On November 5, 1818, the six Chiefs of the Chippewa (
Ojibwa) Nation of southern and
central Ontario, including Chief Paudash, sold and conveyed to the Crown what is today all of southern Muskoka and southern Haliburton (below
45 degrees north), for the "consideration of the yearly sum of Seven Hundred and Forty Pounds Province Currency in goods at the Montreal price". Chief Paudash's "mark" on the Treaty was, in accordance with the custom of signing as a representative of the Crane-doodem, a tiny stick drawing of a Crane (Public Archives of Canada R.G. 10, ser.4, v.2, Treaty No. 20.). The use of the Crane-doodem agrees with accounts that say the Chief who made the mark, probably George Paudash father of Mosang, and grandfather of Robert, was the last hereditary grand chief of the Missassaugas. The grand chief was derived from the chief of the dominant doodem. This is coincidentally interesting also because the crane image dominates the Petroglyphs at Stoney Lake in Petroglyph Provincial Park. It MIGHT suggest that the crane is a recent addition graphically laying claim to the site by the Ojibwa (or at least Mississaugas). Despite the fact that Paudash Lake is named after an Indian Chief, there is universal agreement among anthropologists and archeologists that the
Ojibwa tribe of Ontario never established regular settlements in most of Haliburton. This was not simply due to the Indians' nomadic habits, but also due to the extremely long and harsh winters and the lack of major rivers bisecting the area for transportation. Another significant influence was that the lakes in Haliburton were not a major food source. But this is actually irrelevant because it is common knowledge among Ojibwa themselves and among scholars of other aboriginal hunter-fisher-gatherer peoples, that they did not establish permanent settlements because they had to move from one site of hunting-fishing-gathering to another and stayed only as long as needed. (It would be analogous to how modern sports fishermen try one lake and another, one spot and another.) But this has nothing to do with naming. As with the Eels Lake and Jacks Lake south of Paudash, it was the practice of early settlers - when the Indian presence still had strength - to name lakes after the apparent dominant Indian clan or extended family patriarch or chief. Jack's Lake was named after Jack Cow and Eels Lake after Eel Cow. It follows that settlers experienced the visits now and then of the Paudash family at Paudash Lake and that was how the name was established. As Haliburton did, and still does, contain a tremendous amount of game, the Ojibwa tribe did use the area as a summer hunting ground at least at the time of early settlers. At the time of the early settlers in the 1870s and 1880s, there were still small Indian hunting parties passing through the Paudash Lake area during the summer. While they had no permanent camp on the lake, the hunting parties would occasionally spend the night on Wolf Point on Joe Bay or at the north end of Silent Lake. Certainly Paudash Lake did have an earlier name in the
Anishinaabe language spoken by the Ojibwa, as did all major Haliburton lakes. However, very few other major Haliburton lakes have retained Anishinaabe associated names, the most notable being Kashagawigamog (long-winding-water). But settlers did have a tendency of naming lakes after the clan chief who appeared to identify with a lake, as described above, and for that reason the use of the Paudash name could suggest that the Paudash clan frequented that lake and considered it their hunting-fishing territory in the same way Jack's Lake and Eel's Lake were named after two brothers - Jack and Eel, and that settler history shows Jack fiercely claiming his territory (breaking beaver traps set by others). In early settler times, names of lakes were not given by governments but by settlers according to what family or chief/patriarch of clan seemed to claim it their territory. Aboriginal boat using hunter gatherer tribes were organized in this way - and it is a natural pattern because it can be found throughout the northern wilderness among boat-using peoples - they defined their hunting territories according to water basins, and if it was a river, then the extended families or clans claimed tributaries and lakes of that river system. There could be some 5-6 clans on branches of that river system. wandering from campsite to campsite in a territory determined by this activity, dependent on where their canoes could go. But these clans might be small - maybe a dozen or so people - and natural human social needs brought clans together usually annually in a common place. For river oriented clans, that common place would be at the bottom of that river system. Paudash Lake, like Eels and Jacks, not to mention Stoney and others, are all on waterways flowing to Rice Lake; thus Rice Lake became the congregating site and governments saw it, and most early original reserves were defined at these congregating sites and then the clans were encouraged to remain and farm and not travel to their traditional hunting territory (that was passed down from father to son within a clan). Paudash Lake, thus, is a Rice lake Ojibwa lake, and that is why its name is Paudash - the same as that of a dominant Rice Lake family in Ojibwa history. By the time the Pilgrim Fathers landed in the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620, French Canadians had already explored Muskoka and Haliburton and had established relations with the Indians on Georgian Bay of the Great Lake Huron, even further west of Muskoka. Indeed, before England took over New France, French were dealing with the Ojibwa. But the matter of the Rice Lake and in general Mississauga Ojibwa is complicated because the Mohawks invaded southern Ontario in the mid-1600s and pushed the original Huron settlements, and any Algonquian (Ojibwa) friends north up the Trent Severn valley. There is a question of whether the Mississaugas originated on the north shore of Lake Huron, or whether they were originally the Ojibwa of the major north lake Ontario rivers who were driven out in the mid-1600s along with their friends the Hurons, and returned in the late 1600s to reclaim their original territories from the Mohawk nations who had settled there. (All those settlements vanished by 1700, and what remained in all areas were the Mississaugas.) This is the relevance of the French information, but its relationship to Paudash Lake is quite indirect and this entire paragraph is going somewhat off the subject of Paudash Lake. ==Wildlife==