The Mica Bay War Leads to the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior Treaties of 1850

The 1841 amalgamation of Upper and Lower Canada as the colony of Canada (creating Canada West and Canada East) had no immediate impact on land-acquisition policies. By this time, however, the firmly entrenched settler society of Canada West had little interest in continuing the long-established surrender formalities. When non-Native miners began uncovering copper deposits along the north shore of Lakes Huron and Superior in the late 1840s, the Crown Lands Department issued a number of mining licenses for the area, even though the Aboriginal people had not surrendered any of the territory. Leaders of the local Ojibwa and Métis settlements reminded the colonial government of their sovereignty in the area; in 1848 a party of Métis and Ojibwa from Canada and the United States burned a Lake Superior mining operation to stress the point (an event known as the Mica Bay War). The local Métis threatened to invite their relatives living at Red River to join the struggle if the government did not respond. At this important juncture, the governor general of Canada, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, intervened and wrote the colonial secretary in London to say, "I am much annoyed by a difficulty which has occurred with some Indians on the shore of Lake Superior." He explained that the previous governor general had given licenses to certain mining companies "with out making arrangements with the Indians." As a result of these interventions, the colonial government negotiated the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior treaties in 1850.

--Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, 4th ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), 156.