Jeangagnon via Wikimedia Commons The Bank of Montreal building at Montreal's Place d'Armes. The bank says it has begun the process of removing a plaque commemorating Montreal funder Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve's killing of an Iroquois chief

MONTREAL — Michael Rice said growing up as a Mohawk child, he was told to be prepared to come across portrayals of Indigenous people as the "bad guys." "We are used to being bashed as Iroquois," the high school history teacher said in an interview. "We are like the Russians in the Cold War." An example of Iroquois bashing, he said, is the stone marker on the facade of the Bank of Montreal building in the city's historic Place d'Armes square, one of Montreal's top tourist destinations. Across the street from a statue of the founder of Montreal, Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, is an engraving dedicated to a man he killed in 1644.

THE CANADIAN PRESS

"Near this square afterwards named La Place d'Armes the founders of Ville-Marie first encountered the Iroquois whom they defeated," the marker reads. "Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve killing the chief with his own hands. March 1644." A few feet away is a second stone marker with the same message in French. The Iroquois or Six Nations, form a confederacy consisting of the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk and Tuscarora. Rice, 48, who is from Kahnawake and now lives in Deux-Montagnes, Que., north of Montreal, said he first complained of the engravings to bank employees in 1992 but nothing came of it. Twenty-five years later, a bank spokeswoman told The Canadian Press the stone markers are coming down. Bank spokesman Valerie Doucet said in an email Quebec's Culture Department has been notified. "The department informed us that they would meet us soon," Doucet said. "On our side, we have already obtained a submission from a specialized firm to remove and replace the two stones on which the text has been engraved."

Xicotencatl via Wikimedia Commons Place d'Armes in Old Montreal, with the Bank of Montreal building on the left.