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Chapter 2
We Were Not the Savages - Mi'kmaq Social Values and Economy
The pre-Columbian Mi’kmaq were a nomadic people who moved from place to place in harmony with the seasonal migrations of fish, game and fowl.These provided the principal components of their diets, supplemented by some
farming. Their food supply was bountiful, dependable and extremely healthy,
and materials needed to construct snug wigwams and make clothing suited to
the changing seasons were readily available. They were not wanting.
Because of the communal nature of the society and the abundance of food,
poverty among the People was virtually unknown. Material things, other than
clothing and household goods, were shared equally. Thus the old, sick, infirm
and otherwise disadvantaged were protected from destitution. Endowed with
a high level of personal security, the People had a relatively low level of stress
in their lives. This, combined with a healthy diet, blessed them with unusually
long lifespans; centenarians were not rare. Comparing their comfortable and
serene lifestyles with the hardships then being endured by much of the world’s
other peoples, one must conclude that the Mi’kmaq were very well off.
Denys, who wrote after the Mi’kmaq population had undergone a substantial
decline, describes their dietary habits:
There were formerly a much larger number of Indians than at present.
They lived without care, and never ate either salt or spice. They drank
only good soup, very fat. It was this that made them live long and multiply
much. They often ate fish, especially seals to obtain the oil, as much
for greasing themselves as for drinking; and they ate the Whale which
frequently came ashore on the coast, especially the blubber on which they
made good cheer. Their greatest liking is for grease; they ate as one does
bread, and drink it liquid.1
“Cacamo” was their greatest delicacy. In order to make it, the women:
made the rocks red hot… collected all the bones of the Moose, pounded
them with rocks upon another larger, reducing them to powder; then they
placed them in their kettle and made them boil well. This brought out a
grease that rose to the top of the water, and they collected it with a wooden
spoon. They kept the bones boiling until they yielded nothing more, and
with such success that from the bones of one Moose, without counting the
marrow, they obtained five to six pounds of grease as white as snow, and as
firm as wax. It was this which they used as their entire provision for living
when they went hunting. We call it Moose butter; they Cacamo.2 |
