5 Turning Indigenous Territory into Private Property

From 1781 to 1850, a series of agreements (interpreted as land cessions by the British and treaties by the Anishinaabek) opened virtually all Indigenous lands in southern Ontario to settlement. In the British legal system, following the acquisition of title, the first step was surveying the land and dividing it into rectangular lots to sell or grant to settlers. Surveying was a concept alien to First Nations, who recognized intercommunity or territorial boundaries between Nations with physical features such as heights of land between watersheds. The surveyor thus played a key role in the conversion of Indigenous territories into colonial private property. Often, he needed relationships with Indigenous people to carry out his work.

The story of surveyor Augustus Jones highlights the role of intermarriage in developing alliances between Indigenous and European people. The son of a Welsh immigrant to the colony of New York, Jones accompanied his extended family north in the 1780s. Over the next two decades, he became a key figure in early Indigenous-settler relations. Through marriage, he developed strategic partnerships with key leaders among the Mohawks at Grand River and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Jones learned to speak both Anishinaabemowin and Mohawk. His survey records include a valuable list of Mississauga place names for the rivers and other features of the Toronto area. His extended family relationships established early networks of cooperation between some Indigenous leaders and settlers and between some Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee. Not all Indigenous peoples approved of the results: an uneasy mix of personal interest, networks of power and privilege, and loyalties to multiple communities divided Indigenous communities over how much to trust and work with such intermediaries.

According to historical geographer R. Gentilcore, “No other surveyor in Upper Canada surveyed and subdivided so much important land.”¹ Named deputy surveyor of the Nassau District in 1791 (renamed the Home District in 1792), Jones was a man of prodigious energy. He surveyed most of the townships from Fort Erie to the Head of the Lake (now Hamilton); the Haldimand Tract (lands along the Grand River); the waterfront along the north shore of Lake Ontario from Toronto to the Trent River; town plots for York and Newark (Niagara); York township, Etobicoke Township, and Scarboro (later Scarborough); the western boundary of the Toronto Purchase; and the Lake Simcoe area. He also surveyed two key roads that opened vast lands for settlement: Dundas Street, which linked Lake Ontario and the Detroit frontier, and Yonge Street, which connected Lakes Ontario and Simcoe.

[For place names] we have to rely on Augustus Jones, the deputy provincial surveyor. What does he do? He writes down all the names of the rivers and creeks all around the western end of Lake Ontario. And, for the most part, they were pretty accurate.

—Darin Wybenga, Mississaugas of
the Credit²

In 1795, Jones was directed to survey and open a cart road (what would become Yonge Street) from York to Lake Simcoe. He was given thirty soldiers of the Queen’s Rangers (a Loyalist military unit) for road construction. Surveying began in January 1796, and on February 16 Jones reached Holland Landing (on the Holland River), a distance of almost 55 kilometres.

The northern part of Yonge Street (extending from today’s Aurora to Holland Landing) traversed land that lay beyond the northern limit of the nebulous Toronto Purchase, which was already known to be invalid. (Confusion about the status of the lands along the northern stretch of Yonge Street had led to the search for the 1787 deed.) The land lay within the territory of the Anishinaabek of the southern Lake Simcoe area (known today as the Chippewas of Georgina Island). It is not clear if the land had been properly ceded.

In 1798, Head Chief Musquakie (known to the English as Yellowhead) of the Chippewas of Lakes Huron and Simcoe apparently confirmed that the lands south of Lake Simcoe had been surrendered in 1788.³ The Johnson-Butler agreement had purportedly also ceded waterfront lands east of the Toronto Purchase from Scarborough to the Belleville area. But in 1923, when commissioners investigated Indigenous grievances prior to the signing of the Williams Treaties, the Mississauga Nation claimed that they had never ceded seven townships lying immediately south of Lake Simcoe.⁴ In fact, the Williams Treaties commissioners found no records confirming that the land had been ceded through any treaty. For this reason, the commission included a description in Clause 2 of the 1923 treaty—more than a century after the land had been granted to settlers.

Augustus Jones and His Mississauga Family

During the winter of 1793–94, Augustus Jones hired Wahbanosay / Wabenose (Walks in the Dawn), the Mississauga Eagle Doodem (Clan) Chief, as a guide for the Yonge Street survey. Wahbanosay was the Ogimaa of the Mississaugas at Burlington Bay and would later sign land cessions for Treaties 8 (Burlington Heights), 13 (the 1805 Toronto Purchase), and 14 (Mississauga / Burlington).

That Jones depended on Wahbanosay’s deep knowledge of the land is revealed through this story, told by Kahkewaquonaby (Sacred Feathers) / Peter Jones, son of Augustus Jones and grandson of Wahbanosay: “I heard my departed father say, that when he started to run Yonge Street, he planted his compass by the shore of York Bay, and got my grand-father to set the point of the compass for Holland Landing on Lake Simcoe. My father then followed the course set by the Indian, and came within twenty rods of striking the point aimed at, after running more than 30 miles through a vast wilderness.”⁵

A few years later, Augustus Jones entered into a country marriage (i.e., according to Indigenous custom rather than a Christian marriage) with Wahbanosay’s daughter Tuhbenahneequay, later known as Sarah Henry, whose mother was Naishenum.⁶ Augustus Jones and Tuhbenahneequay would have two children, Thayendenaged / John Jones, born in 1798, and Kahkewahquonaby / Peter Jones, born in 1802. Both would become important figures in the history of the area. After her relationship with Jones ended, Tuhbenahneequay married Chief Mesquacosy, with whom she had eight children. Today, a grove of 150 ancient oak trees along the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail is named in her honour.

Wahbanosay and another wife, Puhgashkis, were the parents and Tuhbenahneequay the half-sister of influential Mississauga Chief Nawahjegezhegwabe (Sloping Sky) / Joseph Sawyer, who would serve as Head Chief of the Mississaugas of the Credit from 1829 to 1863, alongside Wahbanosay’s grandsons, Peter and John Jones, who also became Chiefs.

Augustus Jones and His Mohawk Family

Augustus Jones also married Sarah Tekarihogen of Six Nations of the Grand River in 1798 in an Anglican ceremony, meaning that for a few years he was partnered with both Sarah and Tuhbenahneequay. Sarah was the daughter of [Henry] Tekarihogen of the Turtle Clan, the “acknowledged first chief and sachem of the Mohawks” and his wife, Catherine.⁷ Henry had been named Tekarihogen (a very prestigious hereditary title and position, named after one of the founders of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy) by his mother or grandmother Sarah, the Turtle Clan Matron and Head Clan Matron of the Mohawks. In Haudenosaunee governance, the Head Clan Matron was responsible for naming the Head Chief, and each Clan Matron named the Male Sachem or Chief of their Clan. Clan mothers could also “dehorn” or depose leaders who did not fulfill their leadership responsibilities.

Having two wives proved to be untenable for Jones. Indigenous men could have more than one wife if they could support them (and some European fur traders had multiple country marriages in different regions to secure access to Indigenous kin trading networks and their own safety). But Augustus Jones was a settler who wanted the respect of his Christian settler neighbours. He felt increasing pressure to end his relationship with Tuhbenahneequay (who refused to convert to Christianity), especially after he and Sarah joined the Episcopal Methodists in 1801. He ended his relationship with Tuhbenahneequay the following year and lived permanently with Sarah, though he maintained a lifelong connection to his Mississauga sons and at one point brought them to live with his Mohawk family. Sarah and Augustus would have eight children of their own at Grand River.

Perhaps Augustus Jones met Sarah Tekarihogen through Joseph Brant, for whom Jones conducted numerous surveys along the Grand River (Brantford, once Brant’s Ford, across the Grand River is named after him). Brant and Augustus Jones built their houses at opposite ends of Burlington Beach and became close friends. Jones named his first son by Tuhbenahneequay “Thayandenaged” after Brant, and in 1823 Thayandenaged married Christina Brant, Joseph’s granddaughter.

Educated in colonial schools and well-dressed, with “civilized” manners, Brant was an active participant in the elite social life of the colony and the most influential Mohawk leader in the eyes of British colonial administrators. Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the lieutenant-governor, entertained him at dinner: “He had a countenance expressive of art or cunning. He wore an English coat with handsome crimson blanket, lined with black, and trimmed with gold fringe, and wore a fur cap; round his neck he had a ring of plaited sweet hay [sweetgrass]. It is a kind of grass which never loses its pleasant scent. The Indians are very fond of it.”⁸ In fact, sweetgrass is a cleansing spiritual medicine.

In marrying Sarah Tekarihogen, Augustus Jones became Joseph Brant’s relative in addition to his close friend. In 1779, Joseph Brant had married Catherine Ohtowa’késon, the daughter of Catherine Tekarihogen (a close relative of Henry Tekarihogen) and the powerful Pennsylvania fur trader and Indian agent George Crogham. These relationships, and others created through intermarriage between Indigenous women and members of the Indian Department or fur traders, created an intercultural network of power brokers that advanced certain interests. Many of these relationships facilitated land dealings.

Augustus Jones, Henry Tekarihogen, Joseph Brant, and the Haldimand Tract

The Haldimand Tract would prove to be an early laboratory of Indigenous-settler relations. Augustus Jones allied with the Haudenosaunee faction who, like Brant and Henry Tekarihogen, opposed traditionalist Haudenosaunee and followers of the new Longhouse religion of Seneca prophet Ganiodaio / Handsome Lake, which combined some elements of traditional and Christian teachings. Jones’ faction promoted Christianity, British education, and accommodation with settlers. Controversially, Brant argued that Haudenosaunee should grant settlers long-term leases for significant portions of the Haldimand Tract. The resulting trust fund would guarantee Haudenosaunee economic self-sufficiency, a necessity in his view if they wanted to remain self-governing allies and not subjects of the British Crown.

Colonial officials rejected Brant’s proposal, in part because they opposed the idea of white men being tenants of Indigenous landowners. Also, according to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which unilaterally established the relation of Indigenous peoples to the Crown in British law, Indigenous peoples could only sell their land to the Crown, not to individuals. Hence, according to the British, Indigenous peoples did not own their land in fee simple, as Brant asserted. It could not be disposed of as they pleased.

Nevertheless, Brant and Tekarihogen leased or sold large portions of the Haldimand Tract to Loyalist friends who had lived near them in New York and who they believed would assist the Haudenosaunee in learning Western-style farming.⁹ These Loyalists included Palatine Germans who had come with the Haudenosaunee from New York and Pennsylvania after the American Revolution. (Some of these Palatine Germans were related to those who, like the Stong and Fisher families, later came to the Toronto area.) Through Brant, Jones was granted two huge tracts of land on the Haldimand Tract.¹⁰ Brant also sometimes made Jones his agent in land purchases and named him one of his executors.

Some Haudenosaunee opposed Brant’s policy of leasing out their lands to settlers, and they challenged the validity of Brant’s leases to Jones, among others. For example, in 1809, the Six Nations Council included the following resolution, among many problematic land sales: “Brothers, We had forgot to mention 4800 acres marked out for Mr [Augustus] Jones near the Delaware Village—as we have never agreed to this we forbid his getting it.”¹¹

Traditionalists at Six Nations attempted to dehorn Henry Tekarihogen in 1811 because of his involvement in these land issues, but these efforts failed. He continued as Tekarihogen into the 1820s. In a pattern that would become familiar to Indigenous peoples, those leaders who favoured accommodation with settlers became increasingly powerful in their communities, regardless of their position within traditional governance structures, in part because of their links with colonial officials. In the process, traditionalists (particularly non-Christians) and traditional governance by Hereditary Chiefs were undermined, even though Indigenous peoples were still self-governing.

Problems with Jones’ original survey of the Haldimand Tract persist to this day. Also, although Brant wrestled some concessions from the government and sold or leased a majority of the Haldimand Tract to settlers, the resulting ambiguity over title created a legal morass.¹² Colonial officials appropriated Six Nations trust funds for unrelated purposes and kept poor records. Two centuries later, the Six Nations are still trying to regain control of the development of their lands on the Haldimand Tract and reassert their sovereignty and traditional governance.

Augustus Jones’ support for Brant’s position on land sales may have been the reason he abruptly ceased working as a surveyor in 1800. By then, government officials were actively working to undermine Joseph Brant’s influence and approach to selling or leasing Six Nations land.¹³ Jones retired to his Stoney Creek farm near present-day Hamilton but later moved to the Haldimand Tract. Although his influence declined, in the coming decades, his Mississauga sons, who became known as John and Peter Jones, would have a profound influence on Indigenous peoples and their relations with newcomers.