Acadian a native language?
This folder contains a copy of John MacLean’s 1896 book entitled, “Canadian Savage Folk : The Native Tribes of Canada.”
According to the “Dictionary of Canadian Biography” (see http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/maclean_john_15E.html) John MacLean was born on October 30, 1851 in Kilmarnock, Scotland. Throughout his life, Mr. MacLean attended an academy in Dumbarton, Scotland and came to Canada in 1873. Mr. MacLean held many jobs throughout his life and worked as a Methodist Missionary, Author, Office Holder, Newspaper Editor, Archivist, and a Librarian. Shortly after his marriage in 1880, Mr. MacLean began to spend a significant amount of time among various First Nations tribes of Canada with his wife, as he “had a keen interest in Indian culture and ethnology.” Mr. MacLean also “corresponded with such early ethnologists as Horatio Emmons Hale, Franz Boas, and James Constantine Pilling, with the British Association on North-West Indian Tribes from 1882 to 1888, and for many years with the bureau of ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., on the languages and literature of the native peoples of the west” (see http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/maclean_john_15E.html).
An important excerpt from “Canadian Savage Folk : The Native Tribes of Canada” concerning the “Native languages” spoken in the “Dominion of Canada” at the time John MacLean wrote this book can be found on page 483 and is as follows:
“There are extant numerous vocabularies of the native languages. Our first published vocabulary was that of Jacques Cartier, in 1545, who left us some specimens of the language of the extinct Hochelagans. Some of these vocabularies are to be found in books of travel and scientific magazines, but the greater part of them remain in manuscript deposited in the archives of churches, colleges, public libraries, historical societies and private persons. Vocabularies of the following languages spoken in the Dominion are known to exist : Mohawk, Micmac, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Algonquin, Nanticoke, Shawnee, Abnaki, Mississauga, Ottawa, Acadian, Munsee, Nipissing, Penobscot and Pottawotomi.”
This excerpt is very important, as John MacLean asserts that “Acadian” is a “Native Language” and is therefore, not classified as “French.”
Also worth noting, is that “Micmac” is its own separate language in John MacLean’s list, so “Acadian” is its own entity. So, if “Acadian” was a “Native language” of the “Dominion of Canada” and isn’t “French,” then what is it?
I believe it can easily be concluded that “Acadian” was perceived to be a “Native language” by Mr. MacLean because it was a mix of First Nations words and French words and “born” from the inter-marriage of French settlers and (most often women) members of the various First Nations Tribes in Acadia, like “Michif” is in the Western provinces of Canada (see http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/michif/).
