Jones, Peter - Kahkewaqyuonaby
Aboriginal Missionary ~ 1802-1856
Peter Jones was born 1802, in a wigwam at Burlington Heights, present day Hamilton, and was of Welsh and Aboriginal heritage. His mother was the daughter of a Mississauga chief, and he was given the name, Kahkewaqyuonaby, which means “Sacred Waving Feathers” and was raised in Aboriginal tradition. As a youth he learned to fish, canoe and became a good hunter. At 14 he attended the English school where he learned to read, write, and cipher. He became fluent in English and Ojibwa, and was baptized and converted to Christianity through the evangelical Methodist church. He converted his band to Christianity and was entrusted an intermediary between his tribe and the Indian Department. He became a chief and by 1825, began doing missionary work and kept a journal of his travels. By 1829, he was ministering extensively in the Georgian Bay and Owen Sound area and held the first recorded religious service in what would become Bruce County, near the mouth of the Saugeen River. Between 1828 and 1831, he wrote four books, in addition to his detailed journal. He was the first person to render the Ojibwa language to a written form and transcribed the gospel and hymns into Ojibwa. In 1831, he travelled to England, preaching to over 150 congregations, raising money for Methodist Indian Missions in Upper Canada and had a private audience with King William IV in 1832. On a second trip to England in 1837, at a private audience with Queen Victoria, he delivered a petition from the Ojibwa people, asking her to give them a deed for Indian Lands. By 1844, his health failing from the hardships of missionary life, he made another trip to England, Scotland and France, raising money for the missions. In 1851, the New Credit Methodist Church was completed in Brantford under his leadership. He died after a long illness in 1856, at Brantford, Ontario. His grave in Greenwood Cemetery is marked by a monument erected in his honour by the Ojibwa people. He is a member of the Indian Hall of Fame and a historical plaque marks “Echo Villa”, his home in Brantford.
Additional information: Dorothy Vick, From Quill to Ballpoint, RBW Graphics, Owen Sound, 1988.
Frances Halfpenny, Ed. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. VIII, University of Toronto Press, 1985.
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