Most, if not all, Canadians learned from a grade-school history class that Canada was once a British colony. Today, Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, meaning Canada still recognizes the king or queen of the United Kingdom as head of state. But according to writers of the eighteenth century, Canada once had kings of its own—the so-called “four kings of Canada,” who visited Queen Anne in 1710.
These “kings” were in fact four Aboriginal chiefs, representing the Five Nations, Iroquois, and Mohawk, brought to England by Colonel Peter Schuyler and Colonel Francis Nicholson, to strengthen the colonists’ case for English assistance in the conquest of Canada. In the chiefs’ speech to the queen, they asked for her help in driving out the French, promising her their alliance and active support.
Aside from the original purpose of the trip, the visit of the four chiefs generated a deluge of publications, pamphlets, and ballads, explaining their mission and describing their entertainment, as well as their homeland. While there is the standard rendition of their speech, other writing varied, including a sidelight on their attendance of a performance of Macbeth, in which the kings were brought out onto the stage to satisfy audience curiosity; they were then officially welcomed as guests of honour in the play’s epilogue. Pamphlets produced also discussed the kings’ visit. But, most interesting is their list of astonishing facts about Canada, such as fish with heads resembling the heads of hares or the apparent “oriental” style of the kings’ clothing .
Interested in finding out more of what the British thought of Canada and its native inhabitants? Check out Freda F. Wilson’s article Queen Anne and “The Four Kings of Canada”: A Bibliography of Contemporary Sources, published in the 1935 edition of the Canadian Historical Review.
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