6 Indigenous-Settler Encounters

The goodwill in evidence at York’s 1793 naming ceremony did not last. In 1796, Wabakinine, Head Chief / Ogimaa of the Mississaugas at the western end of Lake Ontario and a signatory of the original Toronto Purchase of 1787, was killed while defending his sister from sexual assault by an off-duty Queen’s Ranger on the Toronto waterfront. Wabakinine’s wife also died a few days later of her injuries. The murder of their leader and the acquittal of his assailant at trial outraged the Mississaugas and sparked a major crisis in the colony.¹ Tensions between settlers and Indigenous peoples were already high since another Mississauga Chief had been murdered at Kingston just a few years previously and other killings by settlers had gone unpunished.

Chief Wabanip, the brother of Wabakinine’s wife, found Augustus Jones at work along the Thames River and asked him to accompany the Mississaugas to Niagara to demand justice from colonial officials. Large numbers of Anishinaabek from across the Great Lakes flocked to Niagara “in great concern for the loss of a favourite and experienced Chief.” Jones conveyed the Mississaugas’ deep distress to Peter Russell, the administrator of Upper Canada who had replaced Simcoe, on leave. To defuse the crisis, Russell promised justice and offered additional gifts and provisions. But the situation remained tense for many months. Russell wrote:

I cannot, however, shake off my apprehensions that some unfortunate family may yet, notwithstanding fall a sacrifice to their resentment, for Wabikanyn had many relations among the Chippewas and Lake Indians, and was greatly beloved by them, especially as they are not insensible of our present incapacity to punish them to any effect—for they mentioned this to Mr. Jones and proposed to him to join them should they prevail upon the Lake Indians to join them in revenging the many injuries they had received from us in this and other instances they enumerated.²

Jones later reported to his superiors that Nimquasim, a prominent Chief from Lake Huron, had met with other Anishinaabek at a York tavern “to open a war against the English to get Satisfaction, for what had been done; saying that he had at the Place of his residence, a great number of young warriors, that he could bring out at his command.”³ York and its neighbouring townships had a population of only 675 settlers and 135 soldiers, so it was extremely vulnerable to a coordinated Indigenous attack.⁴ Although the local Mississaugas were few in number, they were allied with the powerful Western Alliance of Anishinaabek, Wyandot, Shawnee, Miami, and other Indigenous Nations, who were rumoured to have the backing of Britain’s enemies, France and Spain. Russell ordered the inhabitants of York to assemble and provide themselves with “arms and ammunition for their Mutual Defence.” He requested that four thousand small arms be sent to Upper Canada. Later, he requested that two blockhouses be built and that the number of troops in the colony be increased.

Given deepening tensions with Joseph Brant over Haudenosaunee land sales, the British feared the Mississaugas would form a military alliance with Brant and the Six Nations. But Brant convinced the Mississaugas that an armed uprising would fail given Britain’s overall military superiority (beyond its evident weakness at York). To avoid an open confrontation with Brant, Russell accepted Brant’s Haldimand Tract land sales, even though they contravened the Royal Proclamation.

The attack on York never materialized, but Wabakinine’s death marked a turning point in the Mississaugas’ relationship with settlers and the Crown. Their trust had been broken, and they were increasingly wary of British intentions and promises.

Spooked by the unrest, the British appointed James Givins (also spelled “Givens”) the first Indian agent at York. His instructions were to distribute the annual alliance presents to the Mississaugas separately from the Haudenosaunee and to otherwise keep them apart. In a 1797 letter marked “Secret and Confidential,” the Duke of Portland outlined the primary duty of the new appointee: “Fomenting the jealousy which subsists between the Mississaugas and the Six Nations, and of preventing, as far as possible, any junction or good understanding taking place between those two tribes. It appears to me that the best and safest line of policy to be pursued in the Indian Department is to keep the Indians separate and unconnected with one another, as by this means they will be in proportion more dependent on the King’s Government.”⁵ The policy of sowing division and preventing “connections or confederations” was generalized across the colony. Portland elaborated:

They [Indian Department officials] shall distribute His Majesty’s presents in such manner, and with such suitable solemnities . . . as to produce the most powerful effect on the Indians, and to leave the strongest impressions on their minds, of their dependence on His Majesty’s bounty, for the benefits they receive . . . Such measures . . . added to the growing settlement of the Province, which must furnish the means of civilizing the Natives, and of interposing large tracts of settled country between them, cannot fail, e’er long, to put them in a very advantageous position, as well with regard to themselves, as to the Province, without the possibility of their ever becoming an object of alarm, or even of inconvenience.⁶

Despite these efforts, and although the Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee had shelved plans for a military attack, these two Nations were renewing and strengthening their alliance for other purposes.

The Mississauga-Haudenosaunee Alliance of the 1790s

By the mid-1790s, the Mississaugas understood that giving up or sharing land to strengthen their alliance with the British had not served them well. A huge amount of their territory had been alienated under British law for a pittance. They were becoming impoverished as settlers transformed the landscape around them, making their traditional way of life increasingly difficult. They were becoming dependent on annual presents and revenue from land sales to sustain themselves.

When the British approached the Mississaugas to sell their remaining lands on Lake Ontario to the west of the Toronto Purchase (the southern portion of the city of Mississauga), the Mississaugas sought out Joseph Brant’s assistance. Brant had influence with colonial administrators and had succeeded in selling land at market prices. Before his death, Chief Wabakinine had also asked Brant to be a guardian of their lands and to act as their spokesman and negotiator.

In 1798, Mississauga Chief Wabanip reported to the commander of the Queen’s Rangers:

Father, Our Brother Capt. Brant sent us these strings of Wampum this spring to invite us to his village to Council—On our arrival he told us the reason he sent for us was to join our hands and hearts to those of the five Nations and to tye them so fast as never to be separated again; that we may become one people, and in future the five Nations expect to see us every spring at their Council fire to consult with each other, & if any injury happened to one or the other, they were not to do anything without first consulting each other in Council. Father, He gave us this Belt which now tyes us and the five Nations, and I now tell you that we were very much pleased at what our Brother Capt. Brant told us.⁷

The British were shocked when their first attempt to buy the waterfront tract west of Toronto was met with this response by Joseph Brant to Peter Russell: “I do not think it reasonable that the land should be taken from the poor Mississaugas for a shilling an acre, only to give away to individuals to make money of.”⁸ Colonial officials then tried to undermine Brant’s role with the Mississaugas. They tried to pressure the Mississaugas to break their alliance with the Six Nations and made the delivery of the Mississaugas’ presents conditional on “good behaviour,” rather than a right based on their past military service and alliance.⁹ Hostile officials such as William Claus (head of the Indian Department in 1799) sidelined Brant, especially when they received word that the French and Spanish would not support an uprising among the western Nations allied with the Mississaugas and Six Nations. Brant also came under increasing criticism from the Haudenosaunee for giving up huge swathes of the Haldimand Tract to white settlers.¹⁰ By 1805, when colonial officials met with the Mississaugas of the Credit to replace the invalid deed for the Toronto Purchase of 1787 and acquire more land to the west, Brant was no longer the Mississaugas’ negotiator. They were on their own.

The Mississaugas actually were, for a short time, known as the Seventh Nation of the Six Nations. But divide and conquer always was Indian Affairs’ or the federal government’s thing to keep them apart.

—Margaret Sault, Mississaugas of
the Credit¹¹

Invalid Title to Toronto Area Lands

Until 1805, the British did not actually have a valid title to the lands they were disbursing, but they believed they did until 1794. When the purported “deed” of the 1787 cession resurfaced that year with no description of the boundaries of the lands ceded, the British tried to rectify the problem without telling settlers or the Mississaugas.¹² Peter Russell explained the situation in 1798:

We were exceedingly alarmed on reading the paragraph which related to the Purchase made at Toronto in 1787, which if more generally known, would probably shake the tranquillity of many respectable persons, who have risked nearly their whole property within its limits. For should the whole of that transaction be invalid, as your Excy and Lord Dorchester have judged it to be, the King’s right to any of the land between the Rivers Etobicoak & Don, may become very doubtful; and our tenure of the intermediate space (involving a great many cultivated farms, as well as the seat of government) might consequently be at the mercy of the Messisagues, who, if they were apprised of the circumstance, might be induced to give trouble with a view of making their own advantages from it.¹³

The issue of legal title wasn’t resolved until 1805.

The Toronto Purchase of 1805 and the Head of the Lake Purchase of 1805–1806

The breakdown of trust between Indigenous Nations and settlers accelerated Indigenous dispossession. In 1805, British negotiators met with the Mississaugas to acquire all the land along the lakefront and major communication routes, determined to remove Indigenous peoples from areas of potential settlement or conflict. To do this, they also needed to revisit the Toronto Purchase and legally establish its boundaries.

By this time, the Mississaugas were suffering considerable hardship, and they no longer knew with certainty the boundaries agreed to by their Chiefs in the Johnson-Butler treaties of 1787–88. The British increased the size of the land cession without their knowledge or compensation.¹⁴ They apparently resorted to subterfuge to do so.¹⁵ The Mississaugas of the Credit signed Treaty 13, known today as the Toronto Purchase of 1805. The British colonial government acquired legal title to 250,808 acres of land north from the Toronto waterfront to roughly Aurora and east from Etobicoke Creek to Ashbridges Bay.

The final cession differed considerably from Sir John Johnson’s recollection ten years after the 1787 agreement he’d negotiated: a ten-mile square along the Lake Ontario waterfront, two to four miles on either side of the Humber River, and another ten-mile square at the northern end of the Toronto Carrying Place. (The Mississaugas eventually received some redress through the Toronto Purchase Land Claim settlement agreement in 2010.)¹⁶

After the Mississaugas signed the 1805 “confirmation” of the Toronto Purchase of 1787, Crown negotiator William Claus pressured them to give up their waterfront lands west of Etobicoke Creek to Burlington. Chief Quinepenon / Kinepinew (Golden Eagle) responded: “I hope you will open your ears and attend to what we have to say . . . when Sir John Johnson came up to purchase the Toronto Lands, we gave them without hesitation, and were told we should always be taken care of, and we made no bargain for the Land, but left it to himself.” Chief Quinepenon acknowledged the pressure that the Mississaugas were under: “I speak for all the Chiefs & they wish to be under your protection as formerly. But it is hard for us to give away more Land: The Young Men & Women have found fault with so much having been sold before: it is true we are poor, & the Women say we will be worse, if we part with any more land.”¹⁷

Nevertheless, with little remaining bargaining power, the Mississaugas ended up ceding the waterfront lands to the west of the Toronto Purchase in what became known as the Head of the Lake Purchase or Treaty 14. The price was roughly 2.5 per cent of its market value at the time.¹⁸ However dubious its legal origins, once title to the land was confirmed and the land divided and granted or sold to settlers, the land system was self-perpetuating.

By then, the die was cast. We were already largely dependent on European trade goods. And sickly . . . and disease-ridden at the time, so we couldn’t . . . we just didn’t have the numbers to stand up to the Crown in any way, shape, or form.

—Darin Wybenga, Mississaugas of
the Credit.¹⁹