Our ancestors were military allies of the British crown during the American Revolution, as well as in many previous wars between England and France. One of the many promises made to our ancestors was that our homeland villages would be restored at the end of the revolutionary war. However, when the war ended with the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, our homelands were given up by Britain to the American rebel forces. In recompense for the loss of the homeland villages, and in recognition of their faithful military alliance with the British crown, our ancestors were to select any of the unsettled lands in Upper Canada. As a result of this crown promise, lands on the north shore of Lake Ontario were selected for settlement. These lands were not unknown to our ancestors as they were part of a vast northern territory controlled by the Six Nations Confederacy prior to the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
Our ancestors arrived on the shores of the Bay of Quinte on May 22, 1784, only to find that many Loyalist families were already squatting on the lands promised previously by the crown. The Bay of Quinte is the birthplace of Dekanawideh the Peacemaker, who brought the original Five Nations Iroquois Confederacy under a constitution of peace in the 12th century. When the Tuscarora were adopted into the confederacy around 1722, our people became known as the Six Nations Confederacy.
After nine years of reminding the crown of promises made at the close of the war, the Six Nations were granted a smaller tract of land, about the size of a township--approximately 92,700 acres--on the Bay of Quinte. We received a deed to this land known as the Simcoe Deed, or Treaty 3 1/2. This document is dated April 1, 1793.
Not long after we set up our village, many United Empire Loyalists came into the area. Within a span of 23 years, from 1820 to 1843, two-thirds of our treaty land base was lost as the government made provisions to accommodate settler families. Today we have approximately 18,000 acres left of our treaty land base.