The Credit Mission was an

Indian Mission The Indian Mission, now the Luckhard Museum, is a historic Native American Christian mission located at 590 East Bay Street in Sebewaing, Michigan. It was built in 1849 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. History John ...

on the

Credit River The Credit River is a river in southern Ontario, which flows from headwaters above the Niagara Escarpment near Orangeville and Caledon East to empty into Lake Ontario at Port Credit, Mississauga. It drains an area of approximately . The total le ...

Upper Canada The Province of Upper Canada (french: link=no, province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of th ...

. Funded with the proceeds from Purchase #22 or #23, building began in 1826 under the leadership of Peter Jones. When construction began, about 200 Indians lived at the settlement in temporary structures. Thirty log cabins were constructed on the of reserved land. That year Egerton Ryerson was assigned to the settlement as a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

missionary. A Methodist church was soon built, as was a school. John Jones was the school's first teacher. In the spring of 1827 of land were planted with crops, mostly corn and

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es. In 1829, after the death of one of the band's three chiefs John Cameron, Peter Jones was elected to fill his position. In 1830, John Jones retired from the position of schoolteacher, as he was afflicted with

Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

. In an 1836 inspection of the settlement, Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head called it the "cleanest, neatest and most civilised of all the Indian settlements he had seen." Although the provincial government had initially been favorable to the settlement, relations darkened as the Indians of the Credit clung to the Methodist faith under pressure from the province to convert to Anglicanism. During the 1830s, Lieutenant Governor Sir

Francis Bond Head Sir Francis Bond Head, 1st Baronet KCH PC (1 January 1793 – 20 July 1875), known as "Galloping Head", was Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada during the rebellion of 1837. Biography Head was an officer in the corps of Royal Engineers of ...

began to plan to remove the Mississaugas of the Credit Mission to

Manitoulin Island Manitoulin Island is an island in Lake Huron, located within the borders of the Canadian province of Ontario, in the bioregion known as Laurentia. With an area of , it is the largest lake island in the world, large enough that it has over 100 ...

. Chief Peter Jones travelled to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, meeting with Colonial Secretary

Lord Glenelg Charles Grant, 1st Baron Glenelg PC FRS (26 October 1778 – 23 April 1866) was a Scottish politician and colonial administrator who served as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies Background and education Grant was born in Kidderpore, ...

and

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previo ...

to prevent the move, as Manitoulin was too rocky to farm, and the settlers would have been forced to revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Although the Colonial office blocked Bond Head's plan, the Credit Band did not receive the

title deed A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify either generation, an official position, or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may be inserted between the f ...

s that Victoria authorised her minister to grant them, and remained vulnerable to the encroachment of white settlers. In 1840, John Jones was elected one of the three chiefs of the Credit band. In 1847, unable to secure land rights to the mission, the Mississaugas of the Credit Mission relocated to

New Credit Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation ( oj, Mazina'iga-ziibing Misi-zaagiwininiwag, ''meaning: "Mississauga people at the Credit River"'') is a Mississauga Ojibwa First Nation located near Brantford in south-central Ontario, Canada. In April ...

. Title to that land was possessed by the Six Nations, who donated the land to the Mississaugas of Credit.

References

{{reflist Mississaugas First Nations history in Ontario