Noel Jeddore

Saqamaw The name "Jeddore" can be traced back to We’jitu Isidore, (ca. 1656 – ca. 1769) who "was a Kji-Saqamaw or grand chief of the Mi’kmaq of the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Quebec." The priest, St. Croix, who deposed Chief Noel Jeddore in 1924 "was also responsible for dismantling traditional governing structures in the community."

Lewis as chief made settled disputes about territorial trapping areas and his decisions were final. Jackson described how, the "uninhabited wilderness of the southern interior offered an abundant variety of small game: fox, muskrat and beaver. Thousands of woodland caribou roamed the bush and barrens." In a 1907 publication Newfoundland and It's Untrodden Ways by John Guille Millais' (1865 – 1931) the author included his favourable observations of the Jeddore family and other Conne River Mi'kmaq during his visits to Newfoundland in "two short hunting seasons in 1905-1906." Like William Cormack who had undertaken an expedition in 1822 to the interior of Newfoundland with his Mi'kmaq guide Joseph Sylvester, a young Mi'kmaq hunter from Miawpukek, Bay d'Espoir, he provided details on the lives of the Newfoundland Mi'kmaq.

Newfoundland Governor William MacGregor visited Bay d'Espoir in September 1908. In his report he described how the lives of Mi'kmaq on the reserve were becoming more difficult with the encroachment of the railway, a mill and settlers which contributed to the depletion of natural resources on their traditional hunting lands. MacGregor described how the Mi'kmaq there were "hunters and trappers, and are ignorant alike of agriculture, of seamanship, and of fishing... They pay 60 to 70 cents a pound for their tobacco, 20 to 30 cents for gunpowder, and 10 cents for shot. They sell their fur locally where they make their small family purchases." Although he acknowledged that they were healthy and free of tuberculosis, resourceful, self-sufficient, "easy to govern", "seldom quarrel", with "no intoxicating liquor and seldom obtain any", he predicted that their future on the reserve was bleak. The only two cows on the reserve were owned by the Jeddore brothers. MacGregor explained that the Chieftainship was "not hereditary, but is conferred, when a vacancy occurs, on the man the people prefer."

Controversy

The Mi'kmaq at Bay d'Espoir had converted to Catholicism when an early French missionary came to the area and continued to be devout Catholics. They built the first chapel in Bay d’Espoir, Conne River in the 1870s even though there was never a regular parish priest. As chief of the Mi'kmaq, Noel Jeddore was the guardian of a prayer book watermarked in 1807 that he used for Sunday mass and other religious services - deciphering the Komqwej wi’kasikl - Mi'kmaq hieroglyphics. The prayer book which was "originally given by the missionaries and was in Mi’kmaq" Ethnographer Doug Jackson - who "began research in [Miawpukek] in 1976 and lived there until 1981" - observed that St. Croix - who forbid the use of traditional language in the church and in the school, was the primary force behind the acceleration of the loss of the Mi'kmaw language in the early twentieth century. St. Croix "told teachers to strictly enforce the use of English in the classroom. Children were to be strapped if they reverted to Micmac, and he banned the use of Micmac in church.". and by the 1980s the language had largely disappeared." Noel Jeddore appointed his son as Chief in the 1920s but his son refused. According to American anthropologist and University of Pennsylvania professor Frank Speck, one of his older Mi'kmaq informants described in detail how the Mi'kmaq made the sixty mile voyage across the Cabot Strait between Cape Ray on the south-western coast of Newfoundland and Cape North, Cape Breton in two days by birch bark canoes.

According to the Miawpukek First Nation, Jeddore said: "One time before they became Christians, Mi’kmaw were very strong, not even bullets could hurt them. But when they became Christian, they turned into a very weak people".