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Back in the dense, tall forest of the lowlands and of the Cobequid range and about their rivers, brooks, lakes, bogs and swamps, were the moose, caribou, bear, otter, fisher, martin, fox, mink, rabbit, porcupine, and muskrat. In their time, too, were the grouse, the wild pigeon and the land plover in numbers so great as to plague the subsequent white settlers; in season were the strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and the huckle, beech and hazel nuts. From April to November, the Indians lived easily and leisurely, but well, upon the liberality of prolific Nature. Progress for them was unnecessary, and by them was unenvied and unsought. When they came to Tatamagouche, we do not know. But after the coming of the French to Nova Scotia it was their habit to encamp during the milder months along the shores of the Harbour and the Rivers and then, as Winter approached, to move their birch-bark wigwams far inland and up the Rivers into the shelter of the forest, where they camped together for collective warmth, near the hunting grounds of the moose, the caribou and other fur bearing animals. Little now remains to show that they once lived here. The one unquestionable relic of their times is their burial-ground near the shore on the Northwest end of Steele’s Island. The banks along the tidal waters at Tatamagouche Harbour and its Rivers are generally steep and of red sandstone. But on the Northwest end of Steele’s Island, its banks slope gently to the sea and there close to the water’s edge in a sandy soil, light, loose and dry, the Indians buried their dead. The place today is marked by a clump of American Hawthorne and briers. The traditions of this graveyard have been known for years and at various times human bones have been dug up or found nearby. After a heavy storm in 1936, two almost complete human skeletons were found on the nearby beach. The skull of one, in which several teeth are perfectly preserved, is now in the Provincial Museum at Halifax. Back |
