You are what you wear:
“Did you not know,” said he, that those women we so often see in Halifax, with woollen socks and knitted mittens for sale, are Acadians?”
“No, Indeed” said Grace “I did not know they were Acadians, I thought they were French women, and that was the reason of their wearing white handkerchiefs on their heads, instead of bonnets.”
(English = bonnet, French = white handkerchief)
“As they passed the next wigwam, a blanket was hastily dropped over the aperture used as a door. Presently they saw an old man cutting sticks with a hatchet. This old man was dressed in a brown coat, cut in the Indian fashion, with epaulets and trimming of red cloth. The cap he wore was brown like his coat, and surrounded by a band of red cloth. In shape, it resembled a Scotch bonnet, and his white hair streamed from under it over his dusky cheeks. This venerable old man was the chief of the tribe.”
…”mamma-she is down in the kitchen, and the cook has given her some warm coffee, and some bread and butter;-she is very pretty, and so good, mamma. She let me feel her petticoat, and her striped mantle; and she has a basket full of knitted socks, and she says she will sell them for eight-pence a pair, because her mother is sick, and her grandfather has the rheumatism,-and her father is dead, and she is the eldest of seven children, -and their house was burned down three years ago, and they have had no feather beds since, and for a long time they had nothing but a heap of straw to sleep on; and she speaks good English, mamma–not at all like the old man you bought gooseberries from last summer, –no summer before last; and mamma, she walked 22 miles yesterday, and then walked about town to sell socks here, and at night she was so tired she could not sleep”
… and she has no sheep of her own, but she is obliged to buy all the wool she spins and knits”
“Chezetcook women, she called them Acadian.”
“she wore a striped petticoat, and a white handkerchief over her head”
“and her moccasins began to wear out”…
(Ah! The white handkerchief – must be French! So perhaps we can add striped petticoat or mantle to the French wardrobe.)
“In the streets they met groups of persons, whom they knew to be strangers;–ladies in traveling dresses, and green veils;
and gentlemen with moustaches and caps… On the wharf, men were at work, carrying bags of coal into the Steamer, which lay, breathing very loud, Grace said, as if resting itself she stepped on the planks laid down to form a bridge between the side of the vessel and the wharf.