THE MICMAC TERCENTENARY 

 By John M. Clarke 



Recent years have given us a freshet of historic anniversaries. 

 We are swinging through lustra laden with memories of events 

 which subtend large angles in our destinies. We are not to be 

 allowed to forget these, the crucibles in which we were refined. 

 But amid these larger occasions, now and again some event of lesser 

 note in our records strikes its anniversary, graciously salutes its 

 own community or its beneficiaries and takes up again its little 

 orbit. 



It is one of these seemi .gly minor commemorations, now no 

 longer new and so perhaps no longer news, to which, as an inter- 

 ested participant, I desire to refer before the event passes too far out 

 of reach : the Micmac Tercentenary, held at Ristigouche, Province 

 of Quebec, June 24, 1910. It has not received the public notice 

 to which it is entitled and the occasion to remind ourselves of its 

 significance should not be idly let passj-^ 



The date was not haphazard, nor was the place. On June 24, 

 1610, Membertou, grand chief of the tribe of Micmac Indians, with 

 twenty-one of his people, was baptized into the faith by Father 

 Jesse Eleche at Port Royal (Annapolis, Nova Scotia) ; on June 24, 

 1910, at the Capuchin mission on the Micmac reservation at Risti- 

 gouche, by the invitation of the Reverend Eather Pacifique, special 

 missioner to these Indians, chiefs, councilors and captains of the 

 tribe, with many high dignitaries of the church, assembled to com- 

 memorate this ancient event and most momentous occurrence in the 

 history of these people. The reverend priest who organized this 

 successful commemoration kept in the foreground its spiritual 

 significance. The occasion was largely a religious one but still one 

 fraught with very real historical and ethnological significance. 



The event which this interesting celebration commemorated was 

 not one that excited in its day much comment or notice from con- 

 temporary historians. We know from a few records little else 

 than the simple fact stated above. It may be found in Lescarbot's 



1 The writer attended this interesting fete as a delegate from the Educa- 

 tion Department and the New York State Historical Association. 



