Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg by Gidigaa Migizi

Author:Gidigaa Migizi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arbeiter Ring Publishing

Formation of Mud Lake Reserve

So the 1818 treaty was signed and renegotiated in 1822 where less money was promised and then it was decided by someone to try and start a reserve system in Ontario. The missionary society from Boston called the New England Company was asked to try and get the people of the north shore of Lake Ontario into living a village style of life and to Christianize them. This would be sanctioned by the government. The monies to do this was taken from the money that was held in trust by the government in signing the treaties. The New England Company started these First Nations communities in and around the time settlement was starting to occur in the Peterborough area, simultaneously the Peter Robinson immigration was occurring. Peter Robinson was a British army officer. The Irish settlement that happened here was a big influx and I sense that it was under pressure from Peter Robinson and the Canada Company and the like that the New England Company should centralize the Indians and not stand in the way of settlement. I think this is the way that Mud Lake or Curve Lake and Rice Lake were born. They also centralized the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg living around Kingston to Grape Island. It was a very difficult time. Many of our people were living around Rice Lake and Lake Ontario and slowly ended up showing up in Curve Lake because it was more of a distance from settlers and the settlement and they found some refuge here. The hunting was still good in this area. The north end of Chemong became the site for the reserve. However, I found out later it was a piece of land the settlers did not want, they felt it was too rocky and they thought it was best to “let the Indians have it.” Actually it was only by their own misguided way that they inadvertently gave our people land which became really good hunting grounds. They didn’t mean to do that. They just wanted the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg out of the way.

After the 1818 treaty of the Peterborough area from Rice Lake on north, surveyors moved in right away to survey the land. They sectioned it off very quickly and we know now in retrospect that they very much had settlement in mind. Seven years after the signing of that treaty a mass migration happened in this year lead by Peter Robinson. He brought Irish immigrants to the area and literally gave them free land. Yes, they paid 10 schillings for the first 100 acres and if they cleared that land, they got another 100 acres for free. Of course this is to the detriment of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg who were being displaced very quickly. They were being shoved aside. It became clear that their expectation, that they would be let to live on the land as they always had along the shorelines and the farmers would farm the land away from the shorelines, evaporated into thin air.

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