Mohawks on the Nile. Carl Benn
of Canadian opinion over the nation’s connections to Great Britain. At the same time, Macdonald did not want to spend money on British ventures and felt constrained by the Militia Act because it restricted the country’s participation in foreign wars. As a result of the prime minister’s views, the governor general’s office did most of the work in organizing the voyageur contingent rather than the dominion’s Department of Militia and Defence, and the boatmen’s contracts and other relations were with London rather than with Ottawa. The Macdonald government nevertheless assisted Lansdowne, such as recommending militia officers to lead the contingent and directing its officials to inspect the ship that the War Office in London had chartered to transport the boatmen before it left Canada for Egypt.11
The telegram from Lansdowne to Macdonald, moreover, said Melgund should “not lose a moment in putting himself in communication with the agents for these Indian settlements” where Butler and Wolseley assumed the men they needed would be engaged for the expedition.12 However, there was a delay, and good voyageurs from Manitoba and northern Ontario, both native and white, who had been, or could have been recruited, were not organized in time for the departure from Canada. Of the ninety-two men who did come from that region, about half were inexperienced whites who would prove to be an embarrassment to the contingent, although there also were excellent Métis and native voyageurs in their ranks who would provide sterling service on the Nile.13 At the same time, central Canada, where most Iroquois lived, had changed since the Red River Expedition of 1870, which meant that there would be some challenges to overcome in assembling the contingent. Most notably, there had been a steep decline in the small boat forwarding business in eastern Canada, from which London assumed most recruits would come, because the expansion of roads and railways as part of the nation’s modernization allowed people to bypass the rivers and lakes where the forwarders’ skills previously had been needed. Aware of that change, individuals in Ottawa advised Melgund that there might not be enough aboriginal or other pilots from the freighting trade available to sign up for the campaign. Instead, they assumed that the majority of recruits would need to be chosen from among the shantymen of the timber industry, particularly from the Ottawa River. These people overwhelmingly were white, but included respectable numbers of natives within their ranks because men from Kahnawake, Akwesasne, Kanesatake, and other aboriginal communities had been employed by Ottawa Valley lumber companies for decades.14 Beyond the Ottawa River, Iroquois people worked in lumbering elsewhere in the Great Lakes region, such as Oneidas in Wisconsin, Senecas in southwestern New York, and Mohawks from Wahta (or Gibson) in Ontario’s Muskoka region (this last reserve having been established in 1881 by individuals from Kanesatake).15 Shantymen, especially among the non-natives, often were farmers or farmers’ sons who laboured in the forests or on timber drives along the country’s rivers and lakes on a seasonal basis, but included some men who found employment in the industry throughout the year. They cut trees during the winter, drove logs part way downriver at the time of the spring thaw, corralled them into booms for crossing large bodies of water, and assembled great log rafts to float the timber once they passed the barriers that prevented the use of these behemoths farther upstream. Shantymen also worked in mills and rowed various kinds of small boats full of provisions back to the timber camps. Mohawks in particular were valued for their ability to pilot timber rafts through the rapids on the Saint Lawrence River, with the Lachine Rapids near Kahnawake being the most famous of several difficult stretches of water that had to be overcome in moving the timber harvest to Quebec City where it could be loaded onto ships for export to British and foreign markets. Independently of the timber industry, Mohawks also earned money piloting steamships and other vessels through the hazardous rapids at Lachine. Many Mohawks favoured rafting over shanty work and thus were over-represented in comparative terms on the rafts. Beyond possessing the boating skills required for the Nile, shantymen knew how to camp, cook, and otherwise look after themselves in rough conditions because they spent much of the year toiling in environments away from their families and from established settlements.16
Along with the assumption by people in Ottawa that white men would be needed to fill the ranks of the contingent because of the changing nature of the economy and the scarcity of native river pilots, surviving records suggest that at least some Canadians who advised the governor general’s office wished not to hire First Nations voyageurs for racial rather than practical reasons. At one point, Lord Lansdowne noted that he had been “assured by the most competent authorities” that there was “every reason for preferring a force composed of white men or partly of white men and partly of Indians to one composed exclusively of Indians and half-breeds.”17 Some of the people who offered such advice included officials from various lumber companies. Another person who shared the desire to choose non-natives (and who helped to organize the contingent) was E. Matthew Bell Irvine, who had been responsible for land rather than water transportation on the Red River Expedition. He thought the Mohawks, while good, were not quite as excellent for the task as the natives from Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, although they certainly had been superior to the white boatmen in 1870. Yet, Irvine argued that capable white Canadians could be found if sufficient care were taken in the recruiting process. This view seems to have echoed a common opinion in the press that distinguished the First Nations from the rest of the population and that wanted people from the dominant society to participate in the imperial adventure to show the world what the Canadians could do and to enjoy the accolades that would flow to them from their contributions to the expedition. However, finding places for these would-be heroes could be achieved only by shunting the natives aside. Despite this pressure in Canada, military authorities in far-off London reaffirmed the army’s desire that a significant portion of the contingent be made up of aboriginal boatmen. At the same time, one of Ottawa’s advisors, the lumber broker J.T. Lambert, believed the required number of recruits only could be assembled if aboriginal steersmen were included to fill out the ranks. However, through a combination of the changing economy and the attitudes of individuals who informed Lansdowne and Melgund, the Canadian Voyageur Contingent would sail for Egypt with far fewer First Nations pilots than Wolseley and Butler had assumed would be sent.18
Lambert took on a major role in recruiting voyageurs, focusing on the Ottawa area, which provided the single largest portion of the contingent. A few Iroquois joined up in the capital as part of that effort, possibly because they were employed more or less full-time in the forest industry, unlike most of their fellow Mohawks. Recruiting took place in central Canada in towns where shantymen could be found, such as Peterborough, Sherbrooke, and Trois-Rivières, and the governor general wrote to leading Roman Catholic clergymen to gain their assistance in engaging suitable francophones for the expedition. While Lambert made contact with the Mohawks, the primary links to Kahnawake were through Lord Melgund and a militia officer who would serve on the expedition, Captain Alexander MacRae (a veteran of Red River and an experienced hand in river work). Melgund and MacRae focused their efforts on Kahnawake; thus the majority of Iroquois in the contingent came from there rather than from Kanesatake and Akwesasne, presumably because time was short and because the first village met the quota of Mohawks set by officials in Ottawa.19 In 1884, the Iroquois population in Canada and the United States totalled between fifteen and sixteen thousand souls, with somewhat more than half of them residing north of the border, of whom over four thousand called Kahnawake, Akwesasne, and Kanesatake home. Therefore, had they visited the other two Mohawk territories, Melgund and MacRae probably could have increased the size of the Iroquois component of the contingent in fulfilment of London’s original wishes.20
Some of the voyageurs recruited in Ottawa in 1884 before receiving their campaign clothing: a few Mohawks joined in the Ottawa area and did not form part of the Kahnawake contingent.
In the 1880s, Kahnawake occupied fifty square kilometres of territory, consisting mainly of rural areas, a quarry that provided two-or three-dozen jobs, and a waterfront village with shops, houses, and other buildings. Some of these structures were described as “elegant and comfortable” in the Canadian Indian Department’s 1883 annual report. In 1885, the department recorded that there were “several good and beautiful farms” at Kahnawake and “the crops are very good,” while an annual agricultural exhibition on the reserve provided encouragement for farmers to