GLODE, GABRIEL (also known as Cableal Groad and Chief Cobbeyall), Micmac guide and settler; fl. 1842–57 in Nova Scotia.

When Joseph Howe*, Nova Scotia’s first Indian commissioner, visited Queens County in October 1842, he hired as his guide Gabriel Glode, a Micmac whom he described as “a sober Indian of good character.” From 16 to 21 October they travelled from Ponhook Lake to Kejimkujik Lake and back again. On the journey they visited one settlement, later called Greenfield, where trouble was brewing between the Indians and whites. The Micmacs were convinced that the area had been allocated to them as a reserve and they complained that the whites were destroying the fishery. They were most incensed by the threat to their burial-ground in a two-acre clearing known locally as Indian Gardens.

Howe was so impressed with their arguments that he thought he would try to evict the whites as squatters. When he consulted his surveys, however, he found that the reserve set aside for the Micmacs in that county lay ten miles away, close to the settlement then known as Brookfield. He thereupon told Glode to persuade the Indians to settle there and offered his help if Glode would be the first to move.

Together Howe and Glode returned to Greenfield to break the news of a reserve that neither the whites nor the Micmacs had heard of previously. Howe stood in the middle of a circle of impassive Indians and gave a lengthy speech explaining why they would have to give up the land at Greenfield, and how their burial-ground would be safe from desecration. After he had finished, Glode rose and with great emphasis and deliberation replied, “Howe, I believe you lie.”

The negotiations nevertheless continued. Howe and Glode jointly guaranteed that, in exchange for fencing the burial-ground, the white settler on the land would be forever free of any further Indian claims. Howe also purchased one-third of an acre along the river to ensure that the Micmacs had access to the fishery, and ordered it put in trust for Gabriel Glode and his descendants.

The story of Glode’s confrontation with Howe was treasured by generations of Greenfield settlers. Howe, so it was said, smoked the Micmac’s pipe in friendship and then inadvertently took it away with him. He eventually sent Glode a dollar, but kept the pipe. The official records merely show that Glode received £1 for his services.

About 1846, Glode settled on 40 acres of crown land on Lamoony Island (Big La Mouna Island) in Molega Lake. He was convinced, he later said, “that a steady home is the sure way to approach civilization.” He petitioned the House of Assembly in 1856 for money to erect a frame-house, and received £5. The following year he requested a freehold grant of the land so that he could hand it on to his heirs, but no grant was issued. That November he was very ill, and was twice visited by a physician at considerable public expense. The treatment included bleeding: it is not known whether he survived it.

L. F. S. Upton