Together with most of four Iroquois nations, including the Mohawk, they allied with the British government during the American Revolutionary War and the Lower Canada Rebellion.

The French colony of New France used Kahnawake as part of a southwestern defence for Ville-Marie (later Montreal) and placed a military garrison there.

Kahnawake was created under what was known as the Seigneurie du Sault-Saint-Louis, a 40,320-acre (163.2 km2) territory which the French Crown granted in 1680 to the Jesuits to "protect" and "nurture" those Mohawk newly converted to Catholicism.

The new British governor, Thomas Gage, ordered the reserve to be entirely and exclusively vested in the Mohawk, under the supervision of the Indian Department.

[11] Despite repeated complaints by the Mohawk, many government agents continued to allow non-Native encroachment, and mismanaged the lands and rents.

From the late 1880s until the 1950s, the Mohawk were required by the government to make numerous land cessions to enable construction of railway, hydro-electric, and telephone company industrial projects along the river.

Led by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake and the reserve's Inter-governmental Relations Team, the community has filed claims with the government of Canada.

The Mohawk had a matrilineal kinship system, with children considered born into the clan of the mother and deriving their status from her family.

Together with allied First Nations or Native American tribes, they conducted raids along the undefined border between the territories of New France and New England.

Backgrounds may include ancestry of other Iroquois tribes, such as the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora; and/or French, English, Anglo-American, Scots and Irish.

In other areas of Canada, particularly the Red River region in the west, Métis descendants of European trappers and indigenous women, gradually developed what has become a separate, recognized ethnic group, based on a distinct hunting and trading culture.

Tarbell ancestors, for instance, were John and Zachary, brothers captured as young children from Groton, Massachusetts in 1707 during Queen Anne's War and taken to Canada.

[14]: 186, 224 [16] Historic sources document the sometimes strained relations between Mohawk and ethnic Europeans at Kahnawake, usually over property and competition for limited resources.

The Kahnawake cooperated with the British Crown against the Patriotes, largely over the issue of preserving their land and expressing their collective identity.

In addition, the national government's passage of legislation, from enfranchisement to the Indian Advancement Act of 1884, which prohibited traditional chiefs and required Canadian-style elections, split the community and added to tensions.

The Mohawk Council asked members of the Giasson, Deblois, Meloche, Lafleur, Plante and de Lorimier families to leave, as all were of partial European ancestry.

When the national government decided to pass the Saint Lawrence Seaway canal cut through the village, the people and buildings of Kahnawake were permanently separated from the natural river shore.

The people had been sited there for hundreds of years, and their identities were related to a profound knowledge of the river, from the time they were children through adulthood.

The Mohawk success on major high-rise construction projects inspired the legend that Native American men had no fear of working at heights.

[29] Some residents who received eviction notices agreed to leave; others proved they spend only limited time in the community, so were permitted as visitors.

[31] Before European contact, the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) had a long tradition of justice administered within the clan and council system.

They believe this is in part due to the imposition of the Canadian justice system on traditional ways, by which the government has tried to assimilate the First Nations into European-based culture.

Many of the cases have dealt with traffic and parking violations, but her scope is wider, as the JP has jurisdiction over Criminal Code offences related to the following four areas: cruelty to animals, common assault, breaking and entering, and vagrancy.

But, it is an important means of re-education into principles that offer an alternative to the current Canadian system, and helps build a future especially for the young people of the community.[promotion?]

[32] While working to strengthen their culture and language, the people of Kahnawake have generally not had the political turmoil of the nearby, smaller Kanesatake reserve.

In support of Kanesatake during its Oka Crisis in 1990, people from Kahnawake blocked the Honoré Mercier Bridge to Montreal, which had an access road through their reserve.

The Kanesatake reserve had been blockaded and isolated by the Sûreté du Québec in a conflict over use of lands the Mohawk considered sacred.

The bridge blockade affected the commute of many locals throughout the summer, leading to rioting and the burning of effigies, and to the "Whiskey Trench" episode.

On August 28, 1990, a convoy of 50 to 75 cars, bearing mostly women, children and elders, left Kahnawake in fear of a possible advance by the Canadian Army.

[37] Kahnawake contains three National Historic Sites of Canada: Fort St-Louis, the Jesuit Mission of St-François-Xavier, and the Caughnawaga Presbytery.