Many people tend to think, if they have heard of the Algonquian People at all, of them as being one separate people and/or tribe. This is not necessarily the case. For while it is true that the Algonquian are presently in and of themselves a separate people, they were in the ages of the past, a Mother giving birth to many children who became in their own right, Native American/American-Canadian Indian Nations. – Snow Owl
The Ottawa River Valley which forms the present border between Ontario and Quebec.
The cultural identity of the Algonquins of
Barriere Lake is protected by the elders. August 1987, the funeral for
Chief Soloman Matchewan. (back) Blanche Thusky, Elizabeth Nottaway, and
We call ourselves Mitchikanibikok Inik, or in English, Algonquins of Barriere Lake. Our First Nation is one of ten Algonquin First Nations inhabiting the Ottawa River watershed along the border between the provinces of Quebec and Ontario approximately 3 hours drive north of Ottawa.
We take our name-" Mitchikanibikok Inik", meaning "the people of the stone fence or stone fish weir"-from our former rendezvous place of Barriere Lake at the headwaters of the Ottawa River.
As Barriere Lake people, we speak a distinct local sub-dialect of Algonquin, the Easternmost and most divergent dialect of the Algonquian language family.
The historic culture and ecology of our First
Nation identifies us as a Northern people, sharing many "boreal" customs
with other Northern peoples.
Both Algonkin and Algonquin are correct spellings for the name of the tribe, but Algonquian either refers to their language or, collectively, to the group of tribes that speak related Algonquian languages.
The source of Algonkin is unclear. Other than the names of their bands, the Algonkin do not appear to have had a name for themselves as a people. Some researchers have suggested that Algonkin came from the Maliseet word for "ally," but others prefer the Micmac's "algoomeaking" that translates roughly as "place of spearing fish from the bow of a canoe."
The most likely possibility is the Maliseet word "allegonka" meaning "dancers," which Samuel de Champlain might have mistaken for their tribal name while watching a combined Algonkin, Maliseet, and Montagnais victory dance in 1603.
The first group of Algonkin that the French encountered were the Kichesipirini who, because their village was located on an island in the Ottawa River, were called "La Nation de l'Ilse."
At first, Algonkin was used only for a second
group, the Weskarini. However, by 1615 the name was applied to all of
the Algonkin bands living along the Ottawa River.
Among themselves, the Algonkin differentiated between bands which remained in the upper Ottawa Valley year-round and those that moved to the St. Lawrence River during the summer - the northerners being called "Nopiming daje Inini" (inlanders).
The French translated this as Gens des Terres and, in the process, sometimes confused them with Tetes de Boule, their name for the Attikamek (different Algonquian language) who were part of the Montagnais or Cree.
Algonquian. If for no other reason, the Algonkin would be famous because their name has been used for the largest native language group in North America.
The downside is the confusion generated, and many do not realize there actually was an Algonkin tribe, or that all Algonquian do not belong to the same tribe.
Algonquian is a family of related languages, but it has many dialects, not all of which are mutually intelligible.
Algonquian-speaking peoples dominated most of the northeastern North America with the exception of Iroquian-speakers in New York, northern Pennsylvania and southern Ontario.
Their range extended from Hudson Bay southward along the Atlantic coast to North Carolina and west to the Mississippi River.
On the Great Plains, Algonquian-speakers would include Cheyenne, Arapaho, Gros Ventres, Blackfoot, Cree, and Ojibwe, and some have even suggested that the Wiyot and Yurok in northern California speak a distant form of Algonquian.
The dialect of the Algonkin themselves is closely related to that of the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi making the Algonkin the easternmost speakers of this group.
Although there is some variation between the different Algonkin bands, most still prefer their traditional language with French or English being spoken only when necessary.
|Algonkin Bands in 1630:|
Iroquet - Known to
the Huron as the Atonontrataronon or Ononchataronon, they lived along
Ontario's South Nation River.
Kichesipirini "people of the great river" - largest and most powerful group of Algonkin. Known variously as: Algoumequins de l'Isle, Allumette, Big River People, Gens d l'Isle, Honkeronon (Huron), Island Algonkin, Island Indians, Island Nation, Kichesippiriniwek, Nation de l'Isle, Nation of the Isle, and Savages de l'Isle. Main village was on Morrison's (Allumette) Island.
Kinounchepirini (Keinouche, Kinonche, Pickerel, Pike) - sometimes listed as an Algonkin band, but after 1650 associated with the Ottawa. Originally found along the lower Ottawa River below Allumette Island.
Matouweskarini (Madawaska, Madwaska, Matouchkarine, Matouashita, Mataouchkarini, Matouechkariniwek, Matouescarini). The Madawaska River in the Upper Ottawa Valley.
Nibachis - Muskrat Lake near present-day Cobden, Ontario. Otaguottaouemin (Kotakoutouemi, Outaoukotwemiwek). Upper Ottawa River above Allumette Island.
Otaguottaouemin - (Kotakoutouemi, Outaoukotwemiwek)
Sagaiguninini - (Saghiganirini)
Saginitaouigama - (Sagachiganiriniwek)
Weskarini - (Algonkin Proper, La Petite Nation, Little Nation, Ouaouechkairini, Ouassouarini, Ouescharini, Ouionontateronon (Huron),Petite Nation) - North side of the Ottawa River along the Lievre and the Rouge Rivers in Quebec.
Later bands or names associated with the Algonkin: Abitibi (Abitibiwinni), Barriere, Bonnechere, Dumoine, Kipawa, Lac des Quinze, Mainwawaki (Mainwaki), Mitchitamou, Ouachegami, Outchatarounounga, Outimagami, Outurbi, Tadoussac, Temagami, Timiskaming (Temiskaming, Timiscimi).
Too far north for agriculture, most Algonkin were loosely organized into small, semi-nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers. In this, they resembled the closely related Ojibwe.
The Algonkin lived somewhat outside the wild rice region which provided an important part of the diet for other tribes in the northern Great Lakes. Although a few southern bands were just beginning to grow corn in 1608, the Algonkin relied heavily on hunting for their food which made them excellent hunters and trappers, skills which quickly attracted the attention of French fur traders after 1603.
The Algonkin also made good use of their birch-bark canoes to travel great distances for trade, and their strategic location on the Ottawa River became the preferred route between the French on the St. Lawrence River and the tribes of the western Great Lakes.
Groups of Algonkin would gather during the
summer for fishing and socializing, but at the approach of winter,
they separated into small hunting camps of extended families. The
climate was harsh, with starvation not uncommon. For this reason, the
Algonkin could not afford for someone to become a burden, and were
known to kill their sick, crippled, or badly wounded.
There was also a shared belief in a life after death where the spirits of dead men pursued the spirits of dead animals. However, in contrast to Christian beliefs, the Algonkin had no concept of a hell or place of eternal punishment.
Dreams were of particular importance to the Algonquian peoples, and proper interpretation was an important responsibility of their shamans whose other duties included communication with the spirit world, guiding men's lives, and healing the sick.
On the dark side, there was an almost universal fear of witchcraft, and Algonquian peoples, the Algonkin included, were very reluctant to mention their real names to prevent possible misuse by enemies with spiritual power and evil intent.
In various degrees, these beliefs were shared
by most native peoples in North America.
The Iroquois to the west and south of the Algonkin were matrilineal and differed from the Algonkin in several important ways. The most obvious being that the Iroquois relied heavily on agriculture and lived in large fortified villages.
The Iroquois also had a highly developed central political organization, while the Algonkin did not.
Despite this, the Algonkin were formidable warriors who used their advantages in transportation and woodland skills to dominate the Iroquois before the formation of the Iroquian confederacies.
When one thinks of how powerful the Iroquois ultimately became, it was a remarkable achievement.
The Algonkin maintain that their ancestors originally migrated to the upper St. Lawrence Valley from the east, a tradition they share with the closely related Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi.
The timing of this seems to have been sometime around 1400, but when Jacques Cartier made his first visit to the St. Lawrence River in 1534, he found Iroquois-speaking peoples living along the river between Quebec (Stadacona) and the rapids at Montreal (Hochelaga).
It is unclear whether these people were Iroquois or Huron, but by the time the French made their first permanent settlement in this area seventy years later, these so-called "Laurentian" Iroquois had disappeared, the apparent casualties of a Iroquois-Algonquian war which had occurred in the interim.
Some Algonkin say that they lived in peace with the Iroquois at Hochelaga and may even have absorbed some of them. The Iroquois version is significantly different and tells of an earlier time before they united under the Iroquois League when the Algonkin dominated the badly-divided Iroquois and forced them to pay tribute.
This situation changed with the formation of the League, and after 50 years of warfare, the Iroquois had driven the Adirondack and their allies from the Adirondack Mountains and the upper Hudson Valley.
This was where things stood when Samuel de
Champlain established the first permanent French settlement on the St.
Lawrence at Tadoussac in 1603.
Towards the end of May, he met with a Montagnais chief and was invited to attend a feast celebrating the success of a recent raid against the Iroquois. Dressed in his finest, Champlain attended and was introduced to the Montagnais allies, the Etchemin (Maliseet) and Algonkin.
He soon learned that there had been continuous war between these three allies and the Iroquois since 1570. Despite the fact that he was entering a war zone, Champlain was so impressed with the Algonkin's furs that in July he explored the St. Lawrence as far west as the Lachine Rapids.
Champlain left for France shortly afterwards, but upon his return in 1608, he immediately moved his fur trade upstream to a new post at Quebec to shorten the distance that the Algonkin were required to travel for trade.
He soon discovered that Algonkin victories over the Iroquois were not that common, and it was the Mohawk, not the Algonkin, who dominated the upper river.
At the time, it was possible to travel the entire length of the upper St. Lawrence without seeing another human being. The Algonkin usually avoided the river because of the threat of Mohawk war parties.
Champlain was anxious to conclude treaties with
both the Algonkin and Montagnais to preclude competition from his
European rivals. However, the Algonkin, Montagnais, and their Huron
allies were reluctant to commit themselves to the long, dangerous
journey to Quebec unless the French were willing to help them in their
war against the Mohawk.
In June, 1609 Champlain was leading a French exploration west of Quebec when he encountered a group of 300 Algonkin and Montagnais under the Weskarini sachem Iroquet and 100 Huron led by their war chief Ochasteguin, Champlain seized this opportunity to show his support for his new trading partners and unwittingly allowed the French to be drawn into an intertribal war.
In July the French joined the Algonkin,
Montagnais, and Huron at the mouth of the Richelieu River for an
invasion of the Mohawk homeland. The warriors enthusiasm for this
venture had already cooled, and many of them departed once they had
completed their trading with the French.
By the time it reached Lake Champlain in northern New York (which Champlain promptly named for himself), the war party was down to 60 warriors and three Frenchmen in 24 canoes.
At the south end of the lake, they encountered Mohawk warriors massing in anticipation of a battle. However, it was late in the evening, and after some negotiation, both sides decided to wait until morning when the light would be better.
The next day the Mohawk massed for battle,
but French firearms shattered their formation killing two of their war
chiefs. Confronted by strange new weapons, the Mohawk turned and fled.
The following year, Champlain participated in a second attack against a Mohawk Fort on the Richelieu River. Although they were not given any firearms during the early years, the steel weapons received through their trade with the French were sufficient for the Algonkin and their allies to drive the Mohawk well south of the St. Lawrence River during 1610.
The Algonkin advantage was only temporary. The Iroquois soon found another source of steel weapons through their trade with the Dutch along the lower Hudson River to the south.
Fur from the Great Lakes flowed down the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers to the French at Quebec during the years which followed, and the Algonkin, led by their great war chief Pieskaret dominated the St. Lawrence Valley.
However, the Iroquois remained a constant threat, and in winning the trade and friendship of the Algonkin, the French had made a dangerous enemy for themselves.
It did not take long, for the focus of the fur
trade to move farther west, because the French had already learned of
the Huron who were allies of the Algonkin against the Iroquois.
In 1611 Ettienne Brule visited the Huron villages and spent the winter with them at the south end of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay. Champlain's initial impressions of the Huron had not been favorable, but Brule's glowing reports about the quality of their fur soon altered this opinion.
Champlain made his first exploration of the Ottawa River during May, 1613 and reached the fortified Kichesipirini village at Morrison Island. Unlike the other Algonkin, the Kichesipirini did not change location with the seasons.
They had chosen a strategic point astride the trade route between the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and had prospered through the collection of tolls from native traders passing through their territory.
They pointed with great pride to their corn
fields, a skill that they seemed to have acquired just before the
arrival of the French.
However, the quantity and quality of the fur coming from the Huron could not be ignored, and in 1614 the French and Huron signed a formal treaty of trade and alliance at Quebec.
The following year, Champlain, accompanied by four Recollect missionaries, made his second journey up the Ottawa River and, ignoring the Kichesipirini protests, proceeded to the Huron villages.
While there, he participated in a Huron-Algonkin attack on the Oneida and Onondaga villages confirming in the minds of the Iroquois (in case they still had doubts) that the French were their enemies.
In the 1800's, some Algonquin chiefs began
wearing an impressive feathered headdress like their western neighbors
Otherwise, Algonquin men and women generally
wore their hair in two long braids. Both genders painted their faces
and arms with bright colors.
After 1614, the focus of the French fur trade shifted from the Algonkin to the Huron, but because the Iroquois, the French found it prudent to make the long detour up the Ottawa Valley, then portage to Lake Nipissing and the French River, follow the east side of Lake Huron to the Huron villages.
Although the French continued to trade with them, the Algonkin were somewhat annoyed by their demotion to secondary trading partner. The Kichesipirini, however, continued to profit by charging tolls for both French and native traders to pass through their territory.
The effect obviously fell more heavily on natives, since firearms insured that the French usually paid less. Meanwhile, to the south in New York, the Mohawk had fought a series of wars against the Mahican whose location on the Hudson allowed them to control the access of the Iroquois to the Dutch.
Because warfare was detrimental to trade, the Dutch had been quick to arrange peace between these rivals, but in 1624 the Mohawk discovered that the Mahican were attempting to act as middlemen by arranging trade between the Dutch and the Algonkin and Montagnais.
The Iroquois had never accepted their loss of the St. Lawrence Valley in 1610 as permanent. When they became involved in wars with the Mahican, the Mohawk had made several attempts to settle their differences with the Algonkin and Montagnais.
However, with the exception of a brief truce arranged at Trois Rivieres in 1622, fighting had continued between the Mohawk, Algonkin, and Montagnais. The possibility of the Mahican joining forces with their northern enemies was something the Mohawk were not willing to tolerate, and a war erupted in 1624 between the Mohawk and Mahican that the Dutch could not stop.
After four years, the Mahican had been defeated and forced east of the Hudson River. The Dutch were forced to accept the outcome, and the Mohawk afterwards dominated the trade in the Hudson Valley.
Unfortunately, the Iroquois by this time had exhausted the beaver in their homeland and needed additional hunting territory to maintain their position with the Dutch. Their inability to satisfy the demand for beaver was the very reason the Dutch had tried in 1624 to open trade with the Algonkin and Montagnais.
The obvious direction for the Iroquois expansion was north, but the alliance of the Huron and Algonkin made this impossible. The Iroquois at first attempted diplomacy to gain permission, but the Huron and Algonkin refused, and with no other solution available, the Iroquois resorted to force.
In what is generally considered the opening battle of the Beaver Wars (1630-1700), the Mohawk attacked the Algonkin-Montagnais trading village at Sillery (just outside Quebec) in 1629.
By 1630 both the Algonkin and Montagnais needed
French help to fight the Mohawk, but this was not available. Taking
advantage of a European war between Britain and France, Sir David
Kirke captured Quebec in 1629, and the British held Canada until 1632
when it was returned to France by the Treaty of St. Germaine en Laye.
Those intervening three years were a disaster for the French allies. Since their own trade with the Dutch was not affected, the Mohawk were able to reverse their defeats during 1609-10. They reclaimed the territory surrendered in 1610 and drove the Algonkin and Montagnais from the upper St. Lawrence.
When they returned to Quebec in 1632, the French attempted to restore the previous balance of power along the St. Lawrence by providing firearms to their allies.
However, the initial sales were restricted to Christian converts which did not confer any real advantage to the Algonkin.
The roving Algonkin bands had proven resistant to the initial missionary efforts of the "Black Robes, and the Jesuits had concentrated instead on the Montagnais and Huron.
But the Kichesipirini's permanent village made
them more susceptible to missionaries, and Jesuits were not above
using the lure of firearms to help with conversions. Tessouat, the
Kichesipirini sachem, could see that the new religion was dividing his
people and opposed the Jesuits, even to the point of threatening to
kill Algonkin converts.
This not only earned him the active dislike of the French priests, but forced many of his people to leave their island fortress.
Between 1630 and 1640, many of the Kichesipirini and Weskarini converts left the Ottawa Valley. They settled first at Trois Rivieres and then Sillery after a mission was built for them during 1637.
The effect was to weaken the main body of traditional Algonkin defending the trade route through the Ottawa Valley, and the consequences quickly became apparent.
The Dutch had reacted to the French arming their native allies with large sales of firearms to the Mohawk who passed these weapons along to the other Iroquois, and the whole ugly business of the fur trade degenerated into an arms race.
After seven years of increasing violence, a peace was arranged in 1634 which allowed both sides to catch their breath.
Unfortunately, the Algonkin used the pause to
start trading with the Dutch in New York, a definite "no-no" so far as
the Iroquois were concerned, and the war resumed.
Iroquois offensives during 1636 and 1637 drove the Algonkin farther north into the upper Ottawa Valley and forced the Montagnais east towards Quebec. Only a smallpox epidemic, which began in New England during 1634 and then spread to New York and the St. Lawrence Valley, slowed the fighting.
The real escalation occurred in 1640 when British traders on the Connecticut River in western Massachusetts attempted to lure the Mohawk from the Dutch with offers of guns. The Dutch responded to this latest threat to their trade monopoly by providing the Mohawk with as many of the latest, high-quality firearms as they wanted.
The effect of this new firepower in the hands of Iroquois warriors was immediate. The Weskarini along the lower Ottawa River were forced to abandon their villages on the lower Ottawa River during 1640.
Some moved north to the Kichesipirini fortress and continued to resist the Mohawk's occupation of their homeland.
Others moved east and settled among the Christian Algonkin at Trois Rivieres and Sillery.
By the spring of 1642, the Mohawk and Oneida
had succeeded in completely driving the last groups of Algonkin and
Montagnais from the upper St. Lawrence and lower Ottawa Rivers, while
in the west, the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga concentrated on their
war with the Huron.
However, this only seemed to make matters worse. The French were attacked while building Fort Richelieu, and the Iroquois soon bypassed the French settlement and sent war parties north into the Ottawa Valley to attack the Huron and Algonkin canoe fleets transporting fur to Montreal and Quebec.
Through all of these years, the Iroquois had never dared to attack the Kichesipirini fortress, but in 1642 a surprise winter raid hit the Algonkin while most of their warriors were absent and inflicted severe casualties.
The Iroquois tightened their stranglehold the following year. Trying to bolster their defense in the west, the French sent soldiers to the Huron mission at Sainte Marie and ordered the non-Christian Algonkin at Trois Rivieres and Sillery to return to the Ottawa Valley.
However, with Iroquois along the lower river,
most did not go beyond Montreal. Meanwhile, Tessouat had ended his
opposition to Christianity and, to the delight of the Jesuits,
requested baptism in March, 1643.
They could not, however, reverse the deteriorating situation. With the departure of the Weskarini, the Mohawk were free to operate in force along the river and captured three large Huron canoe fleets bound for Montreal.
This brought the French fur trade to a complete standstill, and Champlain's successor Charles Huault de Montmagmy (known to the Iroquois as Onontio "Big Mountain") had little choice but to seek peace.
He ordered the release of several Mohawk
prisoners and sent them to their people with the message that he
wanted to talk. Having suffered severe losses from warfare and
epidemic, the Mohawk were receptive, but they were also aware that the
French were in serious trouble and therefore were prepared to drive a
The Mohawk also had not been empowered to speak for other members of the Iroquois League which meant that any agreement would not protect the Huron and their allies in the west.
Earlier that year, a combined Mohawk, Sokoki, and Mahican war party had attacked Sillery, the main Montagnais and Algonkin mission village outside Quebec. Vimont and Le Jeune were convinced that, with these new allies, the Mohawk were on the verge of destroying the Jesuit missions on the lower St. Lawrence.
On their advice, Montmagmy finally agreed to
a treaty permitting the French to resume their fur trade but
containing a secret agreement requiring French neutrality in future
wars between their allies and Iroquois in exchange for a Mohawk
promise to refrain from attacks on the Algonkin and Montagnais
villages at the Jesuit missions.
Well aware that the treachery would encounter strong objections from their fellow Jesuits, Vimont and Le Jeune did not disclose the full details of agreement to them for another year, and by then it was too late.
Meanwhile, the Jesuits took advantage of the
peace with the Mohawk to send Father Issac Jogues and two other
Frenchmen to build a mission at the Mohawk villages. Accused of
sorcery, they were murdered in October of 1646.
Still, there was a pause in the fighting during which Huron and Algonkin furs flowed east to Quebec in unprecedented amounts, while the Iroquois renewed efforts to gain the permission of the Huron to hunt north of the St. Lawrence. Refused after two years of failed diplomacy, the Iroquois resorted to total war, but this time with the assurance that the French would remain neutral.
While their Sokoki (western Abenaki) and Mahican went after the Montagnais, the Mohawk chose to ignore the distinction between Christian and non-Christian Algonkin.
On March 6th (Ash Wednesday), 1647, a large
Mohawk war party hit the Kichesipirini living near Trois Rivieres and
almost exterminated them.
As French and Indian refugees streamed down the Ottawa Valley to the relative safety of Montreal, Tessouat was still trying to collect tolls and ordered one of the Jesuits who refused him to be strung up by the heels.
However, the Mohawk did not allow much more time for toll collections, and during 1650 the remaining Algonkin in the upper Ottawa Valley were attacked and overrun.
The survivors retreated, either far to headwaters of the rivers feeding the Upper Ottawa River where the Cree afforded a certain amount of support and protection, or west to the vicinity of the Ottawa and Ojibwe.
During the next twenty years, the Algonkin
pretty much dropped out of sight so far as the French were concerned.
Tessouat, however, visited Trois Rivières in 1651 and was promptly
tossed in a dungeon for a few days because of his manhandling of the
Jesuit priest two years earlier.
The Iroquois never occupied the Ottawa Valley, but their war parties roamed its length during the 1650s and 60s making travel extremely dangerous for anything but large, heavily-armed convoys.
Few tribes were willing to run the gauntlet that the Iroquois established along the river. War between the Iroquois and French resumed after the murder of a Jesuit ambassador in 1658.
By 1664 the French had decided they had
endured enough of living in constant fear of the Iroquois. The arrival
of regular French troops in Quebec that year and their subsequent
attacks on villages in the Iroquois homeland brought a lasting peace
Conquest and dispersal had been hard on them, and not many were left (perhaps 2,000). The epidemics which struck Sillery in 1676 and 1679 had reduced the Christian Algonkin survivors to only a handful, most of whom were subsequently absorbed by the Abenaki at St. Francois after the closure of the Sillery mission in 1685.
During the 20-year absence of the Algonkin from the Ottawa Valley, the Ottawa had come to dominate the French fur trade with the western Great Lakes. So much so that any native fur trader visiting Montreal during this period was routinely referred to as an Ottawa even though many were Algonkin and Ojibwe.
An even greater insult occurred when the name
of the Grande Riviere des Algoumequins (Grand River of the Algonkins)
was changed on French maps to the Riviere des Outauais. The change was
permanent and persists today, although no Ottawa, other than the
Kinounchepirini (Keinouche), were ever known to have lived along the
This strange mix of former enemies, both of whom had converted to Christianity and allied with the French, became known by both its Algonkin name Oka (pickerel), and the Iroquois form, Kanesatake (sandy place).
For the most part, the Algonkin converts remained at Oka only during the summer and spent their winters at their traditional hunting territories in the upper Ottawa Valley.
This arrangement served the French well,
since the Algonkin converts at Oka maintained close ties with the
northern bands and could call upon the inland warriors to join them in
case of war with the British and Iroquois League.
Members included: Caughnawaga (Mohawk), Lake of the Two Mountains (Iroquois, Algonkin, and Nipissing), St. Francois (Sokoki, Pennacook, and New England Algonquian), Becancour (Eastern Abenaki), Oswegatchie (Onondaga and Oneida), Lorette (Huron), and St. Regis (Mohawk).
The Algonkin remained important French allies until the French and Indian War (1755-63) and the summer of 1760. By then, the British had captured Quebec and were close to taking the last French stronghold at Montreal.
The war was over in North America, and the British had won.
The Huron of Lorette were the first to
understand this and signed a separate treaty with British that summer.
In mid-August, the Algonkin and eight other former French allies met
with the British representative, Sir William Johnson, and signed a
treaty in which they agreed to remain neutral in futures wars between
the British and French.
After the war, Johnson used his influence with the Iroquois to merge the Iroquois League and the Seven Nations of Canada into a single alliance in the British interest.
The sheer size of this group was an important reason the British were able to crush the Pontiac Rebellion west of the Appalachian Mountains in 1763 and quell the unrest created by the first white settlements in the Ohio Country during the years which followed.
Johnson died suddenly in 1774, but his legacy lived on, and the Algonkin fought alongside the British during the American Revolution (1775-83) participating in St. Leger's campaign in the Mohawk Valley in 1778.
The Algonkin homeland was supposed to be
protected from settlement by the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec
Act of 1774, but after the revolution ended in a rebel victory,
thousands of British Loyalists (Tories) left the new United States and
settled in Upper Canada.
Despite this, Algonkin warriors fought beside the British during the War of 1812 (1812-14) and helped defeat the Americans at the Battle of Chateauguay. Their reward for this service was the continued loss of their land to individual land sales and encroachment by American Loyalists and British immigrants moving into the valley.
The worse blow occurred when the British in 1822 were able to induce the Mississauga near Kingston, Ontario to sell most of what remained of the Algonkin holdings in the Ottawa Valley. Because few, if any, Mississauga actually lived there, the price paid for them to sell another people's land was virtually nothing.
And for a second time, no one bothered to consult the Algonkin who had never surrendered their claim to the area but still received nothing from its sale.
Further losses occurred during the 1840s as lumber interests moved into the Upper Ottawa Valley.
Treaties and purchases by the Canadian government eventually established ten reserves that permitted the Algonkin to remain in the area, but like most Native Americans in both Canada and the United States, they were allowed to keep only a tiny portion of what once had been their original homeland.
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