Six Nations (or Six Nations of the Grand River)[a] is demographically the largest First Nationsreserve in Canada. As of the end of 2017, it has a total of 27,276 members, 12,848 of whom live on the reserve.[2] The six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy are the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora. Some Lenape (also known as Delaware) live in the territory as well.
Many of the Haudenosaunee people allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War, particularly warriors from the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga and Seneca nations. Some warriors of the Oneida and Tuscarora also allied with them, as warfare was highly decentralized. These nations had longstanding trade relations with the British and hoped they might stop European-American encroachment on their territories. These allies were from the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy.
After the American victory in the conflict, the Crown ceded all of its territory in the colonies to their new government under a peace treaty, including that belonging to the Six Nations without consulting them or making them party to treaty negotiations. The Crown worked to resettle native Loyalists in Canada and provide some compensation for lands lost in the new United States. The Crown also hoped to use these new settlers, both Native Americans and European Americans, to develop agriculture and towns in areas west of Quebec, the territory later known as Upper Canada.
The new lands granted to Six Nations reserves were all near important Canadian military targets and placed along the border to prevent any American invasion.[13] The growth of the Six Nations community was also hampered. Land, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, granted a certain measure of power to their owners. Influential leaders such as Joseph Brant and Deseronto were prevented from granting land to business owners who could have brought industry and agriculture to their lands.
After the war, Mohawk leaders John Deseronto and Joseph Brant met with British commander Sir Frederick Haldimand to discuss the loss of their lands in New York. Haldimand promised to resettle the Mohawk near the Bay of Quinte, on the northeast shore of Lake Ontario, in present-day Ontario, Canada. Haldimand purchased from other First Nations a tract 12mi (19km) by 13mi (21km) on the Bay of Quinte, which he granted to the Mohawk. (There are of course questions about First Nations understanding of such purchase). About 200 Mohawk settled with Deseronto at what is now called the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Ontario. The group of Mohawk originally led by John Deseronto, who died in the town named after him, settled on the Bay of Quinte known as Tyendinaga. These were primarily Mohawk of the Lower Castle (of New York).
Six Nations at Grand River
Brant decided that he preferred to settle on the Grand River north of Lake Erie. Mohawk of the Upper Castle joined him in settling on the Grand River, as did bands of the other Six Nations. By the Haldimand Proclamation of October 25, 1784, the government granted a tract of land to the Mohawk Nation and Six Nations bands in appreciation of their support for the Crown during the revolution. The Crown had purchased the lands previously from the Mississauga on May 22, 1784, as part of the Between the Lakes Treaty.[14]Joseph Brant led a large group of Iroquois to settle in what is now referred to as "Six Nations of the Grand River."
A 1785 census recorded 1,843 Natives living on the Grand River reserve, including 548 Mohawk, 281 Cayuga, 145 Onondaga, 262 Oneida, 109 Tuscarora, and 98 Seneca. There were also 400 persons from other tribes, including Lenape, and others from southern territory, such as the Nanticoke, Tutelo, and some Creek and Cherokee.[15] African-American slaves were also brought to Six Nations and Brantford by Joseph Brant. Brant encouraged members of his family to marry local Blacks, absorbing them into the population on the reserve.[16][17] From the 1830s to the 1860s many runaway slaves, escaping through the Underground Railroad, were received and absorbed into the population of Six Nations.[18] Along with the African-Americans who settled largely in the area around Cainsville, Joseph Brant invited several Anglo-American white families to live on the grant, particularly veterans of Brant's Volunteers and Butler's Rangers from New York, who had fought with him during the war. To encourage his loyalist friends to settle there, Brant gave them larger grants than the government had given other loyalists in other areas of Upper Canada. Some Canadians objected to Brant giving such land grants to whites in the reserve area.
As the government did for European Americans, the Indian department provided the Haudenosaunee with some tools and other provisions for resettlement, including such items as saws, axes, grindstones, and chisels. They received help in establishing schools and churches, and in acquiring farm equipment and other necessities. Conditions were extremely difficult in the first years on the frontier, as the government did not provide enough supplies or assistance to any of the resettled loyalists, neither Native Americans nor European Americans. They had to create new settlements out of woodlands. In 1785, the government built the first Protestant church in Upper Canada (now Ontario) on the reserve; it was known as Her Majesty's Royal Chapel of the Mohawks. The Crown maintained its support of this chapel, and it is among only twelve Chapels Royal in the world.
The main town developed at what is now Brantford. It was first called Brant's Town after Joseph Brant, who built his residence there. In 1798, it was described as a large and sprawling settlement. Brant's home was a two-story house, built in a European-American style. In 1797, Brant founded one of the earliest Masonic Lodges in Upper Canada; he achieved the rank of its Worshipful Master.
Governor John Simcoe confirmed the Grant with a limited deed on January 14, 1793. Also, this deed forbade them to sell the land to anyone but each other and the king. Led by Joseph Brant, the chiefs rejected the deed. In 1795, the Grand River chiefs empowered Joseph Brant to sell large blocks of land in the northern section, which the Haudenosaunee were not using at the time. They set terms of no money down because they wanted to take their payment entirely in future years as annual interest. At this time, the population on the reserve was declining; some Haudenosaunee left the Grand River for traditional native communities in New York. After Brant's land sales started in 1795, the population began to increase again. He and the chiefs insisted on annuities to help the Six Nations community survive.
According to the Haldimand Proclamation, the original tract of land stretched from the mouth of the Grand River on the shores of Lake Erie to the river's head, and for 10km (6mi) from either bank. However, the grant of land included land around the source that the Crown had not purchased from the Mississauga. A purchase from the Mississauga was later arranged, but not carried out. Between 1795 and 1797, Joseph Brant sold 381,480 acres (1,543.8km2) to land speculators; the property comprising the northern half of the reserve was sold for £85,332. This was the highest price paid to Haudenosaunee up to this time for undeveloped land.
Chiefs of the Six Nations explaining their wampum belts to Horatio Hale, 1871
Governor Simcoe opposed the land sales. The interest on the annuity promised an income to the people of £5,119 per year, far more than any other Iroquois people had received. The land speculators were unable to sell farm-size lots to settlers fast enough. By 1801, however, all the land speculators had fallen behind in their payments. Because of the lack of payments, Brant was determined to sell more land to make up for the missing payments.
In 1796, Lord Dorchester issued another deed for the land. This empowered the Haudenosaunee to lease or sell their land, provided they offered it first for sale to the government. Brant rejected this deed, partly because the deed named the Six Nations as communal owners of the land. He believed the deed should be limited to the current persons living on the land.
By 1800, two-thirds of the Haudenosaunee had not yet adapted to the style of subsistence agriculture maintained by separate households that the Canadian government encouraged. Brant had hoped that sales of land to European Americans would help them develop the frontier, but conditions were difficult for such agriculture.
In 1813, the chiefs and councillors of the Six Nations residing in the state of New York would declare war on the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.
In 1828, chief John Brant was appointed resident superintendent for the Six Nations of the Grand River.
The Six Nations people were originally given 10km (6 miles) on either side of the entire length of the Grand River, although much of the land was later sold. The ongoing Grand River land dispute is the result of disputes over the sale process. The current reserves encompass 184.7km2 (71sq mi), all but 0.4km2 (100 acres) in Six Nations reserve No. 40.
In the late 19th century, the Scottish doctor Joseph Bell excavated skulls of indigenous people in the six nations. These skulls reached Berlin through the mediation of the doctor William Osler, where they were considered untraceable for decades. In 2020, the journalists David Bruser and Markus Grill, supported by the ethnologist Nils Seethaler, succeeded in finding the skulls in the anatomical collection of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. A return of the skulls to the care of the community of origin was suggested in this context.[19][20]
Six Nations of the Grand River is the most populous reserve in Canada. As of March 2023, there were 28,520 band members, of whom 11,688 lived on the reserve. The population consists of the following bands:[22]
The Six Nations of the Grand River Elected Council is a governing body established to run the affairs of the reserve in 1924, formed under the Indian Act. The Elected Council has, since its foundation, been the primary government of Six Nations recognised by the Government of Canada. However, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council has maintained a presence on the reserve despite the establishment of the elected council, representing a continuity with the traditional government of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Prior to colonization, education in Haudenosaunee communities took place in "unstructured and non-coercive ways."[23] This continues to this day alongside provincial education.
Members of the Six Nations attended the Mohawk Institute, a residential school which was the subject of numerous abuse allegations. Upon closure of the institute in 1972, the residential school was replaced by the Woodland Cultural Centre.[24]
Day schools were also operated on the reserve under the Six Nations School Board (1878–1933), the first Indigenous school board in Ontario.[25] While the official colonial curriculum was taught and many non-Indigenous teachers taught on the reserve, Indigenous influence on the board allowed for the hiring of many Six Nations teachers, many of them women as was and continues to be the case at the elementary level in Ontario.[23] Teachers on the reserve also formed their own association for professional development, the Six Nations Teacher's Organization.[25]
↑ Other than English and French, the two official languages of Canada, indigenous languages of each of the six nations are also officially recognized and promoted:
French: Réserve des Six Nations (de la rivière Grand)
Among the Haudenosaunee the Great Law of Peace, also known as Gayanashagowa, is the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. The law was represented by symbols on wampum belts which functioned as mnemonic devices for storytellers, conceived by Dekanawidah, known as the Great Peacemaker, and his spokesman Hiawatha. The original five member nations ratified this constitution near modern-day Victor, New York, with the sixth nation being added in 1722.
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant was a Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York and, later, Brantford, in what is today Ontario, who was closely associated with Great Britain during and after the American Revolution. Perhaps the best known Native American of his generation, he met many of the most significant American and British people of the age, including both United States President George Washington and King George III of Great Britain.
The 1779 Sullivan Expedition was a United States military campaign during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779, against the four British-allied nations of the Iroquois. The campaign was ordered by George Washington in response to Iroquois and Loyalist attacks on the Wyoming Valley, and Cherry Valley. The campaign had the aim of "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements." Four Continental Army brigades carried out a scorched-earth campaign in the territory of the Iroquois Confederacy in what is now central New York.
The County of Brant is a single-tier municipality in the Canadian province of Ontario. Although it retains the word "county" in its name, the municipality is a single-tier municipal government and has no upper tier. The County of Brant has service offices in Burford, Paris, Oakland, Onondaga and St. George. The largest population centre is Paris.
Haldimand County is a rural city-status single-tier municipality on the Niagara Peninsula in Southern Ontario, Canada, on the north shore of Lake Erie, and on the Grand River. Despite its name, it is no longer a county by definition, as all municipal services are handled by a single level of government. Municipal offices are located in Cayuga.
The Seneca are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League (Haudenosaunee) in New York before the American Revolution. For this reason, they are called “The Keepers of the Western Door.”
The Grand River, formerly known as the River Ouse, is a large river in Ontario, Canada. It lies along the western fringe of the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario which overlaps the eastern portion of southwestern Ontario, sometimes referred to as Midwestern Ontario, along the length of this river. From its source near Wareham, Ontario, it flows south through Grand Valley, Fergus, Elora, Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge, Paris, Brantford, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River, Caledonia, and Cayuga before emptying into the north shore of Lake Erie south of Dunnville at Port Maitland. One of the scenic and spectacular features of the river is the falls and Gorge at Elora.
The Onondaga people are one of the five original nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy in the Northeastern Woodlands. Their historical homelands are in and around present-day Onondaga County, New York, south of Lake Ontario.
The Cayuga are one of the five original constituents of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), a confederacy of Native Americans in New York. The Cayuga homeland lies in the Finger Lakes region along Cayuga Lake, between their league neighbors, the Onondaga to the east and the Seneca to the west. Today, Cayuga people belong to the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario, and the federally recognized Cayuga Nation of New York and the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.
The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (MBQ) are a Mohawk community within Hastings County, Ontario. They control the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, which is a 7,362.5 ha (18,193-acre) Mohawk Indian reserve on the Bay of Quinte in southeastern Ontario, Canada, east of Belleville and immediately to the west of Deseronto. They also share Glebe Farm 40B and the Six Nations of the Grand River reserves with other First Nations.
The Haudenosaunee was formed around the Great Law of Peace Kaianere'kó:wa, a constitution detailing a shared value system which informs the policy and economics of their society.
The Treaty of Canandaigua, also known as the Pickering Treaty and the Calico Treaty, is a treaty signed after the American Revolutionary War between the Grand Council of the Six Nations and President George Washington, representing the United States of America.
The Haldimand Proclamation was a decree that granted land to the Mohawk who had served on the British side during the American Revolution. The decree was issued by the Governor of the Province of Quebec, Frederick Haldimand, on October 25, 1784, three days after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was signed between others of the Six Nations and the American government. The granted land had to be purchased from the Mississaugas of the Credit whose traditional territory spans much of modern-day Southwestern Ontario. On May 22, 1784, Col. John Butler was sent to negotiate the sale of approximately 3,000,000 acres of land located between Lakes Huron, Ontario, and Erie for £1180.00 from the Mississaugas of the Credit. Of the land ceded, some 550,000 acres were granted to the Mohawk nation in the Haldimand Proclamation. The sale by the Mississaugas of the Credit is also referred to as the "Between the Lakes Treaty."
Captain John Deserontyon, U.E.L was a Mohawk war chief allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War. He led his people to Upper Canada after the war, settling on land granted by the Crown at the Bay of Quinte in present-day Ontario. This reserve, initially settled primarily by Mohawk loyalists from the Lower Castle, is known as Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Ontario. Deseronto, Ontario is named for him.
The Iroquois, also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the endonym Haudenosaunee are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America. They were known by the French during the colonial years as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy, while the English simply called them the "Five Nations". The peoples of the Iroquois included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, from which point it was known as the "Six Nations".
Tadodaho was a Native American Hoyenah (sachem) of the Onondaga nation before the Deganawidah and Hiawatha formed the Iroquois League, or "Haudenosaunee". According to oral tradition, he had extraordinary characteristics and was widely feared, but he was persuaded to support the confederacy of the Five Nations.
Six Nations Polytechnic (SNP) is a Haudenosaunee-governed Indigenous institute on Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation. SNP is an Indigenous Institute, the third pillar of post-secondary education in Ontario, as recognized by the Indigenous Institutes Act of 2017, The Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation are the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation reserve acreage at present covers some 46,000 acres (190 km2) near the city of Brantford, Ontario. Six Nations Polytechnic has two campuses, one located in Ohsweken and one located in Brantford.
John Arthur Gibson (1850–1912) was a chief of the Seneca nation of the North American Iroquois confederation. Part Onondaga and part Seneca, he resided within the reserve of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, Canada. Knowledgeable about Iroquois (Haudosaunee) culture, he is best known for the versions he provided of the Iroquois oral constitution, the Great Law of Peace. He acted as an advisor to the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs in matters relating both to Iroquois and non-Iroquois indigenous people. He was a well-respected player of the traditional Iroquois sport of lacrosse until he was blinded during a game when he was 31.
Fish Carrier or "Ojageght," which translates to English as "he is carrying a fish by the forehead strap," was an Iroquois chief of the Cayuga people. He supported the British during the American Revolution, participating in the Battle of Wyoming in 1778 and the Battle of Newtown in 1779.
The flag of the Iroquois Confederacy or Haudenosaunee flag is the flag used to represent the six nations of the Iroquois. It is a purple flag with four connected white squares and an eastern white pine tree in the center.
↑ Dyck, Carrie, Froman, Frances, Keye, Alfred & Keye, Lottie. 2024. A grammar and dictionary of Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ (Cayuga). (Studies of Amerindian Linguistics). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10473483. Pg 1061
↑ The Great Niagara Escarpment. Indigenous Cultural Map, Kanienʼkéha Destinations.
↑ Michelson, Karen; Doxtator, Mercy (2002). "oskanu·tú·". Oneida–English/English–Oneida Dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p.1181. ISBN9780802035905.
↑ Woodbury, Hanni (2003). "Dyehashędákhwaˀ". Onondaga-English / English-Onondaga Dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p.1181. ISBN9781442623637.
↑ Rudes, Blair A. (2015). "Grand river indians". Tuscarora-English/English-Tuscarora dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p.680. ISBN9781442628809.
↑ Paxton PhD, James W. (2008). Joseph Brant and His World: 18th Century Mohawk Warrior and Statesman. James Lorimer & Company Ltd.
↑ Markus Grill/Ralf Wiegand: Die Spur der Schädel Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17.12.20.
↑ David Bruser/Markus Grill: The untold story of four Indigenous skulls given away by one of Canada’s most famous doctors, and the quest to bring them home. Toronto Star, 17.12.20.
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