The Four Kings of Canada

Queen Anne’s War

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) included hostilities between Britain and France in North America, where it was known as Queen Anne’s War. The war provided opportunities for a closer military and economic alliance between Britain and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which had been at war with the French and their Algonquin allies for decades. In 1708, a promised British fleet did not arrive on the American coast to defend British colonies from the French because the British government focused its resources on the Iberian Peninsula. A Congress of Colonial Governors decided that Colonel Francis Nicholson (former Governor of New York, Virginia and Maryland) and Colonel Peter Schuyler (former Mayor of Albany) should travel to London with “a sachem of each tribe of ye five Nations at their election” to request a British fleet to be sent to North America. Nicholas and Schuyler sailed from Boston with “the four Kings of Canada” at the end of February and arrived in Portsmouth at the beginning of April.

The Four Kings of Canada

The four “Kings of Canada” were prominent figures from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, three Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) and one Mahican, who were invited to form a delegation to London by Peter Schuyler: Five Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row of the Wolf Clan, Emperor of the Nations (Hendrick); Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow of the Bear Clan, King of the Maquas (Peter Brant, possibly the grandfather of Joseph Brant and Molly Brant); Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row of the Wolf Clan, King of the Generethgarich (John); and Etow Oh Koam of the Tortoise Clan, King of the River Nation (Nicholas).

Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row (Hendrick), the most prominent member of the delegation, was born around 1660 in a Mohawk Village near Fort Hunter and baptized into the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church in Albany, New York in 1690. (Hendrick is the Dutch version of Henry.) He died around 1735, but for more than two centuries after his death, he was assumed to be the same person as a younger Mohawk leader, Hendrick Peters Theyanoguin, who may have visited the court of King George II in 1740 and certainly died at the Battle of Lake George in 1755. According to his biographer Eric Hinderaker, the elder Hendrick “had repeatedly staked his reputation on the English alliance, often against the better judgement of his fellow Mohawk sachems and in the face of substantial evidence that England would never seriously challenge French power in Iroquoia.” Hendrick remained a key diplomatic link between the British and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for the rest of his life, though he was distrusted by prominent figures on both sides. Governor Robert Hunter of New York described him as “a very turbulent subtle fellow, who since his return has given us more trouble than all the other Indians beside.”

The careers of the two other Mohawk leaders, Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow (Peter Brant), Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row (John), and the Mahican leader Etow Oh Koam (Nicholas) are more obscure. Around 1700, Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow (Brant) had considered entering an alliance with the French but was persuaded not to do so by Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row (Hendrick). He died soon after returning to North America in 1710. Etow Oh Koam (Nicholas) was a war captain who led warriors allied with the British in an attack on French Canada in 1691. Little is known about his career or that of Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row (John) after 1710.

Audience with Queen Anne

On 19 April 1710, Queen Anne received the delegation at St. James’ Palace in London. “The Four Indian Kings Speech to Her Majesty” was read to the Queen by Major David Pigeon (Nicholson’s aide-de-camp) and published in a popular pamphlet. The speech began, “Great Queen! We have undertaken a long and tedious voyage, which none of our predecessors could ever be prevailed upon to undertake. The motive that induced us was, that we may see our Great Queen, and relate to Her those things we thought absolutely necessary for the Good of Her and us Her Allies, on the other side of the Great Water.”

The delegation emphasized the economic and military benefits of the alliance, stating, “The reduction of [French] Canada is of such Weight, that after the effecting thereof, We should have free hunting a great trade with our Great Queen’s children.” The four Indigenous leaders presented the Queen with wampum belts. They also emphasized that they viewed French Roman Catholic priests as “men of falsehood” and were only interested in learning about Christianity from Protestant missionaries sent by the Queen.

Queen Anne was impressed with her visitors and presented them with numerous gifts, including kettles, looking glasses, a magic lantern (image projector) and 400 pounds of gunpowder” as well as the promise of communion silver for a Mohawk chapel. The long-awaited invasion of French Canada would take place in the autumn of 1710 and result in the fall of Port Royal, capital of Acadia (now Annapolis Royal).

London Reception

The four Kings of Canada spent six weeks in London from 1 April to 14 May 1710. Queen Anne commissioned a full program of entertainment and sightseeing in London for her visitors. The delegation attended a dinner party hosted by the Hudson’s Bay Company and many concerts and theatrical performances, including an opera and a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where they were invited to appear on stage at the end of the play so that the audience could applaud them. They visited notable sites in London, including the Tower of London, the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall Palace, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and the newly rebuilt St. Paul’s Cathedral. They also reviewed the Life Guards in Hyde Park and attended a literary dinner hosted by William Penn, where they met prominent British authors such as Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Public Profile

The presence of the four Indigenous leaders in London and their reception by Queen Anne received extensive coverage in English newspapers. They were also the subject of a 53-page book entitled The Four Kings of Canada published that year (1710). According to art historian Bruce Robertson, the visit inspired four official portraits, another 31 portraits “in the form of engravings or miniatures, along with three published accounts of their visits, fourteen broadsides, twelve chapbooks, seven versions of a speech by the four kings and five other publications.” A ballad imagining a romance between one of the Indigenous leaders and a young woman he met walking in London’s St. James’ Park remained popular into the 19th century.

The public profile of the delegation shaped European perceptions of Indigenous peoples and critiques of their own society. The contrast between the good health, stature and “good presence” of the Indigenous leaders and the gout, obesity and limited mobility of Queen Anne prompted discussion of the comparative merits of Indigenous and European society as well as romanticization of Indigenous life, which appeared to be closer to nature than the urban centres of Britain. An anonymously written English pamphlet declared that the Indigenous leaders were free of “those indispositions our Luxury brings upon us,” such as “gout, dropsy [edema], or gravel [kidney stones].”

Portraits of “The Four Indian Kings”

Queen Anne commissioned the Dutch artist Jan (or John) Verelst to paint a portrait of each of “the Four Indian Kings,” the earliest surviving full-length portraits of North American Indigenous peoples painted from life. The four portraits became part of the Royal Collection of art and were displayed initially at Kensington Palace. They were listed as part of the inventory at Hampton Court Palace in 1835 and then left the royal collection in the mid-19th century. By 1851, the paintings were part of the art collection of John William Lionel, 17th Baron Petre, at Thorndon Hall. In 1977, Library and Archives Canada acquired the four portraits with assistance from the British government in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. The paintings were exhibited in Halifax in 1989 and at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History) in 2010.

In 2010, Canada Post issued a set of four stamps in honour of “the 300th anniversary of four portraits that function as a record of early cultural and political diplomacy between the First Nations and the British Empire, and a negotiation that affected the course of power relations in North America.”

Chapels Royal in Canada

After the return of the Four Kings of Canada to North America, Queen Anne sent a double set of communion silver and a reed organ for a chapel in New York’s Mohawk valley. Following the American Revolution and the emigration of Mohawk loyalists to Upper Canada, the chapel was rebuilt along the Grand River in 1784. Today, half of the Queen Anne Silver is housed at Christ Church, Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, in Tyendinaga Mohawk territory; the other half is part of the collection of Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks in the territory of the Six Nations on the Grand River. The silverware was on display at the 250th anniversary commemoration of the Treaty of Niagara in 2014.

Cultural Legacy

Queen Elizabeth II commemorated the 300th anniversary of Queen Anne’s reception of the four Kings of Canada during her final visit to Canada in 2010. At a ceremony at St. James’s Cathedral in Toronto, Elizabeth II presented representatives of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte and the Six Nations of the Grand River with two sets of silver hand bells. Chief R. Donald Maracle stated, “It was [the Queen’s] idea … She wanted to honour the anniversary. We’re pleased that she remembers the Mohawk people and our mutual history for the past three centuries.”

In honour of the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation in 2017, the Toronto-based Tafelmusik baroque orchestra performed a new concert, Visions and Voyages, which explored the century between 1663, when King Louis XIV made New France a Crown Colony, and 1763, the end of the Seven Years’ War. The program included movements from The Old Bachelor and King Arthur, composed by Henry Purcell, which the Four Kings of Canada may have heard performed during their 1710 visit to London.