The History of the County of Brant, Ontario, Canada

The publishers have been fortunate in securing the services of efficient and painstaking historians, who have been greatly assisted by many citizens of the county. The Dominion History was prepared by Dr. C.P. Mulvaney, of Toronto. The history of the county and county seat was prepared by the publishers' staff of historians, with local assistance. The township histories were prepared by Dr. C.P. Mulvaney, John Bingham, Esq., George A. Baker,. Esq., and G.A. Graham, Esq. The biographical sketches were prepared by efficient writers from notes collected by the solicitors, and a copy of each biography has been sent by mail to the several subjects, giving to each an opportunity to correct any errors that might have crept into their sketches. Where the copies were not returned, the publishers were obliged to print the originals.

 

Table of Contents

PART I.
THE DOMINION OF CANADA.

PART II.
INDIAN HISTORY.

PART III.
COUNTY OF BRANT AND CITY OF BRANTFORD.

PART IV.
TOWNSHIP HISTORY.

PART V.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
PORTRAITS.

 

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Unlike the wandering hunters of the Algonquin race, the Iroquois lived in settled towns, surrounded with palisades, and containing a number of bark=covered dwellings often 240 feet high. Along the sides of these were a number of bunks four feet in height, where the members of some twenty families slept promiscuously together; provision for decency there was none. The building was perpetually reeking with a pungent smoke, a fertile cause of eye disease; other annoyances were the filth, the fleas, the cries of children. Outside these "towns" patches of ground were laboriously, and after the toil of months, cleared by cutting down a few trees a laborious work, hard to be effected with stone hatchets. Then the squaws toiled with their rude hoes, pointed with stone or clam-shell, stirring up a little light earth to receive their crop of corn, tobacco, pumpkins or Indian hemp. This the women spun by the primitive plan of winding it round their thighs. There is no pleasant aspect in the life of an Iroquois woman; her youth was wantonness, her after life drudgery. In the summer, at dances and religious festivals, girls who had never learned to blush went naked save for a skirt reaching from the waist to the knees. When permanently married, she was her husband's slave; "the Iroquois women," said Champlain, "are their mules."