by Trudy Sable

The following interview is with Chief Joe Peters of Horton First Nation, now Kluskap First Nation, in Middleton, Nova Scotia on January 31, 1993. The interview was conducted by Trudy Sable to research Mi’kmaw baseball history as part of a larger research project on Maritime baseball history for Dr. Colin Howell, Professor of History at Saint Mary’s University. The research would be incorporated into Dr. Howell’s book, Northern Sandlots: A Social History of Maritime Baseball (University of Toronto Press, 1995). Vaughan Doucette, Eskissoqnik (Eskasoni) First Nation, was also present.

The archiving of this interview is sponsored by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with funding through the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Languages Initiatives Program, 2018-2021.

Note: At the time of the interview, Chief Peters was 71 years old, and had grown up on the Bear River L’sitkuk (Bear River) First Nation. He began the interview by showing numerous pictures of a sports show he travelled with for years throughout the U.S.A. This interview diverges into a number of subjects, though a great deal is described about baseball and many sports in and around L’sitkuk First Nation in the mid-1900s, pre-and post-WW2.)

JP:        They used to go out on Lake William a lot. They had a guides’ meeting there, and as far as I’m concerned, we had one of the best people (inaudible).  We had log rolling, fly casting, and Evert(?) Peck (?) and Washington Peck, brothers, and my father…everybody was out there. And then we had people out there with the bar. And I used to get on the bar and go and do the tricks with them ‘cause I wasn’t scared of anything.

TS:        Where is this, in the show?  Is this the show you’re talking about?

JP:        Yeah, this is when we were out doing the guides’ meeting and we was practicing out there. Contest. We practiced log rolling, canoe tilting, log sawing, and all of that stuff, in the woods, you see. But we had one of the best athletes I ever seen together. We would run ten miles a day easy, practicing up, and then we used to go to work and the St. Anne’s — We used to have St. Anne’s and then we have all Mi’kmaw Indians down there. And every one of them was sports. We used to play ball a lot and we used to compete. We didn’t compete with the Indians, we competed with everybody. We competed with Yarmouth, Metegan, all of these other teams off of the reserve. And then we’d go on a reserve. Well, there wasn’t anybody on a reserve that we know close that we would go to play. And we didn’t have any… we had a field with a lot of rocks into it and everything, you know, and we used them rocks and these Frenchman from way down the shore, he said, “God Damn the hell” he said, you know, “them Indians used to jump behind a rock and they grabbed the ball when they come to it.”

Then we had tug o’ war. We had men…we had some fellers weighed about 250-300 pounds, for Christ Sakes, they were giants compared to what we were. They used to make baskets and all kinds of different stuff, you know, but they were pretty good athletes.  And years ago, when we was there, we didn’t have any welfare. We didn’t know anything about welfare. We went to work, and we went into the woods and we chopped wood and we sawed wood and everything, and haul logs, right in the woods, you know, and that’s where we got our training. We could dive, we could dive down no matter how far down, we could swim, we had to swim because we had to learn to swim because that was part of the thing. If you fell off in the deep water, you’d have to learn to swim, you know. So, we had a lot of good athletes in Bear River when I was younger, even when I was older.

TS:        Did you grow up on the Bear River Reserve?

JP:        On the Bear River Reserve, yes.

TS:        Is that where the baseball team was?

JP:        Yes. That’s where we had… Well we had baseball out there and then we had tug o’ war, but I’m telling you… and I used to go to work and I was only a kid— I used to be the bats, bring the bats up, you know, until I got big enough to play ball myself.  And we’d go to work and we’d have tournaments, and we’d go out and play ball, probably…we would hit a ball from here out over there easy. And we had some good pitchers. We had Louis Pictou and we had Frank Gould and we had a lot of them. They was all Indians. We didn’t have any white people although the Frenchmen didn’t like us because we would trim them all the time. And I then Yarmouth, we’d play Yarmouth, the Yarmouth Gateways, you know, they had a good team.

TS:        And, you played them?

JP:        And, we played them, yup. I played them. And we played Annapolis and all different teams all the way around. So, we had a good bunch of people there. And we had some big heavy people for tug o’ war. And some of them fellers there, they’d brace right back, and you couldn’t budge them, some of them 300 pounds. And they were tall, they were six feet. And I don’t know why we got so small but that’s what they were. And they were all heavy men. And they used to go in the woods. They used to log roll and cut wood, you know, and sell it just the same.  But we lived with the white people and we competed with them and a lot of them couldn’t compete because we was always running, we was always jumping and acrobatics all the time when we was, you know,nothing else to do, you know, do that. So, I have stories, like [name deleted], why he’s told some stories but it was untrue. None of them are true, I’m sorry to say. But it’s a shame what he put in the paper, in that book he wrote. Because as far as I’m concerned, he’s never done anything that I know of when I was young and…We used to pitch horseshoes, we used to pitch horseshoes all the time and we used to beat them. We made out, we would beat them too, all the white people down around town.

TS:        Around Bear River?

JP:        And we would compete with them right on the exhibitions. We pulled them in exhibitions too cause we had a lot of heavy…. they had a lot of heavy men too. But we had a lot of heavy men and when they’d go, when they’d turn, like you know, my lord, they’d lift the people right off of the rope because they were so big. And, we beat them because we had strong enough…every once in a while I would coach them. I would say, “Alright, turn,” but I was only young, “Turn”, and then they would turn and then they would start going back. And then I’d say, “Alright,” and then they’d turn back again, you see, to hold more.

But the way we used to beat them was we would hold the rope steady, because we wasn’t holding with our hands that much. We would have straps over there and I would just lean right back. Well two or three of them big men, they lean back, and you couldn’t pull them anyway. But they had some big men. But we did a lot there right in Bear River. A lot of good people there and we would take first place. And we would come up there to St. Anne’s and we would practice there. But that’s all we did. We always did…you didn’t walk, or something…when you were on the road you would run. You know, you would run, especially up the hill there, up there that’s quite a hill. But there was quite a few people up there living then. But they were awful good athletes and they were good baseball players, I’ll tell you. And they was quick. And we had two or three fellers that was pitching. We even had fellers try out for the hockey game too, but they didn’t make it.

TS:        You mean non-Native hockey?

JP:        Non-native, yeah. But they tried out there I think in 1934 or something like that.

TS:        But, which hockey team was that?

JP:        Hockey, yeah.  And we tried everything, all kinds of sports, we participated in all kinds of sports. We was on the river there all summer swimming or doing something, you know, and that’s the way we grew up, We grew up like that, you see, until we got up. And when we got up, then we got big enough that we start going in competitions. And, we had a lot of people out south there, they were good rollers, you know, and they were good choppers, but we kept up with them. We didn’t care. But we did it for a living, for river drive and stuff. But we had men Ever(?) and Washington Peck would go up and they’d take their hand like that and go up like that ten times with one arm.  And he’d go over to the other side, and he do it ten times like that. Just practice, that’s all, he did, practice. But it’s amazing these people.

I got a lot of pictures somewhere, I have a whole bunch of them around, how they were, how strong they were. Because, now we canoe tilt, you know, and probably you seen it in there when… now you have to have pretty good balance for that especially when you’re a little lighter than the other feller. And if the other fella’s pretty heavy, he can hit you a pretty good blow, but you got to learn just box to fend it off, you know, until he makes a mistake. You stand on the gunwhales of the canoe, then one foot is back, kind of, and boy you got to be watching because if some fellas ever hit you boy, they drive you… I have been driven right back in the canoe, right back. And that’s a hard, hard (boot?) But people don’t realize how much input, and you got to be in good shape. You really got to be in good shape. I mean as far as sports goes, why Bear River, we had a lot of good many of them, good sports there. And Louis Pictou and all of them fellas used to play ball, play baseball, then we used to play other ball, you know. Apples, we used to take apples, you know, and practice onto that, you know, pitching and different stuff like that.

TS:        You mean you’d use apples as balls?

JP:        Yeah, we had a lot of apples, a lot of orchards.

TS:        And, you used them to practice baseball?

JP:        Yeah. And we used to go to work, and I used to pitch there sometimes when I got older. And then when I got in the service, we had our own baseball. I was in the service five years — the 2nd World War. And we used to have our own team.

TS:        Softball, wasn’t it?

JP:        Nope, hardball.

TS:        Hardball in the service?

JP:        Yah, we wouldn’t use softball. No, that was too slow.

TS:        Most people said they played softball in the service.  That’s why I’m asking.

JP:        Well, we had our own, outside of Halifax, you know where the point is where the big guns was out there? Well that’s where I was in there — an engineer for one of them guns, looking after them. But we never stopped. We was always doing something, always doing something regardless of what it was. We go out and get ash and we’d carry… only, I tell you; a lot of the people, they wouldn’t have much wood in the wintertime; they’d always have to go out and cut some wood. So, if we went anywhere, why we were up for earnest, and it didn’t take us long to catch on. Because we were used to running and jumping, we used jump, pole vault and all of that stuff all of the time in all of these exhibitions and when we went to Lake Williams there. So, we was trained right up for any god darn thing, you know. And we wasn’t scared…just the same as these fellas that climbs up these big buildings. My lord, they’re not scared, they can go way up, but I could never do that, I would never do that.  I could climb so far up but….And, we used to go down and catch porpoise, we used to shoot porpoises and they had these forty-foot canoes.

TS:        They?

JP:        They were forty foot long, yeah.  And they’d fill that full of oil because that’s the only oil they had then, porpoise oil for machinery. You know, at that time they didn’t have too many cars around either. And they used to come up the river — this was in Digby now, where the shore was — they’d go down there and they’d all put like little tipis or something up there, you know, as some place to live and they used to stay down there. Well, then they used to go out and get this porpoise oil. And the way they’d shoot the porpoise, they’d come up there and then when the porpoise come up like that, then they’d shoot him. And we had one fella, ninety-two years old, I have a picture of him. He was out shooting porpoise. And when they would get a load of porpoise oil, they would take it over to New Brunswick, and they’d start from Digby and they’d start coming up toward Middleton here. They’d come up like that. Well, when the tide went out, they went down with the tide and they’d come right out there to St. Martin’s. And that Bay gets pretty rough, especially with a canoe.

TS:       Forty-foot canoe full of oil?

JP:        Forty-foot, yup. They used to fill that up. And they knew the weather. They knew the tide and they knew just when to come up and when not to. We had a lot of fishing and we had a lot of good forest. But today, we haven’t. They ruined it, they spoiled everything, and they’ve drained the water off for the salmon. I’m on with the salmon and fisheries there. And my lord, it’s a shame what they’re doing with the fisheries. And the moose. They ruined that completely from up around our area. They have some up around Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik) there but I don’t think they’ll be there much longer because they clear cut a lot of that beech (?) right off this year.

VD:      Who’s doing all the damage?

JP:        Well, I tell you, one thing that I didn’t agree with, when we went to working, we made an agreement to save the fisheries, and for the deer, moose. I said, I think we should have a tag, same as we had last year. Now, I was on the board. Now, I said, “Look, if you fellas going to go to work and go up…” Now there are some people got 10 moose and 40 deer—just one family. Now that’s what ruins it for us. And I said we should have tags up there, but they said no, we want to get our tax money and stuff like that. And I said, “Well, you got to go to work and you got to be looking at the environment and look what we have, and how it’s going because we’re ruining that for ourselves.  Because we get 20 or 30 moose, or a 130, what’s leftover, we could be satisfied and not take anymore. Because if you take a whole lot of moose, that’s going to make somebody else short, and there’s a lot of good people. They said, well, we shouldn’t be doing this or we shouldn’t be doing that. There’s only a few group of people that spoils it.  The money’s the issue (?). So, I said, “Alright, if you are going to be doing it this way, that way, I don’t anything to say to you (?), ‘cause I know what’s going to happen.” That’s what’s happening to our game and our deer.  And, of course, the coyotes helps out a lot, too…they take a lot. This is what I say.  People has got to stop and realize they can’t take too much. If they didn’t give the fishermen, all of these foreigners, all of this fishing when them boats come up there, well we would have fish today. They come right into the Bay of Fundy there and load up with all kinds of fish, and we can’t doing nothing; they stay in there six months, and they go to work and come back, and then another crew comes in because they have the great big steamers, bigger than the Princess Acadia there, just fishing.  And, that’s what ruined it, and I blame that on the government; that is the government’s fault. And, I blame it on the government. I don’t care, and I tell them too.

TS:        Isn’t Chief Meuse (JP: Chief Meuse, yea), he’s trying to work better with that, isn’t he? Do things like get the forest back in shape, and fishing and everything?

JP:        It’s a hard thing to, ah, I went to work…I’ve been lumbering all my life in the woods there and I see so many mistakes there but today, we can’t even get good ash today. It’s hard to get good ash unless you go over there to Big Cove or somewhere and get black ash, you know…it’s pretty hard to get good ash, cause they cut it all down. And this is the environment, you know?  They don’t listen good.  They go do work and they draw all the water…right down here in the Valley, they’re drawing all the water down. See the farmers? Now, in a few more years, they keep doing it, we’ll have a god-dong dessert there cause we got no water and we only got… the topsoil ain’t very deep.  And they have a pit right out there. They went and dug a pit right out there, and that thing never filled up…all you have is sand.  And that’s what’s going to happen to the forestry if they don’t…Up on our Reserve we cut stuff but we go to work, we go down and to the base (?) of trees what we want, the old ones that’s dead. Or else if there’s a big maple or oak with a hole into it up there, we don’t touch those trees because that’s the…the animals goes up there. We don’t touch them even if they are bad, we’ll never touch them. And we’re coming pretty good now with our reforestation. And this is the way we’re doing it. But, we’ve talked with these foresters and different people along and they think we are doing the right thing. Techocorps(? Inaudible) I won’t be around too much longer but still I want to do my share while I’m here.

TS:        I better get back to baseball, huh? It’s all really interesting.

JP:        What I don’t know about the other reserves, whether they competed just with the reserves apparently, I think they still do the same thing. But, with us, we have competed with the people at all of the reserve because we lived there, and we knew all the people, but we competed with all of these teams regardless who it was. If they was on the reserve, we’d play with them, if they was off the reserve. We’d go to Yarmouth, or we’d go to Metegan or we’d go to Annapolis, anywhere, when we was playing ball. This was, I guess 1929.

TS:       When did you start playing?

JP:        When I start?  Well I’ve been playing awful long (inaudible), but I usually was a bat man to start with and then I kept coming up a little higher every year. And then I started playing. But we had some very, very good ball players and we had some good pitchers, I’ll grant you that.

TS:        Can you tell me their names? Do you remember everybody’s name?

JP:        I don’t remember everybody’s name but I know there was about seven. There was Noel Glode, and then there was my brother, Henry Peters, and my Dad, he played, and the McEwans, they played, and the Meuse’s they played. And then we had some other fellas from Annapolis. They used to come down and play.

TS:        You mean not Mi’kmaw? White people?

JP:        No, these was all Indians. We had all Indians. We didn’t have any, we wouldn’t have any white people coming in ‘cause we wanted it all an Indian team.

TS:        You wanted it that way?

JP:        That’s the way we wanted it. Because we was on the reserve and you know them times there was a lot of discrimination against one team or the other. Especially Indians, they didn’t want the Indians there. So, we didn’t want them. We just wanted to have our Indians. And that’s all we had. We had all Indians playing. We wouldn’t have any white people playing. Of course, they were pretty good players too, but we used to give them pretty good trouble, I’ll tell you. But all we did was practice. We had the manpower and we had the strength to do that. But once those fellas set out to hit a ball, they’d drive it right clean out where you wouldn’t find it again.

TS:        Did you make your own ball?

JP:        No, bats. We’d make our bats sometime.

TS:       Out of ash?

JP:        Out of ash sometime, and then sometimes we’d make them out of, not birch…(TS: maple?) I forget now what… there’s another tree we used to make them out of.  Same as playing hockey. We used to play hockey, but we didn’t have very many skates or anything like that. And we was into sports all winter, skiing. We used to ski. We used to make our own skis, like the toboggan, you know. We used to make our own, and we’d ski down, and that’s a pretty steep hill down from Bear River coming down. You go way up there and come down. But we didn’t have anybody show us. We just did ourselves.

TS:        Do you know when baseball started on Bear River Reserve? Do you have any idea how long it was going when you started, or who started it? 

JP:        When we started, it was around the thirties, I think it was.

TS:        You think it started that late in Bear River?

JP:        Yeah, around the thirties when we had because I was only a young fella. But they used to just catch ball or play ball until we had enough people come up to form a team. Then we formed a team (TS: in the thirties?)  because we was all interested in these sports and that’s how we got into the sports. Same with log rolling and the same with everything else.  You see, I stayed in there, for thirty-nine years I was in the states in the show business. So, I only quit when I was fifty-five, sixty. Just had to quit then—I didn’t have to quit but I did. And that’s the same way with ball. I used to play when I was in the service, you know, but that wasn’t all Indian. But, these Indians, I don’t know, they were determined, they would be determined if they wanted to do something, they was going to do it. And we had some instructors down, three-four instructors…

TS:        They played baseball?

JP:        Oh yeah, well we had our own Indians, that would kind of head of the whole thing.

TS:        Of the team you mean?

JP:        Of the team. And if there’s anything wrong, why, they certainly get told right off in short order. We had a little, we made a little discipline with them. And it worked out good, it really worked out good. You couldn’t come in there drinking, didn’t have to have any alcohol or anything on you, you know, when you was in there playing ball, and then… but I think we had a good team.  We had some people from Yarmouth—oh well, they didn’t live in Yarmouth, I think they lived down in Metegan or somewhere down there.

TS:        Well, Peter Robinson. He was from Yarmouth?

JP:        Well, he was with us. He knows quite a lot about that. He used to come up there. And when we had no field, we had to make our own field, or anything you know

TS:        So where would you play? Where did you play?

JP:        We played right up on top of the hill. We made a field up there, about as big as this here. But there was an awful lot of doggone rocks and we couldn’t take the rocks out because we had no – (?) we just played amongst them. (Laughter) But these other guys had a pretty good field, but we had it rough, you know. We didn’t have any horses or anything to go to work and clean it, you know, clean it off. But we played ball quite a lot after.

TS:        Did you play just in the summer?  Did you play all year or just summer?

JP:        We had so many tournaments. We’d go play this fella, and this fella, and this other team, you know. Then we used to train up for the pull, you see, (TS: For the tug o’war?) And that was a lot of training, too. We used to keep busy. We used to go up there and try to hook it on a doggone tree, up there, a great big tree, and then we used to practice there, you know, and but, as I say, the people there… We had blacksmiths down there but they were all muscle, about two or three of them — they were big men. But we had just as big of men as they had. And they could hold it, because when some two or three of them fellers, Why when them fellers would…We used to go up like that, you see, and go down, the smaller ones you know? Why sometimes you’d be hanging on the doggone rope, you know, because when they’d heave over… And then we had Sam – {Pictou?) uh, we had Peter Michael and then we had the Meuse’s up there, and we had the Pictou’s, three or four Pictou’s and they’re all big men. Geez, they weighed over 300 pounds. Because three of them, you’d be up around 1,000 pounds, just two or three men. But when they turned, they were so tall, they would just lift you right out, you know. This is the advantage we had, and we made it do that because we know we had the power to do it (laughter). We got these other fellers downtown; they didn’t have these men; they only had two or three big men, but they didn’t have as many men as we had, and they didn’t have as strong because they all they do was just lay right back and put their feet right down too into the ground. So, I think that we had in Bear River, one of the best sports, all around sports that I know.

TS:        How big was the reserve?  How many people lived on the reserve?

JP:        How many people? We had, oh my lord, I don’t know, we had… I don’t know just how many we had. We must have had 15 or 20 or more.

TS:        Families?

JP:        Families, yeah. They all helped. And St. Anne’s, why we’d all help. We’d all go in and we’d help them build stuff and everything like that.  And that St. Anne’s, that started, and now they have Cherry Carnival. Well, they took that away from us and they moved it down there and called it Cherry Carnival.

TS:        You mean, you used to have that (JP: St. Anne’s) on Bear River?

JP:        Right on Bear River.

TS:        And people would come?

JP:        The people would come up. Then we was making quite a lot of money on to it I guess, so they decided they’d move it down in the town so they would… I don’t know, they would make money. It was hard work. I’ll tell you. We worked. Boy, We used to get up there…when we was cutting, we was cutting logs up there, we used to get out there at 6:00 in the morning every doggone morning, every morning cause I had a yoke of oxen when was younger and I was doing all the team and hauling all the logs, and they’d have to keep me going cause I’d get up there early in the morning and make my (breakfast?) But we only got, I guess, it was only $7.00 a thousand.

TS:        $7.00 a what?

JP:       A thousand. That wasn’t very much money. You only made about $3.00 a day (laughter). But that was a long while ago, you know? But I really think that Bear River had talent.  They had the best athletes I’ve ever seen; they had a lot of competition.  Some of them, they never thought you have to go to work and think, “What are you going to do with this great big fella you got here in front of you?”  Then you got to think.  Same with log rolling, you have to go to work and think before you…you know you have to think. And then you say, “I could do it this way, or I could do it that way.”  And you could trip them up somehow or another.   But I like ball, I like playing ball. I played ball in the service.

TS:        Did baseball, after the service, did baseball keep going after the war in Bear River?

JP:        Oh yeah. We kept right on playing.

TS:        After the war?

JP:        Oh yeah. We kept right on playing. We had some good players. They were good runners.

TS:        What position did you play?

JP:        When I started in, I was catching. But boy I’d get some pretty fast ones come and hit that glove, boy, I’m going to tell you, if you didn’t have it right, boy! it’s fast.

TS:        But, you had a glove, right?

JP:        I had a catcher’s glove. But there wasn’t too much padding in there either. And boy, some of them fellers could pitch. I’m going to tell you, that ball would just sizzle right by you.  And we changed around. We used to change around and give everybody a chance at everything.

TS:        You had a full team? Nine people?

JP:        We had a full team. I don’t know if you remember it or not, do you T’us? (He asks his wife)

JP’s Wife:        I remember you fellers you playing once in a while down there.

JP:       You remember us playing ball down there?

JP’s wife:         Mmhmm.

JP:        Yeah, we had Clarence Glode… We had a big team. And we enjoyed it. But we had… (JP’s wife is talking in the background but it is difficult to hear).  it was nice to go to work and have people that can today, right today I go out there for three days…I had a head dress but I got the jacket there… (JP goes to get the jacket).

TS:        Oh, beautiful, where was this made?

JP:        There we are.  … (Show’s me his fringed leather jacket with beaded motifs on it) Did you ever see a jacket like that?

TS:        No, it’s beautiful. This is moose hide?

JP:        No, I think that’s…I don’t know whether that’s moose hide or caribou.

TS:        Did you make this?

JP:        No, no. Jeez, that’s over a hundred and some odd years old.

TS:        Where did you get it?

JP:        A fella gave it to my daughter down there. It was up in his closet for years and years and years.

TS:        170 years old? 

JP:        It must be older because that was in the war.   I can’t… I’d like to find somebody who knows what these buttons and all stand (for)—you see these buttons here, they are not all the same. And beads, see all these small beads, you see? And, they say that’s an old jacket, because the beads is not all the same.

TS:       They’ve been replaced, you mean? These look newer here. 

VD:      That’s brain tanned. They use brain tan.  That’s why it feels like that.

TS:        What do you mean brain tan?

VD:      They used the brains of the animal to tan the leather.

TS :       That’s why it’s soft?

VD:      That’s why it’s soft. 

JP:        I find about lot of the Indians…I used to go to Philadelphia, and there’s a big museum. Have you ever been down there?

TS:        Yeah.

JP:        Did you ever see Indians down there, Mi’kmaw Indians?

TS:        No, not that I remember. Long time ago I was there.

JP:          Well, I was there quite a while. They got a great big museum down there and the Mi’kmaw Indians, what they had at that time, they didn’t have all of this…they didn’t have that hat what we wear now.

TS:        The headdress, you mean?

JP:       The head dress. No.  And the Mi’kmaq, they only had a few feathers up in there, didn’t they? Three or four feathers, I don’t’ know what… But they didn’t have a headdress like they got now. A lot of these headdresses there. When I was in the shows over there, I used to go up with all of these Indians, up in Utah(?) down in Oklahoma and down through there, and I could see the different ways they would say… Now, he said, “Look, I got all kinds of headdresses here, and all different colours.” But,” he says, “They’re all the same. They’re all for the same thing,” you know.  But he said, they’re not allowed to go to work and wear another fella’s headdress. (And, I said “Why not?” He says, “You don’t do that. You can’t go (do?) those other nations with a headdress.” And he’s absolutely correct. Because I see a lot of people wearing them headdresses shouldn’t be wearing them. (Some interesting commenting going on in the background by JP’s wife).  And when I was on the show, and they had Indians on there, and he’d tell me. “Now this is a different headdress.”  Now, he said, “I ain’t suppose to use that headdress. They have to use that headdress. “

TS:       Because why? Because it’s sacred?

JP:       Because that’s not their… See each tribe has a different headdress, a different style and everything. They don’t have the same thing. That’s how they can tell them apart, you know, by their headdress.  Well I got a tape right here where I tape it off of…Where the heck is that tape? The powwow out west. (TS: The Sioux?) I got a tape there. Boy, you want to see it.  I got a headdress in there.  I don’t like the headdress because I don’t think it’s Mi’kmaw.  (There is a background conversation going on, which is interesting but inaudible and difficult to transcribe).

TS:       Where did you get that?  Where did you get the headdress?

JP:        Like (name deleted) and them; that’s not Mi’kmaw headdress. My father had a headdress but it wasn’t from the Mi’kmaq. He got it from out west. But I would like to go back and get a Mi’kmaw headdress and stuff.  (Inaudible)  but I don’t think it should be because I used to know how they used to dress, you know? Put the beaver, you know, when they used to dress, that’s where they used to put the skin, you know, and then like this way, and then they’d soak them and dry them. When you put the fur next to you, and then when they go to work and put the other, they put it on the outside. That’s the way Mi’kmaq used to go to work and make their clothes. Like beaver, otter, they… the fur would be inside and then when they put the other piece on, it would go on the outside.

TS:        So, it was two pieces? Is that what you’re saying?

            [Break in tape]

JP:        Yeah. They’d never get cold…Nobody ever told us who my father was. We had…his mother was… When they married, you see, well he passed away while… that was my father…But, we didn’t even know who our father was until I found it in a book there, in a paper there that showed my father where they were all hunting out there, in the hills (?)  and stuff so that’ s how I knew who my father was.

TS:       Who was he?

JP:       Peters. He was a Peters. Where we come from, we came from out Peters’ Point, out to Keji. You know where Kejimkujik is, Peters’ Point. This is where we came from, out there.

TS:       That was your family, or your father’s?

JP:       My great grandfather, my father. So, what happened, why, you see, when Champlain, I guess it was, come up and he went to work and seized the ships for the furs, you know, and this Peters, I guess he was an Englishman…and another one, Labrador, I think it was Labrador… they was the two people that was buying the fur, you know for the Englishmen, or whatever.  But what happened, they went to work, and they come out and they had seized all of the furs coming down and they run back. So, they run back with the Mi’kmaw Indians. And they lived right with them, stayed right with them. And that’s why they call that Peters’ Point. We don’t know who he was. He was from London, probably…So, this is where we got our name from.  (There’s Germans, they’re very different (?) inaudible) There is some Peters is Mi’kmaw too, I think. So, that’s where we got our Peters. 

TS:       That’s neat you found it out, that you could find that out.

JP:       It takes a little time to go over a lot of this history. There’s so much in it way back. We had people…we go to work and we look at a tree. Now, you can tell that tree is just a way… and how it gets a twist into it, it’s a wind, and you see there are different grains into it(?), different grains into it. Well, people could just chop a little chip off and they know how the grain goes, whether it’s crooked or —?) So, there’s different things that the people don’t know. And there’s another thing, there’s medicines. There’s a lot of good medicine. I take a lot of that stuff too myself, you know, instead of taking this other medicine. So, the people, Indians, years ago, I don’t know what the French would ever have done, the English ever done, I mean, because they helped them and everything. But then again, a lot of them cheated, they started hunting the Indians down on horseback there. Same as when I was up to Quebec there—I was up there for three days on that French people fighting up there… Well, I mean, if they had any sense, if the people anything, the French people up there, they could have stopped it, the politicians could have stopped it right there. But no, they didn’t want to. And this is what… and I was up there, and we made three or four recommendations how they should do this and everything, but the Frenchmen didn’t want it, didn’t want it. So, that’s (? Oka?)  they want to stop negotiating. Of course, now, we know how we’re doing cause we’re not set way, way back in the woods like they were. You know, we’re out and we’ve got some educated people coming up now. But still again, there might be, but the laws that I find out, when they go to the court, they will go to working and they don’t know just what it means. Like, if you get so much here, or you do this the judge will tell them, or something like that, they don’t know. They can say yes, and they shouldn’t say yes. They should be saying no. See, because they don’t know the difference in the law, they don’t know the law. The reason why… (goes to get a book on the Indian Act laws that tells all about the Indian laws on reserves.)

TS:       You mean this is laws made for Indians, not written by?

JP:       Well, when you start getting to laws and stuff, why there’s a lot of them right there. But I have another book further back on the different laws. I’ll find out more about that baseball. And I’ll get it and as soon as I get some information, probably a week or so, I’ll go to work, and I can fax it to you. And I’ll get all of the names.

TS:        When you played the Yarmouth Gateways, what was that like?

JP:       Oh, that was a good game.

TS:       Were they semi-professional?

JP:       Well, lots of times, you know, we, you see, this is why we… the French people, we could understand them, of course, you how the hell they talk, you know, they talk fast.  But then it’s the old Acadian French, or from France. They’re just the same as we are. We can talk English but we may not talk the right English.  And we used to go down, we used to go down to Metegan and all them different places. We used to go down by trucks. We used to take trucks and go — a truckload of people.

TS:        Trucks people on the reserve had or odd?

JP:        No, no, no. Oh, no. That would be off the reserve. We didn’t have very many cars then. There in 1931, there wasn’t too many cars around. I know when I first bought a car, I guess it was for $700. First car I ever owned, that we bought.  We had a long while paying for it. We had to pay a half down and then we had to pay the other half. So uh, we’ve travelled quite a lot, we travelled quite lot down to Mexico.

TS:        How did you raise money for the trucks? Did you have outfits?  Did you have uniforms (for) the Bear River team?

JP:        For the team? No, we I don’t know. We didn’t have a uniform. We just had the clothes we had on, I guess.

TS:        Did you wear guards or anything for protection?

JP:        We had protection, I don’t know what we the heck we had for protection…it wasn’t very much anyway. A little strap down there so when you kneel down like that why you. But if we had. We had some good players. And I think if I have little more time over, and if I get a little better here, why I’ll look up some stuff like that.

TS:        That would be great.

JP:        I’ll get some more.

TS:        Did you ever play any Black teams?

JP:        Any Black teams?  No

TS:        I thought Yarmouth had a Black team.

JP:        In Yarmouth? Yeah, I guess, well Jesus, there’s a lot of Blacks down there, anyway. I don’t know if they’re Indians or not.

TS:        There were some. I know Peter (Robinson) said he grew up right next to a Black community and they used to play back and forth. That’s why I was asking you.

JP:        Well Peter was good, he was only young then too. How old is Peter?

TS:        He’s in his sixties, isn’t he?

JP:        In his sixties, yeah. 

TS:        Near 71… or?

JP:        He was younger than…if we could get together, I could get a lot of names up here of who we had in there and how we were playing.

TS:        If you have any old pictures that would be great

JP:        I’m going to talk to Peter. I’ll get a hold of Peter there. Cause he had something down there.

TS:        He gave me one picture. Who was it? A Meuse? I’m trying to remember if you were in it. I gave it to the man writing the book. I am trying to remember if you were in it. It was a picture, it had the Meuse’s in it, I know that.  I can’t remember if it was the 1920s or 30s. It was a picture of a pick-up team.

JP:        Pick up, yeah.

TS:        Oh, I have to ask you one question.  Did you ever play Old Fashion Ball?

JP:        Old Fashion?

TS:        Rag Ball or Old Fashion, you know where you’d make your own ball, and no bounds, and you’d run the bases backwards…

JP:        Oh Yeah, we used to make our own ball. Tie ’em up. But there was no canvas on them then.

TS:        You mean out of rags?

JP:        Well, yarn, yarn. We used to roll them all up. But we didn’t have to do that too much because we had enough apples around here to play to (inaudible) ball.

TS:        What did you use for a bat? A regular bat?

JP:        Oh, yeah. We made our own bats.

TS:        But, there’s this game. They played it at Chapel Island and Shubie.  It’s called “Old Fashion Ball.” There’s no fouls and you ran the bases backwards. This is the game they played up there. 

JP:        Oh, they did, yeah?

TS:        Yeah, you would run the bases backwards and you could hit it anywhere. And then somebody was out when they hit you with the ball. When somebody threw a ball, and they hit you, you were out.  It wasn’t baseball, it was another kind  You never played that down here?

JP:        Cricket? Was it cricket, is it cricket or what the heck I played where they have the stick there, you know?

TS:        The fat stick you mean, the broad stick?

JP:        Yeah.

TS:        That’s cricket, yeah.  But you didn’t play that other game?

JP:        Well, there are so many different games that they had, so many different games. We used to have jumping, and we used to have swimming races. Like when I with our family here, we took all the trophies right down there for swimming. And you know how I did it? I put them up in this Annapolis River, there was a thing coming down. I said, “Alright. Now, you fellas swim up there for awhile.” And there was quite a current coming down. So, they would go to work and they would swim onto that. And they’d go and boy oh boy, they were putting everything they had in. See. And, then I’d bring them out and then we’d swim out, then we’d practice swimming. I used to do that but they was going further and further all the time getting better. So, when we come up to the Red Cross, we had a race. Well, my golly, they took every bit of it, they cleaned up everything. Cause nobody ever did that. Nobody ever thought to go swim against the current. See, this is my idea. And that builds your muscle up. You wasn’t going very fast but boy you was really putting the muscle in. And when you got on clear water, well gee, you could go beat (inaudible) heck. This is what I used to do when I used to log roll. I used to put stuff onto my feet, like weights. I had weights on my feet. Well, that made it heavy, made your feet heavy, you know. Made your feet heavy. When you took them weights off, you had to be awful careful for a little while because your feet would go…oh my gosh, there was nothing lift to your feet because you had weights on. And people didn’t ever think of that stuff in them days, you know but I’d like to learn more about the Mi’kmaq, and I sure did it. I used to be in that museum every morning.

TS:        Where, here?

JP:        No, in Philadelphia. In that museum

TS:        They have a Mi’kmaw exhibit?  They have Mi’kmaw stuff in Philadelphia?

JP:        They do, they have one of the best. Mi’kmaq.  They have a whole dog gone picture, a whole big screen.

TS:        From where?

JP:        In Philadelphia in a museum there. I used to go in there every day and look at stuff, and study the stuff, and watch it, and compare it to what the old people used to tell me. And I got a lot of information from the old people. This old feller there, why, when he passed away, he was 105. And he used to go up Bear River, go up, walk up there and walk home, when he was 92, 93. Now, would have had a whole lot of kids around there and — we called him our grandfather; he wasn’t our grandfather, but that was the only one we knew. Well, when he could come up, he’d have an old coat on, but he’d have this candy like that (gestures), not a peanut but a candy. And he used to haul out and he used to give all the kids this candy, just out of his pocket. But he used…with me.. so, by lord, and I’d stay, I’d stay with him cause I knew I would get more candy. Then I used to listen to his stories. He used to tell me from years and years way back. Well then, I got a lot of good information from him. But I got interested into it, before I wasn’t. When the candy fetched me there and I knew I’d get more candy, I was going to listen to all his stories whether it be all day, you know (laughter). He was a feller, he was a man that never lied.

TS:        What was his name?

JP:        Malti, Mi’kmaw language.

TS:       Did you grow up speaking Mi’kmaw?

JP:       No, no. My father did. He wrote a big book on the Mi’kmaq and I just loaned the book out the other day. Just, the other day from that (? bringing it back to me. So, I pick up a lot of them tapes like that and I have quite a few books on that. I took one book away, and I never did get it back. And then I had another good book up there, I loaned, for put it in the paper, loaned him a long while ago– I never even got the book back. Got nothing back. And, there was a lot of good information in that book. 

TS:        Which book was that?

JP:        I forgot what the name of it was. The priest, used to go to work and years and years way back, he used to talk Mi’kmaw. He thought he’d learn how to talk Mi’kmaw and then he would translate it, you see.

TS:        Are you talking about Maillard? That who are talking about?  Abbé Maillard, the priest? Or Pacifique?  Those guys?

JP:        You must have some good books up there too, don’t you?

TS:        Yeah.

JP:        You have some good books up there?  No. I’d like to, if I get more time, go to work and…

TS:        You should come up.  Do you have Ruth’s book? Ruth Whitehead’s book? Have you looked at her book?

JP:       No.

TS:        It’s a good book.

JP        I had two or three of them but I loaned them away but I never got them back. One of them was way back in 1600, one of them was. And, I ‘d like to know the history, a lot of that. I’d like to go and study that.  If I do, I would be (inaudible: rid?) of this Chief’s job. I would have a couple of years yet to me. And, I can see a lot of things that people are bringing up. It is…another fact that they didn’t do that, and I know they didn’t do that.

[Tape Break]

(This next sentence is indistinct:  “But, we’re getting way back, the elderly people.”)  And, another thing I will tell you, I found when they had a funeral, when somebody passed away, they would go to start singing these hymns. And, I was only small then.  And if there was a funeral, you know, and they’d go in and they would say, “Well, you go up and get this fella.” It would probably a half a mile away up there to tell him he’s  passed on, he’s gone on. Well, I would (inaudible) my father he would tell me that because he…Jesus, a kid like that, heard this story (inaudible) and what they were talking about, it would scare you. By the lord, I would (inaudible).  I tell you I would run all the way from there, up to this fellow, and then I would run back and tell them, “I told him. He’s coming down with a lantern.” Boy, I’d go home because I didn’t want to stay there any longer, you know?  The hymns, boy, they are some weird, aren’t they. (Offers TS: more tea)  But that’s what I found.

VD:      Well, they did a recording of all these Mi’kmaw hymns they sang. I think the Union of Nova Scotia Indians put it out.

JP:        From Big Cove, do they have up there? 

VD:      George Paul made…

JP:        Do they have the powwow up there?

VD:      Yep, they have powwows every year.

JP:        They go around different places there?

VD:      Yep.

JP:        That’s what I…

VD:      you want to hear the other songs?  Mi’kmaw songs?  We do a lot of songs. We do the Mi’kmaw songs and we do other powwow songs from other nations.

JP:        How in the world do they…like they have a whole lot of different languages up there.  When you’re playing there, how do you play to that?

VD:      It’s really hard. There’s two ways. One way, how I learned was from another man…his name was Tom Paul from Eskasoni, and he taught me word of mouth, just by mouth, and he taught me how to pronounce the words, and he sang it.  Even before we touched the drum, he would sing it to me and he would tell me, “Well, you’re singing this word wrong.” Then he would say it again, and I would learn it.  Okay what we do now is we teach people on the cassette tapes, and that’s how we learn those songs.

JP:        You tape it?

VD:      Yeah, but you still have to get the pronunciation right.

JP:        Pronunciation right, yeah. I was just thinking that the other day when I seen that tape there. I was thinking of all of that because how can they, if they are chanting, how can they go with all these different tribes, you know?  It’s amazing what they would do.

VD:      You know, if you’re interested in learning some of these songs, I can get a cassette for you, put a tape together for you.

JP:        I have a good notion to try that. 

VD:      I can send you some video tapes. If you’ve got a VCR, I’ll send you videos.

JP:        When I go to some of these meetings, they have that, you know? Every time I go to these meetings they have that, and boy I’m right down there, I’m right down there.  I usually go right in and I just sit right down.  I don’t care and then I just stay(inaudible).  I didn’t care and I take my stuff with me.

TS:        Did your father do that? Did he do any of that?  Did your father do any of that sort of thing, pipe smoking or circles?

JP:        I don’t know really.

TS:        Or, your grandfather?  The Pictous.

JP:        My grandfather. Maybe. They used to go up and set around. A whole bunch of them would set around. I don’t know what for. Go to a funeral and they would be singing and that was weird music. And, I was so inquisitive, I would go into all of this, went to all of this stuff. Get scared to death and then I didn’t know what to do. I was scared, you know, when they get to singing.  I know my father… We had a burial down there, and we buried…who was that?  Billy Meuse, was it?  Billy Meuse.  Couldn’t get anybody so the Chief, he was the Chief, so he made the sermon, and he sung all the hymns and all the stuff. Holy Moly. I was scared even to see him, you know, the noise that came out of him. (Indistinct).  Then we buried him, and I don’t know what happened. That was quite a while ago. (JP’s wife says:  Father did Jane’s after that.) He did Jane, he did Jane too. She used to sing all them songs.

But, I have the books for those songs, but I don’t know what the heck happened to them. I had the whole stack of all (inaudible) hymns from the mass but I don’t know, some of the kids took them. I can’t even find them.  I’m going to try to get another set of books if I can find where I can get it. But, I wanted to learn to talk Mi’kmaw. I’ve been trying to talk but up here, you don’t get nobody to talk with.  It’s just the same as playing music. We had, we used to go up there with a violin. We had a whole bunch of people, right up around, I don’t now, about ten of us. We used to go up there and play the violin. Everybody would bring their violin up there, you know. And then we’d play. (Indistinct: You see?) up at Lake William, Don Messer there. We used to play with Don Messer and all these people, but I wasn’t a very good player, you know. But some pieces, I could take two or three pieces and I could make it perfect. But the other pieces, I couldn’t do it. But I like that, I like music. Boy, I got a violin. I’ll tell you what stopped me from playing the violin.  I had a violin down there, my great grandfather from New Brunswick. Why he was a violin teacher, and it was nice violin.  I got pretty far…it was a nice violin. I got pretty (Indistinct) right now (inaudible) nice violin. And boy, well I’ll tell you how good it was. When Joe Penault (inaudible). Do you remember Joe Penault, do you know Joe Penault? He used to play the violin good. Joe Penault down in Annapolis; they used to play all the music. There was two or three colored fellas down there and Penault and the other people up there. So anyway, I liked it there. Don Messer, when out in Lake Williams, he was out there, and I used to listen to him. That’s a long while ago now. I used to listen at him playing. And Joe Penault, he was a good player and there was another feller down there. They were three good violin players. And I used to listen at them, you know. I don’t think a lot of it was by note either. A lot of it was by ear, you know.  But, then I got interested in playing the violin through them, through going out to Lake Williams there. You know, I used to listen up there, and listen to them play, you know. Well anyway, I had a good violin and (name deleted) wanted to buy it. And he said, “Look,” he said, “your violin, look how it sounds compared to mine.” Well I told him, I said, you know “You’re not playing that violin right. You’re not getting the tone out of that.” “Oh yes,” he says, “Oh yes,” he says. “Well, I will go to work,” he said, “and I’ll trade you your violin.” And I said, “I don’t think you will, I don’t think you will. It doesn’t sound…” But when Don Messer got on that violin, then it was different. By the lord, boy that thing… You could be setting here, and the music would be the same, would be way in the side of that room.  (Indistinct) Stadivarius? And we had a dance over there, paid (indistinct) for a dance over there, when this girl went to working, I put it underneath my chair like that, and I went out, but I didn’t put it in my case, you know? If she didn’t come over and take that chair and she put it right on the top of it and smashed it. After that, I couldn’t find another violin to fix that. I still got it. Then I lost interest into it.

I lost interest.  I couldn’t get…that violin there, I got one there, I got a couple of them up there but I couldn’t play them. I just lost interest into it. I used to play a lot didn’t I (he asks his wife).  I played for a lot of dances. There were some good violin players around there and boy I wasn’t scared of any of them.  French (inaudible).  (Name deleted), now, he played the violin. Holy Jesus, you don’t know what the hell he’s playing. I talked with Dick one time, and boy he said, “I went…they were having a violin contest down there. So, he said, “I went down.” So, I said “you went down to it.”  And boy, he said, “Yeah, I won first prize.”  And I said, (name deleted), “the only dam way you would win first prize is if you were the only one playing.”  And, he says, “That’s right, I was the only one playing.”  (Laughter).  All the noise he used to make…oh my lord, he couldn’t play a violin at all.  I used to play a lot. Played guitar.  (JP’s wife)

TS:        Where did you hook up with this show?  (JP What?) Where did you get into this show?

JP:        Where did I get I to this show? Well, how I come to get in the show business was through Lake Williams. I was only a little fella like that. I was telling you about that that guy Malti there. She’s got that book…she’s got that tape haven’t you?  That little fella there? Well that was me in there, and that was the old fella.  Whatever I can say, because I should have proof here somewheres into it, what I did but I won’t say anything that I don’t believe in. If I believe in something, why I will tell you, but I don’t like to go to work and say something and make a great big story out of if it’s not right.

Well I’ll tell you now, I’ve got a cottage over there, and I’ve got a canoe over there and…

VD:     What kind of canoe you got…fibreglass?

JP:       I don’t use fiberglass.

VD:     Then you use wood?

JP:       No, I use…what they make the Old Town canoes. What they make the…like these black pipes?  And there is this thing in there that goes together?  And the doggone things gets wobbly like that but it won’t tear, it won’t break, and that’s the one I got from Old Town Maine.  I got one up here too.

 Do you know what I’d like to get. I was out to the church there, the church out there last year, and I had my thing on, and we were talking about different things, and then we got onto the constitution. One girl there was talking about the constitution. And, I had to talk with her onto that. So, then we went to work and he said, “Look”, he said, “I want you to show me how the Mi’kmaq go (Indistinct: in the uplands) in a canoe.”  So, “Alright.” So, I just went to work and I showed him how they got in the canoe, you know, how you put your paddle over the thing and turn around and we, the stern, you just sit in the back. So he set in (naudible) and he puts his feet way underneath the (inaudible)  And, I said, “Look, how are you going to get out of that?  You can’t get out of it, because if you upset with that canoe, you ain’t going to get out because I know I did it…(indistinct: I doggone nearly drowned)  because I couldn’t tip it back up again. I said, “You try it out there in this water.”  “Christ,” he said, “of all the things, I never knew that.”  I said, “The only way I knew it is I pretty near drowned because I couldn’t get back up over.” He said, “Boy, that’s something the Red Cross don’t know either.” And he’s an instructor in that.  But I went out there, and I stayed out there for one day and they wanted me to stay three days out there teaching up the kids. They had girls from twelve to sixteen.  I think that’s what the girls (inaudible)  stayed…they had 3-4 cottages and then they had the other boys about the same age, and they had that old place. They had food, they had everything out there, wanting to stay out there. They wanted me to stay out there. I’m going out three days this summer. Going out and staying out, and I want to show them how to do this and do that, a how the Mi’kmaq used to do a lot of stuff.  But they’re interested into it and they like to hear it, and I’m glad these young people take interest in something like that too. And you can have a lot of fun. You can take a canoe and go out there and roll it over. But these canoes, you can’t roll over, you’ll fall out first before they sink. The canoe I got there.

TS:        Did you make it? Your canoe?

JP:        No, Old Town.  This is the one. 

[A last part of this tape got corrupted unfortunately.]