Introduction: Where Histories Meet

You look up “pioneer,” it has three different definitions of it. Every one of them says “the first people in to open up an area and welcome the other people in”—that would make us the pioneers . . . And we weren’t lost, and they weren’t opening up anything. We were here. They were pushing us out of the way. There was nothing to open. We were already open for business.

—Sherry Lawson, Chippewas of Rama¹

Like similar “pioneer villages” in Canada, the Toronto heritage site known until recently as Black Creek Pioneer Village is not an actual historical village: it was created in the 1960s to tell a particular story. Built around Elizabeth (née Fisher) and Daniel Stong’s settler farm, the village consists of buildings transported from other villages and hamlets in southern Ontario to create an image—actually, an idealized version—of nineteenth-century settler village life. For decades this “living history” museum on the city’s northern edge, owned and operated by Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, has been a popular destination for tourists and Torontonians alike. Today, as it gradually recovers from pandemic lockdowns, it hosts educational sessions for more than 25,000 schoolchildren and sees about 115,000 visitors annually.²

Although the Village’s creators vividly represented many aspects of life in a southern Ontario hamlet, they had a significant, telling blind spot: they didn’t consider the context and meaning of “settlement” in a land that already had Indigenous laws, Nations, cultural practices, worldviews, and history. Nor did they acknowledge that settlers had interacted with local Indigenous populations or caused massive environmental transformations that greatly impacted the ability of Indigenous peoples to be self-sufficient. In fact, they didn’t acknowledge the link between the settlers’ arrival and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples at all. A visitor to the Village might be forgiven for thinking that no one had ever lived on these lands before settlers arrived. The Village offered a sanitized version of local history, a bucolic vision of successful settler colonialism that lauded the “pioneers.” This version of history dominated most local histories—and much Canadian history writing—until recently.

This book originated in a research project titled Changing the Narrative: Reconnecting Indigenous and Settler Histories at Black Creek Pioneer Village, which was sparked by the recognition that the old narrative needed revision. Although the push for change came from many directions, including from staff at the village, kiskisiwin | remembering, a punchy six-minute video by Métis-Cree author Jesse Thistle and documentary filmmaker Martha Stiegman concisely made the case.³

Led by Jennifer Bonnell and Alan Corbiere of the York University History Department, the Changing the Narrative project addressed the lack of Indigenous content, context, and perspective in The Village installations and interpretation. York University, Black Creek Pioneer Village / Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, and the University of Toronto’s Map and Data Library collaborated with the five First Nations closest to Toronto: the Mississaugas of the Credit, Mississaugas of Scugog Island, Chippewas of Rama, Chippewas of Georgina Island, and the Six Nations of the Grand River. In one of its first acts, the research committee of First Nations representatives strongly recommended that the name of the site be changed. In 2024, it was officially renamed The Village at Black Creek—the more inclusive name used throughout this book.

As the principal researcher for the Changing the Narrative project, I explored the interconnected histories of Indigenous and settler peoples, particularly on Toronto’s northern and western periphery closest to The Village at Black Creek. Because the Village was said to represent nineteenth-century village life, especially in the 1860s, I focused on the period between 1787, when the British first attempted to purchase land at Toronto, and 1876, when the federal Indian Act became the overarching legal framework controlling Indigenous peoples’ lives. I submitted my report in July 2024 to inform the development of permanent installations and related programming.⁴ Given the lack of publicly available information about this history, The Village at Black Creek and the research committee of First Nations representatives permitted me to adapt my research report into this book.

As it happens, The Village at Black Creek proved to be a useful anchor for thinking about Indigenous history—and Indigenous-settler interactions—in the Toronto region. Serendipitously, The Village—including the original farm that forms its nucleus—is situated on a tributary of the Humber River. The banks of the Humber served for millennia as a key transportation route and site for Indigenous habitation, including successive Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinaabe villages. The Humber watershed thus offers a convenient snapshot of Indigenous histories that are the context for understanding developments in the Toronto region in the nineteenth century as well as contemporary land claims and ongoing Indigenous connections to historical territories in the greater Toronto area.

The first homesteaders on the site, Elizabeth Fisher and Daniel Stong, were “ordinary” people, not members of the elite, the people most often blamed for colonial actions. They were Palatine Germans from Pennsylvania, not British. Yet, by settling on this plot of land and building a farm, their actions had repercussions for the land and Indigenous peoples. The extent to which they had contact with Indigenous peoples is unknown, but close relatives of Elizabeth Fisher held Methodist camp meetings on Yonge Street that were attended by large numbers of Indigenous people.

Although segregation and social distancing increased over time, my research revealed significant interactions between Indigenous and settler peoples, both positive and negative, in the early nineteenth century. These interactions came about through missions, trade, mutual aid, technology transfers, intermarriage, and participation in the War of 1812. I was able to identify individuals, interrelated families, and other social networks that played key roles in establishing relations of power or forms of resistance in the region. These are illustrative examples; I have not identified all such relations.

With its church, school, mill, European-style homes for individual families, and a farm that grew European crops and supported European farm animals, The Village at Black Creek also represents what Indigenous peoples were supposed to achieve through the “civilizational agenda.” Beginning in the 1820s, churches and the colonial government encouraged Indigenous peoples to transform themselves into Christian farmers, establish their own “settled” communities, and abandon hunting. Over the next two decades, in the face of unprecedented loss and change, many Indigenous people adopted Christianity and tried out farming as a strategy for survival and renewal. They struggled to protect their families, lands, and lifeways while also engaging with new ideas and forms of community—out of necessity.

That Indigenous peoples as well as settlers founded new communities in the nineteenth century is rarely acknowledged. As settlers were establishing new farms and villages, Indigenous peoples were being pressured to give up their lands and relocate to new settlements—often repeatedly. However, when they tried to adopt the kind of agricultural and village life that The Village at Black Creek represents, they experienced radically different outcomes. The histories of the Coldwater-Narrows Reserve west of Orillia and the Credit Mission Village on the Credit River provide important points of comparison and reveal how Indigenous displacement and settler immigration were fundamentally linked.

A Collaborative Research Process

Where Histories Meet is perhaps the first historical account of the Toronto region created through a genuinely consultative process with the five First Nations currently living in the area. Research committee members reviewed, provided feedback on, and approved the original research directions, questions, and methodology of the Changing the Narrative project and hence of my archival and secondary-source research. They reviewed two drafts of the report, including maps and images, and offered valuable feedback and numerous suggestions for improvement. Beausoleil First Nation also reviewed the manuscript while the Huron-Wendat Nation did not take up our invitation to do so. As a white scholar, I am enormously grateful for the guidance I received. Research committee members advised me to pay attention not only to colonialism’s impact on First Nations but also to their strategies for creative adaptation, resilience, and resistance and made many contributions that ensured this perspective was well supported.

Because archival evidence and secondary sources such as books and articles reflect the biases of collectors and authors and the fragmentary nature of surviving evidence, Alan Corbiere and I interviewed twenty Knowledge Keepers and Elders who were suggested by the participating First Nations. Notably, several were descendants of historical figures discussed in this book. We asked them about the history of their communities and what should be conveyed at The Village at Black Creek or to Canadians generally. Alan reviewed the interviews, provided analysis, and suggested excerpts that might be particularly useful; I make considerable use of his analyses in the following paragraphs. Because the interview process was delayed by pandemic lockdowns, the interviews were not integrated into the original research report but appear in this book as commentary. Given that colonialism is not “over,” they provide crucial perspectives on colonialism’s consequences and meaning in the present and for the future.

I think they need to know the truth that Black Creek Pioneer Village was manufactured. That it was a manufactured landscape. That’s important. And then, I guess, on the flip side of that coin, they need to know that our people were here, even though we don’t have necessarily stories of my great-great-great-great-grandfather going there and harvesting wood, or something. It doesn’t mean that our people weren’t here. It wasn’t terra nullius. It wasn’t empty.

—Kelly LaRocca, Mississaugas of Scugog Island⁵

This book, then, is a place where the archival record, oral tradition, and Indigenous perspectives on written history, family memory, and genealogy meet. In some communities, such as Six Nations, there is some unbroken oral tradition, such as the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace. In others, the chain of transmission has been interrupted. Darin Wybenga, historical interpreter and research committee representative for the Mississaugas of the Credit, commented, “And one thing I will say is that we don’t have a long memory about our own history. We really don’t . . . Because there is really no oral tradition around here about these things. We really, really suffer from that.”⁶ Wybenga noted the loss of place-based stories: “I long to hear some of those old stories from way back . . . wonderful stories about the little people by the Credit River and the big monster that used to live in the whirlpool out by Burlington Bay. I would love to know those stories.”

Both community members and outsiders are affected by this loss of knowledge. As Elder Garry Sault of Mississaugas of the Credit noted, “There wasn’t much anybody knew about who we were and what we were. It’s like we faded away from history.”⁷ Most interviewees attributed this loss to the influence of the Christian churches and government repression. Margaret Sault of Mississaugas of the Credit commented: “Well, a lot of things were forbidden to them, like Powwows and different things, and the government tried to keep them apart [from other Indigenous communities] and not to participate in those things.”⁸

Elder Rhonda Coppaway of Mississaugas of Scugog Island highlighted the loss of Indigenous language speakers as another threat to knowledge of oral tradition. “Our oldest member passed away a couple of years ago and she was our only language speaker. So we’ve come almost full circle that way, where the whole community spoke the language and now there’s . . . We’re trying to revive that. It’s a little bit difficult, but there seems to be energy in the community to want to push forward . . . So with that Elder passing, our stories, right, are important to hold on to and it’s [difficult] . . . We just probably don’t have the information that we should.”⁹

Yet all the interviewees knew their community’s and family’s history as felt experience, including intergenerational trauma, which is often passed down wordlessly. In addition, as Alan pointed out, many values, practices, and knowledges were learned from parents or grandparents without being identified or labelled as Traditional Knowledge. As Elder and former Chief Carolyn King of Mississaugas of the Credit said, “I’m going to say that just the same way that we just used things, because that’s what my mom did or my grandma did, that I don’t relate it to something that was a long time ago. It was just something that we did.”¹⁰

In many cases, the interviewees’ understanding of their community’s history came from their examination of archival records and secondary sources, usually written by non-Indigenous people, supplemented with what they learned from Elders, often in response to the immediate need to defend Aboriginal and treaty rights—and their territories—from encroachment. Elder Margaret Sault, who spearheaded land claims research for the Mississaugas of the Credit for decades, explained, “I’m just kind of learning the traditional history and how they merge, or how they complement, one another. The written word and the historical, traditional side. I’m just kind of learning and piecing those together.”¹¹ Kory Snache of Chippewas of Rama described a similar process: “I do a lot of independent research in archives all over the place. Googling things and trying to decipher what is legitimate and what isn’t. And I think that’s half the battle. And kind of correlating it with other information.”¹² Some took up this research so they could pass knowledge of their history on to the next generation. King commented, “I started to delve into the history, deeply into the Mississauga history, after I had my kids. You want to tell your kids, right?”¹³ Others wanted to reinterpret history from Indigenous perspectives: Vicki Snache of Chippewas of Rama noted that what “is really important is to allow for us to be part of creating the narrative . . . If we were to have a part in creating the story, then it needs to be from our voice so that it can be told in a respectful and nonbiased way.”¹⁴

Darin Wybenga spoke about how new oral traditions were being created through this process of research and reinterpretation. As Alan Corbiere noted in his report on the oral history interviews of members of the Mississaugas of the Credit, “This statement actually accords with Bruce Granville Miller’s call to recognize Indigenous oral historians not as static ‘jukeboxes’ that kick out the same ‘tune’ (story) on demand, but as historians who constantly reinterpret their history as new information comes to light from multiple sources, assisting in the creation of a more fulsome and dynamic retelling of history.”¹⁵

This book includes numerous excerpts from these oral interviews, providing crucial perspectives on the history it explores, especially in the concluding chapter. Nevertheless, the history presented in the main text has been gleaned primarily through archival and secondary sources because interviewees generally spoke of the more recent past rather than the period before 1876. Even so, the interviewees’ perspectives deepened my understanding of the consequences of European colonialism and the persistence of Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee culture, lifeways, knowledge, and values. Their words and the photographs they so generously shared with me make the living presence, persistence, and creativity of First Nations palpable. To my mind, their words carry the soul or spirit of this book, and I, as a non-Indigenous historian, acknowledge my responsibility to respect and uphold them. Ultimately, though, I selected the historical evidence, interviewees’ quotes, and images. Any errors or biases are my own.

To allow for a nuanced history that does not homogenize the experiences of Indigenous peoples—or Indigenous Nations—I’ve drawn on the rich individual histories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Mississaugas of Scugog Island, Chippewas of Rama, Chippewas of Georgina Island, and Six Nations of the Grand River. The northern and western hinterlands of Toronto in the nineteenth century most centrally involved the ancestors of the Chippewas of Rama, Chippewas of Georgina Island, and Mississaugas of the Credit. Although the Mississaugas of Scugog Island are located closest to Toronto today, they used a different river and portage route via Oshawa for transportation and trade, interacting primarily with other Mississaugas in the Peterborough area. However, they had significant connections with the Anishinaabek of Lakes Huron and Simcoe and were visited by Mississauga Christians from the Credit Mission. Some Scugog people moved briefly to the Coldwater reserve in the 1830s.

The Haudenosaunee of the Grand River lived at some remove from the region north of Toronto but were influential in Indigenous-settler relations throughout south-central Ontario, particularly during the early settlement period. Mohawk War Chief Joseph Brant served as the main interlocutor between the Haudenosaunee, other Indigenous Nations, and the British. He was guided by and reported to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs. In subsequent decades, there were frequent interconnections between the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Haudenosaunee, and they became neighbours when the Mississaugas moved to New Credit in 1847. Haudenosaunee contact with Anishinaabek north of Toronto appears to have been less frequent, although they met occasionally at Grand Councils.

To this day, local First Nations have overlapping claims to territory and different versions of key historical events, including inter-Indigenous conflicts and treaties such as the Dish with One Spoon Wampum agreement (c. 1700). These differences are rarely discussed in print, although they have profoundly shaped relations between First Nations and with governments and settler populations. This book is attentive to this plurality of viewpoints. At the same time, all Nations were affected by the same colonizing dynamics and their current differences were often created or exacerbated through these dynamics. Indigenous people of various Nations also helped one other, shared information, visited one another, intermarried, and relocated from one community to another.

Conflicting historical interpretations among First Nations have legal ramifications. For example, the Six Nations assert rights of consultation in the Toronto area based on the Nanfan Deed of 1701 (which they maintain is a treaty) and their seventeenth-century presence in the area. Some of their claims are disputed by other First Nations. Because several issues discussed in this book are currently under litigation (and may be for some time), we worked together to find ways to acknowledge and express these differences neutrally. Where necessary, I include both versions of disputed historical events in the main text or footnotes. In quoted excerpts from the interviews, however, interviewees express their own perspectives that others may not share.

Including rival historical interpretations isn’t ideal from the perspective of any individual First Nation, though it’s helpful for understanding the overall lay of the land. At the request of the First Nations, I include the following disclaimer: “The involvement of the several First Nations in the research for this book in no way limits their ability to make factual and legal arguments in a court of law that may be contrary to any findings contained in this publication.” The Six Nations of the Grand River crafted a separate and more specific disclaimer.¹⁶

The title Where Histories Meet, then, refers to various forms of contact and contention among different historical accounts, including my own struggle to work respectfully with conflicting Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee historical narratives. As a white historian, I do not feel it’s my role to adjudicate between these narratives given, on the one hand, the history of colonial “divide and rule” policies and, on the other, the colonizer’s need to assert a unitary and dominating narrative to control others. I have come to recognize that these divergent accounts are emblematic of the unruly nature of narrative itself. They are, in part, new origin stories arising from colonial circumstances. There’s creative energy in letting them be and respecting both even as the Canadian legal system insists on winners and losers.

This book is a partial history of Indigenous-settler relations viewed from a particular perspective and shaped in part by the parameters of the original research project. It is suggestive and illustrative. There are many other histories to be told, particularly of Indigenous peoples to the east and northeast.

It is also partial because of the colonial and gender biases of the archives. Most of the Indigenous individuals in the archival record are male Christianized leaders who cooperated with colonial authorities and supported (at least for a time) the adoption of the civilizational agenda. Indigenous women rarely appear outside of brief mentions of Indigenous or white men’s wives or the occasional photograph—yet interesting questions can still be asked about their lives. Archival information about non-Christians is also sparse and the circumstances of their lives opaque. As research committee member Ben Cousineau of Chippewas of Rama commented, “It’s difficult because the people who probably had the most effect on our community’s history, we’ve forgotten. Because the knowledge that we have is mostly coming from government and colonial sources and records.”¹⁷Another caveat is that genealogical information, especially on Indigenous individuals, is often difficult to confirm. While participating First Nations have had the opportunity to review relationship charts, I welcome new information and corrections.

A Few Words about Terminology

Spellings of personal names, ethnonyms, and place names differ substantially from document to document in the archival record and among different groups in the present. In general, original spellings are retained in quotations. When a modernized name or word is substituted or added, this is indicated by square brackets. Because there are several systems of orthography for rendering Indigenous names and languages in roman script, I decided to use, in consultation with Indigenous members of the team and research committee, the most common ethnonyms and spellings.

The term “Indigenous” is used in preference to other more general or outdated labels. Here, it refers to First Nations people rather than Inuit or historical Métis. The term “Indian” is retained in quoted historical texts and when it’s used in a legal sense to refer to those with “Indian status” or to government agencies with “Indian” in their name, such as “the Indian Department.” In a few cases, highly pejorative terms have been replaced by modern neutral terms in square brackets.

Numerous, confusing, and overlapping ethnonyms exist for various groups, with many variant spellings. “Anishinaabek / Anishinaabeg” (adjectival and singular form “Anishinaabe”) is an umbrella term for culturally and linguistically related peoples, including Ojibwe / Ojibway / Chippewa (To Roast until Puckered Up, possibly referring to the puckered seams of Ojibwe moccasins); Michi Saagiig / Mississaugas (River with Many Mouths); Odaawaa / Ottawa (People Who Trade); Bodewadmi / Potawatomi (Keepers of the Fire); Algonquins; and Nipissings. In this text, I most frequently refer to Chippewas and Mississaugas, as these are the names most commonly used at present.

The Six Nations (Five Nations up to the 1720s) or Haudenosaunee Confederacy are also known by the French name “Iroquois” and include the following Nations: Onödowa’ga (People of the Great Hill) / Seneca; Gayogo̱ho:nǫ (People of the Great Swamp) / Cayuga; Onoñda’gega (People of the Hills) / Onondaga; Onyota’a:ka (People of the Standing Stone) / Oneida; and Kanien’kehá:ka (People of the Land of the Flint) / Mohawk.¹⁸ The Haudenosaunee became known as the Six Nations when they were joined by the Skarù:rę (People of the Hemp Shirt) / Tuscarora in 1722. Here, I will refer to the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora.

Many individuals had both Indigenous and “Christian” names in the period under study. At first mention, the Indigenous name (if known) is given first, then its English translation (if known), followed by a Christian or English name, if any. As some individuals preferred to be known or became widely known by one name or the other, subsequent usage may differ among individuals.