Mi'kmaw Teaching and Learning Resources

Tracing of a petroglyph of a house and a petroglyph of a snake and a female human figure

Petroglyph tracings E: Human Figures #39. 1 negative and 4 positives.Second petroglyph may be interpreted as the Mi'kmaq girl who married a snake. Marion Robertson's Rock Drawings of the Micmac Indians interpret this petroglyph as "Snake and Indian Girl… In the Cape Breton version of the girl who married a snake, the proud daughter of an Indian family would not accpet any man as her suitor until one day she saw, sitting in the spring of water where she filled her water buckets, a handsome young man. She accepted him as her lover and he went with her to her father's wigwam and was greeted by her mother as her son-in-law. After a time they had a son. The young man wanted his parents to see their grandson. He took his wife and son to the shores of a lake and they disappeared in the water as two horned snakes and a little snake."

Date: 1888

Retrieval no.: George Creed Nova Scotia Archives MG 15 volume 12 E39

Questions to Consider

When do you think the document was written?

Who do you think wrote the document?

Why do you think the document was written

Who do you think received the document?

Who do you think this document was written for?

What information do you think this document provides? What do you think it tells us about the past?

How do you think the document reflects the attitudes and values of the time period in which it was written?

What impact do you think the document had at the time it was written?

Do you think those were different impacts for different people?