The Invasion

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 15-21

15

Chapter 3

The Invasion

BRAVE CANADIANS! Haen to join that andard, and to make common

cause with your fellow citizens . . . The opportunity of the absence of

the hired red coats of Europe is favourable to our emancipation. And

short-sighted is that man who does not now see that, although his apathy

may protra the conte, it mu end in INDEPENDENCE, freedom from

European thralldom forever!

—     ,  

13  18371

N   the Niagara River, approximately three

miles (f‌ive kilometres) upstream of Niagara Falls. Lying

across a navigable channel from New York’s Grand Island

and separated by a more treacherous passage from Chippawa, on the

Canadian mainland, its status as Canadian territory in 1837 ref‌lected

a complicated past.

What is now called Navy Island was visited and used by Indigen-

ous peoples in the distant past.2 Within historical times, the Niagara

region was inhabited by the Neuter, a nation displaced by the Seneca.

The Seneca then fell into sporadic conf‌lict with the French, the f‌irst

Europeans in the Niagara region in the late 1600s. After misleading

the Seneca into believing they were constructing a trading station, the

French built Fort Niagara in 1726 at the mouth of the Niagara River at

Lake Ontario. Britain, in alliance with the Iroquois during the Seven

Years’ War, captured this fortif‌ication in 1759, following a protract ed

campaign that reached the Navy Island region. The next year, the

British constructed a stockade on the Niagara River, upstream from

the Falls. This settlement — which would feature in the story of the

Caroline — was named Fort Schlosser in 1763.3