Sophie Misheal

Sophie Misheal

March 25, 1890 – October 28, 1970 

Sophie Mary Cecelia Misheal (née Johnny, also Jimmie) was a respected Elder and Knowledge Keeper from the Songhees First Nation. She was a fluent speaker of the Lekwungen language and generously shared her knowledge of the language, history, culture and traditions of her people with linguists and scholars including Wilson Duff, Wayne Suttles and Marjorie Mitchell. In addition to speaking Lekwungen, Misheal spoke both Hul’q’umi’num’ and English, having learned these languages after being sent to Kuper Island Residential School at age seven.

Sophie Misheal was born on Discovery Island on March 25, 1890.1 She was the granddaughter of “Jimmy Chickens,” a well-known Songhees man often described by settlers as a “colourful character.” He and his wife Jenny lived on Jimmy Chicken Island (also known as Mary Tod Island) and he had a reputation for being a chicken poacher.2 Misheal’s parents were Jimmie Johnnie (1857–Nov. 18, 1939) and Mary Joe of the Songhees First Nation. Mary had ancestry among the Samish and Klallam people.

Sophie married her husband, Andrew Gilbert Misheal, in a traditional ceremony at age 17.3 Together they lived between his village of xwulqw’selu (Koksilah) in quw’utsun (Cowichan) territory and her family’s village in Esquimalt. She spent much of her life in a Hul’q’umi’num’ speaking environment and her children grew up speaking Hul’q’umi’num’. The couple were together fifty-five years, until Andrew passed away in 1963.

Both Sophie and her husband Andrew Misheal were important informants to the archaeologist and anthropologist Wilson Duff. They invited and accompanied him to the winter spirit dance ceremonials over several years and Sophie also provided him with invaluable place name information. In 1950, Duff became the Curator of Anthropology for the British Columbia Provincial Museum and Sophie and Andrew Misheal were instrumental in securing Coast Salish regalia for Duff to place in the museum’s collection.

As one of the last remaining fluent speakers of Lekwungen (Songish),  and being able also able to both read and write, Sophie played an essential role in documenting the language. She was the primary informant for Marjorie Mitchell’s dictionary of the Lekwungen language. When Mitchell, an anthropologist and linguist, interviewed Misheal in the 1960s as part of her graduate work, Sophie Misheal was one of the last two known fluent Lekwungen speakers. These interviews and recordings make up the basis of the Songish Dictionary Mitchell created.4 Misheal not only provided vocabulary and phrases for this project, she also shaped the project by providing, wrote Mitchell, “many of the lexical items and most of the topics for the texts.”5

Sophie Misheal worked for many years sharing her knowledge, language, and culture with her family, community members, linguists, anthropologists, and other researchers. We are thankful for the important work that she carried out, and are so grateful for the knowledge repository her sharing created.

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  1.  See Elise Gabrielle Forest-Hammond, “A Human History of Tl’chés, 1860-1973”; also anthropologist Wayne Suttles notes. There is some question as to which year Sophie was born, Suttles reported it as 1892, but her death certificate records it as 1890. ↩︎
  2.  Read more here, here, and here. ↩︎
  3. Read Timothy Montler’s description of her wedding here. ↩︎
  4. Marjorie Mitchell, A Dictionary of Songish, A Dialect of Straits Salish (UVIC, 1968). ↩︎
  5.  Mitchell, A Dictionary of Songish, p.5. ↩︎