Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Niagara Falls

The first European explorers in the Niagara Peninsula were the French who came from the St. Lawrence Valley via Lake Ontario early in the 17th century. They engaged in the fur trade and missionary work as far west as Detroit and south towards the Ohio River, establishing a portage route around Niagara Falls to connect Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. In 1679 the French built stockade at the future location of Fort Niagara, calling it Fort Conti. This was followed by the first permanent settlement on the east bank of the Niagara River. The location was related to the need to defend their trade interests around the Great Lakes from the expansion of the American colonies.

The capture of Fort Niagara by the British in 1759 and the defeat of the French elsewhere in Canada led to a British settlement west of the Niagara River and later elsewhere in southern Ontario. Treaties with the Senecas in 1764 and the Mississauga in 1781 secured land for agricultural settlement to the west of the river. This was an important food supply line for the British military during the American Revolutionary War. After the war ended, a border between the United States and what would become Ontario was established down the middle of the Niagara River in 1783.

The War of 1812 — fought between America and Britain, and by extension, British colonies — played out in the Niagara region. The war was destructive of life and property on both sides, but the boundary between America and what would become Ontario was maintained. An uneasy peace was established for the next half century and settlement of diverse groups of people continued on the west side of the Niagara River, including First Nations, people of mixed Indigenous and European decent, British settlers (largely colonists from the United States), African Americans (free and enslaved) and German-speaking Mennonites (often called Pennsylvania “Dutch”)...

The Canadian Encyclopedia

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