Two Amazing Pieces of Poetry

Susanna Moodie wrote Roughing it in the Bush. a very observant account of her family settling in a loghouse in the 1830’s Their pioneer home was in the middle of the forest near the present town of Lakefield, Ontario. Upper Canada was then a British colony welcoming many American loyalists. The Moodies, mother, father, a retired British army officer, and daughter immigrated in 1832, and shortly after their log cabin was built started having warm relations with the local first nations people who were of the Mississauga tribe. She wrote: “It was not long before we received visits from the Indians…Their honesty and love of truth are the finest traits in their characters... These are two God-like attributes, and from them spring all that is generous an ennobling among them There never was a people more sensible of kindness, or more grateful for any little act of benevolence …We met them with confidence, our dealings with them were conducted with the strictness integrity and they became attached to our persons, and no single instance ever destroyed the good opinion we entertained of them.” In an introduction to the 1913 edition of The Moccasin Maker by the famous biracial indigenous performer and writer Pauline Johnson, Charles Mair wrote: “Impartial history not seldom leans to the red man's side; for, in his ordinary and peaceful intercourse with the whites, he was, as a rule, both helpful and humane. In the records of early explorers we are told of savages who possessed estimable qualities lamentably lacking in many so- called civilized men. The Illinois, an inland tribe, exhibited such tact, courtesy and self-restraint, in a word, such good manners, that the Jesuit Fathers described them as a community of gentlemen. Such traits, indeed, were natural to the primitive Indian, and gave rise, no doubt, to the much-derided phrase—"The Noble Red Man.’” In a short story called “A Red Girl’s Reasoning” in the same book, Johnson writes of a trader who had long ago married an Indian girl: “The country was all backwoods, and the Post miles and miles from even the semblance of civilization, and the lonely young Englishman's heart had gone out to the girl who, apart from speaking a very few words of English, was utterly uncivilized and uncultured, but had withal that marvelously innate refinement so universally possessed by the higher tribes of North American Indians.” First nations peoples under the French and in the earlier years of British rule were vital to our first major industry, the fur trade – providing the furs and powering the transportation system that brought the commodity to Montreal. They had been treated as partners under the French regime, and as we have seen were treated as neighbours and friends by the early settlers in Upper Canada. The diary of Mrs., Simcoe, the wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada in the late 1700’s John Graves Simcoe makes many references to her interest in the local natives in then York and in her and her husband’s’ travels. On a trip to what is now London, Ontario the governor found his native guides very useful: “The Governor rose early on the march and walked till five o'clock. A party of the Indians went on an hour before, to cut down wood for a fire and make huts of trees, which they cover with bark so dexterously that no rain can penetrate, and this they do very expeditiously; when the Governor came to the spot the Indians had fixed upon the lodge for the night, the provisions were cooked; after supper the officers sung "God Save the King"; and went to sleep with their feet close to an immense fire, which was kept up all night.” This benign and friendly interest in the first nations who vastly outnumbered white settlers in the early years of Upper Canada was soon to end as the need for more land for incoming settlers from the US and Europe started to encroach on indigenous lands. This led to treaty making with First Nation’s bands in which they signed away traditional lands in return for small compensation, gifts, and annual monetary awards. This was an unfortunate change from earlier agreements. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 confirmed First Nations’ sovereignty over their lands and prevented anyone, other than the Crown, from purchasing that land. The Crown, needing First Nations’ land for military purposes or for settlement, would first have to purchase it from its indigenous occupants. 50 years before Mrs. Moodie was meeting her Mississauga neighbours it became clear to colonial administrators that agreements on who controlled lands had to be made with this tribe who dominated huge areas north of Lake Ontario.