Missisage

The Missisage, better known as the Mississaugas, are an Anishinaabe people and a sub-group of the Ojibwe, their name deriving from Misi-zaagiing, meaning those at the great river-mouth. Their traditional country lay along the north shore of Lake Huron, around the Mississagi River and Manitoulin Island.

During the Beaver Wars the Iroquois drove out the Huron who had earlier held the region, but around 1700 the Ojibwe pushed the Iroquois back south. French traders and mapmakers labelled the band near the Mississagi River as Oumisagai or Mississauga, and that name gradually attached to all the Ojibwe settling north of Lake Ontario.

From 1781 onward the British Crown bought up most of their southern Ontario lands in a series of treaties, including the Between the Lakes purchase, opening the country to Loyalist settlement and reducing the Missisage to small reserves.