THE MICMAC “HIEROGLYPHICS.”
The Micmac was an important tribe, occupying all of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton island, Prince Edward island, the northern part of New Brunswick, and the adjacent part of the province of Quebec, and ranging over a great part of Newfoundland. According to Rev. Silas T. Rand, op. cit., Megum is the singular form of the name which the Micmacs use for themselves. Rev. Eugene Vetromile (a) translates “Micmacs” as “secrets practicing men,” from the Delaware and old Abnaki word malike, “witchcraft,” and says the name was given them on account of their numerous jugglers; but he derives Mareschite, which is an Abnaki division, from the same word and makes it identical with Micmac. The French called them Souriquois, which Vetromile translates “good canoe men.” They were also called Acadians, from their habitat in Acadie, now Nova Scotia.
The first reference in literature with regard to the spontaneous use by Indians of the characters now called the “Micmac hieroglyphs” appears in the Jesuit Relations of the year 1652, p. 28. In the general report of that year the work of Father Gabriel Druillettes, who had been a missionary to the Abnaki (including under this term the Indians of Acadia, afterwards distinguished as Micmacs), is dwelt upon in detail. His own words, in a subordinate report, appear to have been adopted in the general report of the Father Superior, and, translated, are as follows:
Some of them wrote out their lessons in their own manner. They made use of a small piece of charcoal instead of a pen, and a piece of bark instead of paper. Their characters were novel, and so particuliers [individual or special] that one could not know or understand the writing of the other; that is to say, that they made use of certain marks according to their own ideas as of a local memory to preserve the points and the articles and the maxims which they had remembered. They carried away this paper with them to study their lesson in the repose of the night.
No further remark or description appears.
It is interesting to notice that the abbé J. A. Maurault, (a) after his citation of the above report of Father Druillettes, states in a footnote translated as follows:
We have ourselves been witnesses of a similar fact among the Têtes-de-Boule Indians of the River St. Maurice where we had been missionaries during three years. We often saw during our instructions or explanations of the catechism that the Indians traced on pieces of bark, or other objects very singular hieroglyphs. These Indians afterward passed the larger part of the following night in studying what they had so written, and in teaching it to their children or their brothers. The rapidity with which they by this manner learnt their prayers was very astonishing.
The Indians called by the Abbé Maurault the Têtes-de-Boule or Round Heads, are also known as Wood Indians, and are ascertained to have been a band of the Ojibwa, which shows a connection between the practice of the Ojibwa and that of the Micmacs, both being of the Algonquian stock, to mark on bark ideographic or other significant inscriptions which would assist them to memorize what struck them as of special interest and importance, notably religious rites. Many instances are given in the present paper, and the spontaneous employment of prayer sticks by other persons of the same stock is also illustrated in Figs. [715] and [716].
The next notice in date is by Père Chrétien Le Clercq (a), a member of the Recollect order of Franciscans who landed on the coast of Gaspé in 1675, learned the language of the Micmacs and worked with them continuously for several years.
It would appear that he observed and took advantage of the pictographic practice of the Indians, which may have been continued from that reported by Father Druillettes a few years earlier with reference to the same general region, or may have been a separate and independent development in the tribe with which Father Le Clercq was most closely connected.