Dundas Valley Conservation Area

Dundas Valley is an approximately 5400-hectare valley located on the western tip of Lake Ontario. The valley predates the last ice age and was created by a series of erosion events that carved into the Niagara escarpment. Glacial erosion during the last ice age further smoothed out the valley edges. The area around Dundas Valley is drained by Spencer Creek and its tributaries, which flow over the escarpment cliffs and through the valley before emptying into Hamilton Harbor. This movement of water creates many scenic waterfalls within the valley. Around 1460 hectares of Dundas Valley is managed by the Hamilton Conservation Authority as a conservation area. The conservation area features an interpretative visitor’s center and a series of trails, including a section of the graveled Hamilton-to-Brantford Rail trail.

Dundas Valley creates a warm microclimate that supports a diversity of flora and fauna, including species at risk, such as butternut, and species only found in the Carolinian forest zone, such as sassafras and hickories. Most of the valley is composed of rich hardwood forests, including upland, slope, and riparian forests. Upland forests are composed predominantly of sugar maple, red oak, and white pine, and interspersed with black cherry, ironwood, shagbark hickory, and hawthorns. These forests support a diverse herbaceous understory including raspberries, roses, mayapple, false Solomon’s seal, spring beauty, trout lily, and herb Robert. Forests on the valley slope and bottom experience more moist soil conditions, and support trees such as red maple, ashes, birches, and bitternut hickory, while riparian forests are dominated by eastern hemlock in the canopy and skunk cabbage on the forest floor.

In addition, some sections of the conservation area were formerly farmed, and have since been abandoned and left to undergo succession. These old field habitat types have little tree cover, which typically consist of isolated clumps of white pine and staghorn sumac, and are dominated by agricultural grasses, such as smooth brome and bluegrass, native prairie species such as milkweed and Canada goldenrod, and herbaceous plants of European origin, such as field thistle, Queen Anne’s Lace, and tufted vetch.

Dundas Valley has been a cross-roads area for First Nations habitation, travel, and trade for centuries. The valley sits at the starting point of the Head of the Lake portage, which is a terrestrial trail that connects Lake Ontario to the Grand River. This is a strategic path which allows travelers to bypass the rapids and falls in the Niagara gorge when moving between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The Head of the Lake trail ran from Hamilton Harbor, traveling through Dundas Valley and up the escarpment, and met the Grand River at the oxbow between current-day Six Nations of the Grand River, and the Eagle Place, Echo Place, and Glebe Farm Indian Reserve sections of Brantford. Within Dundas Valley, the Head-of-the Lake portage connected with a system of smaller, localized footpaths, as well as trails that ran along the Niagara escarpment. Several modern roads were paved on top of these Indigenous trails, including Indian Trail Road, Mineral Springs Road, Snake Road, and the eastern part of Highway 8.

Prior to European settlement and the Beaver Wars, Dundas Valley and the surrounding area was home to the Neutral, also known as the Attawandaron Nation. However, during the early 1600s, diseases brought to North America by Europeans, such as smallpox, and conflict with the Haudenosaunee during the Beaver Wars, drastically reduced the population of the Attawandaron. These pressures led to the political disbandment of the Neutral Nation in 1653, with population dispersal of Attawandaron peoples into the Seneca Nation through adoption, and other nations. The Seneca Nation and Haudenosaunee then began to establish villages in strategic hunting and trading locations in former Attawandaron homelands, including Dundas valley.

The Haudenosaunee and northern Iroquoian and Anishinaabe peoples concluded military conflict over beaver at the Great Peace of Montréal or La Paix des Braves, in 1701. That same year, the Nanfan Treaty (also known as Treaty of Albion) was signed between the Haudenosaunee confederacy and the British crown, which recognized and protected the rights of the Haudenosaunee hunt, harvest, and otherwise subsist off the land in what the British recognized as their ‘Beaver Hunting Territory’, which included all southern Ontario. Subsequently, Dundas Valley was also settled by Anishinaabe peoples, who were the ancestors of the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation. Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples built villages in the area in the 18th century. Historian Beth Ryan has mapped firty-one Missisauga, Haudenosaunee, Delaware-Munsee, and Meskwaki Villages between the southern part of the Grand River watershed, eastward to the Genesee River between the years of 1780 and 1826.

Density of European settlement rapidly increased in the Dundas Valley following the American War of Independence, which saw many United Empire loyalist refugees fleeing to live in southern Ontario. After the War in 1784, the British Crown and the Mississauga of the Credit First Nations signed the Between the Lakes Treaty. In this treaty, the British crown purchased from them a large tract of land between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie for settlement, including Dundas and surrounding areas. Europeans began settling in Dundas Valley during the late 1700s, forming communities that would grow into the modern municipalities of Ancaster, Flamborough, Greensville and Dundas. However, Dundas Valley and adjacent Hamilton and Brantford continues to be home to a very large Native community, that includes members of the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation and the Six Nations of the Grand River. In 2011, the Haudenosaunee Wildlife and Habitat Authority of Six Nations of the Grand River and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council negotiated an agreement with the Hamilton Conservation Authority for Haudenosaunee peoples to practice their treaty enshrined hunting and fishing rights in Dundas Valley, as recognized by the Nanfan Treaty of 1701. Every year, members of Six Nations of the Grand River participate in a bow deer hunt, which occurs over several weeks in the winter months.

Between the Lakes Treaty Number 3, Hamilton Conservation Authority: https://hamiltoncivicmuseums.ca/exhibition/treaties/between-the-lakes-treaty-no-3/

Dundas Valley Conservation Area home page: Dundas Valley Conservation Area - Hamilton Conservation Authority (conservationhamilton.ca)

The Dundas Portage: Exploring the Logic of Trails, found online at: https://www.krcmar.ca/resource-articles/2008_Summer_The%20Dundas%20Portage_0.pdf

Hamilton Conservation Authority Haudenosaunee Annual Deer Harvest: https://conservationhamilton.ca/haudenosaunee-deer-harvest-begins-november-6/

Johnson, Lorraine. 2007. The Natural Treasures of Carolinian Canada: Discovering the Rich Natural Diversity of Ontario’s Southwestern Heartland. Carolinian Canada Coalition.

Kelly, Peter E. and Larson, Doug. 2007. The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment. Natural Heritage Books.

The Nanfan Treaty of 1701 and other relevant treaties, Six Nations of the Grand River Lands and Resources, found online at: https://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/HistoricalDates.htm