Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

According to the official history of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, Tyendinaga was the birthplace of The Great Peacemaker, who was instrumental in the founding of the Haudenosaunee in the 12th century.[4] Various non-Indigenous scholars have disputed the dating of this event, suggesting that it may have taken place in the 15th century, but there is no consensus.[5][6]

During much of the eighteenth century, the land that would later become the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory was populated by Mississaugas.[7] Beginning in 1784, the territory was settled by Mohawks, who had been displaced from their home in Fort Hunter, New York by the victory of the United States in the American Revolutionary War. The chief of the Fort Hunter Mohawks was John Deserontyon, a Loyalist Captain who had fought alongside the British Empire during the war.[3]^:11 At first, Deserontyon faced criticism for his chosen site of relocation from fellow chief Joseph Brant (who preferred to settle in the valley of the Grand River), as well as British colonial officials Frederick Haldimand and Sir John Johnson, who had been placed in charge of managing the resettlement.[8] Nonetheless, the Mohawks were granted land on the Bay of Quinte, part of the land reserved for resettlement of Loyalists by the Crawford Purchase of 1783. On May 22, 1784, about 20 Mohawk families, comprising a total of 100-125 individuals, arrived in the area after canoeing from Lachine, Quebec. This landing of the first families is commemorated annually with a re-enactment and a thanksgiving for the safe arrival.[4]

Throughout the 1780s, the settlement grew and developed, including the appointment of an Indian Department-paid teacher named Vincent to the settlement, and the construction of a schoolhouse and a church, completed in 1791.[8] In 1788, when the settlement had a population of about one hundred, Fort Hunter Mohawk captains Kanonraron (Aaron Hill) and Anoghsoktea (Isaac Hill) came to the territory after leaving the Grand River settlement under Joseph Brant, whom they resented for his growing political influence and policy of encouraging white settlers among the Mohawks.[8][9] After repeated requests, including a petition to King George III by Sir John Johnson in 1785,[10] the Mohawks that had settled at the Bay of Quinte were granted a 12 by 13 mile tract of land on the bay by Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe on 1 April 1793, in what is known as the Simcoe Deed, the Crown Grant to the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, and Treaty 3 1/2.[8][11][12]

Near the very end of the century, factionalism broke out on the Territory, with Isaac Hill challenging Deserontyon's leadership and ultimately killing two of Deserontyon's relatives. The issue was settled in a council that took place from the 2nd to the 10th of September, 1800, called by Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Claus, when Hill agreed to exclude himself from the affairs of the Territory.[8][13]

Throughout the first few decades of the 19th century, Mohawks on the Territory raised objections to the government leasing land to white settlers that had been guaranteed to them in the Simcoe Deed, largely for the removal of timber.[8][14] After the death of John Deserontyon in January 1811, and the end of the War of 1812, a further wave of non-Indigenous settlement arrived in the area. A letter dated 5 March 1819 records that in the area were settled "descendants of Germans; there is also a family of immediate descendants of Africans... [t]here are also some descendants of Americans."[15] From 1820 to 1843, the government of Canada allowed United Empire Loyalists to settle on the Territory, despite repeated appeals by the Mohawks for the government to remove the interlopers.[4][16] By the end of that period, two-thirds of the land base was under private ownership,[4] including an 800-acre tract of land sold circa 1836 to John Deserontyon's grandson, John Culbertson, which eventually became the townsite of Deseronto, Ontario (named after John Deserontyon). Since the 1830s, there have been allegations that the sale was illegal, and that dispute forms the basis of The Culbertson Tract Land Claim by the First Nation.[17]

In 1843, the Mohawks constructed the Gothic chapel Christ Church on the Territory. It was later designated Her Majesty's Chapel Royal of the Mohawk by Elizabeth II in 2004, making it one of only six Royal Chapels outside of Great Britain.[4]

In 1860, Oronhyatekha came to teach at Tyendinaga after studying briefly at Kenyon College. In the subsequent years, he left the Territory to spend time at Six Nations, and then studied for a few months at the University of Oxford at the recommendation of the Prince of Wales' personal physician, Henry Acland, finally returning to Tyendinaga in 1863, whereupon he married Deyoronseh (Ellen Hill). His home in Tyendinaga was known as "The Pines", a palatial Victorian estate where he only allowed the Mohawk language to be spoken. In April 1871,[18] Oronhyatekha was appointed the physician for Tyendinaga while he was practising medicine in Napanee. Deyoronseh's family owned Captain John's Island in the Bay of Quinte, which Oronhyatekha renamed Forester's Island (after the Independent Order of Foresters, the expansion of which he had been instrumental in) in the 1890s. On the island, Oronhyatekha built two homes, several cottages, a hotel, a dining hall, a bandstand, and a wharf. He began the construction of an orphanage on the island in 1903, which was opened in 1906 before being sold in 1908. Oronhyatekha had died in Savannah, Georgia in March 1907, a few months before his son Dr. Acland Oronhyatekha (also known as William Acland Heywood), Chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte also died.[19][20][21]

The first council election for the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte band government, as established under the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869, took place in October 1870. The first meeting of the first elected council took place December 10, 1870, and the men listed as "chiefs" of that council were Chief Sampson Green (Annosothkah, an alternate spelling of Isaac Hill's Mohawk name-- Green was Hill's great-grandson), Chief Archibald Culbertson, Chief William J. W. Hill (a descendant of John Desorontyon and Joseph Brant Thayendanegea), Chief John Loft (another descendant of Isaac Hill), Chief Seth W. Hill (also a descendant of Isaac Hill), Chief Cornelius Maricle, and Chief John Claus.[18]

By 1971, negotiations were complete to construct a centralized elementary school building on York Road, to replace the overcrowded Quinte Mohawk Indian Day School, which had been built around 1955 and served students up to Grade 8, and three poorly-insulated single-room schoolhouses constructed before the 1920s.[22] Construction of Quinte Mohawk School began on August 28, 1973, and the school opened in September 1974 with around 230 students.[22]

First Nations Technical Institute (today known as FNTI) was created in 1985, as an Indigenous-owned and controlled post-secondary institute.[23]

In February 2008, Health Canada advised the Council place a precautionary boil-water advisory on all groundwater-fed wells in the Territory. As of March 12, 2019, that advisory was still active.[24]

In February 2020, Tyendinaga became a focal point for the nationwide protests in solidarity with the hereditary chiefs of the Wetʼsuwetʼen opposing the construction of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline through their territory in central British Columbia. On February 6, members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation parked several vehicles near (but not on) a level crossing just north of the territory on Wyman Road, causing Via Rail and Canadian National Railway (CNR) to cancel service on vast parts of their network for almost a month.[25][26][27][28] The Ontario Provincial Police decided not to act immediately on several injunctions issued by CNR, but gave the protesters notice on February 23 to clear their encampment by midnight to avoid prosecution for disobeying the injunctions.[29] Ultimately, the protesters did not leave, and the OPP intervened, arresting several protesters on February 24.[30]