269 
eiy. Marriap;e was a solemn ceremony ]:)receded by a year or more 
of betrothal, when the youth resided with the parents of his future 
bride and gave them the products of his hunting. Equally solemn 
were the funeral rites, when the Indians wrapped their dead in birch- 
bark rolls, deposited them, seated as in life, within round, shallow 
graves, and burnt, or buried with them, all their implements and 
utensils to serve their needs in the after life. Elaborate ceremonies, 
too, attended the installation of chiefs, at least in historical times. 
It is, therefore, very surprising that the writers of the seventeenth 
century, to whom we owe most of our information concerning the 
Maritime Indians, ^ record no ceremony or ritual for the period of 
adolescence, which Indian tribes elsewhere regarded as the greatest 
crisis in a man’s or woman’s lifetime. Yet it is highly probable that 
everj^ youth fasted to obtain a guardian spirit, since the medicine- 
men who i>retended to cure diseases by incantations, by breathing 
and blowing on their patients, and by various juggling tricks, made 
the usual claim that it was through fasting and prayer they had 
gained the favour of the supernatural world. No youth, in any 
event, could participate in the councils of the tribe until he had 
proved his manhood by killing either a moose or a bear. 
These old customs of the Micmac have long since disa]:>peared 
and are now practically forgotten; for the tribe quickly took up 
agriculture, submitted to the teachings of the Jesuit missionaries, and 
intermarried freely with the French colonists who settled in their 
midst. Like their neighbours, the Malecite, they were faithful allies 
of the French throughout the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. It is doubtful whether any pure-blood representatives of 
the tribe still exist, but tlieir mixed descendants, to the number of 
nearly 4,000, which about equals the original population, occupy 
several small reserves in the Maritime Provinces and in Quebec, and 
a few families survive in Newfoundland. Of their old handicrafts 
only basketry persists to any great extent, and even this has been 
modified to meet the requirements of the market. In their mode of 
living to-day the majority of the Micmac are hardly distinguishable 
from poor whites. 
1 Especially Denys, Lo Clercq, Lescarbot, and Biard in the “ Jesuit. Relations.” .See Bibliography, 
Appendix B. 
