Kahnawake - Historic Membership Issues

Historic Membership Issues

The complex history of Kahnawake has included some European settlement since the reserve land was "donated" by the French Crown in the mid-17th century. Through the First Nations' adoption of European captives, the French government's stationing of French colonial troops (who formed liaisons with local women and had children by them), shopkeepers who formed families, and many marriages between European men and Indian women through the 18th century, many Kahnawake people are of mixed ethnicity, of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, French, English, Anglo-American, Scots and Irish descent. As their culture was matrilineal, mixed-race children were assimilated within the mother's family and the nation. In other areas of Canada, Métis, descendants of European trappers and indigenous women, have formed what has become a separate, recognized ethnic group, as in some regions they established a distinct hunting and trading culture. By the 1790s and early 19th century, visitors often described the "great mixture of blood" at Kahnawake. They noted that many children who appeared to be of European ancestry were being brought up as Mohawk culturally.

Surnames such as Beauvais, D'Ailleboust, de La Ronde Thibaudière, Delisle, de Lorimier, Giasson, Johnson, Mailloux, McComber, McGregor, Montour, Phillips, Rice, Stacey, Tarbell, and Williams among Kahnawake families suggest the historic mixture of ancestries through tribal members' adoption of and intermarriage with non-Natives. The Tarbell ancestors, for instance, were John and Zachary, brothers captured as young children from Groton, Massachusetts in 1707 during Queen Anne's War and taken to Canada. Adopted by Mohawk families in Kahnawake, the boys became assimilated: they were baptized as Catholic, learned the Mohawk ways and were given Mohawk names, married women who were daughters of chiefs, reared children with them, and became chiefs themselves. (For more information on the origins of many last names in Kahnawake, please consult the following page: Origins of Kahnawake Last Names).

Historic sources document the sometimes strained relations between Mohawk and ethnic Europeans on the reserve, usually over property and the competition for limited`resources. In 1722, community residents objected to the garrison of French soldiers because they feared it would cause "horrible discord" and showed the French did not trust the locals. In the mid-1720s, the community evicted the Desaulnier sisters, traders who were garnering profits formerly earned by members of Kahnawake. In 1771, twenty-two Mohawk pressed British officials to help them prevent two local families from bringing French families to settle "on lands reserved for their common use". In 1812, many were opposed to specific types of "mixed" marriages. In 1822, agent Nicolas Doucet reported that the community was growing frustrated by marriages in which white husbands acquired rights over the lives and properties of their Iroquois wives according to British Canadian laws, especially as the Iroquois culture was matrilineal, with descent and property invested in the maternal line.

Abuse of alcohol was a continuing problem. In 1828, the village expelled white traders who were "poisoning" the Iroquois "with rum and spirituous liquors". Tensions rose at the time of the 1837-38 Lower Canada Rebellion. The Mohawk had suffered incursions on their land, including non-Natives' taking valuable firewood. The Kahnawake cooperated with the British Crown against the Patriotes, largely over the issue of preserving their land and expressing their collective identity. Before and after the Rebellions, the community was fiercely divided regarding the rights of mixed-race residents, such as Antoine-George de Lorimier (the son of Claude-Nicolas-Guillaume de Lorimier), and whether he should be evicted. Although his mother was Mohawk and native to Kahnawake, because of his father's and his own connections to the European community, George de Lorimier became a controversial figure in Kahnawake, even after his death in 1863.

• Claude-Nicolas-Guillaume de Lorimier (Major de Lorimier), sketch, c. 1810.

• George de Lorimier, who married Marie-Louise McComber.

• Charles-Gédéon Giasson & Agathe McComber

• An article on European-Mohawk conflict from the Montreal Star, 1907

In the 1870s and 1880s, land and resource pressures renewed local concern about ethnic Europeans living at Kahnawake. In addition, the national government's passage of legislation, from enfranchisement to the Indian Advancement Act of 1884, which prohibited traditional chiefs and required Canadian-style elections, split the community and added to tensions. Some young Mohawk men wanted a chance to advance independently to being chiefs; other people wanted to keep the traditional seven life chiefs of the seven clans.

The inequalities in landownership among Kahnawake residents led to resentment of the wealthy. For instance, in 1884, the mixed-race sons of the late George de Lorimier were the largest and wealthiest landowners in the community. Some Kahnawake residents questioned whether people who were not full-blood Mohawk should be allowed to own so much land. The Mohawk Council asked members of the Giasson, Deblois, Meloche, Lafleur, Plante and de Lorimier families to leave, as all were of partial European ancestry. Some, like the de Lorimier brothers, gradually sold their properties and pursued their lives elsewhere. Others, such as Charles Gédéon Giasson, were finally given permanent status at the reserve.

Because the Indian Department did not provide adequate support to the reserve, the community continued to struggle financially. At one point, the Kahnawake chiefs suggested selling the reserve to raise money for annuities for the tribe. Social unrest increased, with young men attacking houses, barns and farm animals of people they resented. In May 1878 an arson fire killed Osias Meloche, the husband of Charlotte-Louise Giasson (daughter of Charles Gédéon Giasson, noted above), and their home and barn were destroyed. Under the Walbank Survey, the national government surveyed and subdivided the land of the reserve, allotting some plots individually to each head of household eligible to live in Kahnawake. The violence stopped as the new form of privatisation of land was instituted, but antagonism toward some community members did not.

The election of council chiefs began in 1889, but the influence of Kahnawake's shadow government of traditional clan chiefs persisted. This lasted into the 1920s, when the traditional seven-clan system became absorbed in the Longhouse Movement, which was based on three clans. This was strong through the 1940s.