Beginning about 1000
AD, nomadic
Indigenous people around the Great Lakes began adopting the cultivation of
maize. By the 14th century,
Iroquoian-speaking peoples, later called the
St. Lawrence Iroquoians, had created
fortified villages along the fertile valley of what is now called the St. Lawrence River. Among their villages were
Stadacona and
Hochelaga, visited in 1535–1536 by French
explorer Jacques Cartier. While they shared certain culture with other Iroquoian groups, they were a distinctly separate people and spoke a branch of Iroquoian called
Laurentian. But by the time
Samuel de Champlain explored the same area 75 years later in the early 1600s, the villages had disappeared. Due to exhaustion of land at Kahnawake and problems with traders' rum at the village, in the mid-1750s about 30 families migrated upriver about 20
leagues to set up a new community. Among the leaders were brothers and chiefs John and Zachariah Tarbell. Father Pierre-Robert-Jean-Baptiste Billiard accompanied the migrants as their priest. French officials supported the move, paying for a
sawmill at the new mission. With tensions rising prior to the
Seven Years' War (also known in North America as the
French and Indian War), the French wanted to keep the Mohawk as allies, and away from English influence. The Tarbell brothers were born to English colonists in
Groton, Massachusetts. They had been taken captive as children in 1707 along with their older sister Sarah, then 14, during
Queen Anne's War. John and Zachariah were 12 and 8, respectively. The three children were taken by the French and
Abenaki raiders some 300 miles to Montreal. They all became Catholic and were renamed. Sarah/Marguerite was redeemed by a French couple and entered the
Congregation of Notre Dame, a teaching order founded in Montreal by French women in 1653. Adopted by Mohawk families in Kahnawake, the two boys became thoroughly
assimilated: learning the language and ways, and being given Mohawk names. They later each married daughters of chiefs and reared their children as Mohawk. They each became chiefs, and some of their sons also became chiefs. They were examples of the multi-cultural community of the Mohawk, who absorbed numerous captives into their tribe. The Jesuits first built a log and bark church at the mission, then a more formal log church. In 1795 the Mohawk completed construction of a stone church, which still stands. De Lorimier proposed recruiting some Indians to launch an attack from the west on Montreal, then held by the American
Continental Army. When Forster agreed, Lorimier went to Akwesasne, where he recruited 100 warriors for battle. The British-allied forces took some American prisoners during the encounters, but these were later freed.
Dundee land claim In the early 1800s, non-Indigenous settlers leased a part of the Akwesnasne reserve located in mainland Quebec, known as
Dundee. In 1888, the
superintendent of Indian Affairs requested that the band surrender this land. They surrendered the land, but the First Nation always contested the validity of the action by the government, as they had not intended to surrender it. In the 20th century, the First Nation of Akwesnasne filed a claim with the government for compensation for that land surrender. It was a period in which the nations were working to correct earlier wrongs and to assert their sovereignty over their treaty territories. In December 2018, Akwesasne accepted a
specific claim settlement of $240M for the Dundee parcel, 37 years after they had first filed their
claim with the
government of Canada.
20th-century institutions Kana:takon School, originally called the Saint Regis Village School, was run by the Catholic
Sisters of Saint Anne until the 1970s. Today, the mission is still active and includes a rectory, the large stone
church dating to 1795, and a cemetery. Parish records show that the Jesuits respected Mohawk traditions, recording their Mohawk names through the 18th and 19th centuries, even after they had also taken European names. Both the federal government and New York State encouraged the tribe to adopt representative elected government, but they resisted. In the 1950s, the Mohawk of St. Regis were among federally recognized tribes to be added to a congressional list for
termination of tribal status in relation to the federal government. It was part of a US policy to lift special treatment of certain Indian nations as part of a policy of assimilation. But Congress did not approve the termination of the St. Regis Reservation. In the late 1960s, a period of heightened Native American activism, Benedict also started
Akwesasne Notes. The newspaper became highly influential and the largest native newspaper in the world. Among its noted features were a series of posters included as centrefolds. A supporter gave the newspaper
Edward Curtis photographs, which editors combined with quotes from Native American authors for the popular poster series. In 1987, the
Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment was founded in response to environmental concerns, including extensive contamination by
PCB (
Polychlorinated biphenyl) as a byproduct of industries located along the St. Lawrence River. In the 1990s, the people of Akwesasne raised money in a variety of ways to fund a renovation of their 200-year-old St. Regis Church. They wrote a history of the church and its priests. ==Geography==