REPORT ON THE BOUNDARIES

OF THE

PROVINCE OF ONTARIO:

Lart I.

WESTERN BOUNDARY OF ONTARIO.

Differences having arisen between the Government of Ontario and the Government of Canada, as to the boundaries between the Province of Ontario and the Territories of Canada, which were formerly in the possession of "The Company of Merchant Adventurers of England, trading in Hudson's Bay," I purpose to consider the boundaries in dispute separately, as the law and the facts by which they must be determined are quite distinct. The Western limit of Ontario is to be ascertained, and located by the proper construction of an Act of the Imperial Parliament, of Treaties with the United States, of Orders in Council, of Proclamations and Royal Commissions interpreted by the aid of contemporaneous facts.

The location of the Northern limit can be ascertained with approximation to exactness, by the facts of history, by acts of State, and by well established principles of Public Law.

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It will not be necessary, in order to determine the location of the Western boundary of Ontario, to state with any great degree of minuteness the limits of Canada, while in the possession of France. Before its conquest by England, and its cession under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the undisputed possessions of France in North America may be stated, in general terms, to have been all that part of North America lying North of the St. Lawrence, the great Lakes and the River Illinois-except a small portion of Territory, about the trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay—

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and nearly the whole of the Western half of the valley of the Mississippi. The French authorities denied the right of England or her Colonies to any territory west of the Alleghany Mountains, or north of the watershed of the St. Lawrence.

At first, the French undertook to extend their possessions by force of arms. In this they failed. Subsequently guided by the good sense of Frontenac and Calliers, they sought to establish friendly relations with the Indians. The French settlers in North America gave but little attention to agriculture, being mostly engaged in the Fur Trade. Many allied themselves with the Indians, and were governed by Indian usages. The Government of Canada, in order to prevent mischief, maintain peace, and preserve some of the elements of a Christian civilization, subjected these coureurs des bois to its control in the most distant parts of its extensive Territory. No Canadian was suffered to trade with the Indians, but by license from his Governor, and under such regulations as that license ordained. The Government divided the country into hunts, as it was divided amongst the Indians themselves. No license extended beyond the limits of a single hunt; and the Canadian hunter strictly conformed to the practice of the tribe to whose hunt his license extended. He was their partner or companion in the chase, and their agent in the disposal of their furs. His license forbade him, under severe penalties, to trade or to hunt, on any account whatever, beyond the limits assigned him. In this way the French authorities, at a very early day, acquired a regular and exact knowledge of a very great extent of country. When the Governor had issued for any hunt as many licenses as its commerce would bear, it became necessary, as the number of French Canadian hunters and fur traders increased, to extend the sovereignty of France by new discoveries, and to make constantly fresh acquisitions of territory.

It was in this way, as well as by the expeditions of La Salle, Tonti, Marquette, Joliet, Alouez and other explorers, that the authorities of France, in Canada, acquired a knowledge of all

the waters, portages, passes, and posts which they believed would enable them to establish their supremacy in North America. While the coureurs des bois were pursuing their own interests, they acquired, for the Government of Canada, a military knowledge of the ground; and as their interests were identical with the interests of the various Indian Tribes, with whom they mingled, they enabled the Canadian Governor to make every trading post a fort, and put a garrison into it when he deemed it necessary.

The policy of the French had been such as to secure the good will of the Indians; and while a few Frenchmen spread themselves, unmolested, over a great portion of the continent, the English colonists could not safely travel far from their settlements into the interior, and the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, for more than eighty years, never ventured away from the forts which the company had erected upon the shores of that Bay. *

* Governor Pownall thus classifies the Indian tribes in the English and French interest in 1756:In the French interest:

At Detroit, Mackinaw, Green Bay, St. Josephs, and in the Illinois country, colonies were formed, and the country was taken possession of, in the name of the King of France. As early as 1682, La Salle explored the valley of the Mississippi, to the mouth of that river, and took formal possession of the country, which he designated the country of Louisiana. *

The wars in which France was soon after engaged upon the Continent of Europe, and the murder of La Salle, checked for a time, French colonization in North America.

In 1688, a census of all the French upon this continent showed a population of only 11,249. The English colonists at that time, were at least twenty times as numerous. The country of the Illinois, or, as it was then frequently called by the French, Upper Louisiana, seems to have been occupied, withwithout interruption, by French Canadians, from the time of La Salle's first visit in 1679.

On account of the hostility of the Iroquois, the earlier French explorers were cut off from Lakes Ontario and Erie,

* "A process verbal" says Albach, "in the French Archives describes the ceremony with which possession was taken of the country, in the name of the French King. It thus proceeds':

"We landed on the bank of the most Western Channel, about three leagues from its mouth. On the 7th, M. de la Salle went to reconnoitre the shores of the neighbouring sea, and M. de Tonti likewise examined the great middle channel. They found these two outlets beautiful, large, and deep. On the 8th, we reascended the river, a little above its confluence with the sea to find a dry place, beyond the reach of inundations. The elevation of the North Pole was here about twenty-seven degrees. Here we prepared a column and cross, and to the said column we affixed the arms of France with this inscription: 'LOUIS LE Grand, roi de FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE, LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, 1682.'

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The whole party under arms chanted the Te Deum, the Exaudiat, the Domine Salvum fac Regum; and then after a salute of firearms, and cries of Vive le Roi, the column was erected by M. de la Salle, who standing near it said with a loud voice in French In the name of the Most High, Mighty, Invincible and Victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God, King of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, this the 9th day of April, 1682, I, in virtue of the Commission of his Majesty which I hold in my hand, and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken and do now take in the name of his Majesty, and of his successors to the Crown, possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbours, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisianna, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio, &c., and this with consent of the (nations) with whom we have made alliance, as also along the river Colbert or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge themselves therein, from its source beyond the country of the Sioux. As far as its mouth at the sea or Gulf of Mexico, and also the mouth of the river of Palms, upon the assurance we have had from the natives of these countries, that we are the first Europeans who have descended or ascended the said river Colbert (Mississippi); hereby protesting against all who may hereafter undertake to invade any or all of these aforesaid countries, peoples or lands, to the prejudice of the rights of his Majesty acquired, by the

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and their route to the upper lakes and the valley of the Mississippi, was by the way of the Ottawa, Lake Nippissing, French River, and Lake Huron. It was this exclusion of the French from what is now the settled part of the Province of Ontario, by the Iroquois, that formed the basis of the claim of the colony of New York to the territory between the Ottawa and Detroit rivers. Marquette reached the Mississippi by passing through Green Bay, Fox River, Lake Winnebago, and thence down the Wisconsin.

The route followed by La Salle was from Niagara through Lakes Erie, St. Clair, Huron and Michigan to the river St. Joseph. Up that river to the nearest point of the Kankakee -a branch of the Illinois-and thence down the Kankakee and Illinois rivers into the Mississippi.

About the year 1716, another route was discovered from the upper part of Lake Erie up the Miami to what is now the site of Fort Wayne, and thence across a portage to the Wabash, and down the Wabash and the Ohio, into the Mississippi.

At a still later period, a fourth route was opened from Presqu'Isle, on Lake Erie, over a portage fifteen miles in length, to a point on French Creek, now Waterford, in Pennsylvania, and thence down that stream to the Alleghany and the Ohio. Along these various routes communication was kept up between the people of Montreal and Quebec, and the settlers and the traders upon the Mississippi and its tributaries.

Many trading posts and forts were established not only

consent of the nations dwelling herein. Of which and of all else that is needful, I hereby take to witness those who hear me, and demand an Act of the notary here present, as required by law.

"To which the whole assembly responded with shouts of Vive le Roi, and with salutes of firearms, and the said Sieur de la Salle, caused to be buried at the foot of a tree, a leaden plate, on one side of which were engraved the arms of France, and upon the other side an inscription in Latin, with the name of the King, the date, the number in the expedition, and the extent of the river which they had navigated.'"

By this act the foundation of the claim of France to the Mississippi valley, according to the usages of European nations, was laid.

On the 24th of July, 1684, twenty-four vessels sailed for America, four of which containing two hundred and eighty persons, was d stined for La Salle's new country, the famed Louisiana. See, also, Falconer's Mississippi Spark's Life of La Salle; and

Parkman's Discovery of the Great West.