The Anishinaabe are comprised of the Confederacy of the Three Fires; the Ojibway (Chippewa), Odawa, and Pottawatomi. Their traditional territory extends from the plains and prairie provinces to the heart of the United States in Kansas and Oklahoma and across the Great Lakes and upwards into Northern Ontario and Quebec. By the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, following the fur trade, relations between all of North America's First Nations peoples and the European settlers had disintegrated as the Europeans quest for more land and resources drove the original inhabitants from their homelands. The newcomers to North America were also fighting amongst themselves and their monarch across the ocean.
By 1776, with the Declaration of Independence in the United States, American colonists were eager to expand westward and also into the Dominion of Canada. A warrior amongst the Shawnee people named Tecumseh (which also means panther or shooting star) rallied against the Americans who continued to desecrate their homelands and wage war against the Shawnee. Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa "the Prophet" pulled together an army of thirty different tribes to defend their territories and allied themselves with the Canadians who were likewise defending the newly created political borders between the two countries. Tecumseh was a key figure of the War of 1812 and is celebrated as having helped to defend Canada against the encroaching Americans. He is also a relative of many of the present-day members of Kettle and Stony Point.
Tecumseh's nephew and second lieutenant 'Oshawanoo' (which means, Southerner) was the first hereditary Chief of Kettle and Stony Point; Oshawanoo's descendants are the Shawnoo family who carry on his name. According to oral historians of Kettle and Stony Point, Oshawanoo was with Tecumseh when he fell at the Battle of the Thames in Moraviantown (present day Delaware of the Thames First Nation). Tecumseh's warriors were granted refuge in Canada for their participation in the War of 1812 and amongst them were many Pottawatomi soldiers who came from Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The Pottawatomi families who settled in Kettle and Stony Point namely the Georges, Greenbirds, and Wolfes were from Wisconsin.
The Georges are descended from George Mandoka, originally Mandoka, who was given the name George after the monarch in Britain. His relatives then assumed the last name George after their father. The Greenbirds and Wolfes also held on to their clan names. Following the War of 1812 and after the Native allies of the British were settled into allocated territories along Lake Huron their land was further diminished with the Huron Tract Treaty of 1827; the two million acres of land between Goderich and Chatham were divided into three reserves; Sarnia (Aamjiwnaang), Walpole Island (Bkejwanong) and Kettle and Stony Point.
