Gabriel Acquin

Gabriel Acquin (c. 1811 – 2 October 1901) was known by a variety of names; Sachem Gabe and Noel Gabriel being the most verifiable. He was a Maliseet hunter, guide, interpreter and showman who was the founder of the St. Mary's First Nation reserve in Canada.

Gabriel Acquin was born c. 1811 near Kingsclear, New Brunswick. Acquin's family is believed to be one of many Aboriginal families to have been displaced by the movement of defeated Loyalists after the American Revolution. In 1839, Acquin married Marie Marthe in Fredericton, and together the couple produced a son, Stephen, in 1845. (Gabe Acquin son was Noel and daughter Katherine Acquin (Paul) Records show that Acquin may have used names such as Noel Gabriel and Newell Gov'-leet prior to the birth of his son, including when attending a Wabanaki Confederacy meeting in Old Town, Maine in 1838.

In 1847, the executors of a Loyalist estate invited Acquin to settle on land at what was to become the St. Mary's Indian Reserve, in York County, New Brunswick. Although Acquin's family had previously been nomadic in nature, Acquin established 14 acres of planted potatoes on his land, and built first a wigwam and then a frame-house there. However, despite the invitation extended to Acquin to live on the land, it had actually been sold several times to different owners, and by 1867 only a two-and-a-half acre patch of land on the riverfront of the Saint John River was in the possession of the Crown and hence available for use by Acquin's Maliseets. When Acquin requested possession of the land he and his people had been living on from the federal government in 1883, he did not receive a reply.

...
Wikipedia