Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

Western Ontario is, in the main, the most British part of Canada. Its towns have British names, and the streets of the towns have British names, while their atmosphere and design are almost of the Home Counties. The countryside (if one overlooks the absence of hedges—though rows of upturned tree-roots with plants growing among them sometimes have the look of hedges) is the suave, domesticated countryside of England. England is in the very air. And at the first of these curiously English towns the Prince became an Indian chief.

Brantford, though it reminds one of a comely British country town, preferably one with a Church influence in it, is really the capital of the Six Nation Indians. It actually owes its name to Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief, who, having fought his Indians on the side of the British—as the braves of the fierce and powerful Six Nations had always fought on the side of the British—in the War of Independence, marched his tribes from their old camping-grounds in the Mohawk Valley to this place, so that they could remain under British rule.

The Indians of the Six Nations still live in and about Brantford, for, though they have ceded away their lands to settlers, they are among the few of the aboriginal races that have thrived and not decayed under civilization. The Prince's visit to Brantford on Monday, October 20th, was nearly all a visit to the Mohawks, the leaders of the ancient Indian federation of six tribes.

This is not to say that the welcome given him by Canadians was not a great one. As a matter of fact, it was astonishing, and it was difficult to imagine how a small town like this could pack its streets with so many people. But Brantford is industrial and scientific also, as well as being Indian. After a strenuous reception, for instance, the Prince went along to the statue that shrines the town's claim to a place in the history of science. This was the memorial to Dr. Bell, who lived in Brantford and who invented the first telephone in Brantford. They will even show you the trees from which the first line over which the first spoken message sent, was strung.

But the colourful ceremonies of Brantford were those connected with the Mohawks. The Prince was taken out to the small, old wooden chapel that George III. erected for his loyal Mohawk allies. It is the oldest Protestant chapel in the Dominion. On its walls are painted prayers in Mohawk, and it contains an old register that King Edward had signed in 1861. The Prince added his own signature to this before going into the churchyard to see the grave of Joseph Brant.

In the little enclosure before the church were the youngest descendants of the loyal Joseph Brant: ranks of Mohawk boys in khaki, and small Mohawk girls in red and grey. They sang to the Prince in their own language, a singular guttural tongue rendered with an almost abnormal stoicism. The children did not move a muscle of lips or face as they chanted; it might have been a song rendered by graven images.

In the main square of Brantford the Prince was elected chief of the Six Nations. This ceremony was carried out upon a raised and beflagged platform about which a vast throng of pale-faces gathered. Becoming a chief of the Six Nations is no light matter. It is a thing that must be discussed in full with all ceremonies and accurate minutes. The pow-wow on the platform was rather long. Chiefs rose up and debated at leisure in the Iroquois tongue, while the pale-faces in the square, at first quite patient, began to demand in loud voices:

"We want our Prince. We want our Prince."

And to be truthful, not merely the pale-faces found the ceremony lengthy. Gathered on the platform were a number of Mohawk girls, delicate and pretty maidens, with the warmth of their race's colour glowing through the soft texture of their cheeks. They were there because they had thrown flowers in the pathway of the Prince. At first they were interested in this olden ceremony of their old race. Then they began to talk of the wages they were drawing in extremely modern Canadian stores and factories. Then they looked at the ceremony again, at the clothes the Indians wore, at the romance and colour of it, and they said, one to another:

"Say, why have those guys dressed up like that? What's it all about, anyhow? What's the use of this funny old business?"