[3] The reserve is located some 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Mont-Tremblant in the geographic township Doncaster, named after the town in England.

[4] In the late nineteenth century, European-Canadian squatters sometimes occupied portions of this land, and repeatedly appealed to the government to have it opened up to settlement.

Two years later on August 9, 1853, the Governor General in Council approved the distribution list as proposed by the Commissioner of Crown Lands, John Rolph.

[5] On May 26, 1890, some 43 squatters, inhabitants of the Doncaster Township, signed a petition in the presence of Fr Lajeunesse requesting the abolition of the Mohawk reserve in the township: "Honorable Sir, Us subsigned, living in the Doncaster District, are asking very humbly for you to use your upmost influence to make the savage reserve disappear from our district and to make a land survey.

For these reasons, Honorable Sir, we hope that you will favorably accept our request, and we won't stop praying that Ste Lucie of Doncaster.

He wrote the following: “Sir, I beg to enclose this file numbered 34 070 of this Department containing correspondences respecting Squatters in the Doncaster Indian Reserve and would refer to Memorandum of 3rd December 1893 which gives a summary of the correspondence and also to letter addressed to Agent Brosseau on the 9th Ultimo and his reply of the 10th instant in which he states that the Indians are quite determined neither to lease nor sell the Reserve for any consideration and if the Squatters have made improvements thereon, the Department should charge them a rent for the land in as much as the Tribe requires the land for some of its members.

In 1904 the government paid compensation to the squatters for their land improvements; in turn, they had to sign an affidavit promising to leave the reserve and never to return, in exchange for not being sued for trespassing.

Previous ministerial correspondences had noted shared management of Doncaster 17 reserve, which was more in keeping with the Mohawk traditional practices related to use of communal lands.