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 levés (or Cheveux relevés), Nation du 
Bois, ete. Among the names given them by the 
various tribes of the Iroquoian stock were the 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 Mississagué,”’ 
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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