The Credit Mission was an Indian Mission

Mission (Christian)

Christian missionary activities often involve sending individuals and groups , to foreign countries and to places in their own homeland. This has frequently involved not only evangelization , but also humanitarian work, especially among the poor and disadvantaged...

 on the Credit River

Credit River

The Credit River is a river in southern Ontario which flows from headwaters above the Niagara Escarpment to empty into Lake Ontario at Port Credit, Mississauga. It drains an area of approximately 1,000 km²...

 in Upper Canada

Upper Canada

The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

.

Funded with the proceeds from Purchase #22 or #23, building began in 1826 under the leadership of Peter Jones. When construction began, about 200 Indians lived at the settlement in temporary structures. Thirty log cabin

Log cabin

A log cabin is a house built from logs. It is a fairly simple type of log house. A distinction should be drawn between the traditional meanings of "log cabin" and "log house." Historically most "Log cabins" were a simple one- or 1½-story structures, somewhat impermanent, and less finished or less...

s were constructed on the 200 acre (0.809372 km²) of reserved land. That year Egerton Ryerson

Egerton Ryerson

Adolphus Egerton Ryerson was a Methodist minister, educator, politician, and public education advocate in early Ontario, Canada...

 was assigned to the settlement as a Methodist missionary. A Methodist church was soon built, as was a school. John Jones

John Jones (Ojibwa chief)

John Jones was a Mississauga Ojibwa teacher, missionary and Chief.Fathered by Augustus Jones, Jones was born to Tuhbenahneequay on July 10, 1798 in the Humber River valley. Augustus Jones and Tuhbenahneequay had been married in the 1790s in an Ojibwa ceremony. Jones was named Thayendanegea,...

 was the school's first teacher. In the spring of 1827 40 acres (161,874.4 m²) of land were planted with crops, mostly corn

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

 and potato

Potato

The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...

es.

In 1829, after the death of one of the band's three chiefs John Cameron

John Cameron (chief)

Chief John Cameron , also known as Chief Ogimauh-binaessih or Chief Wageezhegome , was one of two principal Indigenous Mississauga Ojibwa chiefs, member of the eagle doodem, and farmer...

, Peter Jones was elected to fill his position.

In 1830, John Jones retired from the position of schoolteacher, as he was afflicted with Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

.

In an 1836 inspection of the settlement, Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head called it the “cleanest, neatest and most civilised of all the Indian settlements he had seen.” Although the provincial government had initially been favorable to the settlement, relations darkened as the Indians of the Credit clung to the Methodist faith under pressure from the province to convert to Anglicanism

Anglicanism

Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...

. During the 1830s, Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head

Francis Bond Head

Sir Francis Bond Head, 1st Baronet KCH PC , known as "Galloping Head", was Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada during the rebellion of 1837.-Biography:...

 began to plan to remove the Mississaugas of the Credit Mission to Manitoulin Island

Manitoulin Island

Manitoulin Island is a Canadian island in Lake Huron, in the province of Ontario. It is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world. In addition to the historic Anishinaabe and European settlement of the island, archeological discoveries at Sheguiandah have demonstrated Paleo-Indian and...

. Chief Peter Jones travelled to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, meeting with Colonial Secretary

Secretary of State for the Colonies

The Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary was the British Cabinet minister in charge of managing the United Kingdom's various colonial dependencies....

 Lord Glenelg and Queen Victoria to prevent the move, as Manitoulin was too rocky to farm, and the settlers would have been forced to revert to a hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

 lifestyle. Although the Colonial office blocked Bond Head's plan, the Credit Band did not receive the title deeds that Victoria authorised her minister to grant them, and remained vulnerable to the encroachment of white settlers.

In 1840, John Jones was elected one of the three chiefs of the Credit band.

In 1847, unable to secure land rights to the mission, the Mississaugas of the Credit Mission relocated to New Credit. Title to that land was possessed by the Six Nations, who donated the land to the Mississaugas of Credit.