Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/55

discovered by the Europeans, for Champlain, Lescarbot, Captain John Smith and Cadillac, who visited the river during the first decade of the seventeeth century, found large encampments at Meductik and Hekpahak, (Spring Hill) and the early writers mention that the Maliseets took a leading part in the affairs of the nation.

At whatever time the. Maliseets entered New Brunswick, they were confronted on their entrance by the Micmacs. The tribe had come from the southwest—so their tradition states—and finding the Atlantic Shore, which they coveted, in possession of the Iroquois—called Kwedecks in some of the Micmac legends—drove these toward the St. Lawrence, and established the Restigouche as the northern boundary of the Micmac territory.

The Micmacs seem to have permitted the Maliseets to secure the St. John without opposition, reserving one village site at the mouth of the river. According to the traditions of both tribes, their people have maintained friendly relations ever since, though the Micmacs were inclined to be aggressively combative and had several misunderstandings with the more western of the Wapanaki tribes which, according to the custom of their times, was referred to the arbitrament of the tomahawk.

In some of the earlier histories there are slight and indefinite references to battles during the period between 1605 and 1615, in which Micmacs and Penobscots seem to have been at war with the Maliseets, but these rumors lack confirmation, and it is more than probable that some other tribes were engaged in these conflicts.

The Passamaquoddy Indians were not organized as an independent tribe at the time of the European occupation, and that is the reason why we do not find any reference to them, as a tribe, in the pages of early