"The mammoth comes—the foe, the monster, Brandt—
With all his howling, desolating band;
These eyes have seen their blade and burning pine
Awake at once, and silence half your land.
Red is the cup they drink, but not with wine—
Awake and watch to-night, or see no morning shine."
Posterity has, however, recognised the fact that Joseph Brant was not present at this sad episode of the American war, and the poet in a note to a later edition admitted that the Indian chief in his poem was "a pure and declared character of fiction." He was a sincere friend of English interests, a man of large and statesmanlike views, who might have taken an important part in colonial affairs had he been educated in these later times. When the war was ended, he and his tribe moved into the valley of the St. Lawrence, and received from the government fine reserves of land on the Bay of Quinté, and on the Grand River in the western part of the province of Upper Canada, where the prosperous city and county of Brantford, and the township of Tyendinaga—a corruption of Thayendanegea—illustrate the fame he has won in Canadian annals. The descendants of his nation live in comfortable homes, till fine farms in a beautiful section of Western Canada, and enjoy all the franchises of white men. It is an interesting fact that the first church built in Ontario was that of the Mohawks, who still preserve the communion service presented to the tribe in 1710 by Queen Anne of England.
General Haldimand's administration will always be noted in Canadian history for the coming of the loyalists, and for the sympathetic interest he took in settling these people on the lands of Canada, and in alleviating their difficulties by all the means in the power of his government. In these and other matters of Canadian interest he proved conclusively that he was not the mere military martinet that some Canadian writers with inadequate information would make him. When he left Canada he was succeeded by Sir Guy Carleton, then elevated to the peerage as Lord Dorchester, who was called upon to take part in great changes in the constitution of Canada which must be left for review in the following chapter.
XXII.
FOUNDATION OF NEW PROVINCES—ESTABLISHMENT
OF REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS.
(1792-1812.)
The history of the Dominion of Canada as a self-governing community commences with the concession of representative institutions to the old provinces now comprised within its limits. By 1792 there were provincial governments established in Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. From 1713 to 1758 the government of Nova Scotia consisted of a governor, or lieutenant-governor, a council possessing legislative, executive, and even judicial powers. In October, 1758, an assembly met for the first time in the town of Halifax, which had been the capital since 1749. New Brunswick had been separated from Nova Scotia in 1784, but a representative assembly did not assemble until 1786, when its form of government was identical with that of the older province. Prince Edward Island was a part of Nova Scotia until 1769 when it was created a distinct province, with a lieutenant-governor, a combined executive and legislative council, and also an assembly in 1773. The island of Cape Breton had a lieutenant-governor and executive council, and remained apart from Nova Scotia until 1820 when it was included in its government. In 1791 the province of Upper Canada was formally separated from the province of Quebec by an act of the imperial parliament, and was called Upper Canada, while the French section received the name of Lower Canada. At that time the total population of British North America did not exceed a quarter of a million of souls, of whom at least a hundred and forty thousand lived on the banks of the St. Lawrence and its tributary streams, and almost entirely represented the language, institutions, and history of the French régime. In the French province there was also a small British population, consisting of officials, commercial men, and loyalists who settled for the most part in the Eastern Townships. The population of Upper Canada, about twenty-five thousand, was almost exclusively of loyalist stock—a considerable number having migrated thither from the maritime provinces. Beyond the Detroit River, the limit of English settlement, extended a vast region of wilderness which was trodden only by trappers and Indians.