"An Indian of Considerable Consequence": British Travellers, "Big Chiefs," and Settler Colonialism in 1790s' Upper Canada.

This article analyzes the travelogues of two late eighteenth-century British travellers, Patrick Campbell and Isaac Weld, focusing on their portrayals of Indigenous chiefs in Upper Canada and the role these depictions played in promoting British settler colonialism. Both travellers, unfamiliar with actual Haudenosaunee governance, elevated select Kanyen'kehaka men—such as Arakwenté (Captain Thomas) and Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant)—to the status of "chiefs" who symbolized Indigenous sovereignty and friendship with the British Empire. This friendship was rhetorically used to justify British settlement and dispossession of Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee lands, contrasting British "moral" treatment of Indigenous peoples with American violence during the Northwest War. The article highlights how travel writing contributed to erasing Indigenous political realities, particularly the central role of Haudenosaunee women in governance, while reinforcing imperial narratives that framed Upper Canada as a British space destined for settler expansion.