page_title: Peter Jones (missionary)
section_title: First British tour
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Jones (missionary) / Ministry / First British tour
caption_attribution_description: English: Portraits of Peter and Eliza Jones (nee Field), side by side
context_page_description: Peter Jones was an Ojibwe Methodist minister, translator, chief and author from Burlington Heights, Upper Canada. His Ojibwa name was Kahkewāquonāby, which means "[Sacred] Waving Feathers". In Mohawk, he was called Desagondensta, meaning "he stands people on their feet". In his youth his band of Mississaugas had been on the verge of destruction. As a preacher and a chieftain, as a role model and as a liaison to governments, his leadership helped his people survive contact with Europeans.
  Jones was raised by his mother Tuhbenahneequay in the traditional culture and religion of the Mississauga Ojibwas until the age of 14. After that, he went to live with his father Augustus Jones, a Welsh-born United Empire Loyalist. There he learnt the customs and language of the white Christian settlers of Upper Canada and was taught how to farm. Jones converted to Methodism at age 21 after attending a camp-meeting with his half sister. Methodist leaders in Upper Canada recognised his potential as a bridge between the white and Indian communities and recruited him as a preacher.
context_section_description: Also in 1829, Jones embarked on a tour of the northern United States with Reverend William Case and several Indian converts to raise money for the Methodist missions in Upper Canada.  The tour raised £600, thirty percent of the Methodist Church's annual expenditures across British North America.  After his return to Upper Canada, the year's annual Methodist conference named Jones "A Missionary to the Indian Tribes" on Case's urging.  The 1830 conference gave him the same appointment.  He was also ordained as a deacon then. Upper Canada's Methodists were in desperate need of money by 1831; that spring the church had been unable to pay all the salaries owed.  To raise money for the church, Jones travelled with George Ryerson to the United Kingdom that spring where he gave more than sixty sermons and one hundred speeches which raised more than £1000.  These sermons were also held with Jones in Indian attire, which combined with his Indian name created curiosity and filled the halls, with four or five thousand attendees at his sermon for the London Missionary Society's anniversary.  Jones met with a number of prominent Englishmen, including James Cowles Prichard, who treated him when he fell ill in June 1831, as well as Methodist leaders such as Adam Clarke, Hannah More and Richard Watson.  This tour created significant public interest, and Jones met with King William IV on April 5, 1832, shortly before his return to Upper Canada.
   
  During this tour, he met Eliza Field, to whom he proposed.  She accepted, and Jones returned to Upper Canada in the spring of 1832.  Field came to North America in 1833, arriving in New York City, where the pair married on September 8, 1833.  Field had spent the intervening time learning domestic skills such as cooking and knitting  to prepare for her new life.  She came from a wealthy family and had previously been attended by servants.  Field came to Upper Canada and worked along Jones in his ministry work and as a teacher in the Credit River settlement, instructing the Indian girls in sewing and other domestic skills.  The Mississaugas of the Credit Mission dubbed Eliza "Kecheahgahmequa" (Gichi-agaamiikwe, "the lady from beyond the [blue] waters"/"woman from across the great shore").
caption: Portraits of Peter Jones and Eliza Field, made in 1832 by London painter Matilda Jones. Jones and Field met during his first tour of England, and married in 1833.
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