bloody war between the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois or the Five or Six Nations) and the Huron.
James Hillier, the university’s first honorary degree recipient in Brantford, speaking at the Brantford campus’s first convocation, May 29, 2002.
Despite, or arguably because of, their neutrality, the Neutrals were conquered and assimilated by the Haudenosaunee, who trace their history to “the Great Peacemaker,” Deganawida, who founded the Confederacy of Five Nations sometime in the sixteenth century. This was an alliance among the Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk nations that brought their warring to an end. The peace he established produced a powerful confederacy which, ironically, became a fearsome military alliance. In 1715, the Five Nations became Six when the Tuscarora were admitted to the union.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, shortly before the events that gave rise to Brantford, the Grand River Valley was the hunting ground of the Mississauga. In Brantford’s very early years, the hill on which the settlement’s first cabin was built (the downtown hill occupied by the Brantford Armouries) was still called Mississauga Hill, a name that recognized it as the Mississauga’s favourite camping grounds.4 But Brantford was not an offspring of the Mississauga but of the Confederacy of Six Nations. To the extent that the city can claim to have a founding father, it is Joseph Thayendanegea Brant.
In a globalizing era that has created “hybrid identities” straddling divergent cultures, Brant is a fascinating figure who was, at one and the same time, a feared Mohawk leader and warrior and a British captain and then colonel. In the latter role, he was completely at home in upper-crust British culture and society. His English leanings were nourished early by his sister, Molly Brant, who was the common-law wife of General Sir William Johnson, the British superintendent for Indian Affairs in North America. Johnson arranged Brant’s admission to Eleazar Wheelock’s School for Indians in Lebanon, Connecticut, an institution that became Dartmouth College. Brant attended and studied English, Greek, Latin, mathematics, and religion.
After leaving Wheelock’s School, Brant served under Johnson during the French and Indian War of 1754–63, and received a silver medal in recognition of his service. He subsequently worked as a translator, interpreter, and aide for the British Indian Department. In 1775, he received a commission as captain and visited England, where he was presented at the court of King George III. All accounts suggest that he became something of a celebrity, maintaining his native dress, becoming a Freemason (receiving his apron from the King), and impressively matching wits with literati like James Boswell.5 King George promised to support Brant and the Iroquois if they would fight on the British side in the growing American rebellion.
In its initial deliberations on the war, the Grand Council of Six Nations declared neutrality between England and America, but Brant became an impassioned spokesman for the British cause. In military actions, he led Brant’s Volunteers, a band of Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga warriors, in sometimes fierce and bloody raids against American settlements. His war record included notable acts of bravery and compassion, but his name and his raids struck fear into the heart of white settlers, who referred to him as “the Monster Brant.” When the Americans ultimately prevailed, they retaliated by invading Confederacy lands, burning villages, and confiscating Six Nations territory in the Mohawk Valley.6
Bitter about the end of the war, Brant faced a bleak future in New York. In return for the support he had provided to the British cause, he petitioned the English for territory in Canada. As the talks progressed, he wisely asked for land along the Grand River Valley, close to Seneca settlements in the Genesee Valley, situated between centres of commerce on the St. Lawrence River and the northwestern territories of British North America. On October 25, 1784, Sir Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, responded to the request by providing “the Mohawks and others of the Six Nations” with a land grant of 273,163 hectares — ten kilometres on each side of the Grand River, from its source to its mouth.7 In securing this “fertile and happy retreat,” the Crown paid the resident Mississauga £1,100 in return for their agreement to give up their claim to the land. At Buffalo Creek, New York, the Six Nations clan matrons decided to split the Confederacy. One contingent remained in New York State while Brant led the other to the new land he had acquired in Canada, laying the seeds for future Brantford.
In this 1807 portrait by William Berczy, Joseph Brant strikes a classical pose on the bank of the Grand River, pointing to the land he acquired for Six Nations. Berczy patterned the pose on statues of Roman emperors. Brant’s portrait was also painted by Charles Willson Peale, who is widely known for his portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Brantford is, quite literally, “Brant’s Ford”— the place where Brant and his Six Nations followers forded the Grand River on the way to their new territory. The ford was connected to a thoroughfare used by Six Nations and by travellers, and sprouted a tiny settlement originally known as Grand River Ferry. In 1818, there were twelve people in the settlement, which grew quickly afterward.8 One of Brantford’s best-known early residents, James Wilkes, has recounted how Brantford was christened with its official name:
It must have been in 1826 or 1827, when there were two or three hundred people, that the question of naming arose…. A meeting was called, when Mr. Biggar proposed that the name should be Biggar Town. Mr. Lewis, the mill owner, suggested Lewisville, and my father, who came from that city in the Old Land, stood out for Birmingham. It looked as if there might be a dead-lock when someone suggested that as the place was at Brant’s ford this title would prove the most suitable and the suggestion took unanimously. In the natural order of things the s speedily became dropped, and thus we have the “Brantford” of today.9
Economically, it was the possibility of trade with Six Nations and travellers crossing Brant’s ford that gave rise to the settlement of Brantford. The key deed was sold to settlers after Brant’s death (on April 19, 1830), but Brant himself had initiated and promoted the lease and sale of Six Nations land. The extent of the sales and the question whether he and others had a right to sell was a matter of difficult dispute then and ever since. Brant had hoped to attract farmers and establish an annuity for Six Nations, but the land that was sold “went for a mere song” and Six Nations of the Grand River Territory lost much of its original land grant. In Brantford, the extent to which it was legitimately acquired by others remains a source of great controversy and dispute.10
The first log cabin in Brantford was built by John Stalts in 1805. He erected it on a hill overlooking the Grand River, a few hundred yards from Brant’s ford. Today, the site is occupied by a war memorial dedicated to the Brantford men who died in the Boer War. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the location took advantage of the river, the hunting, and the trading opportunities, but the living conditions in the general area, known as Grand River Swamp, were not especially comfortable. In a reminiscence written in 1850, an observer recalled the frequently damp conditions on the low land around the river. The result was “decaying wood, stumps of trees and other vegetable matter,” which “caused from the action of the sun, an exhalation of malarious vapour, which proved exceedingly injurious to the health, particularly of those unaccustomed to it.”11
The noxious air did not prevent the growth of the fledgling settlement named Grand River Ferry. As it grew, it pushed its way down the thoroughfare on the north side of Brant’s ford. The route became Colborne (pronounced Co-bornne) Street, the settlement’s original main street. In the early 1820s, the village of Grand River Ferry consisted of a scattering of frame buildings, log houses, taverns, and trading posts
