The Concept of "Tribe" As a Useful Tool for Examining Micmac Organization and Leadership
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Concept of "Tribe" as a Useful Tool for Examining Micmac Organization and Leadership JANET ELIZABETH CHUTE Dalhousie University The Concept of Tribe The concept of tribe has been applied to Micmac social organization in varied ways.1 One definition of the term "tribe" refers to a territorially- bounded population, sharing common language and culture, which in con temporary parlance might be called an "ethnic group" (Morrison and Wil son 1986:16-17). The word "Micmac" relates to one such unit, and may represent the same entity referred to in early French historic sources as "Souriquois". The etymology of these group names is hard to trace; for in stance "Souriquois" may stem from the Basque language and denote "people of the white river" or "those of the whites" (Bakker 1990). "Micmac", which probably means "allies", seems to have been a self-ascribed term,2 although the Micmac's most frequent name for themselves, elnu, simply translates as "the people" (Wallis and Wallis 1955:14). Yet whatever their origins, these group designations cannot be said to denote clearly-definable sociopolitical entities. "Tribe" has a more formal meaning, however. According to an evolu tionary scheme of human sociopolitical development devised by Sahlins and Service (1960), tribal entities manifest certain distinct traits. More preva lent among horticultural, pastoral and agricultural peoples than among hunter-gatherers such as the Micmac, tribes usually involve relationships among a number of equal and semi-autonomous smaller social groups. Tribes JThe author acknowledges the generous assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the preparation of this paper. 2The Handbook of Indians of Canada (1913:289) gives 'allies' as a possible interpretation for the term Mikmak. and 'our allies' as a possible meaning for Nigmak. 17 IS THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE" are often, but certainly not always, internally organized along unilineal lines, with episodic trade among their basic social units. Productivity of com ponent groups is generally low, and yet sufficient to permit a measure of redistribution by chiefs. While their units may wage war together against a common enemy, tribes fail to exhibit either strong regional polity or lead ership integration above the band or lineage. Centralized leadership, by contrast, characterizes a chiefdom, a higher level of sociopolitical integra tion that of the tribe. Controversy exists as to whether or not the Micmac constituted a tribe in the formal sense when the Europeans first arrived. While many an thropologists have relegated the Micmac organizationally to the level of a band society, scholarly viewpoints differ, and at least one recent perspective ascribes the status of chiefdom to the Micmac's traditional sociopolitical structure (Miller 1983). Available historic data furthermore provide few clues for an accurate appraisal of the Micmac's political situation at any one time, since the way in which the term "tribe" is used varies radically from source to source. Early French census records often refer to villages sauvages,3 while British sources, particularly from the 1750s onward, make frequent mention of many small tribes.4 To some extent these divergences reflect differing French and British colonial viewpoints on aboriginal peo ples. French officials tended to emphasize estimated military strength of their Native allies, particularly of Native groups which congregated around French coastal forts, trading posts and mission stations such as La Have and Cape Sable on Nova Scotia's southwestern coast. References to vil lages sauvages may have alluded to ephemeral assemblages of trading post bands, conveniently broken down demographically into family, sex, and age categories to better determine potential manpower for future recruitment. The British, by contrast, concerned with Native pacification and settlement within British colonial domains after 1713, lamented the existence of what they perceived as congeries of little independent tribes with which they had 3The 1687-1688 Gargas census of Acadie (Morse 1935:148-149) and a second French census taken in 1707, although formally recorded in 1708 (d'Entremont 1979:66) enumerates "Indians". A typescript of the 1707-1708 census is housed in the National Archives of Canada (NAC 1707-1708). One of the most accessible references to villages sauvages, however, may be found in a 1722 census entitled "Recensement des Sauvages dans l'isle Royalle et de la peninsule de l'acadie qui sont deservis par les Missionaires du Seminaire des missions etrangeres Etablis a Quebec fait part M. Gaulin pretre Missionaire desd. Sauvages en 1722" (AC 1722). 4In "Remarks on Indian Commerce" the British Colonial Office was advised in the 1760s that "the Indians inhabiting the Coasts of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton have no Chief, Sachem or Commander over the whole, but are divided into a number of small Tribes, and take their denomination from the River or Bay they chiefly frequent ..." (PANS 1762). JANET CHUTE 19 to negotiate individually, since no one tribal body seemed to represent the political views of the whole. Summer Bands and Summer Villages Anthropologists fall into four distinct camps in interpreting colonial records for the Micmac area; (1) those who echo the French emphasis upon what has come to be called the "summer village", (2) those who stress the flex ible nature of Micmac social organization and play down any indications of formal tribal institutions, (3) those who see a tribal organization as a phenomenon which arose in response to European colonial policies and (4) those who view tribal organization as a component of Micmac society prior to the coming of the Europeans. Frank G. Speck (1915), writing in the early 20th century, regarded bilateral bands of about 100 to 250 persons as the most resilient social unit in the Algonquian-speaking northeast, although he also contended that heads of the smaller winter hunting groups constituted the only property owners. Wallis and Wallis (1955:171-176), following Speck, argued in the 1950s for the existence of summer band chiefs, with limited powers, responsible for presiding over ceremonial functions, and particularly for the protection of band activities from potentially hostile acts by strangers. Speck, and Wallis and Wallis regarded summer villages as part of a dualistic round of Micmac subsistence activities, characterized by summer coastal occupation and mobile hunting and trapping pursuits in the interior during the winter season. Native summer coastal villages, surrounded by extensive gardens and bordering on shallow tidal streams, existed south of Maine. Early historic accounts describe semi-permanent settlements where chiefs and their visi tors congregated briefly during the summer months (Morrison 1975:40-41). Yet such chiefly councils featured neither redistribution of wealth nor evi dence of tribally-organized military endeavours. T.J.C. Brasser (1971:65- 66) emphasized that alliances linked prominent families together in a nascent- ly stratified society. Chiefs belonging to these upper echelons received trib ute from visitors to their villages, presided over feasts, and arranged mar riages to preserve a network of closely interconnected kin ties among mem bers of their class. To Brasser, tribes did not exist, and confederacies, when and wherever they formed, were political rather than economic in nature. L.F.S. Upton (1979:3) in Micmac and Colonists applied this New Eng land model of Native summer village society almost unchanged to the non- horticultural Micmac. Micmac summer villages containing about 200-300 individuals lay at the mouths of major rivers and tidal estuaries. By con trast to this summer residence pattern, which Upton claimed repeated itself in the same locales year after year, interior winter sites were occupied toi 20 THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE" much shorter periods, and therefore proved archaeologically almost impos sible to identify. To underscore the prominence of the summer village in the Micmac seasonal round, Upton referred to an account of a "great enclosure upon a hill compassed about with cabins great and small, one of which was as great as a market hall ..." Yet this reference, taken from a 17th century account by Marc Lescarbot, a Parisian lawyer, actually depicted a Malecite village at the mouth of the St. John's River, and not Micmac settlement at all (Lescarbot 1907:2:354-356). Early historical references to Micmac summer villages tend to be equally problematic. A large wooden lodge, built under the auspices of the sagamore Membertou, provided a forum for a ceremonies performed just before the Micmac left on a war expedition in the spring of 1607 to the Saco River region. French records and Micmac oral traditions further suggest that at least temporary pallisaded settlements existed among the Micmac of north eastern of New Brunswick and adjoining sectors of Nova Scotia (Patterson 1877:34-37). These structures may have been built in the spring for pro tection against enemy war parties, or to house rituals and festive events — then left to fall of their own accord during the winter months, somewhat in the same fashion as fish weirs, built by community effort, would wash away by the onslaught of winter tides. Elongated ridge pole constructions, per haps containing several families, might have been constructed to allow freer circulation of air among the residents during the summer months, but none of these dwelling types seem to have had the permanency of the Iroquois longhouse. Archaeology does little to clarify the ambiguities of the historical record. The distribution of Late Woodland sites militates against the presence of ex istence of extensive coastal summer villages. Archaeological reconnaissance surveys show that Lake Woodland sites often cluster in the nearshore, rather than the coastal zone. Given the richness of coastal shellfish resources in southwestern Nova Scotia, for example, surprisingly few coastal middens have been located. Instead, many sites have been found at the confluence of short rivers and inland lakes, between seven to ten kilometres back from the seacoast.