Traditional Micmac Culture example essay topic

The arrival of Europeans in North America in the late fifteenth century had from then on been a significant contributor to the forms of Native society. There is considerable opportunity for argument concerning the degree to which this contribution was beneficial or insufferable. What was the nature of the European contact? With what action and intent did it impact North American Aboriginal culture and how did that culture respond and manifest? This will here be examined with particular consideration of the Micmac.

Who were the Micmac? They were the dominant tribe in Maritime Canada. The Micmac were a distinct group according to their belonging in the Algonkian language family, and to their location. Being farther north, environmental and climatic conditions subdued any substantial agricultural development.

They were too far north for a subsistence based on grow corn. Supported by linguistic evidence, the Micmac people apparently emigrated to the maritime from the Great Lakes region a considerable time before the fifteenth century. The Micmac established themselves around a culture based in the Woodland tradition. Their distinctive birchbark canoes held high utility and the Micmac made thorough use of their territorial provisions. Rivers running through their lands were a resource in themselves, as well as providing for easy movement inland and to the sea. Micmac provided for themselves from the environment shared with them.

Reliant on marine food sources, Micmac had plentiful sources of fish, clam, oyster, and shellfish. They also maintained sufficient mainland hunting and gathering. The Micmac had a resource base with both high security and diversity. The Micmac were politically organized as a loose confederacy. The Saqamaw was the head figure.

The seven clans were largely independent with their own district chiefs. Flexibility and informality were accompanied with the ability of formidable mobilization in trying times of war. Social structure was hierarchical and labour was traditionally in sexual division. Men were responsible for hunting, raiding and construction; women maintained the camp and domestic circumstance. Polygyny was accepted and large families were most favourable. The men dressed in common woodland garb, loincloths in the summer, fur cloaks and leggings through the colder seasons.

The women wore robes and tunics. The Micmac circumstances are appropriate as a particular case to understand the broader thesis here. The Micmac were one of the original aboriginal groups to have sustained contact and were quite inviting to European newcomers. They were the epitome of the Native vying for trade, even seeking European attention in desire for the goods they would bring. The relationship began on conditions of mutual regard. The initiative Europeans would need approval of Native forces for profitable expansion not bogged down in conflict.

They needed the Native resources to sustain themselves in new land. Sufficient supply and reserve could not be continually shipped from the Continent. The open market and intense international competition required every advantage possible to be gotten and Native knowledge and guidance was extremely beneficial. Trade and commerce were the nature of the first encounter. The "New World" had been "discovered" in attempts to find better passage to the Indies, to decrease the costs of spice import.

The men coming to North America were capitalists in the finest sense. With the recent trend in Western Europe and Russia demanding beaver pelts, an auspicious opportunity presented itself, grand enough to secure an empire. The beaver belt produced a very fine wool. The fashionable top-hat was a status symbol that was finally achievable below the upper class and its incredible domestic demand devastated domestic populations of beaver. The beaver pelt was needed for the top-hat's fine fabric and North America was needed to obtain the beaver. Effective mechanisms of acquisition required permanent settlements in North America to justify claims to territory as well as to defend the territory and merchandise.

No one would simply let things by without contest. Year round settlements had several consequences. First, agriculture had to be established. As in Europe, agriculture was necessary to provide for a population of elevated density. Life of Europeans in the new settlements was becoming more accepted as ordinary. Conventional tasks throughout the days made things seem more as a home.

With the lack of women coming to the new land, a new concern rose. The men needed social contact and had sexual needs. The merchants and voyageurs were not as predisposed to distinctions as aristocratic's and the primary level of the fur trade was first to extend beyond industry. From the traders and Native women children would follow and the father had responsibility to his children, at least as long as he was in the country. With a new establishment from traditional Europe, clergy would soon follow. The scant dressing of the men and polygynous marriage practices were quite upsetting to the clergy members.

They believed in the union of man and woman as the exclusive bond under God's consent. They believed that it was their personal duty to ensure the "savages" passage into God's hands. Conversion from pagan religion to Christianity was seen as a necessity. Arguably, at least in theory, the goal of clergy was to bring the Church to Canada for the benefit of Natives. It was a benevolent exercise in the grace of God, not driven by ambitions of greed and materialism.

Before the permanent settlements Spain had maintained a claim to the whole of North America. Their military capacity had been an adequate discouragement for serious occupation. The defeat of the Spanish Armada across the Atlantic would echo North America's cementing position as an extended theatre of European imperial conflict. Never having encountered the Spanish, the Micmac were critically affected by them France took this occasion and claimed a monopoly on the fur trade, Cartier's earlier endeavors already getting a French foot in the door. Demand soon overwhelmed the Micmac's capabilities but they were no less to let opportunity fall by the way side.

Remaining in the trade as middlemen, they also aggressively executed military weight. Already with significant measures of warfare in place, the Micmac were part of the Algonquin displacement of the Iroquois confederation. Later trade by the French with previously established adversaries of the Micmac bred the Tarrateen War, but now the fight was with steel. The displeased French still managed trade with both sides. When dispute between claims to North America was finally settled the British Empire had prevailed and gained the right to the land. Although, its legitimacy may not have been recognized by the Natives, its strength was.

France had used North America as a pawn to secure its borders at home, signing it away after losses in the continental war. This was not only ignorant and insulting of the Natives, it was also offensive to the French who had already established themselves in North America. The British were even more socially distant from the Natives. Natives in not insignificant number had converted to Catholicism and the English were fundamentally Anglican. British rule overtly set out to assimilate the Natives and overwhelm their culture, often showing open hostility. The reservation was the foremost mechanism of this program.

They were to end the nomadic lifestyle. Restraining people to a definite area would necessitate the adoption of European based sustenance routine. Right to ownership was totally disqualified of the tribes. Given the option to either comply with assimilation or extinction, assimilation was opted for allowing the greater prospect of effective resistance. While precluding ownership, the reservations granted exclusive use of these lands to the Indian. The reserves did secure some ancestral land.

Not the expanses previously occupied they were at least something. And as much as they kept the people in, they kept everything else out. While a nomadic lifestyle ceased it was not sufficiently replaced to British intentions. The people no longer lived as moving hunters living off the woodland and sea, but British language and culture did not thoroughly penetrate the Micmac.

They were isolated from the system the reservations had intended to inmate them into. The boundaries of reserve served as a barrier to both cultures. Unfortunately all reservations were not enduring ly honoured. The maritime location of the Micmac put them at a point of strategic military importance. In the need for naval posts at Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and with the accompanying Scottish and Irish immigrants, land was often repossessed for their provision. The Micmac realized that as themselves being contrary to British interests and a minority in the country's population, their survival would depend on people able to effectively represent them and negotiate with British demands.

This was also an opportunity for the British to further their digestion of the Micmac. British rule attempted a system of indirect government. The tribal leaders that were to act for the Micmac were manipulated with British objectives of using them as puppets to implement their directives The British administration confirmed the status of these Micmac leaders with titles and gifts. They brought in external validation of Micmac authority, changing who it was that made a chief a chief. Leaders are only successful if the people believe they have some distinct quality and the British defined what that was. Substituting the traditional Micmac hierarchy with a new political institution the traditional leaders were undermined.

The Micmac became organized into new districts and British imposition was given substance. A tangible presence goes far in legitimizing the English in minds of subjects. When the Micmac had begun trade with the Europeans, especially the French, material goods were not the only thing received. Originally, the only imposition on the Indians was to allow the presence of the clergy. The role of the church was so cardinal to European society that when the merchants with monarchical endorsement were trading even they could not escape theocratic attachments. The presence of Catholicism was not an entirely negative circumstance for the Micmac.

Under the later British rule, the role of the church would serve as a rallying point for Micmac culture. It was something they were apart, and it was something that Britain was not only absent from but diametrically opposed to. The Catholic Church was something that not even the British Empire could overcome. Catholicism did displace traditional Micmac religion. The Micmac, or at least those who converted, did not contest the existence or supremacy of the Catholic God or Jesus Christ. The Micmac too believed in an ultimate power above the lower forces and this was simply another name and perhaps a better or different knowledge of it.

Christianity was not incompatible with Micmac culture and religion. Perhaps it was to the Papacy but not necessarily to all believers of the Catholic faith. St. Anne is the best example of the integration of Micmac and Catholic religion. She was adopted as the patron saint of the Micmac, often sought for good blessings. The custom spring gathering the Micmac had traditionally held became coincident with celebration of St. Anne's feast. The Micmac observances became more tolerable to the Europeans and disguised to their detractors and the European religion became more acceptable to the Micmac.

Catholicism was not the only condition imposed on the Micmac, and in fact did contribute to the worst. Along with copper kettles and beads, the Europeans were host to an introduction of devastating disease. Millenia without exposure to these diseases trivial to European survival left the Indians with minimal resistance. At first contact the Micmac had a population approximated to 20 000 people. By the 1620's the number had dropped to 4000 Micmac and would halve in the next 200 years. This introduction of disease and epidemic is perhaps the best model for a generalization of European contact.

It was something without intention of the effects produced and ignorance of its hazard. The European contact with the aboriginal peoples of North America was something instigated and carried out with the intentions of trade and expansion. All parties were active in the events that formed what would become Canada. The adoption of subsistence based on trade rather than primary acquisition led the Micmac to center themselves around locales of European commerce and this reached the point of no return. The market economy had displaced the traditional basis of hunting and gathering from the woodlands and sea whose only demand on the Micmac was respect of its elements. As the Micmac became dependent on trade they became subject to its ebb and flow.

When stocks of beaver or porpoise were scarce or exhausted, they had no furs or oils to sell in the market, and so the market had nothing to give to them. The effects of alcohol consumption, a new and lucrative good of the Europeans, and the altered diet put the Micmac population in jeopardy. The long life and traditional nutritious diet were changed for the worse. The propitiousness of the large family and polygamy were abridged by the European religious and economic organization. Christianity highly stigmatized having several overt sexual partners. As well, economics prohibited the burden of a large family, the smaller unit having much less difficulty to be maintained and provided for.

Combined with catastrophes of small-pox and typhus the Micmac population suffered greatly in its numbers and standard of living. The European governments generally assumed a paternal role in their regards to the Indians. It was an assumed responsibility to help the Natives. As a man who found an abandoned child had a responsibility to that child, the Europeans as so believed in a responsibility to the Natives. They felt it only dutiful to civilize them, to bring language and religion as if they had somehow been absent before.

Reflective in the later Indian Act and the operative Indian agents it was an assumption that the Natives could not care for themselves or handle their own affairs and required guardianship. There was no cohesive European intentions. As much as the paternal role was progressively evident, trade and common human characteristics were the foundation. Merchants acted without regards to fellow territorial claims, empires fought each other and all actions were in security and personal interests. Things were benevolent as long as nothing more ruthless was needed. How is it possible that Micmac culture has survived?

Has it survived? Examining contemporary situations there is little resembling traditional Micmac culture, but there is also only modest resemblance of traditional European culture. Although, mostly of European heritage Canada is predominantly English speaking, not German, Ukrainian or Dutch. Even the English language itself has gone through significant modification. We today dress differently and do not rely on ships or horse.

Yet our culture has been no failure, nor has the Micmacs. All cultures change and evolve. Through embracement of ritual and symbol in Catholicism and its coordination with Micmac ritual they have maintained a system of cultural retention and confirmation. The population has risen to about 40 000 Micmac in Canada and the United States, the count only hindered by intermarriage with French. The intention of European contact and the Micmac response to it have both been the occasion of self interest and rational and capable actions in accordance.

Bibliography

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Plank, Geoffrey. Unsettled: The British Campaign Against the Peoples of Acadia. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
Prins, Howard. The Mi " kmaq: Resistance, Accomodation and Cultural Survival. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1996.
Sultzman, Lee. web Nov. 16, 2002.
Whitehead, Ruth. Elitekey: Micmac Material Culture from 1600 A.D. to the Present. New York: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1998.