4 Early Footprints Harper's Magazine of September, 1877 states, "At Gowan Brae , the late residence of John Macgowan Esq., is a hillock which bears unmistakable evidence of being artificial and is most probably the funeral mound of an Indian chief of other days."10 Mary Louise Macgowan , married to Percy Pope , was the daughter of John Macgowan and his wife Jane MacCallum of St. Peters Bay . Before her death in 1945, she visited William Howlett , then owner of the old Macgowan property, and told him the knoll in the nearby field, cone shaped, 10 feet high by 50 by 60 wide, was the burial ground of a Micmac chief. About 1950, the school district acquired this land and, in a day, a bulldozer levelled the knoll to make way for a schoolhouse. They found it sand and gravel, all easy to move. No one was there to examine the contents.11 Abraham Gesner , a Nova Scotia geologist, in his report to the Island Legislature in 1847 says: "This shore () was evidently inhabited in former days by the native Indians...these relics consist of axes, spear and arrow points and rude pots made of stone. Barbed fish bones which they used in fishing are also found. Some of the arrowheads are made of Labra¬ dor feldspar, agates, hornstone and jaspar... Alexander Leslie Esq . of Souris has made a fine collection of these relics."12 A great deal has been recorded about the hardships of the early pioneers, but little about those of the Micmacs whose land they displaced. As early as 1834, the Indians requested aid from the Island Government because, for two years, their crops of potatoes and corn had failed and "the scarcity of fish and fowl consequent upon the increase of white inhabitants" had reduced them to a state of great destitution.13 In the early years of this century, there was an Indian encampment by a spring near the Y in the road north of St . Mary's Roman Catholic Church. In later years, Indians were frequent visitors to Souris . At that time, some still spoke their language. A resident of Thomas Irwin, a surveyor, began a crusade that lasted until his death: the preservation of the Micmac language. He worked for thirteen years on his Micmac grammar and in 1843 offered to donate a year of his time to the instruction of the Indians in their own language. He was blocked at every turn. The Government considered the Indians should speak English.14 French and Acadian: "In the seaport of St . Malo On a smiling morn in May, The Commodore, Jacques Cartier To the westward sailed away." Many remember, from schooldays, the story of Jacques Cartier toid in song. He was not the first European to visit the Island, but he was the first to leave a written description of it: " Al the said land is low and plaine and the fairest that may possibly be seene, full of goodly medowes and trees."15 In 1534, after only twenty days at sea, Jacques Cartier landed on the shores of Newfoundland on May 11 at a time when the coast was still dotted with ice. It was not until late June, when sailing south from the , that he spotted our Island shore. He saw what he thought were two islands but did not sail close enough to realize that these were actually two points of land: Campbell's and . They are on the north