REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I9II I93 



The tribe is scattered as in the days of Cartier, and spreads 

 through the region over which Xicolas Denys held patent as lieu- 

 tenant governor in 1658 from "the Cap de Campseaux as far as 

 the Cap des Roziers.*' There are fifty-six small settlements or 

 reservations scattered all the way from the Gaspe peninsula to 

 Cape Breton, the largest of all being at Ristigouche, the seat of the 

 Capuchin monastery and church of St Ann and the metropolis of 

 the tribe, where they number 506. Their segregation into widely 

 scattered but numerous settlements is unusual in the present dis- 

 position of the Indian tribes and might seem to expose them, by the 

 very fact of freer contact with the whites, to variation and change. 

 They speak the French in French communities and the English in 

 English, but for business purposes only. Among themselves their 

 own language alone is spoken and without variations, no matter 

 how wide apart their homes may be. '' It is certain that the race 

 is not disappearing either by extinction or by absorption'' (F. P.). 

 This fact is all the more noteworthy because these Indians have 

 been in no wise exempt from the curse of alcohol, ^ tuberculosis 

 and syphihs. These evils have played havoc here, as they have and 

 do today elsewhere among the aborigines. It may be that their 

 general poverty (for there is a total absence among them of the 

 occasional prosperity one sees among the other tribes) and their 

 ignorance of hygienic living will eventually make inroads on their 

 vitality which the life out of doors m.ay not be able to- combat — 

 and here lies at the hand of their legal guardians and of their white 

 neighbors an immediate duty. 



I could not venture to write even in summary the part the ^lic- 

 mac tribe has played in history. It is knit close to the story of 

 early French settlement of Acadia. The enmities of the French 

 were ever its enmities, and this hostility to the English was not 

 based on religious grounds alone. The difference in the attitude 

 of the French and the English toward the Indians is of co rmon 

 knowledge. By the French they were never regarded as subjects 

 of the French king so much as his wards and so by the French 

 clergy they were ever treated not only with gentleness but with 



1 Long ago Denys painted in vivid colors the fearful effects of the French- 

 man's liquor on these savages. For this, in those days of the i6oo's. they 

 spent their very lives ; all the spoils of the winter's hunt were exchanged for 

 liquor and the summer was one long debauch till the fishermen sailed away 

 from the coast. All this has passed and yet today with them, as with all the 

 aborigines, firewater makes the Indian into a savage again and brings out 

 to the surface all that religion has helped to bury. 



