An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Micmakis and Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent on the Government of Cape-BretonMaillard, Antoine Simon
History
An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Micmakis and Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent on the Government of Cape-Breton
Maillard, Antoine Simon
Malecite Indians; Micmac Indians; Nova Scotia -- Description and travel
our notions, as to trafficking and bartering, and knowing the use of
money, of which they were before totally ignorant. We employ besides a
much more effectual method of uniting them to us, and that is, by the
intermarriages of our people with the savage-women, which is a
circumstance that draws the ties of alliance closer. The children
produced by these are generally hardy, inured to the fatigues of the
chace and war, and turn out very serviceable subjects in their way.
But what is most amazing is, that though the savage-life has all the
appearance of being far from eligible, considering the fatigues, the
exposure to all weathers, the dearth of those articles which custom has
made a kind of necessaries of life to Europeans, and many other
inconveniencies to be met with in their vagabond course; yet it has such
charms for some of our native French, and even for some of them who have
been delicately bred, that, when once they have betaken themselves to it
young, there is hardly any reclaiming them from it, or inducing them to
return to a more civilized life. They prefer roving in the woods,
trusting to the chapter of accidents for their game which is their chief
support, and lying all night in a little temporary hut, patched up of a
few branches; to all the commodiousness they might find in towns, or
habitations, amongst their own countrymen. By degrees they lose all
relish for the European luxuries of life, and would not exchange for
them the enjoyments of that liberty, and faculty of wandering about, for
which, in the forests, they contract an invincible taste. A gun with
powder and ball, of which they purchase a continuation of supplies with
the skins of the beasts they kill, set them up. With these they mix
amongst the savages, where they get as many women as they please: some
of them are far from unhandsome, and fall into their way of life, with
as much passion and attachment, as if they had never known any other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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