Teiaiagon
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Teiaiagon, meaning "Place Where the Knife Cuts Through the River at the Falls," was a Seneca and Mohawk Nations village on the east bank of the Humber River in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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[edit] Site
The site is currently near the intersection of Jane Street and Annette Street or the community of Baby Point.
[edit] History
The establishment of the village have slipped away into time immemorial. Since Algonquians only left evidence of seasonal villages in the area, Teiaiagon, a non-seasonal village was identified as an Iroquoian village. According to Percy Robinson's, "Toronto Before the French Regime", it shows Teiaiagon as being a jointly occupied village of Seneca and Mohawk. Of the Iroquoian peoples, it was the Senecas that retained the history of the village. Though the regional population movements were complex, a major shift in the village history, in archaeological evidence, appears to have been connected to the formation of a league among five Iroquois nations south of Lake Ontario some time after 1450. The "League Iroquois" invited the Iroquoians on and about Teiaiagon to join them, and after the invitation was refused, engaged in escalating warfare against all of the Ontario Iroquoians, including the Wendats, who at that time were the dominant Nation of the area.
Beginning in the late 1400s, the Wendats started abandoning their villages and moving north towards Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. There they created their own confederacy of four, perhaps five, nations, three of which had moved north from the Toronto and Belleville areas. Archaeologists believe that this population movement was complete about two decades before 1600, prior to contact being established with Europeans. The departure of the Wendats apparently left the Toronto area without permanent majority population inhabitants, leaving Teiaiagon vulnerable.
Etienne Brule most likely passed through Teiaiagon in 1615. Hennepin and others have recorded that the village was inhabited by as many as 5000 people and had 50 long houses. By 1687, the village was destroyed by DeNonville, the French and 200 native Christian converts. With the removal of the Iroquois out of southern Ontario by the Mississaugas, the Anishinaabe and French trade began to flourish in the region shortly after the Great Peace of Montreal of 1701. Associated with this trade, there was a very small French garrison located somewhere on the old site of Teiaiagon from 1720-1730. In 1730 the French garrison was located downriver off the site of Teiaiagon. No one ever lived on the site of the old village of Teiaiagon as there was a 10 acre burial ground located in the central part of the village. The area of the village-site was overtaken by the Mississauga Indians and later by the French (1750) with a fort called Baby Point. The Mississaugas also did not live at the site of the village of Teiaiagon, but had a village located across the Humber River, on the west bank of the river, near Old Mill Road and Bloor Street from 1788-1805. James Bâby from Detroit in 1816 acquired the land now called Baby Point and only had orchards located on the site of Teiaiagon. The site was relatively undisturbed as it was not farmed. The Teiaiagon area was acquired by the government for military fortress and army barracks, but then was sold to Robert Home Smith who began developing the Baby Point subdivision in 1912. In 1949, at the south-west corner of Baby Point Road and Baby Point Crescent, a plaque was erected, briefly mentioning "Taiaiagon."
During the treaty-making period, the Mississaugas had the primary land claim of the region, but since other nations in the region were not considered in these treaties, these other nations viewed the treaties between the British and the Mississaugas as being illegitimate and not legally binding. Of these other nations, the Six Nations Confederacy had never given up their sovereignty to the lands in Toronto, as it is a part of the Beaver Hunting Grounds.
Alternate names included:
- Taiaiako'n
- Taiaiagon
- Teyeyagon
- Toioiugon
[edit] Other villages
Besides the Seneca, the Haudenosaunee and the Algonquians also lived along Lake Ontario.
The village of Ganatsekwyagon was on the Rouge River in Scarborough. Alternate names included:
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Another village was Ganaraske, originally a Cayuga village that transitioned to a Mississauga village. It is now known as Port Hope, Ontario.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Teiaiagon: A Toronto Tale
- The Seneca
- Teiaiagon
- Encyclopedia: Teiaiagon
- History of Toronto
- SceneandHeard
- Coming of the French
- Port Hope-Ganaraske
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