Historic Mi’kmaq recordings found in St. Francis Xavier library

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by Jennifer Ashawasegai

Mi’kmaq Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy put his mouth to a funnel type microphone of an ediphone to tell the story of “Our Foreign Neighbours.” With him, was another Mi’kmaq man, Levi Poulette, who sang plain song hymns in Mi’kmaq. Scottish folklorist John Lorne Campbell recorded the Grand Chief almost seventy years ago.

In 1937, Campbell visited Cape Breton and Antigonish County from Scotland. His purpose was to record Gaelic stories and folk songs from descendants of Scottish Highlanders. Campbell recorded just over 120 various Gaelic songs and stories, including the songs and stories from the Grand Chief and Levi Poulette on his trip that year. Campbell asked the Mi’kmaq men to sing their own secular songs. They refused, however, they did sing a treaty Mi’kmaq-Mohawk treaty song, Gwan o de. The song is listed as "A Song sung after treaty between Mohawks and Micmacs [sic]. Said to be in Mohawk and not intelligible to Micmacs now.” The recordings went back with Campbell to Scotland.

Those recordings have recently found by Susan Cameron, Director of the Special Collection Library at Saint Francis Xavier University stuffed in a small corner of the library. The recordings and list were part of a collection in the Father Charles Brewer Library, which hold some of the rarest Gaelic and Celtic works and papers, according to Paul MacDonald. A preservation copy had been donated to the library by Campbell in 1953, where it has been ever since. Cameron showed the recordings to Paul MacDonald, Adjunct Professor of Celtic Music History, who is also in the process of digitizing the library’s collection.

MacDonald, who has studied Campbell’s work, says he’s known about the recordings for the last ten years. He first learned of them in a book, Songs remembered in exile: traditional Gaelic songs from Nova Scotia, recorded in Cape Breton and Antigonish County mostly in 1937. The book was first published in 1990 through the Aberdeen University Press.

Besides being Scottish himself, MacDonald has good friends in the Mi’kmaq community. He says he read the book more than ten years ago, and not long after that, at his friend Brendan Poulette’s home in Eskasoni, he noticed a picture on the fridge. The picture was one taken in 1937 of Chief Gabriel Sylliboy and Levi Poulette, Brendan’s grandfather. MacDonald told Poulette he knew there were recordings out there somewhere, and he would find them one day for him.

Brendan Poulette says he was “very surprised” when MacDonald played the recording for him, and says he “felt good” when he heard it. Poulette says he grew up next door to his grandfather and adds his grandfather Levi was a prayer leader for 35 years at the St. Anne mission on Cape Breton and died in 1976 at the age of 92.

Poulette says just by looking at the 1937 picture, “you can see how proud he was”. Plus 55-year-old Poulette says his grandfather was very tall at over six feet. He says back then the Mi’kmaq people were all tall. He also says his grandfather was the right hand man to Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy. Of the Grand Chief, Poulette says “Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy was a smart man. Too bad we don’t have people like that anymore.”

That is also the sentiment of Murdena Marshall, an Elder living in Eskasoni, whose grandfather is the late Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy. Marshall simply states her grandfather was a genius and also spoke Gaelic. And she says she wasn’t a bit surprised with the recently found recordings because she has known of their existence. Marshall says she is also never surprised when people ask her about her grandfather, who was born in 1871, and passed away in 1964 at the age of 93. Marshall says her grandfather became the first elected Grand Chief in 1918, and maintained that position for 43 years.

Marshall says Joe Prosper relayed the story about the Mi’kmaq and Mohawk treaty song, which is sung in Mohawk.

She says the story handed down from Joe Prosper says that treaty was made between the two nations when Prosper was about nine, in the early 1900s. It started when a Scotchman came to Chapel Island, “where no white men were allowed”, and warned the Mi’kmaq of strange canoes coming their way. The women and children were then sent away by the Grand Chief. Prosper, the nine-year-old child, didn’t want to leave his father and so stayed behind. The canoes arrived silently in the night, which threw the Mi’kmaqs off because this was not their etiquette when they approached a village. The two nations met and the peace treaty was recorded on a wampum, “which must have been about 20 feet long.”

Marshall says the Mohawks gave the Mi’kmaq a “welcoming song”, and “a protocol” for when the Mi’kmaq entered a Mohawk community.They only needed to sing the song and be recognized and welcome. Marshall says before the peace treaty was made, the Mohawks came to Mi’kmaq territory for warring purposes.

The story of the neighbours as told by Grand Chief Sylliboy, and of the first meeting between the “Scotch and Mi’kmaq has been historically handed down through oral tradition,” Marshall says. She says the two peoples exchanged gifts. The Mi’kmaq people gave the Scots fire, and the Scots gave Gaelic. “It wasn’t hard for the Mi’kmaqs to pick up Gaelic,” she says. Marshall says this exchange of gifts was symbolic for both cultures.

And Paul MacDonald has been spreading the gift around that he found in December, and will continue to do so. He says he’s very excited about finding the recordings, especially after a long relationship with both Murdena Marshall and Brendan Poulette. “It was exciting to hear both of their grandfathers and be able to return those precious recordings to them.”

MacDonald says he will soon be putting the original songs and story from Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy onto the university’s website. MacDonald adds he will also be looking for funding to get the recordings cleaned up because they were originally recorded onto wax cylinders with an ediphone, and the crank is quite distinct. He hopes after the recordings are professionally fixed, then the voices will be much clearer for people to hear and understand.

With these recordings, MacDonald hopes to bridge a gap in both communities, “It is my sincerest hope that my efforts in presenting these recordings will open a little window on the world of early Cape Breton and that we can learn more about what I knew in my heart for years, that one time in Cape Breton there were excellent relations between the Scotch and the Natives.” And he adds, “Hopefully…we can all come to a better understanding of 'all' our relations.”

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