Treaties and Land: First Nations and the Crown, 1800–1850

Let's start with a question

If you agreed to share your backyard with a neighbour, and years later they said you had sold it to them, would you think it was the same agreement?

Many First Nations say this is what happened with treaties in Upper Canada. Today these treaties are still law, and courts are still deciding what they mean.

Remember from earlier

In Grade 6 you found out whose land you are on and which treaty covers it. In Strand A of Grade 7 you learn about the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara (1764), which set out that only the Crown could make agreements with First Nations for their land, at public meetings, and with their consent.

Why so many treaties?

After the War of 1812, settlers poured into Upper Canada. The Crown wanted land for farms, roads and towns, so it made many land treaties with First Nations, mostly Anishinaabe nations such as the Mississauga and Chippewa (Ojibwe).

• Historians count about 30 to 40 land surrenders in Upper Canada. By the mid-1830s, they covered most of the farmland in the colony.
• Payments were sometimes one-time and sometimes yearly annuities, along with goods and sometimes reserves.
• Examples: the Huron Tract treaty (1827), which made room for the Canada Company; and in 1836, Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head pressed the Saugeen Ojibwe to give up a large area of land and proposed moving First Nations to Manitoulin Island.

First Nations leaders defending their peoples

• Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) was a Mississauga leader and Methodist minister. In the 1820s he helped his people build a farming village with a school at the Credit River. He spoke and wrote to colonial officials, and travelled to Britain, to press for the Mississaugas' rights to their land. In 1847 the Mississaugas of the Credit moved to New Credit, on land offered by the Six Nations of the Grand River. They live there today.
• Shingwaukonse was an Anishinaabe leader at Sault Ste. Marie. In the 1840s, the government gave mining companies permits on the north shores of Lakes Huron and Superior without any treaty. Shingwaukonse and other leaders protested again and again. In 1849, after they were ignored, Anishinaabe people took over a mining site at Mica Bay. Troops were sent, but the protest pushed the government to negotiate.

The Robinson Treaties of 1850

In September 1850, Crown commissioner William Benjamin Robinson and Anishinaabe leaders signed the Robinson-Superior and Robinson-Huron treaties, covering a huge area north of Lakes Huron and Superior.

• Each community kept a reserve.
• First Nations kept the right to hunt and fish on the lands until they were taken up for settlement or development.
• The Crown promised a payment and yearly annuities that would increase if the land made more money for the Crown.
• These treaties became a model for the Numbered Treaties signed later in the West.

But the annuities rose to $4 per person in the 1870s and never rose again. In July 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Crown had broken its promise and must make it right.