![]() Biard says that “in summer the shape of their houses is changed for they are broad and long that they may have more air.” There is all evident attempt to show these summer bowers in the map of Jacomo di Gastaldi made about 1550 given in vol. The men do not wear trousers they wear only a cloth to cover their nakedness.” Their dwellings were usually the ordinary conical wigwams covered with bark, skins, or matting. They often curry both sides of elk skin, like our buff skin, then variegate it very prettily with paint put on in a lace pattern, and make gowns of it from the same leather they make their shoes and strings. Their clothes are trimmed with leather lace, which the women curry on the side that is not hairy. For the women are girdled both above and below the stomach and are less nude than the men. He says: “You could not distinguish the young men from the girls, except in their way of wearing their belts. The missionary Biard, who, in his Relation of 1616, gives a somewhat full account of the habits and characteristics of the Micmac and adjacent tribes, speaks in perhaps rather too favorable terms of them. In the early wars on the New England frontier the Cape Sable Micmac were especially noted. Their hostility to the English prevented for a long time any serious attempts at establishing British settlements on the north coasts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, for although a treaty of peace was concluded with them in 1760, it was not until 1779 that disputes and difficulties with the Micmac tribe ceased. They early became friends of the French, a friendship which was lasting and which the English, after the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, by which Acadia was ceded to them, found impossible to have transferred to themselves for nearly half a century. Most of the early voyagers to this region speak of the great numbers of Indians on the north coast of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and of their fierce and warlike character. Kohl believes that those captured by Cortereal in 1501 and taken to Europe were Micmac. If Schoolcraft’s supposition be correct, the Micmac must have been among the first Indians of the north east coast encountered by Europeans, as he thinks they were visited by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, and that the 3 natives he took to England were of this tribe. While their neighbors the Abnaki have close linguistic relations with the Algonquian tribes of the great lakes, the Micmac seem to have almost as distant a relation to the group as the Algonquians of the plains 2 Micmac Tribe History ![]() 1 An important Algonquian tribe that occupied Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Prince Edward Islands, the north part of New Brunswick, and probably points in south and west Newfoundland. ( Migmak, ‘allies’ Nigmak, ‘our allies.’ Hewitt). Alternative names for the Micmac, which can be found in historical sources, include Gaspesians, Souriquois, Acadians and Tarrantines in the mid-19th century Silas Rand recorded the word wejebowkwejik as a self-ascription.
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