Who owned your property before you did? Who owned it before them? In Toronto, all real estate histories lead back to Indigenous treaties. While the original copies of the treaties are held by Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, we do have these two photos of Treaty 13, the Toronto Purchase. This treaty was negotiated in 1805, in an attempt to clarify an earlier agreement, the Johnson-Butler Purchase of 1787-88. The pictured map was the result of negotiations between William Claus, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs acting on behalf of the British Crown, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Ultimately, this treaty did not achieve the desired clarity. Questions remained about the exact boundaries of the purchase, as well as Indigenous hunting and fishing rights. There was also the question of whether the conditions of the original negotiations had been exploitative. In 2010 the Mississaugas of the Credit Fist Nation and the Government of Canada settled a land claim regardin...