The Haudenosaunee

Before we continue with the story of our ancestors in Canada, we need to have some understanding of the history of the land they settled on. And that history is First Nations history.

The Haudenosaunee (“people of the long house”) are a confederacy of Iroquoian speakers who occupied all of what is now upstate New York when white Europeans showed up in the early 17^th century. The confederacy was originally made up of 5 distinct nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. In 1722, the Tuscarora (who fled north from North Carolina) joined the confederacy, and the group became known in English as the Six Nations. The Haudenosaunee territory stretched from the Hudson River Valley in the east to the Niagara River in the west, but their influence went much further.

Until the late 16^th century, these Iroquois nations continually fought with each other over land and resources, but according to their tradition, sometime between 1570 and 1600, Dekanawidah (the Peacemaker), a Huron (Iroquoian Wendat) from north of Lake Ontario, crossed the lake in a stone canoe and persuaded the 5 nations to make peace and form a confederation. Each nation had its own council composed of clan and village chiefs (appointed by the clan mothers), with representatives sitting on a confederate council to resolve inter-national issues. At this level, decision making was by consensus, with unanimity required. The Six Nations claim they are one of the world’s oldest participatory democracies.

This confederacy was highly successful in warfare against neighbouring nations and in negotiations with European settlers. They expanded their control eastward into the Hudson Valley, southward along the Atlantic coast to South Carolina, and westward into southwestern Ontario, Northwestern Pennsylvania, and Ohio. They gained control over, and demanded tribute from, the Mohican, Neutral, Tionontati (or Tobacco), and Erie peoples. They traded with the Dutch and the English and allied with the English in their conflict with the French in the late 17^th century, while their traditional enemies, the Huron and the Algonquins, allied with the French.

After the Haudenosaunee destroyed the Huron confederacy in southwestern Ontario in 1648-50, they launched attacks on the French settlements along the St Lawrence into the 1690s (the Mohawks captured Pierre-Esprit Radisson as a boy near Trois Rivieres in 1651/52, and he was adopted by one of the clan mothers; he became a Mohawk warrior and later an important European explorer of the Great Lakes basin and a founder of the Hudson Bay Company). By forming a buffer between the French and English colonies, the Haudenosaunee were able to maintain their independence until the American War of Independence.

First Nations Peoples in 18th Century New York and Upper Canada

In 1763, Britain defeated France to end the Seven Years War (of which the French and Indian Wars were the American theatre) and win control over France’s North American colonies, as agreed in the Treaty of Paris. In those wars, the Haudenosaunee fought for the British cause. Just over a decade later, in 1776, when the American colonies rebelled against Britain, the Haudenosaunee again were caught between the warring parties, and again the British pressed them for support. For their help, the British promised that they would protect the Haudenosaunee homelands no matter what the outcome of the war.

In the end, the Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the rebellious colonists, while the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca sided with the British, causing a rift in their confederacy. The Mohawk war chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) and other war chiefs fought alongside the British in many skirmishes in the Mohawk Valley, and in 1779 George Washington ordered the Sullivan campaign in retaliation. General John Sullivan and Col Daniel Broadhead marched their troops across upstate New York, destroying Haudenosaunee villages and farms, burning everything in their path.

When the British lost that war, they forgot to include their Haudenosaunee allies in their negotiations with the victorious Americans and forgot their promise to protect their lands. The British surrendered all of upstate New York to the new country, and the Six Nations were left to negotiate with the Americans for land to live on. In the treaties of Fort Stanwix in 1784 and Canandaigua in 1794, they were forced to cede almost all of their land to the Americans. They moved the central fireplace of the confederacy to a small reservation on Buffalo Creek at the head of Lake Erie.

In the meantime, Chief Joseph Brant went to Quebec City to ask the Governor of Quebec, General Sir Frederick Haldimand, for a homeland in Canada as acknowledgement of their help during the war and the loss of their traditional lands. Eventually, Haldimand purchased a large tract of land in the Grand River valley from the Mississauga Ojibway (Anishinaabe) and gave it to the Six Nations in what is known as the Haldimand Proclamation of October 25, 1784. This proclamation gave all of the land 6 miles on each side of the river from its source to its mouth to the Six Nations for “them and their posterity to enjoy for ever.” It was subsequently discovered that all of that land hadn’t actually been sold by the Mississauga, so the Haldimand Tract reached only about as far upriver as present-day Fergus.

After receiving this title to their new homeland, Brant brought a group of about 2000 refugees from New York to settle in the territory (many of their people remained in New York state). Brant chose the land near the present-day Brantford (Brant’s Ford originally) for his Mohawk people, and the remnants of other nations settled in villages down toward the mouth of the river. Many of the people were war-widows and orphans; all were completely destitute. Brant realized that without capital to get them on their feet, the settlement would fail. He therefore decided that it was in their best interest to sell or lease some of the land to raise some cash.

He had several blocks of land north of Brant’s Ford surveyed so they could be sold, but the Crown said he couldn’t sell or lease the land without their permission. Brant argued that if it really was Haudenosaunee land, if they really had sovereignty, they could do with it what they wished. The Crown patronizingly countered that they could sell land only if all transactions were approved and overseen by a Crown-appointed committee of trustees and if the funds from the sale would be administered by the trustees.

Brant had no choice but to agree to the Crown’s conditions. The Six Nations began selling and leasing land around 1796, and by 1798, the following blocks had been sold:

• Block 1: Township of North Dumfries, Waterloo County
• Block 2: Waterloo Township, Waterloo County
• Block 3: Woolwich Township, Waterloo County, and Pilkington Township, Wellington County
• Block 4: Nichols Township, Wellington County
• Blocks 5 and 6: Townships in Haldimand County south of the current Six Nations Reservation

Of most interest to our family history are Blocks 2 and 3. Block 2 was purchased by Richard Beasley of Burlington Heights and two short-lived partners, James Wilson and John Baptiste Rousseau. Block 3 was purchased by William Wallace of Niagara.

As soon as he acquired Block 2, Richard Beasley had the tract surveyed into two parts called Wilson’s Upper and Lower Blocks, then had portions of the Lower Block (about a third of the total) surveyed into lots. Even though he was not allowed to sell until he had paid off his mortgage to the trustees for the Six Nations, he was deeply in debt, so he started selling in order to make his payments.

The Haldimand Tract
(current Six Nations Reservation shown in yellow)

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Sources:

Bourrie, Mark. Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. Windsor: Biblioasis, 2019.

Cruikshank, Brig. General E. A. “The Reserve of the Six Nations Indians on the Grand River, and the Mennonite Purchase.” Waterloo Historical Society Annual Report, volume 15 (1927).

“Iroquois,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Iroquois_Confederacy).

Martin, Geoff. “From the Banks of the Grand.” New Quarterly online (https://tnq.ca/from-the-banks-of-the-grand/).

Monture, Rick. We Share Our Matters: Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of the Grand River.  Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014.