Southeast Canadian First Nations

Canadians

New Brunswick, Canada

The "Canadians" to whom Kinne refers are the Mi'kmaq and the Passamaquoddy Tribes. Along with the Wolastoqiyik or Malisset Tribe, whom Kinne calls "The St. John's Tribe," they are the original inhabitants of the area north and east of Georgetown, Maine, where Kinne was stationed as a missionary, in what is now called New Brunswick, Canada. These three tribes combined with the Abenaki and Penobscot Tribes in southeastern Maine to form the Wabanaki Confederacy, a coalition of five Algonquian speaking nations of the eastern seaboard, who banded together in response to aggression by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. Kinne is responding to Wheelock's request for "intelligence" about groups of Indians in the region who may be open to Protestant missionizing, indicating that as early as 1766 Wheelock was looking to expand his reach beyond the Haudenosaunees in central and western New York, who had been his primary target.

"Native Tribes of New Brunswick." www.native-languages.org/new-brunswick.htm; "Wabanaki Confederacy." www.native-languages.org/wabanaki.htm.