courtesy nova scotia museum
Mi’ kmaq petroglyphs in Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia dating from the prehistoric period to the nineteenth century include depictions of watercraft, from traditional birchbark canoes to multi-masted European sailing ships. The abundance of boats in the Kejimkujik rock drawings underline the importance of maritime activity to the Wabanaki.
both war and “peacetime” well into the 18th century, and often showcased the extent to which colonial mariners were outclassed in coastal Wabanaki waters. For instance: After Indians seized “a large schooner with two swivel guns” from the Isle of Shoals during Dummer’s War in the 1720s, a modest sloop and shallop crewed by Maine and Ipswich men were commissioned to sail in pursuit. Not long after their departure the dejected crews “returned with their rigging much damaged by the swivel guns” and were able to “give no other account of the enemy than that they had gone into Penobscot.” Stunned residents of York, Maine, witnessed “a Sloop & a Ketch” chase down and capture the crew of a local fishing captain after the natives “fired a great gun at him” during King William’s War in 1692, remarking also “that they saile Incomparably well.”3
This success, as described at the time, appears to be a combination of practical skill, local knowledge, and careful planning. Moreover, attacks like these offered communities economic autonomy, established stronger relations with the French, and enhanced their diplomatic presence on the waters. And since colonial conflicts spanned generations, individual maritime knowledge also combined with cultural and familial traditions of resistance to colonial expansion. In other words, these attacks were often conducted by family groups, providing veteran mariners “an opportunity to initiate their children into the realm of power politics, the art of warfare, and the nobility of providing for others.”4 Conflict at sea, and especially conflict in the name of resisting British expansion, was a central aspect of Wabanaki life and a carefully calculated part of larger international political maneuvering. Rhetorical Warfare By describing Wabanaki warfare as “piracy,” however, the British de-emphasized
the political calculation and agency underlying maritime aggression. A “term of convenience,” the word “piracy” was already loaded with economic and political implications from beyond the New England coast; notoriously and overwhelmingly influencing trade and travel, pirates dominated the period between 1650 and 1750 now referred to as the Golden Age of Piracy. The geographic and cultural shifts of this term into Anglo-Wabanaki contexts coincide with the broader British effort to de-legitimize Indigenous resistance to colonial expansion. After the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ended 25 years of almost-continuous turmoil between European powers on the continent and around the world, the Royal Navy forced veteran seamen to transition to civilian life. Many found few employment options, felt suddenly abandoned, and turned to lives of theft, especially in the West Indies. Struggling to find a solution, English officials across the globe attempted to delegitimize sea raiding in the Caribbean by calling it piracy. The term, as the prosecution in Geudry’s trial pointed out, “is
3 Matthew R. Bahar, “People of the Dawn, People of the Door: Indian Pirates and the Violent Theft of an Atlantic World,” Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 2, September 2014, 418. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau354. 4 Matthew R. Bahar, “The Golden Age of Piracy, 1714–1727.” In Storm of the Sea: Indians and Empires in the Atlantic’s Age of Sail. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2019, p. 175.
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SEA HISTORY 178, SPRING 2022