BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 297 



tary Pocket Atlas" does their name appear on the Niagara 

 Frontier, (i). 



During the American Revolution they sided with the British. 

 A part of 70 Missisaugas served with Col. St. Leger in the cam- 

 paign against Albany in 1777. There can be no doubt that of 

 the many war-parties sent out from Fort .Niagara during that 

 war, some were made up partly at least of the Missisaugas from 

 the Niagara Frontier. 



Their wanderings over the Niagara Peninsula evidently gave 

 the Missisaugas a title to the lands therein, undisputed even by 

 the Iroquois, whose it would appear to have been by right of 

 conquest. In 1748, they ceded the land from the head of Lake 

 Ontario "to the river La Tranche, then down the river until a 

 south course will strike the mouth of Catfish Creek on Lake 

 Erie". Later they and other Indians ceded the land not already 

 ceded west of that grant. 



The lands thns ceded they continued to occupy for fifty 

 years. They never lost their roving propensities and their wan- 

 dering bands are often mentioned by the writers of the period 

 between 1784 and 1820. One of the party which, in 1784, ac- 

 companied Governor Simcoe from Navy Hall to Detroit, kept a 

 diary. In it he speaks several times of meeting Chippewas and 

 Chippewa hunting parties, and of seeing their encampments. 

 At one place they "passed a wigwam of Chippewas making 

 maple sugar", (2). The name Chippewa seems to have been 

 applied to them ever since the days of Sir William Johnson. In 

 1788 Mr. Gould, who later purchased land in Cambria, met par- 

 ties of Missisaugas on the west bank of the Niagara River. He 

 says of them : (3) "The Massaguea Indians were numerous then 

 in Canada. They had no fixed habitation; migrated from camp- 

 ing ground to camping ground in large parties ; their principal 

 camping ground Niagara and Queenston. There were their 

 fishing grounds. Sometimes there would be five or six hundred 

 encamped at Niagara. They were small of stature, gay, lively, 

 filthy, and much addicted to drunkenness." 



Their occupation of the Niagara Frontier ended in the open- 

 ing years of the nineteenth century. At different times between 



1. These maps are in the library of the Buffalo Historical Society. 



2. Coyne, Historical Sketches of the County of Elgin, P. 36. 



3. Turner, Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase, P. 313. 



