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Updated: May 7, 2025
The episode of Port Royal, one of the most lively in Canadian history, introduces to us some striking characters. Here, also, is Membertou, sagamore of the Micmacs, 'a man of a hundred summers' and 'the most formidable savage within the memory of man. Hither, too, in 1611, came the Jesuits Biard and Masse, the first of the black-robed followers of Loyola to set foot in New France.
J. H. Trumbull has shown in his valuable work on the subject. Belonging to this division are the Micmacs of New Brunswick and the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes of Maine, who with the St. Francis Indians of Canada and some smaller clans call themselves the Wabanaki, a word derived from a root signifying white or light, intimating that they live nearest to the rising sun or the east.
I have been told that there is an old custom among the Micmacs, still remembered by many now alive, which is probably a remnant of a ceremony with which was connected an old dance. To this custom is given the name of the "Trade Dance," for reasons which will appear. The account of the custom was given by Peter Selmore, who witnessed it not many years ago.
A fight ensued. The forces were very unequal. The "Newport," of twenty-four guns, was dismasted and taken; but her companion frigate along with the tender escaped in the fog. The French then anchored at the mouth of the St. John, where Villebon and the priest Simon were waiting for them, with fifty more Micmacs.
But most of the villagers got stubborn, and vowed that they would stay by their homes, whether it was Indians or English bid them move. The resolution of these poor souls was perhaps a little shaken as a long line of painted and befeathered Micmacs, appearing from the direction of the wooded hills of Jolicoeur, drew stealthily near and squatted down in the outermost skirts of the village.
The Micmacs seem to have permitted their neighbors to occupy the St. John river without opposition, their own preference inclining them to live near the coast. The opinion long prevailed in Acadia that the Maliseets, were a more powerful and ferocious tribe than the Micmacs; nevertheless there is no record or tradition of any conflict between them.
The most strenuous of these clerical agitators was Abbe Le Loutre, missionary to the Micmacs, and after 1753 vicar-general of Acadia. He was a fiery and enterprising zealot, inclined by temperament to methods of violence, detesting the English, and restrained neither by pity nor scruple from using threats of damnation and the Micmac tomahawk to frighten the Acadians into doing his bidding.
They are very fierce, and their language, which is not the same as that of the Micmacs, seems to present great difficulties. Still these souls have been created by God and bought by Jesus Christ, and the more abandoned, and the further from the religion of heaven they seem to be, so much the more do they call for our compassion.
What the Micmacs call a Chenoo is known to the Passamaquoddies as a Kewahqu' or Kewoqu'. And this is their origin. When they get ready to fight, they suddenly become as tall as the highest trees; their weapons are the trees themselves, which they uproot with great strength.
The Micmacs have tacked on to it a ridiculous fragment of an indifferent French nursery tale, without an end and without any connection with the Indian beginning. The tradition is probably entirely Eskimo.
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