St. Joseph Island is in the northwestern part of Lake Huron. It is part of the Canadian province of Ontario. At in area, it is the sixth largest lake island in the world; the second largest island on Lake Huron, following Manitoulin Island; and the third largest of all the islands on the Great Lakes, trailing Manitoulin and Lake Superior's Isle Royale.
The island lies approximately south east of the city of Sault Ste. Marie and south west of Sudbury.
St. Joseph Island has two population centres, Richards Landing with approximately 400 residents and the village of Hilton Beach with approximately 200 people.
The island is the largest centre of maple syrup production in Ontario, with nearly 30 companies producing 18 per cent of the province's maple syrup. Its location on the Great Lakes, ease of reach by road and boat and the availability of local services have made it a destination for tourists and cottagers in northeastern Ontario.
St. Joseph Island played an important role for First Nations and Europeans in the early fur trade and as a staging point for the first victory for British North America in the War of 1812. The island is the subject of one of the Upper Canada Land Surrender treaties conducted by the British government and First Nations in the period between the end of the American Revolution and Confederation.
History
Indigenous peoples
Unlike neighbouring islands, little evidence has been found of early human activity on St. Joseph Island. Archeologists have found very little to confirm settlement, farming or hunting on the island before the 17th century.
It is speculated that the first humans to see St. Joseph Island and set foot on it were the hunter-gatherers of the Plano cultures who travelled north from the Great Plains of the continent between 9000 BCE and 6000 BCE. These peoples followed the bison and other animals into the areas revealed by retreating glaciers. Evidence of Plano migrations—particularly projectile point tools—has been found in the Great Lakes basin from Lake Superior through the St. Marys River to the North Channel of Lake Huron.
By about 5000 BCE, St. Joseph Island would have formed part of the boundary between the Laurentian Archaic and the Shield Archaic peoples. The Laurentian people, hunters and fishers who came from the southeast, settled in the lower St. Lawrence and eastern Great Lakes region. The Shield people, likely descendants of the Plano, came south from the Tyrrell Sea (a much larger Hudson Bay) and travelled along the northern shores of lakes that are today Superior and Huron..
European exploration
By the time the Europeans began arriving in the 1630s, the north channel of Lake Huron was shared by the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi whose Algonkian ancestors had come from the east around 1200. The very first European believed to have seen the island would have been Étienne Brûlé whose 1621 voyage to the mouth of Lake Superior took him, together with his Wendat (Huron) guides, along the north channel of Lake Huron north of the island.
St. Joseph Island became a strategic mid-way point for French explorers, missionaries and fur traders on the long voyage between Quebec and Lake Superior. In addition to its geographic convenience, St. Joseph Island would have offered opportunities to rest on the voyage between the strategic centres of Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac, fishing, hunting as well as gathering seasonal native berries..
St. Joseph Island first appeared on European maps in the 1670s. A map by French explorer René de Bréhant de Galinée labels it "Anipich", after a Ojibwe word meaning "place of the hardwood trees". The Ojibwe would call the island "Payentanassin" as well. But by the 1740s the island came to be called "Saint Joseph" by Europeans, presumably so-named by Jesuit missionaries in honour of the church they were building on the island. A 1735 French map is believed to be the first to use the name "Isle St. Joseph". A detailed 1744 map by French geographer Jacques Nicolas Bellin depicts a route for batteau north east of the island and a canoe route on the south west, however it shows no mission or settlement real or abandoned anywhere on the island. The name "Cariboux Island" was also given to the island briefly in the 1790s, though this only appears on a British map of the St. Marys River of the early 1790s and is used incidentally within the St. Joseph Island Treaty in 1798.
British North America and Fort St. Joseph
Any claim that France may have had to all or any portion of St. Joseph Island ended with the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763. Under the terms of treaty, France relinquished virtually all of its interests in North America to the British. For the first time, the British and their First Nations allies were unchallenged on the Great Lakes. Included in the French assets was the strategically important fort at the Straits of Mackinac between lakes Huron and Michigan west of St. Joseph Island. From Fort Mackinac, the British were able to control the flow of trade in and out of Lake Michigan.
However, British superiority on the lakes did not last long. By 1783 the Treaty of Paris had ended the American Revolution and established the boundary between the newly independent United States of America and British North America as running "through the middle of said Lake Huron to the water communication between that Lake and Lake Superior..." While the treaty very clearly placed Mackinac Island on the American side, the text was far less clear about how St. Joseph and its neighbouring islands that fell in the middle of the St. Marys River were to be apportioned. For instance, an influential map produced by American engraver Abel Buell based on the treaty instructions appears to divide St. Joseph in half.
For a time, the British exploited this uncertainty as well as the relatively weak American administration in their newly acquired territory, to keep a British garrison at Fort Mackinac. However, this arrangement would soon become untenable. Under the Jay-Grenville Treaty of 1794 the United Kingdom agreed to US demands that it abandon Mackinac and five other forts in US territory on the Great Lakes by June 1796. The British knew they would need to hastily establish new posts in British North America from which to protect its claim to the fur trade and retain influence with the aboriginal peoples. However, there was great dispute among British officials where these new posts should be located and whether one was needed west of the Detroit River at all.
As a first step, the Governor of British North America, Lord Dorchester sent a team of British Royal Engineers led by Lieutenant Alexander Bryce to survey the area from the Straits of Mackinac to Lake Superior to attempt to clarify the boundary left unclear by the Treaty of Paris and to locate a suitable site for a new fort. In his report, the chief surveyor wrote "St. Joseph's [sic] Island is a very fine island about long, one of a numerous group that lies in the straits separating Lake Huron from Lake Superior. It is naturally fertile and well suited to cultivation but not so well fitted for military purposes. However, I have claimed it for the British crown and built a stockade."
Initially, officials in Quebec felt the island was too remote a location for a fort. Principally, it was Dorchester who was opposed to a garrison on the upper Great Lakes. He felt the strongest defensive position in the event of an American attack would be to concentrate the relatively thin British forces closer to the strategic centres of Quebec and Montreal. Upper Canada, he felt, was indefensible and not worth defending if it meant losing Quebec. However, Sir John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada disagreed. He was insistent that a fort on Lake Huron was essential to promote good relations with First Nations people whose support was essential to secure British North America from the expansionist Americans.. Land grants to the Americans resulting from the Treaty of Paris and the Jay Treaty had left First Nations feeling badly betrayed by the British. To Simcoe, abandoning Lake Huron entirely would do nothing to repair relations and would only add to their discontent. Simcoe pressed forcefully for a garrison on the lake, though his preference was for Penetanguishene, some east of St. Joseph Island. Simcoe argued against St. Joseph, citing the then still ambiguous border on the Great Lakes to say that the island was outside British territory; writing in 1794 that "from the map of the Sault of St. Mary's in Charlevoix which I have generally found to be true it would appear that the Island of St. Joseph by treaty is within the line of the United States.".
Nevertheless, following a year of consideration, Dorchester relented and settled on St. Joseph Island as the site for the new fort to replace Mackinac. The site was preferred to other locations on the mainland including Thessalon and Sault Ste. Marie as it had a relatively deep shoreline suited to large vessels.. On April 11, 1796, Dorchester ordered a garrison of 14 men to set up a camp on the southwest corner of the island close to the channel between Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie in order to prevent the island being claimed by the Americans.. This advance detachment, led by Lieutenant Andrew Foster of the Queen's Rangers identified a spot of high ground nearby to suitable for a fort. In accordance with the Jay-Grenville Treaty, the British abandoned Mackinac Island in June 1796 to establish a new fort on the southeastern corner of the island. Subsequently, commanders in Quebec sent orders on July 5, 1796, that the garrison occupying the island could not be removed except on orders from the Governor General.
Though it was generally unpopulated to that point, the island was understood to be the territory of the Ojibwe who in time began visiting the new fort and asking about payment for the island. On June 16, 1798, the deputy superintendent of Indian affairs, Alexander McKee departed Amherstburg on the Detroit River on the ship Francis to negotiate with Ojibwe chiefs for the purchase of St. Joseph Island, held under lease to that point. On June 30, 1798, the Ojibwe agreed to sell the island to the British for £1,200 Quebec currency of trade goods, an annual gift exchange and the right to continue to harvest the island and bury their dead there... The St. Joseph Island Treaty, or "St. Joseph's Island Treaty No. 11" is one of the Upper Canada Land Surrender treaties conducted by the British government and First Nations in the period between the end of the American Revolution and Canadian Confederation.
That summer, Royal Engineers led by Lieutenant George Landmann were sent from Quebec with general instructions to build a fort consisting of a blockhouse, guard house, powder magazine, Indian council house, bake house, and storehouse for the Indian Department all of which would be enclosed on a stockade, as well as a wharf on to Lake Huron. Landmann took three summers to complete the fort, returning to Quebec in the winters.