JULIAN, JOHN NICHOLAS

JULIAN, JOHN NICHOLAS, Micmac Indian chief; b. Miramichi, c1810, s/o Nicholas Julian; m. 1st, 1831, Ann Marie - , and 2nd, 1834, Mary Angelique Cloud; d. Eel Ground, 5 Apr 1888.

John N. Julian was assisting his father with the discharge of his duties as chief of the Eel Ground Indian band as early as 1845. When his father died in 1868 he assumed the chiefship as his hereditary right, but he also applied for a commission from the federal government. A full four years later he was officially appointed by the Indian Affairs office, "in the room of his father, Nicholas Julian."

By the early 1870s serious factionalism and quarreling had erupted at Eel Ground. There was talk on the reserve about the desirability of Chief Julian being replaced by an elected chief. The Indian superintendent, Charles Sargeant, would have solved the problem in 1877 by having the chief advised that he was serving the second of two three-year terms, but the department balked. The chief's appointment had been without term, and he would therefore be chief for life.

From 1877 onward political unrest was palpable at Eel Ground. In 1884 forty of the forty-eight eligible voters demanded that Julian be removed and an election called. Sargeant felt that the petitioners should be heeded. The chief had no support at all, he reported, except from his own relatives. He was seventy years old and in failing health. For what it may have been worth to him, Julian won this round too. Sir John A. Macdonald, then acting as superintendent general of Indian Affairs, ruled that since the members of the band had failed to show how their interests would be injured by the chief's continuation in office he would not be removed.

When Julian died in the spring of 1888 his band was not disposed to recognize another hereditary or life chief. Even some members of his own family were included among the forty-eight electors who petitioned in July for the introduction of a system of elected chiefs at Eel Ground.

There are records of seven children from Julian's second marriage to Mary Angelique Cloud, one of whom was Peter N. Julian.