INDIANS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 263 



end into a pan, into which they stuck a quill or hollow reed. In 

 their wars they used clubs, bows and arrows, and shields, and lances 

 or spears headed with stone. These wars were carried on with much 

 forethought and energy. Membertou, the old Sagamos, at Port 

 Royal, brought men from Miramichi and St. John's river, and made 

 a rendezvous with his own from Nova Scotia, at Grand Manan, be- 

 fore attacking the tribes that resided in what is now called Massa- 

 chusetts. They brought home the heads of their enemies, which they 

 enbalmed and hung them about their necks in triumph, but there is 

 no mention made of scalping. 



As they had no letters they could have had no laws, save tradi- 

 tions. The Sagamos usually settled all disputes. A man of many 

 friends was unmolested, for he had many to avenge him, but a 

 slave or a prisoner with no friends fared badly. Polygamy was allowed 

 rather than practiced, and though they had little regard for chastity 

 yet there seems to have been no jealousy among them. Their care 

 for their parents, fondness for their children and general hospitality 

 must make all amends. 



As regards religion, an obscure belief in some future state was 

 their only creed, some Medicine men their only priests. And now 

 we can form some idea of these men of the stone period as they were 

 about insensibly to fall beneath the iron age. A well fed, light 

 footed, clay-red race, with beardless face and shock of black hair, 

 fish and flesh eaters, reaping no harvest save from forest and sea, 

 having neither letters or laws or settled habitations, yet either in 

 friendship or war having relations five hundred miles at least with 

 their neighbors on either side. 



This is not an unpleasant picture of man in his stone period. 

 With no laws but those of superior strength, they got on very fairly 

 in their social relations. With no church or religion they were hos- 

 pitable to their neighbors, kind to their wives and children, and very 

 careful of the old, li One thing I will say," says Mark LesCarbot, 

 "that belongeth to fatherly piety, that the children are not so cursed 

 as to despise their parents in old age, but do provide for them 

 with venison." But it strikes one through all these narratives that 

 life was hard to keep up. The severity of the climate, the long 



