Critical Review of The Old Man Told Us (Excerpts from Micmac History 1500 – 1950)

At its time of first print in 1991, The Old Man Told Us: Excerpts from Micmac History 1500 - 1950, was just one of the few texts written specifically on the Mi’kmaq of Atlantic Canada, which incorporated both the colonial and Mi’kmaq “voice” side by side. The author, Ruth Holmes Whitehead is an ethnologist, historian, and research associate at the Nova Scotia Museum and has written many books on the Mi’kmaq. This text however, takes on a very different form than her other published works. Instead of penning the narrative, Whitehead arranges the historical documents and oral histories within the text, allowing them to weave their own narratives, which speak for themselves.

Whitehead’s main argument is that the Mi’kmaq have historically been homogenized as “Indians” or “Savages” and not as individual Nations with individual stories and histories. Whitehead further argues that what does exist is typically dominated by the colonial perspective. In her own words Whitehead’s stated goal of this text is to “counterbalance such works, by restoring to our collective memory – whether we are Micmac or not – a sense of the individual and specific.”

Dr. Peter Christmas, in the Forward to the text, accurately describes The Old Man Told Us as a “source book” and Whitehead in her introduction describes the book as a “historical jigsaw puzzle.” Indeed this text is very much like an anthology weaving together over five hundred years of oral histories, newspaper articles, census reports, court cases, personal letters and journal entries, to name a few of the types of sources found in The Old Man Told Us. The text also includes pictures of early images carved into rocks by the Mi’kmaq, illustrations mostly by missionaries depicting Mi’kmaq...

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...ers’ handwriting. Nova Scotia museum Printed Matter File.

Jeremiah Bartlett Alexis to Harry Piers, 28 June 1926.

Jeremiah Bartlett Alexis to T.D, McLean, 27 April 1918. MS in harry Piers’ handwriting. Nova Scotia Museum Printed Matter File.

Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, edited by R.G. Thwaites, 1896.

Joseph C. Cope to Harry Piers, 14 January 1914. Nova Scotia Museum Printed Matter File.

Joseph C. Cope to Harry Piers, Nova Scotia Museum Printed Matter File, 1926.

Le Sieur de Diereville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia, 1968.

Maillard, Pierre Antoine Simon. “Abbe Maillard a Abbe du Fau, 18 October 1749, Archives du Seminaire de Quebec.”

Register of Baptisms in the Church of Port Royal, New France.

Whitehead, Ruth Holmes. The Old Man Told Us: Exceprts from Micmac History 1500-1950. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing Ltd, 1991.