The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (12 page)

The North American Evidence

In Nova Scotia there is evidence of another sort. The native population encountered by Sinclair was the Micmac tribe. Micmac legends tell of a “Great Prince” who brought his people to their world “on the backs of whales.”
³³
This prince stayed with them for half a year, only to leave. Legend records that he returned to their land a second time. The Micmacs claim he lived in a wigwam he called “Winter.” The word
wigwam
is one of the most significant words in the pre-Columbian history of the North Atlantic. While we have no problem believing that ancient mariners of Scotland and Ireland and even the Saxons could cross large expanses of water in flimsy skin boats, we give the natives of North America no such credit. It is very possible that Inuit, Pictish, and Micmac peoples and a horde of unnamed residents of the north had been sailing both west and east well before Columbus, Leif Ericsson, or even Brendan. The word
wigwam
might be part of the evidence.

Inuit natives in subarctic Greenland built their homes by digging into the ground, as a defense against the weather. Picts, the “tribe” of people found in the north of Scotland by the Romans, did the same. The Inuit people called their homes
gammes
; the Picts, who later used such earthen structures just for storage, called them
weems
(
wee
as in “little”). From the two words, we can derive “wigwams,” or “little houses.” The American Indian tribes of the frozen north built their houses in the same manner and also had less permanent tent structures for homes. Both found their way into our language as “wigwams.” American Indian tribes and the neighboring Inuit peoples may have had direct contact with each other, and perhaps contact between the Micmacs and the Picts was made only through the Inuit, who lived between these two groups.

The Picts and Inuit peoples shared the same “
ulo
blade” tool—a stone knife—and both made boats from various materials. Skin boats had been in use from prehistoric times and were still in use during the fourteenth century. As a part of their Orkney heritage, the Gunn clan
would be no strangers to hunting whales (orcas) from these tiny craft. These “sea pigs,” as whales were called, and those other “sea pigs,” dolphins, gave their name to the Orkney Islands in antiquity. Just how far back in time the Picts, the Orkney sailors, the Celts, and the pre-Viking Scandinavians had been launching these frail craft in the choppy frigid seas of the North Atlantic may never be known. It is almost a certainty, however, that their seagoing ability led them to communication and commerce with each other well before any historian would record such trade. The rulers of the Orkneys, the sea kings of the western and northern isles, are recorded from early times as using wicker craft, hide-covered boats, and, later, wooden ships manned by as many as sixteen rowers. It is likely that such Orkney fishermen reached America, either by intention or as a result of storms that blew them off course.

And there are other points of connection. The Celtic, Norse, and North Amerind languages have several words in common. One of the most interesting word similarities between the Celtic and North American languages suggests their early communication. The word is
mac
. The Micmac tribe of Nova Scotia shared matriarchal customs with the Picts of Scotland. Every member of the tribe was a
maqq,
a “child of the tribe.” Wealth was passed to the children through the mother.
Maqq
took on the meaning of “friend,” as in “one of us.” The Picts used the same prefix for the same reason. For the Picts, too, wealth passed from the mother to the children. Women were equal to men and were even allowed to rule. On both sides of the Atlantic the practice of fosterage was an outgrowth of matriarchal custom. Sons were given to the mother’s brother to be raised. The natural father did not have any social importance to his children.
Maqq
may have become
mac
in Scotland, where the same matriarchal customs prevailed as a result of transatlantic communication. From Scotland,
mac
traveled to Ireland as
mc
when the Scots settled there in early times. The shared prefix, which denoted “belonging to” a tribe, a clan, or the smallest subset, the family, attained the meaning “child of” when patriarchal customs and more Roman Christian practices reached the Celts.

“Kin” is another concept shared by Norse and Celtic peoples in Europe and the American Indian peoples on the northeastern Atlantic
coast of North America. The word
kin
referred to a related person and meant loosely that this person was a member of the extended family. A variant on the word sounded almost the same but meant “head”—either the head of the kin or literally the head attached to the neck. An old custom of the Celtic and Norse peoples in war was to take the head of the enemy. The skull was removed and would be made into a drinking vessel. It was a show of pride, a trophy of war; in a spiritual sense it was an act signifying that the owner took the strength of the person killed. Skulls would be used as drinking and cooking vessels.

While few of us have ever taken our meals from a skull, the word for a skull used as a cooking vessel survives. In Old Norse the term for cooking pot and skull was the same—
canna
; our modern equivalent is “can.”
³⁴
A much bigger pot was used for cooking but also for religious and magical practices. Animals were sacrificed and put into this big pot, which in Norse was called the
ketill
, and in Norse its meaning is “sacred cauldron.” Christianity and civilization reached the more primitive northern Europeans later and changed the word for this utensil and its use.
Ketill
became
kettle,
and no more eye of newt concoctions were ritually prepared, just meals.

Just how early North American Indians and Celtic Europeans made contact is unknown, but the North Atlantic Indian word for kettle is
kannaken,
which might have meant “big skull” on European soil. In the British Celtic language,
kenn
(spelled
ceann
in Ireland) meant “head.” When the Celtic languages split,
penn
took the same meaning among the P-Celtic–speaking groups (those using the “P” sound) as
kenn
had to the Q-Celtic–speaking groups (those using the “Q” sound). Our own former President John Kennedy’s surname literally means “ugly head.”
Canmore
(alternately spelled
Kenmore
) means “big head,” which could refer to a chief or may simply be a descriptive term.

The pelican, a bird with a distinctively long beak, was named by the Greeks for its
pele
(meaning axelike)
can
(meaning head). The pelican was literally the “axhead.” In the language of the Welsh, which was P-Celtic, an example of
penn
referring to an important person, a chief, is “Penndragon,” the name of King Arthur’s father. He is the “chief dragon,” or “head dragon,” a term with the connotation of a practitioner of magic. It was
the sailors of Sir Francis Drake’s most celebrated voyage, which passed by the Antarctic coast, who named the strange birds they saw there on the ice floes. For lack of a better term, these Welsh and Cornish sailors called the white (
gwynn
in Welsh) headed
(penn)
birds “penguins.” These funny-looking denizens of the ice were lierally “whiteheads.”

In the Scottish language, the name MacCan took on the meaning “son of the chief” as the father’s role and patriarchal custom emerged from more ancient Pictish customs. The name Duncan came to mean brown
(dun)
chief
(can).
The Celtic spelling was
Donnacaidh,
and everyone with the name Duncan is supposed to have descended from the original brown chief. In 1534 when Cartier met with the American Indians along the Saint Lawrence Seaway, he was introduced to a certain Donnacana. This individual had the role of “chief of the chiefs.” The relationship of
Donnacaidh
and
Donnacana
may be considered coincidental, but it is one of many shared words whose meaning is similar to or exactly the same as its meaning on the opposite shore.

When white Europeans traveled across the Atlantic they may have impressed the Micmacs with the trappings of a higher civilization. Because he had been told by the Faeroese fisherman that his life was spared when he taught the natives how to fish with a net, Sinclair always brought them trinkets, as would later explorers. The trappings of civilization were regarded very highly. As mentioned earlier, the Micmacs have a legend of a prince who came to their world on the backs of whales. He brought with him many men and taught them how to fish with nets. The prince also gave them a magical instrument that made music, a flute. And he showed to them his “sword of sharpness.”
³⁵

Silas Tertius Rand was a missionary and a student of languages who lived among the Micmac people in the mid-1800s. He could speak Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as well as his own English language, and eventually he learned Micmac, Mohawk, and Maliseet. He is responsible for recording most of what we know about the Micmac language. He translates the name of the prince who brought civilization to the Micmac as “Glooskap.” Frederick Pohl identifies Glooskap as Sinclair and also points out that Rand’s recordings of Micmac songs were actually very similar to Scottish sailing songs.

Glooskap
literally means “deceiver,” but this was in fact a title that conveyed respect among northern Atlantic peoples on both sides of the ocean. The Norse god Loki was the trickster god who, like the Greek Prometheus, stole the fire from the gods and gave it to ordinary people. This legend of fire-stealing is shared by many and points to the contact between Stone Age people and more civilized people. Glooskap had the knowledge to make fire. When ancient peoples started a fire, they would keep it lit for as long as possible, since they might not be able to start another one. The Micmac regarded Sinclair as “wasteful” because he put his fire out at night.

According to the Micmacs, Glooskap built a town, which Sinclair told Zeno that he intended to do. This settlement may have been in a place the Micmacs called Piktook, now Pictou. This was a center for the Micmac people, and when the Europeans came to stay, it was a center for them as well. From his first meeting, Sinclair-Glooskap was welcomed as an important chief by the natives. Legend painted him in mythical proportions, but more down-to-earth tales have the chief eating, drinking, and sleeping among his Micmac friends. He taught them games that are similar to existing Scottish children’s games. He also taught them new words and learned a few of theirs.

From his camp in Piktook he went exploring. His travels are recorded by the Micmacs as having started in the Minas Basin area and then crossing a narrow point of the Bay of Fundy to the Parrsboro area and heading west to Cape d’Or. In this area, in a small harbor now known as Advocate Bay, Sinclair may have built additional ships to replace those that sailed back to Europe with Zeno. In 1957 Pohl explored the region closely for clues but found that most of the area had been mined and bulldozed for roads. According to the Micmac tale, Sinclair-Glooskap then left this promontory and headed due west to the ocean. The real Sinclair, if he had sailed west from this point, would have reached New Brunswick, Maine, and then Massachusetts and Rhode Island. From Rhode Island or Massachusetts, the current would take him to Nova Scotia again, and later that current would take him back across the Atlantic and home to Scotland.

The longer Sinclair stayed, the more likely it is that his men might
have married among the native peoples he visited. Children born to such a marriage may have been prized and honored if the first European–North American contact was friendly. The Micmacs belong to the Wabanaki tribe. The Wabanaki, in turn, are a branch of the Algonquin group, a confederation of languages more than an alliance of tribes.
Wabanaki
means “People of the Dawn”—the word
dawn
signifying “east,” the place from which the sun rises every morning. A closely related tribe is the Wampanoag, their tribal name refers to them literally as the “white people.” Being a descendant of the white people who landed in their world may have been considered an honor, and a person of the “white people” therefore might have been of partly European extraction. The presence of the “skeleton in armor” of Fall River, Massachusetts, might indicate that a Sinclair soldier stayed among the “white people” tribe and married into their clan.

The Gaelic word for woman is
ban,
and in certain dialects of the Algonquin language the word for woman is
bhanem.
³⁶
It is interesting to note that a type of baked bread was called
bannock
by both the Scottish and the Abenaki branch of the Micmac. Algonquin women had a special name for their babies who were still being breast-fed—
papoose
or
papisse
. Our own English
pap
refers to breast, and a woman’s breast provides pablum for her baby’s nourishment.

The Micmac did not regard Glooskap as their most supreme god; this god was Mn’tu, pronounced and often spelled
Manitou
. Celtic sailors brought their gods with them, the most important of whom was their god of the seas, Manannan. The Celtic sailors navigated by the constellations, including the Great Bear, which we know alternately as Ursa Major. Silas Rand and Cotton Mather found that the Micmac and Natick (of Massachusetts) both called the same constellation by the same name. The Milky Way of the European sailors was called the Milky Road by the Micmacs.