The Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne ( ; ; ) is a Mohawk () territory that straddles the intersection of international (United States and Canada) borders and provincial (Ontario and Quebec) boundaries on both banks of the St. Lawrence River. Although divided by an international border, the residents consider themselves to be one community. They maintain separate police forces due to jurisdictional issues and national laws.
The community was founded in the mid-18th century by Mohawk families from Kahnawake (also known as Caughnawaga), a Catholic Mohawk village that developed south of Montreal along the St. Lawrence River. Today Akwesasne has a total of 12,000 residents, with the largest population and land area of any Kanienʼkehá:ka community. From its development in the mid-eighteenth century, Akwesasne was considered one of the Seven Nations of Canada. It is one of several (Mohawk) territories within present-day Canada; others are Kahnawake, Wahta, Tyendinaga, Kanesatake, and the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation (which includes several subdivisions of Mohawk, the other five nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and some other Native American tribes), founded after the American Revolutionary War.
With settlement of the border between Canada and the United States in the early 19th century, a larger portion of the territory was defined as being within the United States. The portion in New York state is known as the federally recognized St. Regis Mohawk Reservation. The portion in Ontario is referred to as Akwesasne Reserve No. 59 (), and the portions in Quebec as Akwesasne Reserve No. 15 ().
In Mohawk, the name Ahkwesáhsne means "Land Where the Partridge Drums", referring to the rich wildlife in the area.
History Beginning about 1000 AD, nomadic Indigenous people around the Great Lakes began adopting the cultivation of maize. By the 14th century, Iroquoian-speaking peoples, later called the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, had created fortified villages along the fertile valley of what is now called the St. Lawrence River. Among their villages were Stadacona and Hochelaga, visited in 1535–1536 by French explorer Jacques Cartier. While they shared certain culture with other Iroquoian groups, they were a distinctly separate people and spoke a branch of Iroquoian called Laurentian. But by the time Samuel de Champlain explored the same area 75 years later in the early 1600s, the villages had disappeared.
Historians theorize that the stronger Mohawk from the South waged war against the St. Lawrence Iroquoians to get control of the fur trade and hunting along the river valley. By 1600, the Mohawk used the valley for hunting grounds and as a path for war parties.
In the early 17th century, some Christian Haudenosaunee (primarily Mohawk, but also some Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca) migrated from present-day New York to Kahnawake (formerly known as Caughnawaga, after their village along the Mohawk River), a Catholic mission village established by French Jesuits south of Montreal. Kahnawake is a Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk) word meaning "at the rapids". Here, additional First Nations joined the community, converting to Roman Catholicism; the Mohawk dominated in number. During the colonial years, this community participated in the fur trade. Some men regularly traveled to Albany, New York for better prices from the English and Dutch than the French were willing to give.
In addition, warriors and families became involved in raiding and the traffic in captives during Queen Anne's War in the early 1700s between France and England. French and First Nations allies, including the Abenaki, would bring captives back to Kahnawake from New England settlements, often to be ransomed. Younger English children and women were sometimes adopted by Mohawk families and assimilated into the tribe.John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994
Due to exhaustion of land at Kahnawake and problems with traders' rum at the village, in the mid-1750s about 30 families migrated upriver about 20 leagues to set up a new community. Among the leaders were brothers and chiefs John and Zachariah Tarbell.John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, pp. 186 and 224 Father Pierre-Robert-Jean-Baptiste Billiard accompanied the migrants as their priest.Darren Bonaparte, "The History of the St. Regis Catholic Church and the Early Pastors", in Rosemary Bonaparte, The History of the St. Regis Catholic Church, 1990s, article hosted at Wampum Chronicles, accessed 3 Jun 2010 French officials supported the move, paying for a sawmill at the new mission. With tensions rising prior to the Seven Years' War (also known in North America as the French and Indian War), the French wanted to keep the Mohawk as allies, and away from English influence.Darren Bonaparte, "St. Regis Mission Established 250 Years Ago This Year", first published in The People's Voice, 25 Mar 2005; reprinted The Wampum Chronicles, accessed 9 Jun 2009
The Tarbell brothers were born to English colonists in Groton, Massachusetts. They had been taken captive as children in 1707 along with their older sister Sarah, then 14, during Queen Anne's War. John and Zachariah were 12 and 8, respectively. The three children were taken by the French and Abenaki raiders some 300 miles to Montreal.Northeast Captivity Stories—"The Story of the Tarbell Captives That Became Mohawk Chiefs" , RCN They all became Catholic and were renamed. Sarah/Marguerite was redeemed by a French couple and entered the Congregation of Notre Dame, a teaching order founded in Montreal by French women in 1653. Adopted by Mohawk families in Kahnawake, the two boys became thoroughly assimilated: learning the language and ways, and being given Mohawk names. They later each married daughters of chiefs and reared their children as Mohawk. They each became chiefs, and some of their sons also became chiefs. They were examples of the multi-cultural community of the Mohawk, who absorbed numerous captives into their tribe.
Starting in 1755, French-Canadian Jesuit priests founded the St. Regis Mission at Akwesasne. The Tarbell brothers were listed among the founding chiefs, representing numerous clans as of 1759, in papers of Loran Kanonsase Pyke, the patriarch of Akwesasne's Pyke family.Darren Bonaparte, "First Families of Akwesasne" , The People's Voice, 15 April 2005, hosted at Wampum Chronicles website
The Jesuits first built a log and bark church at the mission, then a more formal log church. In 1795 the Mohawk completed construction of a stone church, which still stands. Named after the French priest St. Jean-François Regis, the mission was the source of the French name of the adjacent Saint Regis River, an island in the St. Lawrence River, and the nearby village. The church was long a landmark to ships on the river approaching the rapids. In New York, the name was later adopted to apply to the Saint Regis Mohawk Reservation. The villagers have since renamed their community Kana:takon ("the village", in Mohawk).
After victory in the Seven Years' War, the British took over Canada and New France east of the Mississippi River. They allowed the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka to continue to have Catholic priests at their mission. The Jesuits helped preserve Mohawk culture, translating the Bible and liturgy into Mohawk. They observed Mohawk customs, for instance, refusing to marry individuals who belonged to the same clan, as this was prohibited by kinship practices. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, they maintained parish registers that recorded the Mohawk names of individuals for life events, even when the people had taken European names as well.
At the time of the American Revolutionary War, the Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca and Cayuga were allied with the British against the rebel American colonists. Forced to cede most of their remaining lands in New York to the new government after the colonists' victory, many of the Haudenosaunee migrated to Canada, where many settled at the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation.
Some Mohawk joined the growing community at Akwesasne. Under the Jay Treaty, the Haudenosaunee retained rights to cross the newly established borders between Canada and the United States in order to maintain their trade and tribal ties. In 1806, Catholic Cayuga, Oneida and Onondaga from Ogdensburg, New York, joined the St. Regis band.
Battle of the Cedars
The Battle of the Cedars () was a series of military confrontations, early in the American Revolutionary War, which involved limited combat. The actions took place between May 19–27, 1776, at and around Les Cèdres, Quebec (located west of Montreal), in the later stages of the American colonial invasion of Quebec that began in September 1775. No casualties occurred.
Claude de Lorimier, a British Indian agent from Montreal, traveled west to Oswegatchie (Ogdensburg, New York), where there was a fort garrisoned by a company of the 8th Regiment of Foot under the command of British Captain George Forster.Leighton (2000) De Lorimier proposed recruiting some Indians to launch an attack from the west on Montreal, then held by the American Continental Army. When Forster agreed, Lorimier went to Akwesasne, where he recruited 100 warriors for battle. The British-allied forces took some American prisoners during the encounters, but these were later freed.
Dundee land claim In the early 1800s, non-Indigenous settlers leased a part of the Akwesasne reserve located in mainland Quebec, known as Dundee. In 1888, the superintendent of Indian Affairs requested that the band surrender this land. They surrendered the land, but the First Nation always contested the validity of the action by the government, as they had not intended to surrender it.
In the 20th century, the First Nation of Akwesasne filed a claim with the government for compensation for that land surrender. It was a period in which the nations were working to correct earlier wrongs and to assert their sovereignty over their treaty territories. In December 2018, Akwesasne accepted a specific claim settlement of $240M for the Dundee parcel, 37 years after they had first filed their claim with the government of Canada.
20th-century institutions Kana:takon School, originally called the Saint Regis Village School, was run by the Catholic Sisters of Saint Anne until the 1970s. Today, the mission is still active and includes a rectory, the large stone church dating to 1795, and a cemetery. Parish records show that the Jesuits respected Mohawk traditions, recording their Mohawk names through the 18th and 19th centuries, even after they had also taken European names.
The Roman Catholic parish at Akwesasne falls under three dioceses because of international borders and provincial boundaries: the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall and the Diocese of Valleyfield in Canada, and the Diocese of Ogdensburg in New York.
Following passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the United States federal government encouraged the tribe to adopt a constitution and elected government. The Mohawk chose to retain their traditional system of hereditary chiefs.
In the 1940s, Ernest Benedict founded Akwesasne's first newspaper, Kawehras! ("It Thunders!"). Benedict covered the resistance of many Mohawk to the system of elections imposed by the federal government on the "American" side of Akwesasne. The US had insisted on representative elections. On May 24, 1948, a vote was held in which "The Six Nations Chiefs", based on historic clans and hereditary office, received 83 votes. "The Elected Chiefs" received only one vote, and "The Seven Nations Chiefs" did not receive any votes. The elected chiefs resigned from office, but the federal government continued to require the tribe to hold elections.Darren Bonaparte, "The History of Akwesasne" , Wampum Chronicles