Hidden Ontario by Terry Boyle Read Free Book Online Page B

own people. Joseph excelled in the two years he attended. Some historians believe that this was where he was converted to Christianity.
    Upon his return he married Christine, the daughter of an Oneida chief, and together they resided in a frame house. Although they had two children, Christine died young of consumption in 1771; Brant married Susannah, who also died of consumption two years later; he was married a third and final time, to a woman named Catherine.
    In 1776 war broke out between Britain and the American colonies. A year later at Oswego, a Council of the Six Nations was held with officers of the British Indian Department. A Treaty of Alliance was agreed upon and the Natives joined in the service of the King. For the next several years, Joseph Brant fought the American colonists from the Hudson River to the Ohio River in the Mohawk Valley. In 1779 Major General Sullivan, in command of the American troops, attacked the Native villages of the Mohawk Valley. He and his troops destroyed 41 Iroquois towns and left thousands of homeless Natives.
    During a raid near Detroit, Brant developed a fever, which he treated in a traditional way. He went to a hill known to have rattlesnakes. There he waited for one to crawl out to sun itself. He caught the snake and took it to his camp, where he boiled it in water to make a broth. After drinking the soup he recovered quickly.
    A peace treaty was signed in 1782 between England and the new United States. Without a territory to call their own, the Six Nations of the Iroquois looked to American and British governments for some assistance. Chief Brant chose to come to Canada with the British. The British assisted the Mohawks and other Iroquoian nations by giving them a tract of land on the Bay of Quinte and a further purchase of land on the Grand River, 10 kilometres (six miles) on each side of the river from its mouth to its source. The Natives then had property but no longer had possessions. Consequently, Brant went to England in 1786 to adjust the claims of his nation for their service during the war.
    Land ownership became an issue of confusion and misunderstanding. The major problem concerned the right of Natives to dispose of their land as they wished. The government contended that the land had been given to the Natives in trust, for their own use only, and that no property could be disposed of without official approval. Joseph Brant believed that the Natives were a distinct nation able to enter into agreement on its own with individuals or sovereign states. He had no problem with selling or leasing land to non-natives to create an income. Some Natives, themselves, had concerns over the dispensation of the money. In the long run, land ownership came to an end in 1841. Samuel Jarvis, Indian superintendent, decided that the only way to prevent white settlers from intruding was to surrender the land to the Crown to be administered for the sole benefit of the Natives.
    Joseph Brant, with his 3,450 acres of land, built a two-storey house out of timber brought by water from Kingston in 1800. He chose a site at Head-of-the-Lake overlooking both the bay and the lake. Joseph and Catherine were the first citizens of the present City of Burlington. On November 24, 1807, Joseph Brant died in his home at the age of 60. His body was removed to Six Nations land near Brantford. The location of his gravesite is not public knowledge.
    One great tragedy from which Joseph Brant never fully recovered was the death of his eldest son Isaac. He was a young man with a fierce temper and was often under the influence of alcohol. During one of his drinking bouts he had an argument with his father. They came to blows. Tragically, during the fight Isaac suffered a head wound which later became infected and caused his death. Brant turned himself in to the authorities and asked to be tried in a court of law. He was found not guilty of the crime.
    The earliest recorded settler on the site of the present-day city