Before proceeding to speak of the appearance of the bay, a space must be given to speak more particularly of those Aborigines who occupied the territory of the bay, and Upper Canada generally, at the time of the revolutionary war, and from whom the British Government purchased the land to bestow upon the U. E. Loyalists, namely, the Mississaugas.
The meaning of the word Mississauga has reference to “many outlets,” or a place of settlement by the “fork of a stream.” The first notice we have found of this name is upon a map in the Imperial library, dated 1620. It is applied to a lake,—L’Missauga, or Buade. The location is not far from the source of the Mississippi River, and there is a small stream represented as running from this lake to empty into the Mississippi, the lake is doubtless the Itasca Lake in Minnesota. The Indians, then inhabiting that region, was the “Eastern Sioux.” There is no doubt some identity as to origin and meaning, between Mississippi and Mississauga. It will be remembered, we have in the north of Upper Canada a River Mississippi as well as River Mississauga. The Mississauga Indians first came into notice about the middle of last century, some time before the rebellion. They were then living east of the Georgian Bay upon the lake and the river, both of which have derived names from this tribe. Capt. Anderson thinks they took the name from living by this river, which has many outlets. It may be regarded as a question whether the river gave a name to the tribe, or the tribe a name to the river.
The Mississaugas have been more generally regarded as a branch of the Otchipewas. Father Charlevoix says, they are a branch of the Algonquins.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Iroquois had quite overrun the territory formerly designated by the French “the country of the Northern Iroquois,” and now constituting Upper Canada. As the Six Nations retired to their territory upon the south of Lake Ontario, the Chippewas, or Otchwas and the Mississaugas descended to the north shore of Ontario, the St. Lawrence, and around Bay Quinté. The exact time at which these tribes obtained possession of the land around the Bay, and its Islands, and other parts of Canada, is uncertain. But, long before the settlement of Upper Canada, they were the acknowledged owners of the soil, and Great Britain purchased from them the right of ownership. The first record we have of surrender of land, was by the Chippewas, in 1781, to Gov. St. Clair. The Mississaugas seem to have been a neutral nation, at least, they never appear to have taken any part in the wars between the French and English. But we find that at a great assembly of chiefs and warriors, at Albany, in August 17, 1746, the chief speaker of the Six Nations, informed the English Commissioners that they had taken the Mississaugas as a seventh nation. There certainly seems to have been a very friendly relationship between the Iroquois and Mississaugas.
The Mississaugas were divided into several tribes, or rather, were divided into several villages, which were scattered all along the St. Lawrence, from the river Gananoque to the Bay Quinté, and Lake Ontario. Thus, we find it recorded that “They were dispersed along Lake Ontario, South of Frontenac.” This means Prince Edward particularly; but they were as well settled in little villages at different points. Charlevoix speaks of the Mississaugas as having a village at Niagara and upon Lake St. Clair; most likely at the mouth of the Thames. They likewise had villages along the upper waters of the Trent, and at the Don. Their armorial bearing, or “totem” was the crane, crow, muskrat, and beaver. The Kentes and Ganneyouses, two tribes of the Mississaugas, although taking no part in the wars against the French, had practised upon them a base act of treachery. In 1687, M. de Nonville, who was then Governor of Canada, being at Frontenac, invited these two tribes to the fort to hold a conference, and while there, seized forty or fifty men, with eighty women and children, who were sent prisoners to France.
The French called the Mississauga, while living in the west, the Souter, or Jumpers, because of the numerous rapids in the river Mississauga down which their canoes were wont to jump.
The Mississaugas are of a darker hue than any other tribe in the northern part of America.
The uncertainty that attaches to the Mississaugas as to origin, and the fact that they were not given to warfare; but seemed to be at peace with all native tribes, causes us to think that possibly they may have sprung from the dispersed “Neutral Nation.”
At the time of the settlement of Upper Canada, the Mississaugas seem to have been the principal, if not the sole aboriginal occupants of the land. There are a great many “Mississauga Points” along the Bay, even at the present day, and there was a greater number at the first, all of which indicated the site of an Indian Village. At Cataraqui, just by the old fort, and Tete du Pont, was a Mississauga point, so called from its being the site of an Indian village. For years after the refugees entered, the Indians continued to dwell here, at least during certain periods of the year. The ground whereon a portion of the railway is laid, used to be the scene of many an Indian dance, to the tune of other music than the screaming of the iron horse, although no less inharmonious. Peter Grass was wont to tell of these scenes, whereat fearful orgies were witnessed by the lurid glare of their rude torches. “At the time of the peace, in 1783, the Mississaugas ceded to the Crown large tracts of land in the Johnstown, Midland and Newcastle Districts.”—(Report).
The whole of the land contiguous to the Bay was purchased from the “Mississaugas of the Bay Quinté.” The Indians, in relinquishing their claims to the land, had guaranteed to them certain stipulated payments yearly, in presents. We find it stated that “every man received two blankets, cloth for one coat and one pair of trowsers, two shirts, several small articles, besides a gun, ammunition, kettles, and other things.”—(Playter).