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The
Toronto Carrying-Place
For thousands of years southern Ontario was occupied, first by hunter-gatherers and then by the more settled farming communities of the Huron and Petun. Around the time that Europeans were exploring and colonizing the eastern Atlantic coast and St. Lawrence river, the Huron withdrew to where the Jesuits found them in the early 1600s. By the early 18th century the French found the area around Toronto occupied by the Mississauga and Seneca. The first known settlement in Metro Toronto was a small village called Teiaiagon (Toioiugon) on the Humber River. This trading post was important enough to be marked on world globes and as the hub for 3 trade routes, it saw French, English and First Nations visitors come and go. One of these routes, the Toronto Carrying Place, was the portage between the lake and the Holland River which led to Lake Simcoe, Lake Huron and points north and west. Not far from Teiaiagon was the Seneca village of Ganatsekwyagon on the Rouge River where the Sulpician father Abbé Fénelon spent the winter of 1669-70. A third river, the Don, was a source of salmon fishing and between these villages and the rivers there was a network of trails, all of which were ignored when the Town of York was surveyed. Before York came a series of French forts:
These were small affairs; in 1794, Fort Rouillé had 1 officer, 2 sergeants, 4 soldiers and a shopkeeper. Furthermore, they marked the end of New France and French control of what became Ontario. The Seven Years War was ending with French forts falling to British armies at Frontenac and Niagara. At the beginning of August 1759, the forts at Toronto were burned by French forces to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. For the next 30 years, the only Europeans in the area were hunters, trappers and traders. The most notable of these were the Rousseaux, who received a license to trade in the area in 1770 and were still living on the Humber in 1793. However, Montreal businessmen were lobbying for greater control of trade along the Humber and after the American War of Independance, the Governor sought a secure harbour west of Kingston that gave access to the interior but was far from the American border. The Toronto Carrying Place seemed an obvious choice. Southern Ontario was mostly in the hands of the Mississauga and it is with this nation and these factors in mind, that the British negotiated the Toronto Purchase. Lord Dorchester, Governor-in-Chief of Canada, had his surveyor-general, John Collins, negotiate the deal, which took place in 1787. For £1700 worth of cash and goods (2,000 gun flints, 24 brass kettles, 10 dozen mirrors, 2 dozen laced hats, a bale of flowered flannel, and 96 gallons of rum), 250,880 acres of land were purchased stretching 14 miles east from the Etobicoke River and 28 miles north from the lakeshore. Signing for the Mississauga were Wabukanyne, Neace and Pakquan (chiefs) and for the British, John Collins, Louis Protle and Nathaniel Lines. Eighteen years later the purchase was confirmed in a second treaty. The next summer (1788), Lord Dorchester ordered a survey. He believed the site would prove valuable as a jumping off spot to Lake Huron. At the same time, Captain Gother Mann, a military engineer, made a plan for the town and harbour, organized around a central square of public buildings.
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