Using Archaeology to understand First Nation Histories and Traditional Territories
Situated between parts of the Great Lakes, Southwestern Ontario was home to the Neutral Iroquoians who after 1650 dispersed from the region, but within a century or two returned. Late in the 17th Century, the Algonquian-speaking Anishnabeg peoples, such as the Potawatomi and more distant Ojibwe, would also settle in the region. The Huron-Wendot (or Wyandot) settled along the Detroit River around the same time as the Anishnabeg, and in the 1780s the Six Nation Iroquois migrated back to the present day region, while the Oneida Iroquois settled west of London in the 1840s. Southwestern Ontario would become the home to those mentioned above, and were free from permanent European settlement until the late 18th century.
Anishnabeg
Permanent settlement was absent in the southwestermost Ontario until the 18th Century, and this was due to seasonal mobility. However, descendent Anishnabeg peoples such as the Potawatomi returned to the ancestral Western Basin territory around western Lake Erie and southern Lake Huron, but many returned to southwestern Ontario during the 19th Century, and can be found today in Anishnabeg communities such as Bkejwanong (Walpole Island).
Territorial boundaries were not fixed and changed periodically, evident through the Bear Creek Ojibwe of the Syndenham River who settled along the drainage of the river only in the late 1780s or early 1790s, but prior to that they occupied the lower Thames River drainage. However, an increase of Euro-Canadian squatters entered the area and 1792 the Moravian Delaware settled further along the river causing the Bear Creek Ojibwe to sell and leave the Thames region. However, intermarriages and familial ties between many communities indicate an overlap of archaeological evidence, such as the Bear Creek Ojibwe and the St. Anne’s Odawa.
Archaeological evidence proves that there were less than a handful of 18th or 19th Century Ojibwe habitation sites documented in southwestern Ontario and Michigan. Primarily due to an introduction of European trade goods that lost a “distinct Aboriginal archaeological expression” (Ferris 2009).
Delaware
As presented above, the Bear Creek Ojibwe witnessed an increase of “new” visitors to their territory; one nation in particular was documented by the missionaries who resided in Moraviantown– the Delaware (Unami-Unalachtigo) community that in 1792 settled at Fairfield on the Thames.
The presence of the Delaware Nation in lands other than their ancestral ground indicates a growing presence of European encroachment into the western states, which caused the Delaware to move north upward the Delaware and Hudson rivers. The threat of wars and the Delaware’s “neutrality,” meaning they were not trusted by either American and or British forces, caused further movement westward into Ohio but after 1782 they were a dispersed nation due to the Revolutionary War and massacre at Sundusky. One of those displaced Delaware missions then found their selves near the Huron (present day Clintion) River north of Detroit, and in 1791, the Muncey Delaware encouraged them to settle near them, forming the Moravian Delaware.
Iroquois
The Iroquois have a vast and wide array of archaeological history due to their extensive material culture, settlement-subsistence, and mortuary practices and traditions. After 1650 the Iroquois nations had come in contact with Europeans, and changed the archaeological landscape.
Epidemics and conflicts caused Five Iroquois Nations to settle in southern Ontario with a desire to create a confederacy under the self-proclaimed title of “one people one land” in the 1630s to 1640s. Many of the Neutral Iroquois who as we saw in the introduction and who encompassed much of central southernwestern Ontario had now found their selves in present day New York State.
After the Revolutionary War, the Grand River region and east of Lake Ontario became home to Iroquois communities who were displaced and disposed out of American territory, but they were only securing land that was theirs to begin with. Today the five nations, who are now six, have maintained a lasting presence in the history of southwestern Ontario. The Six Nations include the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora.
From Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5, respectfully, and found in:
Ferris, N. (2009). The archaeology of native-lived colonialism: Challenging history in the Great Lakes. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
For more information about cultural heritage in regards to beliefs and customs, see these sites below and links to their home sites found on the First Nations Page:
Southwestern Ontario Community-Based & Consultation Archaeology Project 