It warmed my (retired) historian’s heart to see your lead story last week (26 May 2022) on the 238th anniversary of the Mohawk landing on the shores of Tyendinaga, on 22 May 1784. The covering photo of canoes representing the original vessels bearing 13 Mohawk families coming toward shore was moving. What we needed, though, was more historical context. Where did these Mohawks come from? And, crucially, what motivated them to make this trip?
Chief Donald Maracle’s stirring words about placing wreaths in memory of the Mohawks who have given their lives over the centuries, loyally fighting for successive British monarchs, always fulfilling ‘the covenant struck between Mohawk[s] and the British’, provided some answers. Missing, however, was a wider narrative, which you could have provided, to explain the strategic role of the Mohawk nation and its warriors in what would become New York State, in fighting against the American revolutionaries and in defense of the British Empire and its King, George III.
We, including our children and grandchildren, who live in our part of eastern Ontario, are surrounded by streets and place names reminding us of the United Empire Loyalists who first settled the area in the time of the American Revolution, but few recognize what was at stake in identifying with the political and cultural ideals represented by the unified British Empire over 200 years ago.
Those ideals continue to animate Mohawks of Quinte Chief Donald Maracle. He cautions all of us, in the words of Winston Churchill, that “a nation that forgets its history has no future.” The act of remembering is not something of antiquarian interest. For one example, it has become popular to reduce relations between Canada’s Indigenous peoples and European settlers to a simple matter of exploitation visited by European Settlers on the Indigenous peoples of Canada. We need to be reminded that in this part of Canada the settling by English, Scots, and Irish people on the shores of Lake Ontario was of one piece with the settling of the Mohawks, all seeking to live under British law and customs. In the late eighteenth century, we were Loyalists together. Those of us of European extraction have too often failed to keep ‘covenant’ with our Indigenous neighbours; this anniversary is a good time to be reminded that it is our responsibility today to live together in mutual respect and harmony.
Yours faithfully,
Jacob P. Ellens
Camden East
