Nova Scotia (5 page)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ten Thousand Years of
Civilization

In
his book
We Were Not the
Savages
, Mi’kmaq historian
Dan Paul writes eloquently about the history of his people, for the
first time documenting the story of the Europeans’ arrival and
settlement of Nova Scotia from the Native North American point of
view. So much of what is recorded by the European invaders is so
slanted by Eurocentric, and ultimately racist, attitudes that it
may be unreasonable to accept any of the early written accounts
about the Mi’kmaq as fact. Like me, Dan has an inherent mistrust of
history as it is reported to us. White heroes of yore now appear
more like villains of monumenral proportions. If Dan and other
living Mi’kmaq leaders suggest that towns named for the likes of
Amherst, Cornwallis and Lawrence be changed, it is not a simple
complaint against nomenclature. It is a protest against the power
of a dominating culture to distort what really happened. In a
modern tribunal, all of the above would be rightfully convicted of
not only murder but genocide.

   
The story of the Nova Scotian Mi’kmaq people and the arrival
of white settlers is a tragic tale of the degradation of an entire
society. As Dan Paul points out, the European arrival was nothing
short of a “total disaster” for his people.

   
It was 10,000 years ago the first Mi’kmaq settled in Nova
Scotia. Having descended from other tribes which crossed the Bering
Strait and spread out across North America, they had probably
retreated south once or several times as the climate dictated. Now
they were here to stay and prosper until their land was invaded by
Europeans in the seventeenth century. Each Native culture evolved
as it separated from the rest into a unique pattern of lifestyle,
language and government. While Mi’kmaq and Maliseet bore strong
similarities, for example, the Mi’kmaq and the Mohawk would be
radically different. *

   
Mi’kmaq culture was of a highly organized and civilized
nature. It is reputed to have been an open and accepting society
with no degree of racial elitism. Early French officers would worry
about this openness, because it led to “reverse assimilation” as
French soldiers became part of Mi’kmaq communities and families.
Much earlier, it is suggested that even the notorious Vikings had
been welcomed into Mi’kmaq culture, accounting for the presence of
some very white Native people on hand to greet the English and
French when they arrived. 

   
Mi’kmaq villages were democratic, with an established legal
system for resolving grievances. There were seven defined Mi’kmaq
districts in the region and most people lived in communities of 50
to 500. By the seventeentht century, the Mi’kmaq population in
Atlantic Canada stood at about 100,000. By 1843, this number had
diminished to a mere 1,300 survivors of the disease, malnutrition
and mistreatment that befell the people whose homeland was
overtaken by men from across the sea.

   
According to Dan Paul, the Mi’kmaq were far too accommodating
to the intrusive Europeans. The English really had little to fear
from the Mi’kmaq until they began to outrage the local population
with vicious acts against these people they viewed as “savages.”
The resulting Mi’kmaq backlash would be an effort of simple
self-defence, a matter of survival against the militant British
.

   
Mi’kmaq society was not warlike by nature. Men were
competitive but it was a kind of contest to be the best provider
for the community, not a competition for the greatest personal
profit. The English leaders could not cdomprehend this principle.
While the British notion of leadership hinged on enforced respect
and punishment, Mi’kmaq leadership was based on hunting skills and
character strengths. k

   
Religion revolved around a personal and spiritual
relationship to the earth and the inherent spirit in all things of
the earth – from the rocks to trees and bears. The Mi’kmaq have
always believed in an afterlife and the morality of the community
was based upon religious beliefs embracing the interrelationship of
all things of the human world, the natural world and the spiritual
world. Monogamy was dominant in the culture, although polygamy was
permitted. Chrestian LeClercq, one of the first Europeans to
document the Mi’kmaq way of life, notes that they were a very
emotional people. Principles of honour played an important role in
their lives, as did romantic love and a sense of duty to family and
community. The attitude toward sex was very open and while
premarital sex was not encouraged, no stigma was attached to
someone born out of wedlock.

   
When Port Royal’s first French settlers made unwelcome
advances against Mi’kmaq women, however, word was quickly returned
to the French leaders that such actions were offensive. Any white
man who attempted to repeat the offence might be severely punished
by the Mi’kmaq chief.

   
Of their dietary habits, explorer Nicholas Denys wrote: “They
lived without care, and never ate either salt or spice. They drank
only good soup, very fat. It was this that made them live long and
multiply much. They often ate fish, especially seals to obtain the
oil, as much for greasing themselves as for drinking; and they ate
the whale which frequently came ashore on the coast, especially the
blubber on which they made good cheer. Their greatest liking is for
grease; they ate as one does bread and drink it in
liquid.”

   
While that may not sound to modern ears like a totally
healthy diet, it was undoubtedly one that provided all the Mi’kmaq
needed to lead a healthy life until access to such rich resources
was cut off by the English.

   
Traditionally, if a Mi’kmaq villager was not able to find his
own supply of fish, berries, moose meat and other staples, then a
kind of social safety net provided help. The sharing of food was a
vital and sacred principle of life.

   
Among the early Native Nova Scotians were master canoe-makers
who produced both river and ocean-going craft. Europeans were
awestruck by the maritime abilities of canoeists who thought
nothing of paddling from Cape Breton to Newfoundland. In the 1700s
it was even recorded that one Cape Breton chief gathered some
Mi’kmaq leaders to paddle to St. Pierre to pay their respects to
the governor there. The ocean, like the earth itself, was more ally
than enemy. Mi’kmaq watermen had a great knowledge of coastlines,
tides, weather and navigation, all handed down in an oral
tradition, which made ocean travel possible. Father Lallement, in a
letter of 1659, spetaks of the “savage mariners [who] navigate so
far in little shallops, crossing vast seas without compass, and
often without sight of the sun,” implying that they could navigate
on cloudy and foggy days as well as in good
weather.

   
Summer was the time to live by the sea as the Mi’kmaq did
here near my home at Lawrencetown. In winter, people would migrate
to a more hospitable inland site, maybe fifteen or thirty
kilometres from the sea. As Dan Paul suggests, “They invented the
summer cottage business.”

A Savage Assault

Life would change for the Mi’kmaq
forever once the Europeans began arriving. uThe French would get
along with the Mi’kmaq much better than the English. As early as
1605, when Port Royal was abandoned by the French settlers, the
site was left in the hands of Chief Membertou for safekeeping. Once
the French learned to be more civil around Mi’kmaq women,
intermarriage was accepted without much concern. Many young Mi’kmaq
men would even travel to F”rance for an education. Some stayed on
there and were assimilated into Parisian life.

   
The English, however, arrived here with a preconceived fear
of the Native people. They were leery of the Mi’kmaq’s early
friendship with the French. The English military leaders also
mistrusted the democratic nature of the Mi’kmaq culture, which
stood in sharp contrast to their own style of keeping civil order
among the soldiers and settlers. The Mi’kmaq leaders ruled only at
the “pleasure of the people” and could thus be removed if they were
not doing their jobs adequately.

   
Dan Paul argues that the alleged Mi’kmaq raids on white
settlements in the 1700s and 1800s were “mostly propaganda.” Some
can be attributed to Mohawks, who were enemies of the Mi’kmaq and
brought in by the English to help wipe out the local population.
The English, obsessed with being masters over the Mi’kmaq, forced
them to sign documents ensuring their own extinction. The English
used bounty hunters to kill the Mi’kmaq in the 1600s and 1700s.
Gorham’s Rangers were brought in from New England in the 1740s to
kill as many Mi’kmaq as they could find.

   
There would be a long string of treaties designed to rob the
Mi’kmaq of their homes and to subjugate them. The Treaty of 1725
was signed by most of the tribes along the northern seaboard as a
working document to bring about peace. Unfortunately, most of the
Native leaders didn’t understand that it was to be peace by
subjugation. The very nature of written treaties was an alien
concept to the North Americans and the document itself had been
translated from English into French, but not into the many Native
languages. The Mi’kmaq leaders thought they were signing an
agreement of cooperation and peace, not a deal surrendering the
rights to their lands. Whatever was agreed to, little tangible
peace came from it. By 1744 all-out war was declared on the Mi’kmaq
by Nova Scotia and New England. Governor William Shirley of
Massachusetts offered money for the scalps of Native people. Again
and again the English leaders would find excuses, often based on
false information, to offer money for Mi’kmaq scalps, encouraging
the wholesale slaughterC of men, women and children for reward from
the Crown.

   
In 1760, the Mi’kmaq were again forced to sign a treaty that
would lead them into further poverty and a loss of their land
rights. In 1763, General Jeffrey Amherst proposed to deal with the
“Indian problem” by “inoculating” them by means of blankets. And so
blankets infected with the smallpox from dead or dying soldiers
were distributed to Mi’kmaq families. Amherst and his associates
knew how deadly European diseases could be for the pMi’kmaq and he
had determined the perfect treachery to kill off hundreds of the
feared “savages” without incurring any danger to his men. Unaware
of the deadly nature of the blankets, the local Mi’kmaq accepted
this surprising token of English generosity with
gratitude.

   
One of Nova Scotia’s greatest political figures, Joseph Howe,
would be struck by the immense horror of what had happened to these
once proud people. But his efforts could not offset the disaster
that had already occurred. Upon Confederation in 1867, the Native
people became the responsibility of the federal government, which
adopted a paternalistic role. While not as deadly as infected
blankets, the more modern tactics of integrating Mi’kmaq people
into white society would continue to foster physical and spiritual
hardships.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

St. Brendan’s Isle

By contemporary standards, we have
come to accept the whole idea of the “discovery” of North America
by Europeans as preposterous. The Mi’kmaq had obviously “found” a
home in Nova Scotia long before anyone else came along. Over
generations their ancestors had travelled here from Asia. Various
European explorers as well made their way here long before those
who would attempt permanent settlements. These brave voyagers of
the distant past remain obscure but not forgotten. Given the
tenuous proof concerning the journeys of John Cabot, who seems to
garner a lot of credit for “finding” this place in 1497, it would
not be fair to write off the claims of the Irish, the Welsh and the
Orkneymen who may have come across the Atlantic long before Cabot’s
official journey.

   
The Irish, for example, were adventurous seafarers and by the
eighth century had sailed far to the north and west in the
Atlantic. When the Norse arrived in Iceland in 870, they found an
Irish monk already living there. Other Irish had settled there as
well. One traditional tale relates that the Irish fled the hostile,
heathen Norsemen and sailed on somewhere else for a little peace
and quiet. They may have gone to Greenland to settle peaceably
among the Native people there or even as far as the shores of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence.

   
The only further “evidence” of these Irish settlers in the
New World is the Irish legend of the Icelandic merchant, Gudleifr
Gunnlaugsson. He left Dublin in a ship and was caught up in storms
that drove him far away to a land in the west, where he was
captured by an unknown people of tinted skin. These people debated
(in Gaelic!) whether or not they should kill what they saw to be a
troublesome Norseman. An elderly white man came to Gunnlaugsson’s
rescue and set him free, then bid him farewell with presents and
accurate directions for finding his way back to
Iceland.

   
A number of legends speak about Irishmen venturing west by
accident or with good intentions. A story dated around 700 tells of
the voyage of Bran who has a vision of a beautiful woman and sets
off in three curraghs (skin boats), arriving at a place he calls
“The Land of Women.” The queen there keeps Bran for a year until he
can escape and return to Ireland. As he returns, he discovers that
centuries have passed instead of years. A crewman who steps back on
Irish soil dissolves into the sand, so Bran returns to the sea and
is never seen again.