The
Six Nations Confederacy Centuries
ago, the founding constitution
of the Confederacy brought the
Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida
and Mohawk nations together under
one law. Called the Five Nations
by the English and Iroquois by
the French, the five were joined
in the early eighteenth century
by the Tuscarora.
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Six Nations, Six Miles
When George Washington drafted a plan for
the first formal government of the United
States, he used a centuries-old First Nations
confederacy as his model. That confederacy
was the Six Nations, a political and spiritual
union of Mohawk, Cayuga, Onandaga, Tuscarora,
Seneca and Oneida tribes. For more information
contact the Six Nations Confederacy.
Called the "Ongwehonweh",
or "Original People", as well
as the "Haudesnosaunee", or "People
of the Longhouse", the people of the
Six Nations continue to follow a traditional
law of governance known as the Great Law
of Peace.
In an unusual twist of
fate, it was the people of these tribes
who became the first landowners and settlers
of the Grand, trading an American river
valley for a new homeland in Upper Canada.
Upper Canada Reward
On the bloody battlefields of the American
Revolution, Six Nations soldiers from New
Yorkçs Mohawk Valley fought side by side with
the British, sharing the deadly consequences
of defeat. In the wake of
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Canada's
Only Native Royal Chapel
St. Paulçs,
Her Majestyçs Royal Chapel,
in Brantford, is Ontarioçs first
Protestant Church and the only
Royal Chapel dedicated to native
peoples. Dedicated in 1788,
the Chapel was built with a
grant from the British monarchy,
in recognition of the loss of
the Queen Anne Chapel at Fort
Hunter, New York, when American
victory sent exiled native Loyalists
north to Upper Canada. The tomb
of Joseph Brant if located on
the Chapel grounds. Weekly services
are still conducted in the Chapel
and it is open to visitors from
May to October.
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American victory, the
native Loyalists were left homeless. When
their Mohawk leader, Joseph Brant, appealed
to King George III for assistance, the grateful
monarch made an unprecedented offer: six miles
of land on either side of the Grand River,
in the wilderness of Upper Canada.
Brant
weighed his options, and accepted the offer.
In 1785, he and his people moved north,
settling into a land tract that extended,
according to government surveyors, from
the mouth of the Grand to a point just south
of present-day Fergus. The massive tract
was known as the Haldimand Deed, and covered
almost 300,000 square hectares.
Settler Sell-Off
Soon after their arrival, Joseph Brant began
to sell blocks and parcels of the Six Nations
land. Within twenty years, half of the original
holding was gone, bought, leased, or squatted
upon by Scottish settlers, Pennsylvania
Mennonite exiles and United Empire Loyalists.
By 1850, when the formal boundaries of the
present day Six Nations Grand River Territory
were established, only a small fractionúabout
18,000 square hectaresúof the original Haldimand
land tract remained in the hands of the
Grand Riverçs Valleyçs original pioneers.
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