Indigenous · History Classes · Grades 7–9
They Signed On: The Long Service
History Class · Level band: Grades 7–9
English edition — the language editions of the history classes are outstanding and will follow the site’s translation pattern; none is fabricated here.
They Signed On — The Long Service (Grades 7–9)
Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
How to read this entry: Documented fact = the fact stands in a named source — government and museum records, the nations' own published histories. Tradition — the people's own account = what the nations and the men's and women's families teach. Debated / Claim = a disputed point, labelled where it stands. This is the Grades 7–9 telling of the entry; the full entry stands in the senior band.
Documented Fact. Long before Canada and the United States existed, the Indigenous nations of this continent were military powers in their own country, and they made alliances as sovereign nations. When the United States invaded Canada during the War of 1812, Indigenous warriors fought beside British soldiers and Canadian militia to turn the invasions back. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh built an alliance of nations to defend their homelands, and his warriors helped win the war's first victories in the west. Tecumseh was killed in battle in 1813 — and when the peace treaty was signed the next year, the promises made to his nations were dropped at the table. The nations had been needed in the war and were forgotten in the peace. It would not be the last time.
Documented Fact — the battle that saved Montréal. On 26 October 1813, an American army of about four thousand men marched north to capture Montréal. Waiting for them on the Châteauguay River was a much smaller force led by Lieutenant-Colonel de Salaberry: French-Canadian soldiers called Voltigeurs, Canadian militia — and Mohawk warriors from Kahnawake and Kanesatake. The defenders used a trick: bugle calls answered from place to place in the woods, and the Mohawk warriors' cries, made the small force sound like a huge army. The American advance was stopped, and the whole invasion force turned back. Montréal was saved, and the invasion of Canada failed. The warriors' names were written down: they appear, man by man, on the medal rolls of the campaign. A witness wrote afterwards that the Mohawk warriors "were really the heroes of the campaign." A year earlier, at Lacolle Mills, Mohawk warriors and Voltigeurs together had turned back another American advance the same way.
Documented Fact — the First World War. In 1914, Indigenous men in Canada were not even allowed to vote in federal elections unless they gave up their legal status as Indians. They signed on anyway — more than 4,000 of them, earning at least fifty medals for bravery. One of them, Francis Pegahmagabow, an Ojibwa scout and sniper, became one of the most decorated Canadian soldiers of the war, winning the Military Medal three times over. In the United States, more than 12,000 Native men served in that war — most of them before Native people were granted American citizenship at all.
Documented Fact — the Second World War and Tommy Prince. In the Second World War, more than 3,000 First Nations members from Canada, plus many Inuit and Métis, and more than 44,000 Native Americans from the United States, served — the highest rate of any group in the population. Sergeant Tommy Prince, of the Brokenhead Ojibwe Nation in Manitoba, joined an elite unit called the Devil's Brigade. In Italy in 1944, when a shell cut the telephone line he was using to report German gun positions, he disguised himself as a farm worker and repaired it in broad daylight, almost within sight of the German guns. He won the Military Medal and the American Silver Star — one of only three Canadians to hold both. When he came home, he still could not vote. He went to Ottawa and told Parliament to honour the treaties. In 1950, he signed on a third time, for Korea.
The thing to hold onto. These soldiers fought bravely for countries that were, in those same years, trying to erase their peoples' languages, lands and rights — and those countries are still standing partly because of them. That is why their service is in this history: not as a favour the nations did, but as a debt the record owes them.
Companion classes in this band: The Code Talkers · The Nations in the War Over Slavery. The full Long Service entry, with the battle verification at full length, stands in the senior band.