Of the two great families of Indian tribes, the Algonquins and Iroquois, that inhabited the North American continent when Euro. peans discovered it, the Algonquins extended over part of Virginia and Pennsylvania, New Jersey, south-eastern New York, New England, the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the province of Ontario. They were spread, also, along the shores of the Great Lakes, and throughout the northern regions beyond, and they occupied Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, and in detached bands "ranged the lonely hunting grounds of Kentucky". In New England, where the Algonquins were most numerous, were the tribes known as Mohicans, Narragansetts, Penacooks, Pequots, and Wampanoags, and further east the Passamaquoddies or Etchemins, and Penobscots.
Inhabiting eastern Maine and New Brunswick were the Maliseets, and throughout the country bordering on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Baie Chaleurs to Nova Scotia, including Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, the Souriquois or Micmacs, which tribe in later times spread also into Newfoundland. The boundary line between the territories of the Miemacs and Maliseets, says Professor Ganong, began at Quaco, east of St. John, in New Brunswick, and followed the water-shed which divides the rivers flowing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence from those flowing into the River St. John. It ran, that is, from Quaco to the head of the Kennebecasis, thence to the head of the Washademoak, thence to the head of Salmon River, thence away to the west, to the head of the Miramichi, thence to the head of the Tobique, and thence to the head of the Restigouche; following everywhere the height of land, and giving all streams, large and small, on the Gulf side, to the Micmacs, and
17
all on the side of the St. John waters to the Maliseets. Similar boundaries separated the Maliseets from the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies on the west.
The Micmacs were larger framed and had flatter features than the Malisects, but the habits and characteristics of the two tribes did not greatly differ. Both subsisted chiefly by hunting and fishing, but both had some rude agriculture, and both, as far back as the early part of the seventeenth century had cultivated corn, squash, and tobacco. From Marc Lescarbot in the beginning, and Nicholas Denys in the latter part, of the seventeenth century, and from Dier6ville, in 1700, we learn much regarding the Micmacs at that early time. To be a good hunter was the supreme ambition of every young man in the tribe, for on his skill in hunting his standing with his people largely depended. In ancient times the country was full of moose, caribou, and wild fowl, and these furnished the Indians liberally with food. Beavers, martins, otters, lynxes, and other small animals, were also most abundant, and from them were got the valuable furs that formed the chief article of commerce between the Micmacs and the French.
Before the conversion of the Micmac tribe by French Roman Catholic missionaries, the Nova Scotia Indians are said to have worshipped the sun as their creator, believing also in a demon ,called Mendon, whom they frequently tried to propitiate with sacrifices and prayers. They made offerings, likewise, to departed ,spirits, and looked forward for themselves at death to happy hunting grounds, where fatigue and hunger would be unknown, and where game would be abundant and easily got. The marriage ceremony among them, wherever any existed, was simple, and was connected, as among all peoples, barbarous and civilized, with feasts and merry-making. Funeral ceremonies, however, were conducted with great demonstrations of grief, with loud wailings, and smearing of the face with soot. Dead bodies were dried or embalmed and then buried, pipes, knives, axes, bows and arrows, snow-sboes, moccasins, and skins being put with them in the grave. The people were keenly alive to the supernatural, and their mythology and
18
legends, which Charles G. Leland finds strikingly like those of the Scandinavians, show that almost all natural objects were invested by them with mind and soul. They were superstitious to the last degree, putting implicit faith in the incantations of jugglers, and the charms of medicine men. They had much less warlike propensities than their neighbors the Maliseets, but they regarded valor in war as the noblest characteristic they could be possessed of and on occasion would fight bravely and well. They were generous, hospitable, chaste, and in common intercourse had a code of etiquette, which they strictly observed.
In all parts of the Nova Scotian peninsula the tribe had favorite camping places; in winter, when the snows were deep they tramped from place to place through the woods on snow-shoes, in single file, men and women alike having heavy loads strapped on their shoulders and dragging behind them long, narrow sledges or sleds. On these sleds were piled skins, rude axes and kettles, dried moosemeat, and rolls of birch-bark for covering their wigwams when they should again encamp. In a little book of sketches published some twenty years ago, Miss Frame, a Nova Scotian writer, gives an imaginary but perfectly truthful picture of a Micmac encampment. The Indians were encamped in the dense forest on the edge of a little brook which flowed into a larger river. "Here some of the women were busy sewing new and repairing old birch-bark canoes. In this primitive ship-yard neither broad-axe nor caulking-mallet was required. The framework was made of split ash, shaped with a knife and moulded by hand; this was covered with sheets of white birch-bark, sewed round the wood-work with the tough rootlets of trees. The wigwams were formed of poles stuck into the ground and secured at the top by a withe. This circular inclosure was covered with birch-bark; a blanket or skin covered the aperture which served for a door; and the centre was occupied by the fire, the struggling smoke of which found its way out at the top. Round the fire, boughs were laid, which served the family for seats. Dogs snored around the camps, and papooses lay sleeping in the cradles strapped to their mothers' backs, their brown faces up-
19
turned to the sun. ' One mother sat apart, nursing a dying babe. She had prepared a tiny carrying belt, a little pail, and a paddle, to aid her child in the spirit land. Beside the spring some women were preparing the feast for the congregated warriors. Over the fire were suspended cauldrons containing a savory stew of porcupine, carriboo, and duck. Salmon were roasting before the fires, the fish being inserted, wedge fashion, into a split piece of ash some two feet in length, crossed by other splits, its end planted firmly into the earth at a convenient distance from the fire". Until the middle of the 19th century small encampments similar to this imaginary one, might have been found, summer or winter, in several places in King's County, one of the chief spots, latterly, being the "Pine Woods", in Cornwallis, near Kentville, the county
town.
On the mythology of the Micmacs and Maliseets, as of the neighbouring kindred tribes, the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots, Mr. Charles G. Leland has written at length. These tribes, which together with the St. Francis Indians of Canada and some smaller clans call themselves the Wabanaki, "have in common", he says, "the traditions of a grand mythology, the central figure of which is a demigod or hero, who, while he is always great. consistent, and benevolent, and never devoid ' of dignity, presents traits which are. very much more like those of Odin and Thor, with not a little of Pantagruel than anything in the character of the Chippewa Manobozho, or the Iroquois Hiawatha." This demigod, who is called Glooskap, like the Norse deities combines giant-like strength with tender feeling and a light but never cruel or merely fantastic humour. In King's County, especially, conspicuous traces of his power abound. While he roamed the province incessantly, encamping in many different spots, his chief abiding place was the crest of Blomidon. Before his time the beavers, who were then huge, powerful beasts, had built a great dam across the strait from Blomidon to the Cumberland shore, thus making Minas Basin an immense pond or inland sea. One day by speaking a word or by waving his wand, Glooscap broke the beaver dam and let the fierce Fundy tides rush
20
in, as they have ever since continued to do. Towards a beaver who was in hiding near, and whom the demigod wanted to frighten, he once tossed a few handfulls of earth. These lodging a little to the eastward of Parrsborough became the Five Islands. From the site of old Fort Cumberland, running parallel with River Hebert to Parrsborough, is a ridge known by the Indians as Ou-Wokun, but by white men as the Boar's Back. This ridge was thrown up by the demigod, whose power to do physical wonders was quite unlimited, to make it easier for him and his companions, the old Noogumee, who kept his wigwam, and the boy Abistariooch or the Marten, who is connected with many of Glooskap's feats, to pass over to Parrsborough, and from thence to Cape Blomidon. It was Glooskap who created the spirits corresponding to elves and fairies, which inhabited the woods and lived by the shores of rivers and brooks. From an ash tree he created man. The names of all animals and birds were given by him. The turtle, his uncle, he changed into a man, and found a wife for. The dangerous windbird, Wuchowsen, he seized and bound fast. Certain saucy Indians he changed into rattlesnakes, giant sorcerers he conquered, whales let him ride on their backs, loons became his willing messengers. At last, however, he withdrew far into the west, and although the Indians long expected that some day he would return, he has never come back and his home, the high crest of Blomidon, remains lonely and desolate still.
When the French explorers came to Acadia the Micmacs seem to have welcomed them at once, and during the whole period of French occupancy of Acadia these children of the forest kept !oyal to the first European usurpers of the soil. The Micmacs also took kindly to the religion of the French, the baptism of the aged Chief Membertou and his family at Port Royal, in 1610, being followed in a few years by the conversion, chiefly under Recollet friars, of the whole tribe to Roman Catholicism. But towards the English., during this period, the Micmacs showed little love. As the end of French rule in Acadia drew near, under the influence of the wily priest Le Loutre and others of his spirit, they committed occasional
21
depredations on English residents in King's and other counties, and by the English garrison at Windsor, as indeed by the planters and their families after the New England immigration, with good reason were distrusted and feared. In 1720 John Alden, a New England trader, was robbed of his goods at Minas by eleven Indians. In 1722, during the progress of Lovewell's war, the Micmaes captured several vessels in the Bay of Fundy. Two years later, a party of seventy or eighty Micmacs and Maliseets combined assembled at Minas with hostile intentions. In complicity with them, it was charged, were two priests, Father Felix, the .A,linas Cur6, and Father Charlemagne the Annapolis Royal priest, and as a result of the charge the two cur6s were banished from the province. In 1749, about three hundred Miemaes and Maliseets attacked the English fort at Minas, but effected no injury. As usual, the French were accused, perhaps justly, of having inspired this fruitless attack.
For many years the Rev. Silas Tertius Rand, D. D., D. C. L., a native of Cornwallis, laboured as a Protestant missionary among the Nova Scotia Indians. In the matter of doctrinal religion Dr. RaDd's mission was not successful, for few if any of the Micmacs through his labours were permanently won to the Protestant faith, but to Dr. Rand's scholarly enthusiasm for philological research is due the preservation of the Micmac language and many of the ~Iicmac legends. Dr. Rand died in 1889, but shortly before his death his distinguished service to native American philology and mythology was suitably recognized, his Micmac dictionary being subsidized and given to the press by the Canadian Government.
The whole province of Acadia, together with the island of Cape Breton, seems to have been divided by the Micmaes into seven districts, the greatest of these comprising the whole of Cape Breton, and the other six extending eastwardly in two groups of three each. Of these groups, the right hand one took in Pictou, Memramcook, and Restigouche, the left the country from Canseau to Yarmouth, this latter, of course, containing the present County of King's. Originally each of these districts had its chief, but the chief of the
22
district which included Cape Breton was regarded as the head of all. Some of the Micmac names of places in King's County were the following: Blomidon, Owbogegechk, "Dogwood grove", and also Ulkogunchechk, "Bark doubled and sewed together"; Cape Split Plekteok, "Huge handspikes for breaking open a beaver dam"; the strait at Blomidon, Pleegun, "Opening in a broken beaver dam"; Cornwallis river, Chijkwtook, "Narrow river"; Canard river, Apchechknmoochwakode, "Resort of black duck"; Gaspereau river, Magapskegechk, "Tumbling over large rocks"; Kentville, Penooek; Aylesford Bog, Kobetek, "The Beaver"; Long Island, Mesadek, "Extending far out"; Mud Bridge (Wolfville), Mtaban, "Mud-catfish catching ground"; Oak Point, Cornwallis, Upkwawegun, "A house covered with spruce rinds"; Partridge Island, Pulowechwa, "A partridge island"; Pereau, Wojeechk, "A white signal seen from afar" (a waterfall showing white in the distance) ; Starr's Point, Nesoogwitk, "It lies on the water between two other points."
Although the present King's County has never been without a few small Indian encampments there is no Indian "reservation" within its limits, and it is doubtful if, since the English settlement at least, more than two or three hundred Micmacs have lived here at any one time. On the earliest census reports of the King's County Indians we cannot safely rely, nor are later reports much more certainly correct. The census of 1871 gave the whole number of Micmacs in the province as only 1,666. In 1901, King's County is said to have had as its share of the Indian population, the very insignificant number of twenty-eight.
