The Mi’kmaq people have been living in what is now Atlantic Canada for two thousand years or more, yet written history has largely ignored them, presenting them merely as a homogeneous mass or as statistics. Renowned historian and ethnologist Ruth Holmes Whitehead tries to redress that omission by restoring to the collective memory a true sense of the Mi’kmaq. 

In this rich collection, oral and written, Mi’kmaq accounts juxtapose with contemporary European perceptions of native peoples, as documented in letters, journals, court cases, among others. Above all, The Old Man Told Us is a historical jigsaw puzzle, a display of fragments in which one can capture moments in the lives of particular people. It is a book of excerpts from what little documentation has survived over the centuries.