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The Wolastoqiyik: An Overview
by Joanne Light
16/06/05
Written for the New Brunswick Museum
(Some formatting has been lost in the copying of this article)
Introduction
This article will attempt to present an overview of the Wolastoqiyik in a number of ways—in the setting of their own
distinctive aspects within the First Nations of the Wabanuwok (or Wabanaki), as well as in the context of their origins,
their history within the Canadian framework and as one of the founding First Nations of North America.
Theories and Current Research on the Origins of the Wolastoqiyik/ A Look at the Concept of Time in the
History of Human Migration
Aboriginal Canadians, of which the Wolastoqiyik—peoples of the Wolastoq [Good River or Beautiful River] (the St.
John River region of western New Brunswick; easternmost Maine and the St. Lawrence River region north of
Madawaska)—are one distinctive nation (belonging to the Algonkian linguistic group), are, according to the
Arkansas Encyclopedia, “widely believed to have come to this continent via the now non-existent Bering Land
bridge. However, this is not the only theory. Some archaeologists believe that the migration consisted of seafaring
nations that moved along the coast, avoiding mountainous inland terrain and highly variable terrestrial ecosystems.
Other researchers have postulated an original settlement by skilled navigators from Oceania, though these nations
are believed to be nearly extinct. Yet another theory claims an early crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by people
originating in Europe. Many aboriginal peoples do not believe the migration theory at all. The creation stories of
many First Nations place the people in North America from the beginning of time.”[1] Robert Leavitt in Maliseet
Micmac/First Nations of the Maritimes writes:
“A creation story is an account of events which took place at the beginning of time. It is about the actions of divine beings and heroes,
who gave the earth its present form and order. For the native people of the Maritime region, the most important figure is Glooscap. In
these stories, we learn about the creation of the world. We also hear about the “original” animals, the first people and the earliest
landforms. Creation stories are sometimes understood as establishing the order of human society, setting examples of how people
treat one another and how they treat the environment, the animals living in it and other groups of people…” p. 15
When we consider that the Wolastoqiyik have been in the New Brunswick/Maine/Quebec area for at least 11,000
years, and, to paraphrase Morrison and Wilson, seeing that proto-Indo-European beginnings (small horticultural
group ancestral to speakers of modern languages) were only 8,000 years ago and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
tradition was only 4,000 years ago (p. 12), the most recent suggested date is far more distant than most ancestral
events in Western cultural memory. As Morrison and Wilson write in Native Peoples/The Canadian Experience:
“Thus, the Elder and the archaeologist, in their differing ways, seem to be saying the same thing: 12,000 years ago
is, in almost any sense, at the beginning of the world and could very well be deemed the beginning of time.”
According to Morrison and Wilson “most Canadians have some interest in Indians, but they share stereotypes that
are not well founded, show little appreciation for the role of Native peoples in our history and do not understand the
basis for Native land and other claims.” To paraphrase Morrison and Wilson, they have little basis for real
understanding, though they are not necessarily ill disposed toward aboriginal people. Perhaps to begin filling this
gap of non-appreciation and misunderstanding could come the willingness to consider duration; that is, to begin to
acquire a concept of the length of time nations like the Wolastoqiyik have lived here. Consider this concept
proposed by NB Museum curator Peter Larocque: If this essay comprises forty-five pages or 11,715 words and
represents the length of time aboriginals have lived here, the portion represented by non-aboriginals’ time here
would be one and two-thirds of a page or 426 words. If we have been here for ten generations, aboriginals have
been here for 275 generations.[2]
Pursuing the ‘migration trail’—based on anthropological evidence, as cited from several identical online sources, “at
least three distinct migrations from Siberia occurred. The first wave of migration came into a land populated by the
large mammals of the late Pleistocene epoch, including mammoths, horses, giant sloths, and wooly rhinoceroses.”
[3] When the Wolastoqiyik stories speak of Koluskap making the animals less dangerous and of destroying the
dams of the giant beavers, whose fossilized teeth in the museum collection are indeed giant, we can imagine how far
the telling of the stories reaches back even, perhaps, into this time.
To continue from the previous source, “The second migration comprised the Athabaskan people”[4] who, generally
speaking, live in Western Canada. And, from the same reference, the third wave consisted of the Inuit, the Yupik
and the Aleut, nations “so ethnically distinct…they are not usually included in the term, “First Nation”.”
As the authors of the online article state: “In recent years, anthropological evidence of migration has been
supplemented by studies based on molecular genetics. The provisional results from this field suggest that four
distinct migrations from Asia occurred; and, most surprisingly, provide evidence of smaller scale, contemporaneous
human migration from Europe.”[5] In the website notes accompanying the Nova television documentary, “The
Mystery of the First Americans”, it states, “In 1996, near Kennewick, Washington, a suspected murder victim is
identified by forensic anthropologists as Caucasian, but he turns out to be almost 10,000 years old.”[6] For fifty
years our picture of prehistoric America has rested on the premise that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas were
East Asians of Mongoloid stock, the ancestors of today's Native Americans. But the discovery of the Kennewick Man,
along with several other startling finds in recent years, has thrown that once widely accepted idea into question and
revolutionized the science of paleo-anthropology. Another recent discovery of a double-edged spear imbedded in
the remains of a wooly mammoth, as well as molecular genetic research, has linked early aboriginal nations of the
Northeast with those of France. The theory purports that early European man could have made his way across the
Atlantic using vast ice floes and boats.[7]
As Michael Parfit, in his article, “Hunt for the First Americans”, writes about the puzzle of the first humans of Tierra
Del Fuego at the tip of South America, where four separate peoples inhabited a small landscape, where and when a
nation like the Wolastoqiyik originated is, at this moment, wide open:
“You can apply that phrase to the whole story of the first Americans. What will it take to solve the puzzle? Today the study of early
Americans stands at a moment of scientific turmoil: Established theories are shaken to their roots, and new ideas are stacked all over
the place—ideas about boats from Asia, boats from Spain, arrival 30,000 years ago, arrival 13,500 years ago. Realistic scientists don’t
see much resolution soon. Speculation is abundant, but the basic raw material of science—real, conclusive evidence itself—is very
hard to find.” (p. 11)
Western Scientific Classification and Wolastoqiyik “Persons” Collective
It is most important to keep in mind all humans are related, forming one species. Our species is intimately
interconnected with all other species and perhaps, if you are so inclined to believe, also with a spirit world. The
Wolastoqiyik world encompassed “persons” from animal to human to supernatural. In their spiritual teachings,
manifested in the stories, there was movement from one form to another and combinations among forms.
Contrasting with this worldview is the western scientific tradition of analysis, which produces systems of classification
with the intent of imposing quantifiable and qualitative analyses on phenomena. For example, it finds that, as
Morrison and Wilson write, “some of us are more alike and some are less alike” (p.12); thus, names like
“Amerindian” (to which Canadian aboriginals belong), arise out of this type of schematizing, producing the thesis
that a) the original inhabitants of North America are more like each other than they are like people deriving from
elsewhere on the globe, as well as b) Amerindians have been here long enough to become somewhat distinct from
other peoples. Continuing with Morrison and Wilson, “The perspective of relatedness also suggests Amerindians
are c) more like people from Eastern Asia than anywhere else.” (p. 12) (which, as they propose, is not definite proof
of a common origin, but suggests it as the strongest possibility). Recent work in molecular genetics has revealed
evidence for a linkage between northeastern aboriginal peoples, such as the Wolastoqiyik, and early peoples from
France.[8] However, for the discussion here, the focus is still on the East Asian research.
To paraphrase Morrison and Wilson, Amerindians and people from eastern Asian share features found nowhere
else in the world: straight black hair; lack of male-pattern baldness; little facial or body hair; skin that tans easily;
rare occurrence of blue eyes; epicanthic eye folds (may have); Inca bone; Mongolian spot and blood proteins.
And further from Morrison and Wilson, “the evolution of human beings took place primarily in Africa, secondarily in
Asia and Europe, and not at all in the rest of the world,” (p. 13) it follows that the ancestors of Amerindians came
here from somewhere else but, with respect to time, it is vague when this was. DNA research involving Y-
chromosomes has revealed that all non-African humans are descended from an individual who lived in East Asia
about 60,000 years ago. If people reached the Americas before then, as they certainly reached Asia and Europe,
they apparently left no male descendents. mtDNA research involving mitochondrial DNA (inherited through the
female line) reveals: a) the initial peopling of the Americas probably occurred some 20,000-40,000 years ago; b)
modern aboriginal Americans may have multiple points of origin, or the founding population included several mtDNA
lineages. Most, but not all, of these genetic groupings trace back to East Asia and Siberia, but specific lineages
within each major group originated within the Americas.[9]
Teeth have played a special role in the study of evolution because they remain preserved for a long time and are
evolutionarily conservative. A study by Christy Turner reveals that peoples of China, Northeastern Asia and the
New World fall under the “Sino dent pattern of teeth”. There are three sub-types within the Sino dent pattern:
Eskimoan; Athapaskan/Northwest Coast and all other Aboriginal New World peoples. Each sub-type is closely
associated with fossil populations coming from three distinct areas of northeast Asia. As previously stated, his study
reiterates that three migrations from these areas in Asia occurred into North America, the Eskimoan being the most
recent and the Athabaskan the second most recent and all other Aboriginal New World peoples first. And so these
early peoples lived and evolved here for vast amounts of time, too great to actually experience a sense of, though
the spatial analogy with the length of this paper given earlier might help.[10]
Contact, Decimation and Survival
The history of the First Nations of Canada and thus the history of the Wolastoqiyik in the face of that massive
immigration of Europeans is one of survival, both physical, in light of the effect of the European diseases, and
psychological/economic/emotional/spiritual. It is the matter of aboriginal sovereignty, whose existence was
challenged by the Europeans, (and to a much lesser extent, African and Asian people) who came here and imposed
their conception of land rights onto the aboriginals, who had their own, perfectly-viable attitude toward the land—
that no one can own it as it is from the Creator and so belongs to everyone. The European concept of land
ownership is intimately integrated with their notion of North America as a wilderness, with aboriginal peoples being
part of that wilderness, a conception which was perpetuated despite all the evidence to the contrary—a
concentration of indigenous populations; obvious control and management of unfenced pasture areas where many
people harvested mammals for food and practised agriculture; apparent aboriginal military power; aboriginal
peoples’ technological skills and extensive, well-established trade networks across the entire east side of the
continent.
An organization among nations of the northeast—the Wabanuok (of which the Wolastoqiyik were a member nation)
is a quintessential example of such as network. Its existence became known to the outside world from the early 17th
century onward. The nations met in an organized confederacy, called a Búduswágan (convention council), deemed
historically “the original Abenaki Confederacy under Chief Bashabes”, which, as Speck wrote in “The Eastern
Algonkian Wabanaki Confederacy”, grew out of a long tradition of aboriginal diplomacy. It was an authentic
northeastern Algonquian cultural and linguistic, as well as political, institution comprising twenty-one villages on
eleven rivers, one which embodied a set of core values and which survived attacks on its integrity over four
centuries (including outside national and provincial governments trying to dismantle and assimilate it). Its meetings
were consistent with an ancient pattern that is indigenous, adaptive and independent of any dominant society,
featuring a tradition of mutual support, civility and a persistent consensus leadership. It was saturated with ritual and
reciprocity. Women had veto power. The confederacy as a whole never became polarized. Familiar ritual,
reciprocity, kinship statuses (elder/younger brothers) and mutual trust flourished because of socializing prayer,
athletic contests and celebratory activities (feasting, dancing). Its headquarters were at Oldtown, Maine.
Among its reasons for existence was to gather delegations, both to condole the people and to institute a procedure
to select and inaugurate a new chief for a Nation whose chief had died. This process was recorded on Wampum
(Wolastoqiyik wapap (WAHB-ahb belts and was followed consistently in all instances. The timeline it followed was: 1)
chief’s death when the flagpole, flag and belongings of chief were all burnt; 2) one year’s mourning and 3)
messengers sent out in all directions in canoes to deliver invitations to all Nations to come and raise up a new chief.
Upon arrival, 4) messengers took part in reciprocal greetings, prayers, feasting, dancing, reading Wampum belts
and announcing the death of their chief. Then they 5) returned and told people assistance was coming. All
delegations 6) went to the community and a new chief was elected. (A chief from another community 7) put medals
on him. His wife 8) wrapped him in deer hide. The Chief 9) elected seven captains.)
Having absorbed the above breadth, depth and sophistication of such an institution, it seems ludicrous to even
harbour any sense of the continent as a wilderness. Even the acclaimed lyricist, Gordon Lightfoot, bought into the
untruth in his song, Canadian Railroad Trilogy, where he presents a false image of the continent before the
Europeans: “Long before the white man and long before the wheel /when the green, dark forest was too silent to be
real.”
Given the evidence of the, at least, 11,000 year old inhabitation present, the modern perspective (which was
probably little-developed at the time of contact) is one having Europeans at the time of contact viewing North
America as a wilderness from which to find “a sense of belonging” through land acquisition. As Morrison and Wilson
write: “The European legal and moral convention to assume…” that the land of the Wolastoqiyik and all other
aboriginal nations was not “extensively used and modified by ‘civilized’ peoples” and that it “was in fact empty and so
could be claimed by”…”Europeans was “…a powerful constraint on European understanding of how American
indigenous groups occupied and used land.” (p. 30)
Contact through the Centuries
I. 1000
Despite the scarcity of remaining evidence, partially due to the region’s acidic soil (which eats away organic
remains), it is known that one thousand years ago, there was an aborted Norse settlement on the Atlantic Coast. A
respected Wolastoqiyik elder, Dr. Peter Lewis Paul, who died in 1989, tells a detailed oral history story about the
Ancestors encountering the Vikings. The story of a giant snail, Wiwilameq, moving stealthily and slowly across the
water, all evidence of humans hidden, oars cutting the water surface, creating a ripple like a snail’s body acquires
the surface of the land, indeed brings to mind a giant snail slowly making its way silently over a surface. The horns
of the Viking headgear and the snail’s antennae are visually similar. As well, the concentric circles on a Viking shield
could conjure the image of a spiral as in a snail shell. (See the section “The Same But Slightly Different:
Wolastoqiyik Distinctiveness within Two Commonly Shared Cultural Aspects”)
II. 1000-1500
From 1000 to 1500, there is scant but tantalizing evidence of visitation from away, either from Europe or Africa.
Recent speculative history theories in books such as Holy Grail across the Atlantic by Michael Bradley even purport
that Koluskap (Kluskap) was a Scots aristocrat—Prince Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, who was believed to have
made a voyage to the region in 1398. This theory of Koluskap’s origin has been denounced as preposterous by St.
Thomas University religious studies professor, Thomas Parkhill.
“Whatever else it is, Leland's disregard for the integrity of the traditions he studied is bad scholarship that has encouraged more bad
scholarship. A relatively recent, outrageous example is a book which, using Leland's stories as a primary source, purports to prove that
Kluskap was really a fourteenth century Orkney nobleman named Henry Sinclair who overwintered in Nova Scotia.[1] I have already
noted the example of Joseph Campbell. The process of how Leland came to compose "Of Glooskap's Birth...", indeed his story-
gathering and editing methods in general, serve to remind students of Native American religions to be careful, even suspicious, when
considering sources, and to be tentative about their findings.”
After millennia upon millennia of inhabitation, involving association among aboriginal nations in trade, commerce and
social functioning, the European immigration and settlement into Canada forever changed the lives and cultures of
the Wolastoqiyik and other aboriginal nations. From the 15th to the 19th centuries, their populations were
decimated, by the privations of displacement, by disease, and in many cases by warfare with and enslavement by
European groups. For example, as reported in the Arkansas Encyclopedia and other Internet websites, “the first
Native American group encountered by Columbus, the 250,000 Arawaks of Haiti, were violently enslaved. Only 500
survived by 1550, and the group was totally extinct by 1650.”
The first and lasting effect of sustained contact was infectious disease—the disease of overcrowding, which,
because of the absence of crowded conditions on this continent, was unknown before the “modern” Europeans
came. Because of this, the aboriginal peoples had no immunity to these diseases and susceptibility to them became
the major factor in the decline of their populations until the 1920s.
The great smallpox epidemic in 1520-4 began in the West Indies and Mexico and spread northward to affect most of
North America, including the Wolastoqiyik peoples, of whom, it is theorized, up to 90% were wiped out. This was
followed by a measles’ epidemic in 1531 and one by an unknown pathogen (which affected people of the St.
Lawrence Valley) in 1535. The number of people who died is a matter of speculation, but the population of 16th
century North America north of Mexico is estimated to have been between 4.5 to 18 million while, by the late 1800s,
the indigenous population was fixed at 300,000. The greatest killers were smallpox, measles, influenza and the
Bubonic plague. Other killers were diphtheria, cholera, typhus, scarlet fever and typhoid. So, when settlement by
Europeans began in the 1600s, aboriginal peoples had already been devastated by these diseases.
III. 1500-1600
In the 16th century, immigration from Europe and Africa began, although the European settlement of this era
“focused on subtropical regions” (Morrison and Wilson, p. 30). 16th century Europeans were familiar with the North
Atlantic through fishery activities by Basque, Portuguese and English fishermen, whose presence accelerated
throughout the century “until, every summer, around 17,000 European males were present along the northern
coast”. (Morrison and Wilson, p. 31). However, no real permanent settlement was established. “Trade in furs, an
adjunct, began in earnest at this time with French and English voyages of trade and exploration along the coast and
up the St. Lawrence River.” (Morrison and Wilson, p. 31). Trade relationships in 16th century formed a basis for
the pattern of settlement to come. Various European nations established colonies in the territory controlled by the
aboriginal nations such as the Wolastoqiyik with whom each European nation had regularly allied itself in trade. “We
tend to mistakenly look at those alliances in terms of their lasting significance rather than what motivated them at the
time.” (Morrison and Wilson, p. 31). Being versed traders located at the hub of a vast eastern North American
trading network, the Wolastoqiyik would, undoubtedly, have been much involved at an early date in this activity.
IV. 1600-1700
When settlement began in the 17th century, Europeans stayed on at the sufferance of their hosts and trading
partners, the aboriginals. Though Europeans claimed territory for their countries’ crowns, reality of aboriginal control
made it necessary to purchase land from aboriginals and to ally with aboriginals for trade and warfare. The
Europeans professed a dual posture—trading with them by adopting indigenous forms of negotiation and protocols,
while claiming European sovereignty in law. (This perhaps led to the expression: “White man speaks with forked
tongue.”) It isn’t until the early 17th century that we have the first written accounts of the aboriginals by writers such
as Marc Lescarbot in “Nova Francia.” A Description of Acadia. 1606; Father Biard in “Missio Canadensis: Epistola
ex Portu-regali in Acadia transmissa ad Praepositvm Generalem Societatis Iesv A. R. Petro Biardo eyvsdem
Societatis…” (Ex Typographéo Mayeriana, apud Melchiorem Algeyer, Dilingae, 1612). Reprinted, with translation, in
Thwaites, Jesuit Relations 2: 57-117 and Nicolas Denys in The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of N.A.
(Acadia 1672)…Translated and Edited by W.F. Ganong. (Publications of the Champlain Society 2). Toronto, 1908.
Even with their inherent biases. These accounts provide detailed description of the scene encountered and give a
rare picture of the Northeast coast in the early and late 17th century.
Immigration during this century accelerated dramatically when fur trading posts and agricultural settlement were
established by the French and English. A time of huge increase in the trade between Europeans and Amerindians,
as well as European encroachment on aboriginal land was taking place, while complex competition among the
European groups for control of land for expansions and among indigenous nations for economic survival (given the
European onslaught) existed. Alliances and ancient, north and south trade patterns between indigenous nations
were built on, exploited and irrevocably interrupted by the invasion. The Wolastoqiyik allied with the French, whose
inroad was east to west, from Acadia to Gaspé, and then the St. Lawrence Valley, the Great Lakes and south
through the Ohio and Mississippi River systems. The Iroquois, the natural enemies of the Wolastoqiyik, gained
political power by challenging the French and their allies to control trade on the St Lawrence and then by allying with
the British.
V. 1700-1800
In the eighteenth century, an even more dramatic increase in immigration occurred. The French could claim to the
English that their presence in Acadia was by right of Indian invitation, at the same time as the Treaty of Utrecht
handed Acadia to the English with no recognition of this fact. To this day, the treaties concerning land signed
between the Wolastoqiyik First Nation and the British, stated by E. Tappan Adney in a letter to Peter Lewis Paul
dated August 21, 1946, “in 1725 in Boston, confirmed in 1728 at Halifax, and in particular treaties of 1763, 1749,
1778 and 1781 at Halifax”, have never been honoured. As Adney wrote further in the letter, in his defense of Peter
Lewis Paul’s arrest for cutting ash in woods in which his people had been cutting ash for hundreds, even thousands
of years,
“That the treaty understandings have long been violated in respect to hunting and fishing, after Confederation,
when the resources of the provinces were transferred to the provinces, does not affect the fact that the right of an
Indian to go on anyone’s land for materials—in this case small, ash trees—concerns treaties between the British
government and our Indians as sovereign people, acknowledged owners of the country they occupied.”
Regarding these treaties, in 1948, Edwin Tappan Adney wrote in an unpublished essay, “The Tribe of the
Wulastooks”,
“There are several reasons explaining why Chief Saulis of Tobique has started out to revive the old St. John River
Nation [the Wolastoqiyik]. One is that appeal is being made to the old treaties with Great Britain that in positive
terms conceded the [Wolastoqiyik] to be owners of the territories they occupied in 1726 and still occupy.”
For some reason, not revealed during the course of this research, the reconstitution of the Wolastoqiyik as one
nation never succeeded. As Adney wrote,
“The reservations are what remains of tribal lands and the government of Ottawa, which assumed jurisdiction in all Indian affairs from
Great Britain, has broken up these reservation groups into politically independent bands, even to claiming that each reservation [so
called band] is sole owner of the land of their reserves.”
VI. 1800-1900
The nineteenth century, by far the one of the greatest immigration waves, witnessed the establishment of the
second of the Wabanaki and other First Nations’ Búduswágan, described by Willard Walker in “The Wabanaki
Confederacy” as the “Wabanaki Confederacy” (organized around 1850s), an outgrowth of an organizing tendency
shared by founders of League of the Iroquois, Creek Confederacy and the Delaware Confederacy at French
instigation to support the Wabanaki First Nations against the English. As Walker explained, Vaudreuil, the French
officer who instigated Caughnawaga, was merely elaborating on a traditional practise, but the result was not cultural
or linguistic, only political. It consisted of the Wabanaki Peoples (who played only a minor role in it)—all the
Algonkian aboriginals from Maine eastward to the Atlantic and northward to the St. Lawrence including, in order of
seniority, the Wabaná'kiαk (Abenaki), people of the sunrise country; the Pannawampskéwiαk (Penobscot), people of
where the river widens out at Penobscot Bay and River; the Peskada mókantiak (Passamaquoddy), people of the
Pollock fishing grounds at Passamaquoddy Bay; the Wulástεgwiak (Wolastoqiyik), people of the beautiful river (the
St. John River); the Mi’kεmak (Mi’kmaq), people of the coast of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island,
Cape Breton, Newfoundland and the Aroosaguntacook and Wawenock around St. Francis, P.Q., along with the
Mohawk (Iroquois) of Caughnawaga and Oka (who had regularly attacked the Wabanaki, but were always defeated
by them) plus the fourteen neighbouring first nations and smaller groupings, led by the Ottawa, the oldest and most
venerable of the eastern nations, from whom the Mohawk had sought arbitration to secure peace, and who
subsequently complied by appointing Caughnawaga as capital and requiring Nations to send delegates there every
three years for this council. It is widely accepted by historians that not enough credit is given to this confederacy’s
prominent role in the British, French and American political struggles of this era.
The Confederacy met both separately and jointly. Each Nation had its own council house, the Penobscot at Oldtown;
the Passamaquoddy, Sipayik (Pleasant Point); the Wolastoqiyik, Aukpaque (later Tobique) and the Mi’kmaq, Bear
River.
When gathered together, this formal relationship was maintained by series of symbolic ceremonies including
wampum procedures, chief elections, condolence, sending of delegates, etc.---all modeled after the Iroquoian
League. At the assembly, the Mohawk were given the responsibility of guarding the great fire, a large wooden hoop
suspended from the ceiling symbolizing the council fire of the confederacy.
As before, all transactions of the allies were recorded by means of woven or strung (according to certain
conventional designs) Wampum (Wolastoqiyik wapap (WAHB-ahb “white string”) belts made from beads fashioned
from purple and white quahog clam shells. These combinations suggested certain sentences or ideas to the
narrator who knew his record by heart and was merely aided by the association of the shell combinations in his mind
with incidents of the tale on record, which he was rendering. These mnemonic documents were read over again at
each recurring meeting to refresh the memories of the delegates. The last Putuwosuwin (keeper of the
Passamaquoddy Wampum records), was Sapiel Selmo who went to his final confederacy meeting at Caughnawaga
in 1870. His record was converted into written form by Louis Mitchell (b. 1847, who represented his Nation in the
Maine Legislature) but was lost in a fire in 1911. Mitchell reproduced it again by memory and J.D. Prince published
three versions (1897, 1921, Leland and Prince 1902). The 1921 publication (with original words and phrases
restored) was revised in 1990 (Eds. Robert Leavitt and David A. Frances).
The wampum records include the story of how the Wabanaki Confederacy originated and how it was maintained. It is
a rare example of Passamaquoddy oral history transcribed by a Passamaquoddy writer in his native language and
provides a valuable complement to accounts found in Speck’s and Walker’s histories of the Confederacy. It was
also intended for those who wished to know more about the social and political institutions of the Passamaquoddy
people and their neighbours like the Wolastoqiyik during the colonial period. It includes ancient customs like the
wedding ceremony, which survived despite devastating influence of the Church; British and American governance
influences and aboriginal practices like the “Wigwam of Silence” (where all leaders retreated to keeping silent for a
long period of several days before conferring) and “Everyone Talks” (where everyone is heard without interruption
and consensus decision making is the mode [now known as “Talking Circle”] ).
(FULL ARTICLE CAN BE READ BY CONTACTING AUTHOR)
[1] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[2] Developed from the original concept made by Patrick Polchies, New Brunswick Museum board member and
resident of Kingsclear First Nation, who presented the analogy, “If human presence in the Maritme provinces is a
$10 bill, non-aboriginal presence is five cents.”
[3] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[4] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[5] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[6] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/ original broadcast date: 02/15/2000
[7] In conversation with New Brunswick Museum curator, Peter Larocque
[8] in conversation with New Brunswick Museum curator, Peter Larocque
[9] paraphrasing Morrison and Wilson in Native Peoples A Canadian Experience
[10] paraphrasing Morrison and Wilson in Native Peoples A Canadian Experience
[11] http://www.ammsa.com/classroom/CLASS3Indianaffairs.html
[12] http://www.ammsa.com/classroom/CLASS3Indianaffairs.html
[13] http://www.civilization.ca/educat/oracle/modules/dkeenlyside/page02_e.html
[14] http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net/malacitecanoes.htm
[15] Stuart Trueman in John Gyles: as a Slave of the Maliseets
by Joanne Light
16/06/05
Written for the New Brunswick Museum
(Some formatting has been lost in the copying of this article)
Introduction
This article will attempt to present an overview of the Wolastoqiyik in a number of ways—in the setting of their own
distinctive aspects within the First Nations of the Wabanuwok (or Wabanaki), as well as in the context of their origins,
their history within the Canadian framework and as one of the founding First Nations of North America.
Theories and Current Research on the Origins of the Wolastoqiyik/ A Look at the Concept of Time in the
History of Human Migration
Aboriginal Canadians, of which the Wolastoqiyik—peoples of the Wolastoq [Good River or Beautiful River] (the St.
John River region of western New Brunswick; easternmost Maine and the St. Lawrence River region north of
Madawaska)—are one distinctive nation (belonging to the Algonkian linguistic group), are, according to the
Arkansas Encyclopedia, “widely believed to have come to this continent via the now non-existent Bering Land
bridge. However, this is not the only theory. Some archaeologists believe that the migration consisted of seafaring
nations that moved along the coast, avoiding mountainous inland terrain and highly variable terrestrial ecosystems.
Other researchers have postulated an original settlement by skilled navigators from Oceania, though these nations
are believed to be nearly extinct. Yet another theory claims an early crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by people
originating in Europe. Many aboriginal peoples do not believe the migration theory at all. The creation stories of
many First Nations place the people in North America from the beginning of time.”[1] Robert Leavitt in Maliseet
Micmac/First Nations of the Maritimes writes:
“A creation story is an account of events which took place at the beginning of time. It is about the actions of divine beings and heroes,
who gave the earth its present form and order. For the native people of the Maritime region, the most important figure is Glooscap. In
these stories, we learn about the creation of the world. We also hear about the “original” animals, the first people and the earliest
landforms. Creation stories are sometimes understood as establishing the order of human society, setting examples of how people
treat one another and how they treat the environment, the animals living in it and other groups of people…” p. 15
When we consider that the Wolastoqiyik have been in the New Brunswick/Maine/Quebec area for at least 11,000
years, and, to paraphrase Morrison and Wilson, seeing that proto-Indo-European beginnings (small horticultural
group ancestral to speakers of modern languages) were only 8,000 years ago and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
tradition was only 4,000 years ago (p. 12), the most recent suggested date is far more distant than most ancestral
events in Western cultural memory. As Morrison and Wilson write in Native Peoples/The Canadian Experience:
“Thus, the Elder and the archaeologist, in their differing ways, seem to be saying the same thing: 12,000 years ago
is, in almost any sense, at the beginning of the world and could very well be deemed the beginning of time.”
According to Morrison and Wilson “most Canadians have some interest in Indians, but they share stereotypes that
are not well founded, show little appreciation for the role of Native peoples in our history and do not understand the
basis for Native land and other claims.” To paraphrase Morrison and Wilson, they have little basis for real
understanding, though they are not necessarily ill disposed toward aboriginal people. Perhaps to begin filling this
gap of non-appreciation and misunderstanding could come the willingness to consider duration; that is, to begin to
acquire a concept of the length of time nations like the Wolastoqiyik have lived here. Consider this concept
proposed by NB Museum curator Peter Larocque: If this essay comprises forty-five pages or 11,715 words and
represents the length of time aboriginals have lived here, the portion represented by non-aboriginals’ time here
would be one and two-thirds of a page or 426 words. If we have been here for ten generations, aboriginals have
been here for 275 generations.[2]
Pursuing the ‘migration trail’—based on anthropological evidence, as cited from several identical online sources, “at
least three distinct migrations from Siberia occurred. The first wave of migration came into a land populated by the
large mammals of the late Pleistocene epoch, including mammoths, horses, giant sloths, and wooly rhinoceroses.”
[3] When the Wolastoqiyik stories speak of Koluskap making the animals less dangerous and of destroying the
dams of the giant beavers, whose fossilized teeth in the museum collection are indeed giant, we can imagine how far
the telling of the stories reaches back even, perhaps, into this time.
To continue from the previous source, “The second migration comprised the Athabaskan people”[4] who, generally
speaking, live in Western Canada. And, from the same reference, the third wave consisted of the Inuit, the Yupik
and the Aleut, nations “so ethnically distinct…they are not usually included in the term, “First Nation”.”
As the authors of the online article state: “In recent years, anthropological evidence of migration has been
supplemented by studies based on molecular genetics. The provisional results from this field suggest that four
distinct migrations from Asia occurred; and, most surprisingly, provide evidence of smaller scale, contemporaneous
human migration from Europe.”[5] In the website notes accompanying the Nova television documentary, “The
Mystery of the First Americans”, it states, “In 1996, near Kennewick, Washington, a suspected murder victim is
identified by forensic anthropologists as Caucasian, but he turns out to be almost 10,000 years old.”[6] For fifty
years our picture of prehistoric America has rested on the premise that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas were
East Asians of Mongoloid stock, the ancestors of today's Native Americans. But the discovery of the Kennewick Man,
along with several other startling finds in recent years, has thrown that once widely accepted idea into question and
revolutionized the science of paleo-anthropology. Another recent discovery of a double-edged spear imbedded in
the remains of a wooly mammoth, as well as molecular genetic research, has linked early aboriginal nations of the
Northeast with those of France. The theory purports that early European man could have made his way across the
Atlantic using vast ice floes and boats.[7]
As Michael Parfit, in his article, “Hunt for the First Americans”, writes about the puzzle of the first humans of Tierra
Del Fuego at the tip of South America, where four separate peoples inhabited a small landscape, where and when a
nation like the Wolastoqiyik originated is, at this moment, wide open:
“You can apply that phrase to the whole story of the first Americans. What will it take to solve the puzzle? Today the study of early
Americans stands at a moment of scientific turmoil: Established theories are shaken to their roots, and new ideas are stacked all over
the place—ideas about boats from Asia, boats from Spain, arrival 30,000 years ago, arrival 13,500 years ago. Realistic scientists don’t
see much resolution soon. Speculation is abundant, but the basic raw material of science—real, conclusive evidence itself—is very
hard to find.” (p. 11)
Western Scientific Classification and Wolastoqiyik “Persons” Collective
It is most important to keep in mind all humans are related, forming one species. Our species is intimately
interconnected with all other species and perhaps, if you are so inclined to believe, also with a spirit world. The
Wolastoqiyik world encompassed “persons” from animal to human to supernatural. In their spiritual teachings,
manifested in the stories, there was movement from one form to another and combinations among forms.
Contrasting with this worldview is the western scientific tradition of analysis, which produces systems of classification
with the intent of imposing quantifiable and qualitative analyses on phenomena. For example, it finds that, as
Morrison and Wilson write, “some of us are more alike and some are less alike” (p.12); thus, names like
“Amerindian” (to which Canadian aboriginals belong), arise out of this type of schematizing, producing the thesis
that a) the original inhabitants of North America are more like each other than they are like people deriving from
elsewhere on the globe, as well as b) Amerindians have been here long enough to become somewhat distinct from
other peoples. Continuing with Morrison and Wilson, “The perspective of relatedness also suggests Amerindians
are c) more like people from Eastern Asia than anywhere else.” (p. 12) (which, as they propose, is not definite proof
of a common origin, but suggests it as the strongest possibility). Recent work in molecular genetics has revealed
evidence for a linkage between northeastern aboriginal peoples, such as the Wolastoqiyik, and early peoples from
France.[8] However, for the discussion here, the focus is still on the East Asian research.
To paraphrase Morrison and Wilson, Amerindians and people from eastern Asian share features found nowhere
else in the world: straight black hair; lack of male-pattern baldness; little facial or body hair; skin that tans easily;
rare occurrence of blue eyes; epicanthic eye folds (may have); Inca bone; Mongolian spot and blood proteins.
And further from Morrison and Wilson, “the evolution of human beings took place primarily in Africa, secondarily in
Asia and Europe, and not at all in the rest of the world,” (p. 13) it follows that the ancestors of Amerindians came
here from somewhere else but, with respect to time, it is vague when this was. DNA research involving Y-
chromosomes has revealed that all non-African humans are descended from an individual who lived in East Asia
about 60,000 years ago. If people reached the Americas before then, as they certainly reached Asia and Europe,
they apparently left no male descendents. mtDNA research involving mitochondrial DNA (inherited through the
female line) reveals: a) the initial peopling of the Americas probably occurred some 20,000-40,000 years ago; b)
modern aboriginal Americans may have multiple points of origin, or the founding population included several mtDNA
lineages. Most, but not all, of these genetic groupings trace back to East Asia and Siberia, but specific lineages
within each major group originated within the Americas.[9]
Teeth have played a special role in the study of evolution because they remain preserved for a long time and are
evolutionarily conservative. A study by Christy Turner reveals that peoples of China, Northeastern Asia and the
New World fall under the “Sino dent pattern of teeth”. There are three sub-types within the Sino dent pattern:
Eskimoan; Athapaskan/Northwest Coast and all other Aboriginal New World peoples. Each sub-type is closely
associated with fossil populations coming from three distinct areas of northeast Asia. As previously stated, his study
reiterates that three migrations from these areas in Asia occurred into North America, the Eskimoan being the most
recent and the Athabaskan the second most recent and all other Aboriginal New World peoples first. And so these
early peoples lived and evolved here for vast amounts of time, too great to actually experience a sense of, though
the spatial analogy with the length of this paper given earlier might help.[10]
Contact, Decimation and Survival
The history of the First Nations of Canada and thus the history of the Wolastoqiyik in the face of that massive
immigration of Europeans is one of survival, both physical, in light of the effect of the European diseases, and
psychological/economic/emotional/spiritual. It is the matter of aboriginal sovereignty, whose existence was
challenged by the Europeans, (and to a much lesser extent, African and Asian people) who came here and imposed
their conception of land rights onto the aboriginals, who had their own, perfectly-viable attitude toward the land—
that no one can own it as it is from the Creator and so belongs to everyone. The European concept of land
ownership is intimately integrated with their notion of North America as a wilderness, with aboriginal peoples being
part of that wilderness, a conception which was perpetuated despite all the evidence to the contrary—a
concentration of indigenous populations; obvious control and management of unfenced pasture areas where many
people harvested mammals for food and practised agriculture; apparent aboriginal military power; aboriginal
peoples’ technological skills and extensive, well-established trade networks across the entire east side of the
continent.
An organization among nations of the northeast—the Wabanuok (of which the Wolastoqiyik were a member nation)
is a quintessential example of such as network. Its existence became known to the outside world from the early 17th
century onward. The nations met in an organized confederacy, called a Búduswágan (convention council), deemed
historically “the original Abenaki Confederacy under Chief Bashabes”, which, as Speck wrote in “The Eastern
Algonkian Wabanaki Confederacy”, grew out of a long tradition of aboriginal diplomacy. It was an authentic
northeastern Algonquian cultural and linguistic, as well as political, institution comprising twenty-one villages on
eleven rivers, one which embodied a set of core values and which survived attacks on its integrity over four
centuries (including outside national and provincial governments trying to dismantle and assimilate it). Its meetings
were consistent with an ancient pattern that is indigenous, adaptive and independent of any dominant society,
featuring a tradition of mutual support, civility and a persistent consensus leadership. It was saturated with ritual and
reciprocity. Women had veto power. The confederacy as a whole never became polarized. Familiar ritual,
reciprocity, kinship statuses (elder/younger brothers) and mutual trust flourished because of socializing prayer,
athletic contests and celebratory activities (feasting, dancing). Its headquarters were at Oldtown, Maine.
Among its reasons for existence was to gather delegations, both to condole the people and to institute a procedure
to select and inaugurate a new chief for a Nation whose chief had died. This process was recorded on Wampum
(Wolastoqiyik wapap (WAHB-ahb belts and was followed consistently in all instances. The timeline it followed was: 1)
chief’s death when the flagpole, flag and belongings of chief were all burnt; 2) one year’s mourning and 3)
messengers sent out in all directions in canoes to deliver invitations to all Nations to come and raise up a new chief.
Upon arrival, 4) messengers took part in reciprocal greetings, prayers, feasting, dancing, reading Wampum belts
and announcing the death of their chief. Then they 5) returned and told people assistance was coming. All
delegations 6) went to the community and a new chief was elected. (A chief from another community 7) put medals
on him. His wife 8) wrapped him in deer hide. The Chief 9) elected seven captains.)
Having absorbed the above breadth, depth and sophistication of such an institution, it seems ludicrous to even
harbour any sense of the continent as a wilderness. Even the acclaimed lyricist, Gordon Lightfoot, bought into the
untruth in his song, Canadian Railroad Trilogy, where he presents a false image of the continent before the
Europeans: “Long before the white man and long before the wheel /when the green, dark forest was too silent to be
real.”
Given the evidence of the, at least, 11,000 year old inhabitation present, the modern perspective (which was
probably little-developed at the time of contact) is one having Europeans at the time of contact viewing North
America as a wilderness from which to find “a sense of belonging” through land acquisition. As Morrison and Wilson
write: “The European legal and moral convention to assume…” that the land of the Wolastoqiyik and all other
aboriginal nations was not “extensively used and modified by ‘civilized’ peoples” and that it “was in fact empty and so
could be claimed by”…”Europeans was “…a powerful constraint on European understanding of how American
indigenous groups occupied and used land.” (p. 30)
Contact through the Centuries
I. 1000
Despite the scarcity of remaining evidence, partially due to the region’s acidic soil (which eats away organic
remains), it is known that one thousand years ago, there was an aborted Norse settlement on the Atlantic Coast. A
respected Wolastoqiyik elder, Dr. Peter Lewis Paul, who died in 1989, tells a detailed oral history story about the
Ancestors encountering the Vikings. The story of a giant snail, Wiwilameq, moving stealthily and slowly across the
water, all evidence of humans hidden, oars cutting the water surface, creating a ripple like a snail’s body acquires
the surface of the land, indeed brings to mind a giant snail slowly making its way silently over a surface. The horns
of the Viking headgear and the snail’s antennae are visually similar. As well, the concentric circles on a Viking shield
could conjure the image of a spiral as in a snail shell. (See the section “The Same But Slightly Different:
Wolastoqiyik Distinctiveness within Two Commonly Shared Cultural Aspects”)
II. 1000-1500
From 1000 to 1500, there is scant but tantalizing evidence of visitation from away, either from Europe or Africa.
Recent speculative history theories in books such as Holy Grail across the Atlantic by Michael Bradley even purport
that Koluskap (Kluskap) was a Scots aristocrat—Prince Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, who was believed to have
made a voyage to the region in 1398. This theory of Koluskap’s origin has been denounced as preposterous by St.
Thomas University religious studies professor, Thomas Parkhill.
“Whatever else it is, Leland's disregard for the integrity of the traditions he studied is bad scholarship that has encouraged more bad
scholarship. A relatively recent, outrageous example is a book which, using Leland's stories as a primary source, purports to prove that
Kluskap was really a fourteenth century Orkney nobleman named Henry Sinclair who overwintered in Nova Scotia.[1] I have already
noted the example of Joseph Campbell. The process of how Leland came to compose "Of Glooskap's Birth...", indeed his story-
gathering and editing methods in general, serve to remind students of Native American religions to be careful, even suspicious, when
considering sources, and to be tentative about their findings.”
After millennia upon millennia of inhabitation, involving association among aboriginal nations in trade, commerce and
social functioning, the European immigration and settlement into Canada forever changed the lives and cultures of
the Wolastoqiyik and other aboriginal nations. From the 15th to the 19th centuries, their populations were
decimated, by the privations of displacement, by disease, and in many cases by warfare with and enslavement by
European groups. For example, as reported in the Arkansas Encyclopedia and other Internet websites, “the first
Native American group encountered by Columbus, the 250,000 Arawaks of Haiti, were violently enslaved. Only 500
survived by 1550, and the group was totally extinct by 1650.”
The first and lasting effect of sustained contact was infectious disease—the disease of overcrowding, which,
because of the absence of crowded conditions on this continent, was unknown before the “modern” Europeans
came. Because of this, the aboriginal peoples had no immunity to these diseases and susceptibility to them became
the major factor in the decline of their populations until the 1920s.
The great smallpox epidemic in 1520-4 began in the West Indies and Mexico and spread northward to affect most of
North America, including the Wolastoqiyik peoples, of whom, it is theorized, up to 90% were wiped out. This was
followed by a measles’ epidemic in 1531 and one by an unknown pathogen (which affected people of the St.
Lawrence Valley) in 1535. The number of people who died is a matter of speculation, but the population of 16th
century North America north of Mexico is estimated to have been between 4.5 to 18 million while, by the late 1800s,
the indigenous population was fixed at 300,000. The greatest killers were smallpox, measles, influenza and the
Bubonic plague. Other killers were diphtheria, cholera, typhus, scarlet fever and typhoid. So, when settlement by
Europeans began in the 1600s, aboriginal peoples had already been devastated by these diseases.
III. 1500-1600
In the 16th century, immigration from Europe and Africa began, although the European settlement of this era
“focused on subtropical regions” (Morrison and Wilson, p. 30). 16th century Europeans were familiar with the North
Atlantic through fishery activities by Basque, Portuguese and English fishermen, whose presence accelerated
throughout the century “until, every summer, around 17,000 European males were present along the northern
coast”. (Morrison and Wilson, p. 31). However, no real permanent settlement was established. “Trade in furs, an
adjunct, began in earnest at this time with French and English voyages of trade and exploration along the coast and
up the St. Lawrence River.” (Morrison and Wilson, p. 31). Trade relationships in 16th century formed a basis for
the pattern of settlement to come. Various European nations established colonies in the territory controlled by the
aboriginal nations such as the Wolastoqiyik with whom each European nation had regularly allied itself in trade. “We
tend to mistakenly look at those alliances in terms of their lasting significance rather than what motivated them at the
time.” (Morrison and Wilson, p. 31). Being versed traders located at the hub of a vast eastern North American
trading network, the Wolastoqiyik would, undoubtedly, have been much involved at an early date in this activity.
IV. 1600-1700
When settlement began in the 17th century, Europeans stayed on at the sufferance of their hosts and trading
partners, the aboriginals. Though Europeans claimed territory for their countries’ crowns, reality of aboriginal control
made it necessary to purchase land from aboriginals and to ally with aboriginals for trade and warfare. The
Europeans professed a dual posture—trading with them by adopting indigenous forms of negotiation and protocols,
while claiming European sovereignty in law. (This perhaps led to the expression: “White man speaks with forked
tongue.”) It isn’t until the early 17th century that we have the first written accounts of the aboriginals by writers such
as Marc Lescarbot in “Nova Francia.” A Description of Acadia. 1606; Father Biard in “Missio Canadensis: Epistola
ex Portu-regali in Acadia transmissa ad Praepositvm Generalem Societatis Iesv A. R. Petro Biardo eyvsdem
Societatis…” (Ex Typographéo Mayeriana, apud Melchiorem Algeyer, Dilingae, 1612). Reprinted, with translation, in
Thwaites, Jesuit Relations 2: 57-117 and Nicolas Denys in The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of N.A.
(Acadia 1672)…Translated and Edited by W.F. Ganong. (Publications of the Champlain Society 2). Toronto, 1908.
Even with their inherent biases. These accounts provide detailed description of the scene encountered and give a
rare picture of the Northeast coast in the early and late 17th century.
Immigration during this century accelerated dramatically when fur trading posts and agricultural settlement were
established by the French and English. A time of huge increase in the trade between Europeans and Amerindians,
as well as European encroachment on aboriginal land was taking place, while complex competition among the
European groups for control of land for expansions and among indigenous nations for economic survival (given the
European onslaught) existed. Alliances and ancient, north and south trade patterns between indigenous nations
were built on, exploited and irrevocably interrupted by the invasion. The Wolastoqiyik allied with the French, whose
inroad was east to west, from Acadia to Gaspé, and then the St. Lawrence Valley, the Great Lakes and south
through the Ohio and Mississippi River systems. The Iroquois, the natural enemies of the Wolastoqiyik, gained
political power by challenging the French and their allies to control trade on the St Lawrence and then by allying with
the British.
V. 1700-1800
In the eighteenth century, an even more dramatic increase in immigration occurred. The French could claim to the
English that their presence in Acadia was by right of Indian invitation, at the same time as the Treaty of Utrecht
handed Acadia to the English with no recognition of this fact. To this day, the treaties concerning land signed
between the Wolastoqiyik First Nation and the British, stated by E. Tappan Adney in a letter to Peter Lewis Paul
dated August 21, 1946, “in 1725 in Boston, confirmed in 1728 at Halifax, and in particular treaties of 1763, 1749,
1778 and 1781 at Halifax”, have never been honoured. As Adney wrote further in the letter, in his defense of Peter
Lewis Paul’s arrest for cutting ash in woods in which his people had been cutting ash for hundreds, even thousands
of years,
“That the treaty understandings have long been violated in respect to hunting and fishing, after Confederation,
when the resources of the provinces were transferred to the provinces, does not affect the fact that the right of an
Indian to go on anyone’s land for materials—in this case small, ash trees—concerns treaties between the British
government and our Indians as sovereign people, acknowledged owners of the country they occupied.”
Regarding these treaties, in 1948, Edwin Tappan Adney wrote in an unpublished essay, “The Tribe of the
Wulastooks”,
“There are several reasons explaining why Chief Saulis of Tobique has started out to revive the old St. John River
Nation [the Wolastoqiyik]. One is that appeal is being made to the old treaties with Great Britain that in positive
terms conceded the [Wolastoqiyik] to be owners of the territories they occupied in 1726 and still occupy.”
For some reason, not revealed during the course of this research, the reconstitution of the Wolastoqiyik as one
nation never succeeded. As Adney wrote,
“The reservations are what remains of tribal lands and the government of Ottawa, which assumed jurisdiction in all Indian affairs from
Great Britain, has broken up these reservation groups into politically independent bands, even to claiming that each reservation [so
called band] is sole owner of the land of their reserves.”
VI. 1800-1900
The nineteenth century, by far the one of the greatest immigration waves, witnessed the establishment of the
second of the Wabanaki and other First Nations’ Búduswágan, described by Willard Walker in “The Wabanaki
Confederacy” as the “Wabanaki Confederacy” (organized around 1850s), an outgrowth of an organizing tendency
shared by founders of League of the Iroquois, Creek Confederacy and the Delaware Confederacy at French
instigation to support the Wabanaki First Nations against the English. As Walker explained, Vaudreuil, the French
officer who instigated Caughnawaga, was merely elaborating on a traditional practise, but the result was not cultural
or linguistic, only political. It consisted of the Wabanaki Peoples (who played only a minor role in it)—all the
Algonkian aboriginals from Maine eastward to the Atlantic and northward to the St. Lawrence including, in order of
seniority, the Wabaná'kiαk (Abenaki), people of the sunrise country; the Pannawampskéwiαk (Penobscot), people of
where the river widens out at Penobscot Bay and River; the Peskada mókantiak (Passamaquoddy), people of the
Pollock fishing grounds at Passamaquoddy Bay; the Wulástεgwiak (Wolastoqiyik), people of the beautiful river (the
St. John River); the Mi’kεmak (Mi’kmaq), people of the coast of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island,
Cape Breton, Newfoundland and the Aroosaguntacook and Wawenock around St. Francis, P.Q., along with the
Mohawk (Iroquois) of Caughnawaga and Oka (who had regularly attacked the Wabanaki, but were always defeated
by them) plus the fourteen neighbouring first nations and smaller groupings, led by the Ottawa, the oldest and most
venerable of the eastern nations, from whom the Mohawk had sought arbitration to secure peace, and who
subsequently complied by appointing Caughnawaga as capital and requiring Nations to send delegates there every
three years for this council. It is widely accepted by historians that not enough credit is given to this confederacy’s
prominent role in the British, French and American political struggles of this era.
The Confederacy met both separately and jointly. Each Nation had its own council house, the Penobscot at Oldtown;
the Passamaquoddy, Sipayik (Pleasant Point); the Wolastoqiyik, Aukpaque (later Tobique) and the Mi’kmaq, Bear
River.
When gathered together, this formal relationship was maintained by series of symbolic ceremonies including
wampum procedures, chief elections, condolence, sending of delegates, etc.---all modeled after the Iroquoian
League. At the assembly, the Mohawk were given the responsibility of guarding the great fire, a large wooden hoop
suspended from the ceiling symbolizing the council fire of the confederacy.
As before, all transactions of the allies were recorded by means of woven or strung (according to certain
conventional designs) Wampum (Wolastoqiyik wapap (WAHB-ahb “white string”) belts made from beads fashioned
from purple and white quahog clam shells. These combinations suggested certain sentences or ideas to the
narrator who knew his record by heart and was merely aided by the association of the shell combinations in his mind
with incidents of the tale on record, which he was rendering. These mnemonic documents were read over again at
each recurring meeting to refresh the memories of the delegates. The last Putuwosuwin (keeper of the
Passamaquoddy Wampum records), was Sapiel Selmo who went to his final confederacy meeting at Caughnawaga
in 1870. His record was converted into written form by Louis Mitchell (b. 1847, who represented his Nation in the
Maine Legislature) but was lost in a fire in 1911. Mitchell reproduced it again by memory and J.D. Prince published
three versions (1897, 1921, Leland and Prince 1902). The 1921 publication (with original words and phrases
restored) was revised in 1990 (Eds. Robert Leavitt and David A. Frances).
The wampum records include the story of how the Wabanaki Confederacy originated and how it was maintained. It is
a rare example of Passamaquoddy oral history transcribed by a Passamaquoddy writer in his native language and
provides a valuable complement to accounts found in Speck’s and Walker’s histories of the Confederacy. It was
also intended for those who wished to know more about the social and political institutions of the Passamaquoddy
people and their neighbours like the Wolastoqiyik during the colonial period. It includes ancient customs like the
wedding ceremony, which survived despite devastating influence of the Church; British and American governance
influences and aboriginal practices like the “Wigwam of Silence” (where all leaders retreated to keeping silent for a
long period of several days before conferring) and “Everyone Talks” (where everyone is heard without interruption
and consensus decision making is the mode [now known as “Talking Circle”] ).
(FULL ARTICLE CAN BE READ BY CONTACTING AUTHOR)
[1] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[2] Developed from the original concept made by Patrick Polchies, New Brunswick Museum board member and
resident of Kingsclear First Nation, who presented the analogy, “If human presence in the Maritme provinces is a
$10 bill, non-aboriginal presence is five cents.”
[3] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[4] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[5] http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Native/
[6] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/ original broadcast date: 02/15/2000
[7] In conversation with New Brunswick Museum curator, Peter Larocque
[8] in conversation with New Brunswick Museum curator, Peter Larocque
[9] paraphrasing Morrison and Wilson in Native Peoples A Canadian Experience
[10] paraphrasing Morrison and Wilson in Native Peoples A Canadian Experience
[11] http://www.ammsa.com/classroom/CLASS3Indianaffairs.html
[12] http://www.ammsa.com/classroom/CLASS3Indianaffairs.html
[13] http://www.civilization.ca/educat/oracle/modules/dkeenlyside/page02_e.html
[14] http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net/malacitecanoes.htm
[15] Stuart Trueman in John Gyles: as a Slave of the Maliseets