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agent, Reverend Scott, attempted to persuade the group to relocate to Lake Scugog. Scott was well aware of costs and felt one teacher and one preacher would be sufficient — no need to establish yet another community. The Natives at Mud Lake refused to leave the high quality, year-round fishing, the abundant game and fowl, the plentiful sugar maples, the wild rice, and the cranberries.
The Native village of Mud Lake came into being in 1830. Reverend Scott described his goals at this time by stating, “I had the greatest satisfaction of taking the Indians from their scattered wigwams and gave each family a strong and comfortable habitation with a cellar where a good supply of potatoes is laid in for the winter.”
Further change was in the offing even after a number of buildings had been erected. Missionaries and government officials felt it would be in the Natives’ best interest to move the group to Chemong Lake. There the water was so low that year that a canoe could scarcely be paddled through the lake. If the Natives remained in such a swampy tract, there would be great suffering in the summer months from fever. The next year the situation improved as the water level rose and a dam was built at Buckhorn.
By 1857 the village was growing. Each family had a parcel of land, from one to four acres, and the community numbered 96 individuals. Public property consisted of a log church, a few farm implements, and some stock. The settlement was composed of 17 houses and six barns.
In 1865 Reverend Gilmour recorded a conversation he had had with John Irons, a band member there. Irons protested that although the Mud Lake people had land, it was not really their own, as in actuality it belonged to the New England Company. The Natives were discouraged because they could never call it their own. In 1889 Daniel Whetung wrote, “Our agent calls this place New England Company’s Estate not Indian Reserve. He tells us that the company could sell the place.” In this case both Irons and Whetung were of the first generation of men educated in the ways of the non-native. They felt the New England Company was harmful to the community as a whole because it held the deed to the land. The people of Mud Lake had merely the status of tenant or lessee. If they did not abide by company bylaws they could be evicted.
The Department of Indian Affairs proposed that the company convey the lands to the Crown in trust, and on June 4, 1898, the land granted to the New England Company in 1837 was transferred to the Dominion Government in trust for the First Nations people. In 1913 the Mud Lake reserve was purchased by the government from the company and the monies came from the Mud Lake annuity. It was ironic that the Natives had to buy back their land in order to have a home, when they once owned and occupied thousands of acres.
Curve Lake Reserve still reveals the signs of the New England Company planning. In 1893 the land was surveyed and sub-divided into lots, with location tickets given to the occupant of each lot. Many of the two-storey frame houses built by the company still remain on these lots. Location tickets for a 50-acre farm lot were given to occupants who had cleared 20 acres for agriculture. Only six of these were ever handed out.
During the depression years, the Curve Lake band council supported relief measures such as lending $5 from the band capital to each individual requesting it. Certain measures were necessary in the 1930s, as cash was scarce when the basket market disappeared, tourism declined, and the price of pelts hit rock bottom. Eventually, the Department of Indian Affairs refused to permit loans from Mud Lake funds. As an alternative the government began a two-month work program to construct a road into the village and paid each worker 20 cents an hour. Although the Natives were poor, no one starved.
In 1966 Clifford and Eleanor Whetung opened a new outlet, called Whetung’s Ojibwa Crafts, for crafts in Curve Lake. This heralded a prosperous business in that field and for the area. From the outlet’s humble beginnings, the Whetungs have built a business in aboriginal arts and crafts that is now famous across the country. Traditional and contemporary artistic expressions of Canada’s First Peoples have been gathered from reserves across the country and housed in an attractive building guarded by huge totem poles at the front entrance. Ritual masks from the Pacific Northwest, pottery of the Mohawks, and baskets of the Mi’kmaq from eastern Canada are among the items for sale. Handsomely, traditionally dressed fur and leather dolls, handcrafted moccasins, clothing, jewellery, and keepsakes are abundant in the building. Paintings and sculptures from a people who have always been known for their unique and beautiful art are found in a gallery equal to any city gallery in its layout, security, and atmospheric controls. Warmed in winter by a huge stone fireplace that reaches five metres (15 feet) to the ceiling, their art gallery houses the work of many well-known Native artists, and it is well-attended year round.
The traditions are also alive and well there. The local band have their Medicine People and use their purification lodges regularly. They are also open to sharing some of their culture with non-natives, which is a gesture truly to be treasured, given their past experiences with non-natives.
Curve Lake is certainly one Indian Reservation that has recovered some of the Native pride that is inherent in Natives — true to nature and a close relationship to this earth. We need to be grateful for the survival of this heritage in a time when our earth is threatened by our unwillingness to accept and celebrate the differences we see in others.
Gore’s Landing
The Natives regarded Rice Lake as a very sacred place. It was here they brought their aged chiefs and wounded warriors for purification; it was here the Mississaugas initiated the tradition of burning off the vegetation on the Rice Lake Plains on the southern shore. This practice encouraged the growth of the coarse grass so loved by deer and gave their lake its name — Pemedash-da-kota, meaning Lake of the Burning Plains.
When the Wisconsin glacier receded from southern Ontario 12,000 years ago, meltwater lakes, including the Kawarthas, were formed. Although Rice Lake, located north of Port Hope and Cobourg, is commonly included in the chain of Kawartha lakes, geologically it is separate. Its origin is actually pre-glacial.
Vegetation types arranged themselves in belts parallel to the retreating ice front and shifted northward following the ice. First was a belt of low tundra-like vegetation, followed by northern coniferous forests of white spruce on the uplands and black spruce on the bottomlands, with willow shrubs, birch, and poplars in the meadows.
One large mammal that prefers this vegetation type is the woodland caribou. In the 1980s, the heel bone of one of this species was uncovered by Derek McBride while building an addition to his cottage, near Webbs Bay on the south shore of Rice Lake.
Since European settlement began, in the 1840s, farmers on the Rice Lake Plains and residents of Gore’s Landing have discovered arrowheads, stone pipes, skinning knives, pottery shards, and burial sites that testify to the presence of early Natives who lived and hunted on the shores of Rice Lake.
Gore’s Landing. Local Ojibwa guide Billy Hogan and his family on an outing on Rice Lake.
Archives of Ontario
According to lore, a peculiar crevice in a large granite stone at Sager Point, east of Harwood, was used by the Natives to sharpen their tools. It is known locally as a Native rubbing stone.
In 1792 the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, encouraged loyalists who were still in America to emigrate to Upper Canada. As a result Treaty No. 20 was signed in Port Hope in 1818 by the superintendent-general of Indian Affairs, on behalf of His Majesty, King George III, and by the chiefs of the Mississauga Nations. This treaty opened up 1,951,000 acres in the northern sections of the Newcastle District. For this surrender of land, the Nations of the Kawarthas were guaranteed an annual payment of 740 pounds.
In 1973, a trading post was established at the mouth of the Otanabee River on the north shore of Rice Lake. By the last quarter of the 18th century, almost all the important furs were “trapped-out” (depleted by over-trapping) along the north shore of Lake Ontario. In the early 1800s wild rice became an important trade item for the Rice Lake Natives. In 1817 it was reported that the rice of this lake grew so thickly that up to 10,000 bushels a year were available for harvesting. Sadly, the wild rice beds have disappeared