Mi’kmaq in “Of Savages, 1603”

[...] On Friday the tenth of July we reached Tadoussac, where our ship was waiting for us.

We lost no time in setting out again, this time for Gaspé, three hundred miles downriver. On the thirteenth we met a party of savages encamped on the south shore about halfway between Tadoussac and Gaspé. Their Sagamo goes by the name of Armouchides and he is supposed to be one of the wisest and bravest of his people. They were on their way to Tadoussac to trade with the Montagnais, Etchemins and Algonkins, exchanging arrows and moose-meat for beaver and marten. [...]

We reached Gaspé on the fifteenth. Gaspé is on a bay [...]. A river flows into the bay [York River} [...] About three miles off to the southeast there is another island [...] called Bonaventure Island. The savages carry on dry [salted and dried fish] and green fishing [fish preserved via pickling] [...].

Still farther south we came to the Baie de Chaleurs, which extends inland about two hundred and fifty miles. [...] The savages say that [...] up the St. Lawrence, on the south bank, there is a small river called Matane. The Matane runs, they say, about fifty miles inland. From this point they carry their canoes overland two or three miles and from there return to the Baie de Chaleurs and so to Percé, Tracadie and Miramichi.

Source: Samuel de Champlain, "[Mi’kmaq in] Of Savages, 1603" in The Works of Samuel de Champlain, vol. I, H.P.Biggar (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 100-101. Notes: 1971 Reprint

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