On Common Ground. Richard D. Merritt

      Dr. Robert Kerr (1755–1824), attributed to E.Wyly Grier, watercolour over pencil on paper. Kerr served as surgeon to military regiments and the British Indian Department, town physician, judge of the Surrogate Court, and deputy grand master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Masons. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Molly Brant and Sir William Johnson. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Reference Library, John Ross Robertson Collection, JRR #T14843.

      The doctor had built a substantial house in town for his growing family,[37] so it is unlikely that he actually stayed in the commodious house on the Commons, but he would certainly have attended to ailing Department employees there as well as any visiting Natives. In his war loss claims Kerr lists his medical instruments at the Indian Council House as having been destroyed.[38] Kerr was also a prominent freemason, serving as provincial grandmaster for a remarkable thirteen years. Tall and well proportioned, he enjoyed sports, particularly boxing. Like other early medical men, he supplemented his income with government appointments, serving as a judge of the Surrogate Court, a Land Board member, commissioner of the peace, and trustee for public schools. As one of the earliest physicians of Upper Canada, Kerr was much beloved and respected by the Natives, soldiers, and citizens alike.

      William Johnson Chew

      William Johnson Chew, born in that fateful year of 1759, was appointed through the influence of his father, Joseph Chew, who had served ably as secretary to the Indian Department. Young William “behaved with attention to his Duties,” starting in 1794, although he was “not much conversant with the Indian language.”[39] As storekeeper he was responsible for all of the Departmental supplies, as well as the presents and trade goods for the Natives. As clerk he would attend the Indian councils to accurately record the speeches and any resultant agreements. On the morning of May 27, 1813, serving as an officer in the Indian Department with fifty Natives under Captain John Norton, he was killed trying to prevent the American landing at One Mile Creek.[40] Chew married Margaret Mt. Pleasant, whose mother was a Tuscarora Native.

      Barnabas Cain

      Barnabas (Barney) Cain is listed as a sergeant in the Indian Department.[41] He was granted town Lot 39 in Niagara, as well as Lots 111 and 114 in Niagara Township (near Virgil). He later served in the Lincoln militia at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane and is said to have carried off the battlefield the lifeless body of his friend George Caughill.[42] As the Department’s blacksmith he would have been kept busy forging a variety of iron hardware, as well as shoeing horses for the employees and the Natives. In some provincial locales the blacksmith also repaired guns and instruments. The smithy was situated by the Council House. Newly remarried in February 1798 by Reverend Robert Addison,[43] he probably hurried home to his new bride, Cyble Clinton, rather than linger about the commons in the evenings.

      Interpreters

      Interpreters were chosen for their language skills and trustworthiness. At least one and often two interpreters would be present at the various Indian Council meetings, whether at the Council House at Fort George or at meetings held elsewhere such as Buffaloe Creek,[44] Burlington Heights, or the Grand Valley. On occasion they would be sent out as special emissaries or on secret missions. Given their backwoods origins, most interpreters probably preferred to sleep under the stars by a smoking fire, accepting the housekeeper’s invitation to bed down indoors only in inclement weather. Later there may have been separate quarters for the interpreters over by the Council House.

      David Price

      Born of Welsh parents in the Mohawk Valley in 1750, David Price was captured by the Senecas in 1771 and lived amongst them for seven years. During the American Revolutionary War he served with the much-feared Brant’s Volunteers,[45] which consisted of both Natives and whites who fought together under Joseph Brant “in the Indian Fashion.” After the war, he became an interpreter first at Oswego and later Fort George. In 1800 he married Margaret Gonder, daughter of loyalist Michael Gonder, who lived on the upper Niagara River. This “old zealous Servant of the King”[46] left the service circa 1812 and took up farming along the Chippawa Creek until his death at ninety-one years.

      George Cowan

      Probably of Scottish ancestry, Cowan was captured as a young boy by the French at Fort Duquesne (Pitt) in 1758, became fluent in French, and at times assumed a French name, Jean Baptiste Constance or Constant.[47] Although he served on at least one occasion as an interpreter for the Americans in the Ohio Valley,[48] he became a fur trader, guide, and interpreter for the British, establishing a trading post on Matchadesh Bay on Lake Huron. As the guide for Lieutenant Governor Simcoe when he trekked through the region in 1793, Cowan pointed out the ideal site for the future strategic harbour of Penetanguishene.[49] Cowan was considered one of the best Chippewa and Mississauga interpreters in the colony. Whenever these tribes visited the Indian Council House at Fort George he would be summoned. In 1804, a Chippewa chief accused of murder and accompanied by Cowan as an interpreter was being transported aboard the schooner HMS Speedy for trial in Newcastle on Lake Ontario. All aboard, including the judge, the Solicitor General for Upper Canada (prosecutor), a member of the Assembly (defence lawyer), the high constable, and several others were lost when the Speedy went down in a violent storm.

      John Norton (Teyoninhokarawen)

      Norton was born in Scotland in 1770, the son of a Scottish mother and a Cherokee father who as a young boy had been rescued by a British officer from a burning village in America. Based on his future writings and great oratory skills, John received a good education before enlisting as a private in the British 65th Regiment of Foot, which arrived in Quebec in 1785. One year later his regiment was posted at Fort Niagara where Norton soon became enamoured with the Native people. Leaving the army shortly thereafter, he served as a schoolmaster for Native children at Deseronto for one year before heading west. Hired by Detroit merchant John Askin, Norton acted as interpreter and fur trader at various trading posts in the Ohio Country and the Old Northwest. With the defeat of the British and their Native allies at Fallen Timbers, he returned to Niagara and was appointed interpreter to the Indian Department. Based on records of Indian councils, Norton appears to have been the most active interpreter and emissary, hence, he probably spent considerable time at the commodious dwelling. Norton soon caught the eye of Captain Joseph Brant, who eventually convinced him to resign from the Indian Department and work with him amongst the First Nations of the Grand Valley. Soon he was adopted as a Mohawk nephew of Brant and given the name Teyoninhokarawen. Brant sent Norton on a secret mission to Britain in 1804 to press the Six Nations’ land claims. He was unsuccessful in his prime objective, but the trip was a personal triumph for Norton as he was introduced to reformers and abolitionists as well as the nobility and even the Prince Regent.

      Tall, handsome, gregarious, fluent in four European languages and twelve native dialects and blessed with a remarkable memory and oratorical skills, he truly had charisma. He was equally at home in the small intellectual gatherings of the reformers and the grand drawing rooms of the wealthy upper-class of Britain as he was in the frenetic war dances of the First Nations. Before returning home, the newly formed British and Foreign Bible Society convinced him to undertake their very first transcription effort: the translation into Mohawk of the Gospel of St. John, a remarkable feat accomplished in less than three months. Shortly after his return to the Grand Valley, Joseph Brant died. Norton assumed Brant’s role as a chief of war and diplomacy, introducing reforms in agriculture, industry, education, religion, and social welfare to his adopted people. Although supported by the majority of the chiefs and matrons, the Indian Department and his old protégé William Claus, encouraged by colonial officials at York, constantly tried to undermine his authority. They questioned his parentage, his motives, his chosen way of life — yet the more they attacked his integrity, the stronger his stature became.