The Cultural Economy of Survival: The Mi'kmaq of Cape Breton in the Mid-19th Century
Author(s): Andrew Parnaby
Source: Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 61 (Spring, 2008), pp. 69-98
Published by: Canadian Committee on Labour History and Athabasca University Press
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ARTICLE
The Cultural Economy of Survival:The Mi'kmaq
of Cape Breton inthe Mid-19th Century
Andrew
In July
Parnaby
Edward
1841, George
conducted
Jean, Clerk of the Peace for Richmond
a census "shewing the number of Indians
as would convey a full
such other observations
County, Cape Breton,
living within the County... with
the blessing ofthe Legislative Assembly,
knowledge of their situation." With
which just the month before had commended
the clerk's "desire" to "amelio
rate the conditions of the poor Indians of this Province," Jean spent nearly a
month "consumed by the above mentioned
service." Itwas a difficult and, at
was
the county a large and geographi
times, potentially violent task. Not only
area
a
that required
boat, horse, and Indian guide to traverse,
cally diverse
but the very people he hoped to assess were unwilling
to cooperate, at least
at first. Amongst
the Mi'kmaq, most of whom resided at Chapel Island, the
in the county, rumour had it that the "govern
largest Mi'kmaw
community
ment" desired greater knowledge
of their "numbers and situation" not for
"their
Jean,
benefit,"
"with
as their
but,
a view
to
compel
at an
made
clear
representatives
to
them
Statute
Labour
perform
"assemblage"
pay taxes
with
-
and
serve in the Militia."1
1. Nova Scotia Archives
rg 5, Volume
and Records Management
14a,
8a, Number
(nsarm),
to George Edward Jean, 28 June 1841; Petition
from George Edward Jean to
Rupert D. George
"the honourable
the Representatives
ofthe Province
of Nova Scotia," 28 January 1843; Volume
to John Whidden,
11 February
1842. Mi'kmaq
3, Number
72, Charles R. Ward
(with a 'q') is
used to describe
the indigenous
(with a 'w') is used to
people ofthe
region as a whole. Mi'kmaw
refer to a single
Andrew
person;
it is also the adjectival
form.
of Survival: The Mi'kmaq
Parnaby, "The Cultural
Economy
19th Century," LabourlLe
Travail, 61 (Spring 2008), 69-98.
of Cape
Breton
in the Mid
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TRAVAIL
61
70 / LABOUR/LE
Frustrated by this lack of support, the clerk appealed to a local Catholic
priest, Father Julian Courteau, for assistance, for he had a relationship with the
to playing the role of arbiter in community
local Mi'kmaw
people. Accustomed
disputes, Courteau urged the "Indians" to "co-operate," and by the end of July,
as families and extended families gathered at Chapel Island for the annual St.
Anne's
celebration,
Day
many,
agreed
to answer
results
confirmed
most,
or
provident
Jean's
questions
- the
proportion were Children or Adults
their condition
[and] their habits
they belonged,
about "the numbers
various tribes to which
(whether
if not
of sex - which
The
otherwise)...."2
the
clerk's
sus
on that
Each and every one of the 226 "souls" who were enumerated
July day were, in his estimation,
"poor" or "very poor," and few, if any, of the
families he spoke with continued to hunt and fish to satisfy their modest mate
rial needs - pursuing, instead, a combination
of waged work, craft production,
a
on
While
and subsistence
seasonal
basis.
the
Jean understood
agriculture
picions.
life,
important role that cash and crafts played in the Mi'kmaq's
day-to-day
he was particularly
interested in the long-term viability of agriculture, noting
that some "Indian families" would have cleared additional
land and planted
a wider variety of crops had they had access to more seeds. When
it came to
a
the
conditions
ofthe
Indians,"
poor
"ameliorat[ing]
sedentary lifestyle was,
in his judgement, eminently more desirable than a "wander[ing]" one.3
George Edward Jean's study captures something ofthe Mi'kmaq's margin
Nova Scotia. After nearly two and half centuries
ality in mid-19th-century
of
economic,
political,
and
cultural
interaction
with
-
Europeans
a
-
complex
that has been studied in depth by other scholars
this condition
dynamic
of
the
and
after
the
French
deepened
collapse
imperial presence in
emerged
thirteen
1758, the coming of the Planters and Loyalists from the American
set
colonies between 1760 and 1784, and the massive
of
Scottish
immigration
1815
tlers to the region - about 30,000 to Cape Breton Island alone between
and 1838 - following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.4 In this new context,
2. nsarm,
rg 5, Volume
8a, Number
"the honourable
3, Number
the Representatives
toWhidden,
72, Ward
Social Revitalization,
"Ceremony,
inWilliam
of St. Anne,"
Cowan,
to Jean, 28 June 1841; Petition
from Jean to
14a, George
of Nova Scotia," 28 January 1843; Volume'
of the Province
11 February
1842. On St. Anne's day, see Janet Chute,
and Change: Micmac
and the Annual
Festival
Leadership
ed., Papers of the 23rd Algonquin
(Ottawa 1992),
Conference
45-59.
rg 5, Series P, Volume
3. nsarm,
the
8a, Number
14b, "An account of the Indians living within
as taken on the 16th July 1841 - at the Indian Chapel Bras d'or Lake being
of Richmond
County
the Anniversary
of St. Ann's Day," 26 July 1841.
to D.C. Harvey,
4. According
the population
of Cape Breton
increased
from approximately
in 1838; see his "Scottish
6000 in 1815 to 35,420
to Cape Breton"
in Don
Immigration
and Brian Tennyson,
eds., Cape Breton Historical
MacGillivray
Essays
(Sydney 1980), 31. This
section
is informed by L.F.S. Upton, Micmacs
and Colonists:
in the
Indian-White
Relations
Maritimes,
1713-1867
in the History
Change
in Southwestern
Nova
(Vancouver
1979), 81-95;
John Reid, Six Crucial
Decades:
(Halifax 1987), 61-93; Bill Wicken,
of theMaritimes
inMargaret
Scotia, 1771-1823,"
Conrad,
ed., Making
Times
"Mi'kmaq
of
Land
Adjustments:
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
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1. "The Atlantic
Map
region at the time of Confederation"
ANDD.A.MUISE,EDS.,THEATLANTIC
INCONFEDERATION
E.R.FORBES
PROVINCES
(TORONTO
1993), 4
not as an ally or
in Halifax viewed the Mi'kmaq
the colonial government
even an enemy, but as a problem,
like denominational
schools, that needed
to be investigated,
solved; census data, like Jean's,
assessed, and ultimately
was critical to this process. Some politicians,
and editorial
philanthropists,
even
writers
like the Beothuk of Newfoundland
that the Mi'kmaq,
worried
"Can any person, possessed of
before them, were on the verge of extinction.
common feelings, view with indifference the deplorable state of the Indians of
this Province/' humanitarian Walter Bromley asked in 1813. "From thousands
of athletic and powerful warriors, they now number only a few hundred miser
able wretches,
scattered over the length and breadth of the land," echoed the
The Times and Courier in 1847.5
Halifax-based
in Planter Nova Scotia,
17S9-1800
(Fredericton
1991), 113-46; William
Change and Continuity
C. Wicken, Mi'kmaq
Treaties on Trial: History,
Land, and Donald Marshall
Junior (Toronto
or
to my thinking
here is John H. Reid, "Pax Britannica
2002). Of particular
importance
of Pacification,"
Pax Indigena? Planter Nova Scotia (1760-1782)
and Competing
Strategies
Historical
Review 85:4 (December
Canadian
2004), 669-692.
#E77 B7, Walter
Institute, Cape Breton University,
(bi-cbu), Pamphlet
Bromley,
on the Deplorable
at the Free-Masons'
State of the Indians; one delivered
Hall,
at Halifax Nova Scotia."
the other at the Royal Acadian
8,1814,
3,1813,
School, March
August
in
and the Colonial Mind: Walter
See also Judith Fingard, "English Humanitarianism
Bromley
5. Beaton
"Two Addresses
Review 54 (1973), 123-51. The second quota
Historical
Canadian
Scotia, 1813-1825,"
1849. Examples
of this discourse
is from The Times and Courier, 27 February
ofthe
"dying
at this time. "The distresses
of these people are much greater than is
race" are ubiquitous
Nova
tion
commonly
supposed,"
Lord Dalhousie
informed
the Legislative
Assembly
in 1827, "for so con
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72 / LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 61
of Cape Breton, whose
That theMi'kmaq
was
to be
thought
around
500,
were
in the mid-19th
population
in a precarious
economic
position
century
was
par
ticularly obvious when it came to the question of land (seeMap 1, The Atlantic
Region and Map 2,Mi'kmaq
Country). "These lands are eagerly coveted by the
settlers. That the Micmac's
fathers were sole possessors
Scottish Presbyterian
the
of these regions is a matter of no weight with the Scottish emigrants,"
of Indian Affairs reported in 1846. "They are by no means dis
Commissioner
posed to leave the aborigines a resting place on the Island of Cape Breton."6 As
on the Nova
a consequence,
the island's indigenous people, like the Mi'kmaq
for land grants or
Scotia mainland,
either petitioned
the colonial government
licenses of occupation. At least fourteen of the former and fifteen
demanded
of the latter had reached the colony's surveyor-general
by 1821, prompting
on Cape
to finally conduct a survey of "Indian Reservations
the government
Breton Island" in 1832 and 1833.7 In total, six reserves - located at Chapel
and "Indian
Island, Eskasoni, Whycocomagh,
Wagamatcook,
Malagawatch,
40 years, however,
Garden" - containing
12,205 acres were set aside. Within
the total number of acres reserved for the island's Mi'kmaw
people had shrunk
20 per cent, due principally to white encroachment.8
"White
by approximately
people are taking over lands in this place from us," Peter Googoo, aMi'kmaw
wrote in 1855, "we fear we will be driven away from
chief from Whycocomagh,
our
lands
and
do
not
know
siderable
so scarce
nsarm,
to
where
the same time, however,
At
forest now being
portion ofthe
the hunter has much difficulty
88.
308, Number
rgI, Volume
6. Quoted
in Richard
(Saskatoon
1986), 22.
7. The statistics
H. Bartlett,
are cited
Edward
Indian
ofthe Indian
the petitioner
cense
P. Gould
reclaimed
in providing
Reserves
Jean's "account of the Indians
from a state of nature,
a scanty subsistence
in the Atlantic
Provinces
game has become
for his family." See
of Canada
The
J. Semple, Our Land: The Maritimes:
1980), 48. A grant
(Fredericton
of Canada
of occupation
unencumbered
title to the land; a ticket of location/license
gave
a right to specific use, with the Crown
title to the land. As William
Wicken
conferred
retaining
it appears that in some cases aboriginal
has illustrated,
people called for a ticket of location/li
Basis
in Gary
go."9
George
in theMaritime
Claim
and Alan
Provinces
as an interim step, with an eye to making
of occupation
time. See Wicken,
"Mi'kmaq Land in Southwestern
at another
a formal
Nova
for a land grant
petition
Scotia," 115-18.
of reserves
in Cape Breton
is discussed
by Gould and Semple, Our Land, 48-49.
reserve lands was made
to white
in 1843 in response
encroach
survey ofthe
ment. On this final point see Library and Archives
Canada
459, frame 25,
(lac), rg 10, Volume
of consideration
"Report on Indian Lands," 7 [?] June 1854 [?].The report states: "It is a matter
a distinction
in price ought not to be made between
whether
those who intruded before and
The creation
An
additional
to 1843, at which
time Mr. Crawley
the lands and marked
subsequent
surveyed
can
in
Some
be
Breton."
of
sketches
found
nsarm,
rgI, Volume
Cape
Crawley's
Howe Letterbooks,
pages 199-211.
8. Bartlett,
Indian
9. The quotation
Whycocomagh,
Reserves,
432,
Joseph
10-11.
is from nsarm,
signed
the bounds
rg5, Volume
by "Peter Googoo
15, Number
and 18 others,"
from Mi'kmaq
9, Petition
1 February
1855.
at
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in
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25.Wagmatcook
26. Chipei island
27. Eskasoni
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traditional
districts
and modern
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Map 2. "Mi'kmaq
Country:
HARALD
THE
ANDCULTURAL
SURVIVAL
E.L.PRINS,
WORTH1996), 1
MI'KMAQ:
RESISTANCE,
ACCOMMODATION,
(FORTH
blend of cultural
living within Richmond County" hints at the sophisticated
survival that existed amongst the Mi'kmaq
of Cape
tenacity and economic
Breton at mid-century.
"[A]fter planting their few potatoes they wander about
the
he
Island,"
observed,
as labourers
in the vicinity
for a season
of Arichat
the men
many
[c]amping
employed
as
the women
their
and
others
Birch
rinds
for
and
for
work,
selling
handy
covering
dunnage
season
returns
dried cod fish - and when
to gather
in
the digging
shipping
they come home
their potatoes
and settle themselves
down
for the remaining
part ofthe winter.10
Flexible and mobile, Mi'kmaw
families were engaged in a mixed
economy,
in which men and women deployed some of their labour, some of the time
in new
-
ways
for wages,
working
selling
"handy
work"
-
while
maintaining
of seasonal family migration
and ties to an economically
and
as Potletek, Chapel Island
culturally significant locale. Known to the Mi'kmaq
was located by a short isthmus that linked the Atlantic Ocean
to the Bras
d'Or Lake - an inland saltwater lake around which the Mi'kmaq's
subsistence
older practices
was
economy
rg 5, Nova
10. nsarm,
Account
historically
of the Indians
1828 edition
fruit that may
of Webster's
be peeled
11. A.J. B. Johnston,
based.11
Scotia House
living within
A
portage
route
and
seasonal
encampment,
of Assembly,
Series P, Volume
8a, Number
14B, "An
as taken on 16 July 1841." The
the County
of Richmond
"rinds" as: "The bark of a plant; the skin or coat of
defines
Dictionary
off; also inner bark of trees."
Storied
Shores:
St. Peter's,
Isle Madame,
and Chapel
Island
in the 17th and
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TRAVAIL
61
74 / LABOUR/LE
a site of deep spiritual attachments
for the
Chapel Island was, simultaneously,
the
One
first
the
arrival
of
of
Cath
both
before
and
after
Europeans.
Mi'kmaq,
in Cape Breton was established
there around 1741; in 1819, Peter
olic Missions
Tomah, acting on "behalf of himself and other Indians," pressed the colonial
to "secure to them" Chapel Island.12 That the Mi'kmaq
still used
government
at
it
in
and indeed held
that location
high esteem, suggests that a
mid-century,
to
them persisted during this context
resilient, adaptive, internal logic unique
and political weakness,
of material
deprivation
providing a cultural frame
new
economic activities.
work within which they pursued
Scholarship dedicated to earlier periods ofMi'kmaw
history has been atten
tive to the relationship
and
between
indigenous
encounters.13
native-newcomer
culture,
Martin's
Calvin
economic
Keepers
of
adaptation,
the
Game
is
example of this scholarship.14 Less
perhaps the most obvious, if provocative,
are the contributions made by B.A. Balcolm and AJ.B. Johnston,
controversial
on
interaction with French missionaries
the Mi'kmaq's
who have examined
He Royale (Cape Breton) in the 18th century; they make clear how French gift
into seasonal rounds of
giving, fur trading, and cultivation were incorporated
resource procurement.
who
has written about the
William
Wicken,
Similarly,
in
Nova
Scotia
the
Planter
and Loyalist migra
southwestern
Mi'kmaq
during
tions, illustrates the growing importance of farming to indigenous economic
used to
life.15 Less understood,
however, are the strategies that the Mi'kmaq
survive
the
century,
early-to-mid-19th
and
the
importance
of
these
earlier,
in shaping their collective
response to a decidedly
experiences
18th-century
imbalance flows, in part,
This historiographical
different historical moment.
from the importance of the contact and early colonial periods, as well as the
in the Mi'kmaw
literature, and the near total
years of 1760-61,
treaty-making
absence of aboriginal people from the scholarship on Nova Scotia's rural and
18th Centuries
12.
Johnston,
1843, Number
Storied
2157,
13. See the following
of Writing
15-24,
2004),
(Sydney
Shores,
112-113.
23 and 135; nsarm,
"Kavanagh,
Lawrence
& Others
Cape Breton Island, 1787
for the Indians in Bras d'Or Lake," 1819.
Land Petitions,
articles: H.F. McGee,
historiographical
the Native
Peoples of the Maritimes,"
A Decade
"No Longer Neglected:
in H.F. McGee,
ed., The Native
Concerning
Relations
Canada: A History
(Ottawa 1983), 209-218;
of Indian-European
of Atlantic
in the Atlantic
the Colonial
"Native History
Period," Acadiensis
Ralph Pastore,
Region During
of Atlantic
28:2 (Spring 1989), 200-225;
Andrew Nurse,
"History, Law, and the Mi'kmaq
Peoples
Canada"
Acadiensis
14. Calvin Martin,
(Berkeley
Keepers
33:2
(Spring
2004),
126-33.
Keepers
of the Game: Indian-Animal
1978); Shepard Krech m, ed., Indians, Animals,
(Athens 1981).
of the Game
and the Fur Trade
Relationships
and the Fur Trade: A Critique
of
to the Mi'kmaq:
"Missions
and A.J.B. Johnston,
Malagawatch
in the 18th Century," Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical
Society
Nova Scotia," 113-46.
115-140; Wicken,
"Mi'kmaq Land in Southwestern
15. B.A. Balcolm
Island
and Chapel
9 (2006),
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 75
life in the 19th century.16 No historian writing about the early
inNova Scotia doubts that the Mi'kmaq were a small, extremely
and politically marginalized
population:
they were "wretched"; they
working-class
to-mid 1800s
poor,
were
"desperate";
they
were
"miserable."17
This
assessment
is applicable
to
the
lived in Cape Breton, too, a place where the forces of immigra
Mi'kmaq
tion and settlement were exerting new and distinctive pressures on aboriginal
life. Indebted to historical materialism
and post-colonialism,
and influenced
who
by historians Harald Prins and Janet Chute, this essay is about that changing
context and how the island's indigenous people sought to understand
it, nego
tiate its pressures and possibilities,
and blunt its negative effects.18
was one of those politicized
As early as 1783, the
Agriculture
possibilities.
must abandon
colonial government
its
desire
that
the
expressed
Mi'kmaq
their "original roving practices" and become farmers; only in this way, so the
condition be arrested and the ascent
argument went, could their wretched
from savagery to civilization begin.19 This obsession with the Mi'kmaq's
"wan
see
to
was
the
concomitant
desire
and
them
part
dering ways,"
sedentary,
and parcel of an ideology of land lodged deeply in the European encounter
16. Daniel
Samson's
edited collection
Contested
Rural Workers and Modern
Countryside:
1800-1950
and path-break
Canada,
(Fredericton
1994) is a revisionist
it does not, however,
of rural society;
include aboriginal
the
people. While
are not mentioned
in Rusty Bittermann's
and
essay, "Farm Households
important
in Atlantic
Society
ing consideration
Mi'kmaq
in the Early Nineteenth
Labour in the Northeastern
Maritimes
Wage
Century," Labour/Le
Travail 31(Spring
in his MA thesis. See "Middle
1993), 13-45,
they do make a short appearance
River: The Social Structure
in a Nineteenth
of Agriculture
Century Cape Breton Community,"
MA thesis, University
of New Brunswick,
1987, 45, 95-6. Aboriginal
people are not included
in Stephen
J.Hornsby's Nineteenth-Century
(Montreal
Cape Breton: A Historical
Geography
and Kingston
broadly, where
1992). They have
the experiences
fared no better
of newcomers,
in the context
not natives,
labour history more
the literature concerned
of Canadian
dominates
race and ethnicity. As David Roediger
has argued, scholars working
in this field have yet
to "fully grasp" the importance
in general, and aboriginal
of settler colonialism,
in par
people,
to Celebrate
See his "Top Seven Reasons
ticular, to the history of the Canadian
working-class.
and Ask More
from Labour/Le
Travail 50 (Fall 2002), 88-99.
Travail," Labour/Le
with
17. See Olive
P. Dickason,
First Nations:
A History
Canada's
of Founding Peoples from Earliest
2nd ed., (Toronto 1997), 202-3; Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not Savages: A Micmac
on the Collision
and Aboriginal
Civilization
(Halifax 1993), 185; Harald
Perspective
of European
E.L. Prins, The Mi'kmaq:
and Cultural
Survival
Resistance,
Accommodation,
(Toronto 1996),
Times,
164-165.
18. Two
Marxist
Homi
texts deserve
Cultural
K. Bhabha,
to be singled out: Raymond Williams,
"Base and Superstructure
in
inMaterialism
and Culture
(New York 1980), 42 and
Theory," in Problems
The Location
2nd ed., (New York 2004), 51-2, 54-5.
of Culture,
19. "Original roving practices"
is from nsarm,
to Joseph Howe,
13 February
1852.
rgI, Volume
431, Number
62.5, H.W. Crawley
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61
76 / LABOUR/LE
the so-called new world.20 In the specific frame of the British experience,
this ideology, which was influenced in decisive ways by John Locke's "labour
lands were either
theory of property," rested on the notion that indigenous
with
being used inefficiently or not at all, and thus indigenous people deserved to be
displaced by more productive practices and people. Land may have been God's
was produc
gift to humanity, Locke reasoned in the late 17th century, but it
tive labour
what settlers and colonial officials often called "improvements"
- made obvious in the form of a
garden, a ploughed field, a fence, and a home
of
land into private property and thus made it something
self-interest,
legitimized by settlement pressures, commercial
and the pervasive discourse of the "dying Indian," this ideology manifested
itself in the government's
early reserve policy, adopted in 1819, and, 34 years
Settlement
later, in its Act for the Instruction and Permanent
of the Indians,
that transformed
value.21 Further
of Indian Affairs
which, among other initiatives, authorized the Commissioner
to "parcel out to each head of a family a portion of the reservations...and
also
to aid them in the purchase of implements and stock."22 To bring the Mi'kmaq
of Indian Affairs
into "a state of civilization," Abraham Gesner, Commissioner
in 1847, "they must cultivate the land" - or accept
in Nova Scotia, observed
fate.23
their inevitable
in pre-contact
non-existent
Likely
society,
agriculture
was
of
some
impor
tance to the Mi'kmaq,
both on the Nova Scotia mainland
and Cape Breton,
At
the
the
(Malagawatch)
Mirligueche
century.24
early-to-mid-18th
during
on the southern shore of the Bras d'Or
mission
site, which was established
combined
their
Lake in Cape Breton by the French in 1725, the Mi'kmaq
of
and
the
cultivation
rounds
of
with
customary
gathering
hunting, fishing,
20. On
World,
see Patricia
in Europe's Conquest
Seed, Ceremonies
ofthe New
of Possession
Law and Custom:
(New York 1995); Peter Karsten, Between
'High'and Low'
- The United
in the Lands ofthe British Diaspora
Australia,
States, Canada,
this point
1492-1640
Legal Cultures
and New Zealand,
Making
1600-1900
of theModern
I am paraphrasing
in British Columbia
21. Here
Reserves
me
reminding
1847-1853,"
432,
Settlement
(Cambridge
1650-1900
2002);
(Montreal
The Great
John Weaver,
and Kingston
2003).
Cole Harris, Making
Native
(Vancouver
2002),
of the importance
of John Locke.
46-56.1
22. The emergence
9; Elizabeth Haigh,
Volume
World,
ofthe Royal Nova
Joseph Howe Letterbooks,
ofthe
Indians."
mg
September
1847.
and
the
and
Resistance,
Space: Colonialism,
am indebted
to Shirley Tillotson
for
in government
is detailed
in Prins, The Mi'kmaq,
168
of agriculture
policy
as Indian Commissioner,
the Land: Abraham
Gesner
"They Must Cultivate
Journal
23. nsarm,
Land Rush
15, Volume
4, Number
rgI,
Society 3 (2000), 54-71; nsarm,
to Provide for the Instruction
and Permanent
Scotia Historical
"An Act
32, Abraham
Gesner
to Sir Rupert
D. George,
29
contact with
the soil prior to ongoing
24. The extent to which
cultivated
the Mi'kmaq
Patricia Kathleen
has been the focus of debate. See, for example,
Linskey Nietfeld,
Europeans
PhD dissertation,
of New
Micmac
of Aboriginal
Political
"Determinants
Structure,"
University
on the Nova Scotia mainland
Mexico,
1981, 306-365.
practices
during the early
Agricultural
on Trial, 30.
inWicken, Mi'kmaq
Treaties
1700s are mentioned
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 77
according to the governor of Fortress Louisbourg,
they did quite
at
Across
the
lake
Vachelouacadie
which
*had
Island),
(Chapel
effectively.25
become the centre of French missionary
in
modest
1742,
activity
extremely
attempts at growing food continued. There, in the 1750s, Louis Petitpas, whose
mother was Mi'kmaq,
and Madelaine
Poujet, his Mi'kmaw wife, grew root
a
and
wheat
"of
above
the ordinary."26 While
cultivation
vegetables
quality
corn, which,
was by no means
a new experience
on Cape Breton in the
for the Mi'kmaq
the
from
pressures
century,
government
early-to-mid-19th
emanating
policy
and white encroachment,
coupled with their reduced political influence, cer
tainly
were.
on
Thus,
attempted
1818, Morice
or near
four
of Cape
the soil on a wider
to work
an
Bask,
and
"Indian,"
Breton's
six
the Mi'kmaq
reserves,
Island in
scale than before. At Chapel
two
"his
sons
...
cultivated
part
a tract
of
of 1000 acres that has been for many years in the occupation of the Indians.27
families in that area were doing the same thing:
By 1841, numerous Mi'kmaw
- some in small
wheat,
they planted potatoes,
barley, and hay
garden-sized
plots, others in fields as large as two acres; pigs, cows, and sheep were kept as
well.28 Partial evidence suggests that similar "agricultural settlements" were
evident elsewhere on the island, such as Eskasoni, perhaps as early as the 1810s
in 1860, Francis Tomrria,
and 1820s.29 In a petition to the colonial government
"Head Chief of the Micmacs,"
described the "Roman Catholic
settlement on
the east of the Bras d'Or" as possessing
"fields and houses, and flocks and
herds." There, he continued,
the "Indians enjoy all the consequent
benefits
that by lawless aggression and unattainable
redress have been so completely
wrested from the Indians in the [Mi'kmaw] settlement[s] ofWhycocomah
and
Wagmatcook."30
Subsistence
farming
was
never
easy,
of
course,
for
the
land
itself
was
con
tested terrain. Louis Joseph Gregoire,
"the poor Indian," understood
this
notion. Beginning
in the late 1790s, his father, Joseph, made the "first improve
25.
Balcolm
26. Kenneth
Husbandry
and
Johnston,
"Missions
to the Mi'kmaq,"
123-4,
128.
Donovan,
Upon Nature: Gardens,
"Imposing Discipline
Agriculture,
in Cape Breton,
Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006),
1713-1758," Material
and Animal
22-3,
35.
27. nsarm,
Land Petitions,
Number
Island, 1787-1843,
1835, "Bask, Morice
Cape Breton
459, Number
3, "The Petition of Louis Gregoire
(Indian)," 1818; lac, rg 10, Volume
[?], residing
near Chapel
states that "said island has been
the writer
Island," 11 July 1867. In this petition,
worked
and
28. nsarm,
Account
improved
on for the last seventy
rg 5, Nova
ofthe
Indians
Scotia House
living within
six years."
of Assembly,
Series P, Volume
8a, Number
14B, "An
as taken on 16 July 1841."
the County
of Richmond
rg 5, Volume
from Mi'kmaq
15, Number
9, Petition
1855. This petition
reads in part: "Even pieces that were cleared
... we hold most dear." See also Brian
our forefathers
Tennyson,
29. nsarm,
(Sydney
30.
atWhycocomagh,
[?] and partially
ed., Impressions
1 February
cultivated
by
of Cape Breton
1986), 80-81.
nsarm,
rg 5, Series
ofthe Micmacs)...concerning
gp, Volume
3, Number
the intrusions...,"
162, "Petition
12 July 1860.
from Francis
Tomma
(Head Chief
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TRAVAIL
61
78 / LABOUR/LE
- a
ments" on a small island to the west of Chapel Island
spot, according to a
the
local priest, Joseph received "for his wages for his service accompanying
a
to
land
for
his
left
the
land
his
ofthe
time."
death, Joseph
surveyor
Upon
long
son, who "mowed the hay on the island...yearly up to the present date [1867],
to "support a large
[and] lived on the island during the summer months"
or
in
Sometime
the
late
1850s
early 1860s, however, the island was
family."
formally granted to a Scottish settler; Joseph's and Louis Joseph's improve
one could make
ments,
ordinarily one of the strongest signs of possession
title
under English law, were evidently not enough to secure the Gregoires'
in
to the land.31 Similar stories unfolded elsewhere on the island. Beginning
and
settlers
barns,
1811, Scottish
began clearing land, building fences, houses,
River valley and
grazing animals, and planting crops along theWagamatcook
theWagamatcook
reserve; by 1837, at least 13 immigrant families were squat
families,
ting on hundreds of acres of reserve land.32 For the local Mi'kmaw
not only removed "good upland" from their possession,
this encroachment
thus depriving them of its potential benefits, but it produced endemic friction
between themselves and their unwanted neighbours.33
1837 and 1860, high-ranking
colonial officials - the Indian Com
Between
of the Legislative
missioner
for Cape Breton and the Indian Committee
Assembly
agreed that the squatters should be removed from Wagamatcook,
and that the boundaries ofthe reserve must be fixed with greater clarity and
defended from further encroachment more vigorously. But their strong words
- "shall
any person dare to settle on any Indian Reserve, or to extend his
or cut
improvements,
or commit
timber,
any
other
act
of depredation
thereon,
with the utmost rigour of the Law" - never
such offender will be...punished
translated into decisive action on the ground, leaving the squatters atWagamat
cook, and increasingly at other reserves on the island, too, free to expand the
and to sink deeper roots - both literally and
of their occupation,
circumference
- into
metaphorically
aboriginal soil (see Illustration 1,Notice to Trespassers).34
"It appears that no means will be effectual, short of destroying
the houses and
31.
lac,
Chapel
1867.
rg
11 July 1867; Volume
33. Harold
Franklin
1830-1867,"
Man
nsarm,
of Louis Gregoire
[?], residing near
to S. Fairbanks,
22 August
1, J.Courteau
"The Hierarchy
in P.A. Buckner,
8 July 1837.
Wagamatcook,"
34.
459, Number
in a 19th Century
of the Soil: Land and Labour
Cape
and David Frank, eds., The Acadiensis
Gail G. Campbell,
rg 1, Volume
3rd ed., (Fredericton
432,
1998), 263, 266-7; nsarm,
on a tract of Land reserved for the Indians of
"List of Trespassers
Letterbooks,
32. Rusty Bittermann,
Breton Community,"
Reader: Volume One,
Joseph Howe
3, "The Petition
459, Number
10, Volume
Island,"
rg
McGee,
"White
in the Northeast
1, Volume
Encroachment
on Micmac
Reserve
in Nova
Scotia,
on Indian Reserves,"
1May
Lands
(1974), 57-64.
431, Number
36, "Notice
To Trespassers
1837.
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
... now
barns
CENTURY / 79
existing,"
lamented H.W. Crawley,
Indian Commis
the
sioner for Cape Breton.
For
the
their
part,
numer
sent
Mi'kmaq
ous petitions
to a range
of colonial officials; one
drafted during
missive,
the St. Anne's Day cel
ebrations in 1860, called
for a "full survey" of all
"Indian
an
lands,"
W& Zvespasswson
,?,- ?.,.
inven
tory of the squatters "and
the damage
they have
and
immediate
done,"
to "secure...all
action
lands reserved
use
in
Cape
[our]
Breton."35
By that time, however,
the
colonial
govern
ment sought to solve the
problem not by evicting
the
transgressors,
some
had been on
of whom
the land for nearly three
decades, but by selling or
leasing the disputed land
back to the Europeans,
and holding the revenues
from these transactions
in trust for the "benefit
of the Indians." Limited
that
evidence
suggests
at least eleven Scottish
;
.Bniif<$ic9Ut
J!?|/i|S37,
$?&&toca^Uboim:J
mnteiFiSrt^^^'y*' ^h^tS^^J,
anyjofonteacceo^r toeitendMs j
M*?fr'? AlttrnoyGeneral,endpunishedwith the?>
j
Command,
SpBbXUe*^,
\:ttaSmBSWS(m,?yp>rsonibai3iTreiSBeen
|v-
I
j^^^g-8^
...
:>
-
g
::
'
V RUPERT D. GEORGE.
to Trespassers
1. "Notice
Illustration
1837.
Cape Breton,
RG1,VOLUME
36
NSARM,
431, NUMBER
on
Indian
Reserves/'
took the colonial government
up on its offer before the policy was
new
was created and Indian affairs
in
the
when
Dominion
1867,
suspended
became a federal responsibility.36
families
The challenges
35. Quoted
36. nsarm,
inMcGee,
to farming
"White
posed
Encroachment,"
by white
encroachment,
which
affected
60.
to Provincial
135, Samuel Fairbanks
rgI, Volume
431, Number
- Prices fixed
to this letter is a "List of Settlers at Middle
Rivers
Appended
House of Assembly."
i
WflERJ3A5?a nmnberof persons,amongwhomare-AnzwnleKay, GeorgeManror, |
1h*WMo4r
McKoy, MalcolmMcLeed,AlewinWMcDonalfc^rJea MeKeWi- Mal-;
AlexanderMcKeas'wandCMs MeKeoeie, nodertlie alltted aoihorUy
^ce1tnM&a:oIay,
"
i^naRSnfG^lon,
anaigafngtothemtotsfifthe reef or nettbtoarheedof i tract i7
I*ndwerrcd fcr the IndiansatWagamatceak,IntheCountyofCape-Brcioa,and under
Iapwlibo^^onwcofthfi
limitsof thesaidtract,bare' ffet?g3"theorielves
on, and arc
of.Landscomprised
wttjtfnthesaid reservation,thoughthe lines or ''
occopatkm
j oow fatthetee
; Dooadaof same,as tracedandnarked by erierof theGovernment,are clearlydiscern*
haveeaihrascertained,(os theyoughttohavedooek)
ible; and thoughthesepersons.ffitghl
by employinga Surveyor, theexactpositionofAc lotaintendedforthem;
And wfceiKot,Hisfixccllenry theLieuteoaaMjIoverrmr
isdeterminedtoprotectthe In
diansagainstall person*
who shallunjustlyandcruellymiirp or interfere
with theirright
fulproperty,whether situatedatWagamateeali
or at YYbycoconingh,
or any o*
^foresaid,
Uier parijittheWamtot t'?pc-Brct*i). ....
j
is
to
all
command
Uis?xeeHency, therefore, herebypleasedq?
persons abstainfromex*;
tendingtheirclearings,orcuttingwoodof anyaridon thesaid IndianIteserveatWagamat-:
cook,or onany other IndianItrserre.And NOTICEis hereby given, that,fromandalter
the 1stdayofJuly next, at)personssettledouas* IndianReserve, and nothavingobtained\
wilt-'
perarissieato romaiathereon,undertheHandahdSeal of the JUtentenant-Gorernor,
MImmediateprosecution;thatcrery per- i
r-aW
fe^tdfe&toe^seeh Reserve,underpenalty
\anftwtaasn.
HisJSxcetleneymay beploasedfoalUprtoremainon anyweb Iteserre,will be :
?
to
be fixed by His ;
b***Bt-<C*hoIndlans+lheamonot'thereof
! Ifr/Ttffr***"
1Wifofl
M<nUiDl
to re- -;
jl?MlWa^,.ojw,.paio,.HiM*BP
iOCItpttmu^UUExcellency tball -appoint
:eel**
Derm (wriiM^
be allowedto
fe-^t
Mmtiomtheir
a competent
extension
of
them,
Improvements,
andtiiattagnardJgainstaDy
will
to
be
take
a
person
sewedon every IndianIteserre, :
letfofallperiNMnow
employed bowmade
and t?tune/ aach
etearing
tberee*;^IIa?xevHeacy*?intentionbeing,notto I
sanctiontheirpermanentresidenceon the
Unman which theyhavefarfrodeJ,
butmerely i
b?il*** * *******
*******
Hn>*"" **S$uZ*wT*
^fcWftttfrmLaSyL
I
the
for
".
Indian
1862.
Secretary,
of
Committee
by
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/ LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 61
80
further by
nearly all ofthe newly laid reserves on the island, were compounded
land that was often difficult to clear, seeds and implements that were hard to
acquire, and potato crops that, as the island-wide famine of 1845-1851 made
then, Mi'kmaw
painfully clear, often fell prey to disease.37 Not surprisingly,
families tended to view subsistence agriculture as only one economic option,
opting to deploy their labour power in customary ways
seasonally and in
to
when the need arose, much
the government's dismay. "[T]hat
family units
gradual transition taking place among them from the unsettled habits of their
ancestors to that of permanent
residents of their land has suffered disadvanta
geous interruption," Crawley reported in 1848. As a result, they leave "their
in search of subsis
settlements
and diffuse over the country
agricultural
tence."38
as
Or,
Edward
George
Jean
put
to aMi'kmaw
it, referring
from
couple
Island who were deemed
"strong and healthy": "[they] would prefer
fishing to farming."39
From Chapel Island, some Mi'kmaw
in
families migrated
south to Arichat
on Cape Breton's south coast,
search of "subsistence." Located on IsleMadame
the island's cod fishery, serving as the home for Phillip
the town dominated
Robin and Company, one of three Channel
firms active in the
Island merchant
Chapel
cod fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Arichat boasted the largest population
of any settlement on the island, including Sydney, Cape Breton's administra
assortment of workers
tive capital. There, the Mi'kmaq
joined a multi-ethnic
-
Channel
brated
Islanders,
and
Acadians,
to the seasonal movement
of merchant
capital
and
Irish
-
in a pre-industrial
exchange.40
As
"labourers,"
cali
enterprise
to global
of fish and connected
Mi'kmaw
men
networks
perhaps
maintained
fishing premises, helped build shallops and schooners, and con
structed barrels for shipping dried fish - a craft that, according to one colonial
official, they came to dominate by the 1850s.41 Moreover,
given their history
as seafarers,
and knowledge
of inshore waters,
it is possible
that they crewed
see Robert Morgan,
the famine, generally,
(Wreck Cove, Cape Breton
Early Cape Breton
mg
in nsarm,
The impact of potato rot on the island's Mi'kmaq
is described
2000), 136-152.
111, "Year end report from Cape Breton with a strong appeal for more
15, Volume
3, Number
assistance
from Dodds,
Indian Commissioner,
1846."
37. On
38.
nsarm,
expenditure
mg
15, Volume
ofthe
legislature
4, Number
59, H.W. Crawley,
ofthe Cape
for the benefit
"Accounts
Breton
and vouchers
Indians,
showing
12 February
1848."
rg 5, Series P, Volume
Indians living within
14b, "An account ofthe
8a, Number
as taken on the 16th July 1841 - at the Indian Chapel Bras d'or Lake
of Richmond
the County
of St. Ann's Day," 26 July 1841.
being the Anniversary
39. nsarm,
to Outport:
40. Rosemary
E. Ommer, From Outpost
1767-1886
Cod Fishery,
1991).
(Montreal, Kingston
41.
nsarm,
East Arm
Analysis
of the Jersey-Gasp
e
from "Indians on the North
Shore ofthe
431, Number
101, Petition
rg 1, Volume
Bras Dor, County
of Cape Breton...1851
431,
[?]";nsarm,
to Crawley,
13 February
1852." According
"Crawley to Joseph Howe,
"They
at the coopering
Island
business
and supply all the trade in this part ofthe
rgI, Volume
ofthe
Great
62.5, H.W.
are expert workmen
with fish casks...."
Number
A Structural
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 81
fishing and coastal vessels as well. A petition sent to the colonial government
in 1864, in which the "Indians near St. Peter's" state that they are "well versed
in the art of seine hauling," appears to support this speculation.42 That the
men who supplied
of Mi'kmaw
Clerk of the Peace made specific mention
branches and birch bark for the fishery, which were used to dry salted fish,
suggests that they were a part ofthe salting and curing process, an occupation
women might
that Mi'kmaw
How
-
Mi'kmaw
have undertaken
-
were
workers
paid
as well.
in cash,
either
credit,
or
provisions
to ascertain. Men from the Channel
Islands, who came to Cape
a
contract
Breton under
with
firm, worked on sizable fish
large merchant
were
tasks
where
settlements
specialized,
processing
clearly defined, and
is difficult
undertaken
under
the
of
supervision
overseers;
company
workers
migrant
were paid in cash upon the completion of their contracts. In contrast, resident
workers were usually employed by local "planters"
people who possessed
their own boats and small-scale storage and processing
sheds, and exchanged
for credit or provisions.
their catch with
local or international merchants
Island colleagues,
than their Channel
independent, and less specialized
local workers were typically paid in provisions, whether they worked on land,
sea, or both.43 "Laborers" in the view of the Clerk of the Peace, the Mi'kmaq
were likely remunerated
in kind, not cash, an assessment
supported by a scrap
of evidence gleaned from the account books of Lawrence Kavanagh, a local
a substantial
interest in the
merchant
based out of St. Peter's who possessed
cod fishery at Arichat, providing "sundry articles and provisions"; "8 eel spears
to Indians," reads one entry in his ledger dated 1832.44
knew exactly what to do with eight eel spears, for they had
The Mi'kmaq
fished in the island's rivers and inshore waters for a long, long time. Before
and after the arrival of Europeans,
fishing was as important as hunting to the
More
seasonal
Mi'kmaq's
rounds
of
resource
gathering.45
French
missionaries
and
colonial officials on Cape Breton during the early-to-mid-18th
century under
stood this fact, and thus located their missions near the Mi'kmaq's
customary
ringed the Bras d'Or Lake; the island's reserves, which
fishing sites, which
42. Olive Dickason
in Louisbourg
the Mi'kmaq's
skills as mariners
and the Indians:
highlights
A Study in Imperial Race Relations,
1713-1760
is found
(Ottawa 1976), 46, 75-77. The petition
rg 1, Volume
in nsarm,
431, Number
142, "Micmac near St. Peter's to Lt. Gov. McDonnell,
October
1864."
43. Hornsby,
44.
nsarm,
Nineteenth-Century
mg
3, V301-304,
Cape Breton,
"Kavanagh
Account
4-15.
Books,
St. Peter's, Nova
Scotia,
1817-1824,"
page 205.
45.
Janet E. Chute,
McNab,
100. My
in the Maritimes:
in David T.
A Historical
Overview,"
"Mi'kmaq Fishing
in Canadian
ed., Earth, Water, Air, and Fire: Studies
1998),
(Waterloo
Ethnohistory
in this paragraph
is drawn largely from Chute's article. On the seasonal
argument
of fishing see Frances L. Stewart,
"Seasonal Movements
of Indians in Acadia
Documents
and Vertebrate
Faunal Remains
from Archaeological
by Historical
in the Northeast
38 (Fall 1989), 55-75.
Sites," Man
dynamics
Evidenced
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as
TRAVAIL
61
82 / LABOUR/LE
were
a century
about
created
later, were
situated
similarly
for
reasons.
similar
subsistence economy, and imbued with deep spiritual
Critical to theMi'kmaq's
role in trade
and political import, fish and sea mammals
played only amodest
to
at
when
least
the
British
and
with
relations
French,
compared
fur-bearing
in the cod
that the Mi'kmaq
animals.46 There is no evidence
participated
between
1713
at
Fortress
of
the
French
Louisbourg
stronghold
fishery centred
as
two
between
the
circulated
fish
have
and 1758, although
groups
may
part
from the commercial
somewhat
of gift-giving.47 Removed
of the diplomacy
incentives of mercantilism,
fishing was thus a zone of relatively autonomous
1700s - a status reinforced
activity for the Mi'kmaq well into the mid-to-late
use of fishing materials
by the continued
to European,
opposed
as
largely from indigenous,
derived
resources.48
as population
and Scottish
tied to the Planter, Loyalist,
pressures
migrations mounted,
fishing, like hunting and trapping, became severely cir
"The Population and Improvements
cumscribed.
occupy
by their Conquerors
the Rivers and Forests that were the sources of their means of subsistence,"
49
of Indians Affairs for Nova Scotia reported in 1808.
the Superintendent
the mid-to-late-19th
century in Cape Breton, conflicts between
Throughout
flared up around the Bras d'Or Lake and
natives and newcomers occasionally
- "the Indians have been
River
the
system
giving trouble to the
Margaree
along
new settlers" - as immigrants established farms and mills or sought access to
Yet
spawning fish.50 "You have put ships and steamboats upon the water and they
Indians" in
scare away the fish," stated the "Chiefs and Captains ofthe Micmac
1849.
"You
have
dams
made
across
the
rivers,
so
that
salmon
cannot
go up,
and
your laws will not let us spear them. As our game and fish are nearly gone and
incentives
that "commercial
in the Maritimes,"
Chute stresses
In "Mi'kmaq Fishing
likely
at a fairly early date," p. 96.1 don't doubt her basic point,
fishing practices
permeated Mi'kmaq
- based on the evidence
she presents
quite small
activity appears
only that this commercial
to
the
fur
trade.
compared
46.
47. B.A. Balcolm,
and William
"The Fishermen
Review
in Eric Krause, Carol Corbin,
1713-1758,"
Fishery of He Royale,
eds., Aspects
(Sydney 1995), 169-97; A.J.B. Johnston,
of Louisbourg
and Origins," Nova Scotia Historical
of 18th Century Cape Breton: Numbers
"The Cod
O'Shea,
9:1 (1989), 62-72.1
am indebted
to Kenneth
Donovan
for the final point
about
fish and
gift-giving.
were not
96. This is not to say that Europeans
in the Maritimes,"
"Mi'kmaq Fishing
in the
to B.A. Balcolm,
itwas not uncommon
in the Mi'kmaw
fishery at all. According
fishermen with
to provide Mi'kmaw
1720s and 30s for French officials at Fortress Louisbourg
in return, seal oil for the winter.
boats to hunt seals on the Magdalen
Islands, and to receive,
at Fortress Louisbourg,
"The Mi'kmaq
and Louisbourg,"
See Balcolm,
guide for interpreters
48. Chute,
involved
revised
49.
edition,
nsarm,
50. nsarm,
Charles
rg
2006,
on file at Fortress
1, Volume
Louisbourg.
145, G.H. Monk
to George
Provost,
23 April
854, Petition
Number
Cape Breton Island, 1787-1843,
from "Margaree
Inhabitants,"
624, Petition
1812; Number
Land Petitions,
McNab,
430, Number
1808.
from
1810.
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
we
cannot
sell
the
articles
we
make,
we
have
to make
resolved
CENTURY / 83
farms."51
Many
on the island, of course, did pursue agriculture, but others sought to insert
into the European-controlled
themselves
fishery, as labourers (as at Arichat)
or as fishermen
in their own right. Writing
to the colonial government
in
a
42
100
families
from
Island
"seine
of
fathoms
1864,
Chapel
requested
long."
reliable access to their customary hunting and fishing grounds, and
it extremely difficult to "support themselves and their families,
found
having
as the coopering business has become
limited," they hoped to make a "com
fortable living" in the commercial
reside near the
fishery. "[We] principally
seaboard where fish can be taken in abundance." Their appeal, however, was
never fulfilled.52
Without
to Arichat provided an oppor
For Mi'kmaw women, the seasonal migration
a
to
sell
income
them
that supplemented
the
baskets, earning
meagre
tunity
1,2, and 3).53
(see Photographs
goods likely received by their male counterparts
"The Squaws sit for hours and days in their smoky wigwams, making baskets, or
ornamental
trifles, generally sort of mosaic work, inmoose hair or quills ofthe
Nova Scotian porcupine, stained of various colours, and worked upon a shell of
in 1830.54 Freighted
William Moorsom
birch bark," wrote soldier-turned-writer
with an ugly sense of cultural superiority, Moorsom's
observation nevertheless
hints at the gendered division of labour that underpinned
the production and
sale of baskets and "ornamental trifles": both dimensions were monopolized
by
Mi'kmaw women, who learned their skills from their mothers. They, and not
their
male
were
counterparts,
the
in this
artisans
context,
specific
transform
- to borrow from the late Mi'kmaw
- into
poet Rita Joe
ing "ash and maple"
"intricate designs, carefully woven, nothing crude, perfection binding."55 In
search of "a high price and ready sale," Mi'kmaw women
travelled far from
to hawk their wares. The routes from Eskasoni to
their home communities
board
Sydney, "where [in the 1850s and 60s] the squaws find ready markets...on
the steamers which touch Sydney for coal," and from Chapel Island to Arichat,
rg 5, Series P, Volume
45, Number
of Nova Scotia for aid to make
51. nsarm,
Micmac
Indians
rg
52. nsarm,
162, Petition ofthe
1849.
"Chiefs
and Captains
ofthe
farms,"
from "Indians near St. Peter's in the County
75, Petition
1864. The appeal for a "comfortable
living" echoes down to the his
were granted the
toric Supreme Court decision
in R. v.Marshall
in 1999, in which
the Mi'kmaq
in the commercial
livelihood"
right to earn a "moderate
(regulated)
fishery.
1, Volume
53. Bunny McBride
54. William
431, Number
17 October
of Richmond,"
and Harald
S.Moorsom,
Prins, Our Lives
Letters from Nova
1830),
55. Rita
Joe, Poems of Rita Joe (Halifax
in the New World: Maritime
Newhouse,
Aboriginal
Comprising
3-23.
(Halifax
1990),
Sketches
of a Young Country
112-3.
(London
Newcomers
in Our Hands
Scotia:
1978), 23. See also Jane L. Cook,
Furniture
and the Interaction
"Natives
and
of Cultures,"
Cara Voyageur,
in Plain Sight: Contributions
and Dan Beaver, eds., Hidden
(Toronto 2005), 115-135.
People to Canadian
Identity and Culture
in David
of
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84
/ LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 61
1. Mi'kmaw
Photo
the King's
at
people
settlement,
1880.
Breton,
Road
Cape
Sydney,
Note the barrel
and wood
behind
the man.
shavings
BEATON
CAPEBRETON
INSTITUTE,
UNIVERSITY,
HAROLD
MEDJUICK
COLLECTION:
PHOTO
78-710-2460
were
and
horse
trav
well
particularly
by foot,
elled
and
canoe,
When
wagon.56
the railroad
linked Cape
Breton to the Nova Scotia
mainland
the
decades
radius
ment
of
later,
widened
to
Near
move
this
further.57
or
home
far
away,
the generosity
of friends
and family, who provided
food,
the
way,
success
along
to the
Payment
was
flour,
tea,
sugar,
and
molasses,
cloth
fetching
a basket
of
repeat
who were
in
company
was
critical
a woman's
so,
sojourn;
basket-selling
too, were
out
and
shelter,
customers,
purposely
a
given
sought
locale.58
in cash and kind
readily
or two.59
with
accepted,
56. Tennyson,
Some Account
141; Richard Brown, History
Impressions,
ofthe Island of Cape Breton, with
and Settlement
ofthe Discovery
of Canada, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland
ed., "Annie and John Battiste: A Mi'kmaq
(London 1869), 459; Ronald Caplan,
Family History,"
in Cape Breton Works
The importance
of Sydney to
(Wreck Cove, Cape Breton 1996), 163-184.
rg 1, Volume
Mi'kmaw
families
from Eskasoni
is hinted at in nsarm,
431, Number
48, H.W.
Crawley
to Joseph Howe,
57. This
took place in 1891. My thanks
Calder,,4//A6oW
(Antigonish
William
58. Caplan,
22 May
ed., "Annie and
1848.
to Don MacGillivray
1974), 127-129.
John Battiste,"
for digging
up this date.
See also
163-184.
59. McBride
and Prins, Our Lives in Our Hands,
11. The importance
ofthe
"doorstep" economy
women
similar patterns of employment
resembles
in the
for aboriginal women
in the mid-to-late-19th
Pacific Northwest
"Between Doorstep
century. See Carol Williams,
to Mi'kmaw
Barter
and Industrial Wages:
Economy
in Coastal
Laborers
British Columbia,
eds., Native
Being,
Being Native:
and Adaptability
of Coast Salish Female
Mobility
inMark B. Spencer and Lucretia Scoufos,
1858-1890,"
ofthe Fifth Native
Identity and Difference
Proceedings
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J.
THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
Photo
2. This
picture
was
taken
at the
same
time
as Photo
1 by the
same
CENTURY / 85
(unknown)
photographer. On the back of this image is the caption: "TheMicmac Elite."
CAPEBRETON
PHOTO
COLLECTION:
BEATON
HAROLD
MEDJUICK
78-711 -2461
INSTITUTE,
UNIVERSITY,
an additional
same series as Photos
1 and 2, this image reveals
3. Part ofthe
at the King's Road
resided
that more
than one family
"wigwam"
suggesting
at this time.
settlement
COLLECTION:
CAPEBRETON
HAROLD
MEDJUICK
PHOTO
BEATON
78-712-2462
INSTITUTE,
UNIVERSITY,
Photo
women
a reputa
also possessed
Regarded as skilled workers, Mi'kmaw
as
a
In late July 1860,
tion
hard bargainers.
small group of Mi'kmaw
people
American
Symposium
(Durant, Oklahoma
2005),
16-27.
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86 / LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 61
-
women
and
-
children
were
at the
gathered
seasonal
"Indian
encampment"
located on the north side of the entrance of Sydney Harbour, near Sydney
Mines. Their families and extended families had left "North Bar" earlier that
month
for Chapel Island for the "great annual festival of St. Anne," leaving a
few
community
who
members,
were
too
perhaps
or
old
too
to make
young
the
a large group of
trip, behind. One afternoon,
- its
at
the
camp
up
spokesperson
asking if
wanted to meet the Prince ofWales, who was
en route from St. Johns to Halifax as part of a
non-Aboriginal
people turned
of
the
any
camp's inhabitants
in Sydney for a brief visit while
grand royal tour. "The squaws,
for which many of them are distinguished,
with natural politeness
expressed
their pleasure at seeing the Prince," one royal watcher observed at the time,
of
"[They] had the satisfaction of disposing
incredulously:
adding, somewhat
some trifling articles of their own at fabulous prices."60 Significantly,
not all
transactions were so fabulous; selling baskets and quillwork could be danger
ous.
evidence
Fragmentary
that
suggests
some
women
Mi'kmaw
were
exposed
to smallpox from their European customers while peddling their wares door
to see if infection followed the initial exposure was no doubt
to door. Waiting
and her family - all of whom were now
stressful on the individual woman
at risk
for the Mi'kmaq
and Europeans
alike knew that smallpox led to a
fever,
blazing
and
quarantine,
usually
death.61
to labouring in the commercial
fishery and craft production,
the Mi'kmaq
rented pieces of land to white tenants, sold "wood whenever
and acted as guides for surveyors, hunters,
they [could] find an opportunity,"
in 1849, CH. Harrington,
officials.62 Travelling
travellers, and government
an aspiring merchant,
"engaged a canoe and two Indians" from the "Indian
settlement
[on] the Bras D'Or Lake" to take him from St. Peters to Sydney, a
In addition
he
distance,
of
stated,
about
"70 miles."63
Moving
north-east
from
Eskasoni
toward Blackett's Lake and Sydney River, the group "threaded the most intri
cate and tortuous part of the channel" - the aboriginal guides sleeping and
paddling the entire way. About "12miles" from their destination, Harrington
noted, "we unloaded and one of the Indians took my trunk on his back, the
the Prince of Wales
turned up in
Brown, History
of the Island of Cape Breton, 461. When
to become
the local Mi'kmaq
asked for assistance
farmers. See Jennifer Reid,
Encounter:
in Acadia,
1700-1867
British and Mi'kmaq
(Ottawa
Myth,
Symbol, and Colonial
The 1860 Visit of the
1995), 83. The royal visit is the subject of Ian Radforth, Royal Spectacle:
60.
Charlottetown,
Prince
of Wales
to Canada
ed., "Annie
61. Caplan,
and
the United
and John Battiste:
States
(Toronto
A Mi'kmaq
2004).
Family History,"
163-184.
rg 1,Volume
to
of land see nsarm,
431, Number
99, Samuel Fairbanks
see lac, rg 10, Volume
12 August
459, Number
1858; for selling of wood
Secretary,
to Secretary
of State (Canada), 3 April 1868.
6, Fairbanks
62.
For renting
Provincial
63.
bi-cbu,
to Sarah, 6 September
(hc), mg 12, 3A, CH. Harrington
as guides can be found in Jeanette McDonald,
to the Mi'kmaq
working
of the Maragrees,"
(ba Essay, St. Francis Xavier,
1965), 3. That essay can be found at:
1849. Another
Harrington
reference
"AHistory
bi-cbu, Reports
(Towns
Collection
and Villages),
#78-199-669.
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 87
other took the canoe on his head, & thus we crossed the portage three miles
...& from there to Sydney."64 John G. Marshall,
"chief justice of the courts of
common pleas" in Nova Scotia between 1823 and 1841, had a similar experi
ence while travelling the island as part of his judicial circuit. "Large portions
in Indian canoes," he recounted
in a short
of my journeys were performed
whale
of
the
the
of
the night,
"I
sometimes
greater part
passed
monograph.
- and to
to
his
lessen
chilliness"
give
aboriginal guide,
paddling
occasionally
case
in this
who
a
was
tired
"poor,
a well-deserved
squaw,"
break.65
indigenous families hunted on a seasonal basis. "The Indians are con
from one part of the Island to the other," A.W Desbarres, the
tinually wandering
for
General
Cape Breton, observed in 1818. "[T]hey transport them
Attorney
selves along the shore in canoes; their baggage usually consists of a blanket, a
Other
a
axe...and
and
musket,
large
collected."66 ForMi'kmaw
a source
remained
of
iron
families
food
peltry...they
have
in the 1840s and 1850s, fur-bearing
animals
to a
and,
for
pot
lesser
the
also
cooking;
extent,
clothing;
evi
fragmentary
sold
observation,
suggests that pelts were occasionally
as
the
of
the
fur
trade
well.
financial gain
heyday
region's
Although
like Desbarress
dence,
for modest
was
long
small
over,
fur
of
quantities
-
bear,
elk, moose,
caribou,
deer,
beaver,
muskrat, and fox were still being exported from Cape Breton to Halifax and
on
to Europe between 1788 and 1791, continuing an economic endeavour
then
which had persisted on the island throughout the French regime.67 In the early
decades of the 19th century, thousands of Nova Scotia pelts, some of which
from the island, were shipped overseas.68 No doubt dominated by poor
on the island too, the
circumstances
settlers, who faced dire material
of Cape Breton, but
fur trade also included the Mi'kmaq
early-19th-century
only in a limited way. As B.W.A. Sleigh, an officer in the British Army sta
in 1846: "I purchased a couple of red foxes from
tioned in Sydney, recounted
were
white
an
Indian....
Breton
Cape
there
recompense,
in these
abounds
are
a
good
many
black
destructive
foxes
about,
animals;
but,
whose
skins
as a
slight
are most
valuable, and fetch a high price in the Halifax market."69 Sleigh did not know it,
the collection of "peltry" was orchestrated
communities
but within Mi'kmaw
- a
a
territory
sophisticated method of regu
system"
"family
hunting
through
bi-cbu,
hc, mg
65. Quoted
in A.A.
64.
(Antingonish
12, 3A, Harrington
Johnston,
1971), 26.
66. Quoted
in Tennyson,
67. Balcolm
and Johnston,
A History
to Sarah,
6 September
of the Catholic
Impressions
of Cape Breton,
"Missions
to the Mi'kmaq,"
Church
1849.
in Eastern
Nova
Scotia,
Vol.
81.
115-140.
Poor Settlers, and the Nova Scotia Fur Trade, 1783-1853,"
"The Mi'kmaq,
at the 82nd meeting
Historical
Dalhousie
of the Canadian
Association,
presented
2003.
University,
68.
Julian Gwyn,
paper
69. Quoted
in Tennyson,
Impressions
of Cape Breton,
133-34.
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II,
TRAVAIL
61
88 / LABOUR/LE
lating access
similar
from
to, and the dimensions
that
practices
of, specific hunting
contact
pre-dated
with
that evolved
grounds
Europeans.70
of this system are evident in the numerous
filed by
Glimpses
petitions
over
Mi'kmaw
"Chiefs" and "Captains," some of whom
this
likely presided
sensitive
that
the
of
white
conduct
calculus,
protested
complex ecologically
hunters. Not only did Europeans over-hunt moose,
they argued, but they did
so with dogs, killed males and females indiscriminately,
and did not fully use
our people an
the animals' remains. "The flesh of the Moose
afforded
always
... when all other means of
of
food
support failed. [Now]
important supply
a part of the flesh was left in the woods," read one missive presented
to the
of
and
beaver
in
1848.
"The
skins
the
Moose, Cariboo,
Legislative Assembly
were warm [?] to our bodies. We had plenty of good land.We worshipped
the
Great Spirit," echoed another dated 1850. "But your people had not enough
kill the
land....The moose yards of our fathers, where are they? Now whitemen
moose
and leave their flesh in the woods."71 Such waste, the petitions suggest,
ran counter to the Mi'kmaq's
"cultural emphasis on balance and responsibil
- an
that was deeply lodged in the
ity toward the natural world"
emphasis
family hunting territory system.72 That several "Chiefs" and "Captains" ended
their petitions not just with their signatures, but with their "marks" - cross,
the persistence
of the territory
hatchet, canoe, paddle, spear
highlights
group as well as
system further: each symbol denoted a particular Mi'kmaw
the size and location of their historic hunting ground.73 In a context shaped
decisively by the presence of European settlers and colonial "Indian" policy,
the boundaries of, and access
the Mi'kmaq used an older method of delimiting
to, specific hunting grounds, thereby eluding, if only in a partial and limited
of the reserve system and
and encaging geographies
way, the encompassing
of which they were a part.
the wider policy of assimilation
In addition to hunting, Mi'kmaw
families at mid-century
supported them
local officials for "Indian meal," seed potatoes, blankets,
selves by pressing
coats,
and,
in some
instances,
cash.
From
the
perspective
of H.W,
Crawley,
who
70. Janet Chute,
to the Understanding
"Frank G. Speck's Contributions
of Mi'kmaq
Land Use,
to note
and Land Management,"
46:3 (1999), 481-539.
It is important
Ethnohistory
Leadership,
on this
here that Speck's contentions
see, for
specific subject have been highly controversial;
of the debate in The Conflict
and Eastern
example, Alfred G. Bailey's summary
of European
1504-1700:
A Study in Canadian
Civilization
Cultures,
(Toronto 1969), xviii-xxii.
Algonkian
to John Reid for bringing
this source to my attention.
Thanks
mg 15, Volume
57, "Petition of the chiefs of the Indians to prevent
4, Number
5 February
of moose
their salmon fisheries,"
the hunting
1848; rg 5,
by dogs and to preserve
of the Micmac
Volume
Indians of Nova
162, "Petition of the chiefs and captains
45, Number
1849 [?].
Scotia for aid to make farms," 8 February
71. nsarm,
72.
The quoted
73. On
Cultural
phrase
this point
appears
see Marie
Consequences
Ann
of Micmac
in Chute,
Battiste,
"Frank G. Speck's
"An Historical
Literacy,"
Contributions,"
506.
of the Social
Investigation
PhD dissertation,
Stanford University,
and
1983,
52-79.
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 89
surveyed the island's Indian affairs from the comfort of Sydney, the provision
of "supplies" was risky business, and thus was done "with a view of affording
to the Indians a motive
for exertion." Not surprisingly,
then, he appears to
have prioritized
those who, in his judgement, were the deserving poor: "to
two old women," "paid widow," and "cash to Joseph, a sick Indian," read one of
his account books. "Cash toMary Ann, an old Squaw," "cash to blind Squaw,"
stated another. Those who did not fit this profile
pur
aged, sick, female
chased "the remaining articles." In this way, Crawley reported in 1852, "the
welfare of these people will be promoted and their habits of industry encour
aged." Yet what to this official was "gratuitous relief" was to theMi'kmaq
simply
their due. Drawing on their past experiences
the 18th century, in which gifts were given
words,
Crawley's
"entertained"
the
"notion"
with the French and British in
in exchange for loyalty, they, in
an
that
"annual
tribute
of
provi
sions and clothing" was "their right" - a sentiment
that persisted amongst
the Mi'kmaq,
and frustrated state officials, into the 1860s.74 "[Blankets and
[Indians], having particu
coats] are distribute^]
amongst the most destitute
lar regard to the sick and the aged," observed the Indian Commissioner
for
to the number of
Nova Scotia in 1868. "The quantity
is small in proportion
Indians, all of whom think themselves entitled to a share."75
in Sydney for relief, where, as several
Those who did not present themselves
families knew well, smallpox was "introduced by the Emigrant
ships," placed their demands before the state from a distance: at least 38
the colonial capital, between 1819 to
separate petitions poured into Halifax,
1867.76 Accustomed
to, and masters of, the face-to-face diplomacy of the 18th
century, inwhich their positions were set before the British and French orally,
use of petitions, a written form, makes manifest
not only the
the Mi'kmaq's
narrow range of political options available to them in the early-to-mid-19th
century, but, importantly, a capacity to adapt an older political style to a new
Mi'kmaw
set of circumstances.77
In words and phrases that would not have been out of
a
at
in 1726 or 1761, several quite lengthy Mi'kmaw
treaty negotiation
place
a
discourse
of deference, duty, and protection - often laced
petitions deployed
74. nsarm,
75.
rg
lac,
rgI, Volume
10, Volume
431, Number
459, Number
to Secretary
6, Fairbanks
some
76. This number
to Joseph Howe,
62.5, H.W. Crawley
Gould
of State
and Semple
(Canada),
To this total of 29,1 have
government
between
added
an additional
1819 and 1867. Some
nine
of these
petitions,
additional
of Cape Breton on their own or as part of a wider
Mi'kmaq
from the Nova Scotia mainland.
77. This point is also made
and Passamaquoddy
1999. On the orality
Maine,
Maliseet
Trial,
which
nine
coalition
3 April
1852.
1868.
state
that by 1821 the
for land on the Island from
(38) requires
explanation.
"no fewer than fourteen petitions
had received
government
in the same area."
the Indians as well as demand
for 15 tickets of location
colonial
13 February
were
(See Our Land, 48).
sent to the colonial
petitions were
that included
sent by the
the Mi'kmaq
inMicah
A. Pawling,
Survival: The
"Petitions, Kin, and Cultural
in
MA
the
Nineteenth
of
thesis,
Peoples
Century,"
University
see Wicken, Mi'kmaq
in the 18th century
of diplomacy
Treaties on
3-16.
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90
/ LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 61
- that underscored
the
historical,
familial, and spiritual metaphors
to
British
had
the
that
the
island's
unshakeable
obligation
indigenous people.
Indians of Cape Breton,"
"[0]n behalf of themselves, and of the other Micmac
a petition sent to the colonial government
in 1860 began. "Aborigines of that
now
in
continent
Nova
Scotia
called
of
the
part
by means of treaties made
with
former days with their forefathers by the British Government
become British
as
to her Majesty
while
due
and
such, they acknowledge
allegiance
subjects,
would
claim
the
Queen Victoria; they
rights, privileges
respectfully, yet firmly
such claims to legal
and the protections
given to British subjects."78 Often
status were followed by specific objections
related to land and white settle
ment and detailed demands
for better seed, tools, coats, blankets, and rifles
- items that Mi'kmaw
families from Cape Breton called for on numerous
occasions
1853 and 1859.79
between
intermediary
of rights, privileges,
and protections makes obvious
of English law, it also suggests that an
rigorous understanding
- someone with the
ability to listen carefully to the Mi'kmaq's
concerns
express
While
the language
the Mi'kmaq's
and
in the
involved
chant,
other
process,
petitioning
Kavanagh,
local
Indians of Bras D'or" in petitioning
at Chapel
Island
a
"whereon...is
on
persuasively
some
occasions.
of the Nova
member
two
with
along
and
clearly
at least
and future Catholic
farmer,
Lawrence
concerns
those
assisted
priests,
the colonial
for
residence
a
In
Scotia
"Peter
was
mer
1819,
legislature
Tomah...and
government
Years
priest."80
-
in writing
for the land
in
later
the
same locale, Father Julien Courteau, who was assigned to the nearby Catholic
to be
mission of L'Ardoise in 1841 and considered by the colonial government
in
"most in communication
with the Indians," supported Mi'kmaq
petitions
or not Courteau
is unclear.
1848, 1851, and 1867.81Whether
spoke Mi'kmaq
"That your petitioners
enjoy the rights and privileges of British subjects we
are
now
78. nsarm,
few
in number,
rg 5, Volume
to Indians
80. nsarm,
Lawrence
3, Number
remnant
rgI, Volume
431, Number
of
162, "Petition
the intrusions...,"
Micmacs)...concerning
79. nsarm,
the
the Micmac
from Francis
Indians
Tomma
once
(Head Chief
a power
of the
12 July 1860.
75, "Account
of great
coats,
blankets,
and muskets
issues
in 1853."
Island, 1787-1843,
Cape Breton
for the Indians in Bras d'or Lake."
Land Petitions,
& Others
Number
2157,
"Kavanagh,
on Courteau,
see Johnston, A History
Church,
ofthe Catholic
from the The Casket, 28 May
#39, clipping
(Alex D.) Scrapbook
and Acadian
Traditions
Chiasson,
1936; Anselme
(Wreck Cove, Cape
Cheticamp:
History
Breton
from Lower Canada, Courteau
served the Catholic mission
1998), 97-100. Originally
an Acadian
on the island, between
in Cheticamp,
1826 and 1841. For Courteau's
community
81.
For biographical
238; bi-cbu,
54-59,
information
MacLean
see nsarm,
of J.Courteau,
rg5, Volume
45, Number
89, petition
support of Mi'kmaq
petitions,
... on the
8 February
Indians
431, Number
61, "The Petition ofthe Undersigned
1848; Volume
North
Shore ofthe East Arm ofthe Great Bras Dor," 1851, signed by Courteau;
lac, rg 10,
to S. Fairbanks,
1867.
Volume
459, frame 341-2,
J.Courteau
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 91
a sequestered part of the East Arm of the Brasdor
ful tribe occupying
the
Courteau-assisted
[Eskasoni]," began
epistle of 1851:
Your
Petitioners
now
our
also
have
erected
are
in imitation
of the Scotch who
dwellings
our families
the soil. We
have
by cultivating
we assemble
to praise
the Lord of Hosts,
the
comfortable
are maintaining
of worship
in which
and
neighbours
a house
erected
called
are
in whom we live and move.
Your Excellency's
and giver of all things
petitioners
we had often
to the failure of the crops all over the Province
to
in number
and owing
in all its various
time after time stared us in the face. The
famine
forms which
combat with
maker
few
ermine
and other
of the woods
inhabitants
for some time past disappeared
from being
and now no resources
left for
by the whites
the soil. Being yet backward
in husbandry
consume
we purchase
and the remainder
[from?]
have
or driven
from their natural
haunts
destroyed
Your Excellency's
but by cultivating
petitioners
we
can hardly
raise more
than
... Your
coopering.
Excellency's
us.
will be granted
half we
therefore
petitioners
[ask?] that
sum
the
of
fifty pounds
That Peter Tomah and "other Indians" called upon local clergy for political
assistance
is not surprising given the Mi'kmaq's
long history with Christianity
- and the near continuous
in
1600s
the
presence of Catholic
beginning
early
communities
missionaries
the
island's
among
indigenous
during the French
when
and
defined
rela
ceremony, gift-giving,
Regime,
religion
diplomatic
not only made working with
tions.82 This lengthy exposure to Christianity
for the Mi'kmaq,
but it provided some writers with
local priests a possibility
a religious
"Lord",
petitioner
gave
drive
us
the
off,
we
and
their grievances.
the
"woods,
and itwas
nation
the Mi'kmaq
man
"the white
continued,
in 1853,
argued
"God blessed"
everyone.
to express
in and through which
discourse
one
perish,
rivers,
and
The
seas"
to
"great." Since then, he
we
every
perish
day.
...
You think all this right?" Itwasn't, of course, from the petitioner's perspective.
One day, he concluded, turning his gaze from the past to the future, the "Lord"
will come again and "know who be right."83
When
George
Jean arrived at Chapel Island in July, 1841, to com
of the "Indians'" "habits" and "general characteristics,"
the
Edward
plete his inventory
see James Sakej Youngblood
The
Henderson,
long encounter with Catholicism,
Ta'n Teli-ktlamsitasit
Concordat
(Halifax 1997) and Angela Robinson
(Ways of
in Eskasoni, Nova Scotia
of mis
(Toronto 2005). On the presence
Believing): Mi'kmaw
Religion
sionaries
in Cape Breton see Johnston, Storied Shores, appendices
C and D, 134-5.
82. On
this
Mikmaw
83. nsarm,
rg 5, Series
Scotia," 3 March
sure movement
sought
former
P, Volume
1853. This
language
46, number
202,
echoes
that ofthe
"Petition
True
in mid-17th-century
the abolition
ofthe Micmac
Indians
of Nova
fought the enclo
in the United
States, who
Levellers,
who
and black radicals
England,
after the American
Revolution.
On the
during and immediately
in England
ed., A Radical Reader: The Struggle for Change
Hampton,
for the latter see Manisha
Sinha, "To cast just obliquy' on Oppressors:
of slavery
see Christopher
(London 1984), 212-3;
in the Age
Black Radicalism
2007), 151.
of Revolution,"
William
and Mary
Quarterly
LXIV1
(January
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92 / LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 61
to provide
refused
Mi'kmaq
a political
structure
and
information,
any
an
convened
"assemblage,"
to consider
gatherings
matters
in
17th
centuries.
the
and
18th
"Evil-minded
important
persons," Jean
true tenor of my [work]."84Although
"[were] misrepresenting...the
complained,
to the census-taker was brief, the Mi'kmaq's
to
this opposition
capitulation
that resembled
the seasonal
used
of which it
government policy, and the wider pressures of white encroachment
was a part, was not complete. At the same time that Jean was filling in his rows
in honour of
and columns,
they were enjoying St. Anne's Day, a celebration
in which hundreds of people gathered to socialize,
the Virgin Mary's mother
discuss politics, and attend religious services. A blend of aboriginal spirituality
and Catholicism,
the annual ritual was not only enjoyable, but helped reaffirm
bands. A similar combination
the bonds between Mi'kmaw
new
the material
formed
of Mi'kmaw
basis
society
at
ofthe
old and the
as
mid-century
a cus
tomary and intimately experienced pattern of attaining resources was adapted
to a newer and less understood
context of occupational
pluralism. That this
transition was taking place at the same time that St. Anne's Day was assuming
a new vitality is significant. The celebration, amoment
in which the "spiritual
and social realms" of everyday life were drawn closer together, helped to reaf
firm their patterns of living and language, and, in doing so, braced Mi'kmaw
families for the difficult economic
choices that lay before them.85 Moreover,
that they were able to piece together a meagre
livelihood at all ensured that
in the first place. Cultural and material
they were able to hold the celebration
-
resources
deflect
as
on
displayed
colonialism's
heavy
money they can collect
to display a little finery
nalist and government
Within
this pattern
a
undertook
of
variety
that
-
special
were
day
"For months
pressures.
necessary
before,
they
to engage
and
save
all the
from the sale of baskets, tubs, and fancy work in order
for this grand event ofthe year," John Bourinot, a jour
in 1867.86
official from Sydney, recounted
of adaptation and survival, Mi'kmaw men and women
economic
roles,
on
depending
the
particular
occupa
Out in the fields, men and women planted and harvested
the
potato crop. In the commercial fishery, the men worked as labourers and the
if they were not employed salting and drying the day's catch, sold their
women,
in town. In the forests, entire families pursued moose and other
work"
"handy
men
in
the seasonal encampments
the
hunted; the women organized
game:
tional context.
their absence;
and both processed
the catch
for personal
consumption
and
or not this "assemblage"
the Mi'kmaq
from Chapel
Island, specifi
represented
to oppose
is how the decision
is unclear; equally obscure
the
cally, or Cape Breton, generally,
census was made. See Wicken, Mi'kmaq
Treaties on Trial, 40-58,
and Chute,
"Frank G. Speck's
494-495.
section of the cen
The quotation
from Jean is in the "Recapitulation"
Contributions,"
84. Whether
see nsarm,
sus document;
rg 5, Series
the County
of Richmond
living within
Bras d'or Lake being the Anniversary
85.
The quoted
86. Quoted
phrase
in Tennyson,
is from Chute,
Impressions
8a, Number
14b, "An account of the Indians
P, Volume
as taken on the 16th July 1841 - at the Indian Chapel
of St. Ann's Day," 26 July 1841.
"Ceremony,
Social
of Cape Breton,
Revitalization,
and Change,"
45.
161.
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 93
to Ellice Gonzalez,
sale.87 According
possible commercial
during the early
contact era (to about 1700) the "sex division of labor" within Mi'kmaw
society
was "interdependent"; by the close of the colonial era (1700 to 1850), however,
the combined
trade items, and religion" had
impact of "western technology,
subordinated women's economic role - a developed hastened by the advent of
in the late 19th century.88 Yet as this
communities
wage labour within Mi'kmaw
the
division
of labour among the Mi'kmaw
of
investigation suggests,
gendered
at
Breton
Cape
was
mid-century
so
not
clearly
drawn.
An
con
individual's
task
tribution, and the value of that contribution,
depended on the economic
no
one
task dominated Mi'kmaw
economic
life in the
being performed, and
1830s and 40s in the same way that the fur trade did in an earlier period.
By the late 1860s and early 1870s, this was no longer the case, as the eco
roles of Mi'kmaw men and women on the island appear to be more
- the former
sharply defined
working primarily on the land or with wood and
earning the lion's share of family income. The 1871 federal census is suggestive
on this specific point. Of the 196 males on the island who were enumerated
that year, 106 identified a source of income, including farmer, boat builder,
nomic
and
fisherman,
carpenter,
For
cooper.
vast
the
of men,
majority
that
final
occu
- was the most
cooper
pation
important: 51 per cent identified it as a primary
source of revenue, while an additional 38 per cent indicated that itwas on par
with either farming or fishing.89 Mi'kmaw women on the island continued to
into the 1870s, as they had in previous
make and sell baskets and quillwork
decades, but they did so in an occupational
tive options were restricted. Not only did
of supplies; support for wood working and
of households,
but the near total collapse
an
tion and commercial
gain eliminated
of labour inwhich
division
valued
and
equally
87. Ruth Holmes
1950
Whitehead,
1991), 215.
(Halifax
other remunera
- distribution
government
policies
prioritize the male heads
farming
of hunting for personal consump
economic practice that rested on a
the contributions
of men and women were equally
valuable.90
"The Micmac
The Old Man
context
women
Told Us: Excerpts
inwhich
are,
as a
general
from Mi'kmaw
History
rule,
infe
1500
88. Ellice Gonzalez,
"An Ethnohistorical
of Micmac Male and Female Economic
Analysis
29:2 (1982), 117-129. This conclusion
echoes the work of Jo-Anne Fiske,
Roles," Ethnohistory
"Colonization
and the Decline
ofWomen's
Status: The Tsimshain
Studies
Case," Feminist
17:3 (Fall 1991), 509-35;
Eleanor Leacock,
and the Jesuit Program
for
"Montagnais Women
in Leacock,
and Colonization
Colonization,"
ed., Women
(New York 1980), 25-41. An opposite
view is presented
in John Lutz, "Gender and Work
in Lekwammen
1843-1970,"
Families,
in Kathryn McPherson,
et al., eds., Gendered
Pasts: Historical
in Femininity
and
Essays
in Canada
Masculinity
89.
bi-cbu,
"Indians
90.
mg
(Toronto
1999), 80-105.
7A, 16, "Identification
of Nova
The collapse
Report, Department
Richmond
County,
Scotia,
1871, sorted
of Indians
in the Nova
Scotia Census,"
specifically,
by location."
is reported
in Canada. Sessional Papers
of hunting
(Ottawa 1876). Annual
of Indian Affairs. Report by Indian Agent
for District
John McDougall
1October
for District
1875; report by Indian Agent Alex F.McGillivray
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#6,
#8,
TRAVAIL
61
94 / LABOUR/LE
rior to the other sex," reported the Indian Agent for Eskasoni in 1876, referring
specifically to the "Indians'" livelihoods.91
com
Other equally important internal changes took root within Mi'kmaw
as
munities
the 1860s became the 1870s. Preliminary,
but highly suggestive
evidence from this time hints at different and uneven patterns of employment
emerging on each reserve. Land use at two locales illustrates this point well. At
that year
Chapel Island in 1869, only 1 family of the 44 who were enumerated
laboured on a piece of land bigger than 10 acres - the biggest such "improve
ment" in the community - while 20 other families, 45 per cent of the reserve s
population, had improved no land at all. In contrast, at Eskasoni, where in 1869
acres
more
were
cleared
and
under
cultivation
than
on
any
reserve
other
on
the island, individual families used relatively large pieces of land for farming
of
and grazing cattle. Of the 41 families inventoried there by the Department
11 and 40 acres, whereas 5 fami
Indian Affairs, 34 cared for plots between
lies, only 12 per cent of the reserve's inhabitants, did not clear trees or break
the soil at all.92 That some reserves adopted agriculture on a wider basis than
is obvious; what is not clear, and thus deserves additional consider
ation, is the extent to which land use, coupled with access to other options of
remuneration
and employment, was linked to higher levels of family income,
more material
and political
influence within Mi'kmaw
possessions,
society.
others
Cape Breton Indian Agent's report from 1874 hints at this possibility,
link between a hierarchy of the soil and class stratification
and the possible
within
local indigenous communities.
"Some of the said Indians own cattle
One
and
and
horses,
erty....
But
the
this
that of European
Breton,
in houses,
and
number
live
greater
In
laborers."93
live
examined
own
respect,
important
settlers,
like those
by Rusty
Bittermann,
considerable
in wigwams,
other
are
and
the Mi'kmaq's
experience
in mid-19th-century
for whom
Middle
settlement
prop
personal
poor,
was
but
excellent
resembles
River, Cape
a process
of
not levelling, which in time ended in proletarianization.94
differentiation,
to their "wandering" way of life, the
the
Despite
opposition
government's
move
across the colony, and through
to
continued
about
the
island,
Mi'kmaq
out the region - a landscape that remained for them the single, unified context
22 November
1875. See also Ellice B. Gonzalez,
Cape Breton County,
(Ottawa
Analayis
for Micmac Men and Women: An Ethnohistorical
91. Canada.
Report
1876.
92.
lac,
Reserves
rg
94.
10, Volume
Within
93. Canada.
Report
October
Sessional
by Indian Agent
(Ottawa 1877). Annual
Report, Department
F.McGillivray
for District
#8, Cape Breton
459, Number
the County,"
Sessional
by Indian Agent
1874.
See Bittermann,
Papers
Alex
Changing Economic
1981), 65-68.
undated,
(Ottawa
Papers
J.B.McDonald
"Hierarchy
ofthe
6, frames
565-6,
"Schedule
Roles
of Indian Affairs.
County,
of Occupants
24 October
of Indian
likely 1869.
of Indian Affairs.
1875). Annual
Report, Department
2
for District
and Victoria
#7, Inverness
County,
Soil."
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
CENTURY / 95
oiMikmaki.
Mobility was key to their history; it remained vital to their future.
tied to the availability of resources, and modulated
Older cycles of migration
by
kin-ties and identities, persisted, joined by new patterns of movement
brought
economic
about, in part, by the influence of white settlement,
change, and
colonial policy. The route from Eskasoni to Sydney, travelled for the purposes
of selling baskets or securing supplies from the government, was well-worn by
in the city and create
the 1850s; in time, enough people would stay permanently
Families from Chapel Island, however, did not
the King's Road settlement.
was
typically head to Sydney for these purposes, for help from Catholic clergy
available closer to home, the closest market for baskets was in St. Peter's, and
in the commercial fishery were available in Arichat. Still others
opportunities
in another way: they sought better circumstances
used distance
by moving to
or left the colony altogether,
the eastern shores of the Nova Scotia mainland
as some had done in the 1760s, when they migrated
to western Newfoundland
in these Provinces,
on a permanent basis. "We found Micmacs
everywhere
Protestant missionary
Silas T.
and scattering ones all the way to Montreal,"
that
reached
Rand wrote of his travels in 1858-59. "AMicmac
city by
family
the same train by which we arrived. We met another company there one day in
the streets who were from Cape Breton."95 Mobility, as this brief anecdote sug
- a
life that
reality of Mi'kmaw
gests, meant constant interaction with whites
more
as
Sometimes
intensive
the
island
became
settled."96
"thickly
only grew
because
of disease or overtly confrontational
deadly due to the transmission
of
squatting
on more
and
trespassing,
intimate
and
friendly
encounters
aboriginal-white
as well,
terms
and
sometimes
encompassed
turned
a wider
range
of relationships - from employers to co-workers to husbands and wives.97 That
both the Mi'kmaq
and poor white settlers - be they Acadian,
Scottish, or
as "the English"
sometimes
referred to colonial officials and merchants
Irish
is suggestive
deserve
of
further
at
some
least
common
experiences
and
which
expectations,
research.98
"Frank
from Cape Breton to the eastern shore see Chute,
95. On the movement
of Mi'kmaq
to western Newfoundland
in the 1760s see
508. On the migration
G. Speck's Contributions,"
toWestern
Dennis A. Bartels and Olaf Uwe Janzen, "Micmac Migration
Newfoundland,"
in Thomas S. Abler,
10:1 (1990), 71-94. Rand is quoted
Studies
Canadian
Journal ofNative
in Cowan,
of the Peripatetic Niche,"
and Gypsies: Occupation
"Micmacs
ed., Papers of the
(Ottawa
1990),
5.
Twenty-First
Algonquian
96.
47, "Petition of the undersigned
rg5, Volume
16, Number
re: lands granted to the Indians," 16 April 1857.
nsarm,
Whycocomagh
Conference
inhabitants
of
see Ann Laura Stoler, "Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of
this point generally
in North American
and (Post) Colonial
Studies," The Journal of American
History
to Stoler's essay - contained
Ramon A. Gutierrez's
short response
(2001), 829-865.
of the colonial
in the same volume oiJAH - warns
that an appreciation
"politics of intimacy"
an exploration
in the making
of "colonial con
of dominance
and violence
should not displace
97. On
Comparison
88:3
History
quests
98.
and racist
I am indebted
regimes,"
866-869.
to Don MacGillivray
for this point.
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TRAVAIL
61
96 / LABOUR/LE
officials in Nova Scotia, there was little
government
19th-century
Among
or
extinction
doubt that the "Indians" were headed in one of two directions:
of Nova Scotia must
"It is abundantly clear that the poor Micmacs
assimilation.
now either embrace some of our habits of subsisting or perish," read a mem
on Indian Affairs in 1842.
orandum prepared by the Legislative Committee
and thoroughly
"When I take a impartial view of the Indians at Eskasonie,
and
their
their
consider
customs, honesty, integrity,
burning desire to serve
Breton
for
the
Indian
their Maker," echoed
Cape
County in 1876, "I am
Agent
to
of
the
liberal
that
the
tide
conclude
led naturally
time,
support they receive
a
with
close
the
from
very
supervision, will eventually
government,
together
on
with
other
Micmacs
of
Eskasonie
par
people of whiter and more
put the
tender complexions."99 But these Indians, like indigenous people across the
island, eschewed the stark set of choices laid out for them by the colonial (and
settlers - opting, instead, to farm, utilize
later federal) state and European
their
and
"customs,"
serve
their
"maker"
at one
and
the
same
time.
Indeed,
an evolving set of punishing
the Mi'kmaq
understood
circumstances,
and thus avoid utter despair.
that there was still room to manoeuvre
In this predicament,
the Mi'kmaq
of Cape Breton were not alone: broadly
the ways
similar patterns of cultural and economic
adaptation
specifically
within
in which
seasonal
customary,
rounds
of
resource
gathering
were
selectively
realities of colonial society threaded in and around the emerging material
took hold in other geographic locations and other time periods inCanada.100 Yet
as John Lutz's analysis of the "aboriginal labouring class" of British Columbia
1849 and 1890 suggests, broadly similar does not mean exactly the
between
same.
Indeed,
as
he
argues,
when
the
Kwakwaka'wakw,
Lekwammen,
and
- all of whom
Island and/or the
lived on Vancouver
had historically
Squamish
southern coastal regions of the British Columbia mainland
opted for waged
work in the mid-19th
century, they did so from a position of strength, not mar
territories,
customary
strong, occupied
ginality: they were demographically
and
subsistence
economies,
practiced culturally significant activities,
pursued
interference
from missionaries,
with little destructive
settlers, or
European
agents of the colonial state until later in the century. In this context, Lutz
maintains,
indigenous peoples worked for wages not because their customary
resources had failed them, but as a way to attain additional wealth and thus
the potlatch,
enrich existing and still vibrant cultural practices
specifically
a collection of ceremonies
that reaffirmed the prestige, status, and influence
Council
3, Number
76, "Appendix 6, Legislative
15, Volume
Journal for 1842.
the Indians of Nova Scotia; read 14 July 1842"; Canada, Sessional
respecting
of Indian Affairs,
report by Indian Agent
(Ottawa 1877), Annual
Report, Department
Papers
24 October
1876.
for District
Alex F.McGillivray
#8, Cape Breton County,
mg
99. nsarm,
Memorandum
Labour
an excellent
to this subject in "Native Wage
introduction
Steven High provides
Travail 37 (Spring
Production
during the 'Era of Irrelevance'," Labour/Le
Independent
see Alice Littlefield
C. Knack, eds., Native
and Martha
In the American
context,
1996), 243-64.
100.
and
Americans
and Wage
Labor: Ethnohistorical
Perspectives
(Norman
and London
1998).
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THE MI'KMAQ OF CAPE BRETON INTHE MID-19TH
of particular
leaders or families through
Put simply, for some indigenous peoples
choice, cash, and culture went together;
"native
The
place."102
whose
position
years of political,
cannot
be
When
feasting, dancing, and gift-giving.101
in British Columbia at mid-century,
their homeland was, after all, still a
for
said
of Cape
and women
Breton,
after nearly 250
Europeans, was
Scotia,
interaction with
men
Mi'kmaw
the Mi'kmaq
Nova
colonial
and cultural
economic,
weaker.
comparatively
same
in mid-19th-century
CENTURY / 97
into
moved
the
com
in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s they
mercial fishery, agriculture, or craft production
did so not because they wanted to, but because they had to: by that time, their
ability to hunt, fish, and gather was sharply curtailed, and they had few other
The difference
options.
on
experiences
this
the east coast
between
-
specific
point
class
and west
-
formation
coast
indigenous
is stark.
Yet by the later decades of the 19th century - as British Columbia entered
the industrial age, by way ofthe land-based fur trade and gold rush - the expe
riences
of
some
indigenous
in bc's
groups
coastal
southern
areas,
who
bore
came to resemble that of the Mi'kmaq
the brunt of white encroachment,
of
in
A
Breton
brief
with
lin
the
Cape
important ways.
comparison
Squamish,
a subdivision of the Coast Salish, illustrates this idea well. In the
guistically
the Squamish occu
long era prior to European immigration and settlement,
in
Burrard
Inlet
Howe
and
between
Sound
southwestern
British
pied territory
Columbia. The rhythms of life, then, were calibrated to the seasonal availabil
ity of
terrestrial
and
aquatic
-
resources
-
salmon
especially
and
potlatches
were particularly
life underwent an important series of
important. Squamish
was constructed
on Burrard Inlet;
after
when
sawmill
the
first
1863,
changes
area on amore
to
and
families
moved
the
thereafter
families
extended
shortly
into
basis
and
labour
their seasonal
permanent
began incorporating wage
All
the
with
the
and
it, older, resil
while,
migrations.
potlatch continued,
ient methods
of affirming political
leadership, bonds between families and
access
resources
to
sites.103 By the late 1870s and early
families, and
extended
1880s,
the
however,
narrowed
considerably:
Squamish's
reserves
access
were
to customary
a
reality;
lands
so,
too,
and
were
resources
laws
had
restricting
hunting and fishing. Drawn into the capitalist labour force by a wish to con
to seek wages on the Vancouver
tinue potlatching,
the Squamish continued
in
canneries
the
Fraser
River and northern coastal
the salmon
of
waterfront,
on
in
of
the hop fields
like the Mi'kmaq
areas, and
Puget Sound because,
now
the Atlantic
few other economic
choices. "A long
coast, they
possessed
time ago, the Indians depended
101.
John Lutz,
1849-1890,"
and fishing
as their only means
"After the Fur Trade: The Aboriginal
Class of British Columbia,
Labouring
Association
New Series #3 (1992), 69-94.
Historical
of the Canadian
Journal
102. Cole Harris,
Change
on hunting
The Resettlement
(Vancouver
103. On
the Squamish
Vancouver
Waterfront,
of British
Columbia:
Essays
on Colonialism
and Geographic
1997), 69.
see Andrew
1919-1939
Parnaby,
(Toronto
Citizen
2007),
Docker: Making
a New
Deal
on the
76-80.
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of
98
/LABOUR/LE
TRAVAIL 61
leader Mathias
living," Squamish
That
changed."104
change,
in 1913. "Now things have
Joseph remarked
was
however,
accompanied
continuity.
by
Among
the pursuit of waged work, subsistence agri
the Squamish and the Mi'kmaq,
did not obviate the need and desire to pursue
culture, and craft production
more customary methods
of support such as hunting and fishing. Nor did
it negate the significance
of particular, culturally
such as
specific activities
the potlatch or St. Anne's Day. Indeed, as the persistence
of the former and
that the dis
the revival of the later illustrate, culture is not only something
use
is
it
but
that
when
have,
possessed
they
navigating periods of
something
or
can
a
crisis:
it
be
for
the
weakened.
weapon
adjustment
In their everyday lives the Mi'kmaq
of Cape Breton understood
this idea
well enough, and enjoined it to an equally penetrating
that
resistance
insight:
was as much about culture (or
to colonialism's
transformations
disruptive
as it was about supporting oneself economically
in
identity or psychology)
an
people
a basket,
created
petition,
expressed
far from home,
and
labour
beliefs,"
"superstitious
be
renewed
in which
and
recast,
not
as
or
history,
nostalgia
or
Mi'kmaw
seeds, filed a
sowed
a document,
signed
the ways
when
Indeed,
up for a social occasion,
dressed
they demonstrated
could
context.
material
constructed,
harshly
evolving,
"wandered"
custom,
retreat,
ritual,
but
as
a resource
that helped shape new, hybrid patterns of life that ensured their
so obviously not of their own choosing.105 Of
survival
under conditions
very
that final notion, George Edward Jean, the Clerk of the Peace for Richmond
County,
Cape
Breton,
in 1841,
was
no
doubt
unaware.
Thanks are due to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council and
at
Breton
support. Staff
University for financial
Cape
Library and Archives
Nova
Scotia
Archives
and
Records
the Beaton
Canada,
Management,
Resource
Centre
research
and
the
made
this
Institute,
Mi'kmaq
possible.
This essay was improved immeasurably by the insightful feedback provided
the journals
by John Reid, Ken Donovan, Sandy Balcolm, Don MacGillivray,
commentators
at
and
Feminism
kind
the
reviewers,
anonymous
Labouring
and Feminist Working-Class
History (Toronto, 2005) and Atlantic Canada
Studies (Halifax, 2007) conferences.
104. Quoted
in Parnaby,
Citizen
Docker,
80.
105. My understanding
of "hybridity" has been shaped by Bhabha, The Location
xi,
of Culture,
in Theory, Culture,
and Race (New
xiii, 2, 10, 26; Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity
York 1995), 1-28.
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