3The Indian Normal School: The Role of the Mohawk Institute in the Training of Indigenous Teachers in the Late Nineteenth Century

Alison Norman

This chapter will investigate how educating children to become teachers was a priority for Mohawk Institute principals the Reverends Abraham Nelles and Robert Ashton. Both identified high-performing students with an interest in education careers and helped them attend secondary school and sometimes post-secondary school. They supported their efforts to build a career in teaching at day schools in reserves across the province, as well as occasionally at the Institute itself. While Nelles helped students get funding for higher education, Ashton created a teaching certificate at the Mohawk Institute. Both actions resulted in students obtaining the necessary education and certification to teach, and the students’ own efforts led to significant teaching careers for many of the graduates. Ashton’s program was quite possibly the first and only teacher education program in a residential school in Canada. Teaching was a popular choice for graduates of the school, so much so that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the twelve day schools on the reserve were filled with teachers who had trained at the Mohawk Institute. The New England Company (NEC) and the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) trusted these graduates to play an important role in the efforts to provide a Christian and Western education for Indigenous children.

The Early Decades, 1828–1850s

Initially, as the NEC was establishing the Mohawk Institute and the day schools on the reserve at Grand River, the Company hired mostly non-Indigenous male teachers to staff the schools. The teachers usually had experience in England and came to Upper Canada to work at the mission-run schools. However, over time, the Company realized that Haudenosaunee teachers from within Six Nations might be effective teachers at these schools. The reasons were practical: They believed Haudenosaunee teachers who spoke Haudenosaunee languages, and who understood the students, would be most efficient and effective in teaching them. These teachers were also more likely to stay in their jobs, whereas non-Indigenous teachers often left to return to England or other parts of the Canadas. The NEC had earlier used this strategy of training local students to become teachers in other Company schools in New England.¹ In general, graduates of the schools were seen as potential role models and people who could help with the Christianization of the community. For instance, when the bishop of Toronto visited the missions and schools on the reserve, he noted that “it was most gratifying to observe so many of the rising generation of this interesting people receiving instruction which qualifies them to impart the same to others; and to improve themselves and others in the social arts of a civilized and christian [sic] life.”² Over time, an increasing number of graduates would become teachers, and the Mohawk Institute played a particular role in training and supporting its students to become teachers.

As early as 1837, on a tour of the Mohawk Institute, Hannah Nelles, wife of the Reverend Abraham Nelles, advised lay agent William Richardson from the NEC that some of the girls at the school “might become very useful in the education of children in their respective neighbourhoods.” She believed that the girls should have more time to study and argued that they should be exempt from “menial duties,” and that the school would “endeavour to qualify them for higher duties.”³ It does not seem that they actually became teachers, however, as the day schools and the Institute had non-Indigenous teachers in this period, and there is no evidence in the records that girls were provided with time for training.⁴ In the early decades, Richardson spoke of admitting more girls to help with “instructing in the Institute.”⁵ He noted in 1838 that they were “very desirous of completing the education of at least a few [girls], that they may be qualified to instruct the younger children.”⁶

Despite Richardson’s suggestions, the school instead focused its efforts on training the boys for future careers. At the time, the school was known as the Mechanics’ Institute, and boys were provided with training in things like shoemaking, cabinetry, wagon making, and blacksmithing. The school acquired funds from the NEC to supply these students with tools upon graduation, helped them find work as apprentices, and supported them in establishing their own businesses. While the Company had brought in girls around the same time with the aim of them becoming teachers, the records show that this did not actually happen. Nelles’s report of July 1844 describes the lives and the careers of students who had left the institution. Seven female graduates are described, none of whom were teachers. While the idea had been brought forth, in reality, girls generally received an education in skills to be used within the home: “House-keeping, Needlework, Spinning and Knitting.”⁷ These skills were taught so that the girls could help produce clothing for students at the school, thereby keeping costs down.⁸ They were also skills believed to be useful for a farmwife.

At the time, in the 1840s, there was one Haudenosaunee teacher working in a day school at Six Nations, Lawrence Davids. He was likely the first Haudenosaunee teacher to teach in the NEC day schools. It is unclear from the records if Davids had himself attended the Mohawk Institute, but it is very possible, as he would have had to have had an excellent command of the English language and the subjects to be taught in the day schools, as well as the respect of the NEC, in order to be employed by the Company.⁹ In 1842, Nelles hired Davids, who had been teaching elsewhere on the reserve, to teach in a new school that had just been established in the Council House at the Delaware Settlement. Nelles noted that Davids was to “prepare the way for a white teacher; he is competent to instruct them in the rudiments of learning, and possesses advantages over any white man unacquainted with Indian habits, which qualify him for commencing a school among Indians who have scarcely given up their prejudices against Christianity.”¹⁰ Davids was seen as successful in his teaching, but Nelles believed his teaching knowledge was limited: “I think it probably [sic] that a white teacher will be required here before long.”¹¹ Davids was seen as particularly useful as the first teacher when a new school was to be established. Nelles considered having him teach at a school being planned among the Cayuga: “If the Cayugas, who are becoming more favourably disposed, will consent to have a school, I will send Lawrence to them; the old man will do better to commence a school among them than a white person.”¹² This did not come to pass, however. Davids retired in 1844, and the NEC granted him a pension of twelve pounds per year “in consideration of his past services as one of the Company’s Schoolmasters.”¹³

Less evidence is available about the schools in the late 1840s and ’50s due to a lack of records, but by 1859, four graduates of the Mohawk Institute had become teachers. Nelles noted that having Indigenous teachers at local day schools aided in the success of the project to educate Haudenosaunee children on the reserve: “It is satisfactory to observe an increasing desire on the part of the Indians to have their children educated. . . . This improved state of feeling among the Indians is probably chiefly brought about by the influence of those who have been educated at the Company’s schools, of whom four are now engaged as School Teachers, five as Catechists, besides many others who render much useful assistance both to Mr. Elliot and myself, by their advice and example.”¹⁴ Those teachers included James Styres (Cayuga), Thomas Thomas (Tuscarora), and Isaac Bearfoot (Onondaga), all of whom attended the Mohawk Institute as students.¹⁵ In 1860, after Frederick Augustus O’Meara visited the Mohawk Institute and the day schools on behalf of the NEC, he commented on the effectiveness of the teachers he encountered there:

I was struck by the difference between the schools which are taught by Indian-speaking masters, and those the teachers of which do not understand the language of their pupils. In the former the pupils evidently understood what they were learning, so as to give an intelligent account in their own language of the lesson that they were reading or learning in English; which was by no means the case in those of which the masters and pupils had no common medium of communication.¹⁶

The Company saw the value in having Haudenosaunee teachers who could effectively communicate with their students in both their native languages and in English. They also noted that they could sometimes pay Indigenous teachers less: “the best and cheapest teachers for them would be Indians brought up at the Institution; and perhaps sent afterwards for a year to a good school for teachers, like the Normal School in Toronto.”¹⁷

Both the NEC and its local missionaries, including the Reverends Nelles, Elliott, and Roberts, believed in graduating students from the Mohawk Institute to become teachers in local day schools, and sometimes at the Mohawk Institute itself. But they also realized that further education for these students was needed. In 1870, the Company noted that teachers at the day schools and the Mohawk Institute should ideally take a course at the Toronto Normal School, but that such instruction should not be required, as it would be difficult for all current teachers to attend. Rather, gradually over time, students should be selected and sent to Toronto to train as teachers.¹⁸

In September 1870, the commissioner of the NEC, A. E. Botsford, toured Six Nations, and his comments provide information on the teachers working in schools at the time, the vast majority of whom had attended the Mohawk Institute.¹⁹ James Hill (Mohawk) was teaching at the No. 2 School. Alexander Smith (Mohawk) was teaching at the No. 3 School. It had formerly been taught by Isaac Bearfoot, also an Institute graduate. The No. 4 School was taught by Elizabeth Martin Powless (Mohawk) who had attended a day school herself and then finished her education at the Institute.²⁰ The No. 5 School was taught by Daniel Simon (Lenape/Delaware) who had graduated from the Mohawk Institute and had previously been taught by Albert Anthony (Lenape/Delaware), another graduate. The No. 6 School was taught by Mrs. Yagoweia Loft Beaver (Mohawk), who was raised and educated at Tyendinaga and moved to Grand River to marry and work.²¹ No. 8 School was taught by Isaiah Joseph (Tuscarora), a graduate of the Mohawk Institute who spoke Kanyen’kéhaka (Mohawk). Botsford noted that Bearfoot, Smith, Powless, Simon, Beaver, Joseph, and Hill “are capable of conversing with their pupils in their own dialects.” He added,

No doubt it is in some respects an advantage for the teacher to be able to explain to the children, when first sent to school, in their own language, what is being taught to them; still, as one of the first and most essential things to be taught the Indian pupils is to speak English, and in a manner to forget their own tongue, it is by no means absolutely necessary that the teacher should possess a knowledge of the dialects of the Six Nations Indians.²²

So, while the schools had teachers who were from within the community, spoke the languages, and had attended school on the reserve themselves, often at the Mohawk Institute, most had not had additional training to become teachers. This began to change with the establishment of colleges in nearby London, Ontario.

Huron College, Hellmuth College, and Hellmuth Ladies’ College and the Mohawk Institute

In 1869, the NEC began providing grants for a select few graduates of the Mohawk Institute, as chosen by the missionaries, to attend college in London, Ontario. These included Huron College, Hellmuth College, and Hellmuth Ladies’ College, each school under the direction of Isaac Hellmuth and each a precursor to Western University, which was founded by Hellmuth about a decade later. The goal for these students was generally a career in either education or the ministry, jobs that would further the mission of the NEC. Sometimes graduates were chosen to receive further education to become a teacher, while other times, Mohawk Institute graduates who had already become teachers in reserve schools were chosen to be able to further their education, generally with the aim of joining the Anglican Church. The Reverend Abraham Nelles made recommendations to the NEC as to who should be provided with funding to further their education based on who he believed would benefit from such an education and was interested in going. As a result, discussions as to the academic careers and potential imagined futures of these students exist in the records of the NEC reports. Students were often chosen because they were seen to be “deserving” of higher education, but also because they were interested in a career as a teacher or minister, both callings of which the NEC and the Anglican Church were supportive.

Albert Anthony (Lenape/Delaware) was one of the first to receive such support. He attended the Mohawk Institute for some time; he is listed in the attendance records for 1859 as being nineteen years old.²³ He graduated that year, and began working as a teacher in a reserve school.²⁴ In the late 1860s, he taught at the No. 5 School.²⁵ Anthony might have been considering a career in medicine, as he took a twelve-month surgery course at the University of Toronto.²⁶ In 1869, though, he was chosen by the bishop of Huron, Benjamin Cronyn, to attend the newly created Huron College with an eye toward becoming a minister. After three years at the college, Anthony was ordained and became an interpreter to a reserve missionary before becoming a missionary himself and working for many years on the reserve, especially with the Lenape community. He no longer worked as a teacher, but later in life he published a Lenape dictionary, and education seems to have remained a part of his career.²⁷

A year after Anthony was chosen to attend Huron, Mohawk Institute graduates Susannah Carpenter and Nelles A. Monture were chosen to attend, respectively, Hellmuth Ladies’ College and Hellmuth College. Both became teachers in day schools in the community after graduating. Susanna (Mohawk) was the daughter of the interpreter for the Reverend James Chance at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on the reserve; after Susanna’s father passed away, Chance advocated for her education, and in particular, her efforts to become a teacher. He wrote that the goal of her education at Hellmuth was training “to qualify her . . . [as] an efficient and useful teacher among her own people on the Reserve.”²⁸ She was fluent in Kanyen’kéhaka and English, which was seen as helpful for a teacher on the reserve.²⁹ After graduating, Chance wrote that she was “fully competent to undertake the duties of the best school on the Reserve.” He added, “It is most reasonable to expect that, after Miss Carpenter has enjoyed all the advantages of Hellmuth Ladies College during a period of three years, from which College she has received valuable prizes, she is competent to teach school.” By October 1872, she was teaching at the No. 8 School on the reserve.³⁰

Nelles Monture (Lenape/Delaware) was a top student at the Mohawk Institute, and after attending Hellmuth College, he found a position as a teacher at the No. 5 School at Six Nations.³¹ Monture was later a Delaware chief of the Six Nations who became well-known beyond the community when, in 1898, he addressed the Ontario Historical Society and spoke of the loyalty of the Six Nations to the British Crown.³²

Isaac Bearfoot (Onondaga) was also chosen by the NEC to attend Huron College. Like Albert Anthony, he was a graduate of the Mohawk Institute who worked as a teacher and then acquired further education to become a minister. He attended the Mohawk Institute at the same time as Anthony, graduating from the school in the same year, 1859. A couple of years later, he went to Toronto to attend the Normal School.³³ He may have been the first Haudenosaunee person to do so. He then began teaching at a local reserve day school, No. 3.³⁴ In 1869, he was hired to teach at the Mohawk Institute, the first Indigenous person to do so. His language skills were recognized by the school, which continued to find it useful to have teachers who spoke local Indigenous languages.³⁵ Bearfoot held a senior teaching position at the Mohawk Institute for several years until 1876, when he attended Huron College, with NEC support, with the aim of becoming a minister. He was ordained a deacon in May 1877 and a priest in June 1878.³⁶ After working at several parishes across southern Ontario, he returned to Grand River to take charge of St. Paul’s Anglican Church (Kanyengeh) in 1888.³⁷ In 1890 he became superintendent of education at Grand River, inspecting all of the day schools on the reserve, and reporting to the Six Nations School Board.³⁸ He held that position until 1907, when the board dismissed him and replaced him with a (non-Indigenous) inspector they deemed to be more qualified.³⁹ Given all of his experience as a teacher, clergyman, and superintendent, Bearfoot had perhaps one of the most influential careers in Anglican education at Grand River.

Teaching Beyond Six Nations

The school also played a role in informally training students who wished to teach. Lydia Hill was a young Mohawk woman from the community of Tyendinaga. In the late 1860s, she spent six months at the Mohawk Institute “preparing herself for teaching.”⁴⁰ Although there was no specific teaching training program at the time, this may have been the precursor to Ashton’s teaching certificate, which was to come in the 1880s. After leaving the Mohawk Institute, Lydia Hill was hired to teach at what was known as the Upper Mohawk School in Tyendinaga in 1870.⁴¹ Hill taught there for several years in the 1870s, but then her teaching career ended, perhaps because she was paid significantly less than non-Indigenous teachers on the reserve.⁴² She travelled through Western Canada and to England, taught Sunday school, and was the organist for All Saints Anglican Church.⁴³

While the Mohawk Institute generally housed children from Six Nations, children from other communities in the lower Great Lakes also attended in this period, and some of them also used their education to become teachers after leaving the school. In a 1930 list of “successful graduates,” several students from the 1870s were identified as teachers, but it is unclear if they remained in the role for very long. For instance, Lucius Henry and Moses Walker both left the school in 1876. According to the 1930 list, Henry taught at the Ojibwe school in Munsey, and Walker taught at Moraviantown and at Chippeway Hill. John Schuyler and Louis Scanada also both left the Mohawk Institute in 1876, and both taught at Oneida. In 1876 Amelia Checkock taught at Muncey Town, at Stone Ridge, and at Shawanaga near Parry Sound.⁴⁴ Adam Sickles left in 1879 and taught at Moraviantown.⁴⁵

Scobie Logan is perhaps the most well-known of this group of students.⁴⁶ He graduated in 1878 and initially taught at Muncey before beginning a career as a councillor and leader for the community.⁴⁷ In 1882, he travelled to England to petition Queen Victoria to settle a land claim for the Munsees of the Thames. A few years later, he served as secretary-treasurer of the Grand Council of Indians of Ontario, an important leadership role in an organization fighting against discriminatory Indian status legislation.⁴⁸ In 1920, Principal Boyce noted that Logan had written to the Mohawk Institute in 1920 when he was chief at Munsey to express his concern that the school could close down, and stated that he owed his start in life to the school; it is unlikely that one letter accurately conveys his potentially complex views on the school.⁴⁹ No other non-Haudenosaunee students are listed as becoming teachers in this period or later.

Policy Changes

Despite having several graduates attend Huron College and the Hellmuth Colleges, there was discussion in the 1870s among the NEC that perhaps the Company’s money might be better spent on the Mohawk Institute itself, rather than on tuition for pupils at post-secondary schools beyond Brantford. A plan was thus developed for the use of Company money to fund the Mohawk Institute and send graduates to the Normal School in Toronto.⁵⁰ Though Nelles had been supportive of sending graduates to college, the Reverend James Chance, missionary at Six Nations, believed the money should be spent on the Institute itself, an opinion the NEC shared. An April 1872 NEC report notes that “the education given on the Reserve and at the Institution should be sufficient for all classes of Indian pupils, and that the practice of sending them to the highest schools and colleges in the Dominion as a general rule be discontinued; and that, for teachers, the Toronto Training School is the best preparation.”⁵¹ Nelles retired in late 1872; in the same year Bishop Cronyn passed away. He had been involved in the founding of Huron College and in having Mohawk Institute graduates attend. With the hiring of Robert Ashton as principal of the Mohawk Institute, the NEC had support for its idea to cease funding students to leave the school. Ashton worked to improve the education at the school, and then later developed a program whereby graduates could train as teachers at the Mohawk Institute itself.

New regulations for the school were developed by the NEC and published in 1872. The Institute’s stated aim was “to impart such an education as shall fit its pupils for teachers amongst their own people, at the same time training them in the arts and practices of civilized nations.”⁵² Ashton, like Nelles before him, worked toward this goal, identifying students he thought would make good teachers. Ashton was not always successful in choosing new teachers. For instance, in March 1873, he noted in his journal that he helped Phoebe Snake, a nineteen-year-old graduate, find work as a domestic at an Anglican minister’s home in Brantford. He wrote, “I am sorry to lose this girl as she is the best in the school & I had hoped to make a teacher of her but she does not like teaching.”⁵³ But Ashton did continue to work toward helping Institute graduates succeed at becoming teachers. In July 1873, Ashton met with the local missionaries at Grand River and requested that the school board supply him with a list of subjects that the teachers on the reserve must know to pass an examination “so that I might be enabled to present some of the more advanced scholars for examination in those subjects from time to time, in order that they may ultimately obtain their own certificates. I believe this will be an incentive to greater exertion on the part of both pupils and teachers as they will have a definite object in view.”⁵⁴ In the first three years of his time as principal, Ashton noted that two boys and four girls were engaged in teaching at one of the day schools.⁵⁵ The following year, an NEC report noted that “most of the teachers having been his former pupils, his influence over them is considerable. . . . Hence, Mr. Ashton practically controls the education of all the children on the Reserve.”⁵⁶

By December 1875, Ashton had come up with the idea to form a small class of reserve children at the Mohawk Institute to serve as a “practising class for pupils under special training for teachers.” However, Ashton seemed to have some trouble inducing teacher trainees to stay at the school under this scheme. He noted that they left to become teachers without the training. The students knew some of the teachers on the reserve at the time had no formal training, and they wanted to work as soon as possible.⁵⁷ Ashton believed that once standards were improved on the reserve for teachers, his students would be more interested in his training program. But over time, Ashton developed a more focused and successful program. As early as 1876, he mentioned in his journal creating a certificate, one with agreed-upon standards set by the NEC.⁵⁸ His goal was to professionalize teaching in schools where Indigenous children were taught.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Ashton continued to work toward educating students to become teachers. When the Six Nations School Board was created in 1878 to manage the day schools on the reserve, Ashton was appointed secretary, and he held significant power in this position until he retired decades later, in 1908. It was in this capacity that he inspected the schools on a regular basis and paid the salaries of the teachers (which were paid out of NEC funds). The board was responsible for hiring teachers and determining salaries. Many of the teachers it hired were graduates of the Mohawk Institute and were known to Ashton. By training teachers at the Mohawk Institute, the school was able to exert some influence over children in the day schools as well, or at least those taught by Mohawk Institute graduates.

One example is Sarah Davis, who graduated in 1880, and who passed the high school entrance exam with the highest mark in all of Brant County. She attended Brantford Collegiate Institute (BCI), and by 1884 was teaching at the No. 3 School. She taught for more than twenty-five years and passed away in 1923.⁵⁹ She was considered a successful graduate of the school by the DIA. Englishman William Carpenter visited Six Nations on behalf of the NEC in September 1884 and produced a report on his travels.⁶⁰ He visited Davis’s school and took a photograph of her with some students, as well as the school with the class outside. These are two of the few photos of a day school with its teacher and students from the nineteenth century. Davis is likely at the right in the first photo (figure 3.3).

Floretta Maracle was another top student who became a teacher. She attended the school at the same time as Sarah Davis, but she had a more varied career. She graduated in 1881 and attended Brantford Collegiate and then the Normal School.⁶¹ She began teaching at the No. 2 School and taught successfully for nearly ten years. She then moved to Ottawa and, in January 1891, she was appointed to a DIA clerkship, becoming the first status Indian woman to be hired to a position in the department.⁶² She worked in the federal Indian Accounts Branch, which was led by Duncan Campbell Scott, clerk in charge of accounts (and who later became deputy superintendent general of the DIA). She lived in the Home for Friendless Women in Ottawa, a boarding house for single women. In 1908, she married Allen Wawanosh Johnson, brother of Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson, a friend of Floretta’s, and Evelyn Johnson, and lived in Toronto.⁶³ After the death of her husband in 1923, she returned to Six Nations, but it does seem that she taught again.⁶⁴

The Mohawk Institute Certificate

While Ashton had been working to support Mohawk Institute graduates to become teachers by providing some training opportunities within the Institute, in 1882, he created a formally approved certificate for Indigenous teachers that could be used to teach across the country in on-reserve day schools controlled by the DIA. In March 1882, Ashton corresponded with the DIA about what he called “Indian Teachers’ Certificates,” intended for graduates of the Mohawk Institute and Brantford Collegiate so that they could work as schoolteachers beyond schools at Six Nations: “I am seeking the recognition and indorsement of approval of the Dep’y Superintendent General so that graduates from this Institution may more directly obtain schools in distant Indian Superintendencies.”⁶⁵ A significant number of students from the Institute wanted to become teachers and thus chose this training, but there were a limited number of jobs in school at Six Nations. A certificate that could be used to teach at other day schools on reserves in Canada was a good idea.

There was some discussion between the deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs, Lawrence Vankoughnet, and the department’s superintendent of the Six Nations Agency, Jasper Gilkison, about the special certificate having a three-year term in order for candidates to acquire public school certification in that time, but the DIA was generally supportive of the program.⁶⁶ By the end of 1882, the certificate was a reality. Ashton noted that the new program would be awarded to students who met a specific set of conditions: “the Holder must be an Indian, not less than seventeen years of age, of good moral character”; they must have passed the examination for entrance into a collegiate institute in Ontario; and they must have completed “six months Special Training as a Teacher in the Schools of the Above Institution.”⁶⁷ Ashton explained that “the Superintendent having certified the above, the Deputy Superintendent General accepts and endorses it as a certificate of competency to teach an Indian school for three years unless revoked.”⁶⁸ It became known as the “Mohawk Institute Certificate,” and the school became known as the Mohawk Institution and Indian Normal School in 1885.⁶⁹ Those wishing to earn a certificate did not need to be graduates of the Mohawk Institute itself—some attended local on-reserve day schools, or came from other Indigenous nations—but most came from the Institute. During this same period, there was also a focus on ensuring that graduates of the school studied for and passed the entrance examination for BCI. Some of these students boarded at the Mohawk Institute while they attended BCI, given that the Institute was only a handful of kilometres away and much closer than the children’s homes on the reserve.

Ashton supported having teenagers stay at the Institute, as it facilitated graduates achieving their higher-education goals. The NEC provided grants to the school to pay for the expense of having to board the teenagers there, even though they did not attend school at the Institute.⁷⁰ Ashton noted in an 1885 report, “During the last thirteen years I have done much to advance education among the Indians and have personally trained many as teachers, now I am endeavouring to bring them up to the standard of Provincial Certificates. . . . It is very desirable that we should have a supply of fully qualified teachers for our Indian Schools.”⁷¹ And in fact, in 1885, all of the teachers at the day schools at Grand River had been trained at the Mohawk Institute.⁷² Ashton’s efforts formalized a process that had been taking place for several decades and helped teachers who had graduated from the Mohawk Institute find work.

One of the first teachers to gain a certificate was honour roll student Jessie Osborne (Mohawk). Although Jessie’s father was a Scottish immigrant, her mother was Mohawk, a descendant of both Joseph Brant and William Johnson and Molly Brant.⁷³ Jessie and her older sister Jane both attended the Institute, likely enrolling after their mother’s death.⁷⁴ Both became teachers after graduating, but Jessie obtained one of the school’s first certificates. Ashton was keen on Jessie’s career, as he tracked her progress in his journal. In July 1883, he noted that she flew through her exams, and the plan was for her to study in Toronto, teach for a year, and then earn her certificate, although her training did not follow that exact schedule.⁷⁵

Osborne was a high-profile graduate and member of the community until she moved to Manitoba. In October 1884, she was one of three women from Six Nations who joined a delegation of Haudenosaunee people from Grand River travelling to Buffalo, New York, to attend the reinternment of the Seneca Chief Red Jacket. It was a large commemorative event, and Osborne attended along with about ten Haudenosaunee Confederacy chiefs, Pauline Johnson, Evelyn Johnson, the Reverend Albert Anthony (a missionary at Six Nations at that point), and Jasper T. Gilkison, the superintendent of Six Nations. Their attendance was noted in the commemorative booklet published by the Buffalo Historical Society the following year.⁷⁶

In 1885, Osborne was employed as a governess at the Mohawk Institute, and by the following year she was teaching at the school.⁷⁷ She took part in a visit by several chiefs from Western Canada, part of a promotional tour organized by Prime Minister Sir. John A. Macdonald after the Northwest Resistance the year prior.⁷⁸ The chiefs visited the Six Nations, as the community was considered a showpiece for the DIA, and, on 14 October, they visited the Mohawk Institute. A newspaper report notes that “Each of the chiefs was presented with a pair of mittens made by the pupils under Miss Osborne’s charge and Red Crow was so delighted with them that he wore his on the way home.”⁷⁹ The following year Osborne attended the Toronto Normal School and obtained a grade A second-class professional certificate, possibly because she planned to go to Winnipeg and wanted to be able to teach there.⁸⁰ For Osborne, the Mohawk Institute did not provide enough training.

Osborne continued to teach after leaving Six Nations. Her father had moved to Winnipeg, and her sister Jane had moved there too (after graduating from the Mohawk Institute and working as a governess at the Toronto Young Ladies’ College) and married in 1886. While it is unclear when Osborne moved, by 1891 she was living with her widowed father, an accountant, in Winnipeg.⁸¹ She married John Young from Brandon, also an accountant, and the two were recorded in the census of 1901 as living in Rat Portage; it does not seem that she was teaching there.⁸² Her husband died in 1906, at which time she likely moved back to Winnipeg. Little is known about her teaching career there, although it seems she did not teach in any on-reserve schools in Manitoba. Her certificate from the Toronto Normal School would have been useful there. She died in 1928, and Ferrier noted her as a prominent graduate of the school in 1930, having taught at the No 3. School, the Mohawk Institute, and in Winnipeg.⁸³

Another important teacher to come out of this system, and perhaps the most well-known teacher at the Institute, was Susan Hardie (Mohawk). She passed the entrance examination to the Mohawk Institute at age eleven in 1878 and attended BCI several years later.⁸⁴ Ashton was very supportive of Hardie, advocating on her behalf to the Ontario Department of Education when she failed to obtain a second-class teaching certificate in 1885. In a letter to the department, Ashton argued that “As a pupil in this Institution her application & perseverance have been most commendable. She has therefore been permitted to continue her studies at the cost of the New England Company in order that she may become a teacher to her people. It is desired to appoint her as a junior teacher in this Institution as soon as she has completed her training in the Model School.”⁸⁵ Ashton had a plan for Hardie’s career, but she had not done well in English composition and literature, which Ashton, in his letter to the minister of education, said “present almost insurmountable difficulties to an Indian. This you will more fully realize when you consider that an Indian must translate the question from English to Indian, think out the answer in Indian and then translate it into English.” Ashton suggested that “unless the examinations are conducted in Mohawk, Ojibway etc,” they would lose Indigenous teachers because of their bilingualism, which he believed was a useful skill: “it is necessary that they should have a speaking acquaintance with the language spoken by the pupils.”⁸⁶ Ashton was successful in convincing the Department of Education to approve of Hardie’s application, as it responded with a letter saying that “under special circumstances,” the department would approve of her receiving a second-class teaching certificate and return her third-class certificate.⁸⁷ She then took the training program at the Mohawk Institute, taught at the Mohawk Institute for a year, and then attended the Toronto Normal School for one year before returning to teach at the Institute.⁸⁸ Hardie went on to teach until 1936, for a total of fifty years, making her the longest-serving teacher there. She was especially proud of having taught and prepared students from the Mohawk Institute to take the entrance exam at BCI, all of whom apparently passed.⁸⁹ She retired with a pension from the NEC, and was honoured with a stained glass window in the Mohawk Chapel in 1960, although students did not report exclusively positive reviews of her teaching methods.⁹⁰ Hardie was only the second Indigenous teacher, after Isaac Bearfoot, to have a significant teaching career at the Mohawk Institute.

In his report of 1889, Ashton noted that sixteen past pupils were working as teachers in “Indian schools,” thirteen of them “having special certificates of qualification for teaching Indian schools.”⁹¹ For example, Ashton reported that

Josephine Good and Sarah Russell, having attended the Collegiate Institute at Brantford [BCI] for some time, and completed a course of six months’ special training for teachers in our own schools, received certificates as Indian school teachers, and obtained appointments, the former taking charge of a school at Parry Island and the latter of School No. 7, on the Tuscarora Reserve. Their work has been most favourable reported on.⁹²

Good had graduated in 1888 and earned the Nelles Medal for highest marks on a high school entrance examination.⁹³ She attended BCI and then taught in Parry Island (Wasauksing).⁹⁴ In the summer of 1891, Ashton noted in his journal that Good, after teaching for three years at that location, wanted more education to widen her teaching opportunities. He wrote, “she is very anxious to attend the high school again to enable her to obtain a certificate as a public school teacher.” Ashton allowed her to return to the Mohawk Institute and provided room and board but noted that she would have to pay for her books and clothing herself from her savings.⁹⁵ She later found employment at the Bay of Quinte. Russell also received the Nelles Medal the same year as Good, and was hired to teach at No. 7 School on the reserve. She married William Smith and was seen as “influential for good on the Reserve” by the DIA.⁹⁶ Both women were top graduates who did the training program at the Mohawk Institute and had careers as teachers in day schools. Ashton clearly took pride in the production of teachers at the Mohawk Institute. It signified the success of the school as a place of education and training for Haudenosaunee youth who then went on to participate in the colonial education system.

Despite the success of the teacher training program at the Mohawk Institute, the formal certificate seemed to decline over time and the school shifted its focus away from being the “Indian Normal School.” Over the late 1880s, despite the support of the NEC and the DIA, fewer students took advantage of the “students fund” that provided free room and board for teenagers at the Mohawk Institute while they attended BCI. The special Institute teaching certificate is not mentioned as often in DIA records or in Ashton’s journals in the 1890s, and the school ceased to be known as the Mohawk Institution and Indian Normal School in 1893, shortening its name to the Mohawk Institution.⁹⁷

However, students continued to receive training at the school, and some received certificates. While DIA official Martin Benson did not mention the certificate in his thorough report on the school in 1894, Ashton noted the following year that three students completed their course of training “as Indian school teachers.”⁹⁸ Benson also noted that three ex-pupils, who were employed as teachers in day schools in other parts of Ontario, spent part of their summer holidays at the Mohawk Institute, including Josephine Good, who came from Tyendinaga.⁹⁹ At some point, the Institute stopped offering the “special certificate,” but it is unclear when. Graduates of the school continued to become teachers, however, teaching in Six Nations day schools and in schools on reserves across the country.

In the early twentieth century, some of the children graduating from the Mohawk Institute attended BCI, where they took courses in business, telegraphy, stenography, and bookkeeping. A small number went on to agricultural college, medical school, and law school. Several young women found work as domestic servants and governesses, and some went on to train as nurses after the Great War.¹⁰⁰ And, as teaching requirements changed in this period, many graduates went to the Toronto or Hamilton Normal Schools to train as teachers. Teaching remained a popular career choice. By the early 1920s, the Six Nations School Board required all teachers to have a normal school certificate, which was the provincial standard, and teachers without one had to take a leave to attend normal school. By 1923, no teacher was employed on the reserve without one.¹⁰¹

Conclusion

The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that some graduates from the Mohawk Institute in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were able to pursue their interests in secondary school and post-secondary education and thereby build careers, especially in education. While this was in part because the Reverends Abraham Nelles and Robert Ashton both worked to build programs to support students working to acquire further education and training in teaching, it was largely the result of the efforts and talents of children who faced enormous challenges living at the Mohawk Institute. They survived and had successful careers due to their own intelligence, skills, and determination. They were successful despite their residential school experience. It is also important to note that school officials supported their education because they wished for those graduates who became teachers to contribute to the DIA’s assimilation agenda. As Mary Jane Logan McCallum has noted with reference to her mother, who taught at a day school in the postwar period, these teachers represented “an ideal model of assimilated youth—a way to show off the department’s ‘excellence’ in Indian education programming, still underfunded and unequal today.”¹⁰²

Notes

1. 1 Margaret Connell Szasz, Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607–1783 (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 104–106.

2. 2 Bishop of Toronto to the Treasurer, 15 February 15 1841, in Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company, of Their Proceedings for the Civilization and Conversion of Indians, Blacks, and Pagans, in the British Colonies in America and the West Indies Since the Last Report in 1840 (J. P. Gibson, 1846), 14.

3. 3 Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (J. Masters, 1840), 219–20.

4. 4 For instance, in the 1840s, teachers included Thomas Howells, Henry Racey, R. Yeoward, and Henry Peatman. Appendix A, Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1846), 95–99.

5. 5 Elizabeth Graham, The Mush Hole: Life at Two Indian Residential Schools (Heffle Publishing, 1997), 47.

6. 6 12 February 1838 Report, from the 1846 NEC Annual Report, in Graham, 46.

7. 7 1 October 1844 Report, from the 1846 NEC Annual Report, in Graham, 52.

8. 8 “The girls are required to make as much of the clothes as possible, and are also learning to knit. Mrs. Nelles intends introducing a spinning wheel among them this summer, so that in a year or two . . . they should be able to reduce the expense of clothing considerably.” Nelles, 3 April 1840 Report, in Graham, 48.

9. 9 It is unclear when he was first hired. Records from the 1830s rarely mention teachers in the schools. I searched the 1840 report, which covers the 1830s, and only two teachers are mentioned in an appendix, Mr. Ludlow and Mr. Senior, at the Johnson Settlement school and the Mohawk Institute. Appendix F, Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1840), 251.

10. 10 10 June 1842, Nelles to the New England Company, Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1846), 30.

11. 11 24 January 1843, Nelles to New England Company Treasurer, Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1846), 36.

12. 12 Nelles to the Treasurer, 22 February 1844, Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1846), 45.

13. 13 8 November 1844, Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1846), 56. Nelles suffered from a similar fate as other people at Six Nations in this period in the form of non-Indigenous squatters and challenges to his lands. In a statement that Nelles put together in July 1844 regarding land issues at Six Nations, he wrote that “an old Indian of the name Laurence David’s, the Company’s first schoolmaster, has gone away as far as he can into the woods, on the South side of the river: he had an improvement on the North side, which he was not willing to quit; he was offered by white persons much more than the actual worth of it, but he refused to part with it: —his cattle and pigs were then stolen or destroyed; and, overcome by these calamities, he was induced to sell his improvement and go away.” “Statement of Information furnished by the Rev. A. Nelles to the Members of a Special Committee of the Company, on the 19th of July, 1844,” appendix B in Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1846), 151–2.

14. 14 Nelles Report, 9 February 1859, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 53. See also Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company, of Their Proceedings for the Civilization and Conversion of Indians, Blacks, and Pagans, in the British Colonies in America and the West Indies Since the Last Report in 1840 (J. P. Gibson, 1859).

15. 15 In 1855, Thomas was described as “quite competent to teach, and so far has given satisfaction both to Mr. Elliott and the people.” “1855 January 15th—Mr. Nelles Remarks,” in Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company (1859), 26.

16. 16 O’Meara Report, 12 July 1860, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 54–5.

17. 17 1868 New England Company Report, in Graham, 56.

18. 18 “Report of the Hon. A. E. Botsford, Commissioner of the New England Company, on Their Missionary Stations on the Grand River, Near Brantford, Ontario,” appendix VII in History of the New England Company: From Its Incorporation, in the Seventeenth Century, to the Present Time: Including a Detailed Report of the Company’s Proceedings for the Civilization and Conversion of Indians, Blacks, and Pagans in the Dominion of Canada, British Columbia, the West Indies and S. Africa, During the Two Years 1869–1870 (Taylor, 1871), 326.

19. 19 Two other schools were taught by non-Indigenous women, Miss Crombie and Mrs. Hyndman. “Report of the Hon. A. E. Botsford,” 318–32.

20. 20 “Report of the Hon. A. E. Botsford,” 320. Also see Alison Norman, “‘Teachers Amongst Their Own People’: Kanyen’kehá:Ka (Mohawk) Women Teachers in Nineteenth-Century Tyendinaga and Grand River, Ontario,” Historical Studies in Education / Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 29, no. 1 (2017): 32–56.

21. 21 Norman, “‘Teachers Amongst Their Own People,’” 42–3.

22. 22 “Report of the Hon. A. E. Botsford,” 326.

23. 23 “Institution Report, Thomas Griffiths,” 30 June 1859, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 215.

24. 24 History of the New England Company (1871), 121.

25. 25 Canada, Annual Report of the Secretary of State for the Year 1868 (Hunter, Rose & Co, 1869); Canada, Report of the Secretary of State of Canada for the Year Ending on the 30th June, 1869 (I. B. Taylor, 1870).

26. 26 History of the New England Company (1871), 75.

27. 27 Ives Goddard, “The Origin and Meaning of the Name ‘Manhattan,’” New York History 92, no. 4 (2010): 277–93.

28. 28 History of the New England Company, from Its Incorporation, in the Seventeenth Century to the Present Time: Including a Detailed Report of the Company’s Proceedings for the Civilization and Conversion of Indians, Blacks, and Pagans in the Dominion of Canada, British Columbia, the West Indies, and S. Africa, During the Two Years 1869–1870, Volume 2 (Taylor & Co., 1874), 229.

29. 29 “Missionaries and School Teachers in Canada,” in History of the New England Company (1874), xvi.

30. 30 The teachers all took an examination, and Susannah Carpenter was the top teacher; she beat Nelles Monture. History of the New England Company (1874), 146.

31. 31 “Missionaries and School Teachers in Canada,” in History of the New England Company (1874), xvi.

32. 32 Michelle A. Hamilton, Collections and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 126.

33. 33 Upon his arrival in Toronto for normal school training in 1861, Bearfoot wrote to Principal Abraham Nelles, “I sincerely trust that the Supreme being may in his infinite goodness bestow a blessing upon my efforts in propagating civilization and enlightenment amongst my fellow country people.” Bearfoot to Nelles, 14 January 1861, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 55.

34. 34 Canada, Annual Report of the Secretary of State for the Year Department of Indian Affairs for the Year 1868 (Hunter, Rose & Co., 1869); Canada, Report of the Secretary of State of Canada for the Year Ending on the 30th June, 1869.

35. 35 In 1871, he published a book of hymns in Mohawk. Isaac Bearfoot, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns in the Mohawk Language: For the Use of the Six Nation Indians (New England Company, 1871).

36. 36 Isaac Bearfoot, No. 276. Synod record series, sub-series: yearbook and clergy list sub-series, File 6. index and abstracts of the clergy register of the Diocese of Huron: volume 1. The Incorporated Synod of the Diocese of Huron Fonds, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives, London, Ontario.

37. 37 Douglas Leighton, “A Calling that Straddled Two Cultures,” Anglican Diocese of Huron Church News, February 2015. 10.

38. 38 Canada, Annual Report of the Secretary of State (1869); Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December, 1890 (Brown Chamberlin, 1891).

39. 39 Bearfoot was replaced with T. W. Standing, who was already the inspector for Brant County, and who they deemed to be more qualified. He passed away several years later, in 1911. Keith Jamieson, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve (Woodland Cultural Centre, 1987), 8.

40. 40 History of the New England Company, from Its Incorporation (1874), 396.

41. 41 History of the New England Company, from Its Incorporation (1874), 390, 396.

42. 42 Return F, “Statement of the Condition of the Various Indian Schools Within the Dominion, for the Year Ended 30th June 1875,” Annual Report of the Department of the Interior for the Year Ended 30th June 1875 (Maclean, Roger & Co., 1876), 87.

43. 43 “Miss Lydia Hill,” Brantford Expositor, 29 July 1927, 6. For more on Lydia Hill, see Norman, “‘Teachers Amongst Their Own People,’” 44–5.

44. 44 Amelia married a man from Cape Croker in 1889, Charles Kejedonce Jones, and had four children. She passed away at the birth of her fourth son at the age of forty-one in 1898. Her husband later became chief of the Chippewas of Nawash. Russell T. Ferrier, “History of the Mohawk Institute, Successful Graduates,” File 466-1, Pt. 2, Vol. 6200, RG 10, Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

45. 45 Ferrier.

46. 46 Ian McCallum, “Family Story, a Heritage Home, and Munsee-Delaware Histories,” Active History, 28 January 2022, https://activehistory.ca/2022/01/31492/; Mary Jane Logan McCallum, “Intentional, Articulate and Worldly: Archival Records of My Munsee-Delaware Ancestors,” Closer to Home: Locating and Retrieving Indigenous Heritage from Archives Outside Canada, organized by the Indigenous Heritage Circle, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 5 March 2019; Mary Jane Logan McCallum, “Indigenous People, Archives and History,” Shekon Neechie: An Indigenous History Site, 21 June 2018, https://shekonneechie.ca/2018/06/21/indigenous-people-archives-and-history/.

47. 47 McCallum, “Indigenous People, Archives and History.”

48. 48 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.) 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).

49. 49 Boyce to Scott, 14 May 1920, File 466-1, Pt. 2, Vol. 6200, RG 10, LAC, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 122. Chief Logan also attended the closing day picnic at Mount Elgin on 1 July 1919 and gave words of welcome to returned soldiers. See Graham, 284. Logan was included in a 1920 description of graduates of Mount Elgin: “Scobie Logan, able writer and platform speaker, ardent supporter of the Anglican Church, ex-chief and secretary of the Muncey Council, a loyal Britisher and true friend of the Indian.” Graham, 287.

50. 50 “Report of the Hon. A. E. Botsford,” 346.

51. 51 Nelles, 6 April 1872 NEC Report, from the NEC 1874 Annual Report, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 64.

52. 52 Six Years’ Summary of the Proceedings of the New England Company for the Civilization and Conversion of Indians, Blacks, and Pagans in the Dominion of Canada and the West Indies, 1873–1878 (Gilbert and Rivington, 1879), 136.

53. 53 Ashton workbook 1872–6, 52, HCH-2003-43-05-20787, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives.

54. 54 Ashton workbook, 85–6.

55. 55 Ashton workbook, table VI, December 1875.

56. 56 William Lant Carpenter, Report to the New England Company of a Visit to Two of Their Mission Stations in the Province of Ontario in the Year 1884 (Spottiswoode & Co., 1884), 8–9.

57. 57 Ashton’s workbook notes the following (pp. 146–7): “The Committee were pleased to consider the admission of a few young and ignorant children to form a practising class for pupils under special training for teachers. I have not however availed myself of the permission to form this class at present, owing to the disappointments I have me[t] with, in failing to induce the most advanced scholars to place themselves under special training. They profess a desire to become teachers but fail when their energies are put to the test or else believing themselves to be more competent than they really are they persuade their friends to allow them to leave the Institution thinking they will be able to obtain situations as teachers at once. This latter idea has arisen from the fact that they know that the majority of teachers in Indian Schools are less qualified than themselves, and with the natural incredulity of Indians, they refuse the guidance of those best fitted to direct them. // After the Summer vacation, I selected the two most advanced girls and with the approbation of their friends, placed them in training for teachers, at first they displayed great zeal and application but within a month expressed a wish to change—I used all possible means to induce them to persevere, they do so till the end of the term and then left the Institution altogether. // When all teachers in Indian Schools are subjected to an Examination similar to that conducted by the Company’s Missionaries or are required to hold certificates of qualification Indian Youths will exercise as much zeal in seeking the attainments as they now display in obtaining the emoluments of teachers.”

58. 58 Ashton workbook, 31 June 1876. He wanted the Company to agree to a standard by which a student would be considered to have obtained competency as a teacher with the correct credentials—namely, a teaching certificate.

59. 59 Ferrier, “History of the Mohawk Institute, Successful Graduates”; Jamieson, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve; Graham, The Mush Hole, 87, 140.

60. 60 Carpenter, Report to the New England Company.

61. 61 Ferrier, “History of the Mohawk Institute, Successful Graduates”; Wilma Green, personal communication, 31 August 2020.

62. 62 Our Forest Children 3, no. 11 (February 1890): 141.

63. 63 “Ontario Marriages, 1869–1927,” Allen Wawanosh Johnson and Floretta Kathryn Maracle, 25 June 1908, Family History Library microfilm 1,871,864, Archives of Ontario, Toronto.

64. 64 Floretta had a government pension. In addition, in Evelyn Johnson’s will, she left a room at Chiefswood to Floretta, should she ever need a room. Personal communication with Wilma Green, 8 March 2022. In the 1881 census, she was listed as eighteen years old, an Anglican, a teacher, and was living with Charlotte Martin and William General. She was a good friend of Pauline Johnson, and they had a very close relationship.

65. 65 Ashton Workbook, March 1882, HCH-2003-43-05-20787, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives.

66. 66 Lawrence Vankoughnet to Gilkison, 2 June 1882; Jasper Gilkison to Robert Ashton, 5 June 1882, “Extracts from Annual Report of Robert Ashton, Esq., Superintendent of the Mohawk Institution, Brantford (Grand River), Ontario, for the Year Ending 31st December, 1882,” Six Nations Agency—Reports, Correspondence and Memoranda Regarding the Mohawk Institute and Day Schools. Reports and Correspondence of the New England Company, File 154,845, Pt. 11, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC.

67. 67 “Extracts From Annual Report of Robert Ashton,” 92/478.

68. 68 “Extracts From Annual Report of Robert Ashton,” 92/478.

69. 69 “Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School Narrative,” p. 1, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, accessed 1 May 2025, https://archives.nctr.ca/NAR-NCTR-080.

70. 70 Ashton to Hayter Reed, 5 February 1885, Six Nations Agency—Reports, correspondence and memoranda regarding the Mohawk Institute and day schools. Reports and correspondence of the New England Company, File 154,845, Pt. 11, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC.

71. 71 R. Ashton Report, 29 September 1885, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 85.

72. 72 According to Ashton, “all of the present staff of teachers in the Board schools, one teacher in this Institution and several on other reservations have received their education and training here, whist the many who failed to reach the necessary standard as teachers have received a fair education in addition to the training necessary to make them useful citizens.” Ashton to Hayter Reed, 5 February 1885, Six Nations Agency, File 154,845, Pt. 11, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC.

73. 73 Edward Marion Chadwick, Ontario Families: Genealogies of United Empire Loyalist and other Pioneer Families of Upper Canada (1894; repr. Hunterdon House, 1970), 72–3. Census records always note her ethnicity as Scottish.

74. 74 Both girls were born in Hamilton—Jessie in 1865, and Jane in 1863.

75. 75 Ashton Workbook, July 1883.

76. 76 Osborne’s Mohawk name was recorded as “Sa-pa-na,” meaning “The Lily.” Red Jacket. Transactions of the Buffalo Historical Society, Volume 3 (Buffalo Historical Society, 1885), 46.

77. 77 Letter from Rev. Ashton, published in Special Report by the Bureau of Education: Educational Exhibits and Conventions at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans, 1884–’85 (Government Printing House, 1886), 318.

78. 78 See Donald B. Smith, “Chiefs Journey,” Canada’s History, 5 September 2017, https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/first-nations-inuit-metis/chiefs-journey#72.

79. 79 “The Brant Memorial. The North–West Chiefs Visit an Industrial Institution,” Toronto Globe, 15 October 1886, 1.

80. 80 Ashton Report, September 1887, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 86.

81. 81 1891 Census of Canada, Census Place: Ward 5, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Family No: 337, Roll: T-6297.

82. 82 1901 Census of Canada, Census Place: Rat Portage (Town/Ville), Algoma, Ontario, Page: 6; Family No: 60.

83. 83 Ferrier in Graham, The Mush Hole, 220.

84. 84 Her memories are shared in Jamieson, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve.

85. 85 R. Ashton to Secretary Education Department, 4 September 1885, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 84.

86. 86 R. Ashton to G. W. Ross, Minister of Education, 29 September 1885, in Graham, 84–5.

87. 87 Education Department to R. Ashton, 8 October 1885, in Graham, 85.

88. 88 Hardies’ memories, in Jamieson, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve.

89. 89 Standing to whom it may concern, 12 May 1921, File 466-1, Part 1, Vol. 6200, RG 10, LAC. T. W. Standing was the Brant County school Inspector from 1907 to 1932. See Jamieson, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve, 15; Thelma Finlay, “Institute Teacher Is 90,” Brantford Expositor, 9 October 1957.

90. 90 See Alison Norman, “‘True to My Own Noble Race’: Six Nations Women Teachers at Grand River in the Early Twentieth Century,” Ontario History 107, no. 1 (2015): 5–34.

91. 91 R. Ashton Annual Report, 1 September 1889, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 87.

92. 92 R. Ashton Annual Report, 1 September 1889, in Graham, 86.

93. 93 The Nelles Medal was created in 1885 when the Reverend Nelles’s widow donated a silver medal to be given annually to the pupil who obtained the highest marks at the entrance examination. Kelly Report, 15 July 1885, in Graham, 84.

94. 94 Ferrier, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve.

95. 95 Ashton Workbook, 1890–3, 115.

96. 96 Ferrier, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve.

97. 97 “Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School Narrative,” p. 1.

98. 98 Ashton calls them by their initials, P. W., H. B., and L. G. See R. Ashton Annual Report, 1 August 1895, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 95.

99. 99 Graham, 93.

100. 100 One report on the school in 1902 noted how many graduates were helped to find work as domestics by Mrs. Ashton, the principal’s wife. Duncan Milligan to the New England Company, 1 October 1902, File 154,845, Part 1A, Six Nations Agency—Reports, Correspondence and Memoranda Regarding the Mohawk Institute, 1915–1921, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC. See also Alison Norman, “Race, Gender and Colonialism: Public Life Among the Six Nations of Grand River, 1899–1939” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2010), on teachers (63–7); on clerical training (122–5); and on domestic labour (132–6). See also Ferrier, History of Education on the Six Nations Reserve.

101. 101 Julia L. Jamieson, Echoes of the Past: A History of Education from the Time of the Six Nations Settlement on the Banks of the Grand River in 1784 to 1924 (self-printed, n.d.)

102. 102 McCallum, “Indigenous People, Archives and History.”