An early Mi’kmaq beaded bag.

An early Mi’kmaq beaded bag.

A very rare Mi’kmaq bag that was found with the following old note: “The work of Molly Muise wife of Governor of the Mic Mac Tribe in Annapolis.”  She is reputed to have lived to a great age and was so respected by her white neighbors that they erected a tombstone in her memory. She was born in Digby County, Nova Scotia, sometime in the third quarter of the eighteenth century and lived on the Bear River Indian Reserve, so this bag could date to the late eighteenth or the early nineteenth century. A mid-nineteenth century tintype of her in the Nova Scotia Museum is believed to be the earliest portrait of a Mi’kmaq woman by a photographic process.