The New International Encyclopædia/Missisaga

MISSIS′AGA. An Algonquian tribe residing east and south from Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada. They are closely connected with the Ojibwa, of whom they are an offshoot. The name is said to mean ‘great mouth,’ referring to the mouth of the Missisaga River, but an educated member of the tribe says that if refers to an eagle, claiming that the Missisaga are derived principally from the Eagle clan of the Ojibwa. At a treaty in 1764 they signed with an eagle as their tribal mark. When first known to the French, early in the seventeenth century, the Missisaga were living upon the lower part of the river which bears their name and upon the adjacent Manitoulin Island. Soon afterwards they moved east and south into the country left unoccupied by the dispersion of the Huron and Ottawa, and soon spread over the whole peninsula of Lower Ontario. At the close of the Revolution they even had one village on the south side of Lake Erie in what is now Ohio. The land on which the Iroquois are now settled on Grand River, Ontario, was bought from the Missisaga. In 1746 they were admitted as the seventh tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, being then settled in five villages near Detroit, but the alliance lasted only until the outbreak of the French and Indian War, a few years later. On account of the former loose distinction between the Missisaga and Ojibwa, it is impossible to give exact figures of population. Those now officially classed as Missisaga number about 750, on small reservations at New Credit, Alnwick, Mud Lake, Rice Lake, and Scugog, Province of Ontario, Canada. They are all members of the Methodist Church, and support themselves by farming, fishing, trapping, gathering wild rice, basket-making, and outside labor. They are generally prosperous and comfortable and are universally commended by their agents for industry, morality, sobriety, and general progress. The statistics show them to be a healthy people.