Toronto In The Pre-European Era

Toronto was known to native peoples for centuries before the Europeans arrived as the southernmost end of a well traveled portage between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay.
      Many temporary encampments were made in the area, but there appear to have been no permanent settlements until about the time of the arrival of the first Europeans.
      During the period 1600-1650, the Huron people lived in the Lake Simcoe area, and probably south to Toronto, but they were driven out in turn, and by 1666 members of the Iroquois Confederacy had moved into southern Ontario.

The Iroquois Village Of Teiaigon

According to the report of a Franciscan named Father Hennepin (best known in history as the first European to see Niagara Falls), Senecas were living in a village named Teiaiagon in the area in the late autumn of 1678. Father Hennepin stayed with the Seneca for three weeks in their longhouses on the Humber River, probably about where Baby Point is located today.
      The Seneca spelling of the village today is 'Taiaikoan' which means Place Where the Knife Cuts Through the River at the Falls. The pronunciation is Day-eah-eah-go-n. Seneca were one of the Six Nations which joined to form the Iroquois Confederacy--Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga.
      In August of 1680 Teiaiagon was visited by the French explorer, Sieur de la Salle, who was on his way with a group of shipbuilders to build a vessel to sail down the Mississippi.
      By the 1690s, the Iroquois were driven out of southern Ontario by the Mississaugas, a branch of the Ahnishnabe (Mississauga, Ojibway, Odawa, Chippewa). Unlike the Senecas, who practised agriculture and lived in settled communities, the Mississaugas were hunters and fishermen and moved with the season from camp to camp.

Native bark lodge, drawn in the 1790s, similar to residences of Teiaiagon.

Brulé, The First European

In 1615 the first European reached Toronto. The young Étienne Brulé was serving as interpreter for the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. As Champlain traveled past Laker Couchiching, he sent Brulé and a party of Hurons to explore the Toronto portage.

Étienne Brulé, first European to see the site
that would later become Toronto