This is from a story about the scalping of British settlers and militia by Mi’kmaq warriors in what became known as the “Dartmouth Massacre” on May 13, 1751, from John Wilson’s eyewitness account: “These Indians chain the unfortunate prisoner to a large thick tree, and bind his hands and his feet, then beginning from the middle of the craneum, they cut quite round towards the neck; this being done, they then tear off the skin, leaving the skull bare; an inflammation quickly follows, the patient fevers, and dies in the most exquisite tortures.”

Wilson’s account is not the only record of Mi’kmaq attacks on settlers, nor even of the Dartmouth Massacre.

Another is from Thomas B. Akins, a lawyer, historian and archivist. In 1857 he was appointed Nova Scotia’s first Commissioner of Public Reco

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