For centuries before the coming of the Europeans the Micmac Indians had been at Tatamagouche. A branch of the Algonquins, they were never so numerous, virile or ferocious as the Iroquois or Huron, nor had they made the same advance towards civilization as had the members of these tribes. At the time of the coming of the Whites, there were probably about two thousand of their members scattered throughout what is now Nova Scotia. Subsequently, they were greatly reduced in numbers by the ravages of small pox and tuberculosis* and by the predatory and destructive raids of the Indians from Canada. Towards civilization, as we know it, they had made virtually no progress. Not that they were lacking in either physical strength or in energy, but they had not yet entered into the iron age and excepting dogs they had no domesticated animals. Without iron implements and the use of animals, the task of clearing and cultivating the heavily wooded lands of Nova Scotia was for them, as it would have been for us, impossible.

     At Tatamagouche, they had a place to their liking. The long Bay and its Rivers and creeks yielded them, during the milder months, an abundance of lobsters, smelts, eels, herring, trout, salmon, and cod and gasperaux; in the mud flats and about the edges of their channels were clams, oysters and other shell fish; in the Fall and Spring were the aquatic birds - geese, duck and brant; while in the Autumn, the migratory wading birds, curlew, plover, and snipe found feeding grounds in the nearby marshes, creeks and mud flats.

*"Smallpox was the deadliest, but by no means the only plaque that afflicted the aboriginies. Typhus carried off one-third of the Micmac in Acadia in 1746 - "Indians of Canada", Diamond Jenness.