About the Mi'qmak

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 The First Nations' tribes of the St. Lawrence River Valley once were many. Not all shared the same language group or lifeways. Different tribes of Iroquois as well as the many members of the Algonquin/Huron group shared the abundant resources of the powerful river. Among these, probably some the first to encounter the European invasion in the 1600's were the Mi'qmak who lived around the St. Lawrence Bay area as well as in New Foundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and the Gaspe' Peninsula.  Their language belonged to the Algonquin family of languages, and, historically, they were members of the Alongonquin Abenaki Confederation, a league formed in opposition to the Iroquois. Later, the Mi'kmaq would be drawn into colonial wars between the British and French colonizers as well. 

As they were among the first indigenous people who encountered Europeans, between 1500 and 1600 it has been estimated that half their population died from newly introduced diseases, such as measles, mumps, diptheria and, of course, that great killer, smallpox. The first explorer they met was probably John Cabot, an Italian exploring for the English, who described them as fierce and warlike. Even earlier, they had even encountered European fishermen--Basque, Portuguese, French, and English--who had discovered the piscean bonanza of the Grand Banks, rich with Cod and whales.    

Originally, the Mi'kmaq were seasonal nomads, who called themselves "Lnu" (the People), people of the Red Earth. In the spring and summer they could be found on the coasts as they followed spawning events. Even as early as March, smelt were running in the thawing rivers, and later came the herring. Then they found waterfowl eggs and waterfowl themselves, birds busy nesting. 

There were always shellfish along the coasts and other kinds of fish, which they caught in loosely woven baskets, and by the use of ad hoc stone weirs built in the rivers. Here, they speared the fish they'd trapped. They also caught salmon, sturgeon, and even lobster and squid, out in the ocean using large sea-worthy canoes (5.5 to 8.5 meters) with a bark exterior and a cedar wood frame. These canoes were able to sail to the shoals around the islands and, in historic times, there are reports of the entire families traveling island to island in them. Lastly, in autumn, eels ran, providing a finale to their fishing season. They dried what they caught, pounded the flesh to flake and packed that in caches for winter.

Fine craftsmen before first contact, originally they made tools of stone and bone--hooks and arrow points and spear-heads--as well as many different size needles and awls for piercing hide and bark. They women were experts at basket making, these constructed of bark and decorated with porcupine quills, dyed in red and yellow (ochre), charcoal and ground shells. Those four colors, red, yellow, black and white, were also used in face paint and body decoration. They used wood to create spoons and kettles, these last heated by the addition of hot stones as well as finely made grass baskets.

In the autumn and winter, they would retreat inland, away from the gales of the coast, to hunt moose, elk, deer and caribou. Later, their efforts would focus on beaver, as the European fur trade had a lust for beaver pelts for men's hats. In colonial times, with both white men and red, hunting beaver, those clever creatures were nearly pushed to extinction. The Mi'qmak also hunted foxes, lynx, marten, and anything else which sported a beautiful winter fur coat. 

The Mi'qmak word for their homes, "wikuom" became our generic "wig-wam." These were oval, built of bent branches covered with bark and hides, easy to set up as they went from place to place. They loved to tell stories and these--elaborate creation stories of Creator "Mntu" who made everything, including the first Glooscap, his grandmother, as well as legends, hunters' and warriors' tales, stories that were particular to the band. The "Puoin" was a healer or shamen, also an interpreter of dreams. Interpreting dreams was often nightly pastime, because, long before Freud, they believed in the importance of their dreams. They often made important decisions based on what they believed were messages in their dreams, advice from their personal or tribal totemic figures or other interested spirits who watched over the lives of individuals.

The Mi'qmak were accustomed to living out-of-doors and did so, despite the weather, in even a time now called "the little ice age,"  unlike the Iroquois and Algonquin, who lived in palisaded villages in long houses. They considered settled living to be weakening. 

They also scorned growing crops as their neighbors did. Digging in the ground was not what real men did! Their social organization has been described as loose extended kinship groups, each group advised by a sagamore, a man who gained his position through his experience and reputation as a successful hunter, not by any exercise of power. The district chiefs were called Orsaqmaw and these men formed a great council by which the different groups of Mi'qmak negotiated among themselves about hunting territory, personal disputes and war-making. Decisions were made by consensus, which took time, reasoned debate and considerable debate.   

* Information gathered at various Canadian Heritage sites, particularly the Heritage sites of NewFoundland and Labrador.

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Tomorrow is Indigenous Childrens' Remembrance Day in the US and in Canada, a day in which we remember the removal and indoctrination of First Nations' Children in official "boarding schools." These "schools" existed (supposedly) to "Kill the Indian and save the man," but the reality, we know was far diffierent, perhaps akin to the way the Chinese now abduct Tibetan and Uyghur children, hoping to turn them into small copies of the Han who are the ruling group in China. Sadly, we in the West provided the model, which the Chinese, with their attention to detail and modern psychological techniques have now "perfected."

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Edge of the Frontier

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                               "Red and White--at war in her world and in her blood."

Colonial America's early history tells the story of the--at first gradual, and, finally, as Europe burst figurative banks, the enormous wave of "people from over the sea" washed into what is today the U.S. 

I first became of aware of this history of colonization when I was seven, after a move from Ohio to New York State.  Mother relished history and so when she and my father house-hunted, she wanted to find as old a house as she could. I don't think Dad got much say in this, because he was all for "modern" anytime he could get it. Having been a teen through the Depression era had convinced him that electric lights, a furnace and flushing toilets were all desirable things. 

The house we moved into provided all that, although it had been originally built, near as anybody knew, a decade or so before 1800, probably during the time when newly independent Americans were spilling onto lands that had once belonged to the local and now dispossessed Iroquoian tribes.  Our house was small, a style that today is commonly called "Cape Cod" but it also had Dutch doors equipped with heavy iron hinges and which were locked with a bar. As this was near the Mohawk Valley, that the builders were Dutch and had been there before the War of Independence did not seem improbable. There was even a story about Indian attacks during the early days of the house, one which the restless spirits which we encountered almost as we took up residence did nothing to disprove. 

I recently took a New England trip to see an old friend and we decided to go a few miles north to Deerfield, to visit the National Historical site there. When I first saw those carefully preserved Georgian era Colonial houses along the main street, it seemed to me that this would be just another Tory New England town, one which was once filled with dour Calvinist merchants and landlords. I soon learned that during the Revolution, this town had remained loyal to the Crown. 

There were many reasons for this, one of which was that the original terms of the Massachusetts Bay colony. That stipulated that these Dissenters, freshly kicked out of England, could run the territory as a kind of fundamentalist kingdom, as long as they remained loyal and sent plenty of young men into the King's army whenever called upon to do so.  In this Puritan theocracy, citizens could be whipped (15-20 lashes!) and fined for not only more obvious Puritan sins like adultery and/or drunkenness, but for not attending the obligatory, (and endless) Sunday services. In many ways, however, in this period, local government was had many admirable qualities. The towns were administered by Selectmen, and legislation was by consensus instead of majority rule.  

          The minister's house, one of the largest in Deerfield, built for him by his flock.

When white immigrants first explored that area, they found an Algonquian tribe living in a stockaded town, while farming the rich bottom land around the Connecticut River. These were the Pocumtucks, and they lived (mostly) in harmony with their Algonquian relatives. At this time, European diseases, smallpox and measles, were already killing many Indians, while fighting over control over the fur trade increased every year, because those fabulous goodies like metal farming tools and cook pots, guns and wool blankets, etc. brought by European traders had opened a new world to a stone-age people. By the 1630's, these foreign trade goods were becoming indispensable.  

The Iroquois, fierce warriors, were "the enemy" for both the Algonquian tribes and the new immigrants alike. Their confederacy (Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida,) occupied New York State, but their war- path reach extended right across the Connecticut Valley and into Abenaki lands as distant as Maine. The Iroquois were always in the middle of any land or trade agreement, whether you were Algonquian, Dutch, French or English. They made war frequently in order to take captives, preferring to take children who could be assimilated easily. European or Indian, at this time you had to take the mighty Iroquois into consideration.

For a time, the Pocumtucks were able to deal with the whites, who were, initially, seen as just another "tribe" looking for land. Eventually, however, the Pocumtuck angered the Mohawks by killing one of their chiefs. After one swift punitive strike from the Hudson Valley, the Pocumtuck and their town by the river were no more.  

It did not take long for the land to be resettled, this time by an English plantation. Good farmland could not long be ignored by the settlers, but the site seemed cursed. Settlers were just eking out a living when King's Philip's War erupted. This conflict would be the last stand of the eastern Algonquian tribes against an overwhelming white incursion. 

An attempted retreat by the people of Pocumtuck, carrying away their newly harvested corn, ended in a massacre at a place now called "Bloody Brook," and made infamous by Puritan writers. Poor preparation by the militia contributed greatly to the disaster. The town of Pocumtuck hadn't even bothered to build a stockade, so the town was easily destroyed. During this war, one hundred and forty-five men were killed in the northern part of the valley, most of them settlers. Four other towns in the Connecticut Valley were also completely destroyed. The remaining five towns had all been attacked and raided for their corn and cattle. It must have been a grim winter, with families broken and famine on the horizon. 

It would take more than a decade, but the old Pocumtuck land would be resettled, this time called "Deerfield." The new settlers built a stockade. Farmers came to land, younger sons from towns like Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield and Springfield, all places south along the Connecticut River. 

Time would pass while the town grew again, but peace broke down easily. There were always inter-tribal wars as well as wars that originated in Europe to cause Indian raids, rustling and murder among the outlying farms. In the early 1700's, what is known as Queen Anne's War* broke out. The French joined forces with the Caughnawaga and Mohawk, raiding into northern New York and down into New England, even into Halifax near Boston. The Connecticut Valley became a battlefield again.

Deerfield begged for help with troops and arms, and a little arrived in late 1703. Deep in winter of 1704, a group of two to three hundred men on snowshoes came south from Montreal. Among them were French soldiers, coureurs de bois, and Indians, many of these refugees from King's Philips' War, the one that had broken the New England tribes. 

Drifts of snow helped the invaders scale the stockade while the watch overslept. Soon "they were fireing houses, killing all they could that made any resistance, also killing livestock." The Reverend John Williams who lived through a subsequent captivity to tell the tale said: "by their violent endeavors ... broke open doors and windows, with axes and hatchets..." His pistol misfired and he was quickly captured and bound. He watched the murder his youngest two children, a toddler and a six week old baby, as well as the children's black nurse. He and his wife (who would be killed at the start of their march) and five children were carried into captivity.    On the terrible winter march north, Williams would watch nine more people die--the young and the old. 

The sack of Deerfield had ended when men from Hadley and Hatfield arrived on the scene. Early on in the fight, a young man, John Sheldon, after binding his feet with strips of his nightshirt, had managed to struggle almost naked through deep snow for many miles in order to give the alarm. 

Of the 291 people who had gone to sleep in Deerfield that fatal night, only 133 remained alive the following day. Beyond the 109 people captured, 44 residents of Deerfield had been killed--ten men, 9 women and 25 small children. Seventeen of forty-one houses were destroyed. Reverend Williams would survive his captivity and eventually redeem four of his five children.* 

Driving through bustling Connecticut and into Massachusetts today, I can barely imagine this totally urbanized/suburbanized landscape as a frontier, one every bit as wild and dangerous as our more well-known "wild west." The early period of colonization was complex, filled with wars between Indians as well as wars between various groups of colonists as well as the more often remembered wars between Indians and Europeans. 

At the end of the school day, my friend and I paused in our visit to watch Deerfield's streets fill with BMW's and Mercedes as parents arrived to retrieve their children from the exclusive private prep school that shares grounds with the historical site. It was hard, watching that scene, to remember what a hard-scrabble, cold, tough, dangerous place the early New England world truly was.  

~~Juliet Waldron

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* The North American part of the European War of the Spanish Succession. .

* You can read about it in The Unredeemed Captive. Eunice, the youngest survivor of the Williams children, would become Catholic and marry an Indian. Reverend John Williams himself wrote the first text of the tale, the one upon which modern books on the subject are based.   

Take the Taconic

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Driving solo is not something I grew up doing. My teen path did not take me down automobile alley, like so many other American kids. I learned to drive only after I'd become a mom. I was a fairly timid driver for many years, but that wore off quickly after dementia began to hunt my own mother down, necessitating frequent 400+ mile round trips to southern Ohio. I drove the PA Turnpike to I-70, close to Dayton, before turning south and driving through farmland. 

Going through the little burg of Enon, just south of I-70, in need of psychic help before I arrived to face whatever age-related catastrophe awaited, I'd momentarily abandon my goal and  divert to the tiny residential loop of '50's houses that encircle the sacred space of a lone Adena Mound. The place still has some Mojo left, though, and a few moments of contemplating it always gave me strength. 

Those earlier anxious journeys were how I learned to drive alone. As everyone knows, you've got to keep your wits about you on an interstate. Out there are all kinds of people, in vastly different mental conditions, hurtling along at the speed limit or better--mostly way better--and you have to watch your back, as well as pay attention to the road ahead. To paraphrase the old maps and their dragons: "Here there be Potholes & Folks with Anger Issues."

I went to see an old friend in Western Massachusetts recently. We usually drive a route that we've been using since we left the Northampton area. This involves driving east from Harrisburg, up I-81 into coal/fracking country, with heavy truck traffic--no tolls on this road--toiling up mountains and then braking down into the narrow upstate valleys lined with old mining and rail towns, everyone trying to get something going again in those semi-moribund cities and jamming the Eisenhower-era roads to the hilt. A sharp turn south and you hitch yourself to I-84 East, which bangs and bumps it's way into New York State, crossing first the Delaware and then the Hudson at speeds that were, 100 years ago, unimaginable. 

                                                            The early 60's bridge at Newburgh

Instead of enduring the increasing congestion and insanity of I-84 as it roars into Connecticut, this time I took an alternate route north, an old FDR era road, The Taconic Parkway. This is narrow, twisting, and, in places, raggedly patched, parkway was engineered for 45-55 mph, and is crisscrossed by (often) blind side roads. In the late '30's, the Taconic was a wonder, however, allowing people from southern NY/NJ to easily drive north into Northern NY vacation-land, to escape the heat and crowding of a big City. The "Parkway" designation meant there are no trucks, an added benefit. Lots of us oldies remember standing, gripping the back of the front seat, peering over the driver's shoulder while our car and a line of others dragged along on a single lane road through hilly country, behind loaded trucks which didn't have the engineering to allow them to hold their pace when climbing.

                                                                     Figure this out...

 The Taconic was a progressive model of a public work created for the benefit of a rising urban middle class.  The road was originally carefully landscaped, but time and funding have by-passed it, and now  woodlands encroach from every side, making those green alleys a dangerous choice during twilight when the deer are moving, or after dark or in bad weather. Night driving there, I've read, can be fatal, especially when the inebriated or the just-plain-confused enter the Parkway and do unexpected things like driving South on a north bound lane. I can't imagine much worse than popping uphill while taking a fun curve on your motorcycle or in your small European car and being surprised by van headlights accelerating toward you.

Despite all these scary what-if, my Taconic drive was a relief. It felt to slow down, mind the speed limit in light traffic while having time to notice the September blue of the sky and see little flocks of  compact clouds racing west.  After a long hot summer, a Northern High had come to bless my journey. The weather was clear, breezy and cool. Each mile I drove North, I felt better, and this feeling buoyed me through the post-stop-to pee+ lunch-break stupor which my metabolism decrees will follow. 

Besides, I was getting closer to be with my friend, closer to the end of the journey, toward a warm welcome and a flood of cheerful reunion talk. It was a  pilgrimage, too, in a way, back to a once beloved landscape where my children were born and where 20 year-old young married adventures were had, there on the purple skirts of the Berkshires. 

The Taconic ends abruptly, linking me via plentiful signage to I-90. Not many miles east, I was on the Mass Pike, heading toward Boston.  After the long stretches of the morning, I soon found myself hopping off into what used to be a scattering of woodlots and farmland. Sadly, this has become, in the last two decades, strip malls, warehouses, gas stations and housing clusters.  There was stop-and-go traffic on the roads we once used to bicycle. At last, entering a network of roads, now paved, once improved gravel, I wound over steep short hills and into narrow creek-side valleys, houses now everywhere across those once-upon-a-time cornfields, hunting cabins and forests of maple, oak, and pine. 

The house is 50 years older now and the bright golden logs are muted. There is still woodland between my friend and her neighbors. When she and her husband built their log cabin--mostly just the two of them, with pauses for her to nurse their new baby--there were farms and forests and a dirt road. Like some once wooded parts of Pennsylvania, however , this area is pockmarked with houses, and  developments are popping up connected by actual paved roads upon any acreage that is left. 

 

Steps down to the garden, covered with sweet-smelling lemon thyme. Everything you see done by hand.

My friend is there still, getting older like all of us. She is a little younger than me, but she's had a physically hard life. For years she was a cook for years in a busy sea-food restaurant, working long hours in heat amid the constant roar of industrial fans. Now she's deaf, and medical conditions hamper her movements and threaten her balance. The last time I visited, three years ago pre-Covid, I would also take time to visit my friend Kathy in Connecticut. Losing her earlier this year demonstrated to me that while I can still  manage to travel to see friends, I had better do so. 

I met her in the late '60's, when I was twenty-one and already had a "spring off." My husband and I were present at her wedding, when she was 19 and her husband, like mine, was twenty-one. He was my husband's best friend from High School and I remember well the sight of the new couple's knees shaking as they stood in front of the preacher.  Now we are all moving toward 80 at a rapid pace. 

"When I'm 64" is far behind us, although we remember singing along with that one, imagining that we would live brave new lives and never grow old. One thing hasn't changed about my friend--she still has a magnificent head of hair that falls all the way to the back of her knees--even though it's not easy for her now arthritic fingers to braid it. She is wiser than ever, though, and a bright soul and a sense of humor still shine through her eyes. 

My friend and I have a lot to catch up on, and so we talk a blue streak. She has, like the rejoicing family in the Bible, "killed the fatted calf" for me and I am honored by her kindness and generosity. We will feast on mushrooms and good steak one night and the next day go out in the middle of the afternoon for lobsters straight from Maine, the first I've had since visiting here three years ago. We hit the intriguing used book stores in nearby college town Northampton. On on the way there, I admire all the dispensaries Massachusetts residents may enjoy, anchoring many of those new strip malls. We buy fresh off the trees local apples, a crunchy Macoun/Honeycrisp hybrid and drink local cider. We took a drive upriver to visit Historic Deerfield Village on the National Register of historic places, where my friend gamely climbed steep staircases to see where the humble servants and boarders slept, in rooms with no heat.   

 

When we said "good-bye" at the end of our time together, we both hoped this wouldn't be the last time visit, sharing stories and memories, though, we both know all too well by now that change is the only constant. 

~~Juliet Waldron

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Red & White, at war in the world, and in her blood 

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Iroquois Women

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http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion   ISBN: 1771456744

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http://amzn.to/1Vy47lm  Mozart’s Wife  ISBN:  1461109612

There are a host of powerful women in the Iroquois mythic system: sky woman, the creatrix, grandmother moon—and the three sisters—who fed the tribes with their bodies: corn, beans, squash. Many societies have powerful goddesses, but for the Iroquois, this also translated into a tradition of strong and respected women in every village. The Iroquois had a matrilineal descent system, and this raises the status of women. The tribes that made up the Iroquois confederation were divided into clans.

A simple illustration: if your mother was of the turtle clan, then so are you. If you are female, your children will also belong to turtle clan. If you are male, your children will belong to the clan of their mother—who might be wolf, deer, beaver, etc.--but never turtle, as these are considered to be your relatives. The leading woman of each clan was called clan mother. For governance, clan mothers were entitled to appt. A certain number of chiefs. The clan mothers could also depose their appointees, if they disapproved of his choices. Culturally significant white wampum belts indicating hereditary titles of chiefs were kept by women—titles passed not father to son but to brothers or to sister’s sons. The clan mothers, through a man they chose, could always make themselves known in council.

We might think of these women as female chiefs, because their power over decisions and treaties made in council was genuine. These women held greater status and had more control over national affairs than European women of the time. In fact, when early Europeans attended councils to discuss treaties or trade, they were frequently asked by the chiefs “where are your women?”

The Indians found it odd that the whites did not consult their women about decisions which would affect the entire community. The Iroquois had a complex system of chiefs. There were war chiefs, who were, as the name implies, generally young men of demonstrated valor--winners of battles. There were sachems, who were the older men—representing the wisdom that comes with years. There were only a few hereditary chiefs, whose appointment was in the hands of the clan mothers. On more than one occasion the clan mothers are known to have cast the deciding vote, blocking treaties or warparties.

There are many stories about Iroquois women refusing to supply warparties with the moccasins and pemican (charred corn and maple sugar)—that was needed for a successful expedition. Then as now, you can’t wage war without supplies. The clan mothers often sided with the old men, the sachems, laying a restraining hand on the enthusiasm for adventure of the young chiefs.

There are examples from historic times of strong Iroquois women acting as the tribes’ decision makers. Mary brant was a clan mother, and also widow of Sir William Johnson, the British emissary to the Iroquois during the late colonial period. She held her tribe to the British side during the revolution. Sir William was not the only well known historical figure to have made an important alliance with a powerful native woman…major general Philip Schuyler also had a native “wife,” Mary Hill, a Mohawk. Through her, he spread rumors about the activities of the American army. Schuyler’s “terrifiers” are mentioned several times by his British opposite, Sir Guy Johnson, in letters detailing various anti-Tory stories that were causing great fear among the pro-British tribes. Mary Brant herself soon took care of this problem, by removing the younger woman from Schuyler’s influence. She apparently persuaded Mary Hill that she was a Mohawk first, and therefore must obey the pro-British clan mothers.

Perhaps an even better indicator of the high status of women among the Indians are the cases where an esteemed white woman living in Indian Territory could exercise unusual prerogatives. Because she feared the effect upon the British war effort, the Tory Sarah Mcginnis prevented a wampum belt bearing news of an American victory from leaving the village where she lived. 

Women held power in their villages, too. When captives were brought home, the women decided who would live, who would be adopted, who would be made a slave, and who would be offered to the fire gods. Women took active roles in torture alongside their men. Although it happened rarely, women could also be accepted as warriors, if this proved to be the calling of their heart. 

Even long after Iroquois power was broken, their influence was felt in interesting ways. In the 19th century, Lucretia Mott, one of the leaders of the Women’s Movement, (born in MA) spent a month with the Seneca tribe before attending the first Woman’s Rights Conference soon to be held in Seneca Falls, 1848. Native women today claim their influence can be seen in the tenets of early feminists.

It has been noted by modern day activist Iroquois women that they didn’t need western woman’s lib until all their rights were obliterated by outsiders. Christianity in particular was sanctioned—probably a better word would be “enforced” on reservations by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the old days a woman could pack up and leave her husband if she was abused. In a matrilineal society, there a safe haven for a woman and her children always exists among the members of her clan.

Holland C. Holling/Claws of the Thunderbird, 1930's

Oneidas, Mary Cornelius Winder and her sister Delia Waterman saved their tribe’s identity by beginning to argue the modern day Oneida land claims, instituting a suit against the U.S. government in the 1920’s that is still being litigated. Some years ago, modern day struggles within the Oneida tribe have led to suspension of Delia Waterman’s membership. Delia was a centenarian without whom there would be no Oneida nation today. "This suspension was done by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, backed by a ‘Men’s Council’—which never historically existed—in defiance of traditional Oneida law of gender equality."  (Joanne Shenendoah, a noted 21st speaker for her sisters and her Tribe).

Juliet Waldron

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