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T

he signing of La Grande Paix by the Iroquois and the French in Montreal in 1701 brought to an end the wild days of the French-Indian Wars. These wars reflected the European conflicts: the French fought the Iroquois who were allied with the British, while the Huron, Nipissing and Algonquin were either neutral or took the side of the French. As we saw last time, the Weskarinis, who were the indiginous people of our Laurentian area, were casualties of these wars, having been massacred by the Iroquois on the shores of Petit Lac Nominingue in 1751.

The Ste Agathe area did not figure much in events that followed. While the occasional Algonquin party probably trapped furs here, the events that would allow our area to be settled were unfolding further south. The Sulpicians set up a mission at Lake of Two Mountains in the early 1700's and maintained the peace between the Iroquois and the French in exchange for fur-trading rights to the territory. The Sulpicians sold off these rights to French entrepreneurs and did their best to convert the Iroquois and Algonquin to Catholicism. In the war with the English that led to the loss of the colony, many of these Iroquois actually fought for the French.

In 1763 when the colony was transferred, the English king refused to recognise Jesuit and Récollet titles over large tracts of land. Encouraged by this, an Iroquois at Deux Montagnes decided to sell his house to an English businessman. He hoped to demonstrate in this manner that the Iroquois owned their property, and gambled that the Sulpicians would fear confiscation of their lands if they challenged the rights of this Englishman to buy. The Sulpicians were more afraid of the Iroquois strategy than of the English. They petitioned Governer Burton to recognise their clear title. Burton accepted to respect the Sulpician property rights if the latter would swear hommage to George III, King of England, which of course they did. Thus the Iroquois\Englishman sale fell through and Sulpician titles were recognised.

From 1763 to 1936 the Iroquois and Sulpicians continued to fight this legal battle over their lands. The Iroquois were very creative in their fights. They invited a Methodist pastor to run their mission in 1852, thereby threatening to convert to Protestantism rather than Catholicism. This scheme back-fired when the pastor fled in the face of the utter religious apathy of the Iroquois, Algonquin and Nipissing. After subsequent attempts, they built a Methodist temple, but the Sulpicians got a judgement and had it dismantled. Over this period many Iroquois became Methodists and their attempts to break the Sulpician hold over their land can be credited for the creation in 1877 of Montreal's Civil Rights Association to promote religious freedom.

The Sulpicians set up villages for the Iroquois and for the Algonquin and succeeded in encouraging them to live in a spirit of cooperation. The sparse populations of these two peoples became centred around Lake of Two Mountains, and the rest of the area began to fall to settlers. Over time, there was nothing the Iroquois could do to get the same rights to the land as the settlers were getting. Neither the French nor the English crown seemed to be willing to recognise them as anything more than wards, non-citizens who had to be encouraged to move away. There was clearly no interest in their culture, history or political structure, yet, from the Iroquois perspective, it is their great unwritten constitution, the Great Law of Peace, that was the inspiration for Western democracy. Their symbol, the Eagle, and their democratic laws were copied by the 13 American colonies in the creation of the United States. Their goal was always to try to find a middle position between the French and English colonists. They were a people of six nations, the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Onandaga, Oneida and Tuskororas. The sixth was actually adopted by the other five, according to their oral history, around the time the Europeans were first arriving in America. I had occasion to have a long discussion with Tom Morris of Kanawake, and was fascinated to learn the Iroquois perspective. It lends credence to George Woodcock's statement that our salvation will be found in the philosophies of the indiginous peoples.

Most of the Ste Agathe area was being logged during the mid part of the 19th century. The British Empire's appetite for wood devoured forests over a period of 500 years, and most of our area fell under the axe even while the first three homesteaders were arriving in 1849. While they were traveling overland from St. Jerome, the logging was following the river systems that drain into the Ottawa, following the same routes as the Weskarinis had followed for so many centuries. Logging reached its peak in our area in the 1860's, long before the influence of Curé Labelle was felt.

In 1853 Queen Victoria ordained that 250,000 acres should be set aside for the 'Indians', and so the Doncaster Reserve, a square of land six miles on a side, was created. At that time the townships of Beresford, Wolfe and Doncaster were just starting to be surveyed and the Indian land was pretty far away from the Iroquois and Algonquin who were at Lake of Two Mountains. Another, larger reserve, Maniwaki, having an area of 58,975 hectares (over 150,000 acres) was also established, and over the next 25 years the Algonquin moved to it, having tired of the endless legal battle that the Iroquois were having with the Sulpicians.

In the meantime, a social revolution was taking place in the Canadas that would create our democracy. The Chateau Clique here and the Family Compact in Upper Canada were struggling to protect their historical privileges.

Joseph Graham has written a book that features a select number of stories of Laurentian places and how they got their names. To learn more, click here.

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This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the author. © Joseph Graham