INDIANS WHO INHABITED TORONTO 



Island, in Lake Huron. Appearing, with a certain 

 kind of normality, as Messissaga, Mississaga, Missis- 

 sauga, or Mississagua, this word is spelt in the old 

 records in more than a score of different fashions,, 

 running all the way from Messagues to Michesaking 

 and Missinasagues. The Mississagas are the same 

 people termed in some of the early French docu- 

 ments Cheveux leves (or Cheveux releves), Nation du 

 Bois, etc. Among the names given them by the 

 various tribes of the Iroquoian stock were thfc fol- 

 lowing: Assisagigrone, Awighsaghroone, Achsisa- 

 ghek, Nuakahn (Tuscarora name), Tisagechroone, 

 etc. The word Missisaga, more correctly Missisagi, 

 is derived from Missisaking, which in the language 

 of these people, whose dialect is practically Ojibwa 

 (or Chippewa), or very close to it, signifies " at the 

 place of many river-mouths " (missi, saking), an 

 appellation belonging properly to the River Missis- 

 sauga, in the District of Algoma, the home of these 

 Indians, when first heard of, in the early years of 

 the seventeenth century they are then described as 

 " living around the mouth of the River Mississague," 

 where the French met them in 1634. After the 

 destruction of the Huron settlements by the Iroquois, 

 the Mississagas began, early in the next century, to 

 migrate into that part of what is now the Province 

 of Ontario, lying between Lakes Huron, Erie and 

 Ontario, and, about 1720, the French established a 

 post for trading with them at the western end of 

 Lake Ontario. Some fifteen years later, they are 

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