Chair Back Panel

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Chair back panel
(Birchbark, spruce root, porcupine quills, organic dyes)
Anonymous
1845-1855, 19th century
© McCord Museum, Montreal
Accession no. M2201

Sold to a family in Quebec, this chair back demonstrates the adaptability of Mi’kmaw art to European tastes. The heart-shaped design of the chair back, crafted out of birch bark, was fashionable in Victorian-era white households, while Mi’kmaw artisans had been decorating textiles and woodwork with porcupine quillwork for centuries. The artist who made this chair back collected the porcupine quills, dyed them using organic dyes, and then individually flattened each quill between his or her teeth before weaving them into the birch bark back. Because this process was so time consuming, many Aboriginal artisans abandoned quillwork for beading in the late-nineteenth century.

Biographies

Read biographies of several individuals who featured prominently in the land debate in New Brunswick.

Gabriel Acquin

Considered to be the founder of the St. Mary’s First Nation, Gabriel Acquin travelled to England several times forming friendships with royalty, but continued to serve as a hunter, guide, and interpreter in New Brunswick.

Jared Tozer, Jr.

Born into an influential family in 1798, Jared Tozer Jr. was a lumber contractor and public figure on the Miramichi. His father, Jared Tozer Sr., was a native of Connecticut, who had fought as a Patriot in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) before being drawn to New Brunswick in 1789 by the economic opportunities of the new province.

John Julian

John Julian and his family successfully petitioned the colonial government to continue living on their traditional homeland along New Brunswick’s Miramichi River.

Moses Perley

As Commissioner of Indian Affairs for New Brunswick in the 1840s Moses Perley advanced the cause of Aboriginal rights in the province.

Noel Bear

Like all members of the Wabanaki Confederacy, Noel Bear inherited a vast hunting range, stretching from New Brunswick southward to Maine and westward to the St. Lawrence River. By the time of his death, his inheritance had shrunk to a few acres of land.

Noel John (Gohn)

Noel John, chief of the Buctouche-Richibucto Mi’kmaq, petitioned the New Brunswick government to maintain his people’s land. He later sold some of that land to non-Aboriginal settlers.