Mississauga in Ontario, Canada is a modern city whose slogan proudly declares “Leading today for tomorrow” (Mississauga.ca, 2011) indicating that it is an evolving, metropolis-like city with an enthusiasm for moving with the times. However, Mississauga has an extremely rich history including the Mississauga People who lived in the area between around 1701 and 1800 after many migrated to live on the north shore of Lake Ontario (Oakville). In short, it was not always the ultra-modern metropolis that it is today: two to three hundred years ago, Mississauga was teeming with indigenous people living a simple life. These people were known as the Mississagi because of links to the Mississagi River on the north western shore of Lake Huron and in 1640, the Jesuits recorded a similar name for the people – ‘oumisagai’ and the people themselves referred to their name as being ‘Anishanabe’ but accepted the alternative name as well (Oakville). The area of Mississauga is full of interesting history – most notably with regard to the Mississagi people, a name, incidentally, which means “people who live where there are many river mouths” (Oakville) demonstrating that regardless of their actual name (which is still ambiguous to this day), they were an indigenous people who made their home near water.
It seems prudent to first discuss the history of Mississauga as a place. The city is in Southern Ontario and is in the western part of the Greater Toronto area. Currently, it has a population of around 734,000 people (Mississauga.ca) and its population has doubled in the past two decades making it Canada’s sixth most populated municipality (Statistics Canada). This growth can be attributed to its close proximity to Toronto as well as increased level of industrial and corporate ventures that call the city home. By the 1600s and the arrival of the Europeans, Mississauga had already been home to the Algonquian and the Iroquoian speaking people although the latter had already been driven away by the Algonquian-speaking Mississaugans. The area as it’s known today began to grow around 1805 when large quantities of land were purchased from Mississauga people by the Toronto officials (or rather the York officials, as it was known then) which the Mississauga people were later better compensated for (Stewart, 2010). Originally, the city was made up of a cluster of villages including Lakeview, Clarkson and Cooksville, Lorne Park and a number of others which would eventually become known collectively as the ‘Toronto Township’ (Mississauga.ca). The area grew again substantially in 1820 when the government purchased more land from the Mississaugans which led to further developments being established. Eventually, in 1847, the government relocated the Mississauga people from their homes to a reserve in the Grand River Valley which is near Hagersville (MississaugaKiosk.com). Mississauga has also been the home to a number of notable historical events such as being the home of the controlled access highway – the Queen Elizabeth Way (a link back to Canada’s colonial roots); in 1979, it was the home to the largest peace-time evacuation in North American history after a major rail disaster; and interestingly, Bell Canada, the telephone communications company, continues to use the former names of individual places (such as the ones named above) rather than referring to calls placed in Mississauga although it is unknown why.
The Mississauga people lived relatively simple lives: they were primarily hunter-gatherers whose lifestyle altered to account for the current season and its effects. For example, in the summer, they would travel by canoe and in the winter, they used snow shoes (Oakville). They are a sub-tribe of the Ojibwe tribe, along with the Saulteaux people. In the colder months, the tribe would divide up into family groups to travel for hunting and ice fishing; by March, the tribe would collect and boil Maple Tree sap to make maple sugar; in the summer, the families would re-gather to fish and pick berries; in the spring, the women would plant corn and once it had been harvested in late summer, the tribe would break up to harvest wild rice from the shores of the lake before resuming their winter regime again (Oakville) demonstrating her versatile the Mississauga people were depending on the weather – showing them to be true survivors. The Ojibwe and Ottawa tribes, along with the Potawatomi tribe are part of an alliance called the Council of Three Fires which proved to be a powerful banding who eventually clashed with and beat the Sioux and the Iroquois Confederacy (Native-Languages.org).
The colonisation of Canada affected its various indigenous tribes in a number of ways including their land and resources but it also had a profound effect on their religious ideas too. The French had very little impact upon the religious interests of the Mississauga people and the northern Algonquian people remained unattached to any one denomination until a meeting at Ancaster in 1823 where Peter Jones, an active member of the Mississauga tribe, was recruited by the Methodist missionaries and who then actively advocated Methodism to the rest of the tribe and over the ten years that followed, his preaching helped to engage a significant number of southern Ojibwe people in the religious practice as well (Magocsi & MHSO, 1999, p26). Following this progress, the Methodists also established a number of Ojibwa model agricultural communities – the most popular of which were placed nearby to where the modern Mississauga city is today (Magocsi & MHSO, 1999, p26). Later still, in the 1830s and 1840s, Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries began to actively convert members of the various Ojibwa tribes to their respective religions in the Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron areas “whilst Chief Peguis became the first Western Ojibwa chief to espouse Anglicanism at Red River” (Magocsi & MHSO, 1999, p26) and it is important to remember that despite this, many of the traditional beliefs were still held by tribes.
The Mississauga people are thought to have been peaceful people who did not challenge the removal of their lands. One mural, painted on the walls of the foyer of the Mississauga Golf Club, entitled Governor and Mrs Simcoe Paddled up the Credit River, and depicts the arrival of the Governor and his wife on the banks, whilst the native people sit on the ground in front of their birch-bark wigwams. The natives do not acknowledge the arrival of the Governor and his wife, suggesting that the Mississauga people did not resist their removal from their lands. The mural’s placement is somewhat ironic as the land on which the modern-day golf club sits, was once land owned by the Mississaugans.
Whilst the mural depicts a lack of resistance or anger in the native people, it is possible that the artist was requested to make the painting look as such in order to conceal the upset that was potentially caused. In practice, it was extremely rare for any natives to be removed from their land without some resistance: “as Edward Said states, ‘Never was it the case that the imperial encounter pitted an active Western intruder against a supine or inert non-Western native; there was always some form of active resistance.’” (McKay, 2002, p141). It seems unlikely that the Mississauga people would have given up their rightful land without a fight, as demonstrated in the above quote but regardless of their resistance, they were removed and resettled anyway. The Mississauga people were not the only native Canadians to suffer this fate as the belief that native people could not make ‘good use’ of their land, and also that they would all soon disappear anyway, was rife in nineteenth century Canada (McKay, 2002, p141) and this led to the vast majority of native Canadians being resettled elsewhere – a common trait of the nineteenth century globally. Another account discusses how the various treaties of settlement caused the aboriginal tribes of Canada to surrender their land and in 1770, the British military began to “negotiate” with the Mississauga people for access to the land in the Great Lakes basin (Magocsi, 2002, p26). This account seems to present a more realistic take on the removal of the various indigenous tribes from their lands: negotiations are unlikely to be entirely peaceful and in reality, the Mississauga people had every right to want to stay on their own land. So, whilst they are presented as peaceful people, it seems hard to believe that they would have happily handed over their land without too much of a fight.
In 1701, south-central Ontario experienced a season of peace which meant that its lands were opened up to settlers and in 1708, the Iroquois people allowed people from the Ojibwa and Mississauga tribes to settled on Seneca lands, on the north shore of Lake Ontario and they quickly filled them too: southern Ontario’s hunting grounds were also now controlled by the northern Algonquians who quickly occupied the space, including some abandoned Seneca villages (Roots, 1999, p71). French documents of the area at the time (around 1720) showed that Mississauga had three main villages on the north shore of Lake Ontario – Kenté, Toronto and Niagra, with a fourth major village on Lake Simcoe too: all of these villages were thought to have around 150 men of fighting age with the total of the villages’ populations being around 750 people. This meant that these villages controlled “the subsistence and fur resources from the east end of Lake Erie to the Bay of Quinte, and from the north shore of Lake Ontario to the margins of the Canadian shield” (Roots, 1999, p71) demonstrating a high level of control of the area at the time. As things progressed, the Mississauga people gradually traded more with the English at Albany and Oswego after 1725; in 1720, the French opened a post for the Mississauga people in Toronto but it was closed again ten years later when the profits on fur were found to be too low to substantiate it (Roots, 1999, p71). This time in the history of the Mississauga people demonstrate their willingness to use the European colonialists to trade with and perhaps indicates their familiarity and nonchalance in the aforementioned mural – European people and their styles and fashions were not unfamiliar to the Mississauga people. In 1749, Oswego fur returns listed twenty five Mississauga canoes carrying 175 packs of fur for trading demonstrating that this was the Mississauga’s main resource.
The Mississauga quickly took ownership of the majority of the Ontario lands and established themselves as equal traders amongst the French and the British. However, in addition to this, the Mississauga people began to name areas in the Ontario area – giving them Ojibwa names as a sign of ownership (Oakville). For example, Sixteen Mile Creek was re-named ‘Nanzuhzaugewazog’ or ‘having two outlets’ because it has a gravel bar dividing its shallow mouth; and the Credit River was re-named ‘Missinnihe’ or ‘trusting creek’ because supposedly, this is where the Mississauga people were given credit by European investors for the furs which they were to deliver the following year (Oakville). This re-naming of the area was quite a controlling method by the Mississauga but, primarily, it was a peaceful effort which demonstrates that they were not a troublesome people – further compounded by their willingness to trade with the Europeans who, to them, must have seemed like invaders.
Much history concerned with the various colonisations of places is quick to present the respective indigenous people as being weak and unable to stand up to the might of the British or the French, for example. However, a reassessment of the history surrounding the various indigenous tribes in the early Mississauga area demonstrates that these were individuals who were capable of standing proud for quite some time but not without being capable of recognising when it is time to evolve and move with the times – such as Peter Jones who, recognising the merits of Methodism, chose to adopt it as his religion and lived the rest of his life encouraging others to do the same. It seems as though the Mississauga people were not reluctant to welcome the various advantages that came as a result of Canada’s colonisation. However, it is also clear from historical records that they were the fur traders of the time – monopolising the market, it would seem, even in the face of the British and the French traders – the smaller tribes still managed to sustain a fur business and even traded with the various foreigners, recognising that there was money to be made. It demonstrates a sensible attitude of ‘adapting’ rather than refusing to move with the times – they did not let their pride enhance their problems, like so many other indigenous tribes have done. In short, it would seem that the Mississauga people welcomed the British and the French into their lives – allowing them to improve their standard of living, religious faith and education. Whilst the various accounts of the Mississauga people’s reaction to the removal of their lands shows a mixed message of people who were happy to let it happen or as people who put up a fight for it, they did ultimately move on and received a significant compensatory package for it in 2010, demonstrating the respect for the Mississauga people and their heritage, rich and interesting as it is.
References
Magocsi, P. R. & Multicultural History Society Ontario. (1999). Encyclopedia of Canada's peoples. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Magocsi, P. R. (2002). Aboriginal peoples of Canada: a short introduction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
McKay, M. J. (2002). A national soul: Canadian mural painting, 1860s-1930s. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Mississauga City (2011). Mississauga Data. Retrieved from http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/residents/mississaugadata
Mississauga City (2011). Mississauga: Leading Today for Tomorrow. Retrieved from http://www.mississauga.ca/
Mississauga Kiosk. (2011). History of Mississauga. Retrieved from http://www.mississaugakiosk.com/history.php
Native Languages. (2011). Native Languages of the Americas: Chippewa (Ojibway, Anishinaabe, Ojibwa). Retrieved from http://www.native-languages.org/chippewa.htm
Oakville. (n.d.). The Mississauga People 1701-1800. Retrieved from http://www.oakvilletrails.ca/firstnations-essay5.htm
Roots, B. I. (1999). Special places: the changing ecosystems of the Toronto region. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Statistics Canada. (2005). Population and dwelling counts, for Canada and census subdivisions (municipalities), 2006 and 2001 censuses. Retrieved from http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/popdwell/Table.cfm?T=301&S=3&O=D
Stewart, J. (2010). Feds Offer to Settle Land Claims. Retrieved from http://www.mississauga.com/news/article/544075--feds-offer-to-settle-land-claims
