The Following is the Abstract and a Chapter of my Doctoral Dissertation - the first full Chapter of Mi'kmaq based content.

There is currently an embargo on my doctoral dissertation, but as soon as it is available it will be posted in full on this page. Please contact me at Colin.osmond1@msvu.ca to request a PDF copy

Chapter Five: The (Re)settlement of Epekwitk aq Piktuk and the Remaking of the Mi’kmaw World, 1773-1864

In the fall of 1773, the Mi’kmaq living near A’Se’k looked out over the choppy waters of the Northumberland Strait, and saw the rough outline of the ship Hector’s sails on the horizon. These were not the first tall ships that the Mi’kmaq had witnessed on the waters of Epekwitk aq Piktuk. French traders had visited the harbour since the seventeenth century, and the Hector followed a meagre population of settlers from Philadelphia who arrived several years earlier. Of course, the British and French had built massive fortresses at Halifax and Louisburg respectfully, but they were too distant to have much direct impact on the Mi’kmaw in Piktuk. Carrying a ragtag group of Scottish Highlanders, the weather-beaten fluyt arrived on September 15th - too late in the season to plant crops, even if the ground was cleared to do so. The ship’s stores were nearly depleted after storms had pounded the Hector’s aging hull into an extended voyage, and those already living at the settlement had little to spare. Smallpox broke out during the voyage and greatly weakened the Hector’s passengers, leaving them tired, desperate, hungry, and sick on their arrival.

The Mi’kmaq who were living at various places around the harbour provided these displaced Highlanders with food and taught them the skills needed to survive the cold and wet winters on the North Atlantic coast. Historian Rev. George Patterson gathered memories from those early settlers, one of whom was his grandfather, John Patterson. Patterson recalled that it was with “much kindness” from the Mi’kmaq that his ancestors survived those first winters. They taught them how to make snowshoes, build shelters to withstand the cold and wet winds blowing down the Northumberland Strait, and to call and hunt for moose. Patterson, reflecting the stories he had heard, claimed “that from the time of the arrival of the Hector, they never gave the settlers any serious molestation, and generally showed them real kindness.” Patterson concluded on these early relationships, however, by highlighting that many of these settlers soon forgot these Mi’kmaw acts of kindness: “When the tables were turned, so that the whites had plenty and [the Mi’kmaq] were needy, it has not always been reciprocated.” Without Mi’kmaw assistance, many of these ill-prepared Highlanders would not have survived in the ‘new world.’
Of course, for the Mi’kmaq this was not the ‘new world’. It was their ancestral homeland. However, it was a homeland that their ancestors would have found increasingly unfamiliar due to the beginnings of settler colonialism, the process that the late Patrick Wolfe described as the displacement of Indigenous people from their territories and resources and the dissolution of their societies in order to establish a new colonial society on the appropriated land. The initial decades of colonization of Mi’kmaw land in what became Pictou County looked like anything but the type of structures that we associate with settler colonialism. As historian Joseph Weiss recently argued about the colonial settlement of Haida Gwaii on Canada’s West Coast, seeing settler colonialism as beginning when the first settler set foot on Indigenous land creates narratives of settler colonialism and its power to transform Indigenous space that require Indigenous people be “always on the verge of disappearing.” Recent scholarship has critiqued the utility of using settler colonial theory to understand the periods of exploration and early settlement that occurred long before the emergence of settler colonialism proper. Much of what has been written about the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County’s colonial settlement era situated the original inhabitants of the land as fledgling and fleeting shadows in the emerging settler colonial world – a phenomenon that occurred when the first Scottish Highlander placed his boot in Mi’kma’ki. It was not until the 1830s, however, that the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County began to experience settler colonialism in ways that significantly impacted their ability to access and harvest resources throughout their territory; and even then, they found ways to penetrate and side step colonial efforts at displacement.

The Mi’kmaq’s persistence in their efforts to secure land between the mouth of Pictou Harbour and a tidal lagoon called A’Se’k (Boat Harbour) highlights how the area had always been an important area for the Mi’kmaq – and remained so during various attempts to settle the land. The Mi’kmaq had a thriving village on the site when settlers began to arrive in the 1760s and continued to use the land as their own holdings regardless of it being portioned out and deeded away to settlers in the late eighteenth century. However, despite the fact that it had been promised to settlers on paper, few of these settlers arrived to occupy their land until the 1820s. I discuss the many attempts made by the Mi’kmaq, through residents of the town of Pictou, priests, and by their own petitions, to secure their land around A’Se’k, at the place that came to be known as Fisher’s Grant, and today as Pictou Landing First Nation. The government failed to recognize and protect Mi’kmaw property rights at A’Se’k, regardless of ample contemporary evidence that they were living and improving the land at the site upon the arrival of settlers. As a result, as the settler population grew and concentrated by the 1830s, the Mi’kmaq became landless in their own territory, with few options other than to ‘trespass’ on settler land in order to maintain a living.

By the mid-Nineteenth century, the Mi’kmaq had been alienated from villages, fishing sites, and hunting grounds that were now surveyed and pre-empted to settlers. After the Hector, subsequent waves of settlement brought more Scottish Highlanders to Pictou County, as did the end of the end of the American Revolutionary Wars, which sent thousands of Loyalists onto Mi’kmaq lands. The Mi’kmaq had been turned from benevolent hosts to ‘trespassers’ in the eyes of many of the settlers. By the middle of the nineteenth century, without land and with increasing encroachment on their hunting and fishing grounds, the situation had become inverted with the Mi’kmaq at Pictou coming to increasingly rely on meagre settler government aid to survive the long winters. Even access to such fundamentals as firewood were largely denied to the Mi’kmaq, who were frequently chased away from settler land for cutting trees to warm their families, and to manufacture items both for Mi’kmaw use and for trade and sale in towns like Pictou. But marginalization did not mean complete alienation, and certainly it did not mean assimilation or extinction. Despite settler efforts, the Mi’kmaq did not stop accessing their broader territory.

This Chapter discusses the history of the Pictou County Mi’kmaq in the nineteenth century to reveal the processes that led to the creation of Fisher’s Grant, the first Indian Reserve in Pictou County, in 1864 – a century after the arrival of the first settlers in Epekwitk aq Piktuk. Settlement on a reserve, where the Mi’kmaq could engage in subsistence agriculture and sedentary living (in order to reduce relief requests and free up land for settlement), was central to the colonial government’s plan to assimilate the Mi’kmaq. But somewhat ironically, it was the Mi’kmaq, not colonial officials, who pressed the hardest to secure a Mi’kmaq reserve at the mouth of Pictou Harbour. The government, alongside their failure to survey and secure Mi’kmaq land, adopted an intentionally miserly system of relief for the Mi’kmaq, which, compounded by the denial of reserve lands, stressed and distressed the Mi’kmaq living in Pictou County. However, despite the increasing pressure on Mi’kmaw land and resources that came with the rising settler population after 1830, the Mi’kmaq never gave up or abandoned their desire to regain control over the land between the mouth of Pictou Harbour and A’Se’k. This, the evidence makes clear, was due to the long history of Mi’kmaw use of the land, and to their desire to access markets for Mi’kmaw labour and manufactured goods at places like the town of Pictou. Mi’kmaw women and men provided essential as well as prestigious manufactured goods, such as baskets, quill boxes, axe and pick handles, and butter churns and firkins, and also fresh and salted fish for both local and market settler consumption throughout the nineteenth century. Typically, Mi’kmaw families often harvested resources together, but often divided production into gendered spheres. Women more commonly made baskets, quill boxes, dried flowers, and clothing, while men typically made axe and pick handles, firkins, and other wooden products. These gendered divisions were less rigid in practice, however, and at certain times of the year women and men engaged in all aspects of the production of these goods.

Despite the pressures from the colonial government at Halifax to remove the Mi’kmaq from their land near Pictou, many settlers maintained respectful relationships with the Mi’kmaq who worked and sold their goods in and around the budding settlement at Pictou. Many settlers, such as James Dawson and Hugh Denoon (discussed below) recognized the plight of the Mi’kmaq and pushed the government to secure land for them. Some settlers complained that the Mi’kmaq stole resources from land that they (in their understanding of land ownership) understood as belonging to them, were less sympathetic to the Mi’kmaw claims for land at A’Se’k and at the mouth of Pictou Harbour. The result was a confusing situation where the Mi’kmaq found themselves negotiating local intricacies and attitudes while simultaneously moving through a world that was increasingly dominated by settler colonial law.

These tensions were exacerbated as the settler population grew. The early settlement that followed the Hector was relatively slow. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the whole of Pictou County had a sparse population estimated at “1,300 souls.” By 1817, the County had 6,737 settlers. However, by 1827 that number had doubled (13,949), and by 1838, 21,449 settlers lived throughout the county. By the 1870s, Pictou County had ballooned to 32,114 people, a sizable County in the newly created Province of Nova Scotia in the Canadian Dominion. As settlement grew, the Mi’kmaq not only faced competition for their village sites, but also for access to resources such as hardwood, wild game, and fish. The development of an industrial economy in the County increased the competition, and thus further marginalized the Mi’kmaq from their lands and resources. The history of population growth in Pictou County fits within the general pattern of colonial growth in rural Nova Scotia. Indeed, as historian John Reid argues, colonial Nova Scotia witnessed a “period of intensive settlement that lasted from 1782 until approximately 1860.” Much of the settlement between 1782 (the end of fighting during the American Revolutionary War) and the early nineteenth century, however, was focused around the colonial node of urban, economic, and political power at Halifax, and in a network of associated coastal towns on the southern and western shores of the province in what historian J. Brian Bird has called the “Atlantic-Shore pattern of settlement”

While the settlement in rural Pictou County remained sparse in the early nineteenth century, places like Pictou began to host budding colonial populations. As various industries developed in Pictou County, Mi’kmaq labourers found a market for their labour, in jobs such as logging, stevedoring, fishing, and in the local coal and iron industries. The Mi’kmaq also engaged a variety of industries through the sale of wooden tools and raw timber (used in ship building and for mineshaft construction). In this context, my research reveals how government action (or lack thereof) created a confusing morass of laws and policies pertaining to Mi’kmaw land rights and use. Direct action and inaction by the colonial government made it increasingly difficult for the Mi’kmaq to build a stable economy, regardless of new and increasing wage labour and mercantile opportunities. The lack of a land base (caused by the Government’s failure to properly survey Mi’kmaw land before assigning settler land grants) and the alienation from resources facilitated a reliance on government aid, which ran directly opposed to the colonial government’s plans for the Mi’kmaq. As historian L.F.S. Upton has shown, “the touchstone of Indian policy remained settlement,” but without land, the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County were forced into a feedback loop within the colonial gaze – they could not become ‘civilized’ in the government’s eyes without land, and thus relied on periodic relief, which the government saw as evidence that the Mi’kmaq were lazy, primitive, and disconnected from settler society. Of course, these Eurocentric idealizations ignored Mi’kmaw perspectives and ways of understanding work and labour. The historical evidence mobilized in this chapter and those following make it clear that work ethic allowed the Mi’kmaq to survive even the most challenging times. This chapter examines these government created problems, which resulted in nearly a century of Mi’kmaq attempts to gain a land base in their own territory. And although the Mi’kmaq had shifted from a self-governed people to a colonized people that struggled to secure a footing in the settlers’ New World, this is a story of Mi’kmaw agency, hard work, and resistance against staggering colonial odds.

The symptoms of colonial settlement on Mi’kmaw family and community life were many. The Mi’kmaq, whose population had been reduced and weakened by several disease epidemics spread from incoming Europeans, had to face a colonial system that favoured settler land claims over Indigenous ones. Their traditional economies challenged by settlement and competition for resources, they were thrust into a rapidly changing Euro-Canadian economy based on export markets and, later in the nineteenth century, industrial production. As their land base disappeared with the preemption of Mi’kmaw land to settlers, the Mi’kmaq were forced into a situation where they were landless in their own territory, which manifested in an ardent Mi’kmaw effort to reclaim their land at the mouth of Pictou Harbour. These efforts, however, were often more passive than they were direct: Mi’kmaw families simply refused to recognize settler claims to land and made decisions to live and harvest resources regardless of the settler presence. As Mi’kmaw historian and archaeologist Roger Lewis explains, in the early nineteenth century the Mi’kmaq’s traditional economy imploded, resulting in changes to Mi’kmaq social structures and traditional ways of living. This process, Lewis argues, highlights Mi’kmaq adaptability and agency at a time of increasing pressure on their lives and resources. In this context, the Mi’kmaq remade their economy to adapt to settler colonialism.

Facing an influx of Loyalist farmers following the American Revolution, and recognizing that despite significant Indigenous population decline, the Mi’kmaq were there to stay, the colonial government of Nova Scotia sought to remake the Mi’kmaq into rural subsistence farmers that organized as nuclear families. In this way, the Mi’kmaq would not interfere with commercial economic resource extraction and development in the forests and mines, nor would they become financial burdens on the emerging setter communities. The most the government was willing to invest in the Mi’kmaq was the setting aside of marginal reserve lands, a few seeds and basic farming tools, and training in agricultural techniques. Through making the Mi’kmaq sedentary farmers, as historian Courtney Mrazek argues, “the British believed that agriculture would allow the Mi’kmaq to bear the costs of their own civilization.” Indeed, as early as the 1790s, British officials saw the solution to their “Indian Problem” in “equipping the Indians to become self-supporting farmers.”

Starting with the survey of Mi’kmaq land in Pictou County for disbanded Loyalist soldiers from the American Revolution in 1783, and with more aggressive colonial settlement in the first half of the nineteenth century, the colonial government appropriated lands through a process that Mi’kmaw Historian Daniel Paul describes as “delivering the ultimate blow to Mi’kmaq dignity.” Many Mi’kmaq, like those in Pictou County by the 1830s, found themselves landless and forced to camp near settler towns to find work and sell their various manufactures. The Colony of Nova Scotia, under the British Colonial Office, struck a committee in 1800 to solve the issue, which was mainly focused around the Mi’kmaq in Halifax County. Their plan was to provide increasingly limited relief, agricultural training, and education for the children, to ultimately “make them over into farmers, ‘useful members of society.’” These plans resulted in the surveying of 9560 acres of mostly swamp, rocky, non-fertile land on mainland Nova Scotia as Indian Reserves in 1801, but none of them were in Pictou County. The Government made a lackluster effort to understand the Mi’kmaw situation by attempting a census, before cutting relief funding in 1801 and 1803. The Committee angrily debated relief costs, viewing Mi’kmaq seasonal mobility as idleness and laziness, and relief as wasted money merely sustaining such attitudes and behavior. The Mi’kmaq, however, understood relief and periodic government grants as part of their treaty benefits from agreements signed between the Mi’kmaq and the Crown in the mid-eighteenth century. These payments were akin to interest in the Mi’kmaq mind, who were awaiting “fulfillment of the treaty…compensation for fisheries and lands long lost.”

In the fall of 1807, the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia were divided into twelve Indian Districts, partly as a means to understand and comprehend the size of the various Mi’kmaq populations in the Province. The colonial government was also attempting to solidify their relationship with the different Mi’kmaq communities in the years leading up to the War of 1812. The British sought to ensure that Mi’kmaq would support Britain in the case of an American invasion of Nova Scotia. The relationship was still tenuous, as the British had only recently solidified their colonial claim over Mi’kma’ki. The British wanted to ensure that if they could not rely on the Mi’kmaq as allies they would at least remain neutral. A war on two fronts, in a loosely controlled colony, was a war that the British feared they would lose. There can be little debate over whether it was in the colonial government’s best interest to deal respectfully with Mi’kmaq land claims, and yet in the end the British colony failed to adequately do so in Pictou County.
In 1808, the Mi’kmaq travelled across the harbour from A’Se’k to Pictou to meet with a government agent representing G.H. Monk, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Nova Scotia. The agent left the meeting with a troubling message. The Mi’kmaq refused to accept any gifts from him and told him that they would remain neutral in the prospective war until “they could form an opinion on the strength of the enemy.” The Mi’kmaq expected that the colony would be invaded and that the invaders would conquer the British. If this came to pass, one Mi’kmaw man warned, “in the case of war, he, and a few others, could scalp all of the inhabitants [of the village of Pictou] in two nights.” The relationship between the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County and the Colonial Government was precarious at best – and the Mi’kmaq negotiated from a position of power. Pictou, in the early years of the nineteenth century, was a small colonial settlement – the entire County only had about 1500 settlers. It was a long way, nearly 200 kilometers of horse paths, from the center of colonial power in Nova Scotia at Halifax. The small settler population at Pictou initially had little impact on the Mi’kmaq, and the Mi’kmaq clearly believed that they held the balance of power despite the increasing settler presence.

The British did not control Nova Scotia in ways that allowed them to disregard these threats. Indeed, Monk conservatively (and likely incorrectly) estimated that the fighting force of all Mi’kmaw men on mainland Nova Scotia able to bear arms to be about 350-400 in 1808. While the force was small in comparison to the English garrisoned at Halifax, the British did not exert much control over Mi’kma’ki, especially in the Mi’kmaw lands in between the scattered outposts of colonial power on the coastline of Nova Scotia. Monk warned that if steps were not taken to control the Mi’kmaq in the event of war, the Mi’kmaq would be able to “harass and destroy the scattered inhabitants of the new settlements.” Pictou was one of these “new settlements,” and the Mi’kmaq warning struck fear in the heart of the British government. Considering the consistent raids that the Mi’kmaq had conducted at Halifax and the surrounding area, Colonial officials like Monk were worried that their precarious foothold might not withstand a unified Mi’kmaq attack that was supported by the United States.

In interesting ways, the Mi’kmaq grappled with geopolitical pressures and dynamics that threatened to isolate them from their territory and resources. They negotiated these pressures by not simply aligning with whoever offered them more gifts or promised sympathetic treatment, but by rather assessing who was the strongest and most likely to win if a war erupted. Even though British documents like the Royal Proclamation of 1763 aimed to reduce settler violence towards Indigenous people, which was markedly different than American approaches to settling Indian Country in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth Centuries, the Mi’kmaq weighed their options and considered the strength of each side and their survival through another international conflict in Mi’kma’ki. As Colin Calloway explains, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had little influence on American settlers who felt justified moving east into Indian Country. Rather, Calloway explains that the Proclamation “aggravated tensions, alienating back country settlers and ensuring that many of them would throw in their lot with the rebels once the Revolution began.” Regardless of American policy towards Indigenous people, which largely situated Indians as obstacles to American expansion and settlement, the Mi’kmaq assessed their situation, and made pragmatic decisions about their role in any conflict that might erupt around them. This realistic approach demonstrates that the Mi’kmaq were well attuned to dealing with conflicting colonial powers – they had been doing so for over a century. And even if they were a small force in a potentially large conflict, they knew they would play a key role at the local level in any colonial conflagration.

Interestingly, although the Colonial Office granted limited funding to provide relief and supplies for the Mi’kmaq during the War of 1812, Monk’s answer to this issue was not to attempt to garner Mi’kmaw favour through increasing the number of gifts offered and through heightened efforts to make alliances, as one might suspect. His plan was to use the Catholic Church, an important player in many Mi’kmaq communities, to root out sympathetic Mi’kmaq who would help organize pro-British Mi’kmaw militias in case of attack. These allies would be provided with clothing, arms, supplies, and significantly, land, seeds, and implements to plant crops. Monk estimated that these Mi’kmaq would inspire others to ally with the British. Monk foresaw that geographically anchored Mi’kmaw communities would become self-sustaining and no longer rely on semi-seasonal migration and government aid to sustain their populations, and thus would not interfere with settler and corporate interests who wanted direct access to resources to sustain industries such as ship building. Indeed, anchoring Mi’kmaq people would allow the government to count and control the Mi’kmaq in ways that the colonizers saw impossible if they maintained their migratory systems. Monk foresaw the increasing European settlement that would “occupy the rivers and forests” and take the country away from the Mi’kmaq. In the eyes of the colonizers, sedentism and assimilation were the keys to turning the Mi’kmaq from enemy to ally, from foe to friend.

In the end, there were no violent encounters between Pictou settlers and Mi’kmaq during the War of 1812. Ultimately, the British and American’s had no major engagements in Nova Scotia and the Mi’kmaq were never forced to choose sides. Once the threat of American invasion had passed, the Mi’kmaq were left without consistent and reliable relief from the colonial government. During the entire ordeal, the Mi’kmaq of the area had been clearing land and planting crops on the site of an important Mi’kmaw village between Moodie Cove (the entrance of Pictou Harbour, also called Indian Cove, today Pictou Landing) and Boat Harbour. Since the arrival of Scottish settlers in the region, the Mi’kmaq had increasingly cleared and planted their village across from the small settlement at Pictou. Long before the British began to implement their control and plans for assimilation, the Mi’kmaq at Pictou had, on their own accord, altered a seasonal fishing village and important resource site to plant corn, wheat, and potatoes. Historian Jason Hall has argued that maize agriculture had reached the St. John River Valley (and the broader region) by 1680, and likely much earlier. Mi’kmaq Chief James Lulan and others had planted crops at the mouth of Pictou Harbour as early as 1780 (likely sooner). As had a Mi’kmaw man named Joseph Purnall, who was reported to be growing “potatoes, Indian corn, beans. &c…in several parts of the district [of Pictou County]” in 1800, suggesting that by the turn of the nineteenth century the Mi’kmaq were pursuing agriculture without direct government action to induce them to do so. Regardless of the fact that the Mi’kmaq had a significant land holding at Moodie Cove, occupied for centuries by their ancestors, the British government had leased the land to a Doctor from the 82nd Regiment of Foot, a disbanded regiment from the American Revolutionary War given a massive grant of land in Pictou County. The Mi’kmaq were compromised from the start, and this sparked a half-century battle to obtain a portion of their land at the mouth of Pictou Harbour.

While it took the better part of the nineteenth century for the Government to recognize the Mi’kmaw claim to the land at the mouth of Pictou Harbour, the Mi’kmaq actively pursued them throughout the century to recognize their land rights. In 1829, Chief James Lulan, a “sober, honest, and industrious…Chief of the Indians at Pictou” petitioned the government to give his people their land at Moodie Cove, where they had been planting for “upwards of fifty years.” Lulan complained that the settler who had pre-empted the land, Thomas Moodie, had prevented them from planting corn and wheat in the considerable clearing they had made over the past fifty years. Without the ability to plant crops, in addition to decreasing access to hunting grounds and fisheries due to increasing settlement, Lulan feared that his community would be destitute without a land base. Additionally, without ample hardwood they would not be able to warm their lodgings or be able to manufacture goods that were in high-demand by settlers at Pictou. These markets were still forming, but the Mi’kmaq recognized an important market for their goods and sought to protect their land at Moodie Cove to maintain both their cropland and their base for trade in Pictou.

Lulan’s petition raises interesting questions about the Nova Scotia colonial Government’s goals pertaining to the Mi’kmaq. It is clear that the government wanted to instill sedentary living through agricultural development for the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County. The British believed this would work doubly to keep the Mi’kmaq stationary (where they could be counted and controlled), and ensure the Mi’kmaq would be self-sufficient and rely less on government aid. Chief Lulan and the Mi’kmaq community called for their land to be surveyed in the onslaught of settlement in the mid-nineteenth century, but the government had already surveyed the land to settlers, causing friction between the government’s settlement plans, and the Mi’kmaq’s desire to settle on land they had occupied for centuries.

The Mi’kmaq had maintained their right to occupy the land at Moodie Cove, despite attempts to remove them from the vicinity. In 1831 Hugh Denoon, a Pictou Merchant, wrote to Sir Rupert George, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, to request one hundred acres of land “adjoining Boat Harbour, about three miles to the entrance of the Town of Pictou and on the southern side of the entrance to the Harbour.” Denoon, who had developed a friendly trade relationship with the Mi’kmaq, reported that the land could be purchased for one hundred pounds, and that the failure to purchase it would result in tensions between the Mi’kmaq and the settlers on the land. Denoon stated that anything less than one hundred acres would be insufficient to provide a land base for the Mi’kmaq, and he hoped that the government would grant land to help relieve the pressure on “these unfortunate Indians.”

Four months later, George Smith, a settler living in Pictou, repeated Denoon’s calls for the government to recognize the Mi’kmaq claim to the land at Moodie Cove. Smith reported that the he found the “Indians so attached to their personal possession at the entrance of the Harbour that no other [place] would satisfy them” and that Moodie had agreed to sell the land to the Mi’kmaq. Smith stated that the land was “very convenient and desirable for these poor people” and that if the land was not granted to them it would be difficult to find any other suitable land in the region that would meet their needs in terms of agriculture, fishing and trading. The Government, however, refused to secure the land for the Mi’kmaq, resulting in constant complaints by settlers and Mi’kmaq action to protect the rights to their village site for the next thirty-five years.

The lack of a land base from which to grow crops, fish, and provide a base for labour and trade pursuits in nearby markets, in addition to facing increasing pressure on their larger territorial hunting and fishing grounds, the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County were forced to be
“squatters” on their own lands – lands that had been permanently occupied, cleared, and cropped by the Mi’kmaq for the entirety of the European settlement period in Pictou. This resulted in a series of Mi’kmaq requests for food and provisions throughout the mid nineteenth century, as well as complaints from settlers that Mi’kmaw families were cutting wood, camping, and trespassing on their land. Chief Maltiel Sapier, representing a group of Mi’kmaw families living near Pictou pursued the Government for “benevolence…in the most liberal manner” in the form of blankets, clothing, and muskets for hunting in 1836 and again in 1837. Without land, the Mi’kmaq were forced to live in a sort of hybrid world – one where they were unable to fully engage with the newly emerging colonial society, and one where they were unable to maintain their means of subsistence due to increasing settlement and thus pressure on fish and game stocks from settlers. The Government’s answer was to dole out meager amounts of relief funding, which barely provided a small portion of the community with any sort of meaningful relief. Many Mi’kmaw families received next to nothing from the government.

What is ironic about this conundrum is that the Mi’kmaq had, for several decades, attempted to incorporate aspects of settler life into their systems. These were often ones that also had value in Mi’kmaw traditions and ways of living, such as catching and trading fish, and manufacturing baskets and other goods. They had cleared land and planted crops at Moodie Cove, but the Government, due to its own failure to survey reserves prior to settlement, had not protected their land rights. Many Mi’kmaw labourers found work in the various industries around Pictou, and many provided important items for consumption by settlers in Pictou (fish, game, baskets, wildflowers, axe and pick handles, etc.). But without a land base, the Mi’kmaq were forced to either risk being evicted from a settler’s land, or to move further north to Maligomish – an island in the Northumberland Strait that had been an important gathering place for Mi’kmaq from all over Mi’kma’ki for centuries. Maligomish was too far from settler markets, and the Mi’kmaq required a land base close to Pictou to be able to use the town as a market for their goods and labour. The island, sometimes referred to as Indian Island (not to be confused with the large Mi’kmaw settlement in Cape Breton), was also too small for intensive agriculture and offered little protection during the winter months. Moodie Cove became an unflinching point of contention for the Mi’kmaq, were they dug in their heels and pushed to have their land rights recognized.

The Colonial Government began more concerted efforts to survey and reserve Mi’kmaw lands in Nova Scotia in the 1840s. Led by Sir Joseph Howe, the Indian Commissioner for the Province of Nova Scotia and later Premier of the Colony, the Commission was tasked with visiting the various Mi’kmaw communities in Nova Scotia and ascertaining their land and property rights in the wake of recent increased settlement. For some, the Commission secured already surveyed land and made them part of the Colonial gridwork. For others, like the Mi’kmaq of Pictou County, the Commission was to listen to Mi’kmaw land issues and find suitable holdings that would provide them with ample space to build houses and develop agriculture. Indeed, the goal of the commission was the same as the goal before 1812 – make the Mi’kmaq stay in one spot so they could quantify and control them.

Howe was unable to travel to Pictou due to other commitments in Halifax. In his stead, he appointed James Dawson, a merchant in the town of Pictou, to act as a government agent. His task was to “represent [Howe], and do with the Pictou Indians whatever your own judgement dictates concerning your attention within the scope of the Act, and having in mind that a permanent settlement and education of these people, not one based on relief, are the primary objects.” Howe asked Dawson to gain a better understanding of the land situation at Moodie Cove, and to decipher who owned the current title to the land. Interestingly, given that Howe must have understood that the Mi’kmaq had no land holdings in the area, instructed Dawson to give any Mi’kmaq person “disposed to make clearings” farming equipment and seeds. Ironically, the Mi’kmaq had met this requirement at least three-quarters of a century earlier, if not a century earlier.

The Mi’kmaq had been dealing with Dawson for nearly twenty years, by Dawson’s own estimation, driven mostly by his self-confessed interest in the “civilization of the Indians.” But Dawson was also a merchant who acted as a middle man between the Mi’kmaq and merchant ships seeking to load up on goods for their return voyages. He claimed he was sympathetic to the Mi’kmaq, and reported that even though he had developed a relationship with the community, he had “long and deeply regretted that he could do little for them.” Dawson believed that civilization required education and religion, but he also believed that settlers and Mi’kmaq alike needed to live closely, as Mi’kmaq goods were “necessary for the settlers.” Dawson understood that all of these factors were of a little utility if the Mi’kmaq were not provided with a sufficient land base that they could use to harvest timber, produce goods, obtain consistent wage labour, and educational and religious instruction. Dawson told Howe that religion, labour, and education efforts would remain “but preliminary to their settling in a piece of land and ultimately adopting regular civilized habits.”

Dawson knew that the land at Moodie Cove would be the most desirable for encouraging the Mi’kmaq to engage with these societal structures. But we must be careful to not put too much strength and advocacy in the hands of the Government. The Mi’kmaq themselves had many reasons for wanting to secure their land holdings at Moodie Cove. As noted, they and their ancestors had used the land in this area as a village for centuries. They had also cleared a significant portion of land for European style agriculture, despite the government giving the title to settlers. Dawson maintained that even without Government title and surveys, the Mi’kmaq had always maintained “adverse possession” of the area, and would not vacate their lands. In a report on the history of the title to the tract of land at Moodie Cove, Dawson stated to Howe that, despite the title having changed hands several times since the original grant, the grant to disbanded soldiers from the 82nd Regiment of Foot, in 1783,
"…no one claiming it has ever had anything like possession of it until a few years ago [1830s], when it began to be sold in small lots…and the parties in doing so have had to drive the Indians from their clearings where they grow potatoes etc. The Indians are so passionately fond of this lot, as it affords them great facilities for the fishery."

Increasing settlement resulted in a situation where the Mi’kmaq were “driven from one place to another till they have not a foothold left they can call their own. Their very burying grounds have in some instances been desecrated by the plough.” As more settlers came to Mi’kma’ki in the mid-nineteenth century, the land holdings that the Mi’kmaq had maintained through the early settlement period became contested and increasingly tenuous.

Settlement at Moodie Cove made it difficult for the Mi’kmaq to maintain their village, and while the Mi’kmaq harvested resources in the area, many families moved to Maligomish. This island had been part of a land grant, known as the Wentworth Grant, but given the Mi’kmaq presence on the Island the title was transferred to them by a settler. However, the title transfer had never been completed by the government, even though several settlers testified and verified that they had witnessed the transfer of the title between the settler and Mi’kmaw Chief John Lapier. From Maligomish, the Mi’kmaq pursued their right to occupy the land at Moodie Cove.

On June 25th, 1842, Dawson travelled to Maligomish to meet with the Mi’kmaq. However, many of the Mi’kmaq had left the village that morning to pursue the herring and cod fisheries. Dawson, accompanied by a local settler named John MacDonald, who was “much in the confidence of the Indians” met with Lapier, an elderly Mi’kmaw Chief who was tending to his potato crops when they arrived. Dawson and MacDonald asked if they could speak with Lapier to explain the government’s plans the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County. Lapier agreed to listen, but he insisted that he first assemble several women present on the island to be part of the discussion. The Mi’kmaq gathered and listened to the men, and at their conclusion they expressed agreement “of these benevolent intentions.” However, Lapier and the group of Mi’kmaq women collectively conveyed disapproval “of any of their children being educated in the white man’s school because, when so educated, it would break off all natural ties of affection and association between them and their tribe.” The Mi’kmaq gathered did approve of getting more Mi’kmaq to plant crops on their lands, especially at Fisher’s Grant, and Lapier personally agreed to do his best to encourage others to plant potatoes and other crops. Indeed, Lapier had already been helping others to get a potato crop into the ground by giving them shares of his seed potatoes and lending out his tools, an initiative that impressed Dawson. But attempts at agriculture by the Mi’kmaq would always be minimal and limited. Maligomish was much too small to provide the entire population with ample land for planting crops. Dawson reported to Howe that more land would be needed, and the Mi’kmaq at Maligomish told Dawson that their land at Moodie Cove was the best location.

Moodie Cove was an important base for the Mi’kmaq fishery, and the various fish they harvested were not only for subsistence. The Mi’kmaq provided an important source of fresh fish to the Town of Pictou, and for salting and shipping to foreign markets. Without a land base near Pictou, the Mi’kmaq would be unable to maintain this supply. Dawson reported to Howe that this market has provided an important income for the Mi’kmaq and has reduced the need for government aid in recent years. Dawson’s view was that if Maligomish could be used as a place to teach the Mi’kmaq how to farm, they could apply those skills on larger reserves elsewhere. Moodie Cove would be a perfect land base from which to farm, fish, labour, and also to allow access for teachers and missionaries. But the government was unwilling to purchase the land, and regardless of Dawson’s efforts, the Mi’kmaq continued to be considered squatters on their own land.

The lack of a land base required the Mi’kmaq to migrate to different parts of Pictou County, and to other regions in Nova Scotia, in order to survive. Indeed, as Michelle Lelievre reminds us, European settlement and colonialism did not put an end to Mi’kmaq mobility, rather, it just shifted the ways that Mi’kmaq people migrated. Writing in 1843, Joseph Howe reported that as places like Pictou County became more settled by Europeans, the Mi’kmaq were being forced out of their lands by “the forest disappearing before the axe, and mills either damming, or in course of erection upon, every stream, are very likely to be deserted for others.” As more of Mi’kma’ki was occupied by settlers, and especially the most productive lands at river mouths and fisheries, the Mi’kmaq of Pictou County found their ability to survive in the changing world rooted in their mobility.

The government’s motives for rejecting Mi’kmaw efforts to acquire title to Moodie Cove, despite the fact that their broader goals for the Mi’kmaq required settlement on a reserve, were influenced by the fact that there were settlers who wanted the lands for themselves. Despite the efforts made by Dawson and others in Pictou, the government favoured non-Indigenous claims to the land between Moodie Cove and A’Se’k. This resulted in a petition from residents of Pictou in 1846, who requested the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia to survey and purchase land for Mi’kmaq. As Mi’kmaq sources of food and material became challenged with the rise of competition from the settler population in the County, industrial labour and “supplying the markets with fresh fish” had become more central to the Mi’kmaq economy. Further, many Mi’kmaq manufactures, such as baskets, butter churns, wooden hoops for lobster traps, and axe and pick handles, were in high demand in places like Pictou. Without a permanent land base, settlers could only expect to have access to these goods on an inconsistent or seasonal basis, and residents of the town of Pictou (and other nearby towns) recognized Mi’kmaw contributions to their economy and wanted to keep their Mi’kmaw neighbours close at hand.

Regardless of these consistent pleas for the Mi’kmaw land rights in Pictou to be recognized, the Government failed to secure any holdings at Moodie Cove. It is unclear from the existing records why the government failed to do so, but the lack of responses by Howe to these several requests suggests that the Commission was understaffed and unable to handle the amount of correspondence and requests. Alternatively, they may have suffered from a lack of funds and were consequently unable to purchase any land. Perhaps it was both. Either way, the Government failed to make its intentions clear. The government seemed willing to give limited relief to the Mi’kmaq in the form of goods, such as blankets or great-coats, and also in medical care. In 1846 Howe signed off on a paltry sum of £253 of relief for the Indians in Pictou County, allotted for reimbursing Doctors and druggists for their expenditures to Mi’kmaq patients.

The late 1840s and 1850s was a grim period for the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County. The Mi’kmaq lived at various places in Pictou County, such as Maligomish, Pine Tree Gut, or as ‘squatters’ on Mi’kmaw lands occupied by settlers. These places, however, where small camps on settler land with limited resources and no agricultural opportunity. Chief Peter Toney travelled to Halifax to hand-deliver a petition to the House of Assembly, asking for relief for his community at a time of “want of sufficient food and clothing.” Toney went to Halifax on behalf of his “famishing brethren,” and he sought to remind the
Honourable House that his people have been driven from their hunting grounds and natural places of subsistence and that they can very scarcely find an abode in the Province, furnishing even fuel necessary for their comfort of life. That in consequence they are driven to appeal to those who have now in possession the lands once the sole property of the Indian and your memorialist hopes that this appeal, which he now makes to your honorable House, for immediate relief, will not be made in vain.

Toney’s petition demonstrates how the government’s failure to protect Mi’kmaw land rights in Pictou County positioned the Mi’kmaq in a place where they were unable to maintain a stable economy in the colonial world, and thus relied on the government to provide relief. The Mi’kmaw land holdings at Maligomish were only 35 acres, which was not sufficient to sustain a population of at least 150 people. In response, it seems as if the government was only willing to provide the most meagre of provisions to help the Mi’kmaq withstand issues that were directly related to the lack of a sufficient land base (something the government had failed to allot to this population).

The issues with land were also compounded by sickness and diseases amongst the Mi’kmaq. Due to their lack of land base to provide consistent subsistence, and due to the issues with accessing their hunting grounds and fisheries, the Mi’kmaq were increasingly susceptible to the spread of introduced infectious diseases. Mi’kmaw historian Daniel Paul argues that the “European ravishing of the Aboriginals’ traditional food supplies… lowered Aboriginal resistance to all sicknesses…and created the right climate for disease to run rampant among [the Mi’kmaq].” Smallpox appeared in Pictou County in 1800-1801, spread to the Mi’kmaq from newly arriving Scottish settlers who had recently landed in Pictou Harbour. In 1846, an epidemic (likely tuberculosis) spread amongst the Mi’kmaq living at Maligomish, which caused many of the survivors to flee to an encampment somewhere near the town of Pictou, likely near A’Se’k. The Board of Health from Pictou sent several doctors and magistrates to the camp to assess the situation, and they found the “sick Indians were in want of everything.” The Board of Health immediately voted to “procure a batch of oatmeal and molasses to supply their immediate wants”, while also reporting the situation to the Provincial Secretary, Sir Rupert George, for further instructions. James Anderson, the secretary of the Pictou Board of Health, reported to His Majesty that “the sick Indians were in a state of destitution, and that those in health had a difficulty in procuring necessaries on account of the increasing unwillingness of the white inhabitants to hold communications with them”, likely for fear that the fever would spread to the white population. It is not known exactly how many perished from the outbreak, but the Health Officers recorded only one death after they intervened with food and supplies.

The plight of the Mi’kmaq in the mid-nineteenth century needs to be considered in the context of broader environmental and colonial factors. Much like other rural populations that combined subsistence agriculture with hunting, fishing, and wage labour, one of the main staple crops for the Mi’kmaq at this time were potatoes. Potato Blight wrought havoc on crop yields in Nova Scotia during the 1840s and 50s, taking away a resource that provided many calories to the Mi’kmaw diet. Historian Rusty Bittermann argues that incoming Scottish Highlanders to Nova Scotia, dispossessed of their land and personal resources via the capitalistic remaking of their Scottish homelands, suffered during the potato famines in Nova Scotia “like the rural poor elsewhere in the western world during these decades from the combined misery inflicted by agricultural failures coupled with more general economic down turns.” Rural folk in colonial Nova Scotia often lived a precarious life, subject to drought, famine, and economic downturn.

The Mi’kmaq faced a similar situation, but with the additional burdens of settler colonialism which kept them from fully accessing the same sorts of safety nets that Euro-Canadian rural settlers could rely on. For example, poor settlers (such as the settler potato farmers mentioned above) in Nova Scotia could, if they found themselves destitute, access relief through work houses and poor asylums, founded in Halifax as early as 1758. The Colonial government looked to townships to care for their local poor, and the colony’s “Poor Laws” were only available to those who lived in settler towns or poor districts and could demonstrate they had done so for at least a full year – in some cases up to five years of residency had to be proven before relief would be given. The first poor houses were established in Pictou County in the 1880s, and before that poor people were often sent to be boarded with better off families, or shipped to the poor houses in Halifax County. Given the residency requirements (remember for most of the nineteenth century the Mi’kmaq were seen as ‘landless vagrants’), and the fact that the colonial government had separate accounts that provided for Mi’kmaw relief, the Mi’kmaq were unable to access these institutions. Indeed, in the Mi’kmaq living in Queens County petitioned the colonial government to extend the colonial Poor Laws to them in 1859, stating that it was unfair that the government provided relief for people of African descent but did not extend to the original inhabitants of the country. The historical record contains multiple letters from the mid-eighteenth century from both Pictou County Mi’kmaq and officials from settler towns asking for relief to be delivered to the Mi’kmaq. The government sometimes sent supplies (blankets, greatcoats, and preserved food) to towns like Pictou where it could be distributed amongst the Mi’kmaq living near the town. For example, in 1837 the colonial government sent a meagre £7 (roughly $112 Canadian Dollars today) to purchase blankets and preserved foods for all of the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County. George Smith, the local man in charge of handing out the blankets, commented he “sparingly dealt to the Indians” the few blankets he could purchase. He grimly stated, however, that “a few Indians are very thankful, there are yet a good many more in need.” Further, the Mi’kmaq in Pictou County did not even have British recognition of their land rights, which made any of their planted crops, even in the most productive years, tenuous and contested by settlers.

The lack of land from which to supply food and provisions had grave effects on the Mi’kmaw population. At a minimum it pushed some Mi’kmaq to remove to other parts of the Province or to be risk being fined for ‘trespassing’ on settler land while remaining near Pictou. On the other end of the scale, however, the lack of land meant that disease epidemics like the one discussed above were potentially much deadlier than they might have been if the Mi’kmaq had a permanent, and ample, land base. Indeed, diseases spread much more quickly through malnourished populations, and it is clear that the many calls for relief from the Mi’kmaq in the 1840s were from a community unable to provide some of the basics of survival due to the government’s failure to protect Mi’kmaq land.

Without permanent settlements, the Mi’kmaq were less likely to have regular visits from medical professionals, and doctors had little incentive for travelling to distant and isolated Mi’kmaq camps. One doctor, requesting reimbursement for aid in 1861, highlighted the difficulty he had in treating Mi’kmaq patients. George Murray, a Medical Doctor from Pictou, described travelling over rough terrain in order to visit Francis Fraser, a Mi’kmaw man who maintained a camp “in the woods between the East and Middle Rivers about 1 ½ or 2 miles from New Glasgow.” Murray reported that he had to travel through the woods in “snow 3 or 4 feet deep” to attend to Fraser’s injury, a lacerated artery in his leg. Murray also gave medical attention and food and clothing to the wife of Michael Phillips, a Mi’kmaw woman living at a camp called “Wash Brook.” To cure her illness, Murray provided clothing and food, in addition to medicine, for which he was never repaid from the Government. Murray then travelled to Matthew Paul’s camp at “a point below the narrows on the East River” to treat Paul and his wife for Typhoid Fever. Regardless of his services, which entailed many miles of travel and were not necessary to maintaining his medical practice in Pictou (Murray was not paid directly from the government to treat the Mi’kmaq), Murray’s invoice was disputed by the House of Assembly. They refused to grant Murray his full amount, which the House saw as excessive. Murray defended his submission by resubmitting the claim the following year, complete with justification on what similar services would cost if provided by a doctor in a town. The Colonial government refused to provide basic medical services for the Mi’kmaq, even though they were considered to be wards of the state, under the care of their colonial oppressors. The Mi’kmaq of Pictou County had no permanent base, which meant that doctors who agreed to care for them had to travel to isolated and inconvenient places. This was a direct result of the failure of the colonizers to secure land for the Mi’kmaq in Pictou, yet they refused to pay the bills that resulted from this unfortunate situation. The travel of medical professionals to these various camps represents the Mi’kmaw attempt to remain in their territory in spite of the challenges brought by increased settlement on their lands.

Relief efforts highlight the limited lengths the Colonial Government of Nova Scotia was willing to go to provide the basic necessities for the Mi’kmaq who had limited ability to provide for themselves without reserves. Alexander McLean, a Pictou resident who had agreed to distribute relief to the Mi’kmaq, reported in 1862 that he “received some time ago a supply of blankets for the poor Indians of this county which I distributed amongst them as far as they went. I am sorry to say that the supply was this year so very small that I could not even give one blanket to each family, and what is one blanket for a family of seven or eight?” Several families did not even receive one blanket. McLean called on the government to provide relief to these families as they were “really in a state of suffering.” The lack of blankets as government aid, from a Mi’kmaw perspective, was a failure of the Crown’s treaty obligation to care for the Mi’kmaq. The Mi’kmaq understood that the loss of their lands, and the destruction of their hunting livelihoods that provided meat for food and furs for warmth, had resulted in a government responsibility to care for the Mi’kmaq. Indeed, as one Mi’kmaw man told Linguist and Baptist Missionary Silas Rand in the earlier nineteenth century, “Our lands have been taken away; the forests have been cut down and the moose and the bear nearly exterminated. We have no skins now with which to wrap ourselves up in winter. Government, it is true, gives us a bit of a blanket, and we spread it over the children. One awakes crying with the cold, and gives it a pull; and then another awakes crying, and he gives it a pull; and (suiting the action to the word), by-and-bye they pull ‘em all to pieces.”

By 1863, the government finally made an effort to secure land at Fisher’s Grant for the Mi’kmaq. The House of Assembly struck a special committee to purchase land out of proceeds from the sale of Indian lands elsewhere in Nova Scotia, with J.B.B Fraser as head commissioner in charge of securing land at Pictou. Samuel P. Fairbanks, the Indian Commissioner in 1863, proposed to the House, in his annual report, that "a proposition has been submitted for purchasing a tract of land, situate about one mile from the town of Pictou, for the purpose of settling a number of Indians in that County, where there are no Indian Reserves. I most earnestly recommend this proposal for the consideration of the Legislature; and that the land should be paid for out of the Indian Fund. At a proper time I shall be prepared, with such evidence of the importance of such a purchase, as I think cannot fail to satisfy the government and the Legislature, that it would be a wise and judicious measure, giving the Indians of the County of Pictou a home, from which they are now wholly destitute."The Committee on Indian Affairs for the colony had been confounded by the fact that “although Pictou contains the largest Indian population of any county in the Province, there were no Indian Reserves in the County.” Through a series of decisions, some direct and some consequential, the Colonial Government of Nova Scotia had failed to protect the Mi’kmaw land in Pictou County, and let tens of thousands of settlers occupy Mi’kma’ki.

The Mi’kmaq were forced to negotiate a difficult, confusing, and nearly impossible situation where they were alienated from the vast majority of their ancestral lands and resources, blamed for the situation the colonists had created, and given few of the required tools to survive in this new world. Interestingly, the Mi’kmaq strategy for survival was similar to the way that they had always used their territory – migration based on resource availability, now including the newly introduced elements of settler markets and wage labour opportunity. Colonialism brought new realities on Mi’kmaw ways of living – resources and land were challenged by increasing competition and settlement, in addition to seasonality. Regardless, the Mi’kmaq’s knowledge of their land and their ability to remain mobile and highly adaptable allowed them to not only survive in this difficult world, but also to remain active agents of their land who demanded that the government recognize their rights. After nearly a century of struggles in the face of conflicting and contradictory messaging from individual settlers and colonial authorities, the Mi’kmaq were finally able to secure a small portion of their ancestral lands at the mouth of Pictou Harbour. The total acreage of the reserve was small and was totally insufficient for the sizable Mi’kmaq population that came to live for at least part of the year at the Fisher’s Grant Indian Reserve. By this point in time, however, the Government motivation for granting land seems to have been less about accommodating Indigenous rights than it was about quieting settler complaints that the Mi’kmaq used the land and resources in the region regardless of settler title. These latter points will be explored in the next chapter.

The purchase of land for the Mi’kmaq at Fisher’s Grant was carried out by February of 1864, and the Mi’kmaq were then in formal possession of the land. Fairbanks noted that having a home has provided the Mi’kmaq “afforded much satisfaction.” The purchase was controversial, at that time, as the money used to buy the land at Fisher’s Grant was taken from the general Indian fund, specifically from funds that were gained by selling Mi’kmaw land in Cape Breton. However, the Committee justified the expense given the fact that Pictou County’s Mi’kmaq population was larger than any other county on mainland Nova Scotia. The purchase of 50 acres at Fisher’s Grant cost $401.25.

It had been nearly a century since the Mi’kmaq watched the arrival of the Hector, and the start of settlement in earnest on their lands in Pictou County. Finally, the Mi’kmaq had a base from which they could start to restore their village at A’Se’k. Much had changed for the Mi’kmaq in the long nineteenth century, and a new chapter was about to begin. Mobility, while not disappearing, became seriously challenged as more and more settlers came to appropriate Mi’kmaw land in Pictou County. Regardless, the Mi’kmaq continued to travel seasonally off of their reserve lands to access resources that they used for both traditional purposes and to accentuate their participation in the settler economy well into the twentieth century. Increasingly, as Upton has shown, the Mi’kmaq had in many ways “incorporated the whites into their seasonal cycles of life.”

But if the Mi’kmaq had found a way to preserve continuity in their culture, they were also facing changes that they determined required them to adapt. In the next chapters, I discuss how the settlement of the Mi’kmaq at Fisher’s Grant changed Mi’kmaw life and labour over the next half-century. With this land base, Mi’kmaw dependence on relief majorly reduced, and wage labour and manufacturing goods for the settler market played an increasingly larger role in the Mi’kmaw economy. I continue to discuss contestations between Mi’kmaq and settlers over land by showing the various changes to the boundaries of the Fisher’s Grant Reserve between 1864 and 1930. What becomes clear, however, is that the government’s plan for agriculture at Fisher’s Grant was doomed to fail, given the small acreage of the original reserve (and additions to it), and the reality that many Mi’kmaq preferred to obtain wage labour, manufacture goods, and catch fish to sell to settler markets. My examination of the tensions that emerged between government plans for ‘civilization through the plow’ and realities on the ground at A’Se’k reveal the adaptability of Indigenous culture and economies in the face of both concerted government efforts at assimilation and languishing government neglect.