The First Canadians
Though the ancient Mi'kmaq Indians of Nova Scotia were known to trade well inland along the shores of the St. Lawrence River, the ancient hockey stick and ball game to which they play is in fact closer in design and rules to European hockey than the native game of lacrosse. The Nova Scotia Mi'kmaqs, part of the Algonquin tribes, and not traditional Sun worshippers, played a form of ancient hockey that mirrored Scottish shinny. It was British soldiers, at the time of the founding of Halifax, Nova Scotia in c.1749 AD, reported that the Mi'kmaqs played primitive shinny. How the Mi'kmaqs, the true originators of "Canadian hockey," came to play such a game is one of the great mysteries of history. The most likely explanation for this mystery is found in two controversial legends referred to as the Mi'kmaq legend of Glooscap and the Scottish legend of the Voyage of Sinclair.
In the late 1800's, when British and Canadian sports writers were busy trying to discover the origins of Canadian hockey, they were forced to acknowledge the fact that the Mi'kmaqs had been playing a shinny-like game for as long as anyone could remember. Because no one in the establishment sports communities wished to credit non-whites with the early development and origins of Canadian hockey, the Mi'kmaq game was politely dismissed with the conclusion that even though the Indian game was similar to that of shinny, these similarities were purely coincidental.
At the time, no one examined the history of the Mi'kmaqs, their legends, or the legends of the Scots. If such an examination had been attempted, more questions than answers concerning the Mi'kmaq game and its origins would have been raised. Of all the early native tribes likely to have had contact with Northern Europeans, the most likely would have been the Mi'kmaqs as they would have been the first tribe that Europeans traveling the North Atlantic Ocean currents would have encountered either through exploration or shipwreck. In addition, due to their friendly nature and knowledge of the region, they would most likely have served as guides for anyone wanting to explore the inland regions west of the eastern seaboard or anyone interested in benefiting from the establishment of a trading network between themselves and other tribes.
Though accounts are sketchy, early written reports of Europeans journeying to Canada, following the John Cabot Expedition of c.1497 AD, indicate on more than one occasion when Europeans encountered the Mi'kmaqs they were able to communicate with them, as the natives were said to possess limited knowledge of a number of European languages including Basque. At least one account claims the Mi'kmaqs could speak about a half a dozen or more languages, including a primitive form of Gaelic.
According to the Mi'kmaqs, a great white god, named Glooscap, had once lived among them and taught them various skills including fishing with a net. The legend describes how he built an island on which he placed large trees. Once he had completed his work he floated away on the winds and over the waters. In recent years, historians examining the legend have concluded the reference to an island and trees is likely a description of the building of a boat with masts. This spectacle would have been unknown to the early Mi'kmaqs and one which would be explained by them utilizing the only forms of description they would have understood. Even more intriguing is the Scottish argument that Glooscap was of Scottish descent. Known in the Scottish annals as Henry Sinclair, Prince of Orkney, Sinclair is said to have led an expedition from the Orkney Islands westward to an unknown land in c. 1398 AD, ninety-four years before Columbus.
Sinclair was born near present day Rosslyn Castle outside of Edinburgh in c.1345 AD and was of Norman ancestry. This means that he was of Viking origin. His father, a knight, had died battling the Lithuanians in c.1358 AD when young Henry was 13. Prior to this, Henry's grandfather had died in Spain battling the Saracens. By the time Henry had turned 21 he was himself a Knight Templar, a member of a mysterious band of warriors that to this day conjures up romantic images. At age 24, King Hakon V of Norway declared him the Earl of Orkney.
The recorded evidence of his voyage to the New World is found in the c.1558 AD Zeno Narrative, a series of maps and old letters by Antonio Zeno, a former admiral of the Orkney ruler and a reputed participant of the voyage. In 1961, the historian Frederick J. Pohl in his book Atlantic Crossings Before Columbus convincingly argued that Glooscap was indeed Earl Henry Sinclair. As described in the Zeno Narrative, Sinclair decided to embark on a westward journey after being intrigued by Antonio Zeno's tale of a fisherman who had been blown westward 26 years earlier to an incredible and very fertile land called Estotiland. The account states that in c.1398 AD an expedition of 13 ships, manned by Knight Templars, and armed with the latest in cannonry, sailed west in hopes of discovering the territory and to lay claim to the region in the name of the Norwegian monarchy. The Zeno documents go on to describe the journey recounting the first lands encountered as home to hostile natives forcing the ships to move south until they reached a new landfall and a safe harbor. Pohl argues that this land was in fact Nova Scotia and the harbor in question was the area known as Chedabucto Bay on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia.
According to Zeno, while the ship sailed through the region, Sinclair's party saw smoke from a distant hill and Sinclair subsequently ordered 100 of his men to leave their boats and move forward in the direction of the smoke with the intent of identifying the source. After eight days the soldiers returned and brought word that the smoke was a natural occurrence from a great fire in the bottom of a hill. It was from here that a pitch-like substance ran like a spring into the sea. The soldiers also reported the presence of a large number of primitive natives living in nearby caves.
If this account is accurate then the most likely location of the burning pitch and caves appears to be the region in and around present day Stellarton, Nova Scotia, an area rich in asphalt deposits and home to Mi'kmaq Indians whose forefathers were said to have lived in caves. Pohl states:
Open deposits of viscous pitch are rare. In the New World, the two best known, one in Trinidad and the other in Venezuela, were over 2000 miles south of Newfoundland. . . There were oil seepages in Eastern Canada . . . but none of these, except the one at Stellerton, was associated with an open burning coal seam, and was near a river and a harbor . . . As for the burning coal seam at the bottom of the hill at Stellarton, the so-called Foord seam there has been on fire repeatedly; for its bituminous coal is exceptionally rich in oil and gas. It was on fire three times between 1828 and 1830, a fire that began in 1832 burned for more than a year until the East River was turned into it to extinguish it. After 1860 it was on fire several times, and again there was a fire in it, which burned continuously from 1870 to 1901.
Glooscap, the legendary cultural hero of the Mi'kmaqs, is in a number of tales and had always been believed by scholars to be European - but always assumed to be after Columbus. Pohl found no less than 17 places where the Mi'kmaq legend was identical with that of Prince Henry Sinclair, as some of Pohl's comparisons show:
The visiting hero was a 'prince'. He was a 'king', who had often sailed the seas. His home was in a 'large town' on an island, and he came with many men and soldiers. He came across the ocean via Newfoundland and first met the Mi'kmaqs at Pictou. His principal weapon was 'a sword of sharpness'. He had three daughters. His character was unusual, and was precisely that which biographical study of Sinclair reveals. He explored Nova Scotia extensively. He slept for six months in the wigwam of a giant named winter. He remained in the country only from the sailing season to the next sailing season.
Beatrice M. Hay in the December 30, 1927 edition of Canadian National Railways Magazine said of the Mi'kmaqs:
Their missionaries believe that they had learned something of Christianity before the arrival of the first French priest, and that they acquired this knowledge from Norsemen who are known to have visited the shores of North America long before.
Hay continued, stating that in historian N.E. Dionne's 1891 biography of 17th century French explorer Samuel de Champlain, Dionne writes how Champlain, during one of his forays along an inlet north of Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, discovered the remains of a moss-covered decayed cross. Other historian have recorded that the Mi'kmaqs were extremely devoted to the cross equating the object with their earlier legends.
Although the Mi'kmaq legends of the Glooscap and the Zeno Narrative account of the expedition of Sir Henry Sinclair correspond, the question still remains: "Is there archaeological evidence to support the accounts?" It is the Scottish account that describes how the Sinclair expedition spent their winter teaching the natives various Scottish games and dance. The Mi'kmaqs would later claim to have knowledge of Shinny for hundreds of years and given that Shinny was a popular pastime of the Scots, this strongly implies that Shinny was one of the games introduced to the Mi'kmaqs at the time of the Henry Sinclair expedition to Nova Scotia. Furthermore, in 1883, a burial stone marker was discovered near present day Westford, Massachusetts, depicting a 14th century knight with a sword and shield. An oval-shaped "boat stone," measuring about 2 feet in diameter was found in the 1940's by a farmer who had kept it in his barn for approximately twenty years before deeding it to the J. V. Fletcher Library, in Westford. On the stone is a carved image of a 14th century ship, an arrow, and the numbers 184, presumably carved at the same time as the Westford Knight burial stone marker.
Zeno's fairly accurate map made in the 1390's show both sides of Greenland. This map, with its clockwise shift of Greenland and Newfoundland, shows compass bearings and latitudes where there were progressively larger magnetic declinations the farther North they went. (Magnetic declinations are caused from a compass pointing to the magnetic north and not the geographic North Pole and constantly are slowly changing over time.) It would not be until c.1534 AD, 140 years later, following the journey of Jacques Cartier to the coasts of Canada, that a more accurate map of the region was made.
Maybe the most intriguing discovery to date in Nova Scotia is that of a cannon found at Louisburg Harbor, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1849. The cannon dates back to the late 1300's and is identical in design to those used by the Venetian Navy during this period. Since the Zeno was related to Carlo Zeno, an admiral in the Venetian Navy and a man who had achieved naval victories utilizing primitive cannons on his ships, such a find adds yet more evidence to a Sinclair link to Nova Scotia and a subsequent Mi'kmaq contact.
Ten kilometers outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, stands the Rosslyn Chapel. The Chapel was built in c.1446 AD by Sir William Sinclair, third and last Prince of Orkney. The building was specifically constructed to house Knight Templar artifacts. Inside the chapel are a number of detailed carvings depicting religious, historical and botanical images. Included in the carved botanical depictions are over a dozen different leaves and plants. Among these are Cacti and Indian corn. Though such depictions may appear innocent, one wonders how such plants could have been known by the Orkney builders forty-six years prior to Columbus' expedition to the New World. Upon his return to Scotland Sinclair was murdered by the English. In the end, we may never know the complete story of Sinclair and the Glooscap. What we do know however is, in addition to the previous mentioned archaeological discoveries, as early as c.1749 AD the Mi'kmaqs were playing a form of primitive shinny on the frozen ice of the Dartmouth lakes making them the first recognized Canadians to have played hockey on ice.
