This charcoal drawing of the chief of the Pokemouche First Nation reserve was made on September 13, 1841, during a visit to the Pokemouche Indigenous community by Moses Perley, the provincial Indian Commissioner. It reveals that approximately 75 Indigenous people lived in Pokemouche, making their living from hunting and fishing and working as lumberjacks during the winter. Perley’s assistant, Captain Henry O’Hollaran, produced the drawing, which, despite its poor quality, is believed to be the oldest known image of an Indigenous person on the Acadian Peninsula. Joseph Julian, the chief at the time, had succeeded Jean Baptiste Pominville, the chief who, in 1810, received a land grant of several thousand acres surrounding the present-day Pokemouche Golf Club. Another well-known chief of Pokemouche is Aikon Aushabuc who, in June 1761, signed with the English Crown the famous treaty of friendship which would allow the natives to have access to commercial fishing activity in 1999. (Sources: NB Public Archives).

Bernard Thériault, historian