Article

Peter Jones

Published Online February 4, 2008

Last Edited March 4, 2015

Peter Jones, or Kahkewaquonaby (Sacred Feathers), Methodist minister, chief, translator (b at Burlington Heights [Hamilton], UC 1 Jan 1802; d at Brantford, Canada W 29 June 1856). Son of a white surveyor and a Mississauga
Jones, Peter
Sacred Feathers was photographed in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1845, believed to be the first photographic study of a Canadian aboriginal (courtesy National Galleries of Scotland).

Peter Jones, or Kahkewaquonaby (Sacred Feathers), Methodist minister, chief, translator (b at Burlington Heights [Hamilton], UC 1 Jan 1802; d at Brantford, Canada W 29 June 1856). Son of a white surveyor and a Mississauga (Ojibwa) woman, he became the first Indigenous Methodist missionary to the Ojibwa after his conversion to Christianity in 1823. With his brother John, he prepared the earliest translations of the Bible from English into Ojibwa. Elected chief of 2 Ojibwa bands, he argued articulately for Indigenous land rights. His Life and Journals (1860) and History of the Ojebway Indians (1861) were published posthumously.