5. 5 Jones, Life and Journals, 75.

6. 6 Playter, History of Methodism, 284–28.

7. 7 Playter, History of Methodism, 301–2.

8. 8 Playter, History of Methodism, 303.

9. 9 Jones, Life and Journals, 149, June 10, 1828.

10. 10 Playter, History of Methodism, 350–51.

11. 11 Jones, Life and Journals, 162, August 8, 1828.

12. 12 Jones, Life and Journals, 349, July 4, 1832.

13. 13 Letter of Egerton Ryerson, reprinted in Methodist Episcopal Church, Second Annual Report, 19.

14. 14 Playter, History of Methodism, 353.

15. 15 Jones, Life and Journals, 163–64, August 13 and 14, 1828.

16. 16 Methodist Episcopal Church, Second Annual Report, 19–20.

17. 17 Jones, Life and Journals, 93, November 18 and 19, 1827.

18. 18 Jones, Life and Journals, 162, August 9, 1828.

19. 19 Jones, Life and Journals, 164–65, August 14, 1828,.

20. 20 Playter, History of Methodism, 353.

21. 21 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

22. 22 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 76–77; and Donald B. Smith, Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 52.

23. 23 Albert Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

24. 24 Jones, Life and Journals, 81.

25. 25 Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to Their Conversion to Christianity (London: A.W. Bennett, 1861), 174.

26. 26 John Carroll, Case and His Contemporaries, vol. 3 (Toronto: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1871), 259.

27. 27 Playter, History of Methodism, 261; and Methodist Episcopal Church, First Annual Report.

28. 28 Darin Wybenga, “Education at the Credit River Mission,” Historical Tidbits: Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Pillar 5 Committee, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation Chief and Council, 2019.

29. 29 Wybenga, “Education at the Credit River Mission.”

30. 30 Jones, Life and Journals, 112–13, February 22, 1828.

31. 31 Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada Conference, Missionary Society, Third Annual Report of the Canada Conference Missionary Society, Auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (York: Society at the Office of the Colonal Advocate, William Lyon MacKenzie, 1827), 9.

32. 32 Elizabeth Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary: Missionaries as Agents of Change among the Indians of Southern Ontario, 1784–1867 (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1975), 20–27.

33. 33 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 68; and Chandra Murdoch, “Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850–1906” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2023), 164.

34. 34 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

35. 35 Methodist Episcopal Church, Third Annual Report, 9.

36. 36 Playter, History of Methodism, 323, 327.

37. 37 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 78, quoting Peter Jones to Samuel Martin, River Credit Mission, January 18, 1830, E.J. Pratt Library, Victoria University Library, University of Toronto, Peter Jones Collection.

38. 38 Kory Snache interview.

39. 39 Albert Big Canoe interview.

40. 40 Jones, History, 117.

41. 41 Jones, Life and Journals, 269, January 27, 1830.

42. 42 Jones, Life and Journals, 386.

Chapter 13: The Credit Mission

1. 1 Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada Conference, Missionary Society, Third Annual Report of the Canada Conference Missionary Society, Auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, (York: Society at the Office of the Colonial Advocate, William Lyon MacKenzie, 1827), 6–7.

2. 2 George F. Playter, History of Methodism in Canada: With an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Work of God among the Canadian Indian Tribes, and Occasional Notices of the Civil Affairs of the Province (Toronto: A. Green, 1862), 303.

3. 3 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

4. 4 Playter, History of Methodism, 348.

5. 5 Playter, History of Methodism, 349.

6. 6 James Magrath, “Report of the State of the Indians on the River Credit,” in Authentic Letters from Upper Canada, ed. Thomas William Magrath (Dublin: William Curry, 1833), 310–11.

7. 7 Magrath, “Report,” 312.

8. 8 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 157.

9. 9 Robin Jarvis Brownlie, “First Nations Perspectives and Historical Thinking in Canada” (paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association, Saskatoon, May 2007, 8); and Maureen Konkle, Writing Indian Nations: Indian Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827–1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 40.

10. 10 The code is reprinted in Elizabeth Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary: Missionaries as Agents of Change among the Indians of Southern Ontario, 1784–1867 (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1975), Appendix III, 107. See also Chandra Murdoch, “Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850–1906” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2023), 169–70.

11. 11 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 169–70.

12. 12 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 171; and Mark Walters, “How to Read Aboriginal Legal Texts from Upper Canada,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 14, no. 1 (2003): 106.

13. 13 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 70–71, August 21, 1826.

14. 14 “James Ajetance, Peter Jones, Joseph Sawyer, John Jones, and 49 other Mississaugas of the River Credit to the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, January 31, 1829,” Library and Archives Canada, RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 1011, reel T-1456.

15. 15 Tenth Parliament, “An Act, the Better to Protect the Mississaga Tribes Living on the Indian Reserve of the River Credit, in Their Exclusive Right of Fishing and Hunting Therein” Statutes of His Majesty’s Province of Upper Canada, Passed in the First Session of the Tenth Provincial Parliament (York: Robert Stanton, 1829), 23, passed 20 March, 1829; and Karim M. Tiro, “A Sorry Tale: Natives, Settlers, and the Salmon of Lake Ontario, 1780–1900,” Historical Journal 59, no. 4 (2016): 1018.

16. 16 Jones, Life and Journals, 352, July 24, 1832.

17. 17 William and Lawrence Herkimer were the grandsons of Johan Jost Herkimer of German Flatts, Herkimer County, New York, a Palatine German and Loyalist colonel who settled at Cataraqui (Kingston) in the mid-1780s. Their father was Johan’s son Lawrence, a Rice Lake fur trader; their mother was Magiyakamigokua, a Mississauga woman. William, Lawrence, and their brother Jacob moved to the Credit River.

18. 18 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 155–57.

19. 19 Wybenga interview.

20. 20 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 157.

21. 21 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 158.

22. 22 Darin Wybenga, “Rev. Peter Jones—History of the Ojebway Indians,” Historical Tidbits: Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Pillar 5 Committee, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation Chief and Council, 2019.

23. 23 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

Chapter 14: The Coldwater and the Narrows Settlement

1. 1 Vicki Snache, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

2. 2 Henry Darling, “Report upon the Exact State of the Indian Department,” July 24, 1828, enclosed in Earl of Dalhousie to Sir George Murray, Secretary of the State for the Colonies, October 27, 1828, Parliamentary Papers, 1834, vol. 617, ed. BCO, 22–35, excerpts published in Aborigines Protection Society, Report of the Indians of Upper Canada, 1839 (Toronto: Canadiana House, 1968), henceforth Report of the Indians, 1839.

3. 3 For discussion of the Darling report, see John F. Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry into Indian Affairs in the Canadas, 1828–1858: Evolving a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Indian Affairs and Northern Development Branch, 1985).

4. 4 Darling, Report of the Indians, 1839, 6–8.

5. 5 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

6. 6 According to Margot Maddison-McFaydyen, a descendant. Personal communication with author, February 25, 2024.

7. 7 Gwen Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases, 1783–1788: A Strategic Perspective,” Ontario History 111, no. 1 (2016): 64, https://doi.org/10.7202/1059965a.

8. 8 Simcoe Papers, 2:72; and Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases,” 48.

9. 9 Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases,” 49; and “Return of Indian Stores, March 22, 1788,” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 1834, reel C-1224, 20. The return’s cover page reads: “Return of Indian Stores given to Mississagay Nations of Indians as a payment for the Lands at Toronto & the communication to Lake Huron relinquished by them to the Crown.”

10. 10 Robert Surtees, “Land Cessions, 1763–1830,” in Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, ed. Edward S. Rogers and Donald B. Smith (Toronto: Dundurn), 107.

11. 11 “Memorial Address of the Lake Huron and Simcoe Tribes,” c. 1847–48, LAC, RG 10, vol. 123, file 6199–6202, cited in Reimer, “British-Canada’s Land Purchases,” 69; the cover page to this memorial reads: “Vide letter to CC Lands 1 February 1848.” This memorial is also filed together with other returns dated 1847–48 containing “claims by Indians in Canada West to certain lands which they state have not been ceded to the Crown”: Campbell to Commissioner of Crown Lands, February 1, 1848, LAC, RG 1–273-5-1-1, 8–9.

12. 12 Indian Claims Commission (ICC), Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry: Beausoleil First Nation, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, Chippewas of Mnjikaning (Rama) First Nation; Coldwater-Narrows Reservation Surrender Claim, 2003, 8, https://publications.gc.ca/Collection/RC31-15-2003E.pdf (henceforth Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry).

13. 13 Much of my analysis draws on two key research reports, Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” c. 1991, and Joan Holmes and Associates, “The Coldwater Treaty Draft Historical Report,” both prepared for Specific Claims INAC, March 1993, and revised October 1993. These reports and supporting documents can be found in the first two volumes of ICC, Chippewa Tri-Council Coldwater-Narrows Reservation Claim: Compilation of Documents, submitted for the Coldwater-Narrows Reserve land claim in 1996 and released in 2008. See University of Saskatchewan Indigenous Studies Portal, https://iportal.usask.ca/docs/ICC_CD/Chippewas%20Tri-Council/open.pdf.

14. 14 Albert Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

15. 15 T.G. Anderson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Coldwater, to J. Givins, Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs, April 25, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 46, reel C-11014; Anderson to L. Mudge, Secretary of Lieutenant-Governor, Upper Canada, March 22, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 5, reel C-10997–10998; and Anderson to Givins, May 3, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 46, reel C-11014.

16. 16 Chief Yellow Head, Speech, July 12, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 46, reel C-11014, as reproduced in Holmes, “The Coldwater Treaty Draft Historical Report,” 50.

17. 17 Yellowhead, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 5, 577–80, in Florence Murray, ed., Muskoka and Haliburton, 1615–1875: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1963), 105–6.

18. 18 ICC, Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry, 12.

19. 19 J. Colborne, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, to G. Murray, Secretary of State, October 14, 1830, “Aboriginal Tribes,” Parliamentary Papers, Great Britain, House of Commons, 1834, vol. 617, 128, hereafter Parliamentary Papers.

20. 20 Colborne to Baron Aylmer, Governor General of Canada, February 19, 1831, in “Aboriginal Tribes,” Parliamentary Papers.

21. 21 Anderson to Mudge, May 10, 1831, LAC, RG 10, vol. 47, reel C-11015; and Anderson to Givins, September 17, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 51, reel C-11016–11017.

22. 22 Anderson to Givins, October 4, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 52, reel C-11017.

23. 23 Anderson to Givins, February 20, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 50, reel C-11016. Anderson also suggested that “it would also be an act of charity to allot a parcel of Land for the Half Breeds and enable them to form a settlement subject to the rules of this Establishment.”

24. 24 A.F. Hunter, A History of Simcoe County (Barrie, ON: County Council, 1909), 2:9, and Anderson to Givins, December 3, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 52, reel C-11017.

25. 25 Chief and Rev. Peter Jones to Viscount Goderich, Secretary of State, July 26, 1831, “Aboriginal Tribes,” Parliamentary Papers.

26. 26 See Fred Blair, “Orillia’s Early Settlers, Part 4: Andrew Borland,” Orillia Museum of Art and History, February 18, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/orilliamuseum/photos/a.252204871475152/4357061550989443/?type=3.

27. 27 Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” 25–27, 44–46.

28. 28 Craig Heron, Booze: A Distilled History (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013), 18, 42, 50–51.

29. 29 Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” 26.

30. 30 Givins to Anderson, November 6, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 499, reel C-13341–13342, as reproduced in Holmes, “The Coldwater Treaty Draft Historical Report,” 60.

31. 31 Anderson to Givins, January 24, 1831, LAC, RG 10, vol. 47, reel C-11015; and Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” 43–44.

32. 32 Anderson to Givins, December 4, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 6, reel C-11014.

33. 33 Givins to Anderson, December 18, 1830, LAC, RG 10, vol. 499, reel C-13341–13342.

34. 34 Anderson to Givins, September 28, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 51, reel C-11016–11017.

35. 35 Anderson to Givins, November 20, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 52, reel C-11017.

36. 36 Givins to Anderson, December 5, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 500, reel C-13341.

37. 37 David Town, Yellowhead’s Revolt (Orillia: Impression House, 2020), 30.

38. 38 Quoted in Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” 1991, 51. See also “Proceedings of an Inquiry into the Truth of Certain Statements, Made by Captain Anderson and Mr. G. Alley of the Indian Department . . . ,” Christian Guardian, March 14, 1832, 70.

39. 39 David Town, Orillia’s Civil War (Orillia: Impression House, 2016), 32–33. See also “Proceedings of an Inquiry,” 70.

40. 40 Anderson to Givins, August 13, 1834, LAC, RG 10, vol. 56, reel C-11018–11019.

41. 41 Anderson to Givins, August 13, 1834.

42. 42 Town, Yellowhead’s Revolt, 30–31.

43. 43 Givins to Anderson, July 16, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 499, reel C-13341–1342.

44. 44 Chief John Aisence, Coldwater, July 24, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 51, reel C-11016–11017; and Anderson to George Phillpotts, Captain, Royal Engineers, February 6, 1833, LAC, RG 10, vol. 53, reel C-11017–11018.

45. 45 Aisence, July 24, 1832.

46. 46 Phillpotts to Anderson, February 18, 1833, LAC, RG 10, vol. 53, reel C-11017–11018.

47. 47 “Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at Coldwater, April 16, 1833,” LAC, RG 10, vol. 54, reel C-11018.

48. 48 Anderson to Phillpotts, February 6, 1833, LAC, RG 10, vol. 53, reel C-11017–11018.

49. 49 Anderson to Givins, May 6, 1834, LAC, RG 10, vol. 55, reel C-11018.

50. 50 Anderson to Givins, November 28 and December 27, 1834, LAC, RG 10, vol. 56, reel C-11018–11019; and Anderson to Givins, July 16, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 51, reel C-11016–11017.

Chapter 15: “Progress,” Setbacks, and Strategies for Self-Sufficiency

1. 1 Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” c. 1991, in Chippewa Tri-Council Coldwater-Narrows Reservation Claim: Compilation of Documents, ed. Indian Claims Commission, 1996, 25–27, https://iportal.usask.ca/docs/ICC_CD/Chippewas%20Tri-Council/open.pdf.

2. 2 Vicki Snache, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

3. 3 T.G. Anderson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Coldwater, to J. Colborne, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, August 1, 1832, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 51, reel C-11016–11017.

4. 4 Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry, 13; and John Webster Grant, Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Canada in Encounter since 1534 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 84.

5. 5 “Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at Coldwater, April 16, 1833,” LAC, RG 10, vol. 54, reel C-11018.

6. 6 Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” 31.

7. 7 Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 84–85.

8. 8 Diary of Reverend G. Hallen, January to August 1835, Simcoe County Archives, Midhurst, ON, referenced in David Town, Yellowhead’s Revolt (Orillia: Impression House, 2020), 33.

9. 9 “Proceedings of an Indian Council.”

10. 10 “Proceedings of an Indian Council.”

11. 11 “Proceedings of an Indian Council.”

12. 12 “Proceedings of an Indian Council.”

13. 13 Anderson to [Major] Winniett, September 16, 1833, LAC, RG 10, vol. 54, reel C-11018.

14. 14 Anderson to Givins, October 25, 1834, LAC, RG 10, vol. 56, reel C-11018–11019.

15. 15 Chiefs John Aisence, John Jones, Pierre Ashagashe, and Naineishkung, January 5, 1835, LAC, RG 10, vol. 60, reel C-11020.

16. 16 Anderson to Givins, January 5, 1835, LAC, RG 10, vol. 60, reel C-11020.

17. 17 “In consequence of the very severe Frosts it became necessary to stop the Saw Mill in order that the Grist Mill might continue to Grind, therefore the rent could not be exacted, and the Indians being very desirous to get the Mill under their own management, it has been given up by Mr. G. Mitchell”: Anderson to Givins, April 9, 1835, LAC, RG 10, vol. 57, reel C-11019.

18. 18 Anderson to Colborne, September 24, 1835.

19. 19 David Town, Orillia’s Civil War (Orillia: Impression House, 2016), 42–43.

20. 20 Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” 71.

Chapter 16: The Quest for Secure Land Tenure

1. 1 Chief and Rev. Peter Jones to Viscount Goodrich, Secretary of State, July 26, 1831, “Aboriginal Tribes,” Parliamentary Papers, Great Britain, House of Commons, 1834, vol. 617, 128.

2. 2 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 351.

3. 3 John Colborne, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, to R. Hay, Colonial Secretary, December 15, 1831, “Aboriginal Tribes,” Parliamentary Papers.

4. 4 T.G. Anderson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Coldwater, to J. Givins, Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs, January 29, 1832, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 50, reel C-11016.

5. 5 Givins to Anderson, January 31, 1832, LAC, RG 10, vol. 499, reel C-13341–13342.

6. 6 “Proceedings of an Indian Council held at Coldwater, September 16, 1833,” LAC, RG 10, vol. 54, reel C-11018.

7. 7 “Proceedings of an Indian Council.”

8. 8 Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, “Origin and History,” https://www.scugogfirstnation.com/Public/Origin-and-History. See also Grant Karcich, Scugog Carrying Place: A Frontier Pathway (Toronto: Dundurn, 2013), 152.

9. 9 Joan Holmes and Associates, “Coldwater-Narrows Surrender of 1836: Report about Additional Research Findings,” in Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry: Coldwater-Narrows Reservation Surrender Claim (Ottawa: Indian Claims Commission, 2020), 21.

10. 10 Joan Holmes and Associates, “Coldwater-Narrows Surrender,” 21.

11. 11 Chiefs John Aisence, John Jones, Pierre Ashagashe, and Peter Katakickwou to Francis Bond Head, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, August 19, 1836, LAC, RG 10, vol. 62, reel C-11021.

12. 12 Givins to Anderson, October 6, 1836, LAC, RG 10, vol. 501, reel C-13342; and Rhonda Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion, 1830–1840,” in Actes du trente-deuxième congrès des algonquinistes, ed. John D. Nichols (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2001), 555.

13. 13 Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry, 19.

14. 14 Anderson to Givins, November 30, 1835, LAC, RG 10, vol. 59, file 60240-42.

15. 15 Bond Head to Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, August 20, 1836, no. 32, in British Parliamentary Papers: Correspondence, Returns and Other Papers Relating to Canada and to the Indian Problem Therein, 1839, vol. 12 (Shannon: Irish University Press, [1969]).

16. 16 Theodore Binnema and Kevin Hutchings, “The Emigrant and the Noble Savage: Sir Francis Bond Head’s Romantic Approach to Aboriginal Policy in Upper Canada, 1836–1838,” Journal of Canadian Studies 39, no. 1 (2005): 125.

17. 17 Anna Brownell Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, afterword by Clara Thomas (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990 [1838]), 339.

18. 18 Bond Head to Lord Glenelg, August 20, 1836, in Joan Holmes and Associates, “The Coldwater Treaty: Draft Historical Report,” Specific Claims INAC Report, 1993, 137–38.

19. 19 Chiefs Aisence, Jones, Ashagashe, and Katakickwou to Francis Bond Head, August 19, 1836.

20. 20 Givins to Chief Yellowhead, Narrows, October 6, 1836, LAC, RG 10, vol. 501, reel C-13342.

21. 21 Givins to Anderson, October 26, 1836, LAC, RG 10, vol. 501, reel C-13342.

22. 22 Chief Yellowhead to Givins, November 6, 1836, LAC, RG 10, vol. 63, reel C-11021.

23. 23 Coldwater Agreement, November 26, 1836, Indian Treaties and Surrenders from 1680 to 1890, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Brown Chamberlain Printers, 1891), 117.

24. 24 Bond Head to Lord Glenelg, August 15, 1837, “Correspondence Returns, and Other Papers Relating to Canada and to the Indian Problem Therein,” Parliamentary Papers, Great Britain, House of Commons, 1839, vol. 323, 149–52.

25. 25 Joan Holmes and Associates, “Coldwater-Narrows Surrender,” 25.

26. 26 Rama, Snake Island, and Coldwater Indians to Sir Charles Bagot, 1842, in Florence Murray, ed., Muskoka and Haliburton, 1615–1875: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1963), 115–16.

27. 27 Anderson to William Hepburn, December 17, 1836, LAC, RG 10, vol. 63, reel 62254–62257, quoted in Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion, 1830–1840,” 556.

28. 28 Andrew Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

29. 29 He did this by saying that whites would take the land anyway without any compensation whatsoever: James Evans, St. Clair, March 24, 1838, Christian Guardian, April 1838.

30. 30 Eighty-one men to Lord Glenelg, April 10, 1837, LAC, RG 10, vol. 65, reel C-11022.

31. 31 Resident and Ministers of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada to Bond Head, June 24, 1837, LAC, RG 10, vol. 66, reel C-11022–11023.

32. 32 Quoted in Binnema and Hutchings, “The Emigrant,” 130.

33. 33 Aborigines Protection Society to Earl of Durham, Governor General of Canada, April 3, 1838, Report of the Indians of Upper Canada 1839 (Toronto: Canadiana House, 1968), 22–27.

34. 34 Elizabeth Elbourne, “The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003): https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cch.2004.0003.

35. 35 Great Britain and Aborigines Protection Society, Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlement) (London: W. Ball, A. Chambers, and Hatchard and Son, 1837), iv.

36. 36 The report also argued for metropolitan oversight of Aboriginal affairs because colonial legislators faced an inevitable conflict of interest: duty of protection versus responding to their electors’ desires: Elbourne, “Sin of the Settler,” paras. 4, 15, 24, 26.

37. 37 Elbourne, “Sin of the Settler,” 66–68.

38. 38 “Despatch on Indian Affairs-Missions,” Christian Guardian, March 21, 1838, Victoria University Library, Donald B. Smith fonds, 2013.08, box 7, file 11.

39. 39 Chandra Murdoch, “Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850–1906” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2023), 168; and John F. Leslie, The Report of the Pennefather Commission: Indian Conditions and Administration in the Canadas in the 1850s (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, 1983), 5.

40. 40 Givins to Anderson, February 11, 1837, LAC, RG 10, vol. 501, reel C-13342.

41. 41 Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry, 26–27.

42. 42 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 558.

43. 43 Jones, Life and Journals, 384, July 24–25, 1837.

44. 44 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 167.

Chapter 17: Defending the Crown

1. 1 Gerald Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968), 212.

2. 2 Scott Kennedy, with Jeanne Hopkins, 200 Years at St. John’s York Mills: The Oldest Church in Toronto (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2016), 266.

3. 3 Susan Goldenberg, “Historic Stong Family,” North York Historical Society, January 20, 2014 https://nyhs.ca/historic-stong-family/.

4. 4 Ronald J. Stagg, “Joseph Shephard,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), vol. 7, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003–, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/shepard_joseph_7E.html.

5. 5 J.C. Dent, Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion (Toronto: C. Bleckett Robinson, 1885), 2:47; and Patricia Hart, Pioneering in North York: A History of the Borough (Toronto: General Publishing, 1968), 161–62.

6. 6 “Black Creek Pioneer Village: Elizabeth (Fisher) Stong,” Hiking the GTA, https://hikingthegta.com/tag/daniel-stong/#:~:text=In%20the%20rebellion%20of%201837,arrested%20and%20held%20in%20jail.

7. 7 They, along with one other rebel, were setting fire to the Don Bridge when Montgomery’s Tavern was burned.

8. 8 Hart, Pioneering in North York, 162.

9. 9 Wellington Willson Cummer and Clyde Lottridge Cummer, Cummer Memoranda: A Record of the Progenitors and Descendants of Jacob Cummer (Cleveland: O.S. Hubbell, 1911), 28–31.

10. 10 T.G. Anderson, “Memo Shewing the Number of Indians Who Were Employed under My Direction in the Late Rebellion, between the 7th and 15th December 1837 Inclusive,” June 26, 1838, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 68, file 64592-95; Gerald Alley, letter, December 10, 1837, LAC, RG 10, vol. 67, file 64191-92; Anderson to S.P. Jarvis, Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs, December 14, 1837, vol. 124, file 69672; Alley to Jarvis, November 30, 1838, LAC, RG 10, vol. 124, file 69972-73, cited in Rhonda Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion, 1830–1840,” in Actes du trente-deuxième congrès des algonquinistes, ed. John D. Nichols (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2001), 561.

11. 11 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 560–61. A further 170 Rice Lake Mississaugas were summoned by militia captain Charly Anderson, their Indian agent, to go to Toronto by steamer, but their journey was aborted because they weren’t needed.

12. 12 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 560, 562.

13. 13 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 551–52.

14. 14 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 562.

15. 15 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 552, 560.

16. 16 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 564.

17. 17 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 557.

18. 18 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 564–65.

19. 19 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

20. 20 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

21. 21 See Jarvis to Alley, December 5, 1838, LAC, RG 10, vol. 502, file 158–60; Alley to Jarvis, December 8, 1838, LAC, RG 10, vol. 69, file 65196; Jarvis to Alley, December 12, 1838, LAC, RG 10, vol. 502, file 170-71; and Alley to Jarvis, December 14, 1838, LAC, RG 10, vol. 124, file 69974-71.

22. 22 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 566.

23. 23 Rama, Snake Island, and Coldwater Indians to Sir Charles Bagot, 1842, in Florence Murray, ed., Muskoka and Haliburton, 1615–1875: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1963), 115–16.

24. 24 Alley to Jarvis, January 24, 1839, LAC, RG 10, vol. 124, file 69943-44.

25. 25 Andrew Borland to Alley, January 30, 1839, LAC, RG 10, vol. 124, file 172, quoted in Murray, Muskoka and Haliburton, 114.

26. 26 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 567–70.

27. 27 Telford, “The Central Anishinabe and the Rebellion,” 570.

28. 28 Darrel Manitowabi, “From Fish Weirs to Casino: Negotiating Neoliberalism at Mnjikaning” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2007), 9.

29. 29 Jarvis to John McAulay, Secretary to Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, June 19, 1838, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ontario, file 10-1-10.

30. 30 Andrew Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

31. 31 See Laurie Leclerc, “Rama First Nation Land Acquisitions, 1838–1848,” Mzinigan, Our Heritage Place, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, Dagwaagi/Fall 2022, 6–10. https://issuu.com/bencousineau/docs/mzinigan_fall_2022.

32. 32 Ben Cousineau interview.

33. 33 Mark Douglas, interview by Alan Corbiere, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, November 24, 2022.

34. 34 Sherry Lawson, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

35. 35 Ben Cousineau interview.

36. 36 Quoted in Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, “The Coldwater Narrows Reservation,” c. 1991, Chippewa Tri-Council Coldwater-Narrows Reservation Claim: Compilation of Documents, edited by Indian Claims Commission, 1996, https://iportal.usask.ca/docs/ICC_CD/Chippewas%20Tri-Council/open.pdf.146–47.

37. 37 Chippewa Tri-Council Inquiry, 28.

38. 38 “Chiefs John Aisance, Yellowhead, and Snake (written by T.G. Anderson, Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs,” memo, October 17, 1845, LAC, RG 10, vol. 268, reel C-12653.

39. 39 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

40. 40 Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, “Fact Sheet: The Coldwater-Narrows Land Claim,” May 20, 2011, http://specific-claims.bryan-schwartz.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/Fact_Sheet-The_Coldwater-Narrows%20Land%20Claim_2011.pdf.

Chapter 18: Surviving, Rebuilding, Adapting, Resisting

1. 1 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 407.

2. 2 “Petition to the Queen, from the Credit Indians, Praying to Have Their Lands Secured to Them,” October 4, 1837, in Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to Their Conversion to Christianity (London: A.W. Bennett, 1861), 265–67.

3. 3 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 166, 175.

4. 4 Sydenham to Lord John Russell, Colonial Secretary, July 22, 1841, Province of Canada, Journals of the Legislative Assembly, Sessional Papers, 1844–45, Appendix EEE, quoted in John F. Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry into Indian Affairs in the Canadas, 1828–1858: Evolving a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Indian Affairs and Northern Development Branch, 1985), 122. The interpretation in parentheses is Leslie’s.

5. 5 Macaulay Report, April 22, 1839, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 718, 28–29; and Leslie, Commissions, 83.

6. 6 Donald B. Smith, Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 77.

7. 7 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 174

8. 8 “Minutes of a General Council Held at the River Credit Commencing on January 16th 1840,” LAC, RG 10, Paudash Papers, Council Minutes, 1835–48, vol. 1011, 77.

9. 9 “Minutes of a General Council.”

10. 10 Joseph Sawyer, Peter Jones, and John Jones to Colonel S.P. Jarvis, Credit, February 24, 1842, LAC, RG 10, Letter Book, 1825–42, vol. 1011, 190.

11. 11 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 77.

12. 12 Haudenosaunee names as spelled in Smith, Sacred Feathers, 174–76.

13. 13 Jones, History, 120.

14. 14 “Minutes of a General Council,” 82.

15. 15 “Minutes of a General Council,” 86.

16. 16 “Minutes of a General Council,” 87.

17. 17 For more on these interpretations and the use of the Dish with One Spoon in land acknowledgements, see Dean M. Jacobs and Victor P. Lytwyn, “Naagan Get Bezhig Emkwaan: A Dish with One Spoon Reconsidered,” Ontario History 112, no. 2 (2020): 191–210.

18. 18 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 176; and Jones, History, 126.

19. 19 See Mark D. Walters “‘According to the Old Customs of Our Nation’: Aboriginal Self-Government on the Credit River Mississauga Reserve, 1826–1847,” Ottawa Law Review 30, no. 1 (1998–99): 1–45.

20. 20 Johann Georg Kohl, Travels in Canada and through the States of New York and Pennsylvania, vol. 2 (London: George Manwaring, 1861); and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Indian Affairs Annual Reports, 1864–1990 (Ottawa: National Library of Canada / Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2004), referenced in Darrel Manitowabi, “From Fish Weirs to Casino: Negotiating Neoliberalism at Mnjikaning” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2007), 10.

21. 21 Matthew Stevens, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, October 6, 2022.

22. 22 Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, “Origin and History,” https://www.scugogfirstnation.com/Public/Origin-and-History.

23. 23 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

24. 24 William Henry Smith, Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer (Toronto: H. Rowsell, 1846), 40.

25. 25 Quoted in Smith, Sacred Feathers, 177.

26. 26 Peter Jones, quoted in The Banner, August 15, 1845, cited in Smith, Sacred Feathers, 222.

27. 27 For details, see Six Nations of the Grand River Lands and Resources Department, “Land Rights: A Global Solution for the Six Nations of the Grand River,” https://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/SNLands-GlobalSolutions-FINALyr2020.pdf.

28. 28 Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016), 44.

29. 29 Phil Monture, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2022.

30. 30 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 38.

31. 31 Chief Kahkewaquonaby, “The Indian Nations: A Short Account of the Customs and Manners of the North American Indians, Particularly the Chippeway Nation,” Monthly Review Devoted to the Civil Government of the Canadas 1, no. 5 (1841): 318–26.

32. 32 Macaulay Report, April 22, 1839, LAC, RG 10, vol. 718, 254, cited in Leslie, Commissions, 82n8.

33. 33 Province of Canada, Journals of the Legislative Assembly, “Report of Committee No. 4, on Indian Department,” Sessional Papers, 1847, App. T, App. no. 1, quoted in Leslie, Commissions, 83.

34. 34 Leslie, Commissions, 85.

35. 35 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 194.

36. 36 “A Paper Talk of the River Credit Indians [Signed Joseph Sawyer, John Jones, Chiefs] Laid before the Governor General,” LAC, RG 10, Port Credit, Entry Book, December 5, 1844, vol. 1011, 107, quoted in Smith, Sacred Feathers, 194.

37. 37 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 194.

Chapter 19: From Civilization to Assimilation

1. 1 Peter Jones, Christian Guardian, September 29, 1841, quoted in Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1, Origins to 1939: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume I (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 74.

2. 2 Peter Jones, “An Address to the Christian Public of Great Britain and Ireland in Behalf of the Indian Youth of Upper Canada, 1845,” December 26, 1844, quoted in Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 195.

3. 3 TRC, Final Report, 71.

4. 4 Province of Canada, Legislative Assembly, “Report on the Affairs of the Indians in Canada,” by Charles Bagot, Sessional Papers, 1844–45 (hereafter Bagot Commission), App. EEE, sec. 3, “Present Mode of Conducting Indian Affairs, with Recommendations for Its Amendment”; and John F. Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry into Indian Affairs in the Canadas, 1828–1858: Evolving a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Indian Affairs and Northern Development Branch, 1985), 89, 90.

5. 5 Province of Canada, Legislative Assembly, Sessional Papers, 1847, App. T, sec. 3, “Report on the Affairs of the Indians of Canada.”

6. 6 Sessional Papers, 1847, App. T, submissions 30 and 38, cited in Leslie, Commissions, 90.

7. 7 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 183.

8. 8 Province of Canada, Journals of the Legislative Assembly, Sessional Papers, 1847, parts 4 and 5, cited in Leslie, Commissions, 91.

9. 9 Leslie, Commissions, 104–5.

10. 10 Leslie, Commissions, 109.

11. 11 Chandra Murdoch, “Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850–1906” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2023), 171–72.

12. 12 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 50–51.

13. 13 TRC, Final Report, 75.

14. 14 TRC, Final Report, 75.

15. 15 Sherry Lawson, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

16. 16 TRC, Final Report, 75.

17. 17 The school, which was founded by the New England Company (the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England) in 1828 as a day school for boys, became a Residential School in 1831 and opened to girls in 1834.

18. 18 Henry Baldwin, ed., Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, Held at Orillia, Lake Simcoe Narrows, on Thursday, the 30th, and Friday, the 31st July, 1846, on the Proposed Removal of the Smaller Communities, and the Establishment of Manual Labour Schools (Montreal: Canada Gazette Office, 1846), 6–7.

19. 19 Baldwin, Minutes, 23.

20. 20 Baldwin, Minutes, 20.

21. 21 Baldwin, Minutes, 21.

22. 22 Baldwin, Minutes, 21.

23. 23 Baldwin, Minutes, 26–27.

24. 24 Baldwin, Minutes, 22, quoted in TRC, Final Report, 76.

25. 25 Baldwin, Minutes, 25, quoted in TRC, Final Report, 76.

26. 26 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

27. 27 Baldwin, Minutes, 28.

28. 28 Baldwin, Minutes, 32–33.

29. 29 Ben Cousineau interview.

30. 30 See “Toronto Normal School, 1847–1897: Jubilee Celebration (October 31st, November 1st and 2nd, 1897,” referenced in Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 166.

31. 31 “Appendix A, Report of Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools,” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 2952, file 202, 239; and Egerton Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools, May 26, 1847,” in Statistics Respecting Indian Schools (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1898).

32. 32 TRC, Final Report, 78.

33. 33 Province of Canada, Legislative Assembly, Sessional Papers, 1858, App. 21, “Report of the Special Commissioners to Investigate Indian Affairs in Canada: Part 2, Industrial Schools at Alderville and Mount Elgin,” quoted in Leslie, Commissions, 153.

34. 34 TRC, Final Report, 64.

35. 35 Peter Jones to George Vardon, Port Credit, January 21, 1847, LAC, RG 10, Entry Book, 1831–48, vol. 1011, quoted in Smith, Sacred Feathers, 210.

36. 36 Darin Wybenga, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, August 24, 2022.

37. 37 Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016), 45–46.

38. 38 Peter Jones, “The Removal of the River Credit Indians,” Christian Guardian, January 12, 1848.

39. 39 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

40. 40 Darin Wybenga, “January 1848—Eight Months after the Move from the River Credit,” Historical Tidbits: Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Pillar 5 Committee, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation Chief and Council, 2019.

41. 41 Garry Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 13, 2022.

42. 42 Jones, “Removal,” 1.

43. 43 Neil Semple, The Lord’s Dominion: The History of Canadian Methodism (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 172.

44. 44 Darin Wybenga interview.

Chapter 20: Black Wampum

1. 1 Chandra Murdoch, “Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850–1906” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2023), 49–50, referencing J.E. Hodgetts, Pioneer Public Service: An Administrative History of the United Canadas, 1841–1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955), 217–18. In 1839, the parliamentary grant was £20, 000 (£15,850 going to presents and £4,150 to salaries).

2. 2 The Grand River Navigation Company was established in 1832 to build dams and locks to ship goods such as milled flour and lumber along the Grand River between Brantford and Lake Erie. “Without the knowledge of the Haudenosaunee,” Keith Jamieson writes, “officials had funnelled large sums of their trust funds to buy company stock, and sold their lands to finance further investments”: Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016), 86; see also Six Nations of the Grand River, “Land Rights: A Global Solution for the Six Nations of the Grand River,” https://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/SNLands-GlobalSolutions-FINALyr2020.pdf. Six Nations of the Grand River has been seeking a full accounting of these expenditures as there is no record of repayment or repayment with interest. A major lawsuit has been launched.

3. 3 Phil Montour, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2024.

4. 4 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 44, 57.

5. 5 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 48–49.

6. 6 Reverend P. Choné to Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, August 15, 1862, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 292, file 195634–195637, reel C-12669, emphasis in original, according to Choné. Quoted in Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 68.

7. 7 Rhonda Telford, “The Anishinabe Presentation of Their Fishing Rights to the Duke of Newcastle and the Prince of Wales,” Papers of the Thirtieth Algonquian Conference, ed. David H. Pentland (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1999), 386.

8. 8 Quoted in Telford, “The Anishinabe Presentation,” 387, found in LAC, RG 10, vol. 266.

9. 9 An Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in This Province, and to Amend the Laws Respecting Indians, S.C. 1857, c. 6, cited in John F. Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry into Indian Affairs in the Canadas, 1828–1858: Evolving a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Indian Affairs and Northern Development Branch, 1985), 140–41. Leslie points out that passage was backed by A.A. Dorion, J.A. Macdonald, G.E. Cartier, W.B. Robinson, and George Brown: The Globe, May 15, 1857.

10. 10 Others who did not reach this standard but who were deemed to possess a satisfactory level of knowledge and intelligence were placed on three years’ probation before becoming enfranchised.

11. 11 John L. Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada’s Indian Policy,” in Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, ed. J.R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 130.

12. 12 Tony Hall, “Native Limited Identities and Newcomer Metropolitanism in Upper Canada, 1814–1867,” in Old Ontario: Essays in Honour of J.M.S. Careless, ed. David Keane and Colin Read (Toronto: Dundurn 1990), 161.

13. 13 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 118.

14. 14 Leslie, Commissions, 141.

15. 15 David Thorburn to Richard Pennefather, October 13, 1858, LAC, RG 10, vol. 245, Civil Secretary’s Office Correspondence, no. 11401–11600.

16. 16 Thorburn to Pennefather, October 13, 1858.

17. 17 J.S. Milloy, “The Era of Civilization: British Policy for the Indians of Canada, 1830–1860” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 1978), 280.

18. 18 Telford, “Anishinabe Presentation,” 387.

19. 19 Donald B. Smith, Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 85.

20. 20 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 85–86.

21. 21 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 215, drawing on Brenda Child, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community (New York: Penguin, 2012); and Madeleine Whetung, “(En)gendering Shoreline Law: Nishnaabeg Relational Politics along the Trent Severn Waterway,” Global Environmental Politics 19, no. 3 (2019): 16–32; and others.

22. 22 Heidi Bohaker, Doodem and Council Fire: Anishinaabe Governance through Alliance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 79.

23. 23 Historian Heidi Bohaker noted consultation with Women’s Councils on three early treaties with the British between 1792 and 1796 as well as three women signatories to the 1784 Mississauga-Anishinaabe land cession providing land for displaced Haudenosaunee: Doodem and Council Fire, 141.

24. 24 Susan Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017), 58, in Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 217–18.

25. 25 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 89. See “Lo the Poor Indian,” The Globe, March 16, 1860; “An Indian Woman among the Friends,” The Globe, April 5, 1860; and “The Indian Imposter,” The Globe, May 23, 1860.

26. 26 “From Our London Correspondent,” The Globe, July 7, 1860.

27. 27 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 90. See also Celia Haig-Brown, “Seeking Honest Justice in a Land of Strangers: Nahnebahwequa’s Struggle for Land,” Journal of Canadian Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 143–70.

28. 28 The Globe, September 1, 1860, quoted in Ian Radforth, “Performance, Politics, and Representation: Aboriginal People and the 1860 Royal Tour of Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 84, no. 1 (2001): 18.

29. 29 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 91.

30. 30 Garry Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 13, 2022.

31. 31 Telford, “Anishinabe Presentation,” 391.

32. 32 Ian Radforth, Royal Spectacle: The 1860 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 231. For the original petition, see “Points of Grievance Complained of at Sarnia, September 1860,” LAC, RG 10, vol. 266, 163, 028-163, 378.

33. 33 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 91.

34. 34 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 81, 85.

35. 35 Telford, “Anishinabe Presentation,” 393. James McLean to David Thorburn, September 15 and September 20, 1860, LAC, RG 10, vol. 842, 143–45.

36. 36 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 94.

37. 37 Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 94.

38. 38 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

Chapter 21: The Indian Act and the Great Council Fire

1. 1 An Act Providing for the Organisation of the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada, and for the Management of Indian and Ordnance Lands, S.C., 1868, c. 42.

2. 2 Norman D. Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance in the Post-Confederation Period: The Grand General Indian Council of Ontario, 1870—1936” (master’s thesis, Queen’s University, 2001), 27–28.

3. 3 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

4. 4 John S. Milloy, “The Early Indian Acts: Developmental Strategy and Constitutional Change,” Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, ed. J.R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 145–56. See also Chandra Murdoch, “Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850–1906” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2023), 95–96.

5. 5 Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of Indians, the Better Management of Indian Affairs, and to Extend the Provisions of the Indian Lands Act, S.C., 1869, c. 6.

6. 6 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 90.

7. 7 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 94.

8. 8 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 89.

9. 9 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 90.

10. 10 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 102.

11. 11 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 107.

12. 12 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 109–10.

13. 13 Minutes of the Six Nations in Council, April 26, 1870, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, Department of Indian Affairs, vol. 347, 126–31, C-9590.

14. 14 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 121.

15. 15 Copy of Petition to His Excellency Sir John Young, Governor General of Canada, the General Council of the Six Nations and Delegates from Different Bands in Western and Eastern Canada, June 10, 1870 (Hamilton: The Spectator Office, 1870), 27, quoted in Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 122.

16. 16 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 123.

17. 17 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 123.

18. 18 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 88–89.

19. 19 Dr. Oronhyatekha to Minister of the Interior, June 11, 1872, LAC, RG 10, vol. 1934, file 3541.

20. 20 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 3.

21. 21 Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, to the Special Parliamentary Committee of the House of Commons, The Indian Problem, 1920, LAC, RG 10, vol. 6810, file 470-2-3, vol. 7, 55 (L-3) and 63 (N-3).

22. 22 While minutes of the meeting have not survived, there was a lengthy discussion about the Indian Act. The Council informed David Laird that it had approved the legislation sixty-six votes to one. The letter states that “J. Henry, Puhgwujenene, William Wawanosh, Lamorandiere, Waucaush, J.L. Kerby, Rev. H.P. Chase, Rev. J. Jacobs, J.B. Nanigishkung, Andrew Jacobs, D. Sawyer, Sumner, Mahsegeshig, Kabaosa, Wahbemama, Menace, J. Fisher, Paudauch etc. etc.” participated: H.P. Chase to David Laird, July 12, 1876, LAC, RG 10, vol. 1994, file 6829, referenced in Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 139.

23. 23 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 23.

24. 24 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 135.

25. 25 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 165–66.

26. 26 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 129.

27. 27 Allan Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples: Chief Peter E. Jones, 1843–1909 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012).

28. 28 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 131, 167, 169, 172–73.

29. 29 See Susan Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017), 188,

30. 30 Hill, Clay We Are Made Of, 187, quoted in Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 142.

31. 31 Sally Weaver, “The Iroquois: The Consolidation of the Grand River Reserve in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1847–1875,” in Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, ed. Edward S. Rogers and Donald B. Smith (Toronto: Dundurn), 207–9.

32. 32 Oronhyatekha to the Minister of the Interior, June [11?], 1872, LAC, RG 10, vol. 1943, file 3541.

33. 33 “Six Nations Reserve: Petition from Several Indians Protesting the Indian Act of 1876,” LAC, RG 10, vol. 2077, file 11,432, quoted in Keith D. Smith and Mary-Ellen Kelm, eds., Talking Back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler-Colonial Histories (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 53–54.

34. 34 The General Council of the Six Nations, and Delegates from Different Bands in Western and Eastern Canada, June 10, 1870 (Hamilton: 1870), 25, quoted in Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance,”38.

35. 35 Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance,” 46.

36. 36 Peggy Blair, “Fact Sheet: Rights of Aboriginal Women On and Off Reserve,” Scow Institute, 2005.

37. 37 See, for example, Assembly of First Nations, “What Is Bill C-31 and Bill C-3?,” https://www.afn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/16-19-02-06-AFN-Fact-Sheet-Bill-C-31-Bill-C-3-final-revised.pdf.

38. 38 Norman Shields “The Grand General Indian Council of Ontario and Indian Status Legislation,” in Lines Drawn upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands, ed. Karl Hele (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), 209.

39. 39 See Brenda J. Child, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community (New York: Viking, 2012); and Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 214–15.

40. 40 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 2.

41. 41 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 297.

42. 42 Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance,” 143.

43. 43 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 305.

44. 44 Albert Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

45. 45 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 142.

46. 46 Hill, Clay We Are Made Of, 186; and Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 142.

47. 47 See Deskaheh, “The Redman’s Appeal for Justice,” 1923 https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/TheRedmansAppealForJustice1923.pdf; and Brian Titley, “The Six Nations Status Case,” A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1988), 110–44.

48. 48 Phil Monture, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2022.

49. 49 Phil Monture interview.

Chapter 22: After 1876

1. 1 Leona Charles, interview by Allan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, July 7, 2022.

2. 2 Albert Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

3. 3 Garry Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 13, 2022.

4. 4 Leona Charles interview.

5. 5 Vicki Snache, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

6. 6 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2022.

7. 7 Susan Hoeg, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

8. 8 Patricia Le Saux, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, July 7, 2022.

9. 9 The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health accepted a figure of five hundred thousand for the number of Indigenous people in Canada in the late fifteenth century. On the death rate, see Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel, A Population History of North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 12; Herbert C. Northcott and Donna Marie Wilson, Dying and Death in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 25–27; and William G. Dean, Conrad Heidenreich, and Thomas McIlwraith, eds., Concise Historical Atlas of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 2. Data specific to the Greater Toronto Area or southern Ontario region could not be located.

10. 10 Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 30.

11. 11 “Diary of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe’s Journey from Humber Bay to Matchedash Bay in 1793,” by Alexander Macdonell, Sheriff of the Home District, Simcoe Papers, 2:73, cited in Smith, Sacred Feathers, 270. Smith also cites William Osgoode to Ellen Copley, Niagara, September 25, 1793, in A.R.M. Lower, ed., “Three Letters of William Osgoode: First Chief Justice of Upper Canada,” Ontario History 57 (1965): 185; extract of a letter from Nathaniel Lines, Interpreter for the Indian Department, Kingston, October 17, 1796, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 8, British Military and Naval Records, vol. 249, file 215; and Augustus Jones to D.W. Smith, Saltfleet, March 1797, Archives of Ontario, Surveyors’ Letters 28, 131.

12. 12 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 147; and Jennifer Bonnell, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 24–25.

13. 13 Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to Their Conversion to Christianity (London: A.W. Bennett, 1861), 143.

14. 14 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 160–61.

15. 15 Smith, Sacred Feathers, 209.

16. 16 See Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux and Magdalena Smolewski, Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004).

17. 17 Peter Jones, Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Quo-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (Toronto: A. Green, 1860), 352.

18. 18 Johann Georg Kohl, Travels in Canada and through the States of New York and Pennsylvania, vol. 2 (London: George Manwaring, 1861), 14.

19. 19 Jones, History, 29.

20. 20 Allan Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples: Chief Peter E. Jones, 1843–1909 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 155.

21. 21 In fact, a box containing Peter Jones’ herbs, along with a pharmacy scale, survived an 1838 shipwreck near Port Daniel, Quebec. These items were donated to the McCord Museum in Montreal. See Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 23.

22. 22 Jones, History, 153.

23. 23 Jones, History, 16.

24. 24 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 155–66.

25. 25 Mrs. Rosanna Hoover to Wilma Jamieson, Thessalon, ON, September 16, 1959, cited in Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 165.

26. 26 Emerson Benson Nanigishkung, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

27. 27 “Vernon B. Wadsworth’s Reminiscences of Indians in Muskoka and Haliburton, 1860–4,” in Muskoka and Haliburton, 1615–1875: A Collection of Documents, ed. Florence Murray, (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1963), 176–77.

28. 28 Susan Hoeg interview.

29. 29 Garry Sault interview.

30. 30 Jones, History, 143.

31. 31 Edward Roe, “Roe Arrived after War of 1812,” The Era (Newmarket, ON), June 4, 1975, https://news.ourontario.ca/newmarket/page.asp?ID=2436443&po=13&n=600.

32. 32 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 8.

33. 33 Donald B. Smith, “Peter Edmund Jones,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), vol. 13, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jones_peter_edmund_13E.html.

34. 34 Mikayla Wronko, “The Duality of Peter E. Jones: A Queen’s Graduate and the First Indigenous Physician of Canada,” Queen’s University Journal, September 30, 2016, https://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2016-09-30/features/the-duality-of-peter-e-jones.

35. 35 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 23.

36. 36 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 22.

37. 37 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 44.

38. 38 “Frank, like his late father, was well educated and taught school for several years, but when the herbal medicine business lagged, he left the reserve to travel the world as an advance sales agent for the Royal Italian Circus and Menagerie”: Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 40.

39. 39 On Maungwudaus, “Following each performance he presented himself as an experienced Aboriginal Medicine Man and sold packages containing a variety of herbal cures. His son, George Henry Jr., acquired his father’s herbal recipes in due course”: Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 57. For more on Maungwudaus, see Donald B. Smith, Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 126–63.

40. 40 Garry Sault interview.

41. 41 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 51.

42. 42 Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016), 49.

43. 43 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 52.

44. 44 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 63–64.

45. 45 Oronhyatekha’s speech reminded the prince that the Haudenosaunee had been allies of the British Crown for almost two hundred years and were joined together by the metaphorical Covenant Chain. But there was no time to deliver the speech. The Brant Expositor reported that all the speeches were submitted on paper in a ceremony that lasted about five minutes. See Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 80–81.

46. 46 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 86.

47. 47 Nelles was a powerful figure on the reserve. His father and grandfather had served in the British Indian Department, and Joseph Brant had granted the Loyalist family land on the Haldimand Tract. Nelles was even entrusted by the Confederacy Council with communications with the British Crown. He remained headmaster of the Mohawk Institute until he retired in 1872. See Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 50, 89, 92–93, 99–103.

48. 48 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 103.

49. 49 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 117.

50. 50 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 121.

51. 51 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 89–94, 153.

52. 52 A big party was held to celebrate the opening of the New Credit Council House. The guests enjoyed a rich dinner, speeches by Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe Chiefs, music by several reserve brass bands, and a war dance. See Norman D. Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance in the Post-Confederation Period: The Grand General Indian Council of Ontario, 1870—1936” (master’s thesis, Queen’s University, 2001), 63–66.

53. 53 Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance,” 53. See Mark D. Walters “‘According to the Old Customs of Our Nation’: Aboriginal Self-Government on the Credit River Mississauga Reserve, 1826–1847,” Ottawa Law Review 30, no. 1 (1998–99): 1–45.

54. 54 Shields, “Anishinabek Political Alliance,” 77.

55. 55 Malcolm Montgomery, “The Six Nations Indians and the Macdonald Franchise,” Ontario History 57, no. 1 (1965): 13-25.

56. 56 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 191–92.

57. 57 Margaret Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 2, 2022.

58. 58 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 193.

59. 59 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 158–59.

60. 60 William W. Mitchell, “Worshipful Brother Joseph Brant,” Historical Record of the Brant Masonic District, 1855–2020, 370–79, https://www.brantmasons.com/files/BMD—Historytothe19Nov2020-1.pdf; and Dr. G. Brett, “The Life and Masonic Career of Joseph Brant,” Papers of the Canadian Masonic Research Association, vol. 1 (Cambridge, ON: Heritage Lodge No. 730, 1986), 273–80, https://archive.org/details/papersofcanadian01cana/page/274/mode/2up.

61. 61 Jessica Harland-Jacobs, “All in the Family: Freemasonry and the British Empire in the Mid-nineteenth Century,” Journal of British Studies 42, no. 4 (2003): 464.

62. 62 Harland-Jacobs, “All in the Family,” 477.

63. 63 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 124.

64. 64 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 123.

65. 65 Oronyhatekha, History of the Independent Order of Foresters (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose, 1895), 58–59; and “Great I.O.F. Invitation,” Globe, February 19, 1902, cited in Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 180.

66. 66 Gayle M. Comeau-Vasilopoulos, “Oronhyatekha,” in DCB, vol. 13, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/oronhyatekha_13E.html.

67. 67 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 161–62.

68. 68 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 229, 231. Demolished in the 1960s, a piece of its facade is preserved at Guildwood Park in Scarborough.

69. 69 Comeau-Vasilopoulos, “Oronhyatekha.”

70. 70 See R.A. Phipps, “Red Man vs White Man,” Toronto Daily Mail, November 30, 1875; Oronhyatekha, “The Prohibition Question,” Toronto Daily Mail, December 4, 1875; B.A., “Red Men vs. White Men,” Toronto Daily Mail, December 8, 1875; P.E. Jones, “Red Man v White Man,” Toronto Daily Mail, December 14, 1875; and Oronhyatekha, “Red Man v White Man,” Toronto Daily Mail, December 14, 1875.

71. 71 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 236.

72. 72 Quoted in Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 30.

73. 73 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 198.

74. 74 Jamieson and Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha, 27–28.

75. 75 George Copway was the first Indigenous person from Canada to produce a weekly newspaper—Copway’s American Indian—but it was published in New York. See Penny Petrone, Native Literature in Canada: From Oral Tradition to the Present (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990), 45.

76. 76 Copies of all twenty-four issues are held at the New Credit Public Library. They are also on microfilm at the Toronto Reference Library.

77. 77 “The Grand General Council of Ontario,” The Indian (Hagersville, ON), December 30, 1885; and Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 188.

78. 78 Murdoch, “Act to Control,” 188–89; “The Indian Homes,” The Indian, February 3, 1886; and The Indian, July 7, 1886.

79. 79 Smith, “Peter Edmund Jones.”

80. 80 Sherwin, Bridging Two Peoples, 68–71.

81. 81 See Michelle A. Hamilton, Collections and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).

82. 82 Trudy Nicks, “Dr. Oronhyatekha’s History Lessons: Reading Museum Collections as Texts,” in Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, 2nd ed., ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 476.

Conclusion: Confronting History, Re(making) History

1. 1 Phil Monture, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, November 15, 2022.

2. 2 Garry Sault, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 13, 2022.

3. 3 Ben Cousineau, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

4. 4 Kelly LaRocca, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, October 20, 2022.

5. 5 Ben Cousineau interview.

6. 6 Mark Douglas, interview by Alan Corbiere, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, November 24, 2022.

7. 7 Matthew Stevens, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, October 6, 2022.

8. 8 Carolyn King, virtual interview by Victoria Freeman, October 10, 2020.

9. 9 Matthew Stevens interview.

10. 10 Ben Cousineau interview.

11. 11 Kory Snache, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, September 21, 2022.

12. 12 Rhonda Coppaway, virtual interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, October 20, 2022.

13. 13 Vicki Snache, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, July 6, 2022.

14. 14 Kory Snache interview.

15. 15 Phil Monture interview.

16. 16 Lauri Hoeg, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, December 17, 2022.

17. 17 Ben Cousineau interview.

18. 18 Kelly LaRocca interview.

19. 19 Ben Cousineau interview.

20. 20 Vicki Snache interview.

21. 21 Albert Big Canoe, interview by Alan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, December 17, 2022.

22. 22 Leona Charles, interview by Allan Corbiere and Victoria Freeman, Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, July 7, 2022.

23. 23 Vicki Snache interview.

24. 24 Ben Cousineau interview.

25. 25 Matthew Stevens interview.

26. 26 Vicki Snache interview.

27. 27 Kory Snache interview.

28. 28 Kory Snache interview.

29. 29 Phil Monture interview.

30. 30 Carolyn King interview.

31. 31 Phil Monture interview.

32. 32 Matthew Stevens interview.

33. 33 Lauri Hoeg interview.

34. 34 See, for example, Jerry Agar, “AGAR: Exclusion Not the Solution to Achieving Inclusion,” Toronto Sun, April 22, 2024, https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/agar-exclusion-not-the-solution-to-achieving-inclusion.

35. 35 Ben Cousineau interview.

36. 36 Kelly LaRocca interview.