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, in honor of Saint Louis and Louis XIV. One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent". A later ill-fated expedition to the Gulf coast of Mexico gave the United States a claim to Texas in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. La Salle was assassinated in 1687 during that expedition.
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 Iroquioan tribes the Mohawk 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.
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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.
Wentworth County, area 269,057 acres (1,089 km2), is a historic county in the Canadian province of Ontario.
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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.
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