1“To Shake Off the Rude Habits of Savage Life”:1 The Foundations of the Mohawk Institute to the Early 1900s
Jennifer Pettit
Senator Murray Sinclair, chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), cautioned us that reconciliation is going to be a slow process given the significant and long-standing impact of the Indian Residential School system on Indigenous peoples. Before his passing, Sinclair explained that “we may not achieve reconciliation in my lifetime, or within the lifetime of my children.”2 According to Sinclair, the path to truth is equally challenging: “The road we travel is equal in importance to the destination we seek. There are no shortcuts. When it comes to truth and reconciliation we are forced to go the distance.”3 Where better to begin our journey toward the “truth” than a study of the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, Canada’s first and longest-running residential school and one that served as a foundation and “model” for the entire residential school system.4
Long before the TRC, Carl Urion suggested that “if we could understand the motivation for the establishment of residential, industrial and boarding schools for Indians in Canada and the United States . . . we would understand Indian-White relations in North America.”5 To that end, this chapter traces the beginnings of the Mohawk Institute, the first of what we would now call residential schools in Canada, from its inception in the 1830s through to the early years of the twentieth century, when students set fire to what was then the second set of Mohawk Institute school buildings. It argues that church and state administrators and the Six Nations of the Grand River had very different visions for the Mohawk Institute. Based on the largely negative experiences that took place behind the bricks of the school, government and church officials should have abandoned their assimilationist agenda of “Christianizing and civilizing” Indigenous peoples instead of replicating schools like the Mohawk Institute across the rest of what would become Canada.
The story of the Mohawk Institute begins in the late 1700s with three groups—the British government, the New England Company, and the Six Nations. The school’s subsequent history, stretching from 1904 to the present, is told in chapter 2. Together, these two chapters provide context for subsequent chapters in Behind the Bricks.
The Six Nations and the British in the 1700s
The Six Nations are Haudenosaunee, “people of the longhouse,” who originally belonged to a confederacy of five nations—Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. When the Tuscarora joined the confederacy in the early 1700s, it became known as the Six Nations. Originally inhabiting lands in what is now New York and guided by the Great Law of Peace, each nation had their own languages and governing council of chiefs and clan mothers, and a political structure in which men and women held significant positions. The Six Nations also had their own education systems in which “children learned in unstructured and non-coercive ways, through participation, and studying their environment, and from instruction provided by older members of their communities.”6
After the British settled in what would become the Thirteen Colonies, the Six Nations began to form ties with the new settlers. These relationships brought about treaties, the conversion by some Haudenosaunee to Christianity, the formation of schools, and trade and military partnerships. Throughout the eighteenth century the British saw the Six Nations as valuable economic partners in the fur trade.7 Equally important, if not more so, the British also saw Indigenous nations as military allies, to the extent that the first British Indian Department for Canada was created in 1755 as a branch of the military portfolio to ensure a strong partnership with Indigenous peoples like the Six Nations during such conflicts as the American Revolution.8 When the British lost the Revolutionary War to the American colonists in 1783, thousands of those who had fought alongside the British, including members of the Six Nations, fled to what would become Canada. Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) and others encouraged the Crown to provide the Six Nations with land as compensation for land lost during the American Revolution. To facilitate this, Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, signed the 1784 Haldimand Treaty with the Mississauga, establishing a large territory for the Haudenosaunee on both sides of the Grand River (six miles on each side, amounting to 674,910 acres); this territory would eventually become the location of the Six Nations Reserve and the future Mohawk Institute in Brantford. While the Haudenosaunee saw themselves as sovereign nations, the British began to view them as subjects under their control. By 1847 the Six Nations would occupy only “4.8 percent of the original Haldimand Tract.”9
New Government Policy: To Christianize and Civilize
Not long after the Haldimand Treaty of 1784, military and commercial alliances with the Six Nations began to wane. Following the War of 1812 (1812–15), there was little need for Indigenous support in battle, as the threat of future North American wars had decreased; subsequently, Indigenous peoples’ “warrior image had been replaced by that of an expensive social nuisance.”10 In addition, a substantial influx of settlers into Canada during the late 1700s and early 1800s exacerbated what was now the “problem” of what to do with Indigenous peoples who were no longer seen as valuable military partners, who were living on valuable farmland, and who were thus in the way of desirable non-Indigenous settlers during a time of significant population growth.11 All of these changes meant it was becoming more and more difficult for Indigenous peoples in Canada to pursue their traditional ways of life. They became more and more reliant on what was known as the present system, which consisted of payments and gifts from the government. With the decline of the fur trade, Indigenous groups such as the Haudenosaunee were also no longer seen as important economic and commercial partners. Instead, they had become an exorbitant expense. With costs increasing and returns dwindling, the British sought out a new, more economical direction for their relationship with Indigenous peoples in Canada, one that would enable them to solve what they were now calling “the Indian Problem.”12
British officials opted to undertake several inquiries in an attempt to find a solution. In 1828, Major General H. C. Darling, military secretary to the Governor General, led the first exploration of this situation in Canada. Darling felt the British government should “encourage the disposition now shown generally amongst the resident Indians of this province, to shake off the rude habits of savage life, and to embrace Christianity and civilization.”13 Darling’s report would form the basis of a new “civilization” program. Darling’s solution to eliminating these land and financial pressures and solving the “Indian problem” was to create a reserve system (in 1830) and make Indigenous peoples self-supporting sedentary Christian farmers who would be “educated” in schools and who would integrate into settler society (albeit as lower-class manual labourers). Government officials explained that
experience has shown that Indians can no longer lead a wild and roving life, in the midst of a numerous and rapidly increasing white population. Their hunting grounds are broken up by settlements; the game is exhausted; their resources as hunters and trappers are cut off; want and disease spread rapidly among them, and gradually reduce their numbers. To escape these consequences, no choice is left, but to remove beyond the pale of civilization, or to settle and cultivate the land for a livelihood. . . . The settled and partially civilized Indians, when left to themselves, become exposed to a new class of evils. They hold large blocks of lands, generally of the most valuable description, which they can neither occupy nor protect against the encroachments of white squatters, with whom, in the vain attempt to guard their lands, they are brought into a state of constant hostility and collision. As they are exempt from any obligation to make or maintain roads through their lands, these reserves are serious obstacles to the settlement and improvement of the surrounding country, and their possessors become objects of jealousy and dislike to their neighbours.14
The “civilization” plan was not without recent precedent. In 1808 Major John Norton, who was adopted by Joseph Brant, Pine Tree Chief of Six Nations, proposed a “civilization programme comprising agricultural settlement, religious conversion, individual Indian land titles, and incentives to encourage local Indian enterprises.”15
There were also other suggestions about how to solve the “Indian problem.” For instance, Sir Francis Bond Head, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada from 1836 to 1838, felt a civilization policy was bound to fail and that all Indigenous peoples should be moved to Manitoulin Island, where they would eventually disappear. Here, they would be able to live away from the influence of settler society until they perished.16 This obviously inhumane approach was not acceptable to church groups, such as the New England Company, who would become the government’s partners. Lord Glenelg told Bond Head to stop his efforts and follow Darling’s plan.17 A “civilization” program was henceforth adopted.18
The “civilization” program was founded on three principles: “Indian protection, based on the Royal Proclamation; improvement of Indian living conditions; and Indian assimilation into the dominant society. The new policy had three systemic cornerstones: a system of land cession treaties, which we see in Upper Canada, which is now Ontario, and western Canada; a system of Indian reserves and supervisory Indian agents; and a system of schools to educate Indians, first at day and industrial schools, and later at residential schools.”19
Like Darling, Sir James Kempt, an army officer and colonial official who became administrator of the Government in Canada, wrote in 1829 that nothing would civilize “the Indians” but “the education of a portion of their children.” He went on to say, “I am aware that it has been the practice to look upon the Indians as useful only for war, but my object is, as far as it may be practicable, to alter this system, and to induce the Indians to adopt the habits of civilized life.”20 Civil authorities knew Indigenous peoples would have to learn to survive in the burgeoning industrial and agrarian society of the Canadas without government support. To sustain themselves, government and church officials believed that Indigenous peoples, especially children, needed to be taught Christianity and British culture, as well as work skills to keep in step with the social, economic, and technological changes taking place in the Canadas. Ideally, a “civilized” Indigenous person would support one of the Christian churches, would read and write English or French, and would dress and live in a manner similar to that of British people who were now living in Canada. Administrators hoped Indigenous groups such as the Haudenosaunee would begin to work toward this model of “civilized” personhood at an early age, when it supposedly would be easier for them to change their “savage” ways. Giving up speaking Indigenous languages was essential to this process, as was abandoning all Indigenous religious beliefs and practices, habits, customs, celebrations, and traditional dress and vocations. The laws, norms, and gender roles of Canadians would also have to be adopted. In virtually all aspects, Indigenous peoples were to become like the non-Indigenous settlers occupying their lands. Schools would teach Indigenous children to accept a subservient position in society and to acquiesce to upper-class authority.
The various church societies shared in many of these state aims. Schooling thus became the “joint enterprise of throne and altar.”21 The churches, like the government, sought Indigenous land, saw the schools as an employment opportunity for their followers, and often also held the same prejudiced ideas about Indigenous people. Yet, other issues also motivated church involvement in the industrial school system. The prime motivation for church members was the spreading of the word of God to “heathen” Indigenous peoples since the “Great Commission” in the Bible decreed that followers should bring the word of God to the world.22 The motivations of missionary groups derived from what E. Brian Titley has called “misguided humanitarianism,” since missionaries assumed that Indigenous groups were destined to be destroyed unless they embraced the values and cultures of the supposedly more advanced white society.23 The state believed in the power of religion to speed up the civilization process, and perhaps more importantly, felt church involvement would save money.
Settler Colonialism
British North Americans’ ideas about their cultural superiority shaped these civilization plans. Non-Indigenous settlers believed that agriculturalists were superior to those who lived by other means such as hunting. Moreover, drawing on the Bible and papal law known as the Doctrine of Discovery, non-Indigenous settlers believed that, since they had “subdued” the land, they possessed a greater right to it than did Indigenous peoples. Settlers also assumed that, as a result of their supposed “supremacy,” Indigenous peoples would want to adopt Euro-Canadian language and ways of life. The British did not believe they needed to consult Indigenous people at length regarding their opinions or ideas about assimilation and assumed that they would want to convert. Many in the dominant settler society simply believed the disappearance of Indigenous peoples to be inevitable.
This replacing of Indigenous society by an “invasive settler society” has come to be known as “settler colonialism,” which has been defined by Barker as “a distinct method of colonising involving the creation and consumption of a whole array of spaces by settler collectives that claim and transform places through the exercise of their sovereign capacity.”24 Settler colonialism continues to exist today in Canada, as non-Indigenous settlers are still living on appropriated land and many treaty promises remain unfulfilled.25 All of this is built on the notion of terra nullius—the idea that Indigenous lands were unused. Barker and Lowman explain that settler colonialism differs from other forms of colonialism for three reasons: colonizers intend to stay; the “invasion is a structure, not an event,” that results in “the assertion of state sovereignty and juridical control over their [Indigenous peoples’] lands”; and finally, the goal of settler colonialism is to “eliminate challenges posed to settler autonomy by indigenous peoples’ claims to land by eliminating indigenous peoples themselves and asserting false narratives and structures of settler belonging.”26 Thomas Peace’s recent book, The Slow Rush of Colonization, argues strongly that schools, both day schools and colonial colleges, played a critical role in the development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of settler-colonial hegemony in the places that eventually became Canada.27
While church and state administrators throughout the history of the Mohawk Institute referred to having an agenda with the goals of “civilization” and assimilation, in reality, the goals are better described as management and elimination. Assimilation actually meant conformation as manual labourers and acceptance of upper-class white authority, and the destruction of traditional ways of knowing and life, with “British rhetoric calling for ‘assimilation’ of Aboriginal people into British North American Society . . . tempered by a long-standing colonialist view that Aboriginal peoples not only had an inferior culture to their own, but that this alleged inferiority demonstrated that Aboriginal peoples were simply not as intelligent or as capable as people of European origin.”28 The TRC has used the term “cultural genocide” to describe the real plans of church and state:
For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide. . . . Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group. . . . Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.29
This is exactly what transpired at the Mohawk Institute over the course of its history.
Early Day Schools and the Arrival of the New England Company at Six Nations
When the Six Nations relocated to what would become Canada in the late 1700s, Governor Haldimand had promised them that they would thrive on the banks of the Grand River. In addition to a sawmill, a grist mill, and a church (the Mohawk Chapel), Haldimand committed to building a school and paying twenty-five pounds a year for a schoolteacher. This was in keeping with the wishes of Pine Tree Chief and Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, who wanted Haudenosaunee children to acquire a Western-based education and be taught about the Christian faith. As a result, in 1786, with the help of funding from the Crown, the Anglican Church opened the first day school in the Mohawk Village; children attended the school during the day and returned home at night. Teachers at the school used items such as prayer books and school primers in the Mohawk language.30 The goal of leaders like Brant was the construction of more day schools. To that end, John Brant, the son of Joseph, visited England in 1822. While there, he approached the New England Company (NEC), an Anglican missionary group, to request a school and resident missionary for his community. The Company agreed to provide two hundred pounds for the school.31 Brant “was instrumental in focusing the attention of the New England Company on the Six Nations.”32
In keeping with its new plans for “civilizing” groups like the Six Nations, the British government supported the building of the day schools, endorsing the Church of England as the religious organization “most closely tuned to its official views.”33 The “Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America,” or the “New England Company,” as it would come to be known, was set up by an ordinance on 27 July 1649 and received a charter on 7 February 1662 from Charles II. The NEC was originally a Puritan missionary organization but later became an exclusively Anglican society.34 The Company’s missionaries assumed that the Indigenous groups such as the Six Nations would welcome their efforts; the seal of the NEC pictured an Indigenous person with the motto “Come Over and Help Us.” The Company’s 1662 charter explained that “we are resolved not only to seeke the outward welfare and prosperity of those colonies, by putting an industrious people into a way of trade and commerce, that they may be imployed and improved for their owne and the common benefitt of these our kingdoms; but more especially to endeavour the good and salvation of the most glorious gospel of Christ amongst them.”35 An extract from the 1874 correspondence of the NEC stressed the importance of their “civilization” focus, in keeping with government policy goals: “the first duty of the New England Company for more than 200 years has been, and still is, to civilize heathen natives in British North America. Their second duty is to christianize [sic] them.”36
The Company’s early efforts concentrated on the American colonies. After the American Revolution, however, the NEC moved to Sussex Vale, New Brunswick.37 In 1786, missionaries decided to place Indigenous children in the homes of English-speaking settlers so that they could be “instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, reading, writing and also some trade or business.”38 The settlers, though, used the children “only as a means of financial gain, cheap labor, and sexual indulgence.”39 In 1822, the Reverend Oliver Arnold claimed that the children “appeared to be scattered all over the country,”40 and by 1826 the Reverend John West asserted that “little or no good has accrued to the Natives from the Establishment at Sussex Vale. . . . Not an Individual is found to have settled upon Land on leaving his apprenticeship.”41 The plan had “utterly failed.”42
The Company speculated that perhaps a more “advanced” Indigenous community such as the Six Nations would accomplish more than had the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqey of Sussex Vale. The Six Nations were largely sedentary and they had an established system of government.43 In addition, some of the Six Nations had already received religious instruction before they moved to Grand River and thus were Protestants and had been members of the Church of England for many years.44 The Six Nations had also already encountered schooling while in the American colonies and had been exposed to reading and writing.45 Joseph Brant, for example, had attended “Moor’s School in Connecticut.”46 As a result, at Brant’s urging, the NEC decided to move to Upper Canada to minister to the Six Nations. Eager to expand, the Company continued to fund and build more day schools in the 1830s in the communities of the Oneida, the Tuscarora, and the Cayuga. By 1900 there would be twelve day schools at Grand River.47
The NEC also established mission stations (as they were known) on the banks of the Grand River, near Lake Erie; on the shores of the Bay of Quinte, northeast of Lake Ontario; and on the banks of the Garden River, near Sault Ste. Marie.48 Writing in 1826, the Reverend John West said one of the day schools created by Thomas Davis, a Mohawk chief, proved to be a huge success. He went on to say he spoke with an Indigenous farmer who “expressed a warm Interest in the Education of the children of his Tribe,” and said that “these Schools present[ed] every encouraging Prospect of further usefulness under the continued Patronage and Support of the Company.”49 West saw the Grand River station, home to over two thousand people (the Mohawks being the most numerous of the groups), as having great potential: “I beg leave respectfully to mention the importance should the Company have funds at their Disposal of having a Missionary resident at the Mohawk village. . . . I know not so promising a field of Missionary Labor or where the Labors of a liberal Enlightened Devoted Missionary would be found so efficient in benefitting a highly interesting, yet . . . neglected a portion of our fellow Men.”50
The NEC chose the Reverend W. Hough as the first resident missionary at Grand River. He was there only a few months, however, before the Reverend Robert Lugger took over the role of resident missionary.51 Lugger had some educational experience, having organized the National Negro School in Barbados in 1818, where he focused on the joining of education and evangelism. The NEC’s 1829 annual report described Lugger as “a gentleman whose moral and religious character and earnest desire to be engaged as a missionary, well qualified him to carry into effect the objects of the Company.”52
Opening of the Mohawk Institute
In 1828, the Reverend Abraham Nelles was appointed assistant missionary to Lugger and was tasked with overseeing the educational aspect of the Grand River mission. Lugger wanted to expand beyond the day schools, so the Company opted to open a Mechanics’ Institute near the Mohawk Chapel that consisted of a mechanics’ shop and four rooms, two for teaching girls to spin and weave, and two for instructing Indigenous boys in tailoring and carpentering.53 This building had originally been occupied by Nelles as his home.54 At first, the Institute operated as a day school for boys only, but by 1834 it opened “residential quarters” for ten boys and four girls from the Six Nations. Canada’s first residential school was now in operation. Government officials would come to support the Institute since they viewed removing students from their parents in a positive light as it meant less community influence. It also guaranteed a higher rate of attendance than at day schools:
The Day Schools are very inefficient for the purposes of education. In most cases there are no means of securing a regular attendance of the children at School. The abodes of the Indians are very scattered; the poverty and improvidence of the Indians in many instances so great that they are unable to provide suitable food and clothing to enable their children to attend regularly; the weather is often inclement, the roads bad, and parental restraint extremely lax. The only plan, therefore, to secure a systematical education, is to establish a Boarding School among them. The children should be removed to it at an early period from the injurious influence of their homes, and carefully and thoroughly reared in industrious and religious habits. By connecting a Farm with a School, the children might be usefully employed, and contribute much to defray the expenses of it.55
At schools like the Mechanics’ Institute, children would be able to learn trades in addition to traditional academic subjects. Officials believed that training the young students in trades, farming, and household duties would be more useful by far than “book knowledge” on its own and would be the ideal means to fashion “Christianized and civilized” people.
Prior to the creation of the Mechanics’ Institute, there were some models and attempts at boarding-type schooling, though not necessarily akin to what we today would consider a residential school. As early as the 1610s, French Récollets tried to school Innu children in their seminaries. Once they were replaced by the Jesuits, these efforts continued, always being somewhat short-lived. Female religious, such as the Augustinians and Ursulines, also boarded young girls. Though many of these children quickly left these schools, their legacy persisted into the eighteenth century.56 Developments were similar in the Thirteen Colonies, with the early histories of Harvard, William & Mary, and Dartmouth all following similar trajectories.
The concept of the residential school originated in the eighteenth century in what was to become the United States. John Sergeant, a clergyman, first suggested the notion of an industrial school in 1743. Sergeant died, however, before his plan of establishing a school took shape.57 The first industrial school in the United States would not open until 1804, when a Presbyterian missionary founded a school for Cherokee children, called a “manual labour residential school,” that was to give equal time to work and study.58 These schools were modelled upon “homes for vagrants, orphans and incorrigible children in Britain,” thus “an institution ostensibly designed to reform those with a predilection for crime . . . [was] chosen as the premier form of schooling for Indian children.”59 These spaces were “designed for disciplining the bodies of those perceived to be unproductive, shiftless, or sinful.”60 Driving the creation of schools for children “was the belief that Indigenous adults were too stubborn in their traditions for effective assimilation, making children the best targets for a more rapid transformation of Indigenous communities away from their cultural past toward a more Europeanized future.”61
Indigenous peoples, however, envisioned a different system of education than did the government and Indigenous missionaries. They wanted a school system that would teach their children to cope with the changing circumstances that imperilled their traditional ways. Most wanted to retain their separate status and the reserve system, and sought only the parts of the “civilizing” program that they felt would help them in some manner. They perceived the schools as more of a partnership between Indigenous peoples and church and state, and many believed that Indigenous communities would one day control their own education programs.62 As historian Douglas Leighton has explained, Indigenous groups such as the Six Nations were “active participants in the Indian-church relationship.”63 Indigenous missionaries such as Mississauga Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) sought financial and moral support for schools. In an 1831 letter to Viscount Goderich, the colonial secretary, Jones wrote, “I want to speak a few words about the Indian schools in Upper Canada. I hope you will help all the schools which good White people have established for the Indians. . . . We have great regard for our teachers.”64 A number of Indigenous peoples felt schools would teach their children the skills needed to be self-reliant. Euro-Canadians appeared to be prospering, so Indigenous peoples sought to learn the same skills, which apparently made them successful. In addition, administrators could help establish contacts between Euro-Canadians seeking employees and Indigenous peoples seeking work. Schools would also instruct children in the English language and arithmetic, which would facilitate business transactions and would ensure that non-Indigenous peoples did not deceive Indigenous peoples in business dealings. Chief Shawahnahness of St. Clair, for instance, claimed in 1833 that his people “agreed to have their children instructed that they might understand the weights and measures used by the white people, and that they may be able to write and keep accounts that the white men may not cheat them.”65 Finally, some Indigenous peoples believed that conversion to Christianity would end social problems such as alcoholism, which now plagued some of their communities.66 That said, their ability to respond and either support or resist the assimilationist plans of church and state varied over time.
While some community leaders initially backed the idea of schools, some Indigenous peoples responded rather apprehensively to the new Mechanics’ Institute at Six Nations. Just as English-speaking Canada lived in two universes, Protestant and Catholic, the Six Nations community contained Catholic, Protestant and Longhouse adherents, followers of traditional spiritual belief.67 Longhouse people were generally not supportive of schools, and a clear religious divide existed between Longhouse chiefs and Mohawk Anglican chiefs. In addition, the new Institute differed from the traditional education a child usually received. Indigenous children originally learned only the skills and knowledge that directly related to “the economic, social and cultural bases of their culture,” and they learned through observation rather than through formal instruction.68 Instead of being taught school concepts such as failure, Indigenous children traditionally were taught to be collaborators and to “act for others”—this was very different from what the school was teaching. The Anglican chiefs of the Six Nations, however, were hopeful about the new school. They backed the new Mechanics’ Institute and asked that two hundred acres of their land be set aside for the Mohawk Chapel and the Institute.69
Significant immigration in the 1820s meant more and more pressure on Indigenous lands. When the Reverend Robert Lugger arrived at Grand River, the Indigenous population was 2,233, and of the 355,000 acres remaining of the original tract government officials had allotted to Six Nations, less than 7,000 acres were under cultivation by Indigenous farmers.70 In 1830, 800 acres of Six Nations land was alienated for the establishment of the village of Brantford.71 In 1841, under protest, the Six Nations saw the Crown reduce their remaining lands of 220,000 acres to a mere 20,000-acre reserve plus the land under cultivation. After further reductions, the reserve would eventually total about 44,900 acres.72 The NEC argued against the land reduction, and afterward the Mohawk Institute grounds were the only lands still considered Six Nations land in addition to the condensed reserve. By 1847, a sufficient number of non-Indigenous settlers arrived to justify the village of Brantford’s incorporation into a town.73 Farmers composed the majority of these settlers. By 1851, Brant County became the most productive farming community in Ontario. More than 50 per cent of local farmland was improved by this time in Brant County, the “greatest extent of ‘farm progress’” in all of Ontario to that date. Net farm output for the county averaged over $350, yet net farm output for Six Nations farms during this period was less than $100.74
Early Years of the Mohawk Institute
In 1831, the Reverend Abraham Nelles took over school affairs, though he would not be made resident missionary for the New England Company for six more years. Nelles was born in Ontario, and his father and grandfather had been involved in the Indian Department in New York. He studied Iroquoian dialects as a student missionary. As he could speak Mohawk, he could communicate with the community in the Grand River.75 Throughout its history the school would go by various names, though “Mohawk Institute” would be the most commonly used term. The NEC stated its goals for the school as follows: “the instruction of a number of the youth of both sexes in the arts, habits, and customs of civilized life, who may hereafter act as instruments in the hands of the Company, for the complete civilization of the Indians generally.”76 The NEC reported that the Six Nations welcomed the school, and that “it is the wish of the most civilized amongst them that their offspring would receive the benefit of instruction.”77 Shortly thereafter, farming became the most important subject in which the children received instruction, but trades still remained an integral part of the curriculum. In 1836, in a report to the Company’s directors, Nelles made clear that that school was flourishing: “The progress of the children at the Institution he describes as very gratifying. They have been visited by many persons of respectability, some clergymen, who all expressed satisfaction and delight.” By 1837, there were eighteen children at the “Institution,” three of whom were day scholars.78 In 1838, Nelles reported on the addition of six girls to the school, who “seemed to be contented, and promised to profit by the instructions given them, as much as the boys.”79
When the government recommended in 1835 that the Haudenosaunee should move to the south side of the Grand River, the need for more residential places in the school increased; at the same time, NEC costs rapidly escalated from £750 to £4,000 per annum.80 Conditions at the school continued to be favourable throughout the 1830s, and at the end of 1838 enough equipment and buildings existed to accommodate thirty boys and ten girls. The school was considered a “model institute.” Besides being instructed in farming, the “older boys were trained as wagon-makers, blacksmiths and carpenters,” while the girls learned “housekeeping and the arts of needlework, spinning and knitting.”81 In 1838 the Institute hired shoemaking and wheelwrighting teachers. Nelles recommended an increase in the number of children at the Institute as “he regard[ed it] . . . as the most useful part of the Company’s establishment.”82 In the 1840s, graduates of the Institute began settling on small farms near the school, and in 1842 the NEC gave a grant of ten pounds to provide graduates with tools and materials. Nelles wrote in 1844 that he was worried, however, as most graduates returned to the reserve after completing their education and reverted back to their older practices.83
In these early years of the Mohawk Institute, government officials monitored the school and the general condition of Indigenous peoples. In 1842, Sir Charles Bagot, the governor general, was tasked with studying the Indian Department and Indigenous peoples in general. The Bagot Commission claimed that policy for Indigenous peoples lacked direction and argued that the approach that the Mohawk Institute was taking—removing children from their parents and sending them to school to learn farming and trades—was the desirable path forward. Rather than spending money on treaty payments, the commission’s report said that the government should fund manual labour schools.84 Shortly after, at the 1846 General Council at the Narrows of Lake Simcoe (present-day Orillia, Ontario), a number of the chiefs who gathered agreed that industrial schools for Indigenous children seemed to be the way of the future. To place Indigenous peoples “on the same ground as the white man,”85 chiefs promised to support the erection of schools by giving one-quarter of their annuities for the next twenty-five years.86 A government report in the year that the council took place indicated that over fifty children were on a waiting list for the Mohawk Institute.87 In these early years, the Mohawk Institute drew its student body from Six Nations, with many Christian chiefs and families in the community eagerly sending their own children to the school.88
The popularity of the Mohawk Institute in particular stemmed in part from Nelles’s ability to recognize what the Christian Six Nations desired; indeed, he is remembered as being “well-liked by both the students and the Six Nations community.”89 Nelles permitted the students to speak Indigenous languages at all times, “except while lessons were being conducted.”90 Nelles was also concerned about how the Six Nations were reacting to the Institute. For example, in 1847, when Egerton Ryerson, then superintendent of education in Canada West, recommended that more time should be spent on manual labour,91 Nelles refused to make changes and retained the Mohawk Institute’s system of one half day of instruction and one half day of labour as he knew that people from Six Nations would resist having students spend more time on work.
A Model Institute
In his 1847 Report by Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools, Ryerson made clear that he believed that schools such as the Mohawk Institute were intended to “give a plain English education adopted to the working farmer and mechanic.”92 Ryerson had visited an agricultural school for the poor in Hofwyl, Switzerland, that inspired much of his thinking. He believed there should be schools for Indigenous peoples that were intended to produce labourers, not professionals. Ryerson praised the Mohawk Institute and recommended that “a general education should be provided for the Indian youths . . . similar to the New England Company’s Establishment.” He also recommended that such schools be the joint enterprise of church and state, and again emphasized that during most of the school year the “time occupied in labour should be from 8 to 12 hours a day . . . and instruction from 2 to 4 hours . . . [and] in the autumn, it may, perhaps, be well to omit instruction altogether.”93 He further suggested that schools such as the Mohawk Institute should be called “industrial schools” rather than “manual labour schools.” Ryerson insisted that students must reside together at these schools and that the schools had to be connected to the churches: “the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings.”94 Ryerson suggested that the day-to-day management of the schools be left with the churches, while the government would provide financial support. At this point, however, the NEC continued to financially support the Mohawk Institute.
Interest in schools and the “civilization” program remained strong and the Mohawk Institute became “a model of sorts” for other institutions.95 In 1847, the chief superintendent of Indian Affairs was equally positive about the Mohawk Institute:
I am of the opinion that a general Education should be provided for the Indian youths, both male and female, on a uniform system, something similar to the New England Company’s Establishment [i.e., the Mohawk Institute; emphasis added]. The children should reside at the Establishment, and be placed under the constant supervision of a competent and attached Tutor, who should pay to their habits the same attention as to their minds. The course of Education should consist of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and religious instruction under the superintendence of the Minister of the church to which they belong; they should also be in-structed in such mechanical arts as they display an aptitude to acquire, and in the theory and practice of husbandry; the more talented should be encouraged, by a more liberal education, to enter into Holy Orders, and become the resident Ministers among their Tribe. The girls, besides a similar elementary Education, should be instructed in such useful acquirements as are possessed by white people of the inferior class. The proceeds of their labours, as well as of the boys, in the mechanical arts, might be profitably disposed of in the neighbouring towns and surrounding country. This constant employment of their intellectual and bodily faculties, will alone reserve the Indians from extinction, and elevate their condition.96
After the opening of the Mohawk Institute, the first of these new schools was the Alnwick or Alderville Industrial School built in 1848 by Methodists. Shortly after, in 1851, Methodists opened the Mount Elgin Industrial School on the reserve belonging to the Chippewas of the Thames.97 Unlike the situation with the NEC, which was still covering the costs for the Mohawk Institute, this time the government entered a financial partnership with the Methodist missionaries. The church was to be placed “in charge of the Industrial schools and responsible for providing books, supplies, and teachers’ salaries. The missionaries also supplied farm stock and farm equipment for the attached model farms. For its part, the Indian Department agreed to maintain the school buildings and provide an annual per capita subsidy to defer food, clothing, and general education expenses.”98 Despite the government’s faith in the “civilization” plan, both the Alderville and the Mount Elgin schools experienced troubles such as mismanagement and a lack of funding and student interest. In 1858 a government investigation recommended that both schools be closed.99 The Methodists ignored this recommendation, but in 1859 the Alnwick school merged with the Mount Elgin school.100 By 1862 administrators were forced to close the Mount Elgin school for a time to assess the various difficulties it was experiencing, though it would reopen and remain in operation until 1946.101 Mary Jane McCallum’s study of the Mount Elgin Industrial School provides us with a detailed look at the impact of a lack of funding on students, who were forced to work instead of going to school to offset the costs of running the schools.102 School officials spent as little as they were able on food and care for the students, which meant that “poor nutrition, overexertion, stress, and unsafe conditions made students at Mount Elgin especially vulnerable to getting ill, and when they did, principals often delayed seeking medical advice and intervention to save money.”103
The 1850s and ’60s: Challenges and Possible Arson
While students at the Mohawk Institute faced similar conditions, by 1853 there were forty adults, “practically all graduates” of the Institute, who were following trades and farming and living near the school. By that time, the New England Company decided that since “the Mohawk Institute was meeting with so much more success than the day schools, that especial attention should be devoted to its activities.”104 Still, the day schools continued to serve an important role in the community, and Six Nations was home to more day schools than any other Indigenous nation in Ontario. In 1857, the government chose to pass the Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in the Province, and to Amend the Laws Respecting Indians. In addition to new powers for the Indian Department such as control of reserve lands, the act focused on enfranchisement (terminating Indian status). At this time, Richard T. Pennefather, the civil secretary, wrote a report that recommended that the government’s focus should be on education and that Canada should take over the control of Indian affairs in Canada from the British; this happened in 1860. To facilitate the success of the schools, a new system of agents was created to supervise the industrial schools, as they had come to be known.
Despite these government studies, in 1858 the Mohawk Institute burned to the ground, either by accident or, as some assumed, by arson. Undeterred, the NEC ignored these concerns and decided to rebuild the Institute after the fire. The new yellow-brick school opened in 1862. Much bigger than the first school, the new multi-storey building could hold approximately sixty students, though additions not long after meant it could hold ninety students—forty-five boys and forty-five girls.105 The new school was built on a ten-acre parcel of land a few hundred yards from the Mohawk Chapel that had been purchased by the NEC from individual members of Six Nations.106 Unlike many other residential schools, the school was just over a mile away from the nearest city (Brantford), and only seven miles from the Grand River Reserve, today commonly referred to as Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.
Conditions at the Institute appear to have improved in the 1860s. The Prince of Wales visited the Mohawk Institute in 1860 and H. J. Lister, sent by the NEC in 1868 to report on the school, described it as “very well managed.”107 By the middle of the 1860s the Mohawk Institute was the only technical education institution that had achieved its intended results.108 During this period, Isaac Barefoot, an Onondaga member from Six Nations and a graduate of the Mohawk Institute, became the first Indigenous person appointed as a teacher at the school. He had trained to be a teacher at Egerton Ryerson’s Toronto Normal School and eventually became a priest at Huron College in London, Ontario.109 Several other graduates from the Institute excelled during this period as well. Three boys were sent to the Grammar School in Brantford, and three girls and two boys were sent to Hellmuth College in London, Ontario.110 This development of Indigenous teachers and clergy was not outside the professed goals of church and state policies for Indigenous peoples. Such activities enhanced the influence of the Institute among its target population without changing the general goal of training the masses for labouring jobs. The NEC hired several more Indigenous teachers to work at the schools, and by the 1880s seven of the eight teachers at the day schools were Haudenosaunee.111
For a variety of reasons, the main one financial, the NEC made the decision in 1864 to pull back from trades instruction at the Mohawk Institute and concentrate mainly on farming. To facilitate this, the Company purchased what was known as the Babcock Lot, roughly thirty-three acres located between the Institute and the town of Brantford. The hope was that instructing the students on this land would lead to more students deciding to farm after they graduated from the school.
A few years later, the 1867 British North America Act not only officially made Canada a country but also transferred authority over Indigenous peoples to the federal government under section 91(24). The portfolio of Indian Affairs now fell under the guidance of the secretary of the state, who became the superintendent general of Indian Affairs. Administrators opted to retain much of the earlier colonial legislation, including the plan to use schools to “civilize” Indigenous peoples.
Shortly after, in 1869, the Canadian government passed the Enfranchisement Act. The act stated that the governor-in-council could remove from band council membership lists those who he felt were unqualified or unfit to hold office, and even minor bylaws were to be approved by the superintendent general of Indian Affairs. The goal was for Indigenous groups to give up traditional forms of government in favour of a top-down, centralized form of government.112 While elected councils were supposed to be required under this legislation, the Six Nations kept their hereditary council until 1924, the last Indigenous community in Canada to do so.
The 1870s: Changes at the Institute and the Expansion of the School System
In 1870, an addition was added to the Mohawk Institute’s main building, and a few years later additional spaces for staff were also built, as was a new principal’s residence. These additions were financed by the NEC.113 In 1872, when the Reverend Abraham Nelles retired as the Institute’s principal, the Company named the Reverend Robert Ashton as his replacement. Ashton was English and had worked as a schoolmaster in England prior to moving to Brantford in 1872 after being hired by the NEC to manage the Mohawk Institute. Rather than finding a school in great shape, as Nelles had claimed, Ashton claimed to discover errors in Nelles’s bookkeeping. He also reported other problems at the school such as a lack of proper bathing facilities for the children, and that numerous land claims problems existed. The NEC responded with surprise and wrote to Ashton that “it is quite amazing to the Committee that such a state of affairs as you describe should have been permitted by your predecessor.”114
Ashton’s discovery of Nelles’s shortcomings can be interpreted in a number of ways. Ashton may simply have been promoting himself by discrediting his predecessor, a common enough tactic among rival professionals, but Ashton’s insistence on more meticulous bookkeeping and management of the school is also reflective of a growing paternalism in government and Institute policy. This paternalism stemmed from population growth and economic development of the larger non-Indigenous society. Non-Indigenous people began filling the majority of the farm-labouring positions that Indigenous peoples had earlier held, and the growth of racism meant most graduates were not able to find off-reserve wage employment. The rise in paternalistic social control meant an increasing separation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous objectives for the Institute. There were fewer and fewer reasons for the Six Nations community to send their children to the school, especially since the number of day schools was increasing.
This situation was compounded by Ashton’s management approach, which was far stricter and more paternalistic than Nelles’s. He chose to remodel the Institute after British reformatory schools.115 Ashton believed the children at the Institute were lazy and poorly disciplined and thus needed to be reformed, and students describe his appointment as the beginning of a “reign of terror.”116 At first, the NEC approved of Ashton’s methods, writing to tell him in 1873 that “the Committee approves of your proceedings generally.”117 Ashton was keen to make the school more aesthetically pleasing and took on projects such as creating a lawn and planting trees and shrubs in front of the Institute; seeing this, the public and others would be less concerned about what went on behind the bricks of the Mohawk Institute. Ashton also enacted new measures to “prevent communication between the boys and girls in the Institution,” and required parents to provide a doctor’s note before a student could be removed from the school due to illness.118 In addition, Ashton sent out a letter to the parents of all of the students informing them of the school’s attendance policies.”119 Ashton decreed that only English, and no Indigenous languages, be spoken at the Mohawk Institute, and he used student monitors to enforce this rule. All of these actions were indicative of a growing control that the Six Nations increasingly resisted.
In keeping with the rise of paternalistic sentiments, the Reverend Robert Ashton’s letters to the NEC seldom mentioned specific children and instead focused on school policies and the school buildings. For example, Ashton obtained a new laundry, bathroom, and bathhouse for the Institute.120 Ashton also proudly informed the Company that the male students undertook all of the ploughing and seeding on the farm.121 Government officials encouraged Ashton to have parents sign forms promising they would not interfere with their children for five years, but Ashton claimed such actions would be difficult since many parents already complained about the quality of education received by their children.122
The Six Nations resisted the growing paternalistic social control of the Anglican Church and state officials, and as a result, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council of Chiefs tried to take over control of the schools on the reserve. The Council failed in this attempt, but the NEC agreed in 1878 to the creation of a school board composed of the Indian superintendent, three Six Nations representatives who would be elected by the Council, and three officers of the NEC.123 The Company said that this arrangement was to eventually lead to Six Nations taking over control of the day schools on the reserve.124 The creation of such a board was rather unique and a significant step for the NEC, which was accustomed to having sole control over school matters, and well into the twentieth century (the school board existed until 1933) the board was the only one of its kind in all of Canada.125 The Six Nations agreed to provide an annual grant of £1,500 for schools.126 They said that it would be “a step in the wrong direction” for the NEC to give up its management of the Mohawk Institute.127
At this time, the Canadian government established the Indian Affairs Branch as part of the Department of the Interior (in 1873), and in 1876 the government passed the infamous Indian Act. This document consolidated previous legislation and would have an impact on virtually every aspect of the lives of Indigenous peoples in Canada.128 In 1879, Nicholas Flood Davin, a Regina newspaper editor and the member of Parliament for Assiniboia West, was sent by the federal government to study the American system of industrial schools. Davin delivered his findings in his Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds (1879). Based primarily on his research in the United States, Davin recommended building institutions similar to the Mohawk Institute in Western Canada despite disappointing results at most of the schools in Eastern Canada.129 Davin did not sympathize with the challenges facing Indigenous peoples, and he professed, of the average Indigenous person, that “little can be done with him. He can be taught to do a little at farming, and at stock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized manner, but that is all.”130 Under this new plan, only the Qu’Appelle and Battleford schools in Saskatchewan and the High River or Dunbow school in Alberta were to be constructed. Shortly after, however, a number of industrial institutions appeared, and the 1890s witnessed the “heyday” of this type of school. At its peak, the industrial school system numbered in the twenties. Schools in Ontario, such as the Mohawk Institute, “served as models for [this] later development in western and northern Canada.”131 Given the negative reactions by this time to the schools in Ontario, administrators should have seriously reconsidered their decision to expand the system across the country. Had they done so, a great deal of harm could have been prevented.
The End of the Nineteenth Century and Changes to the Mohawk Institute
This apparent confidence in the industrial school system must be closely examined. The Mohawk Institute cannot be deemed a “success” as a major shift took place whereby the administrators began to focus on enrolling orphans and destitute children who formed the majority of students by the 1890s. The school principal became their legal guardian, and more rigid disciplinary systems were put in place. As time passed, Six Nations students attended the Institute only long enough to acquire the skills they needed to farm, or until they were able to find someone willing to adopt them. Some families, at their own expense, sent their children to Caledonia or Brantford to be educated. Many parents felt the administrators at the school overworked their children. Destitution became the prime motive for sending children to the Institute, and more and more children came from bands other than the Six Nations. By 1878, of the ninety students at the Institute, half came “from Indian Bands outside of the Six Nations.”132
An agricultural depression in England forced the NEC in 1882 to reduce its grant to the school from £1,500 to £1,000.133 In response, in 1885, the Indian Department gave its first grants to the Institute to protect it from the threat of closure, but management of the school was largely left under the auspices of the NEC. That year, J. Kelly, who was sent by the government to inspect the Mohawk Institute, claimed that the school possessed ample academic supplies such as globes, a chemical cabinet, two hundred books, and various periodicals. Kelly felt “the whole farm . . . present[ed] a park-like appearance and [was] very attractive.”134 Likewise, in 1885 visiting Superintendent and Commissioner J. T. Gilkison offered a very positive description of the school: “the extensive grounds in front of the Institute are much improved and beautified, rendering the place pleasing, attractive, and a most comfortable home for its fortunate inmates.”135 Clearly, he did not look too deeply into what was transpiring behind the bricks of the school, assuming instead that if the outside of the school looked wonderful, the inner workings must be equally positive.
Despite the federal government’s faith in industrial schools, Principal Ashton was becoming increasingly frustrated with resistance to his efforts at the school and recommended that if students left the Institute, they should not be permitted to attend another school. Ashton said most students left “before the completion of their second year” and before they “derived much lasting advantage from the course of training provided.” He thus sought “regulations as would permit pupils being admitted under a written agreement to remain [for] specified periods.”136 While demand for admission to the Mohawk Institute remained high, “far exceeding the accommodation that the building is capable of affording,” it was still not completely meeting expectations.137 Hayter Reed, the deputy superintendent general, visited the Mohawk Institute in 1889. He objected to the amount of time the children spent in classrooms and said they should spend even more time engaged in labour, “unless it be intended to train children to earn their bread by brain-work rather than by manual labour.” Reed also disliked that some of the children spent summer vacation time at home on the reserve.138
By 1891, a larger government grant (now sixty dollars per student) meant that Indian Affairs would henceforth pay “the major portion of current expenses and . . . shared the responsibility for the conduct of the school.”139 The grant covered the majority of costs and the NEC agreed to make up the difference and maintain the property. Once again, trades instruction was reduced even further. The NEC in 1893 used the newly acquired funds to add a new wing to the school, which allowed it to increase the number of students at the school to 120.140 The majority of these new students, however, were destitute or orphans who Ashton feared would lower the standards of the Institute even further. He emphasized that “the general standard of attainments is and will be lowered for a time owing to the admission of orphans and neglected children, who are generally quite ignorant on admission.”141 Ashton explained that at this time there were two “classes” of children—the children whose parents sent them to the Institute so that they would have access to higher education, and the orphaned and destitute children who began to attend in higher numbers.142
In an effort to gain control of the students, Principal Ashton decided to give “good conduct badges” to deserving pupils once a month.143 The badges consisted of a small star and were to be worn on the left breast. A first badge entitled the student to one month with no corporal punishment and meant they could go out without a monitor. Two badges entitled a boy to go out on half-holidays and a girl to go on a walk to Brantford once a fortnight. Three badges earned a reward of two cents per week, four paid three cents per week, and so on, up to five cents per week. Once two “bad” reports were received in one month, a badge would have to be forfeited. Each additional bad report would mean the loss of another badge. Crimes such as “theft, absconding, direct insubordination or gross breach of discipline” meant the loss of all badges. A student who received more than four offences in one month would be put on a “black list.”144 Boys on this list were forced to wear a black strap over their left shoulder and girls had to wear a black apron.145
Discipline at the school was strict and was enforced by monitors. For example, children were locked in their dormitories at night and a “punishment room” existed, which was six feet by ten feet and “only lighted by a barred fanlight over the door.” Ashton felt that this form of discipline had “a most salutary effect” and that “examples [had] to be made and punishment resorted to.” Unruly students were also forced to participate in “Sentry Go,” which consisted of a “solitary march around a well beaten square” during playtime.146 It was said that Principal Ashton could “train an Indian child ‘to work whether he likes work or no.’”147 Besides the punishment room, Ashton had students dig pits behind the school to serve as cells for those who misbehaved, and he resorted to the use of solitary confinement with bread and water as the only source of nourishment.148
In many ways the school mimicked a military-type establishment. In fact, the students were actually arranged into military squads.149 Regimentation carried over into all aspects of life at the Institute. Bells were rung to inform children what activities they should be engaging in, and when the bell rang for supper, for example, all the students washed and then fell into “their proper places and march[ed] to the dining room,” where they sat in “squads.” Even the clothing of the children was intended to look like military uniforms: “[The boys] wear a neat dark grey uniform, blouse and trousers, with a black strip and glengarry cap, and with polished boots and neatly brushed hair they looked very smart and carried themselves like veterans.”150 Each student’s clothing was marked with the number they had received when they arrived at the Institute.151 Even the bathing towels were stamped with each student’s number. Baths at the school were really quite degrading for the boys since once a week they were all gathered in a large basin and sprayed down. Sleeping arrangements were also very regimented and crowded. Forty-one girls slept in a room sixty by thirty-five feet and fifty-three boys slept in a room fifty by thirty-five feet.152
Disillusionment with Industrial Schools Like the Mohawk Institute
In 1894, to ensure children attended schools such as the Mohawk Institute, the federal government passed the first legislation regarding school attendance. Residential school attendance was voluntary unless an Indian agent or justice of the peace believed a child was not being properly cared for or re-educated. In these cases, children could be committed to schools such as the Mohawk Institute. According to the new regulations, truant students could be arrested and their parents fined (maximum two dollars) or imprisoned for ten days. Force could be used if necessary to keep children in custody, and the government was to appoint truant officers who were given the right to search homes for missing students.153 Hayter Reed, deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs, explained that, “in the past, no small amount of difficulty has been experienced in getting Indian parents to consent to leave their children in these institutions for terms sufficiently long to enable them to receive permanent benefit.”154 Less than half of Indigenous children attended schools of any sort in 1900.155 Ashton explained that most of the applications to the Mohawk Institute now came from female students, which he saw as somewhat positive since previously parents “would not readily allow their girls away from home.”156 Church and state administrators encouraged female students to attend the Institute since they believed that Indigenous women would have a greater influence than Indigenous men on future generations of children:
A boy leaves the school, returns to the Reserve, marries an Indian girl who has not had similar advantages and the result is he reverts to the Indian language, habits and customs and his children are Indians pure and simple. While a girl who has been thoroughly trained returns to her people, takes pride in her cooking and house-hold duties, and when she marries and has a family, her children are taught to speak English and are brought up to follow her habits of civilization. The man may be the breadwinner but the woman is the civilizer.157
By the beginning of the 1900s, continued immigration brought with it increasingly racist sentiments about Indigenous peoples. These immigrants, rather than graduates of residential schools, filled manual labour positions. By this time, the population of Indigenous peoples had dwindled to just 1.5 per cent of the population of Canada.158 Schools such as the Mohawk Institute were proving to be expensive, there was discontent from both parents and students, and religious groups such as the NEC were becoming less and less keen to finance the schools. Parents were also increasingly disillusioned with the “education” their children received. To help finance the Institute, farming and gardening operations had to be expanded during the late 1890s, with the result that academic subjects faded farther into the background. In 1899 Ashton reported that “farming and gardening form the principal occupation of the boys.”159
By this time, the high cost of running industrial schools was becoming increasingly obvious. In 1896, for example, the average yearly cost of a student’s attendance at an industrial school like the Mohawk Institute was $132.18, while the average cost at boarding schools, where trades were not the focus, was just $81.27.160 Anxious to reduce these costs, Clifford Sifton, the superintendent general of Indian Affairs, asked school inspector Martin Benson to launch a larger investigation to determine the value of industrial schools such as the Mohawk Institute. Benson’s inquiry revealed that few officials had ever visited the schools or seriously considered the work being done there. He cited other issues such as poor-quality teaching and lack of farmland and said that departmental funds were being squandered: “I consider it a waste of time and money to force a trade on a boy who is not likely to make a success of the opportunities afforded to him. . . . What opening is there for printers, shoemakers, tailors and several other trades that are now taught at a loss of time, wages and materials at some of the schools?”161 Frank Oliver, a member of Parliament and future superintendent general of Indian Affairs, went on to say that the graduates of schools like the Mohawk Institute were potentially an economic threat: “The position is this—that we are educating these Indians to compete industrially with our people, which seems to me to be a very undesirable use of public money, or else we are not able to educate them to compete, in which case our money is thrown away.”162
In 1898, due to a lack of funds, the NEC was forced to terminate its grant to the Six Nations day schools. The Company, however, decided to retain the Mohawk Institute. To compensate for the lack of funding, the Institute forced children to spend more time on farm and garden work rather than learning trades or going to class.163 The Six Nations believed they were doing a better job of running day schools than were the government and churches, and thus sought control of all the schools, especially since they were largely financing them. The Indian Department refused this request.164
“Utterly Destroyed” by Fire
On 19 April 1903, student discontent with the situation at the Institute culminated in the school’s destruction by fire. The following day’s edition of The Toronto World newspaper described the incident in the following terms: “The fire originated in the dormitory on the third storey shortly after 10 o’clock, where the 130 students in attendance were asleep. There was much confusion when the alarm was sounded, but fortunately the building was cleared before anyone was injured. The flames spread with great speed, and by midnight every department in the building had been utterly destroyed.”165 Principal Robert Ashton reported that “the institute, laundry and dairy were totally destroyed by fire on April 19 last; the farm buildings were burnt down on May 7, and the boys’ play-house where the lads were temporarily housed was destroyed on June 21, the boys being accountable for the three fires.”166
The question was whether to rebuild. The Mohawk Institute had now been burned to the ground twice—once in 1858 (possibly through arson) and again in 1903 (confirmed arson). A clearer message could not be sent—the school was not what the Six Nations wanted or imagined. Rather than a school to empower the Six Nations, the Institute now housed mainly orphans and destitute children. Likewise, what church and state administrators thought would be an inexpensive solution to the “Indian problem” instead became a costly enterprise that was failing to meet their shared goal of assimilating the Six Nations. By the time of the fire, the school had been running for seventy years. During that period, church and state administrators and the Six Nations had very different visions for the Mohawk Institute. Based on students’ largely negative experiences at such schools, government and church officials should have abandoned their assimilationist agenda of “Christianizing and civilizing” Indigenous peoples. Instead, they ramped up construction of institutions such as the Mohawk Institute across the rest of Canada. It seemed that church and state administrators were either unwilling to formulate another plan. Their faith in the Mohawk Institute remained steadfast as well. Virtually everything was lost in the fire, and since insurance was not sufficient to cover the costs of rebuilding, the Indian Department provided a grant to finance reconstruction. As chapter 2 details, the Institute would rise from the flames once again.
Notes
I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for providing financial support for this research, and George Emery, professor emeritus at Western University, for supervising my 1993 master’s thesis on the Mohawk Institute, which sparked my interest in the history of residential schools. Since that time, as a result of the bravery of former students sharing their stories, and reports such as that from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, our knowledge of the “truth” of the residential school system has been greatly expanded. As a settler scholar, I am thankful for those who have challenged long-held views of Canadian history that have told only the history of those who have benefited from settler colonialism. It is my hope that works such as this one contribute to our collective knowledge and move us toward reconciliation.
1 The title of this chapter comes from H. C. Darling’s report from 1828, in which he recommended the creation of a system of education for Indigenous peoples in Canada so that they would “shake off the rude habits of savage life.” See British Parliamentary Papers, “H. C. Darling Report upon the Indian Department,” in Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers, vol. 3, Anthropology: Aborigines (Irish University Press, 1968), 24 July 1828.
2 Senator Murray Sinclair in Dave Rideout, “Chancellor Murray Sinclair Shares Thoughts on National ay for Truth and Reconciliation,” Queen’s Gazette, 29 September 2021, https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/chancellor-murray-sinclair-shares-thoughts-ahead-national-day-truth-and-reconciliation.
3 Senator Murray Sinclair, “Keeping Reconciliation at the Forefront,” Queen’s Gazette, 12 September 2019, https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/keeping-reconciliation-forefront.
4 Residential schools have been described in various ways over time, though most today use the term “residential school.” It was not until the 1920s that the term “residential schools” was utilized. This chapter uses the terms “mechanics’ institute,” “manual labour school,” “industrial school,” and “residential school” interchangeably, though, as I demonstrate, historically there were some differences between these types of schools. Boarding schools were seen as separate from industrial schools until 1923.
5 C. Urion, “Introduction: The Experience of Indian Residential Schooling,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 18 (Suppl. 1991): i.
6 Alison Norman, “The History of Education at Six Nations of the Grand River, 1828–1939,” in Ontario Since Confederation: A Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Lori Chambers, Edgar-Andre Montigny, James Onusko, and Dimitry Anastakis (University of Toronto Press, 2024), 90.
7 See important foundational works on the fur trade such as Arthur J. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870 (University of Toronto Press, 1998); Jennifer S. H. Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (University of British Columbia Press, 1980); and Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz, Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600–1870 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983).
8 See Communications Branch, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Indian Affairs and Northern Development 1755–1986 (Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1986), for a detailed list of the managers responsible for Indigenous affairs in Canada.
9 See Rick Monture, We Share Our Matters: Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of the Grand River (University of Manitoba Press, 2024); Michelle Filice, “Haldimand Proclamation,” Canadian Encyclopedia, last modified 10 November 2020, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/haldimand-proclamation .
10 John Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry into Indian Affairs in the Canadas, 1828–1858 (Treaties and Historical Research Centre Research Branch, Corporate Policy, Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 1985), 1.
11 During the period 1815 to 1851, the population of Upper Canada increased from 95,000 to over 950,000. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, vol. 1, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2, 1939 to 2000 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 56.
12 See Noel Dyck, What Is the Indian “Problem”: Tutelage and Resistance in Canadian Indian Administration (Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1991).
13 See British Parliamentary Papers, “H. C. Darling Report,” 29.
14 See Canada, “Report on the Affairs of the Indians of Canada,” Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, appendix T, sec. III, pt. I, 24 June 1847, 1.
15 John Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry, 2.
16 See 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 / Revue d d’études canadiennes 39, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 115–38. Binnema and Hutchings argue that Bond used “Romantic notions that exalted primitivism and the ‘noble savage’ to justify this plan,” and while it seemed like this may have been a benevolent approach, removing Indigenous people from their land was also his goal (see pp. 115 and 134).
17 See British Parliamentary Papers, “Instructions Addressed to the Governors of Upper and Lower Canada from Lord Glenelg,” in Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers, 3:21 April 1836.
18 For a discussion of Canada’s early policies toward Indigenous peoples, see 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 (University of Toronto Press, 1991), 127–44.
19 Canada, 37th Parl., 1st Sess., Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources, meeting 43, presentation by John Leslie, research consultant, 12 March 2002.
20 British Parliamentary Papers, “Despatch from Sir James Kempt to Sir George Murray,” in Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers, 3:15 December 1829.
21 J. R. Miller, “The Irony of Residential Schooling,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 14, no. 2 (1987): 5.
22 Quoted in Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men and Its Work (Church Missionary Society, 1899), 1:2–3.
23 E. Brian Titley, “Indian Industrial Schools in Western Canada,” in Schools in the West: Essays in Canadian Education, ed. Nancy Sheehan, Donald Wilson, and David Jones (Detselig Enterprises, 1986), 133.
24 Adam J. Barker, “Locating Settler Colonialism,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13, no. 3 (Winter 2012), https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cch.2012.0035. For a basic overview of settler colonialism, see Adam Barker and Emma Battell Lowman, “Settler Colonialism,” Global Social Theory, accessed 1 July 2024, https://globalsocialtheory.org/concepts/settler-colonialism/ .
25 See Linda Tuhiwai Smith, K. Wayne Yang, and Eve Tuck, eds., Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View (Routledge, 2019).
26 Barker and Lowman, “Settler Colonialism.”
27 Thomas Peace, The Slow Rush of Colonization: Spaces of Power in the Maritime Peninsula, 1680–1790 (UBC Press, 2023), chap. 10.
28 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, vol. 1, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1, Origins to 1939 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 63.
29 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Final Report, vol. 1, pt. 1:3.
30 Norman, “The History of Education at Six Nations of the Grand River,” 92.
31 Norman, 92.
32 Duncan C. Scott, deputy superintendent general of Indian affairs, 18 December 1930, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31 1930 (F. A. Ackland, 1931), 15.
33 James Douglas Leighton, “The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada, 1840–1890,” (PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 1975), 53. See also the charter for the New England Company, 7 February 1662, File 7825-1B, Vol. 200, Record Group 10 [hereafter RG 10], Library and Archives Canada [hereafter LAC].
34 John Webster Grant, Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Canada in Encounter Since 1534 (University of Toronto Press, 1984), 72.
35 Charter for the New England Company, 7 February 1662, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
36 Correspondence, 1874, File 7928-1, B 3, Manuscript Group 17 [hereafter MG 17], New England Company Records [hereafter NEC], LAC.
37 See chapter 10 by Thomas Peace for more information about the New England Company and Sussex Vale.
38 Report by Robert Ashton, 12 March 1882, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
39 J. W. Chalmers, Education Behind the Buckskin Curtain: A History of Indian Education in Canada (University of Alberta, 1972), 42. See also Judith Fingard, “The New England Company and the New Brunswick Indians, 1786–1826: A Comment on the Colonial Perversion of British Benevolence,” Acadiensis 1 (Spring 1972): 29–42.
40 Report by Reverend Oliver Arnold, 25 September 1822, File 7928-1, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
41 Report by Reverend John West, 20 September 1826, File 7930, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
42 Report by Lieutenant Governor Howard Douglas, 13 December 1824, File 7930, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
43 The history of the Grand River Haudenosaunee is explored in more detail in Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (University of Manitoba Press, 2017).
44 Charles M. Johnston, “To the Mohawk Station: The Making of a New England Company Missionary—the Rev. Robert Lugger,” in Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies, ed. Michael K. Foster, Jack Campisi, and Marianee Mithun (State University of New York Press, 1984), 69.
45 Woodland Indian Cultural Educational Centre, School Days (Woodland Indian Cultural Educational Centre, 1984), 29.
46 Margaret Connell Szasz, Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607–1783 (University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 240.
47 Norman, “The History of Education at Six Nations of the Grand River,” 92.
48 Finding aid of the New England Company Manuscripts, B3, MG 17, Reference Room, LAC.
49 John West, 20 September 1826, File 7970, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
50 Report by Reverend John West, 20 September 1826, File 7970, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
51 New England Company Sub-Committee, September 1877, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
52 New England Company, Annual Report, 1839, in John L. Duncan, “Church of England Missions Among the Indians in the Diocese of Huron to 1850” (master’s thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1936), 12.
53 Agreement of New England Company with R. Ashton, 1872, File 7966, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
54 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 American, and the West Indies, Since the Last Report in 1832 (J. Master, 1840), 6.
55 See Canada, “Report on the Affairs of the Indians of Canada” (pp. 3–4 of the document).
56 Thomas Peace, “Borderlands, Primary Sources, and the Longue Durée: Contextualizing Colonial Schooling at Odanak, Lorette, and Kahnawake, 1600–1850,” Historical Studies in Education / Revue d’histoire De l’éducation 29, no. 1 (2017), https://doi.org/10.32316/hse/rhe.v29i1.4498.
57 See Robert F. Berkhofer, “Model Zions for the American Indian,” American Quarterly 15, no. 2, pt. 1 (Summer 1963): 176–90.
58 Joan Scott-Brown, “The Short Life of St. Dunstan’s Calgary Industrial School, 1896–1907,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 14, no. 1 (1987): 41.
59 Titley, “Indian Industrial Schools in Western Canada,” 133.
60 Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (University of Manitoba Press, 2015), 51.
61 Woolford, 63.
62 See 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 (Canada Gazette Office, 1846).
63 Douglas Leighton, “The Ethnohistory of Missions in Southwestern Ontario,” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 26 (October 1984): 56.
64 British Parliamentary Papers, “Peter Jones to Viscount Goderich,” in Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers, 3:26 July 1831.
65 Chief Shawahnahness in Elizabeth Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary: Missionaries as Agents of Change Among the Indians of Southern Ontario, 1784–1867 (Peter Martin, 1975), 73.
66 For further discussion regarding why Indigenous communities chose to convert and support schools, see Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians (University of Toronto Press, 1987), 73.
67 For a further discussion of this split in the community, refer to Sally Weaver, “The Iroquois: The Consolidation of the Grand River Reserve in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1847–1875,” and Weaver, “The Iroquois: The Grand River Reserve in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 1875–1945,” in Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, ed. Edward S. Rogers and Donald B. Smith (Dundurn Press, 1994), 182–257.
68 Abate Wori Abate, “Iroquois Control of Iroquois Education: A Case Study of the Iroquois of the Grand River Valley in Ontario, Canada” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1984), 8.
69 See 1844 Council Minutes, pp. 286–300, Vol. 144, RG10, LAC.
70 Johnson, “To the Mohawk Station,” 74.
71 Grand River Branch, United Empire Loyalists, Loyalist Families of the Grand River Branch (Pro Familia Publishing, 1991), 33.
72 Sally M. Weaver, “Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario,” in Reserve Communities: A Six Nations History Unit, ed. Woodland Indian Cultural Education Centre (Woodland Indian Cultural Educational Centre, 1987), 41–2.
73 H. R. Page & Co., Illustrated Historical Atlas of Brant County, Ontario (Mika Silk Screening, 1972), xiv.
74 See Marvin McInnis, “Ontario Agriculture at Mid-Century,” in Canadian Papers in Rural History, ed. Donald H. Akenson (Langdale Press, 1992), 56.
75 See Douglas Leighton, “Abraham Nelles,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, 1881–1890 (University of Toronto Press, 1982), 639–40.
76 Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company, of Their Proceedings, 147.
77 Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company of Their Proceedings, 147.
78 Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company, of Their Proceedings, 24–6.
79 Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company, of Their Proceedings, 91.
80 Scott, Annual Report, 16.
81 Scott, 16.
82 Report by a Committee of the Corporation Commonly Called the New England Company, of Their Proceedings, 105.
83 Abraham Nelles in Duncan, “Church of England Missions,” 31.
84 The report was published in two parts in “Report on the Affairs of the Indians of Canada,” Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, 1844–5, appendix EEE, and 1847, appendix T.
85 See Henry Baldwin in Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, Held at Orillia, Lake Simcoe Narrows.
86 Most of the chiefs present at the Orillia meeting supported the donation, but some felt that one-quarter of annuity money was too generous a gift. See “Report of the Special Commissioners Appointed on the 8th of September, 1856, to Investigate Indian Affairs in Canada,” Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, vol. 16, appendix 21, 1858, n.p.
87 Report on the Affairs on Indians in Canada, 1844, in The Valley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents on the Indian Lands of the Grand River, ed. Charles M. Johnston (Champlain Society, 1964), 268.
88 Norman, “The History of Education at Six Nations of the Grand River,” 97.
89 “A History of the Mohawk Institute,” Wadrihawa, Quarterly Newsletter of the Woodland Cultural Centre 17–18, nos. 4 and 1 (June 2003): 4.
90 “A History of the Mohawk Institute,” 4.
91 Egerton Ryerson to George Vardon, assistant superintendent general of Indian affairs, 26 May 1847, HR 6503. C73R4 Ex. 1, 3, Archives Deschâtelets [hereafter AD].
92 E. Ryerson to George Vardon, assistant superintendent general, Report by Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools, 26 May 1847, p. 73, File 202,239, Vol. 2952, RG 10, LAC. See also Egerton Ryerson, Statistics Respecting Indian Schools with Dr. Ryerson’s Report of 1847 Attached (Government Printing Bureau, 1898). For a discussion of the debate over Ryerson’s role in the creation of the residential school system, see Donald B. Smith, “Egerton Ryerson and the Mississauga, 1826 to 1856, an Appeal for Further Study,” Ontario History 113, no. 2 (2021): 222–43.
93 E. Ryerson to George Vardon, assistant superintendent general, Report by Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools, 26 May 1847, p. 75, File 202,239, Vol. 2952, RG 10, LAC.
94 E. Ryerson to George Vardon, assistant superintendent general, Report by Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools, 26 May 1847, p. 73, File 202,239, Vol. 2952, RG 10, LAC.
95 Leighton, “The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada, 1840–1890,” 237.
96 See Canada, “Report on the Affairs of the Indians of Canada” (p. 3 of the document).
97 See Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Nii Ndahlohke: Boys’ and Girls’ Work at Mount Elgin Industrial School, 1890–1915 (Friesen Press, 2022).
98 Leslie, Commissions of Inquiry, 105–6.
99 See “Report of the Special Commissioners,” Journals of the Legislative Assembly, n.p.
100 Memo by M. Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, p. 3, File 160-1, Pt. 1, Vol. 6039, RG 10, LAC. In the memo, Benson claims that in 1855 Lord Bury (then superintendent general) suggested the amalgamation of the Alderville and the Mount Elgin institutes.
101 D. C. Scott notes, February 1898, File 468-1 Pt. 1, Vol. 6205, RG 10, LAC. The Mount Elgin school would reopen in 1867 and remain in operation until the 1940s.
102 McCallum, Nii Ndahlohke, 13.
103 McCallum, 55.
104 Scott, Annual Report, 16.
105 Agreement of the New England Company with R. Ashton, 1872, File 7966, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC. See also the illustrations before the appendices.
106 Scott, Annual Report, 16.
107 J. H. Lister, 1868, in Brantford Expositor, 4 October 1955.
108 Leighton, “The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada, 1840–1890,” 243. See also Keith Jamieson and Michelle A. Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Dundurn, 2016).
109 Chapter 3 by Alison Norman explores in more detail the training of Indigenous teachers and their role at the Mohawk Institute.
110 Scott, Annual Report, 17.
111 Norman, “The History of Education at Six Nations of the Grand River,” 93.
112 See Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” 45–6.
113 Scott, Annual Report, 17.
114 New England Company to Reverend Robert Ashton, 23 November 1872, File 7928-1, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
115 See chapter 11 for an in-depth study of Ashton’s time as principal of the Mohawk Institute.
116 “A History of the Mohawk Institute,” 4.
117 New England Company Committee to Ashton, 13 February 1873, File 7928-1, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
118 New England Company Committee, 16 May 1873, File 7928-1, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
119 Robert Ashton, 31 July 1873, File 7928-1, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
120 Robert Ashton, 26 May 1874, File 7928-1, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
121 New England Company Committee, 30 July 1876, File 7928-2, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
122 See File 7928-1 to -5, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
123 Constitution of the School Board of the Six Nations Indians, 29 July 1878, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
124 New England Company Sub-Committee, September 1877, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC. This takeover never did transpire, and the Six Nations never had true control over the Council as they held only three seats.
125 Scott, Annual Report, 17.
126 This grant was to be voted on annually by the Six Nations. See Report of the Privy Council, 18 November 1878, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
127 School Board of Six Nations Indians, 29 July 1878, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
128 See Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” 44–5.
129 See Nicholas Flood Davin, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds ([publisher not identified], 1879).
130 See Davin, 2.
131 Agnes Grant, No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada (Pemmican Publications, 1996), 60.
132 R. Ashton to Hayter Reed, 28 November 1894, File 154,845, Pt. 1, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC, and Superintendent Gilkison to Department of Indian Affairs, 29 August 1878, File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
133 New England Company Committee Report, 14 May 1882, file 7928-3, B3, MG 17, NEC, LAC.
134 J. Kelly, 14 July 1885, Vol. 5991, RG 10, LAC.
135 J. T. Gilkison, Visiting Superintendent and Commissioner to Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, 27 August 1885, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31 December 1885 (MacLean, Rogers & Co., 1886), 2.
136 R. Ashton to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 25 August 1885, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31 December 1885, 17.
137 Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Report, 1 January 1889, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31 December 1888 (A. Senecal, 1889), xv. Many of these children, however, were orphans or destitute.
138 Hayter Reed in Jacqueline Kennedy, “Qu’Appelle Industrial School: White ‘Rites’ for the Indians of the Old North-West” (master’s thesis, Carleton University, 1970), 91.
139 Scott, Annual Report, 18.
140 R. Ashton to Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 14 September 1893, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 30 June 1893 (S. E. Dawson, 1894), 22.
141 R. Ashton, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 30 June 1893, 22.
142 See R. Ashton to Hayter Reed, 28 November 1894, File 154,845, Pt.1, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC.
143 R. Ashton to Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31 December 1888, 123.
144 Martin Benson, Report on the Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Boarding Schools, 30 August 1895, File 7825-1A, Vol. 2006, RG 10, LAC.
145 Benson, Report.
146 Benson, Report.
147 Benson, Report.
148 “A History of the Mohawk Institute,” 5.
149 See chapter 4 for a detailed study of the use of military training at the Mohawk Institute.
150 Benson, Report.
151 The exact time students began to be assigned numbers is not clear. The deputy superintendent general of Indian affairs recommended it in a letter to Ashton in 1894. See Deputy Superintendent General to R. Ashton, File 154,845, Pt. 1, Vol. 2771, RG 10, LAC.
152 Benson, Report.
153 Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children, 1894, File 150-40A, Pt. 1, Vol. 6032, RG 10, LAC.
154 Hayter Reed, Report of the Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 31 December 1894, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 30 June 1894 (S. E. Dawson, 1895), xxi-xxii.
155 In 1900, of twenty thousand Indigenous people aged six to fifteen years, 3,285 were enrolled in thirty-nine boarding and twenty-two industrial schools and 6,349 attended 226 day schools. See Barman et al., Indian Education in Canada, 1:8.
156 R. Ashton to Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 30 June 1894, 22.
157 Benson, Report.
158 Barman et al., Indian Education in Canada, 1:8. This statistic is from 1911.
159 R. Ashton to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 25 August 1899, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 30 June 1899 (S. E. Dawson, 1900), 291.
160 Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 30 June 1896 (S. E. Dawson, 1897), 291.
161 M. Benson to J. D. Mclean, 15 July 1897, File 160-1, Pt. 1, Vol 6039, RG 10, LAC.
162 Hansard, 14 June 1897, 4076.
163 See R. Ashton, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 20 June 1899, 291, and File 7825-1B, Vol. 2007, RG 10, LAC.
164 Keith Jamieson, History of Six Nations Education (Woodland Indian Cultural Education Centre, 1987), 16. This is reproduced in appendix 1 of this volume.
165 “Brantford’s Big Blaze: Some Narrow Escapes,” Toronto World, 20 April 1903.
166 R. Ashton to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 12 August 1903, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended June 30 1903 (S. E. Dawson, 1904), 326.