Teiaiagon was an Iroquoian village on the east bank of the Humber River in what is now the York district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was located along the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail. The site is near the current intersection of Jane Street and Annette Street, at which is situated the community of Baby Point.
The name means "It crosses the stream." [1]
Percy Robinson's Toronto During the French Regime shows Teiaiagon as being a jointly occupied village of Seneca and Mohawk. Helen Tanner's Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History describes Teiaiagon as a Seneca village around the years 1685-1687, although it existed before that time, and as a Mississauga village around 1696. [2]
Étienne Brûlé passed through Teiaiagon in 1615. [3] The village was on an important route for the developing fur trade industry, [4] and it was also "surrounded by horticultural fields". [5] It was said to be about "a day's journey from the Toronto Lake, our present Lake Simcoe". [6]
On November 18, 1678, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle departed Fort Frontenac for Niagara in a brigantine with a crew including La Motte and the Récollet missionary Louis Hennepin, following the north shore of Lake Ontario to mitigate the effects of a storm. The ship was grounded three times, forcing the crew to stop at the mouth of the Humber River on November 26. The surprised inhabitants of the village "were hospitable and supplied them with provisions". [7] On December 5, the ship set off after being cut out of the ice with axes. [7] Before departing, "La Motte's men bartered their commodities with the natives" for corn. [8]
Hennepin and others have recorded that the village was inhabited by as many as 5,000 people and had 50 long houses. La Salle camped at Teiaiagon several other times, once in the summer of 1680, and "perhaps twice in 1681" during his expeditions. [5] There was a 10-acre (40,000 m2) burial ground located in the central part of the village.
The Senecas left the village, either pushed out by, or voluntarily for, the Mississaugas by 1701. With the removal of the Iroquois from southern Ontario by the Mississaugas, [9] the Anishinaabe and French trade began to flourish in the region shortly after the Great Peace of Montreal of 1701. Associated with this trade, there was a very small French garrison or Magasin Royal located near the site of Teiaiagon from 1720 to 1730. In 1730, the French garrison was located downriver of the site. A store was later built at the mouth of the Humber in 1750 and Fort Rouillé soon after, east of the Humber.
The Mississaugas did not live at the site of the village of Teiaiagon,[ citation needed ] but had a village located across the Humber River, on the west bank of the river, near Old Mill Road and Bloor Street, from 1788-1805. James Bâby from Detroit in 1816 acquired the land now called Baby Point and only had orchards located on the site of Teiaiagon. The site was relatively undisturbed as it was not farmed. The Teiaiagon area was acquired by the government for a military fortress and army barracks, but then was sold to Robert Home Smith, who began developing the Baby Point subdivision in 1912. In 1949, at the south-west corner of Baby Point Road and Baby Point Crescent, a plaque was erected, briefly mentioning "Taiaiagon."
Possibly because early European explorers had difficulty in transcribing First Nations names into European orthographic systems, numerous spelling variations exist. These include Taiaiako'n, Taiaiagon, Teyeyagon, and Toioiugon.
The name "Teiaigon" appears on a 1688 map of New France drawn by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin based on "sixteen years' of observation of the author". [10] It was indicated to be on the eastern side of a small bay, from which a portage route led to the west branch of Lake Taronto.
Excavations at Baby Point were first conducted in the late nineteenth century. Records from that excavation have been lost, though it is known that they revealed "traces of palisade walls". [5] In the late 1990s and early 2000s another excavation, conducted as a result of installation of a natural gas line to the residential neighbourhood, discovered the burial plots of two Seneca women, which were dated to the 1680s. [5] One of the women was buried with a moose antler comb engraved with a rattlesnake-tailed panther, "possibly representing Mishipizheu", [11] which morphs into a bear. The other woman was buried with three brass rings and a carved moose antler comb depicting "two human figures wearing European-style clothes flanking an Aboriginal figure". [11] Another burial plot on Baby Point was found in 2010 when a house was being renovated. Artifacts were studied and a ceremonial reburial took place. [12]
Just north of the site, in today's Magwood Park, is "Thunderbird Mound", which is believed to be an ancient burial mound. [12] The site has not been studied for its archaeology. The site is considered threatened by erosion and pedestrian traffic by the Taiaiako'n Historical Preservation Society. [13]
By the late 1660s various Five Nation Iroquois had established seven villages along the shores of Lake Ontario where trails led off into the interior. In addition to Teiaiagon at the mouth of the Humber River, the following settlements have been identified by historian Percy James Robinson: [14]
Etobicoke is an administrative district and former city within Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Comprising the city's west-end, Etobicoke is bordered on the south by Lake Ontario, on the east by the Humber River, on the west by Etobicoke Creek, the cities of Brampton, and Mississauga, the Toronto Pearson International Airport, and on the north by the city of Vaughan at Steeles Avenue West.
York was a town and second capital of the colony of Upper Canada. It is the predecessor to the old city of Toronto (1834–1998). It was established in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe as a "temporary" location for the capital of Upper Canada, while he made plans to build a capital near today's London, Ontario. Simcoe renamed the location York after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, George III's second son. Simcoe gave up his plan to build a capital at London, and York became the permanent capital of Upper Canada on February 1, 1796. That year Simcoe returned to Britain and was temporarily replaced by Peter Russell.
The Humber River is a river in Southern Ontario, Canada. It is in the Great Lakes Basin, is a tributary of Lake Ontario and is one of two major rivers on either side of the city of Toronto, the other being the Don River to the east. It was designated a Canadian Heritage River on September 24, 1999.
The Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, also known as the Humber Portage and the Toronto Passage, was a major portage route in Ontario, Canada, linking Lake Ontario with Lake Simcoe and the northern Great Lakes. The name comes from the Mohawk term toron-ten, meaning "the place where the trees grow over the water", an important landmark on Lake Simcoe through which the trail passed.
Baby Point is a residential neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is bounded on the west by the Humber River from south of Baby Point Crescent to St. Marks Road, east to Jane Street and Jane Street south to Raymond Avenue and Raymond Avenue west to the Humber. It is within the city-defined neighbourhood of 'Lambton-Baby Point'. Baby Point is within the proximity of Jane station.
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, Oshweken, 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.
Fort Rouillé was a French trading post located in what is now Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Fort Rouillé was constructed by the French in 1751, building upon the success of a trading post they established in the area a year earlier, known as Fort Toronto. Fort Rouillé was named for Antoine Louis Rouillé, who at the time of its establishment was Secretary of State for the Navy in the administration of King Louis XV of France. It served as a trading post with the local indigenous peoples from the region.
Sunnyside is a lakefront district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It includes a beach and park area along Lake Ontario's Humber Bay, from west of Exhibition Place to the mouth of the Humber River. The area has several recreation uses, including rowing clubs, sports clubs, picnic areas, playgrounds, a nightclub, a bathing pavilion and public pool. The area is a 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) long strip along the lakeshore, bounded by the Gardiner Expressway and rail lines, which separate it from the Parkdale, Roncesvalles and Swansea neighbourhoods to the north. The name originates in a local farm owned by John Howard, which was situated just to the north, on the location of the current St. Joseph's Health Centre hospital.
Ganondagan State Historic Site, also known as Boughton Hill, is a Native American historic site in Ontario County, New York in the United States. Location of the largest Seneca village of the 17th century, the site is in the present-day Town of Victor, southwest of the Village of Victor. The village was also referred to in various spellings as Gannagaro, Canagora, Gandagora, Gandagaro and Gannontaa.
Lambton is a neighbourhood in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is situated on the east bank of the Humber River north and south of Dundas Street West. It is bounded on the north by Black Creek, on the east by Jane Street and on the south by St. Mark's Road. The area west of Gooch Avenue and south of Dundas Street West is also known as "Warren Park", the name of the housing sub-division built in the 1950s. The portion south of Dundas Street West is within the 'Lambton Baby Point' neighbourhood as defined by the City of Toronto.
Chief Kineubenae, was a principal chief of the Mississauga Ojibwa, located on the north shore of Lake Ontario. His name Giniw-bine in the Anishinaabe language means "golden eagle[-like partridge]". He was a member of the Nigig-doodem.
The Hiawatha First Nation is a Mississauga Ojibwe First Nations reserve located on the north shore of Rice Lake east of the Otonabee River in Ontario, Canada.
The Aurora Site, also known as the "Old Fort," "Old Indian Fort," "Murphy Farm" or "Hill Fort" site, is a sixteenth-century Huron-Wendat ancestral village located on one of the headwater tributaries of the East Holland River on the north side of the Oak Ridges Moraine in present-day Whitchurch–Stouffville, approximately 30 kilometres north of Toronto. This Huron ancestral village was located on 3.4 hectares of land and the settlement was fortified with multiple rows of palisades.
Bead Hill is an archaeological site comprising the only known remaining and intact 17th-century Seneca site in Canada. It is located on the banks of the Rouge River in Rouge Park, a city park in Toronto, Ontario. Because of its sensitive archaeological nature, it is not open to the public, nor readily identified in the park. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1991, eventually becoming a unit of the national park system in June 2019.
Ganneious, also spelled Ganneous, is a former village, first settled by the Oneida, located on the North Shore of Lake Ontario near the present site of Napanee, Ontario, Canada. Starting in 1696, it was occupied by the Mississauga.:10 The name is most likely a likely misprint for the French "Gannejout(s)", meaning Oneida.
Between 1665 and 1670, seven Iroquois settlements on the north shore of Lake Ontario in present-day Ontario, collectively known as the "Iroquois du Nord" villages, were established by Senecas, Cayugas, and Oneidas. The villages consisted of Ganneious, Kente, Kentsio, Ganaraske, Ganatsekwyagon, Teiaiagon, and Quinaouatoua. The villages were all abandoned by 1701.
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Tinawatawa, also called Quinaouatoua, was an Iroquois village of the Seneca people on the western end of the Niagara corridor, described as "a fertile flat belt of land stretching from western New York to the head waters of the Thames River". It was located on the western end of Lake Ontario.
The Carruthers Creek is a stream in the Durham Region of Ontario, Canada. Its watershed lies within the boundaries of Pickering and Ajax.
43°39′22″N79°29′43″W / 43.65601320416743°N 79.49539641090861°W
