Natives in Eastern North America

A map showing the extent of Missippian cultural
influence at the height of the Mississippian civilizations, ca. A.D. 1200-1500.
Modern archaeological sites and modern Toronto are noted.
The tip of Southern Ontario is circled.
Modified from "Atlas of Ancient Archaeology", by Jacquetta Hawkes, Page 234

From the period about A.D. 600 until 1500, southern Ontario was on the fringe of the great Mississippian and South-Eastern agricultural civilizations. The ancestors of the Iroquoian peoples probably settled in this area at a very early period.

Copper was mined north of Lake Superior and in the interior of the province, and traded as far away as the American south and the Gulf of Mexico. Seashells from the Gulf have been found as far north as Ontario. Native peoples in Ontario farmed corn, beans and squash, and supplemented their diets with fish, shellfish, wild game and other foods. Though they had very large villages and towns, this area probably functioned as a distant fringe of the great Mid-American mound-building societies. The settlements of these ancient peoples in southern Ontario seem to have been fairly mobile. They would cut down a patch of forest for farming, and then move on.

These ancient Ontarians left many remains all over the province. We know a lot about their settlement patterns. They often buried their dead in identifiably characteristic patterns. First, the bodies would be buried. Later, their bones would be re-interred in secondary graves, also called ossuaries. These are found all over southern Ontario. There are several earthen mound complexes in various parts of the province, as well, though their purposes are unknown.

In most collapsing societies, the people on the fringes are the ones who manage to survive and continue. The Iroquoian peoples of Ontario, Quebec and New York State lived on the edges of great civilizations, so when the civilizations collapsed, the Eastern fringes inherited their legacies.

The ancient Tsirogi or Chalaque of De Soto's rampage became the Cherokee that met the British and Americans. They were an Iroquoian-speaking people. The Spanish had long abandoned the region, because there was no longer a massive population to enslave and no useless trinkets such as gold and other meaningless wealth. By the time the British arrived, the Cherokee had begun a cultural recovery in earnest.

The Iroquoians managed to rebuild much of what had been lost, while learning to adapt to new realities. They practiced a form of mobile agriculture, probably developed from the chaos that ensued after De Soto's rampage. These nations included the Five (later six) Nations Confederacy with its constitution and liberal political systems, the Huron, the Four Nations (which was dissolved or incorporated into other polities), and a dozen other social groups stretching up and down North America.

Ancient cities and homes are often still remembered in placenames. One city region was known as Tinasi (Tennessee); another people as the Alabami (Alabama), and their principal city as Mobila (Mobile). The Ottawa, a northern people, lent their name to Canada's capital, though they soon moved further west. Stadacona (Quebec City) and Hochelaga (the Island of Montreal) were devastated by first contact with the French. When the French returned a generation later, they used these very same sites to found their new colony, though they gave them new names. The name "Ontario" itself comes from "Anandario", which means "Shining Waters".

The societies that the English, French and Dutch found when they came to North America in the 1600's and 1700's were the slowly recovering remains of a once great civilization. Unfortunately for the native peoples, their social recovery was too late to stem the tide of the European invasion for very long, and though their population was rebounding, the result was probably inevitable given the violent and abusive nature of European society.

These people have persevered and, despite their setbacks, they survive as distinct nations. Most no longer live in their original territories, or live in a much reduced area, though.

The highly sophisticated and settled Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee lived in the fertile valleys of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and other areas in the American south. They were forcibly removed from their ancient homelands in the 1830's by the militaristic and shamelessly brutal American government, despite many treaties guaranteed by the American congress.

After a forced migration, called the "Trail of Tears", they were dumped in the arid American South-West. When the Americans expanded to that region, they were forced further and further back into the wastelands, where they have reserves today. But they've maintained many of their traditions and their ancient history, preserved in a highly developed oral culture.

Scattered tribes live on reservations throughout the atlantic seaboard of the U.S.A. A few Cherokee tricked authorities and stayed in their traditional territory, in places like the Qualla Reservation.

The "People of the Long House", or Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee, became highly mobile, moving large populations from site to site with ease. United in the "Great Longhouse", they were the Five Nations: Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Later, the non-Iroquoi Tuscarora people were formally added, making it a confederacy of Six Nations. Like their forebears, they were skilled craftspeople and had complex artforms. The Iroquoian political culture was highly developed. They were outstandingly eloquent and accomplished speakers; the oratorial brilliance of the Six Nations was legendary and respected even by the Europeans.

The Six Nations fared very poorly once the American colonies declared their independence from Britain. One of more important but less-taught reasons for the American War of Independence was the (minimal) respect that the British crown gave to local native sovereignty. The colonial populations, once they had control over their own affairs, immediately put unremitting pressure on the native nations surrounding them. Greedy for land and filled with ethnic mistrust and misplaced feelings of "moral" superiority, they cheated, tricked, lied and murdered their way to wealth. The bulk of the Six Nations population came to Southern Ontario and Quebec as refugees fleeing racist American persecution, joining their scattered communities already settled in the Canadas.

The site of Toronto was purchased by the British crown from the Mississauga Indians at the end of the 1700's. They were re-settled further west, but the Toronto's large suburb of Mississauga still bears their name, as do many other local features.

The patronizing British colonial government in Canada treated the Six Nations and the other Iroquoian natives of Southern Ontario with mild disdain and paternalistic disinterest. When Canada wrested control over its own affairs from the British Empire, official attitudes towards native peoples worsened, just as they had in the U.S.A.

Treaties were broken without consideration, land once guaranteed to native nations in legally binding treaties was stolen, and native children were abducted and force-fed European "education", which took place in repugnant government-run schools. Their political systems were attacked, though they have persevered through great effort. It was even illegal to raise money (!) for land-claims suits against the government until the late 1960's.

Over the past two hundred years, they have been harassed, manipulated, and denied basic rights by the nation that purports to claim their loyalties.

Today, the Six Nations controls its own territories in casual defiance of all outside governments, and neither the American nor Canadian authorities have had much luck enforcing their law or policies. The Six Nations have a very strong legal argument for independence: under treaties with the Canadian Crown, they are be considered allies of the crown rather than subjects, and are therefore independent. They live in their traditional regions of New York State in the U.S.A., Quebec and Ontario in Canada, and throughout Canada as they moved where opportunities took them.

Our own societies have inherited much from these ancient peoples. We carried on many native traditions. They gave us crops that make up the foundation of much of modern agriculture: corn (maize), pumpkins, squash, tobacco, sunflowers (for oil), vegetables, maple syrup, many fruits, some spices, and other common items. The same land that native people used for farming are often still used for farms today. The choicest locations for settlements, along rivers and lakeshores, are often the sites of modern towns and cities. Old placenames litter Ontario.

In the U.S.A., American settlers killed natives, hounded them from their lands and physcally assaulted them in order to force them out. They frequently moved right into Cherokee and Iroquoian farmsteads and towns, "founding" a town without even having to build or clear land. The real story of the founding of these European settlements is rarely told, because the culture of the ancestors of the current inhabitants was, vicious, violent and essentially criminal.

The Great law of the Five Nations may even have inspired the American constitution, a founding early document that helped lead to current concepts of human rights and democracy, and helped inspire such things as the Canadian Charter of Rights. The League of Six Nations had a very similar document, and the authors of the American constitution were intimately familiar with the Six Nations' Great Law. It laid out basic concepts such as liberty, rights and female suffrage when Europeans were languishing under the lash of kings, feudal lords and the rule by the rich and wealthy. They also developed the idea of three-tiered government: federal, provincial/state and municipal levels. The debt we owe to our native peoples and their history is incalculable but rarely acknowledged. Not only did the ancestors of modern Americans and Canadians rape and pillage to win territory, their descendants deliberately ignore and lie about this terrible past.