Dish with one spoon wampum treaty

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Sept 22

It has become the fashion across Canada to make so-called land acknowledgements at the beginning of important meetings and events.  These are supposed to be part of Canada’s reconciliation with aboriginal peoples, even though the recitation statements are usually made in the absence of aboriginal representatives, who can receive the acknowledgement.  These acknowledgements, insofar as they are not mere compelled denunciations of Canada’s legal legitimacy, are empty gestures to those reciting it or listening to it.

How empty?  So empty, that people don’t even understand the terms being said.  In Southern Ontario, for example, land acknowledgements often make reference to a “Dish with one spoon wampum treaty” and that the land the meeting is being held on is, or once was, covered by that treaty.  What exactly is the “Dish with one spoon wampum treaty?”

Mississauga oral tradition holds that The Niagara Peninsula, South-Western Ontario, and the north shore of Lake Ontario as far east as the Quebec border was Mississauga territory from time immemorial[1] and that they agreed to share it with the Iroquois in 1701, quite possibly as a side-deal of the Great Peace of Montreal of that year.  A reference to a deal was made in 1765.  Daniel Claus, Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, wrote to Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, informing him of the Treaty of Montreal of 1701 in which the Governor of New France told the indigenous parties to the agreement that hunting grounds would be in common and free to all the Indian Nations.

A reference to the side-deal was made in 1793 by Chief Joseph Brant who wrote to Alexander McKee, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to say that statements to the effect that the Grand River Tract belonged to Six Nations were wrong, inasmuch as the Great Treaty of Montreal of 1701 said that these lands were to be shared with other indigenous tribes for hunting purposes, and that the side-deal, the Dish with one spoon wampum, supported his position.

What Chief Brant said makes perfect sense if European sovereignty and Indian concepts of land possession co-exist in separate, parallel universes.  And they may once have, in the days of 1701, when Europeans hadn’t settled in the area and it was all Indian Territory so far as competing European sovereignties were concerned.  However, by 1784, the facts on the ground had changed.  The American Revolution had succeeded, Mohawks loyal to the British Crown needed a refuge, and United Empire Loyalists began pouring into Southern Ontario, then called Quebec, or British North America.

British authorities found the Mississaugas to be “in possession” of the lands in question, and so in 1784 Sir Frederick Haldimand, governor of the province of Quebec, acquired land around the Grand River from the Mississaugas, and signed a decree granting the tract to Six Nations.  Such an arrangement would be incoherent if the Dish with one spoon treaty still held, as Brant protested.  Mohawks, by right, could simply move there.  Later, beginning in 1792, more land was acquired from the Mississaugas to allow for European settlement in the Niagara Peninsula, South Western Ontario, at the Head of the Lake, and eastwards along the north shore of Lake Ontario.[2]

These land acquisitions rendered the Dish with one spoon wampum treaty as dead as a doornail.  In the first place, the land was no longer hunting ground, nullifying the principle underlying the cause for sharing.  More to the point, the land was no longer Mississauga to share with other Indian Nations.[3]  They sold it to British authorities.  And finally, the land was filled up with non-Indian Nations peoples who were never party to the Dish with one spoon agreement.  Even if one subscribes to Chief Brant’s conception of parallel and non-intersecting ownership, that conception can only still apply to the Six Nations – Mississaguas of the Credit joint reserve.  Everything else was sold.  The territory of Dish with one spoon has shrunk from much of Southern Ontario to a reserve south of Caledonia and east of Highway 6.

The Peace of Paris of 1763 is more relevant today than Dish with one spoon.  The Peace of Paris transferred sovereignty over New France – territory including Southern Ontario - from the French to the British Crown, and today that sovereignty resides in the lawful successor to the British Crown, the Canadian Crown.  Dish with one spoon never engaged Europeans, neither French nor British; it was a deal between aboriginal tribes, and no written copy of the agreement ever existed.  It’s all oral tradition, and a wampum belt now kept in the Royal Ontario Museum.

Acknowledging Dish with one spoon as once covering Southern Ontario is akin to acknowledging that so did a glacier, once.  So what?  The Gage family once owned extensive tracts of land in Stoney Creek and eastern Hamilton, but do no longer.  We recognize that fact by naming some things after the family, just as we acknowledge past Indian heritage with Mohawk Road and the City of Mississauga.  How does ‘acknowledgement’ bring about “reconciliation” when lack of acknowledgement and unsettled land claims aren’t the cause of estrangement?

For those who follow these things, “reconciliation” is a racket.  It has no end, and will never end so long as some aboriginals believe it is a means of squeezing more of the “white man’s money” from his government.  The danger of land acknowledgements is that they call into question the moral and legal legitimacy of Canada.

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[1] Time immemorial must begin after 1649.  The Hurons occupied much of this territory, and were wiped out by the Iroquois in 1648 and 1649, with the final massacre occurring at St. Ignace, near present day Midland, Ontario.

[2] Mississauga Concession at Niagara (1781), Between the Lakes (1792), Brant Tract (1797), Toronto Purchase (1805), Head of the Lake Purchase (1806), Ajetance Purchase (1818), Treaty 22 (1820), Treaty 23 (1820), Rouge Tract claim (2015 unsettled).

[3] In June, 2010, the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation accepted $145 million from the federal government to settle land claims in Toronto and Burlington, ON. (The Toronto Purchase and Brant Tract.)