Nova Scotia

by Lesley Choyce

  Summer was the time to live by the sea as the Mi’kmaq did here near my home at Lawrencetown. In winter, people would migrate to a more hospitable inland site, maybe fifteen or thirty kilometres from the sea. As Dan Paul suggests, “They invented the summer cottage business.”

  A Savage Assault

  Life would change for the Mi’kmaq forever once the Europeans began arriving. uThe French would get along with the Mi’kmaq much better than the English. As early as 1605, when Port Royal was abandoned by the French settlers, the site was left in the hands of Chief Membertou for safekeeping. Once the French learned to be more civil around Mi’kmaq women, intermarriage was accepted without much concern. Many young Mi’kmaq men would even travel to F”rance for an education. Some stayed on there and were assimilated into Parisian life.

  The English, however, arrived here with a preconceived fear of the Native people. They were leery of the Mi’kmaq’s early friendship with the French. The English military leaders also mistrusted the democratic nature of the Mi’kmaq culture, which stood in sharp contrast to their own style of keeping civil order among the soldiers and settlers. The Mi’kmaq leaders ruled only at the “pleasure of the people” and could thus be removed if they were not doing their jobs adequately.

  Dan Paul argues that the alleged Mi’kmaq raids on white settlements in the 1700s and 1800s were “mostly propaganda.” Some can be attributed to Mohawks, who were enemies of the Mi’kmaq and brought in by the English to help wipe out the local population. The English, obsessed with being masters over the Mi’kmaq, forced them to sign documents ensuring their own extinction. The English used bounty hunters to kill the Mi’kmaq in the 1600s and 1700s. Gorham’s Rangers were brought in from New England in the 1740s to kill as many Mi’kmaq as they could find.

  There would be a long string of treaties designed to rob the Mi’kmaq of their homes and to subjugate them. The Treaty of 1725 was signed by most of the tribes along the northern seaboard as a working document to bring about peace. Unfortunately, most of the Native leaders didn’t understand that it was to be peace by subjugation. The very nature of written treaties was an alien concept to the North Americans and the document itself had been translated from English into French, but not into the many Native languages. The Mi’kmaq leaders thought they were signing an agreement of cooperation and peace, not a deal surrendering the rights to their lands. Whatever was agreed to, little tangible peace came from it. By 1744 all-out war was declared on the Mi’kmaq by Nova Scotia and New England. Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts offered money for the scalps of Native people. Again and again the English leaders would find excuses, often based on false information, to offer money for Mi’kmaq scalps, encouraging the wholesale slaughterC of men, women and children for reward from the Crown.

  In 1760, the Mi’kmaq were again forced to sign a treaty that would lead them into further poverty and a loss of their land rights. In 1763, General Jeffrey Amherst proposed to deal with the “Indian problem” by “inoculating” them by means of blankets. And so blankets infected with the smallpox from dead or dying soldiers were distributed to Mi’kmaq families. Amherst and his associates knew how deadly European diseases could be for the pMi’kmaq and he had determined the perfect treachery to kill off hundreds of the feared “savages” without incurring any danger to his men. Unaware of the deadly nature of the blankets, the local Mi’kmaq accepted this surprising token of English generosity with gratitude.

  One of Nova Scotia’s greatest political figures, Joseph Howe, would be struck by the immense horror of what had happened to these once proud people. But his efforts could not offset the disaster that had already occurred. Upon Confederation in 1867, the Native people became the responsibility of the federal government, which adopted a paternalistic role. While not as deadly as infected blankets, the more modern tactics of integrating Mi’kmaq people into white society would continue to foster physical and spiritual hardships.

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 5

  St. Brendan’s Isle

  By contemporary standards, we have come to accept the whole idea of the “discovery” of North America by Europeans as preposterous. The Mi’kmaq had obviously “found” a home in Nova Scotia long before anyone else came along. Over generations their ancestors had travelled here from Asia. Various European explorers as well made their way here long before those who would attempt permanent settlements. These brave voyagers of the distant past remain obscure but not forgotten. Given the tenuous proof concerning the journeys of John Cabot, who seems to garner a lot of credit for “finding” this place in 1497, it would not be fair to write off the claims of the Irish, the Welsh and the Orkneymen who may have come across the Atlantic long before Cabot’s official journey.

  The Irish, for example, were adventurous seafarers and by the eighth century had sailed far to the north and west in the Atlantic. When the Norse arrived in Iceland in 870, they found an Irish monk already living there. Other Irish had settled there as well. One traditional tale relates that the Irish fled the hostile, heathen Norsemen and sailed on somewhere else for a little peace and quiet. They may have gone to Greenland to settle peaceably among the Native people there or even as far as the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

  The only further “evidence” of these Irish settlers in the New World is the Irish legend of the Icelandic merchant, Gudleifr Gunnlaugsson. He left Dublin in a ship and was caught up in storms that drove him far away to a land in the west, where he was captured by an unknown people of tinted skin. These people debated (in Gaelic!) whether or not they should kill what they saw to be a troublesome Norseman. An elderly white man came to Gunnlaugsson’s rescue and set him free, then bid him farewell with presents and accurate directions for finding his way back to Iceland.

  A number of legends speak about Irishmen venturing west by accident or with good intentions. A story dated around 700 tells of the voyage of Bran who has a vision of a beautiful woman and sets off in three curraghs (skin boats), arriving at a place he calls “The Land of Women.” The queen there keeps Bran for a year until he can escape and return to Ireland. As he returns, he discovers that centuries have passed instead of years. A crewman who steps back on Irish soil dissolves into the sand, so Bran returns to the sea and is never seen again.

  One of the more outlandish reports is that of the voyage (or voyages) of Prince Madoc, a twelfth-century Welsh prince who travelled to the Americas and sailed all along the coast from Nova Scotia to Mexico. The place impressed him so positively that he returned again with folks from Wales to establish a colony. He has been identified with Quetzalcoatl as a legendary white man who taught Native Americans to speak Welsh. Other reports surfaced among later American colonists that there were Indians who spoke Welsh but these curious people were never found.

  Another voyage involves a chief’s son named Mael Duin, who sails in a curragh big enough for sixty men in search of a bandit who murdered his father. They come across many fantastic islands and creatures including giant ants, exotic birds, monsters and mystifying creatures. At the furthest reach of the journey, there are no beautiful enslaving women this time, but simply a hermit who has the satchel of the great St. Brendan, who had been there before.

  And this leads us to the story most reported by the Irish, that of St. Brendan the Navigator, born around 489. Medieval maps show something called “St. Brendan’s Isle” in various locations far across the Atlantic from Europe. All we can say with reasonable certainty is that Irish sailors, and probably monks as well, had already been living in Iceland when the Norse arrived. It would be a hopeful guess to say that Brendan actually made it to Nova Scotia on his voyages, but the possibility is not to be ruled out. Brendan’s tale was written up three or four hundred years after the events were supposed to have occurred. The earliest story has him setting out on a quest for a quiet and peaceful place, failing once and trying it again, this time with success. A message from God later tells him to give up the peace and quiet of the New World an
d return to a less cloistered life in Ireland.

  The twelfth-century version of Brendan’s story sends him off with thirty men to an earthly paradise retreat. An angel has told him which direction to sail. Brendan encounters monsters, whales, mermaids and even devils as he sails from island to island only to return home after five years, never having found the promised land. What he really wanted to find was a place of no violence or death. Fearing that he might have failed because he was travelling in a boat made from the slaughtered skins of animals, he built a wooden one and set off with sixty men. This time he confronted more monsters, sea cats and pygmy demons, but he eventually arrived at yet another island, this one inhabited by a lone Irishman, a survivor of some shipwreck, who told him the way to the dream island. The narrative ends where Brendan arrives at the much sought-after coast to find a man wearing brilliant white feathers.

  In the long narrative that is the story of Nova Scotia, this tale is probably of little concrete merit, except to show a healthy contrast to the motivation of so many of the explorers who were to follow. Here is an ancient Irishman plowing the seas in search of a little peace and harmony. Had such a tradition prevailed, Nova Scotia might have been populated by a wave of ancient European peaceniks craving a contemplative life. Instead, what followed was a long parade of aggressive men of commerce, lusting for riches and hoping to harvest and harass more than to homestead.

  The Fierce Adventurers

  While Newfoundland can probably lay a sincere claim to the arrival of the early Norse explorers, it is reasonably safe to say that these fierce, proud but violent people also came ashore on Nova Scotia, where they established temporary settlements. The Icelandic sagas provide accounts of voyages to a place known as “Vinland the Good” and it has been widely debated as to exactly where Vinland was – perhaps as far south as Massachusetts or as far north as the coast of Labrador. The name “Vinland” may not have suggested grapes at all, but in translation, simply grass – a land of grass. The grassy expanse of L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland fits that description and it is here that archaeologists have found the remains of homesteads created by Norse men and women.

  The sagas include reports of encounters with Native North Americans called “Skraelings,” who may have been Inuit, Beothuck, Mi’kmaq or some other Native group. While these people were considered by the Norse to be hostile and dangerous, a quick scan of many of these sagas and legends reveals that the Norsemen themselves were anything but easy to get along with. They were quick to anger, aggressive and likely to make enemies of whoever crossed their path, and it’s safe to assume that the Skraelings recognized the imminent danger of these newcomers and tried to defend their homes.

  The Icelandic sagas were written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and were based on oral tradition. Thus they are full of half-truths, exaggeration and even contradiction. Nonetheless, we know that Vikings certainly came this way, they settled, they fought, and they died or retreated. Unlike those other Europeans who were to follow, however, they understood the harshness of the cold North Atlantic winters and probably had made better psychological and physical preparation. They were a northern people, turbulent but resilient.

  Although evidence of visits by Leif Eriksson and Thorfinn Karlsefni to Newfoundland is quite compelling, the case for Viking visits to Nova Scotia remains tentative at best. However, not far from Yarmouth a stone was discovered which is believed to have an inscription written in ancient Icelandic. Known as the Yarmouth Stone, this piece of rock has been deciphered by the researcher Henry Phillips to say “Harkussen Men Varn” or “Harko’s son addressed the men.” Harko was one of the men reported to have travelled with Thorfinn Karlsefni. In 1939 Olaf Strandwold, another researcher hot on the trail of the meaning of this rock, deciphered the message as “Leivur Eriku Resr” or “Leif to Erik raises,” implying that the rock was a monument recording praise from Leif Eriksson to his father. One of Strandwold’s critics, however, suggests that he was a man who was “able to find runes in any crevice or groove and decipher them,” while others who have seen the stone suggest that the markings are more likely Mi’kmaq in origin.

  The Wealth of Whales

  Basque fishermen from the Bay of Biscay prided themselves on being great whalers and there is a record of whaling going on there as early as 1199, although it most likely goes even further back. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whaling was a Basque monopoly and their catch was plentiful along their own shores until the sixteenth century, when they had depleted their own stock and were forced to travel further for the kill. They went to Spain, Scotland, Iceland and Newfoundland. The European harvest of the sea has rarely been a cautious or concerned endeavour. The message was clear, even as early as this, that the sea did not provide a limitless resource, though this myth has persisted to our own time and may continue to do so until all species of commercial value are eradicated.

  Whatever their environmental shortcomings, Basque fishermen were brave, industrious and willing to put up with the great discomforts of a cold North Atlantic crossing for a catch of seafood from the riches of the Grand Banks and beyond. Basque fishermen may have found their way to Newfoundland as early as the 1300s, but the first real documentation shows them here in the 1520s. Port-aux-Basques in the southwest corner of the island bears their name. Basque whaling ships in the fourteenth century would have rivalled the size of even Columbus’s largest vessels.

  Basque fishermen fished for whales and cod, both off the shores of Nova Scotia and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Life aboard a whaling ship would not have been a pretty picture. There were no sleeping quarters, the provisions would often be rotting, a smell of decaying whale fat would permeate the hold, and beyond that were the dangers of icebergs, storms and pervasive cold.

  Life ashore in the temporary colonies on Île de Bacaillau (Island of Cod), as they referred to Newfoundland, must have provided some respite to restore their health as the Basques dried and salted their catch for return to their homeland.

  The Basques seemed fairly unconcerned with holding down any piece of geography. They wanted the fish and Newfoundland provided a convenient place to go ashore and preserve the catch. The surrender of Newfoundland to the English in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht drove the Basques not only from Newfoundland but also from the high seas as well. The more militant English, with their weapons and their naval vessels, had by then discovered the great profit to be made in whaling and wanted to have full reign to plunder without competition.

  Henry Sinclair and the Holy Grail

  St. Brendan, if he came this way at all, was not alone in his quest for new land for religious reasons. In recent years considerable ink has been spilled over the evidence concerning the travels and religious quest of Prince Henry Sinclair of the Orkney Islands. While reports of other adventures rest more in legend than fact, there is a credible story here with shreds of concrete evidence that cannot be dismissed.

  Prince Henry Sinclair was the son of King John I and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt. In his 1974 book, Prince Henry Sinclair: His Expedition to the New World in 1398, Frederick J. Pohl writes with conviction of the authenticity of Sinclair’s travels to Nova Scotia. The story goes as follows.

  In 1398 Henry hears a tale about a fisherman who had disappeared into the western sea for about twenty-five years and then returned to tell of a strange but magnificent land where there was plenty of fish but cannibals as well. Not fearing the cannibals, but lured by the adventure, Henry and a sizeable crew set sail and arrive at Newfoundland (called Esotilanda), where an Icelander tells him of another island called Icaria that is ruled by an Irish king. Henry travels there and goes ashore but is attacked by Aboriginals and forced to leave. Sailing further along, they spot smoke coming from a hillside, causing Sinclair to send a hundred of his sailor/soldiers to see what was going on. The men return after eight days to report that the smoke came from a burning pitch-like substance that flowed up from a spring. They also report h
aving found many inhabitants who were small in stature, timid and living in caves.

  Sinclair and some of his men decide to stay on here and send the others back. He may have intended to eventually build another sailing ship from the local trees for his own return voyage, although this plan seems a curious, brazen move that may have left him cut off from his home for good.

  There’s another facet of this story more intriguing than the journey itself. Michael Bradley, in Holy Grail Across the Atlantic, argues that Sinclair’s journey was not purely for discovery. Henry Sinclair was a supporter of the Templar movement in Europe and provided refuge for those persecuted on the continent. Some believe that the Templars had inherited the Holy Grail – the actual cup used by Christ and passed around at the Last Supper. Bradley and other writers have put forward the notion that Sinclair came to Nova Scotia with his Templar refugees to hide the Holy Grail from enemies and also to establish some sort of new colony as a refuge for his persecuted friends. Bradley points out that early maps of Nova Scotia show some sort of castle near the centre of Nova Scotia that was similar to castles in Sinclair’s homeland.

  Adding to this amazing but far-fetched story is new research by a surveyor named William Mann, which includes exact details about where the Holy Grail is buried in Nova Scotia and other clues to Sinclair’s visits here that involve surveying techniques, stone carvings, Masonic codes and the mystery of buried treasure on Oak Island. Establishing the truth about what actually happened may be impossible after these many years, but the controversy surrounding this mystery will undoubtedly have a long life. If Pohl, Bradley and Mann are correct, then Sinclair hoped Nova Scotia to be a kind of New Jerusalem, a land of religious refuge and spiritual growth.

  Chapter 6