Mohawks on the Nile. Carl Benn
many more had small garden plots. Approximately three hundred men — representing the majority of Kahnawake’s adult males — typically worked away from home in the lumber industry for part of the year, while others sought lucrative employment elsewhere, such as in American circuses or on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Most women supplemented their family incomes by sewing beadwork for both local and American vendors, receiving “fair pay” in supplies of food according to the 1883 edition of the Indian Department’s report, although by 1886 this activity seems to have fallen off to a noticeable degree. Kahnawake was too small for the size of the population, with almost half of its sixteen hundred people holding no land at all, a situation made worse by encroachments by neighbouring whites, imbalances among the size of property holdings, and expropriations for railway and other purposes related to Canada’s Victorian-era industrial expansion. Given Kahnawake’s location across the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal, then the dominion’s largest city, with a population of 160,000, it was almost inevitable that the forces of modernization would be felt among the reserve’s inhabitants and would affect land use independently of Mohawk desires. The restricted size of the community meant that there were disputes about such issues as access to firewood and the right of some residents to occupy land because they had a white father or otherwise were not thought eligible to hold property. Despite these tensions, which could be severe at times, life in the village, in the words of the Indian Department, was “very peaceful.”21
At the time Lansdowne oversaw recruiting voyageurs, the Turtle, Great Bear, Old Bear, Wolf, Snipe, Deer, and Rock clans each selected a chief to form a council to exercise leadership in Kahnawake, although not all of the chiefs participated in its political life and other communal affairs at the time.22 It was these chiefs who needed to deliberate on the governor general’s appeal for steersmen, which he sent to them on August 26, 1884. The Montreal Daily Star picked up the story the next day, under the title, “Caughnawaga Warriors for Egypt.” It reported that “A sensation” had been caused “by the reception of a notification from the governor general by the chiefs that the British government wishes to secure the services of fifty of the most experienced river men in the tribe for the transportation service in the Egyptian expedition.” The article said that news of the request “spread all over the village, and the younger Indians jumped at the offer with enthusiasm” while “several of the petty chiefs … expressed their willingness to raise the party, but if it is raised it will probably be under the direct management of the council of chiefs, who are to meet to consider the matter.” The Star concluded with the hopeful statement that “the old warlike spirit of the Iroquois appears to have been aroused and there is little doubt but that a full band of the ever faithful allies of the British will answer the call to duty in the far East.”23 Despite the paper’s enthusiasm and the arrival of Captain MacRae two days later, only a small number of people expressed a willingness to join up until Lord Melgund joined MacRae and spoke with Louis Jackson, who would become the lead foreman from Kahnawake. Yet, when Lansdowne’s military secretary first approached the Mohawks, he found that they “hung back very much,” even though their memories of the mission to Red River were positive and they learned how Wolseley had put his faith in them to meet his needs in the Sudan War. Melgund thought their reluctance arose from a desire for higher wages than London offered at the time.24 Yet, Jackson, who wrote one of the two Mohawk memoirs of the expedition reproduced later in this book, recorded that when people heard that it was “the express desire of General Lord Wolseley to have Caughnawaga Indians form part of the Canadian contingent, the required number was soon obtained, in spite of discouraging talk and groundless fears.”25 He did not elaborate on the details of the talk or fears, but there were claims in the press that the boatmen would not survive in the desert. For example, one Ottawa newspaper, copying a story from the London press, quoted an army officer who had served in Canada and who announced that “Iroquois Indians taken from the frosty climate of Canada” would not be able to withstand the heat, which “would be fatal to the Lachine Indians,” and therefore Wolseley would need “stretchers and ambulances” for them “instead of boats.”26 Meanwhile, a Conservative opposition member of the British Parliament, Stavey Hill, criticized the enrolment of voyageurs, and even travelled to Canada to warn people not to go, claiming that any who went to Egypt faced certain death. (For his part, Colonel William Butler thought Hill’s behaviour dissuaded at least some natives from joining the contingent.)27 As well, when the request from Ottawa first arrived at Kahnawake, some individuals wondered if the proposal to recruit Mohawks was genuine, while others who were willing to go were dissuaded from doing so by the women of the community.28 Another concern centred on the nature of the engagement. Mohawk leaders were willing to have their people navigate boats, but they did not want to them to serve as combatants, and therefore needed a promise that their men would not be called upon to take up arms, which the authorities assured them would not occur and which the governor general reaffirmed in his farewell address at the time the contingent left Canada.29
Notwithstanding these concerns, fifty-six recruits — six more than had been requested — signed up in addition to several Iroquois who joined “gangs” formed in Ottawa. As was common in the lumber industry, the foremen or “bosses” seem to have taken the direct lead in selecting recruits rather than the more senior officials, at a ratio of approximately one foreman to twenty or twenty-five labourers, with the foremen of the sixteen gangs of the Canadian contingent coming from the same towns and villages as their men, for the most part. Thus it was natural that two older and more experienced Kahnawake individuals, Louis Jackson and François Delisle, became foremen.30 However, we do not know how much they had to defer to the council chiefs in choosing people. The chiefs may have been reluctant to let younger men go, given that newspaper reports indicated that enthusiasm was centred among the more youthful shantymen, because in the end the majority of Mohawks in the contingent were older. Yet, their greater years may have represented the chiefs’ response to Lansdowne’s particular desire to obtain the most qualified river pilots possible. Thus, while shantymen in Victorian Canada in general tended to be younger, of those Mohawk voyageurs whose ages are known to us, only 39 per cent of the men were between eighteen and twenty-four years old. Another 39 per cent were between twenty-five and thirty-nine, and 22 per cent were over forty. (Most of the volunteers in this older group were between forty and fifty years old, but one was sixty-six and another, Ignace Three-Rivers, seems to have been a majestic seventy-four, but somehow was regarded as capable of undertaking the hard work that lay ahead of him once he reached North Africa).31
Given the age range, it is no surprise that of those Mohawk voyageurs whose marital status is known for 1884, 63 per cent were married, or had been married before and were single, or were married or living in a common-law relationship for the second or third time.32 The majority of the Iroquois did not speak English, largely being Mohawk and French speakers, understanding enough English for “boating purposes but no more” according to Foreman Jackson.33 (The growth of proficiency in English at Kahnawake tended to occur later, around the beginning of the twentieth century, when large numbers of men found employment across North America in the construction industry.)34 In contrast to the Ojibways from Manitoba, all of whom were literate, only six Mohawks had enough education to sign their names to their engagement forms.35 Formal schooling run by the Roman Catholic Church had been part of the landscape at Kahnawake for a long time, but attendance levels were low in comparison to many other reserves in eastern Canada, apparently because of the poor quality of the instruction and language barriers between the francophone teachers and their students.36
The main village at Kahnawake, circa 1885.
Once things were settled at Kahnawake, Captain MacRae and Ottawa’s local Indian agent, Alexander de Lorimer, oversaw the Mohawk recruits before they joined their fellow river pilots from elsewhere in Canada to embark for Egypt.37 Command of the Canadian Voyageur Contingent was placed in the hands of a member of Wolseley’s staff from the 1870 expedition (and a veteran of the Fenian Raids), the Toronto lawyer, alderman, and militia officer, Major Frederick Charles Denison of the Governor General’s Body Guard, who received a brevet to lieutenant- colonel for the