Micmac Texts

Richard W. Parker is an assistant professor of classics at Brock
University in St. Catharines.

Micmac Texts is a collection of traditional stories in Micmac, a member
of the Algonquian language group. Each text is given in the original
language (in Roman alphabet plus two vowel symbols) with the words
glossed in English immediately below; a free translation in English
accompanies each text. Two texts are also provided with a morphological
analysis, which (along with the “Orthographic Symbols” and “List
of Abbreviations”) will mystify those who lack knowledge of Algonquian
linguistics, although notes provide some help for the linguistically
trained. The author’s scheme is dictated by his several target
audiences: adult readers of Micmac and nonreaders who wish to learn;
teachers and students who are studying the language in a formal fashion;
and the casual reader who is interested in the Micmac people and
culture.

The book comprises ten stories told by five different persons, all born
around or before (some well before) the turn of the century. The
stories, told orally and collected in 1961, include several hunting
stories, a war story, a ghost tale, a conversation, a mini-tragedy, an
etiological legend of Glooscap (a Micmac culture-hero), and
“Remembering” (described in the abstract as an “oral history of
the coming of the first Europeans to the shores of Cape Breton
Island”). The abstract’s bland description of this last story hardly
does justice to the verve, vigor, and obvious relish with which it is
told by Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy—who, although in his
eighty-seventh year, was clearly still a lively and accomplished
storyteller. The story possesses good-natured humor and subtle irony,
with which it pokes good-natured fun at “Christopher” and the Micmac
“Americans” in recounting the European discovery of North America,
as well as the journey to Europe by a Cape Breton Island seal hunter
(the Micmac discovery of Europe!). Efforts such as this slender volume
may well encourage others to share their traditional tales and create
new ones.