Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir by William MacGregor (rooftoppers txt) 📕

school for the young.

The question of their trapping lands will have to be dealt with before long. Each man regards his rights to his trapping area as unimpeachable. They are recognised at present among themselves, but they have no official sanction for their trapping lands either as a community or as individuals, just as they have no official title to the Reservation.

I was accompanied on this visit by the Honourable Eli Dawe, Minister of Marine and Fisheries, who, as a member of the Government, will himself take an interest in the settlement, and call the attention of his colleagues to the condition of the Micmacs. I was also assisted by Mr. James Howley, who has been on friendly terms with these people for many years. I enclose photographs[A] of some of the Micmacs, taken by Mr. Howley during this visit.

10. The Micmacs are held by ethnologists to be a branch of the Algonquins, who inhabited Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. It was from the last-named province that they extended to Newfoundland, apparently not much more than a century ago. The fact that they did not effect a lodgment on Newfoundland sooner may be at least partly accounted for by supposing that the Beothuks, the aboriginal natives of Newfoundland, were able to defend themselves and their country from the Micmacs so long as both sides were unprovided with firearms, and until the Beothuks were nearly destroyed by their French and English aggressors.

A sufficiently accurate view of the arrival and early doings of the Micmacs in Newfoundland may be had from the brief extracts from official records enclosed herewith. Governor Duckworth reports in 1809 that the Micmacs were coming over, and that the Beothuks were keeping to the interior in dread of them. The Governor followed up this Report next year (1810) by a Proclamation to the Micmacs and other American Indians frequenting Newfoundland, warning them that any person that murdered a native Indian (Beothuk) would be punished with death. Unfortunately this Proclamation it would appear had no restraining effect, as Governor Keats reports to the Secretary of State in 1815 that the Micmacs had recently come over from Nova Scotia in greater numbers, and had reached the eastern coast of Newfoundland; and he expressed the fear that these newcomers would destroy the native Indians of the Island, whose arms were the bow and arrow.

The Micmacs, it appears, have always possessed firearms since they arrived in Newfoundland. On the other hand I have never heard of a single instance in which the native Beothuks ever obtained such a weapon. The fears of Governor Keats were therefore only too well founded. The unfortunate Beothuk was thus crushed out of existence by the white man and the invading Micmac. Between the white man and the Beothuk there was always hostility; and I have not heard of any family or person in Newfoundland in whose veins flows Beothuk blood. On the other hand it may be doubted whether there is a single pure-blooded Micmac on the Island to-day. As an ethnic unit the Micmac can therefore hardly be said to exist here.

At the same time the Micmac community, such as it is, will not, at least for several generations, be absorbed into the European population of Newfoundland. It is at present a separate entity, and as such clearly requires special attention and treatment at the hands of the Administration, for the Reservation families have claims on Newfoundland by right of a century of Micmac occupation, and by virtue of the European blood that probably each one of them has inherited.

I have, &c.,
WM. MACGREGOR.

The Right Honourable
The Earl of Crewe, K.G.,
&c., &c., &c.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Not reproduced.]


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APPENDIX I.


MICMACS AT CONNE SETTLEMENT, 29th May, 1908.

Head of Family. Family. Condition of Members
of Family. Stephen Joe 5 Self, wife, 3 children. Stephen Bernard 5 Self, mother, 3 children. Noel Matthew 13 Self, wife, 11 children. Nicholas Jeddore 5 Self, wife, 3 children. Noel Jeddore 9 Self, wife, 7 children. Bernard John 2 Self, wife. John 5 Self, sister, 3 brothers. Joseph Jeddore 3 Self, wife, 1 brother. Stephen Jeddore 7 Self, wife, 5 children. John McDonald, Sr. 2 Self, wife. John D. Jeddore 2 Self, wife. John McDonald, Jr. 7 Self, wife, 5 children. William Drew 4 Self, wife, 2 children. Matthew Burke 4 Self, wife, 2 children. John Benoit 9 Self, wife, 7 children. Ben Benoit 12 Self, wife, 10 children. John Juks 7 Self, 6 children. Edward Pullett 4 Self, wife, 2 children. Reuben Louis 2 Self, sister. Thomas McDonald 8 Self, wife, 6 children. Peter Joe 5 Self, wife, 3 children. John Martin 3 Self, wife, 1 child.

Total Micmacs on the Reservation, 123.

Living off the Reservation were-

Head of Family. Family. Condition of Members
of Family. William McDonald 8 Self, wife, 6 children.

Gone to Glenwood.

Lewis John 5 Self, wife, 3 children. Peter John 1 Self. Louis John 1 Self.

Totals.

Living on the Reservation 123 Living near the Reservation 8 Gone from the Reservation to Glenwood 7
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Total 138
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APPENDIX II.


NEWFOUNDLAND. No.
To all to whom these Presents
shall come, I, ANTHONY
MUSGRAVE, Esquire, Governor