In 1860, an Ojibwe woman, Nahneebahweequay (or Nahnee), traveled from Canada to England to meet Queen Victoria. To the English, she was known by the baptismal name she had chosen: Catharine Brown Sunegoo (after Catharine Brown, a well-known Cherokee convert who had died at the age of twenty-three).
Early Life
Her birth name, Nahnebahwequay, means Upright Woman – a name that proved to be fitting. She was born in 1824 by the Missinnine River (renamed Credit River by the English). Her parents had been converted through the local Methodist mission, so Nahnee grew up as a Christian. It was a vibrant Christian community that produced several native missionaries, interpreters, and schoolteachers. In her correspondence, Nahnee referred to a renowned native missionary, Peter Jones, or Kahkewaquonaby (“Sacred Feathers”), as her “uncle,” although he might have been a cousin.
Her early years were marked by sorrows, as most of her siblings died of disease and her only surviving brother drowned in the Missinnine River. Nahnee almost died from an illness as well. All this has a strong impact on her father, who forsook the faith and began to drink heavily. But her mother retained a strong faith. Nahnee also benefited from the care of Peter Jones and his English wife, Eliza Fields, who joined the mission soon after their marriage in 1833.
Eliza taught Nahnee and other Mississauga girls the gospel story, as well as many household skills. Years later, Nahnee thanked Eliza in a letter in her own spelling: “Dear sister, when I was a child you gave me clothes to were [wear] not because I was nakaid but because you want to do me good and tell me that Jesus died for me […] you taught little Indian girls in that little house a cross the road and you taught them how to sew and many other things […] As for my part I thank you for what I now know but more to that God that sent you at the Credit to instruct the poor Indian girls in the way to heaven. […] how good you were to C B Sunegoo who once lived at Credit what a naughty girl she was not to now you kindness.”[1]
First Trip to London
Nahnee first visited London in 1837, traveling with Eliza, while Peter joined them in the fall. The city of over 1.5 million people must have looked amazing to a girl coming from a small village. They stayed at the large country home of Eliza’s family, while Peter prepared for his meeting with Queen Victoria, when he defended the rights of Native Americans.
“Our people have been civilized and educated, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached to us,” Peter explained in his petition. “We have also learned the ways of the white people, they have taught the children of the forest to plough and to sow … Will your Majesty be pleased to assure us that our lands will not be taken away from us, or our people, who have begun to cultivate their farms; and will your Majesty be pleased to permit us to
go on dividing our land among our people as our people in council think best?”[2]
After listening carefully to Peter and the other envoys and accepting their written petition, Queen Victoria replied, “I thank you, sir. I am much obliged to you.”[3]
This experience must have had an impact on Nahnee, preparing her for her own diplomatic mission.
Married Life
Soon after returning home, Nahnee met an English shoemaker named William Sutton, who had immigrated to Canada nine years earlier. According to Nahnee, his move had been motivated by “a sense of duty towards the Indians, and [he] had become an Indian that he might be useful to them.”[4] By the time he met Nahnee, he had become a skilled farmer and a lay preacher.
William was 27 and Nahnee 14 (a normal age for marriage for Ojibwe women). The age difference didn’t seem to matter. They married in January 1839, with Peter Jones officiating the ceremony. William later wrote of Nahnee: “She was a general favourite among both Indians & white people; their was something in her natural apearance & behaviour wich at once introduced her to the notice & atention of all with whom she came in contact without any effort of her own […] she was equaly at home among all classes of People whither in the Mansions of the Rich, the Poor Man’s Cottage, the back woods shanty or the Bark or rush Wigwam of the Indian [… ] she was kind to all a special frend to the Poor and suffering.”[5]
Nahnee and William had eight children together, although they had to relocate several times – sometimes due to financial straits, other times because of the colonists’ violations of the land titles Queen Victoria had granted. These moves were often accompanied by heartbreak and homesickness. Over time, their family came to include Nahnee’s widowed mother and her youngest children.
Most of the time, a move involved clearing land, building a home, and planting new crops. Besides these tasks, the Suttons were active in the local church. Nahnee often interpreted for the missionaries or delivered the gospel herself to the local people. It was a difficult life. One of their children died in infancy and Nahnee almost died once of an illness during a harsh winter.
Nahnee’s Diplomatic Journey
By 1859, the Canadian government had passed new laws that restricted the rights of the native people, claiming more of their lands. In protest, Nahnee wrote a letter to the government, stating, “the department has made this excuse for robbing me and my children of our birthright, which I inherited from my forefathers before the white man ever set foot on our shores.”[6]
Instead of listening to her request, the Departed declared that she and her children were not legally considered Indian since she had married an English man. When other petitions were equally unfruitful, the local native community asked Nahnee to take their grievances to Queen Victoria. Nahnee accepted, although she was several months pregnant at that time. She was thirty-six years old.
William had full confidence in his wife, knowing she could travel “under allmost all circumstances wither by the noble steamer, the swift canoe, or the slow coasting of small row boats, or bivowaking for the night on the wild uncultivated shore of our Northern Lakes.”[7]
“I shall be going to a land of strangers, but I hope that I shall meet with honest justice and this hope keeps up my sagging spirits. I cannot bear to see my children deprived of their lawful home and inheritance,”[8] she said. As she later wrote: “My trust was in God and the justice of my cause.”[9]
Traveling in difficult conditions with limited money and resources, Nahnee met both supporters and antagonists. In Toronto, the Globe called her an impostor, stating that her claims were false and that Indians were well-treated and free to purchase land in Upper Canada.
Her arrival in New York, where she was going to sail to England, was also met by disappointment as the person who was supposed to help her refused to do so. Apparently, though, someone noticed her discouragement as she returned to her hotel. Soon, she heard a knock on the door. “I arose from my knees and opened it, when there stood a little girl, with a smiling countenance. She said her mother wanted to see me. She said she was a little Friend. I could not think what she meant by the term ‘friend.’ I thought I understood what was included in the word, but now it seemed to have another application.”[10]
The girl was a Quaker (the Society of Friends), and her family introduced Nahnee to the local Quaker community. After listening to Nahnee’s story and investigating her claims, the Quakers agreed to pay for her voyage and provided her with the names of a couple who would host her in England.
Nahnee met Queen Victoria on 19 June 1860, delivering her petition and leaving a favorable impression (in spite of forgetting to kiss the queen’s hand). Unlike her uncle Peter (and contrary to the council of her people), Nahnee chose to wear European clothes during her travels and her visit to the queen, in an effort to show that her people were “civilized.” At the same time, she proudly claimed her Indian heritage. The Queen concluded the meeting by promising her help and protection.
Then nine-months pregnant, she delivered her baby just three weeks after meeting the queen. She named the boy Alsop Albert Edward Sutton – Alsop as the last name of the Quaker family who had taken her in, Albert after the Prince Consort, and Edward after the Queen’s eldest son. She also gave him an Ojibwe name, which translates into English as, “Little Man From Over the Great Waters.”
Continuing the Fight
In the end, the Canadian Department allowed William Sutton to buy the land which had been given to them in 1845 and on which they lived. Nahnee continued to defend the rights of her people, especially those who could not defend themselves. “We can purchase land – but on what conditions?” she said in a speech to her London supporters, “Why, the Indian must be civilized: he must talk English, talk French, read and write, and be well qualified for everything before he can purchase land. Why, the poor Indians, none of them can go there.”[11]
In a letter to her Quaker friends in New York, she expressed her continued faith. “Pray for me, that I may hold out to the end, and at last, with my people and all the people that love God, find a rest in Heaven, whence I need never again carry the poor Indian’s petition.”
She believed that God would eventually make things right, since he said, “vengeance is mine,” but she also admitted her weakness. “Oh, that I was more faithful to God, then I would never feel cast down; but how prone I am to leave the God I love, and want to love with all my heart, although these smooth-tongued men may say I told things that were not true; but the time will come when it will be known I [unreadable] my poor people’s wrongs. Oh! How often have I thought of my people. The Indians that inhabited British North America were once very numerous; they owned nearly all the land in what is now known as Upper Canada; they roamed through the forest in pursuit of game; the smoke of their council fires ascended towards Heaven – all was peace. And now the poor Indian scarce has a land that he can call his, or he cannot give even to his own red child his land. No! These men that hold their sway above the poor Indians – they are the only ones that give to whom they please. Happy for them, the love of a Saviour’s blood has changed the brave and warlike Indian. The war-song is no more; it is changed to a song of praise to his Maker. Like his Master who died for him, he has no home – he is poor; but in Heaven he has a home, and there he will receive a crown of life.”[12]
Nahnee’s health declined after giving birth to her last child in 1864. She died the following year, at the age of 41, from an asthma attack, but her memory lived on.
[1] Donald B. Smith, Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013], 74.
[2] Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians [London: A. W. Bennett, 1841], 206-207
[3] Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987], xiii
[4] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 77
[5] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 79
[6] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 86
[7] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 87
[8] Celia Haig-Brown, David A. Nock, With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada, [Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2006], 132
[9] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 87
[10] Haig-Brown, Nock, With Good Intentions, 139
[11] Haig-Brown, Nock, With Good Intentions, 145
[12] “Nah-nee-bah-wee-quay,” in Friends’ Intelligencer, vol. XVIII, Philadelphia, March 16, 1861, Vol. 1, 118-120, https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=CJ4sAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PR8&hl=en (The whole letter is worth reading)