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. Such discoveries prompted Stephen Davis (1991), who con­ ducted one such survey, to warn that comparisons of these late Woodland sites, with Gulf of Maine sites of similar age known to have been occupied during the winter, must be undertaken with care. Other major interior sites in Nova Scotia lie along the Shubenacadie River (Preston 1974), the Gaspereau River in Hants County, and the Mersey River in Queen's County, Nova Scotia (Nash and Stewart 1990). Like Davis, Charles Martijn and Patricia Nietfeld also treated the "sum­ mer coastal village" model with caution. Martijn (1989) considered the largest Micmac social group to be the summer band, rather than the sum-

/ JANET CHUTE 21

mer village. This unit, he argued, could be, but not always was tied to a specific summer locality. Martijn's bilateral band manifested certain simi laxities to the nodal core group identified in the early 1970s by Smith and Rogers (1973) for the Ojibwa. According to this model, prominent lead ers and their wives and children, formed a central unit to which others sought attachment through the exercise of both consanguinal and affinal kin ties. Martijn nevertheless recognized that non-kin linkages also held Micmac bands together, by noting that band chiefs wielded considerable powers to influence membership, arbitrate disputes, initiate and maintain alliances, coordinate access to localized resources and direct war parties. An important ecological and historic study conducted by Nietfeld (1981) took another tack. Two important findings, which had heuristic appeal for later investigators, emerged from her work. First, Nietfeld held that the Micmac's homeland in the Maritime Provinces, far from being environmen­ tally homogenous, could be divided into a number of distinct resource areas, each requiring regionally unique exploitative strategies on the part of the aboriginal inhabitants. Second, she maintained that large coastal settle­ ments may have existed in only some of these districts prior to European contact, such as along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And even in these areas it was likely that interior locales, such as the Redbank and Oxbow sites on the middle reaches of the Mirimichi River, had seasonally drawn just as large assemblages as did the coast for thousands of years (Allen 1980). Both of Nietfeld's findings conflicted with an earlier work undertaken by Bernard Hoffman (1955) which not only upheld the existence of summer coastal vil­ lages, but also argued for winter occupancy of the same sites by Micmac people who uniformly derived as much as 90% of their subsistence from the shore and sea. Nietfeld instead argued that worsening climatic conditions after A.D. 1200 precluded year-round reliance on littoral and marine resources. Stress on dwindling reserves, she claimed, led to incipient redistribution by chiefs, although the leader's main role lay in matching people to resources, not in allocating stored produce. Nietfeld furthermore stated that Micmac so­ ciopolitical organization prior to coming of the Europeans remained rel­ egated to informal meetings of neighbouring band chiefs at which many topics were discussed, but few decisions binding (Nietfeld 1981:562). It was only during the historic era, she concluded, that the Micmac eventually developed what Morton Fried has designated as "secondary trib­ alism"— a state brought about by factors peculiar to the European fur trade, intensification of intercolonial warfare, and Native diplomatic inter­ action with French and British officialdom. Nietfeld thus represented the camp which viewed tribalism among the Micmac solely as a historic phe­ nomenon. 22 THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE"

Other anthropologists, however, held that long-distance trade preceded the coming of the Europeans, and may well have led to incipient tribalism in the Maritime region. As adherents of this latter view, Bourque and Whitehead (1985) focused on geographic areas in the Maritime Provinces bearing concentrations of tradable resources; among these chalcedony and agate from Scot's Bay near Blomindon, and copper from Cap d'Or in Nova Scotia. Busycon shells, moose hides and probably furs constituted other exchangeable commodities. Nash and Stewart (1990) further noted the strategic and resource potentialities of the Melanson site near Minas, Nova Scotia, as a major trade centre for groups coming as far away as Maine and other parts of New England. This approach allows for a ranked society of chiefs acting within a tribal framework and enjoying some rights to tribute, mainly for redistribution to others. It is also a dynamic perspective. According to Bourque and Whitehead, the coming of the Basques in the early 16th century meant the end of extensive aboriginal intergroup exchanges in lithics and copper, but the vacuum was rapidly filled with iron and copper goods, clothing, foodstuffs and ornaments from European sources. In the wake of these developments along the coast, the trade became dominated by "big men" competing with one another to maximize benefits for their respective groups. Desire to be near the source of European goods prompted certain groups, such as the Malecite, who bore cultural and linguistic affinities to the interior Abnaki, to press eastward and take up residence near the mouth of the St. John River (McFeat 1989). This model of an extensive northeastern prehistoric exchange system, superseded by European dominated trade, not only contended against Hoff­ man's coastal village model but also undermined Speck's view of traditional Micmac society as predominately riverine (cf. Bourque 1989). In some­ what the same vein, a third model, introduced by Nash and Miller (1987), drew on ecological and historical data to explain while nearshore, interior and coastal locations might all weigh equally in economic importance to the Micmac. This model called for the recognition of at least seven dis­ tinct environmental and exploitative zones within the Micmac homeland — in a manner reminiscent of Nietfeld's stress on Maritime regional ecologi­ cal diversity. It urged a building upward from the subsistence base to an understanding of traditional Native economic and possibly sociopolitical structures in each district. Miller (1983:52), in particular, well aware of late historic data pertaining to a three-tiered rank system existing among the Micmac of the 19th century, if not earlier, suggested that part of the expla­ nation might lie in a coordination of diverse exploitative strategies within a broad tribal organization. But this, she cautions, would only provide part of the picture. Diffusion of ideas from Iroquoian sources might offer more of JANET CHUTE 23 the explanation, coupled with the Micmac population's need to cope with the pressures of war from hostile Iroquois and New England groups. And so, equipped with these tantalizing suggestions for further research, as well as Miller's and Nash's model of a mosaic of environmental and exploitative zones, I set out to introduce my own model relating to the concept of tribe as a useful explanatory tool in the Micmac context.

A New Model To Nash and Miller, the Micmac area presented special problems not found elsewhere in the northeast. Most important, exploitation of diverse resource zones would have taken a high level of cultural and political coordination - a state of affairs whose existence is actually borne out in the archaeological record. While ethnic diversity characterized the population of the Maritime Peninsula from approximately 2400 B.C. to about A.D. 1200, cooling tem­ peratures after A.D. 1200 apparently stimulated cultural interaction and gradually promoted cultural homogeneity within the proto-Micmac region. John Erskine (1958) of the Nova Scotia Museum determined as early as the mid 1950s, for instance, that interband trade had advanced to the degree that chalcedony and agates from the North Mountain of Nova Scotia could be found on archaeological sites from Yarmouth to Cape Breton. Given the fact that artifacts recovered from Maritime sites show close associa­ tions with such diverse cultures as the proto-Algonquian North Beach and Adena traditions — as well as the proto-Iroquoian Susquahanna complex of the North Carolina Piedmont region — such harmonious integration seems quite remarkable. Along with the rise of cultural homogeneity, there must have been a trend towards the establishment of a ranked order, as certain chiefs gained control over access to specialized resource areas. Within the new cultural climate, however, such territorial aegis apparently failed to became the pre­ serve of competitive big men but rather became as viewed as a charge laid on Native power-holders who exercised their prerogatives in a responsible way on behalf of their groups. Trade in resources from these districts may have consolidated the proto-Micmac peoples internally while, at the same time, it fostered alliances with neighbouring groups for both political and economic ends. Politically, such alliances would have extended the range of potential Micmac allies at the expense of those whom the Micmac consid­ ered strangers. The historic Micmac evidenced little strife within their national bound­ aries, which may reflect a legacy from their pre-Columbian political system. Seventeenth century historic sources suggest that the Micmac did indeed live up to their name, which means 'allies". In this respect they differ radi­ cally from the Ojibwa of the Great Lakes region, where intergroup conflict 24 THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE" was common.5 The Micmac as a whole by comparison proved far more re­ gionally integrated. Micmac leadership also proved more institutionalized, for prominent Micmac men exercised mechanisms unconnected with either consanguinal or affinal kin ties, such as ritual adoption, to recruit new mem­ bers to their groups (Le Clercq 1910:310-315). That the chiefs' retinues of young men often were not directly related to him also suggests that the Micmac rank structure evidenced institutional aspects separate from the norms of kinship. At the same time Micmac bands broke down easily and members were extremely mobile. In part, such mobility may have been facilitated by Mic­ mac society's generational emphasis. The Micmac exercised the lateral inte­ grating potentialities of their kinship system to the fullest by equating both parallel and cross cousins terminologically and behaviourally with siblings. Not only would such a practice have extended the range of the incest taboo (Miller 1986:334-335) and aided coordination within task groups formed to construct weirs, wage war or hunt sea mammals (McGee 1977), but it also linked more distant relatives closely together across space and so made long distance travel palatable. The peripatetic nature of Micmac society was always a source of chagrin to British colonial administrators who drew un­ savoury comparisons between the Native population of the Maritimes and the Algonquian nations of the great Lakes, who proved far more internally cohesive than the Micmac bands (PANS 1768). It might not even be too far fetched to suggest that the Micmac peri- pateticism of the late historic era, while undoubtedly enhanced by the pres­ sure of white settlement and resource scarcities (Abler 1990:1-11), had its roots in traditional Micmac society. While somewhat tangential to this particular study, this assertion still may have heuristic value for explain­ ing recent problems in the Maritimes concerning on-reserve and off-reserve Micmac populations, since the Micmac may never have formed the cohesive bands found among central Algonquians such as the Ojibwa. In brief then, this new model stresses population mobility within an incipient tribal complex of resource districts. In such a milieu, arranging access to available resource areas when scarcities arose elsewhere would have been just as important a role for Micmac district leaders as would the accumulation and distribution of goods in trade. At the same time, each resource district within the broader mosaic pattern would have been in some respects unique from its neighbours, a fact which ensured continued circulation of both goods and people over time among the districts.

5Edward S. Rogers (1967:333-334) stressed the existence of intergroup warfare among proto-Ojibwa in the upper Great Lakes region in his rejoinder to Harold Hickerson's article "Some Implications of the Theory of Particularity, or 'Atom­ ism', of Northern Algonkians" (Hickerson 1967:313-343).

/ JANET CHUTE 25

The first mention of seven districts among the Micmac appeared in the writings of the Baptist missionary, Silus Tertius Rand (Rand 1875:81) Bernard Hoffman, drawing upon Rand's and other late 19th century sources on the subject, went further and devised a complex regional sociopolitical system for the 16th-century Micmac, based on the existence of a unilineally ordered, ranked Native society drawing most of its subsistence from the sea and shore. Each district, Hoffman surmised, had a least one major coastal village within it, which formed its political core. More recent studies upholding environmental diversity, rather than the ecological uniformity Hoffman claimed, have provided a new and thought-provoking slant on the existence of districts among the Micmac. The distribution of the seven districts is interesting. Most cover a range of microenvironments which ensures that those inhabiting them have access to diverse resources. The location of the firstdistrict , Onamagi, or present- day Cape Breton, granted access to anadromous, catadromous, littoral, ma­ rine, lacustrine and boreal resources, including sea mammals on islands in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (Martijn 1989). The second district, covering eastern Nova Scotia and known as Essigeoay, not only embraced tracts of rough boreal forest and rocky interior lakes, but also fisheriesa t Canso and rich riverine and estuarine resource lowlands around Antigonish. Pigtogeog, the third district, included Prince Edward Island as well as the present-day Pictou region. Residents of Segepenegatig, the fourth district, could reach both the Atlantic and Minas Basin shores by travelling the Shubenacadie- Stewiacke River system. The ancient chalcedony quarries at Scot's Bay, as well as the copper of Cap d'Or fell within this region. As this district also touched on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it was, like its neighbouring district, Sigenigteoag — which covered the Isthmus of Chignecto northward to the Richibucto River — one of the largest and most environmentally diversified of all seven districts. The sixth district, Gespegeoag, which took in the lower Gaspe, the northeastern New Brunswick coastline and the watersheds of the Restigouche and Mirimichi Rivers, had fewer littoral resources such as shellfish than other districts, but was noted for its salmon runs (Nietfeld 1981:405-406). Semi-sedentariness arising from seasonal abundance of fish led groups as­ sociated with certain locales along the Restigouche and Mirimichi Rivers to adopt specific symbols, such as the salmon, as group identifiers (Ganong 1910:37-40). Finally, the seventh district, Gespogoitg, in southwestern Nova Scotia, encompassed an interior watershed system of interconnected lakes which drained into the Atlantic on the east and southwest by the Mersey. Jordon. Roseway. Tusket and Salmon Rivers, and into the Bay of Fundy by the Bear River. 26 THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE:

Information regarding these resource areas undoubtedly continually cir­ culated throughout the entire Micmac region and, while a hunting group head might have endeavoured to return to tracts which he knew well, district leaders probably shifted residence on occasion to assume headship of other districts, should a power vacuum exist or their rights to exercise power in their former tract be contested. In short, district chiefs manifested a degree of managerial, diplomatic and administrative specialization not evidenced by the ordinary hunting group leader. And it was the district leader, not the summer band chiefs which attended the summer political forums composing the tribal entity. A district leader might hold his status for his lifetime, and had some right to influence choice within his district to favour the appointment of a son or other close male relative as successor upon his death. Yet any ap­ pointee's right to assume a district leadership role had to be validated by his behaviour in keeping with Micmac ideals. Such chiefs able to wield consid­ erable powers within their districts thrived on environmental heterogeneity, not homogeneity. I believe we have been too influenced by the culture area concept, with its emphasis on cultural differences bred by environmental heterogeneity, and argue instead that districts, as long as they are not sepa­ rated by formidable topographical barriers may actually foster sociocultural integration as each district chief sought to incorporate himself more fully into the whole system, not only for economic but also defensive advantage. The last point is important. Like Miller, I do not believe that ecology alone can account for the rise of a tribal structure in the Micmac region. Diffusion of ideas from the southwest, particularly from the Adena culture of the Ohio Valley region, may have instigated a ranked society in its most nascent form. But an organized system of chiefs still would not have pro­ vided impetus enough to launch the proto-Micmac society into its early historic tribal aspect. The catalyst for this final stage may instead have occurred as a result of dynamic changes taking place by A.D. 1600 in what has become known as the St. Lawrence Iroquois region, north of the Micmac homeland. At this point another model, one devised by Jamieson (1990) has special utility. Jamieson constructed a model for the development of Saint Lawrence Iroquois society from a hunting and gathering state around A.D. 500 to a semi-sedentary fortified society by the time of firstEuropea n contact. In­ tensified use of certain rich resource areas, especially prime fishinglocations , she contended, led to increased settlement visibility, and hence vulnerabil­ ity from foes. Jamieson further stressed the plight of the Saint Lawrence Iroquois when, during the worsening climate by A.D. 1580 with the onset of what has been called the "little ice age" this nation fell prey to more

/ JANET CHUTE 27 southerly Iroquoian-speaking groups who coveted the Saint Lawrence Iro­ quois's rich hunting and fishingterritories . Horticultural yields had become unpredictable and the scarcities associated with crop failures further south led to predatory raids on the vulnerable northerners, who by A.D. 1580 had succumbed to the onslaughts and dispersed. I contend that Jamieson's explanation for the demise of the St. Lawrence Iroquois may have some explanatory bearing on the tnoalization of the proto-Micmac. Jamieson maintained that the St. Lawrence Iroquois experi­ enced increasing encapsulation on lands lying on the northeastern Atlantic coast. Semi-sedentary village settlements, once an adaptive response to re­ source scarcities, became a liability by A.D. 1580 as such villages became targets for large-scale aggression from Native marauders desiring lands on the St. Lawrence and Gaspe peninsula as a resource hinterland fnr their homelands further south. Had the Micmac adopted a semi-sedentary existence similar to the St. Lawrence Iroquois, they too might have suffered a similar fate. Instead, the Micmac's lack of semi-permanent settlements may have been their salva­ tion, for no other group on the northeastern Atlantic seaboard was probably as strategically placed, other than the St. Lawrence Iroquois themselves, to be encapsulated by hostile strangers. For this reason it made good sense for the Micmac to restrict their visibility by remaining hunters and gatherers, while assuming enough sociopolitical integration to launch successful war parties and maintain the functioning of their complex network of resource districts. From such a perspective some limits on population growth for the Micmac would have undoubtedly been adaptive. The ever-present threat by A.D. 1580 of potential encapsulation by Native marauders from both the west and south probably fostered intercourse among the leadership of the Micmac tribal districts in order to defend traditional tribal territories. Historic changes likely sponsored an intensification, rather than a ma­ jor modification, of this tribal organization based on the district system. French military initiatives coincided with Micmac coastal defense schemes by linking the hostile Iroquois with the British enemy and stressing the need to repel both. At least two French commissions awarded to Native district chiefs exist —one to Joseph Condo of Restigouche in 17306 and another to Francis Muise of La Have and Merligueche, or Lunenburg, in 1742.' For many years the word "Mohawk" remained an umbrella term among the Micmac for dangerous and unpredictable strangers of any sort. Native or

6Indian Affairs Correspondence 1860-1869. William Spragge to the Surveyor General. 12 April, 1865, with enclosures. (PANB 1865). 7Abbe Jean-.Mande Sigogne to Lieutenant-Governor Sir John C. Sherbrooke 5 Mav. 1812. Enclosures include Muise's commission from the French in \tM (PANS 1812). 28 THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE" non-Native (Wallis and Wallis 1955:189-190). Meanwhile the French mis­ sionaries sought to instill associations of stable or predictable power in the minds of the Micmac with French Roman Catholicism. By the time Louis- bourg fell in 1758 the Micmac district system had come to assume a more rigid hierarchical structure than it ever had evidenced prior to the estab­ lishment of the French regime in North America; but such a development should not be allowed to overshadow the fact that its origins extend back into the proto-historic period, long before the first Europeans arrived on the Atlantic coast.

REFERENCES Abler, Thomas S. 1990 Micmacs and Gypsies: Occupation of the Peripatetic Niche. Pp. 1- 11 in Papers of the Twenty-First Algonquian Conference. William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University. Allen, Patricia 1980 The Oxbow Site: An Archaeological Framework for Northeastern New Brunswick. Pp. 132-146 in Proceedings of the 1980 Conference on the Future of Archaeology. Occasional Papers in Anthropology 8. Daniel Shimabuku, ed. Halifax: Saint Mary's University. Bakker, Peter 1990 A Basque Etymology for the Word Iroquois. Man in the Northeast 40:89-93. Bourque, Bruce J. 1989 Ethnicity on the Maritime Peninsula, 1600-1759. Ethnohistory 36: 257-284. Bourque, Bruce J., and Ruth H. Whitehead 1985 Tarrentines and the Introduction of European Trade Goods in the Gulf of Maine. Ethnohistory 32:327-341. Brasser, T.J.C. 1971 The Coastal Algonkians: People of the First Frontiers. Pp. 64- 91 in North American Indians in Historical Perspective. Eleanor B. Leacock and Nancy O. Lurie, eds. New York: Random House. Burley, David 1983 Cultural Complexity and Evolution in the Development of Coastal Adaptations Among the Micmac and Coast Salish. Pp. 157-172 in The Evolution of Maritime Cultures on the Northeast and the North­ west Coasts of America. R.J. Nash ed. Department of Archaeology Publication 11. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Davis, Stephen A. 1991 Yarmouth Coastal Survey. Pp. 69-88 in Archaeology in Nova Scotia 1987 and 1988. Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum, Curatorial Report No. 69. JANET CHUTE 29 d'Entrement, Clarence J. 1979 Census of Port Royal, Acadia, 1678. French Canadian and Acadian Genealogical Review 7(l):47-66. Erskine, John 1958 Mirmnr Notes. Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax. MS 754. Ganong,, William F. 1910 Introduction. Pg. 1-41 in New Relation of Gaspesia. Chrestien Le Clercq. Toronto: Champlain Society. Geographic Board of Canada 1913 Handbook of Indians of Canada. First published in 1912 as an ap­ pendix to the Tenth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada. Ottawa: OH. Parmelee, The King's Printer. Hickerson, Harold 1967 Some Implications of the Theory of Particularity, or "Atomism", of Northern Algonkians. Current Anthropology 8:313-143. Hoffman, Bernard 1955 Historical Ethnography of the Micmac of the Sixteenth and Seven­ teenth Centuries. PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley. Jamieson, J.B. 1990 Trade and Warfare; The Disappearance of the Saint Lawrence Iro­ quoians. Man in the Northeast 39:79-85. Le Clercq, Chrestien 1910 New Relation of Gaspesia. W.F. Ganong, ed. Toronto: The Cham­ plain Society. Lescarbot, Marc 1907 The History of New France. Toronto: The Champlain Society. [1907-1911.] Martijn, Charles 1989 An Eastern Micmac Domain of Islands. Pp. 208-231 in Actes du vmgtieme congres des algonqumistes. William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University. McFeat, Tom 1989 Rise and Fall of the Big Men of the Northeast. Pp. 2.32-249 in Actes du vingtieme congres des algonqumistes. William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University. McGee, Harold 1977 The Case for Micmac Denies. Pp. 107-114 in Actes du huitieme congres des algonqumistes. William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University. Miller. Virginia 1983 Social and Political Complexity on the East Coast: The Micmac Case. Pp. 41-55 in The Evolution of Maritime Cultures on the Northeast and the Northwest Coasts of America. R.J. -\ash ed. Department of Archaeology Publication 11. Simon Fraser I Diversity Burnabv. B.C. 30 THE CONCEPT OF "TRIBE"

1986 The Micmac: A Maritime Woodland Group. Pp. 324-352 in Native Peoples, The Canadian Experience. R. Bruce Morrison and C. Rod­ erick Wilson, eds. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Morrison, Kenneth 1975 The People of the Dawn: The Abnaki and their Relations with New England and New France, 1600-1727. PhD thesis, University of Maine at Orono. Morrison, R. Bruce, and C. Roderick Wilson, eds. 1986 Native Peoples The Canadian Experience. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Morse, William Inglis, ed. 1935 Acadiensia Nova 1. London: Bernard Quaritch. NAC (= National Archives of Canada) 1707- Recensement genal fait au mois de Nouembre mile Sept cent huit de tous les Sauuages de I'Acadie qui resident dans la Coste de I'Est, Et de ceux de Pintagouet et de Canibeky. Famille par Famille, Leurs ages — Celuy de Leurs Femmes et Enfants avec une Recapitulation a la fin de la quantite d'hommes Et de garcons capables d'aler a La guerres, commeaussy Le recensement des francois Establis a La ditte Coste de I Es. MG18, F18. The original manuscript is housed in Vol. IV, No. 751 of the Edward E. Ayer Collection of the Newberry library, Chicago. [1707-1708 (typescript).] Nash, Ronald J., and Virginia P. Miller 1987 Model Building and the Case of the Micmac Economy. Man in the Northeast 34:41-56. Nash, Ronald J., and Frances Stewart 1990 Melanson; A Large Micmac Village in Kings County, Nova Scotia. Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum, Curatorial Report No. 67. Nietfeld, P.K.L. 1981 Determinants of Aboriginal Micmac Political Structure. PhD thesis, University of New Mexico. PANB (= Provincial Archives of New Brunswick) 1865 RG10, RS105. Copy in the Indian Document Collection, document 38. Microfilm reel 8875. PANS (= Public Archives of Nova Scotia) 1762 Remarks on the Indian Trade in 1762. British Colonial Office Records, CO/217/20: 164 (b). On microfilm. 1768 Michael Francklin to the Earl of Hillsborough, 20 July, 1768. RGl, vol. 43, doc. 37. 1812 Indian Affairs records. RGl, vol. 430, documents 20-21. Patterson, George 1877 A History of the County of Pictou. Montreal: Dawson Brothers. Preston, Brian 1974 Excavations at a Complex of Prehistoric Sites along the Upper Reaches of the Shubenacadie River, 1971. Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum, Cu­ ratorial Report No. 19.

/ JANET CHUTE 31

Rand, Silus Tertius 1875 First Reading Book in the Micmac Language. Halifax: Nova Scotia Printing Co. Rogers, Edward S. 1967 Comment on Some Implications of the Theory of Particularity or "Atomism," of Northern Algonkians. Current Anthropology 8:333-

Sahlins, Marshall, and Elman Service, eds. 1960 Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sanger, David 1987 The Carson Site and the Late Ceramic Period in Passamaquoddy Bay, New Brunswick. Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper No. 135. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization. Mercury Se­ ries. Smith, James G.E., and Edward S. Rogers 1973 Cultural Ecology in the Canadian Shield Sub-arctic. Paper pre­ sented at the Nineth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Chicago. Speck, Frank G. 1915 The Family Hunting Band as the Basis of Algonkian Social Organi­ zation. American Anthropologist, n.s. 17:289-305. Turnbull, Christopher J. 1976 The Augustine Site: A Mound from the Maritimes. Archaeology of Eastern North America 4:50-62 in. Upton, L.F.S. 1979 Micmacs and Colonists. Indian-White Relations in the Maritimes 1713-1867. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Wallis, Wilson D., and Ruth Sawtell Wallis 1955 The Micmac Indians of Eastern Canada. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.