David Ramsay (Upper Canada)

David Ramsay (c. 1740 – c. 1810) was a controversial figure born in Leven, Scotland, who served as a cabin boy in the British Royal Navy, participated in the siege of Louisbourg in 1758 and later acted as a courier, translator and fur and alcohol trader, in part of the lower Great Lakes region consisting of present-day southern Ontario, Canada, and western New York state.

Several conflicting images emerge of Ramsay regarding his conduct amongst the native people of the region while engaged as a trader. One cluster of accounts preserved in the 18th and 19th century oral tradition of Loyalist settlers in the area around Long Point, Ontario, draws mostly on stories told by the wife of local settler Frederick Mabee in the early 19th century and portray Ramsay as a quintessential "pioneer hero" figure who strikes out at local natives only in preservation of his life and property, against the onslaught of the local Ojibwa people who sought to harm him without cause.

Another perspective, derived from native oral accounts in the early 19th century by missionary Peter Jones, present a decidedly different version of Ramsay's activities in Upper Canada. This latter version is also more in keeping with Ramsay's own legal declaration on May 15, 1772, at Fort Niagara, after he surrendered himself to British colonial legal authorities.

In this account, Ramsay confessed that in March 1772, on the banks of Kettle Creek north of the present day community of Port Stanley, Ontario, "in defense of his life", he had killed an Ojibwa man named Wandagan, as well as two women who were also present while other natives were absent from the camp. Ramsay also admitted that he had scalped all three adult individuals involved and also kidnapped two local children who were in the company of the natives, one aged twelve, removing them to the Long Point area.

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