Who Stands in Your Place?

Try it

At the band’s table a stranger walks into your seat and a release is signed in your place. At the Register’s, the same stranger is stopped at the gate: no oath, no seat.

The certainty the law set

A ladder of proof, weakest at the foot. Tap a rung.

Why the harm cannot be undone

One-way doors. Tap each in turn.

If you fail to follow the instructions

Simcoe’s Proclamation of 6 April 1796 found that the registry Dorchester ordered “has not been generally made”, and that “it is still necessary to ascertain the persons and families”: all claiming were “to ascertain the same upon oath before the magistrates in the michaelmas quarter-sessions”. Those who neglect it “will not be considered as entitled, in this respect, to the benefit”. In this respect, the benefit was the fee-free deed of land; the Crown’s own words make certainty, on oath, the condition. A band list is no oath, and band figures are never the posterity.

What this is about

Who holds this interest, not who is Mohawk. Band lists record a band’s members by its own rules; they are not the class and its posterity, which is unknown in number because the Crown never ascertained them. Band figures are never to be cited as the posterity.

In eight lines

• Two doors. A band list turns both ways.
• One gate. Proof, sworn.
• Your seat. No one signs for it but you.
• The unborn. No one alive can sign for them.
• The ladder. A list sits at the foot.
• The law’s standard. On oath, 1796.
• One-way doors. A release cannot be taken back.
• The answer. Ascertain, record, deal with no one in their place.