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". [1] It was located on the western end of Lake Ontario. [2]
There are a number of theories about where the village was located. [lower-alpha 1] One theory is that it was east [1] [3] or northeast of present-day Westover, Ontario, on the north side of Spencer Creek [2] and in Beverly Swamp, [1] [4] which was a winter hunting grounds site. [5] From archaeological studies of what was called the Christianson Site, it was occupied about 1615 to 1630 by Iroquois people. [2]
Other theories are that Tinawatawa was along Ancaster Creek in Ancaster, Ontario, between Dundas and Brantford. [1] It may have been in current day West Flamborough on the Grand River along a high ground trail that is now Regional Road 97. [5] Or, more probably, halfway to Brantford and the Grand River. [2]
In the 17th century, what is now Southern Ontario was Huronia. The Lower Great Lakes and Huronia "region was a multicultural landscape composed of conquerors, refugees and dispersed peoples." The Dutch, French, and English competed for trade alliances with indigenous peoples. Explorers and cartographers passed through the area. The Beaver Wars involved Iroquois and Algonguian speaking people. [5] In the 1660s, Tinawatawa was part of the territory held by the Iroquois, but others traveled or ranged through the area. From 1660 to 1690, Tinawatawa was a hub village. [5]
On September 24, 1669, [1] Louis Jolliet and explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle met with René de Bréhant de Galinée, François Dollier de Casson, superior of the Sulpicians, and other Sulpicians of Montreal, who were missionaries. [3] [4] The missionaries were exploring the western frontier and looking for a place to establish a mission. [4] They stopped at Tinawatawa to find a guide to take them to the western frontier. [2]
There were 30 years of skirmishes following the 1669 meeting. [5] Tinawatawa was subject to attacks by the French and Ojibwe. By 1701, most of the Iroquois withdrew from southern Ontario. [3]
The original five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy reused former settlements in Southern Ontario, including Tinawatawa, also called Quinaouotuan and Tinaouatoua, or Otinawatawa by historian Francis Parkman. [1]
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and the Mississippi River. He is best known for an early 1682 expedition in which he canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico; there, on 9 April 1682, he claimed the Mississippi River basin for France after giving it the name La Louisiane. One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent".
The Canadian Martyrs, also known as the North American Martyrs, were eight Jesuit missionaries from Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. They were ritually tortured and killed on various dates in the mid-17th century in Canada, in what is now southern Ontario, and in upstate New York, during the warfare between the Iroquois and the Huron. They have subsequently been canonized and venerated as martyrs by the Catholic Church.
Étienne Brûlé was the first European explorer to journey beyond the St. Lawrence River into what is now known as Canada. He spent much of his early adult life among the Hurons, and mastered their language and learned their culture. Brûlé became an interpreter and guide for Samuel de Champlain, who later sent Brûlé on a number of exploratory missions, among which he is thought to have preceded Champlain to the Great Lakes, reuniting with him upon Champlain's first arrival at Lake Huron. Among his many travels were explorations of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, as well as the Humber and Ottawa Rivers. Champlain agreed to send Brûlé, at his own request, as an interpreter to live among the Onontchataron, an Algonquin people, in 1610. In 1629, during the Anglo-French War, he escaped after being captured by the Seneca tribe. Brûlé was killed by the Bear tribe of the Huron people, who believed he had betrayed them to the Seneca.
Ancaster is a historic town in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, located on the Niagara Escarpment. Founded as a town in 1793, it immediately developed itself into one of the first important and influential early British Upper Canada communities established during the late 18th century eventually amalgamating with the city of Hamilton in 2001. By 1823, due in large part to its easily accessible water power and location at the juncture of prehistoric indigenous trading routes, Ancaster had become Upper Canada's largest industrial and commercial centre. Additionally, Ancaster had at that time attracted the 2nd largest populace (1,681) in Upper Canada trailing only Kingston, but surpassing the populations of nearby Toronto (1,376) and Hamilton (1,000). After this initial period of prosperity beginning in the late 18th century, sudden significant water and rail transportation advancements of the early 19th century would soon better benefit Ancaster's neighbouring towns situated closer to the Lake Ontario waterfront. Stationary steam engines for industries that had rapidly developed in the 19th century would eventually make Ancaster's water-powered industries less vital. As a result, after the 1820s, Ancaster's influence during the remainder of the 19th century would begin to wane.
The Beaver Wars, also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Saint Lawrence River valley in Canada and the lower Great Lakes region which pitted the Iroquois against the Hurons, northern Algonquians and their French allies. As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Hurons or Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mahican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighboring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed.
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.
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.
Flamborough is a district and former municipality in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. For most of its existence before amalgamation with Hamilton in 2001, Flamborough comprised the former townships of East Flamborough, West Flamborough, and Beverly, as well as the village of Waterdown. The largest suburban community is the former village of Waterdown containing perhaps one third of its thirty thousand or so inhabitants. Other Flamborough communities include Carlisle, Christie's Corners, Clappison's Corners, Copetown, Freelton, Greensville, Lynden, Kirkwall, Millgrove, Mountsberg, Orkney, Peters Corners, Rockton, Troy, Sheffield, Valens, Strabane and Westover.
The Neutral Nation was a tribal confederation of Iroquoian peoples. Its heartland was in the floodplain of the Grand River in what is now Ontario, Canada. At its height, its wider territory extended toward the shores of lakes Erie, Huron, and Ontario, as well as the Niagara River in the east. To the northeast were the neighbouring territories of Huronia and the Petun Country, which were inhabited by other Iroquoian confederacies from whom one term for the Neutrals, the Attawandaron, derives. The five-nation Iroquois Confederacy lay to the southeast, across Lake Ontario.
Wentworth County, area 269,057 acres (1,089 km2), is a historic county in the Canadian province of Ontario.
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.
Waterdown is a village in Canada which since 2001 has been a community of Hamilton, Ontario. Waterdown is approximately 60 km west of downtown Toronto.
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.
Buffalo is the county seat of Erie County, and the second most populous city in the U.S. state of New York, after New York City. Originating around 1789 as a small trading community inhabited by the Neutral Nation near the mouth of Buffalo Creek, the city, then a town, grew quickly after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, with the city at its western terminus. Its position at the eastern end of Lake Erie strengthened the economy, based on grain milling and steel production along the southern shores and in nearby Lackawanna.
René Bréhant de Galinée was a member of the Society of Saint-Sulpice at Montreal and an explorer and missionary to the Native Americans. In 1670, he and François Dollier de Casson were the first Europeans to make a recorded transit of the Detroit River. His map of the trip demonstrated that the Great Lakes were all connected.
The Wenrohronon or Wenro people were an Iroquoian indigenous nation of North America, originally residing in present-day western New York, who were conquered by the Confederation of the Five Nations of the Iroquois in two decisive wars between 1638–1639 and 1643. This was likely part of the Iroquois Confederacy campaign against the Neutral people, another Iroquoian-speaking tribe, which lived across the Niagara River. This warfare was part of what was known as the Beaver Wars, as the Iroquois worked to dominate the lucrative fur trade. They used winter attacks, which were not usual among Native Americans, and their campaigns resulted in attrition of both the larger Iroquoian confederacies, as it had against the numerous Huron.
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.
Martin Chartier was a French-Canadian explorer and trader, carpenter and glove maker. He lived much of his life amongst the Shawnee Native Americans in what is now the United States.