Marijke Huitema, Brian S. Osborne and Michael
Ripmeester1
Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries,
Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial
Conflict in Eastern Ontario
Abstract
Principal discourses reveal that Euro-Canadian and First Nation claims to
territory are a product of differing cultural perceptions of land, territory, and
property, as well as a metanarrative of colonial expansion and appropriation
of territory. However, current research is demonstrating that the reality was
much more complex. In particular, Euro-Canadian contact often precipitated
contestation between First Nation interests in areas where none had
previously existed. This paper will examine the historical context of the
Mississauga-Algonquin conflict of territorial boundaries in the 1783-1923
period. This issue is still central to ongoing land claims in eastern Ontario.
Résumé
Les discours dominants révèlent que les revendications territoriales des
Euro-Canadiens et des premières nations sont un produit de perceptions
culturelles différentes de la terre, du territoire et de la propriété, de même
qu’une méta-narration de l’expansion coloniale et de l’appropriation du
territoire. Cependant, des recherches récentes tendent plutôt à démontrer que
la réalité est beaucoup plus complexe. En particulier, le contact avec les
Euro-Canadiens a souvent précipité l’émergence de contestations entre les
intérêts de Premières nations différentes dans des régions où il n’y en avait
jamais eu auparavant. Cet article étudiera le contexte historique du conflit
sur des limites territoriales qui a opposé les Mississaugas et les Algonquins
pendant la période de 1783 à 1923. Cette question continue à se situer au
cœur même des revendications territoriales qui ont toujours cours dans l’est
de l’Ontario.
Setting the Scene
Euro-Canadian and First Nations’ claims to territory are a product of
long-standing differences in their respective perceptions of nature, land and
resources that represent different ontologies, cultural constructions and
techno-economic systems. Further, these contested claims are usually
interpreted in the context of a well-established metanarrative of colonial
expansion and appropriation of territory.
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25, Spring / Printemps 2002
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However, the reality of land-conflict as it played out on the ground in
particular places was much more complex than a simple monolithic
explanation of Euro-Canadian and First Nations’ difference. In particular,
Euro-Canadian contact often precipitated contestation between First
Nations’ interests in areas where none had previously existed. This was
certainly the case with the Mississauga-Algonquin conflict over territorial
boundaries in the Lake Ontario-Ottawa River watershed region of eastern
Ontario. Here, between 1783 and 1923, a formerly extensive territory that
had long been viewed as a common resource base with locales of periodic
occupancy—often with common campsites that were established points of
social congress—became a contested space and a site of conflict.
Nevertheless, these contestations have been paper-wars, expressed in the
tropes of Euro-Canadian authority, and debated in the administrative spaces
of colonial power. Accordingly, the Mississaugas and Algonquins directed
their grievances to the Euro-Canadian forums of discussion where they
exist as documented confrontations. At the ground-level of lived
interactions, however, there is no evidence of personal hostility. Indeed, it
would appear that they never communicated with each other directly
concerning this issue of contested space or boundaries.
These matters are still central to ongoing First Nations’ land claims in
eastern Ontario. How did this come to be?
Dissonant Concepts
European settlement of Canada was intricately connected to the
transformation of material and ideological terrains. In particular, formerly
unbounded space became limited by boundaries and appropriated as
regulated territory. This was facilitated through different social
constructions, usufructuary practices and mechanisms of control, all of
which were grounded on particular sections of land and located in specific
places. The usual assumption is that these different social constructions
may be attributed to long-standing cultural—and even racial—categories
of difference. Indeed, much has been written about the theological
constructions of innocence, savagery and nobility.2 Whatever the lens, by
the eighteenth century, Europe had positioned itself as the arbiter for
assigning the relative hierarchy of stages of human development.3 This
taken-for-granted position informed, and functioned, as imaginary
geographies of other worlds, and as a template for agendas of power and
place.4
What is significant, however, is that the eighteenth century
Euro-Canadian world was itself undergoing re-conceptualization in the
context of the Enlightenment’s transforming forces. The pre-modern world
of feudal-communal dependencies was being challenged by the
rationalizing concepts of property, profit, management and efficiency.5
From 1745 to 1845 in Britain, a series of Enclosure Acts attacked the
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putative chaos of communal land-use and customary obligations, and
reorganized rural society by extending proprietary controls and imposing a
geometrical cadastre.6 More effective state management—some would say
a “culture of surveillance”—was facilitated by the introduction of a
national census of the population and economy and a coordinated system of
national mapping.7 Finally, increasing attention was directed to the social
health of the “body-politic” by an evangelical zeal for converting those on
the other side of the “great abyss”—be they Irish, Scottish, Welsh, poor
English or exotic heathen—to the improved condition of industry,
propriety and morality.8 These were the dominant values at the time Britain
asserted imperial control over North America. The prevailing precepts of
effective and rational administration encountered a chaotic wilderness
occupied by a people who were noble to some, savage to others, and
certainly pagan in the eyes of Western theologies.9 As summed up by Pratt,
The systematizing of nature represents not only a European
discourse about non-European worlds … but an urban discourse
about non-urban worlds, and a lettered, bourgeois discourse about
non-lettered, peasant worlds … Subsistence societies of any kind
appeared backward with respect to surplus-oriented modes, and as
in need of “improvement.”10
This same impulse prompted the classification and fixing of Native peoples
in ethnographic time and geographical space.11 European conceptualizations of political territory could not accommodate spatial overlap and,
eventually, the initial assigned territories became ossified in official maps,
Indian Department documents, and treaties and surrenders.
The fundamental problem was that Euro-Canadian society did not
comprehend what the meaning of land was to Native groups. Even more
profoundly, the Euro-Canadian imagination could not accommodate a
different Native ontological engagement with land as “hearth, home, the
source and locus of life, and everlastingness of spirit.”12 For Native peoples,
bonding to a particular space was the outcome of social obligations, kinship
structures and spiritual constraints that transformed the material world into
a moral space.13 There were no boundaries between the physical and
spiritual aspects of Native culture. Territory and the physical environment
were encompassed by, and integrated into, the spiritual realm by spatially
grounded religious praxis. This gave meaning to their categories of land,
residency and resource use. It followed from this that, for Native peoples,
land and resources constituted a social relationship, not an individual one,
and any “individual’s or a family’s rights to property were defined by the
community which recognized those rights.”14 Moreover, there was a subtle
differentiation between the concepts of shared occupancy of territories and
joint-use of resources. Whereas use referred to an array of different
activities such as hunting, trapping, fishing, gathering of medicinal plants
and berry picking, occupancy referred to a particular group’s claim to an
area because of continuous “habitation, naming, knowledge and control.”15
Thus, while the spatial differentiation of the limits of occupancy were likely
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to be much more stable over time, the definition of the limits of use revealed
temporal and spatial overlap.16
From the Euro-Canadian perspective, however well-entrenched in
culture they were, Native customary practices of resource use did not
necessarily constitute proof of legal possession and they believed that
“Native cultures lacked the rationality to use their lands effectively.”17 In
particular, effective use of these lands implied Western Euro-Canadian
models of agriculture and industry and Native peoples’ retention of wild
lands in their savage state would impede civilization, progress and
agricultural expansion.18 The prevailing official view was that if Natives
would cultivate their land it would then be considered their own property,
because uncultivated land was like a “wild animal” and could not be
protected from intrusion by those who were “hunting” for it in order “to
cultivate it.”19
The issue of property was crucial. The Euro-Canadian perception of
property and individual ownership underpinned the emerging economic
system, the acquisition and control of capital, and a wage economy. It
followed, therefore, that “it was difficult for Natives to join in the march of
progress because they failed to conform to civilized norms … and they
failed to treat land as a source of income.”20 The rejection of Native
concepts of communal land-use practices and the assertion of EuroCanadian concepts of ownership enabled the colonial authorities to
categorize the land to facilitate colonial territorial expansion. Classified as
wild, unproductive and unoccupied, Euro-Canadian concepts of economic
praxis and social progress dictated that—in line with the prevailing
improvement ethic in Britain—such lands were in need of development by
European intervention.
However, if lands were to be improved, they also had to be controlled.
The conflicting conceptualizations of property, resources and territory
became reified in the very tangible expressions of authority asserted by
Euro-Canadian systems of naming, mapping, land recording, taxes, duties
and obligations and census. Taken together, such strategies served to other,
appropriate and spatialize Native people and their territoriality. On to one
imaginative geography was superimposed another, more foreign one, with
another vocabulary, different modes of representation and new purposes.21
Fauna and flora were assigned the names and categories of Western science
and the indigenous peoples were appropriated by the taxonomic power of
ethnography. The unknown was explored, surveyed and mapped.22
Euro-Canadian appropriation of large extents of territory by treaties was
followed by the imposition of an all-encompassing system of districts,
counties, townships, concessions and lots that constituted the Procrustean
bed upon which the new system of land-control and ownership was
developed. Land became reconstituted as parcels of property, fixed
spatially on cadastres, legalized in Land Registries, and legitimated by
periodic municipal tax-assessments and government censuses.23 All of this,
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together with the regime of civil and criminal law, served to further alienate
and exclude the Native peoples, while also massively altering their
long-standing spatial and temporal routines.24
Staking a claim to physical territory—a term as physically evocative as it
is theoretically profound—was a concept foreign to Native peoples who, it
was claimed, maintained “territorial integrity and access to resources”
primarily through “the defence of social boundaries rather than of the
territorial perimeter.”25 The principal weapon in this assault on the spatial
conceptualization of Native life was the map. It formed the practical
template and theoretical underpinning of an array of other mechanisms of
control. Maps produced a space governed by “the demands of a field of
knowledge,”26 “un espace de projection privilégié pour les désirs, les
aspirations, la mémoire culturelle du sujet.”27 By the unstated exercise of
cultural elision, the Native peoples were removed from their lived-in places
in a rendering of an apparently empty space. Through the “sly rhetoric of
simulation,”28 the lines on the map implied control of the ground and the
promise of future development and control.
The map focused attention on the matter of boundaries and edges of
control: a different ontology of space that transcended the concepts of
location and containment. The Euro-Canadian attempts to record
boundaries on paper were incomprehensible to Native people.29 This is not
to suggest that they did not possess a sophisticated appreciation of space,
bio-geographical locations, or their own socially constructed ethnogeographies.30 While not recorded on paper, they were nevertheless crucial
in their negotiation of their lived-in worlds. Indeed, “[s]ince the core of the
territory, and especially its key resource sites, were the primary concern,
boundaries were seldom physically demarcated and were apt to be
somewhat permeable, according to social rules.”31 This being said,
government officials were well aware that the cartographically established
boundaries imposed by them were not well understood by the Natives in
their ontology of space and place. As one official noted, “it is unlikely that
the Natives of themselves would determine upon a line of latitude, or any
imaginary line, as the boundary of their hunting ranges,” arguing further
that “the boundaries of the Natives’ territories would be provided by lakes
and rivers or heights of land.”32 But these were not perimeters or edges of
their “homeland.” Rather, for them, they were integral parts of the total
homeland and their mobile ecological existence marked by regularly used
campsites, hunting and trapping ranges, and a well-established ecological
knowledge. Certainly extensively occupied, and often overlapping with
territories used by other Native groups, these peripheries were negotiated
according to the mutual recognition of traditional usary rights and were, of
necessity, permeable. Their mutability reflected variations in frequency
and intensity of use because of shifting demands. Knowledge of their
environment, along with systematic use and occupancy of an area, was
considered sufficient by them to generate recognition of territorial rights by
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outsiders.33 It was from this perspective that Native peoples negotiated with
Euro-Canadians. Perhaps naively, they expected that the cultural, social,
and moral obligations and constraints that defined the claims to the cores
and edges of their domains would be respected by the colonial authorities
and their subjects.34
Clearly, government policies were intended to impose order by
transforming the wilderness into a place of proprietorial control and
productivity, and converting the people to a civilized life. Ironically, the
rhetoric of integration and assimilation was accompanied by the actual
praxis of spatial and social marginalization motivated by a protocol of
moral reform and social control. A cynical interpretation of imperial
interests would locate motives of acquisition of territory ahead of the
prevailing ideological motive of improvement. No doubt, the two were
complementary premises. Certainly, the imperial gaze viewed the
wilderness, Native peoples and their established practices of resource use
as primitive and irrational. From the earliest instances of contact, this
(re)presentation framed Native peoples and their lands in ways that served
imperial interests by redefining Native territories and boundaries, and
justifying the subsequent appropriation of their land.35
The introduction of the concept of private property, the enforcement of
bounded spaces and the introduction of land-based systems of social
control, governance and surveillance have been the principal mechanisms
by which Native peoples have seen the erosion of their autonomy. The
central thesis of this paper, however, is that these same processes also
destabilized systems of mutual interdependence and understanding
regarding resources and territory between Native groups.
The Mississauga-Algonquin Peoples: Contesting a Shared Space
Historically, for the Algonquin and Mississauga peoples, like other Eastern
Woodland groups, the “key to survival was access to, and control of,
resources, rather than the control of land per se.”36 While Native groups
recognized specific locales at which family units would assemble regularly
for the social, religious, economic, and political functions that reinforced
their cultural identity, at other times, family groups would disperse
throughout the extensive forests to pursue their subsistence activities.
Because of low people-to-land ratios, sporadic—albeit regular—resource
use and mobility, the Native mode of livelihood challenged the
Euro-Canadian concepts of permanent occupancy and fixed residence that
underpinned proprietorial claims. They also facilitated Euro-Canadian
intrusion into the seemingly unoccupied Native “homelands.”37
An Historical Ethnogeography of South-Eastern Ontario
During the late prehistoric period, the region of southern Ontario was
largely empty. Endemic warfare led to the region serving as a large buffer
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zone between powerful nations—most particularly, the Iroquois Five
Nations, the Huron, the Neutral, the Petun, and the Algonquin and the
Nipissing. Contact with Europeans and participation in the capitalistdriven fur trade altered Native geopolitics as well as social and cultural
structures.38 Competition for furs and a middle position in the fur trade
provided a powerful impetus to control the region. Throughout the first half
of the seventeenth century, reciprocal raiding between the Five Nations and
the Hurons was interspersed by tenuous peace agreements. The Iroquois
engaged in a far-flung offensive against the Hurons, the Petun, the Neutral,
and several Algonquian nations and by the early 1650s had displaced them
from south-eastern Ontario. Some fled to the west and the region
surrounding Lake Nipigon. Others drifted east to what would become
Quebec. The consequence was that the Iroquois had gained almost
exclusive control of south-eastern Ontario by the middle of the seventeenth
century.39
Sometime around 1700, the Iroquois were replaced as the primary
inhabitants of south-eastern Ontario following a massive Ojibwa offensive,
with battles and skirmishes throughout south-eastern Ontario as far north as
the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers.40 Ojibwa oral histories clearly recount
how the Mississaugas came to occupy south-eastern Ontario after
displacing the Iroquois:
The Mississaugas then returned, and seeing that the land
conquered by them from the Mohawks, who had dispossessed the
Hurons, was full of game and an excellent hunting-ground, they
came down from Lake Huron and settled permanently in the valley
of the Otonabee, or Trent, and along the St. Lawrence as far east as
Brockville …41
By the 1720s, the Mississaugas had become firmly entrenched in the
region, with population estimates in 1736 reporting that there were 150
Mississauga warriors between the Bay of Quinte and the head of Lake
Ontario.42 More contemporary estimates propose that there were as many
as 2,700 Mississaugas inhabiting the region between Lake Ontario and
Lake Huron where they adopted a middle position in the fur trade with the
British, French and other Native peoples.43 The Algonquins had earlier
been driven from the region and were concentrated in the area of the Lake of
Two Mountains mission in Lower Canada.
During these years, the boundary of the Ottawa River-Lake Ontario
watershed became the essential divide between the Mississauga and
Algonquin peoples (Figure 1). While a divide and a buffer zone, it
increasingly constituted a shared territory and a common resource. For the
Algonquins, access to the region was provided by the Ottawa River and its
tributaries: Bonnechere, Petawawa, Mattawa, Rideau, Mississippi and
Madawaska.44 The Mississauga of the Gananoque-Kingston-Bay region
entered the interior lands via the tributaries to the St. Lawrence and Lake
Ontario: the Gananoque, Cataraqui, Napanee, Salmon, Moira and Trent.
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Figure 1. Algonquin and Mississauga Territories
The height of land between Lake Ontario and the Ottawa River comprised a
vast extent of Canadian Shield covered by a mixed coniferous-deciduous
ecosystem that supported their nomadic subsistence activities. In
particular, the series of lakes at the height of land–the Rideau Lakes–served
as a nexus of these waterways where, increasingly in the nineteenth
century, some of the Algonquin and Mississaugan peoples gathered in
shared or contiguous camps. From there, they made use of the spring runs of
maple-sap, the early summer spawning of fish, fall crops of wild rice and
game throughout the year. In addition, it was here that they acted out social
and political practices by which they negotiated their relationships with
each other.45
However, these long-standing practices were challenged by the
introduction of Euro-Canadian values into the complex calculus of Native
people-land relationships. In a series of somewhat opaque negotiations, the
Euro-Canadians negotiated the cession of these Native lands and imposed a
foreign system of land tenure, paper-boundaries and administrative praxis
(Figure 2). Not only did these negotiations serve to marginalize the Native
peoples of the region, they also precipitated a contestation over territory and
resources between Native groups where none had existed previously–at
least on paper! It is important to emphasize that while there is considerable
documentation of Algonquin complaints against the Mississauga, there is
no evidence whatsoever of direct negotiations between the peoples
themselves. What happened on the ground between the Algonquin and
Mississaugas? When they met in their customary gathering places, sat
around shared campfires, or intermarried, did they discuss the status of their
respective land-claims, petitions and putative grievances that were being
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Figure 2. Mississauga Land Cessions: 1783-1923, and
Present-Day Algonquin Claim Area46
considered and argued in the corridors of colonial power? In all probability,
while they were primarily concerned more with such prosaic matters as
family, hunting and shared experiences, they were aware that the discourses
of territory and boundaries being engaged at a higher domain of policy were
increasingly crucial to their own negotiated resource sites and demarcated
territories.
New Contacts, New Constructs: The Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence
Front, 1783-1812
In honouring government’s promise of land and a new home for former
American settlers and their Iroquois allies who had been loyal to the British
during the American Revolution (1776-1783), the military turned to lands
well known to them along the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario front.47
Designated by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 as “Indian Hunting
Grounds,” these lands had long been the domain of the Iroquois peoples, but
since the early eighteenth century had been occupied by the Mississauga.48
Accordingly, in 1783, Captain William R. Crawford met with the
Mississaugas at Carleton Island and purchased from them “all the lands
from Toniata or Onagara River [Jones Creek, below Brockville] to a river
[Trent River] in the Bay of Quinte … including all the Islands, extending
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from the lake [Ontario] back as far as a man can travel in a day.”49 It was
here, centred on the former French post of Cataraqui—to be renamed,
Kingston—that Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of the Province of
Quebec (1778-1786), intended to locate the loyalist settlers and Mohawk
allies.
The 1783 acquisition of lands known as the Crawford Purchase is not
accompanied by a documented deed, map or formal treaty. There is only a
letter between Captain Crawford and the Indian Agent, John Johnson, and
another between Johnson and Governor Haldimand. Indeed, the spatial and
territorial tropes that delimited the territory in terms of river boundaries and
distances that “a man can travel in a day” were expressions of associations
with place very much in harmony with the imagined geographies of the
Native peoples. Given the date, they may also reflect an early stage of
Euro-Canadian conceptualization of place and territory before the
implementation of the full apparatus of colonial control. Certainly, it was
ambiguous in terms of both the nature of the concept of ownership, as well
as the matter of exclusivity of claims to ownership and initiated a
momentum that was to be the source of future dissatisfaction.
What the Mississauga understood the Crawford Purchase to entail refers
back to the whole question of Native conceptualizations of nature, land and
property. Some would argue that there were profound conceptual
misunderstandings over government purchases in Ontario: that Natives
probably saw the payment in terms of tribute in order to settle dislocated
peoples, a concept that had historical precedent among Great Lakes
peoples.50
As for the matter of who were the rightful controllers of the lands, no
doubt, government turned to the Mississaugas because they were one of the
local Native allies based at Carleton Island, were resident in the vicinity of
the proposed new town, Kingston, and claimed the lands fronting onto Lake
Ontario as their traditional homelands. Apparently, the negotiating
authorities did not investigate the propriety of these claims. Rather, they
accepted the assertion of “old Chief Menas”[elsewhere, Mynas], a
Mississauga, who had been “useful in facilitating the purchase of the lands
from the Mississauga, and had sold his own lands including all the country
between the River St. Lawrence and the Grand (Ottawa) River.”51 Few
questioned the Mississaugan claim to negotiate the Lake Ontario front as
their homeland. But it was their subsequent claim to the shared territories of
the watershed divide of Lake Ontario and the Ottawa River as well as to all
land south of the Ottawa River that was to prove to be contentious over the
ensuing two centuries.
The Rideau Corridor, 1812-1832
In the decades following the War of 1812, attention was directed to
settlement of the interior lands to the north of Lake Ontario. There were
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several reasons: land was needed to accommodate new settlers; lumbering
companies were advancing into the territory along the tributaries of the
Ottawa River; and, perhaps most importantly, there was a military
imperative to settle and develop a corridor along the line of the Rideau. All
of this activity was clearly beyond the limits of the Crawford
Purchase—however vague they may have been! And, certainly, there was
increasing tangible evidence of new, Euro-Canadian systems of spatial
organization. Surveyors’ chain-men were cutting sight-lines through the
forest; concessions and lots were being staked-out only to be pulled up by
the Mississauga;52 and in the outskirts of Belleville, new survey-plats were
even superimposed over a Mississauga burial place.53 Everywhere, Native
concepts of place and social order were being constrained by geometry and
the commodification of land. Confrontations between the Mississauga and
government surveyors prompted William Claus, Deputy Superintendent of
Indian Affairs, to instruct the resident Indian Agent, John Ferguson, to
investigate the Mississauga claims of intrusion into their lands north of the
Crawford Purchase. It was noted that “although they were not certain, they
believed they had not sold that part of their hunting grounds.” Further, they
claimed that “no other Indians than themselves … have any claim to that
area of land” and “that the claims of the Nipissings and Algonquins do not
cross the Ottawa River.”54 On 31 May 1819, Ferguson negotiated a
Provisional Agreement with the Mississaugas for a three million acre tract
of land along the south shore of the Ottawa River between Pembroke and
Ottawa, extending south and west. Because a number of Mississauga chiefs
had not been present at the original signing, the agreement was ratified on
28 November 1822.55 This 1819-1822 negotiation was to be the basis for
subsequent disputes between the Mississauga and their Algonquin and
Nipissing neighbours.
By this agreement, not only did the Mississauga cede lands in the
southern section of the Rideau Corridor, but also throughout the watersheds
of the Ottawa valley and, in particular, throughout the tributaries of the
Madawaska and Mississippi. Whether or not these lands were part of the
Mississauga traditional homeland is not at issue. The point is that the
Mississaugas were not the only Native peoples with a long-standing claim
to that region. In particular, it had also been the domain and hunting grounds
of the Algonquins who had not been party to the Rideau Purchase. Why
were they excluded?
Was it because government negotiators were interacting more with the
Kingston-centred Mississaugas, many of whom, incidentally, were being
converted to Methodism at this time and, therefore, more accessible to
government than the Roman Catholic Algonquins?56 Was it because the
Mississaugas were under the control of Upper Canadian authorities while
the Algonquins and Nipissings based at Lake of Two Mountains were the
charges of Lower Canada? Indeed, it was also claimed that because Captain
Charles Anderson, who was not only the “Indian Superintendent of Rice
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Lake,” but was also married to a Mississaugan woman, the government
would look more favourably upon the Mississauga claim. Whatever the
reason, apparently, the government did little to determine Native claims to
this vast extent of territory—despite the fact that there was no evidence that
the Upper Canada side of the Ottawa River belonged to the Mississaugas
and that there was abundant proof that the Algonquins and the Nipissings,
“from time immemorial, have considered this part of the country as their
exclusive hunting grounds.”57 Accordingly, the Algonquins and Nipissings
were not consulted during the Rideau cessions of 1819-22. Not
surprisingly, they complained that their lands had been sold clandestinely
by the Mississaugas and they continued to press their claims to their
traditional homelands.58
Certainly, there is evidence of the reassertion of an Algonquin presence.
As mentioned above, the Algonquins and Nipissings were among those
groups displaced by the mid-seventeenth century expansion of the Iroquois
into southern Ontario. However, it appears that they had begun to
re-establish a presence: by the middle of the eighteenth century, they were
making winter hunting trips along the Ottawa River; by the 1820s and
1830s, they had taken up permanent residence between the northern limit of
European settlement and the Ottawa River. In 1830, such was the growing
presence that the Mississaugas of Mud Lake and Rice Lake complained that
the Algonquins and Nipissings were destroying their hunting grounds.59
Two years later, colonial officials noted that “the Indians of the Lake of Two
Mountains and St. Regis have taken up residence in the Kingston
backcountry and are collecting presents intended for the Mississaugas. This
is reported as happening last year.”60
What factors prompted the Algonquin to reassert their territorial rights to
hunting grounds in south-eastern Ontario? As noted by Major Darling in
1828, one factor appears to have been the considerable pressure on the
limited space and resources surrounding the mission at Lake of Two
Mountains where they had been congregating during the summer months
since at least 1763:
The result of the present state of things is obvious, and such as can
scarcely fail in time to be attended with bloodshed and murder; for
driven from their own resources, they will naturally trespass on
those of other tribes, who are equally jealous of the intrusion of
their red brethren as of white men. Complaints on this head are
increasing daily, while the threats and admonitions of the officers
of this department have been found insufficient to control the
unruly spirit of the savage, who, driven by the calls of hunger, and
the feelings of nature towards his offspring, will not be scrupulous
in invading the rights of his brethren, as a means of alleviating his
misery, when he finds the example in the conduct of his white
father’s children practiced as he conceives towards himself.61
Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that they re-asserted their
presence in their former homelands to the north and west, in the Ottawa
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River watershed. Moreover, by the 1820s, having claimed and ceded these
lands, the Mississaugas were experiencing considerable social and cultural
trauma:
In about 1818, there were a great many hundreds of Indians of
Kingston, Upper Canada, and at Belleville and Rice Lake. And
they were all unhappy drunkards. I was well acquainted with these
tribes of Indians. And in 1829 I do not think there were more than
half the number; for they were dying very fast every year. Some of
them were stabbed, some were shot, some were tomahawked,
some were drowned, some were burned, and some were frozen to
death. And thus were going to destruction at a great rate.62
Others left the region to join the Methodist sponsored mission at Grape
Island, Bay of Quinte.63 Consequently, when Major Darling completed his
survey of Native peoples in the Canadas, he could account for only eighty
individuals inhabiting the back-country behind Kingston. It would appear
that it was at this time, and under these circumstances, that the Algonquins
and Nipissings increased their presence in a somewhat depopulated St.
Lawrence-Ottawa watershed.
In 1820, Algonquin and Nipissing Chiefs petitioned Sir George
Dalhousie, Governor-in-Chief of Canada, requesting that he grant them
written titles and patents to the unsold islands in the Ottawa River and other
lands to which they were entitled for their hunting. Complaining that their
territory was being intruded upon by hunting parties from other Indian
groups and by squatters and lumbermen, they were recognizing that they
had to have recourse to Euro-Canadian legal practices for protection.
Dalhousie’s somewhat unhelpful and undiscriminating response was that
he could not
grant a specific tract of the country, however remote, to any
particular tribe, or nation of Indians [since] the whole of these
widely scattered regions, ought to be open to all those
[Algonquins, Nipissings, Iroquois and Hurons] who choose to
hunt, in the yet unsettled & uninhabited parts of them.64
In 1824, Sir John Johnson forwarded a similar petition on behalf of the
Algonquins and Nipissings to the Military Secretary and Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, Colonel Darling. This precipitated an
investigation and the preparation of a map of the disputed area by Captain
J.M. Lamothe of the Indian Department in Montreal. The memorandum
accompanying the map is definitive, its assumptions based upon the “right
of lengthy occupation” and “confirmation” by Royal Charter:
The Algonquin and Nipissingue Tribes have from time
immemorial occupied as hunting grounds the Lands on both sides
of the Ottawa and little (Matawa) Rivers … to the height of land
dividing the waters of Lake Nipissingue from those of the said little
(Matawa); as also the Countries Watered by all the streams falling
into the said Ottawa and little (Matawa) Rivers, north and south to
their sources. This tract is bounded to the southward by a Ridge
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dividing the waters which fall into the lakes and into the St.
Lawrence from those falling to the Northward and into the Ottawa
River.65
Accepting the basic premise of Lamothe’s map, Johnson warned Darling
that as the Algonquin and Nipissings had not received compensation for
grants made in their territory, it was a “[b]reach of His Majesty’s Royal
Proclamation” and that as
[they] possess no land from which a revenue is derived … and
depend upon their hunting for support and of late the Settlement of
the Country, and the indiscriminate and injudicious destruction,
by the settlers, of the Beaver, and other animals, … is likely soon to
deprive them of the means by which they have hitherto supported
their families.66
Disputing the claim that these lands were shared by others and warning that
he feared “some lives will e’re long be sacrificed,” Johnson went on to
comment on emerging Native attitudes to land claims:
the Hunting Grounds of the various tribes of Indians Inhabiting
these Provinces were originally defined among themselves, and
the boundaries of each Tract Perfectly understood by them; any
encroachment by one Tribe upon the lands allotted for the use of
another is viewed by them in precisely the same light as is, the
Invasion of one Civilized state by another.
Despite the compelling logic of Johnson’s arguments, the Algonquins
and Nipissings received no redress. Over the next two decades, they
continued to petition, albeit unsuccessfully, a succession of governments
for compensation for lost lands and the protection of their remaining lands
from encroachment. In 1827, Colonel Darling spoke to the “Grand
Council” of Algonquins, Nipissings, Iroquois, and Abenakis and warned
them that he could not prevent “White people” from hunting in their hunting
grounds and that if they killed any of them they would be tried and punished.
He concluded that while he could not grant them lands “to be kept in a wild
state as Hunting Grounds,” Governor Dalhousie was ready to grant a small
portion of land to those who were prepared to take up agriculture.67
Increasingly, government was reluctant to recognize the particulars of the
Algonquin-Nipissing claim because of two somewhat contradictory
assumptions: that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had recognized Native
rights, in general, to hunt on ungranted Crown lands; and that the
Mississaugas had surrendered the lands claimed by the Algonquins and
Nipissings and had been compensated for their rights to them. Indeed, the
conclusion reached in 1839 by Justice James Macauley would appear to
have finally resolved the issue:
The papers referred to do not enable me to express any opinion
upon the merits of this Memorial [an Algonquin claim]. It seems
admitted that the Algonquins and Nipissings have a valid claim to
the North or Lower Canada side of the Ottawa River, their
pretensions to the south side are more doubtful. They contend, not
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for the St. Lawrence as a boundary, but a line midway between the
two rivers. The Mississaugas it is said, on the other hand, have
from the beginning claimed the whole Territory south of the
Ottawa and north of the St. Lawrence. The Government of this
Province have by treating with this Tribe implicitly recognized
their right as occupants, and there is no sufficient evidence to
support the counter-claims of the Algonquins. If it exists it must
repose in the early history of the Tribes frequenting the great
Canadian Rivers.68
Notwithstanding this apparently definitive conclusion, the Algonquins
continued to press their case that the Mississauga had “clandestinely” sold
their lands. Indeed, it would appear that the Algonquin-Mississauga land
claims were being presented in Euro-Canadian proprietorial tropes. In
1841, at a Council Meeting in Oka, the Algonquins presented the essence of
their case to James Hughes, Superintendent of the Indian Department:
The Mississauga never openly came and hunted on our waters nor
we on theirs, this was according to an Indian treaty between the
chiefs of the Mississaugas and us which the Iroquois Tribe are well
acquainted . . . [They asked that] the remuneration annually paid to
the Mississauga be from henceforth retained from them and paid to
us the Nipissings and Algonquins, the only Tribes entitled to
receive the annuity above mentioned.69
Despite the judgment by the new Governor-General of British North
America, Sir Charles Bagot, that there would be neither compensation nor
land, the Algonquins insisted that an inquiry be made into their claim to a
portion of the annuities paid to the Mississaugas for the Rideau Purchase in
1819-1822. Eventually, following several more petitions, in 1847, James
Hughes presented his opinion to Lord Elgin that “the Mississauga
clandestinely took upon themselves to sell this tract of land which they were
well aware belonged and formed part of the hunting grounds of the
Algonquin and Nipissingue Tribes.”70 Nevertheless, the Algonquins and
Nipissings never received the annuities.
The Bedford Interlude
Ironically, as if to underscore the internal discrepancies within the official
documentary voices, one aspect of the lived reality on the ground tells a
different story during this period of disputed land claims. The considerable
engineering of the Rideau Canal had much altered the hydrography of
eastern Ontario by linking the south-west flowing Cataraqui-Gananoque
river system with the north-east flowing Rideau river systems to produce a
through-route from Bytown [Ottawa] to Kingston. It also created an
extended lake-system athwart the watershed that came to be known as the
Rideau Lakes in the former shared land-use territories of the Algonquin and
Mississauga. Indeed, the Bagot Commission of 1844-45 suggests that not
only did they share the region’s resources but that some of them, at least,
appear to have shared common camp grounds:
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Within a few years past, some stragglers from the Rice Lake tribe
[Mississaugas] have settled in the Township of Bedford, about
twenty-five miles north of Kingston; and recently they have been
joined by a band of eighty-one Indians from Lower Canada,
belonging to the post of the Lake of Two Mountains. As the
settlement is of recent formation and the claim of these Indians
upon the interest of the Department of Upper Canada has only been
brought forward last year, they have not been visited by any officer
of the Department, and no account can be given of the settlement.71
How did this come to be?
In 1832, some nineteen Mississauga families were granted 2,680 acres
close to Wolfe Lake [West Rideau Lake] in Bedford Township.72 Here they
stayed until 1833 when they were ordered to move to the newly established
reservation at Alderville, near Peterborough. While most complied, many
continued to consider the Bedford region as part of their traditional
homeland domain.
Nearby, at Bob’s Lake, the Algonquin Chief, Peter Stephens,73 claimed
lands for his people, arguing that they had “long been accustomed to
spending the [winter] hunting season” there, returning to Lake of Two
Mountains for two months in the summer to receive presents and religious
instruction.74 In 1842, in response to the Algonquin petition for land, and
upon receipt of a census furnished by Peter Stephens that enumerated the
Algonquins at Bedford,75 an Order-in-Council awarded a “licence of
occupation” to the Stephen’s group, “only during the pleasure of the
Crown.”76 Indian Affairs then recommended 2,000 acres of secluded, if
poor quality, land be set aside for them, “on the same terms and conditions
that the Reservations in other parts of the Province” had been granted.77
Estimated to have some 96 persons in 1844, Peter Stephens group of
Algonquins continually petitioned for protection from the intrusion of
squatters and lumbermen.78 Their petitions were ignored but they stayed in
the area until at least 1863.79 As the frontier of lumbering and pioneer
agriculture intruded further into the Ottawa valley, many Algonquin people
dispersed further north.
However, these two short-lived experiments—together with evidence of
co-residence in camps and intermarriage—suggest that on the ground, at
least, the Mississauga and the Algonquins co-existed on the margins of their
respective claims. In all probability, they had shared areas of resource use in
the past but the shared occupancy of this region and the close proximity of
their camps may have been a reflection of the pressure of the times. The
encroachment of settlers and lumbermen limited their options: remain in an
ever-shrinking territory, relocate to the established reservation at Alnwick
(Mississauga) or to reservations established at Golden Lake and in northern
Quebec (Algonquin), or move to the north-west of those ceded by the
1819-22 Rideau Treaties.
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Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario
The Ottawa-Huron Tract
By the 1860s, the Public Lands and Colonization Act (1853) and the
Homestead Act (1868) had stimulated Euro-Canadian settlement of the
Ottawa-Huron tract.80 Faced with new incursions, in 1869, George
Paudash, a Mississauga Indian chief, submitted a petition suggesting that
the land lying north of the 45th parallel belonged to the Mississaugas and
had never been ceded.81 They were claiming this territory on behalf of the
Mississaugas of Rice, Mud and Scugog Lakes. Paudash was a direct
descendent of Charles and T.G. Anderson, both Indian Superintendents,
Charles Anderson having married a Mississauga woman from Rice Lake.
Accordingly, it has been suggested that not only did the Indian Department
favour the Mississauga claim because of this connection but that it might
even have assisted Paudash in compiling the claim.82
In any event, in 1870, the matter was brought before the Honourable
Joseph Howe, Superintendent General. It was his opinion that the “[t]he
Ojibways of the Upper Lakes had evidently no territorial rights extending
through from Lake Huron to the Ottawa.”83 The claim was not considered
again until 1878 when it was reported that “the Ontario Department of
Crown Lands has searched the available documentation and failed to
discover the evidence of any treaty showing that any part of the tract of land
[claimed by the Mississaugas and Chippewas] has been surrendered by the
Indians.”84 The Mississauga continued to press their claims, although the
conclusions reached by A.E. Irving in 1893 must have displeased them.
Essentially, Irving argued that “There is no reason why these Bands
[Mississaugas and Algonquins] should claim together” and that “the lands
in respect of which the Mississaugas claim compensation, belonged to
other Bands, the Algonquins and Nipissings, and that they [Mississaugas]
have been compensated.”85 Even more damningly, Irving goes on to assert
that “parts of the Lands included in the Surrender of 28th November, 1822,
were the Hunting grounds of the Nipissings and Algonquins,” and that
“these Chippewas and Mississaugas were not aboriginal inhabitants of
Upper Canada, they were immigrants, and possessed no rights to land
therein.”86 Such was the growing support of the Algonquin position that an
Indian Affairs confidential report in 1899 suggested that the department
drop the Mississauga claim.87 But in 1909, Samuel Bray, Chief Surveyor of
the Department of Indian Affairs, concluded “that the area claimed by the
Mississauga had not been claimed by any other group of Indian people,”
although he went on to suggest that they “seem to have made very little use
of the area claimed.”88
Despite these apparent set-backs, the Ojibwa communities of Christian
Island, Georgina Island, Rama, Mud (Curve) Lake, Rice Lake, Alnwick
(Alderville) and Scugog continued to argue that they had never ceded their
rights to the lands between Lake Ontario and Lake Nipissing.89 Indeed, they
sustained a strong presence in the area with people from Rama and
Christian Island retaining detailed knowledge of canoe routes to the north
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and those from the Alderville community making references to lakes in the
Algonquin Park region. There was also clear evidence of Algonquin and
Nipissing having made long-standing use of these lands. Nevertheless, on
31 October 1923, government signed the Williams Treaty with the
Chippewa of Christian Island, Georgina Island and Rama, and on 15
November 1923, with the Mississauga of Rice Lake, Mud Lake and Lake
Scugog.90 By this agreement, in return for compensation amounting to
$500,000 and $25 per capita, the Mississauga and Chippewa ceded their
fishing, hunting and trapping rights to an area of about 17,600 square miles
south of Lake Nipissing, west of the Ottawa River, east of Georgian Bay and
north of 45 degrees latitude, and to an area of about 2,500 square miles in the
Counties of Northumberland, Durham, Ontario and York. They also ceded
all rights and privileges to all other lands situate in Ontario, apart from lands
set aside as reserves.91
While this payment was intended to finally resolve claims of the Ojibwa
peoples in this region, yet again, both the federal and Ontario governments
had overlooked the claims of the Algonquin peoples of the Ottawa valley.
Not surprisingly, the result has been continuing litigation to redress these
long-standing claims to a long-standing disputed territory.
Conclusion: Connections and Disconnections
Native and colonial societies possessed differing perceptions of the
conceptualization of space as a defined territory. Colonial practices of
mapping and codifying space resulted in bounded territories with
imaginary lines that did not parallel the concepts of boundaries utilized by
the indigenous inhabitants. When colonial authorities delimited and
categorized indigenous territories as lines on paper, they did not take into
account the necessity of permeable boundaries to enable the historically
acknowledged freedom of movement of Native groups and the dynamic
relationships between peoples and between themselves and the land. As
this paper demonstrated, the assertion of colonial control occurred at a time
when the Mississaugas and Algonquins were themselves renegotiating
territories and boundaries. The thrust of colonial expansion precipitated
legalistic contestation between these Native groups and initiated the
process of individual claims to territory.
The fact that there continues to be controversy regarding the
Mississauga-Algonquin claims to former homeland territories throughout
the Ottawa Valley watershed boundaries reflects past governments’ failure
to comprehend the grounded ethnographic realities of Native occupation of
this region. In the watershed boundary areas, Mississaugas and Algonquins
shared lands and campsites and frequently intermarried. As recently as the
1970s, they stood together at the barricades to block the commercial
exploitation of their wild rice beds at Mud Lake, Ardoch.92 It would appear
that colonial appropriation of Native lands by such vehicles as the Rideau
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Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of
Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario
Purchase and the Williams Treaty were concerned more with shortsighted
legalisms rather than cultural verities. Moreover, there may have been
another, purely bureaucratic factor. Rather than a simple metanarrative of
contestation between a monolithic Euro-Canadian “government” and the
“Native peoples,” there appears to have been a more nuanced intercolonial
real-politic. Algonquin claims appear to have been supported by colonial
authorities in Lower Canada but resisted by those in Upper Canada.
Conversely, Upper Canadian authorities favoured the Mississaugas while
attempting to deflect the Algonquins back over the Ottawa River to Lower
Canada. Such positions may have been less than objective and more
concerned with sidestepping responsibility. The Indian Department was,
after all, a very expensive administrative appendage. Whatever the reason,
the result has been some two centuries of intransigence, inaction and
repetitive litigation. To date, the Algonquin and Mississauga claims to their
“Northern hunting grounds” in the watersheds of the tributaries of the
Ottawa River are still unresolved.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Huitema is an Independent Researcher, Osborne is in Geography at Queen’s
University, and Ripmeester is in Geography at Brock University. They are
currently collaborating on an SSHRC funded research project: “Homeland, Third
Space, Identity: The Landscapes of the Alderville Mississauga.”
O.P. Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French
Colonialism in the Americas, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1954; see
also Cornelius J. Jaenen. “Conceptual Frameworks for French Views of America
and Amerindians,” French Colonial Studies, No. 2, 1978, pp.1-22.
Harry Leibersohn, “Discovering Indigenous Nobility: Tocqueville, Chamisso,
and Romantic Travel Writing,” The American History Review, Volume 99, 1994,
pp. 746-766; see also Victor Kiernan, “Noble and Ignoble Savages,” in G.R.
Rousseau and R. Porter (eds.), Exoticism in the Enlightenment, Manchester:
University of Manchester Press, 1990, pp. 86-116.
Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1979; see also M. Edney,
Mapping and Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India,
1765-1843, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume II: The Rise of Classes and
Nation-States, 1760-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; see
also Fernand Braudel. The Wheels of Commerce, Volume 2: Civilization and
Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
For enclosure, see J.M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and
Social Change in England, 1700-1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993. For an example of enclosure as a challenge of customary practices see
Brian S. Osborne, “Commonlands, Mineral Rights and Industry: Changing
Evaluations in an Industrializing Society,” Journal of Historical Geography,
Volume 4, 1978, pp.231-249. For a further challenge to customary practices
mounted by the “commutation” of church tithe income, duties and obligations by
pecuniary payments, see Roger J.P. Kain and Hugh C. Prince, The Tithe Surveys
of England and Wales, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
105
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7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
106
J.H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth Century
Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Of course, the “great abyss” is that emotive term referring to the divide between
the classes in Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybill. For more on evangelicalism at home
and abroad, particularly in its Methodist form, see J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff,
Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in
South Africa, Chicago: Chicago Press, particularly Chapter Two: “British
Beginnings,” 1991. pp. 49-85.
Consider the motives of the eighteenth century traveller, Dupaty, who declared,
“mon imagination avoit passé en revue tous les maux de la civilisation; elle
entroit dans les forêts du Canada, pour interroger, sur le bonheur, la vie sauvage”:
Dupaty [Charles Marguerite Jean Baptiste Mercier]. Sentimental Letters on Italy,
2 Volumes, London, Volume 1, 1789, p. 186.
M.L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, New York:
Routledge, 1992, pp. 34-35.
Several authors have suggested that the colonial imagination collapsed travel
through space and time into a single process. Human difference was explained
through recourse to evolutionary process. To travel beyond the bounds of Europe
was, therefore, to travel before the time of Europe. See, J. Duncan, “Sites of
Representation: Place, Time and the Discourse of the Other,” in J. Duncan and D.
Ley (eds.) place/culture/practice, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 39-56; see
also A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the
Colonial Contest, New York: Routledge, 1995; and B. Christophers, Positioning
the Missionary: John Booth Good and the Confluence of Cultures in
Nineteenth-Century British Columbia, Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 1998.
J.E. Chamberlain, “Culture and Anarchy in Indian Country,” in M. Asch (ed.),
Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equality, and Respect
for Difference, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997, p. 3.
J. Carson, “Ethnography, Geography, and Native History,” unpublished paper
presented at Queen’s University, 29 January 1999.
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of
New England, New York: Hill and Wand, 1983, p. 58.
Terry N. Tobias, Chief Kerry’s Moose, A Guidebook to Land Use and Occupancy
Mapping, Research Design, and Data Collection, Canada: Joint Publication of
the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and Ecotrust, 2000, p. 3. (Tobias states that these
distinctions draw directly from Peter Usher’s work as one of the pioneers of land
use and occupancy methodology).
Ibid. See also J. Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World, New York: Guilford
Press, 1993; and L.C. Green and O.P. Dickason, The Law of Nations and the New
World, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1993.
A.J. Sluyter, “Material-Conceptual Transformation in Sixteenth Century
Veracrux,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, Volume 89, No. 3,
1999, pp. 377-401.
Canada, JLAUC, 1844-45, Report of the Affairs of the Indians in Canada, Section
1, unpaginated, hereafter, The Bagot Commission.
Canada, Indian Treaties and Surrenders from 1680-1902, Volume 3,
Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Bond Head, cited in R.H. Bartlett, Indian
Reserves and Aboriginal Lands in Canada: A Homeland, Saskatoon: University
of Saskatchewan Native Law Centre, 1990, p. 2.
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26. Chloe Chard, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and
Imaginative Geography, 1600-1830, Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1999, p. 10.
27. Ibid., Chard quotes this statement by Christian Jacob in L’Empire des cartes:
approche théorique de la cartographie à travers l’histoire, Paris: Albin Michel,
1992, p. 16.
28. J.B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” in T. Barnes and J. Duncan (eds.),
Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text, and Metaphor in the Representation of
Landscape, New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 16.
29. M.E. Huitema, “‘Land of Which the Savages Stood in no Particular Need’:
Dispossessing the Algonquins of South-Eastern Ontario of their Lands,
1760-1930,” M.A. Thesis, Queen s University, Kingston, 2001, p. 20.
30. See G.M. Lewis, “Indian Maps” in C.M. Judd and A.J. Ray (eds.), Old Trails and
New Directions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980; See also G.M.
Lewis, “Indian Delimitations of Primary Biogeographic Regions,” in T.E. Ross
and T.G. Moore (eds.), A Cultural Geography of North American Indians,
Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1987.
31. P.J. Usher, F.J. Tough, R.M. Galois, 1992, op cit., p. 112.
32. Archives of Ontario (AO), Sir A.E. Irving Papers, F 1027-1-8, Indian Land
Dispute and Compensation Claims, A.E. Irving, lawyer and counsel for the
Ontario government, to J.P. MacDonell, 1835-1911, 18 February 1893.
33. P.J. Usher, F.J. Tough, R.M. Galois, 1992, op cit., p. 112.
34. M.E. Huitema, 2001, op. cit., p. 18.
35. For recent formulations of these perspectives, see D. Clayton, “Captain Cook and
the Spaces of Contact at ‘Nootka Sound’” in J.S.H. Brown and E. Vibert (eds.)
Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, Peterborough: Broadview
Press, 1996, pp. 95-123; see also R.C. Harris, 1995, op. cit.
36. P.J. Usher, F.J. Tough and R.M. Galois, 1992, op cit., p. 112
37. O.P. Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from
Earliest Times, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 62.
38. See D. Clayton, Islands of Truth, The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island,
Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.
39. See C. Heidenreich, Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians,
1600-1650, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971.
40. P. Schmalz, The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1991.
41. Chief Robert Paudash, “The Coming of the Mississaugas,” Ontario Historical
Society, Papers and Records, Volume 6, 1905, p. 190.
42. “Enumeration of the Indian Tribes connected with the Government of Canada;
the Warriors and Armorial Bearings of Each Nation, 1736,” Documents Relative
to the Colonial History of the State of New York, E.B. O’Callaghan (ed.), Albany:
Weed, Parsons, and Company, Volume 9, 1856, p. 1056.
43. H. Hornbeck Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, Norman and London:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1987, p. 66.
44. Duchesnay, 1829, cited in G.M. Day and B.G. Trigger, “Algonquin,” in B.
Trigger (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15, Northeast,
Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978, pp. 794-5. The territory north of
the St. Lawrence front had been the subject of an alliance between the Abenaki
and Algonquin nations in the early 1700s, which recognized the St. Lawrence
River as the dividing line, and the land north of the river as Algonquin country.
Based on these assumptions, in 1791, the Algonquin nation held a council with
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45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
Colonel John Campbell of Indian Affairs for the Province of Quebec,
complaining of settlers encroaching on their hunting grounds and that the
Iroquois were “pillaging” their hunting grounds. They asked Campbell to use his
authority to ensure that “each nation hunt[ed] on the lands which Nature gave to
them.” L.C. Hansen, Research Report: The Algonquins of Golden Lake Indian
Band - Land Claim, (unpublished) Ministry of Natural Resources, Office of
Indian Resource Policy, 1986, p. 17.
For more on the Mississaugan way of life see B.Osborne and M. Ripmeester,
“Kingston, Bedford, Grape Island, Alnwick: The Odyssey of the Kingston
Mississaugas,” Historic Kingston, Volume 43, 1995, pp. 83-111; B. Osborne and
M. Ripmeester, “The Mississaugas between Two Worlds: Strategic Adjustments
to Changing Landscapes of Power,” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies,
Volume XVII, No. 2, 1997, pp. 259-292; M. Ripmeester, “Vision Quests into
Sight Lines: Negotiating the Place of the Mississaugas in South-Eastern Ontario,
1700-1876,” Ph.D. Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; M.
Ripmeester, ‘“It is scarcely to be believed...”: The Mississauga Indians and the
Grape Island Mission, 1826-1836,” The Canadian Geographer, Volume 39,
1995, pp. 157-168. For the Algonquins, see M.E. Huitema, 2001, op. cit.
Huitman, M.E., “‘Land of Which the Savages Stood in no Particular Need’:
Dispossessing the Algonquins of South-Eastern Ontario of Their Lands,
1760-1930,” M.A. Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, 2001, p. 75.
B. Osborne and D. Swainson, Kingston: Building on the Past, Westport, Ontario:
Butternut Press, 1987.
See B. Osborne and M. Ripmeester, 1995 and 1997, op. cit., M. Ripmeester 1995
op. cit. See also Don Smith, “The Dispossession of the Mississauga Indians: A
Missing Chapter in the History of Upper Canada,” in J. Johnson and B. Wilson
(eds.) Historical Essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives, Ottawa: Carleton
University Press, 1989, pp. 23-52. For contemporary accounts, see Rev. Peter
Jones, [rpt. 1970]. History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to
their Conversion to Christianity, Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1861; Peter
Jones, The Life and Journals of Kah-ke-wa-quo-na-by, (Reverend Peter Jones)
Wesleyan Methodist Missionary, Toronto: A. Green, 1860.
Captain Crawford to Haldimand, Papers of Sir Frederick Haldimand:
Unpublished Papers and Correspondence, 1758-1784, Queen’s University
Archives, Kingston, 9 October 1783.
G. Snyderman, “Concepts of Land Ownership among the Iroquois and their
Neighbours,” in W. Fenton (ed.), Symposium on Local Diversity in Iroquois
Culture, Washington. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American
Ethnology, Bulletin 149, 1951, pp. 15-34.
NAC, MG21, Add. Mss., 21818, f1-425v, “Report from Sir John Johnson to
Governor Haldimand,” 17 November 1783, p. 186.
Queen’s University Library, Government Documents, Department Lands and
Forests, Surveyors’ Letters, Volume 37, p. 93, Samuel Wilmot to Thomas Ridout,
26 August 1818.
Ontario Ministry Natural Resources, Survey Records Branch, “Ammended
replica of a Plan shewing the relative situation of the Indian Burying Ground in
the Township of Thurlow, Surveyor General’s Office, 5 August 1816.”
NAC, RG10, Volume 32:18918-19, letter from Ferguson to Claus, 8 March 1816.
Canada, Indian Treaties and Surrenders: From 1680-1890, Volume 1, Ottawa:
Brown Chamberlain Printers, 1891, pp. 62-3.
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56. For more on this conversion see B. Osborne and M. Ripmeester, 1995, 1997, op.
cit., and M. Ripmeester 1995, op. cit.
57. A.E. St. Louis, “Memorandum: Ancient Hunting Grounds of the Algonquin and
Nipissing Indians: Comprising the Watersheds of the Ottawa and Madawaska
Rivers.” Unpublished manuscript. Dominion Archivist, Canada, Department of
Indian and Northern Affairs, Treaties and Historical Research Centre, 1951, p.
15.
58. Much of what follows derives from Hanson, 1986, op. cit.
59. NAC, RG10, Volume 499, p. 15, C-13341, “J. Givens to T.G. Anderson, York,”
22 April 1830.
60. NAC, RG10, Volume 51, pp. 56769-56770, C-11017, “J.B. Clench to Col.
Givens, Kingston,” 15 September 1832.
61. Copy Despatch and Enclosures from Lord Dalhousie to Sir George Murray,
London, 27 October 1828. Enclosure, Major-General Darling’s Report to Lord
Dalhousie. Quebec, 24 June 1828, Irish University Press Series of British
Parliamentary Papers: Correspondence and other Papers Relating to Aboriginal
Tribes in British Possessions, 1834, Anthropology, Aborigines, 3 (Shannon: Irish
University Press, 1969), p. 24.
62. CA&J, Volume 10, 43, 17 June 1836, p. 179.
63. Of course, there were other Ojibwa/Mississauga groups in the Peterborough,
Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay areas. These too were undergoing similar
processes, being relocated to such places as Mud Lake, Rice Lake, the Credit,
Coldwater and the Narrows. Despite such dislocations, they too retained an
interest in, and claim to, lands throughout the Ottawa Huron tract.
64. NAC, RG10, Volume 494, Governor Dalhousie to Colonel Darling, Military
Secretary and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, August 1822, pp.
31073-75.
65. NAC, RG10, Volume 494, Captain Lamothe, Indian Department, to Sir John
Johnson Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 29 October 1824, pp.
31066-67.
66. NAC, RG10, Volume 494, Sir John Johnson to Colonel Darling, 5 November
1824, pp. 31028–29.
67. NAC, RG10, Volume 20, Colonel Darling to the Grand Council, 5 October 1827,
pp. 14240-53.
68. NAC, RG10, Volume 117, Report on Indian Affairs: Mr. Justice B. Macaulay to
Lieutenant Governor Arthur, 22 April 1839, pp. 65660-64; also AO, Sir A.E.
Irving Papers, MS 1780, F 1027-1-2, Report of Mr. Justice B. Macaulay, Toronto:
pp. 81-86.
69. NAC, RG10, Volume 6, Proceedings of Council at Lake of Two Mountains, 4
September 1841, pp. 2915-22.
70. NAC, RG10, Volume 604, Report: James Hughes for Lord Elgin, 30 September
1847 pp. 49937-39.
71. JLAC, 1844-45, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Indian Affairs to the
Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, Section 2, Part 16. (Hereafter
known as “The Bagot Commission.”)
72. NAC, RG10, Volume 48, correspondence between M. Macauley and Col. J.
Givens, pp. 54381-55027.
73. Peter Stephens was also known as Piershawanapinessi, Pierchaw-wi-ni-pi-nessi,
Peter Shaw-we-ne-pi-nai-see, Peter Shawanipinessi, Pshawainonpininisi and
Chawanibenisi. Stephens was also variously spelled as Stevens (M. E. Huitema,
op cit. Ftn. 312, p. 117).
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Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario
74. NAC, RG10, Volume 186, pt. 2, Petition of Peter Shawanipinessi for Licence of
Occupation entitled Petition No. 115, 17 July 1842, pp. 108566C-566F.
75. NAC, RG10, Volume 138, Peter Stephens, Chief at Bedford, to Col. Jarvis, Chief
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 14 March 1844, pp. 79150-51.
76. NAC, RG10, Volume 119, Order-in-Council #1467, Licence of Occupation,
Wm.H. Lee to the Commissioner of Crown Lands, 21 March 1844, pp. 522-23.
77. NAC, RG10, Volume 186, Lieutenant Colonel Jarvis (Chief Superintendent of
Indian Affairs) to Indian Affairs Department, 29 October 1843, pp. 45607-09,
also Volume186, pt. 2, pp. 108566.
78. NAC, RG10, Volume 186, pt. 2, Pierchaw-wi-ni-pi-nessi, Bedford Chief,
Petition No.127, 6 January 1846, unpaginated; also NAC, RG10, Volume 186,
Report of W.R. Bartlett, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Toronto to C.J. Wated,
Accountant, Indian Department, 26 January 1861, pp. 155409-10.
79. Canada, 1861 Census: Bedford, Kennebec, Olden, Oso Townships in Frontenac,
indexed by Russ Waller, Documents Library, Queen’s University; also J. Holmes
and Associates Inc., “Report on Non-Status Algonquin Communities: Antoine
First Nation, Ardoch Algonquins, and Bonnechere Métis Association, First
Draft,” unpublished, Ottawa, Ontario, 20 October 1999, p. 61
80. Brian S. Osborne, “The Settlement of Kingston’s Hinterland,” in G. Tulchinsky
(ed.) To Preserve & Defend: Essays on Kingston in the Nineteenth Century,
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976, pp. 63-79,
351-353; Brian S. Osborne, “Frontier Settlement in Eastern Ontario in the 19th
Century: A Study in Changing Perceptions of Land and Opportunity,” in David
Harry Miller and Jerome O. Steffen (eds.) The Frontier: Comparative Studies,
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997, pp. 201-226.
81. NAC, RG10, Volume 2329, File 67071-1, Wetongwe to William Spragge,
(signed by George Paudash) 22 December 1869, unpaginated.
82. A.E. St. Louis, 1951, op. cit., pp. 15, 30.
83. AO, Sir A.E. Irving Papers, MS1780, Folio 1027-1-8, Indian Land Dispute and
Compensation Claims, Joseph Howe, Department of Secretary of State, Indian
Branch, to Commissioner of Crown Lands, p. 2.
84. NAC, RG10, Volume 2328, File 67071-1, Secretary of the Province of Ontario to
Secretary of State (Canada), 17 July 1878, unpaginated.
85. AO, Sir A.E. Irving Papers, MU 1464, Indian Land Dispute and Compensation
Claims, Summary of Claim, 9 February 1893, unpaginated.
86. Ibid. Irving claims that this was communicated by Vankoughnet, Deputy
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to Sir John A. McDonald on 2 October 1884,
together with an array of supporting documentation.
87. NAC, RG10, Volume 2545, File 111834, Report: J. A. McKenna and R. Rimmer
(Law Clerks for the Department of Indian Affairs) 20 March 1899, unpaginated.
88. NAC, RG10, Volume 2329, File 67071-2, Memo: Samual Bray (Chief Surveyor
of the Department of Indian Affairs) to the Deputy Minister, 26 April 1909,
unpaginated.
89. Edward S. Rogers, “The Algonquian Farmers of Southern Ontario, 1830-1945, in
E.S. Rogers and D.B. Smith (eds), Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives
on the First Nations, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1994, pp. 122-167.
90. L.C. Hanson, op cit. 1986, p. 62.
91. Hansen, ibid, pp. 62-63. See also Williams Treaties, NAC, RG10, Volume 1853,
pt. 1, Treaty #1080 and Treaty #1081. See also R.C. Daniel, A History of Native
Claims Processes in Canada 1867-1979, Ottawa, 1980, pp. 64-76; and R.J.
Surtees, The Williams Treaties, Treaty Research Report, Ottawa, 1986.
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92. Susan Delisle, “Coming out of the Shadows: Asserting Identity and Authority in a
Layered Homeland: The 1979-82 Mud Lake Wild-Rice Confrontation.” M.A.
Thesis, Queen’s University, 2001.
112