Mi’kma’ki Dispersal Map

1600–1900

Tracing the forced movement, reclassification, and exportation of Mi’kmaw and Mi’kmaw-descended families across the Atlantic world.

Overview

This map documents the overlooked dispersal of Mi’kma’ki families who were relabeled, transported, or absorbed into other populations under colonial classification systems. Unlike traditional migration maps, this diagram follows export routes created by British administrators—routes that sent Native people outward from Nova Scotia into the Atlantic world.

Primary Dispersal Routes

1. Nova Scotia → New England (1600s–1800s)

• Seasonal trade, kinship exchange, and later forced labor routes • Many Mi’kmaw, “tawny,” and “mulatto Indian” families absorbed into Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island communities • Thousands mislabeled as “colored,” “mulatto,” or “free people of color”

2. Nova Scotia → Virginia & the Carolinas (1700s)

• Export of “servants,” many actually Indigenous • Reclassified as “Negro,” “Mulatto,” or “Free Black” upon arrival • Parallel process to the Virginia tribal erasures

3. Acadian–Mi’kmaw Expulsion → American South (1755–1764)

• Families taken as entire households (race not separated) • Sent to Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana • Large Acadian–Native families absorbed into early Creole and Black populations

4. Nova Scotia → Sierra Leone (1792)

• People labeled “Free Black” included reclassified Mi’kmaq • Export under false racial identity • Creates the Atlantic loop back to Africa that confuses genealogies today

5. Nova Scotia → Caribbean (Lesser-Known Routes)

• Some mixed Acadian–Native families shipped to Caribbean islands • Later absorbed into “maroon” and “colored” categories • Severed from their Mi’kma’ki origins

Interpretation

What historians often present as “Black migration” into Nova Scotia was frequently the opposite: the export of Indigenous and Indigenous-mixed families under imposed racial labels. These dispersal pathways show how Mi’kmaw descendants appear in African American, Creole, Caribbean, and Sierra Leone populations.

Why This Matters

This map is not about speculation—it is about pattern recognition. Once reclassification becomes visible, the dispersal routes become obvious, and the suppressed history of Mi’kma’ki resurfaces.