The
Age of European Exploitation
The
usual place to begin the story of the founding of Europe's New World
is with the commercial revolution that swept through the continent in
the centuries that followed the great Crusades to the Holy Land.
In 1095, Pope Urban II stood before a council of bishops at Clermont
in France and preached the First Crusade. The pontiff had
learned from the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire that a new
breed of infidel, the Seljuk Turks, had seized the Holy Land and
refused to allow Christian pilgrims to visit the Holy Places.
He urged the warriors of Christendom to strap on their swords, take
up the cross of their crucified Redeemer, and hurry to the Holy Land
to drive these Muslim infidels from Jerusalem. The knights of
France and other Christian kingdoms took up the papal challenge, and
four years later the Holy City fell to them in an orgy of blood and
righteousness.
These Christian knights
fought the Muslims of the Holy Land for material as well as
spiritual gain. As they conquered the great cities of the
eastern Mediterranean, they created European feudal states to
satisfy their lust for more territory. For two centuries they
clung tenaciously to their principalities in the Middle East, but
the Muslims refused to let them be. By the 1200s, as the
Christians gradually lost their grip on the eastern Mediterranean,
the Italian merchants who had provided them supplies and
transportation for their Crusading expeditions had opened a
lucrative trade between southwestern Europe and the eastern
Mediterranean. By the 1300s, despite the loss of the Holy Land
to the tenacious Muslims, Europe was benefiting materially and
intellectually from the Crusading effort. The Italian
city-states of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice exploited the Mediterranean
trade routes that had not seen so much use since Roman times.
New ideas as well as new products flowed through the ports of Italy
and southern France, igniting a Renaissance of art and ideas that
transformed parochial Europe. Put off by Turkish dominance of
the eastern Mediterranean, the Italians, especially the Genoese,
opened new trade routes via the Strait of Gibraltar with
northwestern Europe.
Meanwhile, the crusading
spirit compelled two Christian kingdoms in a once obscure corner of
Europe to move southward towards the gold fields of west Africa.
In the late 1300s, the Portuguese began the conquest of the Canary
Islands off the coast of Africa. The natives, called the
Guanche, who had inhabited the island for thousands of years, fought
desperately to preserve their way of life, but island after island
fell to the determined invaders, who used the Guanche as slaves on
profitable sugar plantations. In the mid-1400s, the Castilians
drove the Portuguese from the islands and continued the conquest of
the Guanche. By the end of the century, most of the Canaries
belonged to Castile. Eventually, Spanish-speaking natives of
the Canaries came to be called Isleños.
The Portuguese, encouraged
by the king’s brother, Prince Henry the Navigator, turned their
attention to other islands off the African coast--the Azores,
Madeira, and Cape Verdes--thereby thrusting their economic and
strategic interests deeper into the Atlantic. The Portuguese
established sugar plantations, worked by slave labor of course, on
Madeira. Meanwhile, with the cooperation of local rulers, the
Portuguese established fortified trading posts along the coast of
northwest Africa, moving steadily southward towards the equatorial
zone and the prosperous kingdom of Benin. What they found in
their exploitation of the African coast proved to be more compelling
even than pagan souls—gold, ivory, jewels, pepper, fish ... and more
slaves. Their ultimate prize, however, was a spice trade with
the fabled Orient via a route around Africa that would effectively
outflank the Muslims. In late 1487, the Portuguese navigator
Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern end of
Africa and noted that the coast beyond the cape stretched away to
the northeast. Ten years later, Vasco da Gama repeated Dias's
voyage, used the winds and currents of the South Atlantic to propel
him into the Indian Ocean, and, after a long and sometimes difficult
voyage, returned to Portugal with a cargo of precious Indian spices.
The Portuguese now claimed an all-water route to unprecedented
wealth and power.
It was an obscure Italian
with a bold idea who brought Iberian exploitation of the Atlantic
world to an entirely new level. Cristoforo Colombo was born in
Genoa in 1451, the son of a weaver who lost his boy to the lure of
the sea. Young Columbus, as we know him, worked in the
merchant fleet of his native city and then switched his allegiance
to Portugal. Sometime in the late 1480s, after carefully
(mis)calculating the circumference of the earth, he conceived his
plan—to sail due westward and reach the Indies by crossing the
Atlantic Ocean. He was confident that his skills at navigation
and command could overcome all obstacles he would surely encounter
in this dangerous voyage, which would give Portugal a much shorter
route to the spices, as well as the unconverted souls, of Asia.
He presented his idea to his Portuguese masters, but a maritime
commission rejected his calculations and refused to entrust a fleet
to him. Undaunted, he moved to France, England, and then to
Spain but met similar rejection there. He refused to give up
and eventually sold his idea to Queen Isabella of Castile, who, with
her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon, had just conquered the Moors
and established a degree of domestic tranquility within their
kingdoms. Christian Spain was ready, Isabella believed, to
compete in the Eastern trade and to bring the Asians to
Christianity. So Columbus became the admiral of a fleet of
three ships which set sail from the Canary Islands via Palos in the
late summer of 1492. Two months later, on the sandy beach of
San Salvador, in the present-day Bahamas, the history of the world
was profoundly changed when Columbus reached "the Indies."
Though Columbus himself never acknowledged the existence of the New
World he had stumbled upon, others did. Spanish
conquistadors
exploited Columbus’s great discovery, and by the mid 1500s, gold and
silver from America, as the New World came to be called, transformed
Spain into the most powerful kingdom in Europe.
Portugal came upon the New
World in 1500 when Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to India with a
huge fleet to duplicate da Gama’s voyage, landed on the coast of
present-day Brazil. The papal Treaty of Tordesillas six years
before had awarded Portugal that part of the Atlantic east of a
certain line of longitude down the middle of the ocean. The
place where Cabral landed and which he promptly claimed for Portugal
stood east of the treaty line. So even the Portuguese now had
claims to exploit in what Europeans soon realized was an entirely
New World.
Meanwhile, another Italian
navigator, John Cabot, as he came to be called, also had seized upon
the idea of a cross-Atlantic voyage to the Indies. Like
Columbus, he sought sponsors in several kingdoms, in this case Spain
and Portugal, before finding one. By the mid-1490s, he had
moved to England, and in 1496 he and an Italian sponsor coaxed King
Henry VII into authorizing a voyage to the East. Sailing from
Bristol, Cabot reached
terra firma at present-day Newfoundland in 1497 and
explored the coast extensively, going ashore only once.
Nevertheless, the English now possessed an early claim to the
Indies. But the coast that Cabot had explored and that may
have cost him his life on a subsequent voyage did not seem to
possess the potential for exploitation as Columbus's and Cabral's
discoveries to the south. England thus failed to exploit its
American claims for many decades, leaving Spain and Portugal the
early winners in the imperial competition for the New World.
But if one were to award
the true "discoverers" of North America, of its size, its intricate
configuration, and its economic importance, the prize must go to the
thousands of fishermen, whalers, and seal- and walrus-hunters who
ventured there within a decade of Cabot's exploration. Every
coastal European people sent their sturdy sons across the cold, wide
ocean. Portuguese, French and Spanish Basques, Bretons,
Normans, Englishmen from the West Country, Dutchmen, Danes,
Norwegians--thousands of them ventured across the dangerous
North Atlantic to exploit the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
"Together the whale and cod fisheries involved an annual
trans-Atlantic migration of hundreds of ships and thousands of men.
Less spectacular than Spanish activities in the Caribbean, Mexico,
and Peru, the fisheries in the northwestern Atlantic involved more
ships and men." By the 1550s, cod fishermen from northern
France had perfected the wet or green fishery, which allowed them to
fish the offshore banks early in the season, salt the cod in their
holds and return to their northern European ports without having to
make land fall. But more extensively, and more importantly to
our story, the cod fishermen developed the inshore or dry fishery
for the southern European and West Indian markets. This
required them to build drying and salting stations along the North
American coast. Contact with the natives was inevitable, as
was the exchange of goods and microorganisms. The fishermen
seldom used Indians in the labor-intensive drying operations, but
they found a secondary market in trading with them, especially for
furs. This trade transformed Indian life permanently and
profoundly, and someday it would rival fishing and whaling in
economic importance to the Europeans.01
France in the New World
Except for its sturdy
fishermen and a visit to Brazil by explorer Binot Paulmier de
Gonneville in 1503-04, France was a relatively late comer to the
competition for America’s riches. "The Atlantic trade, except
for a few piratical captains, was largely abandoned to the
Iberians," a student of colonial France explains. "The French
crown prized far more the traditional Mediterranean trade with the
Near East, and the enterprising Spaniards and Portuguese moved
quickly to protect their tenuous Atlantic commercial advantage."
Papal interference contributed to this. The papal bulls of
Alexander VI--Inter caetera
on 4 May 1493, and Dudum siquidem on 28 September 1493,
ratified the following year by the Treaty of Tordesillas--divided
the Atlantic world between the Iberian powers, not only for
settlement and trade but also for exploration. The papal
interdiction was generally ignored, but France was not eager to test
Spanish resolve in enforcing its claims in the New World.02a
Not until the 1520s did a
French monarch, François I, authorize a voyage to America. Yet
another Italian navigator, Giovanni da Verrazzano of Florence, in
his ship
La Dauphine, explored the North American coast in 1524,
seeking a Northwest Passage to the Orient for his clients, the silk
merchants of Lyon. Verrazzano charted the littoral from
present-day Cape Fear up to Nova Scotia, calling what he saw
Francesca, later Nova Gallia, and the northern part of it
"Arcadia." A decade later, in 1534, the Breton navigator
Jacques Cartier of St.-Malo, searching for mines and the Northwest
Passage, re-discovered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On subsequent
voyages into the early 1540s, he explored the magnificent river that
flowed into the gulf as far up as the falls above present-day
Montréal, proving that it was not the elusive passage to the Orient.
He and his men then spent a hard, cold winter at the Iroquoian town
of Stadacona, the site of present-day Québec. Meanwhile,
attempts at establishing a French colony in North America came to
nothing, but Cartier's explorations in the St. Lawrence region gave
France a claim to that part of the continent.02
The Protestant revolt that
had erupted in Europe a generation after Columbus’s discovery of the
New World consumed France, as much as it did Germany and England, in
a maelstrom of rancor and violence. The French theologian Jean
Calvin was as important a figure in the struggle against Catholic
authority as was the founder of Protestantism, the German priest
Martin Luther. Having been run out of France in the year of
Cartier’s first voyage to North America, Calvin took refuge in
Geneva, but his ideas seeped back into this native country.
French Protestants, known as Huguenots, challenged the authority of
the pope and preached what Catholics insisted were heretical
doctrines. As a result of these intractable theological
differences and a bloody rivalry between noble families for control
of the throne, a series of civil wars raged through France from 1562
to 1598. "At times," a modern historian tells us, "they
brought the French monarchy very low; the nobility came near to
mastering it. Yet, in the end, aristocratic rivalries
benefited a crown which could use one faction against another.
Meanwhile, the wretched population of France had to bear the brunt
of disorder and devastation. In 1589 a member of a junior
branch of the royal family, Henry, ruler of the little Spanish
kingdom of Navarre, became (after the murder of his predecessor)
Henry IV of France and inaugurated the Bourbon line whose
descendants still claim the French throne. He had been a
Protestant, but now accepted Catholicism as the condition of
succession, recognizing the religion most Frenchmen would stand by.
The Protestants were given guarantees which left them a state within
a state, the possessors of fortified towns where the king’s writ did
not run."03
Despite domestic upheaval,
the Huguenots, at least, tried to establish French colonies in the
New World. In 1555, Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, a
powerful Huguenot leader, sent an expedition under Nicolas Durand de
Villegagnon to establish a colony of his fellow Protestants on an
island in the harbor of present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil--a refuge
for oppressed Huguenots. Coligny ignored the fact that
Portuguese had long claimed the area. The next year, Coligny
sent 300 reinforcements to the Huguenot refuge, "many picked
personally by Jean Calvin himself." The colony languished, and
in 1558 the Portuguese attacked the settlement and hanged all of its
survivors.03a
Undaunted, Coligny tried
again, this time in an area claimed by Spain. In 1562, he sent
a lieutenant, Jean Ribaut, to plant a Huguenot colony in Florida,
which would serve as a base "to prey upon Spanish galleons in the
Caribbean and to watch for an opportunity to intervene in the West
Indies." Ribaut built a fort near present-day Port Royal,
South Carolina, which he named Charlesfort after King Charles IX,
and then he returned to France. Not long after he left, the
unhappy tenants of the fort turned on one another, murdered the
officer whom Ribaut had left in charge, built a ship of their own,
and abandoned the fort to the elements. In 1564, Coligny sent
another lieutenant, René de Laudonnière, to try again. Fort
Caroline in northern Florida, also named after the French king,
stood on a hill beside the St. Johns River and fared better, or at
least a bit longer, than Ribaut's fort up the coast.
Eventually, however, Laudonnière and his colonists quarreled
bitterly, ran short of food, found no gold, and alienated the local
Indians. Even worse for the hapless Huguenots, Spanish
authorities learned of the French incursion into their territory and
resolved to rid the New World of these troublesome heretics.
In September 1565, a powerful expedition led by Pedro Menéndez de
Avilés attacked Fort Caroline and massacred most of the settlers,
including the redoubtable Jean Ribaut. Menéndez promptly
erected a stronghold at nearby San Agústín, today's St. Augustine,
40 miles south of Fort Caroline, to keep Protestants away from the
Catholic realm. Seven years later, in August 1572, during the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Catholic militants murdered Coligny
along with other prominent Huguenots, "thus bringing to an end the
first phase of French transatlantic expansion" and precipitating a
fourth war of religion in France.04
The Founding of Acadia
Not until well into the reign of Henry
IV did the French attempt another lodgment in America. It is
then that the history of Acadia begins in earnest.05
In November 1603, at the king's
residence at Fontainebleau just outside of Paris, Henry IV granted
Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, a distinguished member of his court and
a Calvinist, "extensive rights to settlement, trade, and fishery"
for 10 years in the area the French called La Cadie.
That Henry IV rewarded the monopoly and the title of lieutenant
governor to a Huguenot gives some idea of how open-minded the French
had become in religious matters, at least while Henry reigned.
To the French, La Cadie comprised not only the peninsula of
present-day Nova Scotia but also what is now New England and New
York, much of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, all of New Brunswick,
Prince Edward Island (called Île St.-Jean by the French), Cape
Breton Island, Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and much of what is today the Province of Québec.06
Like his fellow Protestant Coligny,
Dugua established a settlement in territory claimed by a rival
nation--in this case, England. Unlike Coligny, Dugua chose not
to remain in France but to go himself to oversee the establishment
of his new holdings. Also unlike Coligny, Dugua would
establish a settlement in La Cadie not to create a "New France" in
North America but only as a headquarters for his commercial venture.
Dugua had already spent a winter at Tadoussac, the fur-trading
center on the lower St. Lawrence River, and sought a milder climate
to the south for his new settlement. Also, having witnessed
the annual frenzy by French traders in the St. Lawrence valley to
acquire beaver pelts from the Indians, he chose to set up his
fur-trading monopoly not on the lower St. Lawrence but further down
the Atlantic coast, where the natives had not yet been exploited by
his fellow countrymen.06a
Dugua crossed to Acadia from Le Havre
in early March 1604 in two ships--the Bonne Renommée, 150
tons, and the Don de Dieu, 120 tons--and a small unnamed
barque or pinnace of 8 tons, with 120 men in the expedition.
No women and certainly no families accompanied this venture.
This was first and foremost a commercial enterprise bankrolled by an
association of merchants, both Catholic and Protestant, from Rouen,
St.-Malo, La Rochelle, and St.-Jean-de-Luz. Large profits from
trading for fur with the Indians was the main reason for the
venture; everything else, including the local fishery, would be
secondary to that trade. With Dugua were Jean de Biencourt,
sieur de Poutrincourt et de Saint-Just, an influential Catholic
nobleman, who had come on the voyage "for his pleasure"; François
Gravé, sieur du Pont, called Pontgravé, of Honfleur, Dugua's second
in command, who knew North American waters well; and Samuel
Champlain, an experienced navigator and geographer and friend of
Dugua from their native region of Saintonge, who served as the
expedition's cartographer.
Champlain also had spent some time in the St. Lawrence
valley before 1604; he had explored as far up as present-day
Montréal as well as several of the great river's tributaries.
It was his job to advise Dugua on the best place to set up the new
trading center.06b
Dugua's little fleet reached Acadia in
early May and landed in two places. The larger ship, under
Pontgravé, reached Canso, a fishing rendezvous on the Atlantic side
of the Acadian peninsula, where it remained to intercept any
contraband traffic, while the smaller ship and the pinnace, with
Dugua and Champlain, landed at Cap de La Hève, now La Have, farther
down the coast. Unfamiliar with these waters, Dugua moved the
ship carefully down the coast and anchored at Port-au-Mouton, where
he waited while Champlain, with 10 men, took the pinnace to explore
the coast to the southwest. Champlain inched his way around
Cap-Nègre and Cap-Sable and sailed north to the mouth of the Bay of
Fundy, which the French called, appropriately, the Grand Baie
Française. Champlain hurried back to Port-au-Mouton,
informed Dugua of what he had discovered, and Dugua sailed the
Don de Dieu to present-day St. Mary's Bay, near the southern
entrance to the great French bay. Dugua now joined Champlain
in the pinnace to explore the big bay thoroughly. Along the
south shore they came upon today's Annapolis Basin with its narrow
gut, commanding hills, and spacious harbor, which Dugua granted to
Poutrincourt. They explored what was later called the
Bassin-des-Mines, the name of which evokes the hope of finding
valuable minerals in the area along with a plentiful supply of furs.
They sailed along the narrow Baie de Chignecto at the far end of the
great bay and found more inlets and marsh-lined estuaries along both
shores. By then, they could see that the tides in the bay were
by far the highest they had encountered anywhere in Europe and North
America. Northeast of the great bay's entrance they came upon
the mouth of a large river which they discovered on June 24, the
feast day of St.-Jean-Baptiste, and so Champlain called it Rivière
St.-Jean.07
But Dugua chose another place to
establish his settlement. For a number of reasons--its
security, its beauty, its mild climate, the fertility of its soil,
the profusion of fish, clams, and mussels in the surrounding water,
its proximity to the mouth of the great bay and to nearby Indians
villages, and the lateness of the season--Dugua picked as the site
of his new trading venture a five-acre island in a wide river along
the northern shore of Baie Française, west of the mouth of Rivière
St.-Jean. The French called the island Île Ste.-Croixe and the
stream on which it lay Rivière Ste.-Croixe. Dugua landed on
the island on June 26, and the post there took shape over the
summer.07a
map
Pontgravé and Poutrincourt returned to
France in late August with the ships and a load of furs "to take
care of their affairs and, to plan for a later return, with more
men, provisions, tools, seedgrain and livestock," leaving Dugua and
Champlain on the island. From early September to early
October, Champlain explored the coast south to the Kennebec River in
present-day Maine while Dugua supervised the construction at Île
Ste.-Croixe, which included additional gardens and a grist mill on
the mainland east and west of the island. When Champlain
returned to Île St.-Croixe, he found most of the settlement
completed. But the island soon revealed its inadequacies as a
settlement. The sandy soil held no water, so they could not
sink a well. Rain, which fell too infrequently, failed to
nourish the garden crops. Only wheat sown on the mainland,
farther upriver, produced a crop. The fish and shellfish
became the staple of their diet. Winter came earlier than
expected. Snow fell in early October, and by early December
ice floated past on the river. No more rain fell, only snow.
Deep snow that lasted through April, thick ice on the river, heavy
winds, biting cold, and the poor condition of their boats--all made
leaving the island nearly impossible. If anyone had thought
that moving the trading venture south of the St. Lawrence valley
would mean milder winters, the experience at Île Ste.-Croixe proved
otherwise. In March 1605, a band of local Passamaquoddy
Indians appeared and exchanged meat for bread, but this did little
to improve the Frenchmen's diet. By spring, which finally came
in May, nearly half of the 79 men with Dugua and Champlain had died
of scurvy. Dugua had expected Pontgravé to return from France
by April. In May, Dugua ordered the construction of two more
pinnaces, of 7 and 15 tons each, to take the survivors to Gaspé, on
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they were sure to find a ship to
take them home. Finally, in mid-June, Pontgravé appeared at
Île Ste.-Croixe with two ships full of supplies and reinforcements.08
The colony was saved.
For good reason, Dugua was dissatisfied
with the island and explored southward all the way to Cape Cod to
find a more suitable place to settle. From June 18 to August
2, he and Champlain sailed one of the new pinnaces along the coast
of today's New England, but they saw nothing promising. Dugua
chose as the site of his new post a place that he and Champlain had
seen on their exploration of the great French bay the summer
before--the beautiful, wide basin beyond the gut on the south shore
of the bay, in the seigneurie he had granted to Poutrincourt.
There, in the summer of 1605, Dugua established Port-Royal, which
became the oldest more or less continuously occupied French
settlement in the New World and the heart of the French colony of
Acadia.08a
Dugua erected a small fort with several
buildings on the north side of the basin, opposite Île-aux-Chèvres,
today's Goat Island, near the Mi'kmaq village of chief Membertou,
using materials from the structures on Île Ste.-Croixe. The
following winter, 1605-06, Champlain remained again with the
settlers, this time with Pontgravé. Dugua returned to France,
where he remained. Poutrincourt, who had remained in France in
1605, left La Rochelle aboard the 150-ton Jonas in May 1606
with more supplies and men for his settlement at Port-Royal.
To his chagrin, Poutrincourt found Port-Royal virtually abandoned
when he got there via Canso in late July.09
After another hard winter with many
deaths from scurvy, most of the Port-Royal survivors, led by
Pontgravé and Champlain, had sailed to Canso, the fishermen’s
rendezvous, where they were certain to meet ships from the homeland.
The fishing trade at Canso and other
harbors along the Acadian coast had been flourishing for decades.
"First in dozens, then in scores, and finally in hundreds," notes an
historian of the period, fishermen from western Europe "came to the
coast of Newfoundland and gradually to the offshore banks and the
coasts of Greater Acadia in search of codfish" throughout the
sixteenth century. "Norman and Breton, West-country English
and Basque, Spanish and Portuguese, they gradually added to the
technique of packing the cod down in heavy salt on their vessels
(the ‘green’ or ‘wet’ fishery) the practice of curing their catch on
shore, in the open air soon after catching, with much less salt.
This (the ‘dry’ fishery) made a more valuable product and required
landing on, and learning the nature of, the rocky Atlantic
shoreline. Disembarking only briefly in the summers at first,
they began to find the shore phase of their work important enough to
require leaving men to winter in the new land in order to protect
structures and to prepare for the following season…. We have
records of many who virtually lived their lives in such a fishery
and whose knowledge of the coasts of today’s Atlantic Canada must
often have been profound. [Marc] Lescarbot described a meeting
at Canso, in 1607, with a French fisherman who was on his
forty-second annual voyage to the area."10
But Poutrincourt was not in Acadia to
establish a fishery settlement. The fur trade was still the
major pursuit of the Acadian venture, and he was determined to start
an agricultural settlement on his seigneurie to support it. He
ordered the men back to Port-Royal to sow vegetables and grain to
feed the trading post there. "A lime kiln was built, a forge
set up and charcoal made for it, and paths were cut from the
settlement to the fields and the valley. Tradesmen of many
kinds spent a brief part of the day at their trades, the rest of it
fishing, hunting, and gathering shellfish. They had a good
winter [1606-07], and toward the end of March [1607] started sowing
seeds and building a water-powered gristmill to take care of the
anticipated harvest."11
Then court politics threatened, not for
the last time, the existence of the colony. In the summer of
1607 news arrived in Port-Royal that the king had withdrawn Dugua’s
concessions in Acadia. The year before, "merchants and
shipbuilders from Dieppe and La Rochelle succeeded in having
[Dugua’s] 10 year trade and commerce rights in Acadia annulled just
when the entire venture was beginning to look promising." One
of the charges brought against Dugua was that, during the three
years since he received his monopoly, he had failed to convert a
single savage to Catholicism. Dugua gave up and stayed in
France. Without a concession from the crown to give him a
monopoly on any profits to be made from the colony, he considered
Acadia and the expense of its maintenance to be a liability, not an
asset. That summer, Port-Royal, "the longest and most
elaborate post-Viking settlement of Europeans on the North American
continent north of Florida[,] was abandoned—in the same year that
Jamestown was established" by a company of English merchants 800
miles to the south.12
Champlain, however, remained in North
America and directed his attention westward, to the interior of the
continent. The year after Dugua abandoned Acadia, Champlain
founded a new trading post at Québec on the abandoned site of the
old Iroquois town of Stadacona, where Cartier had wintered on the
St. Lawrence River 70 years before. Thus began the French
colony of Canada or New France, which one day would thrive on the
lucrative fur trade that Dugua had controlled so
briefly. Poutrincourt's little fort at Port-Royal lay abandoned for
three years, watched over by Membertou and his Mi'kmaq ... until
politics in France fashioned a new monopoly for Acadia, and the
colony was resurrected.12a
Early Struggles to Maintain the
Colony
This time it was Poutrincourt who would
risk his fortunes in Acadia. In June 1610, he brought to his
seigneurie at Port-Royal at least 40 men and several head of cattle.
He also brought two of his sons, 19-year-old Charles de Biencourt de
Saint-Just, the even younger Jacques de Salazar, and perhaps his
wife as well. Eager not to repeat Dugua's mistakes, one of the
first things Poutrincourt did after he anchored at Port-Royal was to
summon the local Indians. Secular priest Jesse Fléché preached
the Word to Membertou's band of Mi'kmaq and baptized 21 of them on
June 24. Only then could the French resume the business for
which they had come. Charles de Biencourt returned to France
in 1611 with a cargo of furs and then hurried back to Port-Royal
with reinforcements and two unwelcome Jesuit priests who had loaned
him money to provision the colony and who now would share in half
the profits. It did not take long for Poutrincourt and the
Jesuits to quarrel over religious as well as political matters.
Poutrincourt returned to France in 1612 on the annual voyage back to
the homeland, leaving young Biencourt in charge at Port-Royal.
Biencourt also quarreled with the meddlesome priests, and again the
colony was thrown into chaos. Meanwhile, the ministers of
Marie de Medici, widow of the recently-assassinated Henry IV and
regent for her nine-year-old son, King Louis XIII, granted a
concession in Acadia to the son of Pontgravé, who established
himself on Rivière St.-Jean and promptly ran afoul of Biencourt's
authority. The queen mother also rewarded one of her
favorites, Antoinette de Pons, marquise de Guercheville, who was a
champion of the Jesuits, a generous grant in North America even
larger than Poutrincourt's. The marquise had provided
invaluable support to the Port-Royal venture only because of the
Jesuit mission there, but when Poutrincourt and Biencourt quarreled
with the priests, she withdrew her support. Poutrincourt ended
up in debtor's prison, and for more than a year Port-Royal received
no supplies from France. In 1613, the marquise sent agents to
Acadia to seize Jesuit assets from the Port-Royal habitation and to
re-establish her priests on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of
Maine. Conflicting claims as well as politics in the mother
country threatened once again the future of the Acadian venture.13
No sooner had these rival Acadian
settlements put down roots than a greater menace came sailing up the
coast, flying the flag of England. Samuel Argall, a Welsh
freebooter and the dangerous right arm of Jamestown’s new marshal,
Sir Thomas Dale, sailed from Virginia in 1613 and destroyed the
infant settlement on Mount Desert Island. In November, guided
by one of the captured Jesuits, Argall returned and fell upon
Port-Royal, "looted and burned the … settlement, dispersed its
people, and destroyed its livestock." The incident would not
be an isolated one. It was, in fact, a foreshadowing of
conflict over possession of Acadia that would haunt the colony for
the next century and a half. "This raid set the pattern for
the future of the region," an historian of New France observes.
"Although blessed with rich natural resources[,] the Acadian
marches, owing to their geographic position, were doomed to remain a
buffer zone between the rival empires until one or the other
prevailed."14
When Poutrincourt sailed back to
Port-Royal in early 1614, he found only ashes and ruin at the old
fort beside his lovely basin. A decade of effort had produced
little for him and his associates; like Dugua, he had his fill of
this Acadian business, gave up, and returned to France, taking his
younger son and most of the men with him. But Charles de
Biencourt and a handful of other Frenchmen refused to abandon the
venture. They had seen the rich potential of the trade in furs
and were determined to supply the wealthy merchants of La Rochelle
with the precious commodity. Within a year of his return to
France, Poutrincourt died in another bloody civil war, so Biencourt
inherited his father’s title as well as his claims in Acadia.15
The next ten years of Acadian history
were dominated by the efforts of Biencourt and others, including
Claude de Saint-Étienne, sieur de
La Tour
and his son Charles-Amador, to profit from the fur trade.
The hardy young Biencourt "lived much like an Indian, roaming the
woods with a few followers, and subsisting on fish, game, roots, and
lichens." However, he and the La Tours did not forget
who they were and why they were there; they maintained trading posts
at Fort Lomeron near Cap-Sable; on Rivière St.-Jean; and at
Pentagouët, at the mouth of the Penobscot River, today's Castine,
Maine, watched over by friendly Indians. They also made
frequent contact with the region's many cod fishing posts, from
whence they could ship their furs to France via fishing vessel.15a
Without the cod fishermen and
especially the local Indians, the efforts of Biencourt and the La
Tours to maintain the Acadian fur trade would not have been
possible. At first the French were no more impressed with the
local Algonquian-speaking tribes than with any of the other natives
they encountered. The principal tribe of peninsula Acadia, the
Mi’kmaq, whom the French called the Souriquois, "were a small group
thinly scattered over a large area when the seventeenth century
opened. Contacts throughout the previous century, chiefly
through fishermen, had prepared them for trading relationships with
the French," but they were little acculturated to French habits and
attitudes when Dugua and his associates first encountered them.
The Mi'kmaq numbered about 3,000 over the roughly 30,000 square
miles of their territory. The French put them to good use for
their own purposes, and the Mi’kmaq responded in kind. "The
chief services of the Micmac to the French, consistent with the
maintenance of their own basic culture patterns, were as guides,
paddlers, hunters, and procurers of the furs and feathers for which
a market existed in Europe, the St. Lawrence settlements, or the
English colonies to the south." This largely amicable
relationship with the French was sealed by the efforts of Catholic
missionaries. "The slow, but ultimately universal, attachment
of the Micmac to the Roman Catholic faith reinforced their ties to
the French. These ties were maintained assiduously by
missionaries largely based on Quebec" who belonged to the order of
Franciscan Recollets.16
Biencourt died near Port-Royal in 1623,
and only the
La Tours remained to carry on the Acadian fur trade.
Charles La Tour claimed that Biencourt had bequeathed to him
his rights to the colony, but it almost did not matter anymore.
The English reappeared in greater force, and this time they came to
stay.17
The English Seize Acadia
Virginia, too, had endured its share of
troubles after its founding in 1607. From the beginning, the
English colonists exhibited a remarkable ineptness in dealing with
the Algonquian-speaking natives who lived in the vicinity of
Jamestown. In the first years of the settlement, mostly as a
result of incompetent leadership and Indian depredations, the death
toll among the settlers was astonishingly high. The
introduction of tobacco cultivation as a profitable venture and the
conversion of Princess Pocahontas to Christianity after her
kidnapping by the resourceful Argall were lucky strokes for the
hard-pressed English during the administration of Thomas Dale.
In 1614, the princess married John Rolfe, the colony's secretary and
the fellow who had introduced tobacco cultivation to the colony.
By 1619, the Englishmen at Jamestown managed to export the
institution of representative government to Virginia and allowed a
cargo of Africans who had arrived on a Dutch ship to become
indentured servants. But the peace that had followed the
princess’s marriage to Rolfe was shattered in March of 1622 when the
Indians under a formidable new leader massacred hundreds of the
colonists in every settlement but Jamestown. The king’s
ministers soon took over administration of the colony from a
defeated London Company. By then, English Separatists had
founded a colony of their own at Plymouth, near Cape Cod, in 1620,
15 years after Dugua and Champlain had explored the area.
Plymouth lay only 300 miles south of Port-Royal, closer to Acadia
than to Virginia. These "Pilgrims" were more adept at
relations with the Indians than the Virginia pioneers had been.
And now two English colonies offered a potential threat to
the tenuous French hold on Acadia.18
To make matters worse for the French in
North America, in 1621 King James I of England (who also was King
James VI of Scotland) rewarded one of his Scottish friends with a
generous grant—Acadia and Canada! In 1622 and 1623, Sir
William Alexander, First Earl of Stirling and a prominent member of
the House of Lords, ventured to the territory granted to him, which
he called "Nova Scotia," that is, New Scotland, but he did not make
landfall at today's Nova Scotia. During the first expedition,
he established a fisheries settlement in Newfoundland, which he
visited the following year. On his way home, he sailed along
the south coast of present-day Nova Scotia, but, again, he did not
make landfall there. Not until 1628 or 1629, after his
associate, David Kirke, had captured Port-Royal, did Sir William
establish a Scottish settlement across the basin from the old French
habitation there. In 1629, the Kirkes struck again and forced
Champlain to give up the crown jewel of French North America,
Québec. A third British settlement, Fort Rosemar, was
established in the region that year, at Port-aux-Baleines on Cape
Breton Island. The story of French Acadia, and French Canada
for that matter, could have ended in 1629, only a quarter of a
century after it had begun, but the French, despite years of bad
luck and neglect, were unwilling to give up their holdings in North
America. French Captain Charles Daniel, sailing under the
behest of the newly-formed French Company of New France, attacked
the English fort on Cape Breton Island as it was being built and
carried its inhabitants to France as prisoners of war. The
Treaty of St.-Germain-en-Laye of 1632 ended hostilities between the
two kingdoms and compelled England to return Acadia and Canada to
France.19
In the meantime, life had become
dangerously complicated for the hard-pressed La Tours.
Claude, the father, was captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by one
of the Kirkes and taken to England. Sir William rewarded him
and his son titles of nobility in exchange for the outposts they
controlled in Acadia. This meant nothing to Charles, who
seldom remained in one place. "After the death of the … Sieur
de Biencourt," wrote an enemy of Charles about his exploits during
this time, "Charles Latour travelled the woods with 18 or 20
men, mingled with the savages and lived an infamous and libertine
life, without any practice of religion, not even bothering to
baptize the children they procreated and instead abandoned them to
their poor, miserable mothers as the coureurs de bois still
do today." These half-breed children, called
métis
by the French in Canada, "became some of the staunchest allies of
the first French families of Acadia." Many of them were
baptized by French missionaries and clung to the faith of their
fathers. They diligently pursued the trade in furs that sealed
the relationship between the worlds of their parents.20
Razilly and d'Aulnay Resurrect the
Colony
After Canada and Acadia reverted to
France, Cardinal Richelieu, the powerful minister of King Louis
XIII, organized an expedition to reestablish French presence in
North America. Heading the venture would be Richelieu's
cousin, Isaac de Razilly of Touraine, a former associate of
Champlain and a naval commander who had lost an eye in the siege of
La Rochelle. In May 1632, the King named Razilly
"Lieutenant-General of all of New France (Canada) and Governor of
Acadia." The Company of New France, a powerful trading
organization founded by Richelieu in 1628 to organize the cod
fishing and fur trade in French North America but whose efforts had
been stymied by English aggression, would direct Razilly's efforts,
including the establishment of a new French colony to sustain these
commercial ventures.21
Razilly's expedition of three ships,
holding 300 men, perhaps a dozen or so women, and supplies aplenty,
all financed by his own trading company, departed Auray in early
July 1632 and arrived at La Hève three months later. He left
most of the men and supplies at La Hève, until then just another
fishing station on the Atlantic shore of Acadia but now his new
headquarters, and hurried to Port-Royal to take possession of the
old post from the surviving Scots, who he returned to Britain via
France. After 18 years of neglect and English interference,
French suzerainty in greater Acadia finally was restored.21a
Razilly next had to deal with the
troublesome Charles
La Tour, who considered himself master of all Acadia and
had considerable influence with the local Indians as well as
powerful officials in France. Razilly was forced to compromise
with his clever compatriot. La Tour and his men could
retain their outposts at Cap-Sable and at Pentagouët and Machias in
Maine, from which they could pursue the fur trade. Razilly
also granted
La Tour a large concession centered on Rivière St.-Jean;
La Tour already had built a fort near the mouth of the river to
secure his rights to the area; fur-bearing animals were more
plentiful in the woods of the mainland than on the over-hunted
peninsula. Razilly was determined to establish an
agriculture-based settlement as well as an entrepot for furs and
codfish at La Hève. La Tour
was interested primarily in the fur trade; the forts at Cap-Sable
and on the St.-Jean were well-placed, well-protected bases from
which to pursue his interests, but they likely had their
agricultural components as well.22
Razilly brought with him two associates who also would play
prominent roles in Acadian history. Charles de Menou, sieur
d’Aulnay de Charnisay, Razilly’s cousin and chief lieutenant, was 28
years old when he arrived at La Hève in 1632. Nicolas Denys de
la Ronde was age 29. Razilly granted them concessions also,
continuing the New World modification of what the French called the
seigneurial system, whereby a land holder with sanction from the
King could charge rent to the inhabitants of his seigneurie,
as it had been done in France since the Middle Ages.22a
D’Aulnay would direct the colony's
principal agricultural effort at La Hève as well as the fur trade
along the coast of Maine and on the peninsula. As before, the
agricultural component was secondary to the commercial one,
"intended only to provide a supply base for the fur trade or the
fishery," not "for colonization in the usual sense."
Nevertheless, as Nicolas Denys observed many years later, "'he
[Razilly] had no other desire than to people this land, and every
year he had brought here as many people as he possibly could for
this purpose.'" One of Razilly's biographers adds: "In
his letters to Richelieu, Razilly spoke in the most glowing terms of
the land of Acadia and of the number of people then living and
suffering in France who could dwell in comfort in this 'blessed
land.' 'The soil,' he writes, 'is rich both on the surface and
below; the sea abounds in fish that we are exporting to southern
France.'" Razilly established 40 allotments for the settlers
at La Hève, and at least one successful wheat crop was reported
there.22b
Razilly and d'Aulnay chose to keep the
agricultural settlement on the Atlantic side of the peninsula for
several compelling reasons. First, La Hève, with its excellent
harbor, provided easier communication with France. Nearby were
the fisheries and also villages of friendly Mi'kmaq, who could help
sustain the venture until it became self-sufficient. Second,
the soil at La Hève, derived from glacial drumlins, though not of
the highest quality, was adequate to sustain a small agricultural
community. And then there was a characteristic of the Bay of
Fundy, on the other side of the peninsula, that seemed to preclude
any sustainable agriculture along its shores.
Geographer/historian Andrew Hill Clark describes it best:
"Around the Bay of Fundy and its various branches there are,
roughly, some 120 square miles of salt marsh and associated bogs.
Its origin lies in the extraordinarily high tidal range of the Bay
of Fundy area ... of thirty to forty feet at normal tides, and fifty
feet or more at spring tides.... The ranges are still higher
when gales are combined with spring tides...." These
amazing tides likely had been observed by Dugua and Champlain during
their exploration of the bay in the spring of 1604, so this natural,
and troubling, phenomenon would have been well known to Razilly and
d'Aulnay three decades later.22c
map
Denys, a tireless entrepreneur, had
little interest in agriculture other than as a source of sustenance
for his many enterprises. He took charge of the Acadian
fisheries, a lumber enterprise at La Hève, and also shared in the
fur trade. His concessions extended along the south shore of
the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Canso all the way up to the Gaspé
Peninsula. He established his headquarters at Chédabouctou,
now Guysborough, Nova Scotia, near Canso. Encouraged by
Razilly, Denys opened a fishing port at Port Rossignol, now
Liverpool, Nova Scotia, just down the coast from La Hève. In
the 1640s, he built a post at Miscou, at the entrance to the Baie
des Chaleurs in present-day northeastern New Brunswick, and his
holdings eventually included Cape Breton Island, where he built Fort
St.-Pierre, today's St. Peter's, in the early 1640s.23
Under Razilly's vigorous leadership,
the resurrected Acadian colony held every promise of success.
But two incidents during his short time at the helm of the Acadian
venture threatened the colony's survival. By 1632, the year
Razilly commenced his settlement at La Hève, the English had
established yet another colony along the wide swath of the North
American coast—Massachusetts Bay in 1629. The founders of this
colony were dour, exceedingly righteous, extraordinarily hardworking
Puritan dissidents whom the new English king, Charles I, was glad to
be rid of. He granted them a charter to establish their "City
upon a Hill." Boston, up the coast from the Separatist
settlement at Plymouth, had a flawless harbor and thus every chance
of permanence. Other English settlements had appeared in the
area--Wessagusett, now Weymouth; Merry Mount, now Quincy; and
Naumkeag, now Salem--and were subsumed into the Massachusetts Bay
colony after Boston was established in 1630. New England was
there to stay. It was only a matter of time before these good
Puritans clashed with their papist neighbors up the coast. In
1633, a Massachusetts merchant named Isaac Allerton sailed to
Machias, between Pentagouët and Rivière Ste.-Croix, to rescue three
English traders whom Charles La Tour was holding there and to
assert his claim to the outpost. La Tour and Razilly
informed the rescuer that English rights extended up the coast of
Maine only as far as the Kennebec River. By 1635, Razilly felt
secure enough to send d'Aulnay to seize the fort the English had
built at Pentagouët. This left that post, Machias, the
Ste.-Croix, and the St.-Jean squarely in French Acadia … for now.24
The other incident occurred at the old
fishing village of Canso, up the coast from La Hève. Razilly
had sent another lieutenant, Nicolas Le Creux du Brueil, to
construct a stockade, Fort St.-François, at Canso to protect his
interests there. Meanwhile, back in France, Richelieu had
granted one Jean Thomas permission to engage in cod fishing on the
Grand Banks, but, respecting Razilly's concession in the region,
forbade Thomas from engaging in any sort of trade with the
Indians. In 1635, ignoring the minister's restrictions, Thomas
set up his own operation near Canso and began a lucrative fur trade
with the Mi'kmaq, who could care less about European points of law.
Even worse, "Thomas incited the Indians through talk and plying them
with wine to attack and pillage the fort," which they did at the end
of July. Razilly acted swiftly. He sent lieutenant
Bernard Marot to Canso to capture Thomas and bring him to La Hève
for judgment. Holding Thomas in confinement, Razilly held two
inquiries, in which he grilled members of Thomas's crew and
residents of Canso about the fisherman's activities. Adjudged
guilty, Thomas was hustled back to France and imprisoned at La
Rochelle. In September, Thomas, who probably had friends at
court, secured an early release on bail. Wisely, he did not
return to Acadia, where only a fool would have had the temerity to
challenge Razilly's interests there.24a
Unfortunately for the colony, Isaac de
Razilly died suddenly at La Hève in July 1636, and, again, Acadia
was thrown into confusion. Isaac, who was only age 49 when he
died, had never married, so his brother, Claude de Launay-Rasilly,
inherited his shares in the family's trading company. To the
chagrin of La Tour and Denys, Claude, who had spent little
time in Acadia and who chose to remain in France, named d’Aulnay as
his agent in Acadia. La Tour insisted that Rasilly and
d’Aulnay guarantee to him rights to the Pentagouët outpost, as
Razilly had done. Denys continued to develop the flourishing
fisheries and the fur and lumber trades on his concessions.25
Soon after Razilly's death, d’Aulnay
moved his headquarters from La Hève to Port-Royal, where he believed
there was more arable land to build up the colony's base of supply
than on the Atlantic side of the peninsula. During the late
1630s, most of the settlers still at La Hève, who had numbered less
than a hundred in 1635, followed d'Aulnay to Port-Royal, where he
settled them "on individual allotments on which they could
contemplate some security of future...." The ones who remained
at La Hève most likely had taken Indian wives from local villages
and were encouraged to remain with their métis
families. Genealogical records reveal that only two of the
original settlers at La Hève established families at Port-Royal:
Pierre Comeau, a cooper, was 34 years old and still a
bachelor when he came to Acadia in 1632. Razilly's trusted
lieutenant, Germain
Doucet, sieur de La Verdure, of Couperans or Conflans en
Brie, was married and the father of two or three children when he
came to Acadia, but he probably did not bring his family with him,
at least not on the first voyage.26
In May 1636, a few months before
Razilly's death and d'Aulnay's move to Port-Royal, the ship
St.-Jehan arrived at La Hève from La Rochelle.
Aboard were the first recorded French families in Acadia.
They included 35-year-old farmer Pierre Martin of
Saint-Germain de Bourgueil, in the Loire valley, his wife Catherine
Vigneau, and sons Étienne age 5, Pierre, fils, age
4, and Urbain age 2; Guillaume
Trahan, also 35, an edge-tool maker from Montreuil-Bellay in
Anjou but living in Bourgueil when he left France, his wife
Françoise
Corbineau, two daughters, Jeanne age 7, and a younger
daughter whose name and age have been lost to history, as well as a
valet; and Isaac
Pesseley, a merchant from Piney, Champagne, who may have
sailed with wife Barbe Bajolet, age 28, and daughter
Marguerite, age 3. Also aboard the Mayflower of Acadia
was Jeanne or Jehanne Motin de Reux, 21-year-old daughter of
Louis Motin de Courcelles, an associate of Isaac de Razilly;
she married the Sieur d'Aulnay at Port-Royal two years after her
arrival.27a
According to Acadian historian Bona
Arsenault, several other settlers came to the colony in c1636.
Jean
Gaudet from Martaizé, near Loudun, at the southern edge of
the Loire valley in northern Poitou, would have been a 61-year-old
widower that year; with him were three children, Françoise, age 13,
Denis, age 11, and Marie, age 3. Antoine Bourg,
a farmer from Martaizé, would have been a bachelor in his late 20s.
Vincent
Brun from La Chaussée on the Loire near Blois, was
another bachelor in his 20s who had been hired with other men from
the area, probably including Antoine Bourg, "on a five-year
contract as land clearers and laborers." François
Gautrot from Martaizé, who would have been age 23, came
with his wife Marie, whose family name has been lost to history.
Although their names do not appear on the role of the St.-Jehan
or any other ship that reached the colony that year, they
certainly had come to the colony during d'Aulnay's proprietorship.27b
These sturdy Frenchmen had been
recruited by Razilly or his brother to enhance the colony's
agricultural efforts, and they also joined d'Aulnay at Port-Royal.
Pierre Martin's sons Étienne and Urbain died at Port-Royal in
c1636, soon after the family settled there--among the first French
children to die in the colony. By most accounts, Pierre
Martin's fourth and youngest son Mathieu, born at Port-Royal in
c1639, was "the first Frenchman born in Acadia"; during the late
1680s, Mathieu would pioneer the Acadian settlement at Cobeguit.27
D'Aulnay vs. La Tour, and the death
of d'Aulnay
The move to Port-Royal put d’Aulnay’s
headquarters perilously close to La Tour’s new seat on
Rivière St.-Jean across the bay. On 10 February 1638, the
Company of New France, in the name of King Louis XIII, granted
d'Aulnay the title "lieutenant general in Acadia with authority over
Port-Royal and La Hève." In that same year, La Tour’s
powerful friends in Paris acquired for him the same title,
lieutenant general of Acadia, with authority over his own domains,
but the Sieur d’Aulnay would have none of that. He and La
Tour quarreled bitterly over who was in control of the colony.
Virtual civil war erupted in Acadia and lasted for nearly a decade.28
La Tour made the
first move by seizing a ship d’Aulnay had sent to Pentagouët to
assist the settlers there against English threats. In 1640,
La Tour took two ships to Port-Royal to capture the
place, but d’Aulnay arrived from Pentagouët in time to capture La
Tour and his men instead. In July, d'Aulnay ordered an
inquiry at Port-Royal into the actions of La Tour; three of
the witnesses who appeared to testify against La Tour were
Germain Doucet, Isaac Pesseley, and Guillaume
Trahan. The tables then turned on La Tour back in
France. By early 1741, d’Aulnay had returned to the mother
country to inform the authorities of La Tour’s treachery and
to shore up his hold on the colony. It was during this trip
that d'Aulnay sealed his financial and personal relationship with
Claude Launay-Rasilly and established a financial partnership with
Emmanuel Le Borgne, sieur du Coudray, a wealthy merchant from
La Rochelle "who became at the same time the man responsible for
fitting out [d'Aulnay's] ships, his banker, and his business agent."
The French court, now dominated by Cardinal Mazarin, revoked La
Tour’s concessions and summoned him to Paris to answer charges
against his conduct, which he refused to do. Meanwhile, French
authorities named d’Aulnay "Governor and Lieutenant-General of the
entire coast of Acadia from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Virginia."
This left not only La Tour but also Denys at the mercy of
d’Aulnay, who soon declared that Denys’s holdings along the Gulf of
St. Lawrence now were his. In 1642, with La Tour’s
refusal to appear before the royal court, authorities in France
authorized d’Aulnay to seize La Tour
and force him to return. With Le Borgne's assistance,
d'Aulnay fitted out a fleet of four ships, including the Vierge,
which he placed at the mouth of Rivière St.-Jean. La Tour
strengthened his fort on the St.-Jean and sought assistance from the
English in Boston. Under cover of night, La Tour, his
wife, and some of his men slipped past d'Aulnay's blockade and
sailed to Boston. The ship La Tour
used to make his escape, the St.-Clément, was manned by 140
Huguenots and had been sent to him by his merchant friends in La
Rochelle. The Boston magistrates at first were wary of the
daring Frenchman despite his claim that he was now a Protestant, but
La Tour charmed them into giving assistance in his struggle with
d’Aulnay. In July 1643, Bostonians manning four armed vessels
joined La Tour and the crew of the St.-Clément
in an assault on d'Aulnay's vessel at the mouth of the
St.-Jean. D'Aulnay's ship withdrew to Port-Royal, and La
Tour and his contingent followed, but the English commander, an
officer named Hawkins, realizing he had gone too far in assisting
La Tour, refused to attack Port-Royal. Meanwhile, 20 of
d'Aulnay's men had taken shelter in a mill near the fort.
La Tour and his men, with Puritan volunteers, attacked the mill,
"wounded several men, killed three others and took one captive.
They killed a quantity of livestock and took a ship loaded with
furs, powder and food." After La Tour burned the mill,
"the Puritans returned home, having broken their orders and
compromised their colony" by helping the volatile Frenchman strike
his enemy.29
D'Aulnay was more
determined than ever to vanquish his rival. He built a new
fort at Port-Royal and then struck back, this time with words, not
bullets. After gathering statements from the colony's
Capuchins and other supporters attesting to the treachery of La
Tour, d'Aulnay returned to France "to request further help."
His efforts paid off. On 6 March 1644, the French Court
declared Charles La Tour
an outlaw and a pirate.29a
With an even larger force,
including the 200-ton frigate Grand Cardinal, carrying 16
guns, d'Aulnay hurried back to Acadia. The object of his wrath was
not only La Tour but also the outlaw's wife. She had
gone to France to plead for her husband's cause, failed, and managed
to return to Acadia via England and Boston despite orders from the
King to remain in France. D'Aulnay and his associate, Bernard
Marot, blockaded the St.-Jean again, waiting for their opportunity
to strike with overwhelming force. The moment came in April
1745, when they learned that La Tour
was in Boston, intriguing with his old friends. Gathering up his
forces, d'Aulnay assaulted La Tour’s stronghold on Rivière
St.-Jean. Madame La Tour and 45 of her husband’s men
resisted valiantly. After a three-day seige, d’Aulnay rushed
the fort on Easter Monday, losing a number of men in the struggle.
Incensed by the valiant resistance of La Tour's compatriots,
d’Aulnay hanged some of them "as an example and as a lesson to
posterity of such an obstinate rebellion," and forced Madame La
Tour to witness the atrocity. She died in May, probably
from injuries suffered in the assault. La Tour "roved
the Gulf of St. Lawrence as a privateer, before taking refuge in
Quebec with Governor Montmagny."30
Having vanquished La
Tour and made peace with the Puritans, d’Aulnay rebuilt the fort
on Rivière St.-Jean, set up a profitable fur-trading venture there,
and then turned on some of his other associates, including Nicolas
Denys. In 1646, d'Aulnay seized Miscou, on the southern end of
the Baie des Chaleurs. In 1647, he seized Nepisiguit, west of
Miscou, which also belonged to Denys, and Fort St.-Pierre on Cape
Breton Island, which then belonged to Company of New France
associate Guilles Guignard.31
By 1650, d’Aulnay’s
control of Acadia stood unchallenged. In February 1647, a
decree of the new king, Louis XIV (for whom his mother, Anne of
Austria, served as regent), had declared d'Aulnay Governor General
and Seigneur of Acadia, his domains extending from the St. Lawrence
all the way to Virginia. The only glitch for d’Aulnay in this
decree was that Denys retained his rights to what was left of his
holdings. Nevertheless, the assumption by d’Aulnay of La
Tour’s lucrative empire brought him great wealth and undisputed
power, though his relationship with Le Borgne soon
deteriorated over unpaid obligations. Keeping one eye on the
fur trade and its promise of even greater wealth, d'Aulnay turned
his attention to other enterprises, including lumbering and
seal-fishing. And he now could pay more attention to one of
his original ventures, improving the agriculture settlements around
Port-Royal.32
A successful innovation that d’Aulnay
encouraged among the settlers was the dyking of the extensive tidal
marshes along the Port-Royal Basin. Using an innovative device
the transplanted Frenchmen called
aboiteau--"a sluice fitted with a clapet that was forced
shut by the rising tide on the seaward side, then pushed open as the
tide fell by water draining from the fields"--in a few years time
this marvel of engineering could leech the sea salt from the soil
behind the dyke and turn tidal marshes into hay fields and then into
fields of golden grain or whatever else the farmers chose to grow
there. During the time it took the aboiteaux to leech the sea
salt from the reclaimed soil, the dyked fields could serve as rich
pasturage for the settlers' sheep and cattle, as well as a source of
salt for the cod fisheries.33
Then disaster struck. On 24 May
1650, a "dark and stormy day," d’Aulnay, accompanied only by his
valet, paddled a birch bark canoe from Port-Royal, perhaps on a
visit to one of the dyking operations. Somehow his canoe
foundered over a wide, deep mudflat, and he died of exhaustion
trying to extricate himself from the icy mire. A few hours
later, Indians came upon d'Aulnay's body and the still-breathing
valet. They brought the valet and the governor's body to the
north shore of the river and sent word to the fort of what had
happened. Father François-Marie Ignace de Paris, the superior
of the Capuchin priests who had been so loyal to d'Aulnay, took the
body to the fort and, after a solemn mass of the dead, buried it in
the chapel "in the presence of his wife and all the soldiers and
inhabitants."34
Suddenly the colonists had lost their
most important leader. To be sure, his ambition, greed, and
aggressiveness had caused chaos throughout Acadia when he attacked
first La Tour and then his other associates. But it was
d’Aulnay more than anyone who had insured the survival of the
struggling colony. He had encouraged families to put down
roots in the Port-Royal basin to create an agricultural foundation
on which to build a commercial enterprise that would endure.
Ironically, because of his indispensability to the colony, his
sudden death left Acadia in great confusion. His leadership
was gone. His creditors were many. It was anyone’s guess
who would replace him.34a
The death of d’Aulnay resurrected his
old antagonist, Charles
La Tour. When the outlaw heard that d’Aulnay was
dead, he left his refuge in Québec, where he had been "lodged" at
the Chateau Saint-Louis by the governor, and hurried to France.
In February 1651, he secured not only a pardon for his misdeeds but
also the governorship of Acadia, such was the fickle nature of the
young French king and his chief minister Mazarin.
La Tour chose as his new lieutenant
Philippe Mius
d’Entremont, an army captain from Cherbourg, Normandy, and
hurried back to Acadia. At Port-Royal, La Tour found
that the representatives of d’Aulnay’s powerful creditors already
had visited the fort there.
Emmanuel Le Borgne, the wealthy La Rochelle merchant and
former agent of the dead governor, insisted that the d’Aulnay estate
owed him 260,000 livres! In November 1650, Le Borgne
had secured from d'Aulnay's aged father, René de Menou de Charnisay,
"a formal recognition" of his claims on the dead governor's estate
and sent an expedition to Acadia the following spring to satisfy the
claim. The Capuchin fathers at Port-Royal tried to protect the
interests of Madame d’Aulnay, but Le Borgne’s men, led by the
creditor's agent, Saint-Mas, pillaged the settlement anyway.
La Tour compounded the widow’s problems by demanding the return
of his old fort on Rivière St.-Jean. She was powerless to stop
him, so in September 1651 La Tour
returned to Fort St.-Jean to recoup his Acadian fortunes. He
ordered
d’Entremont, who had recently come to Acadia with his
wife and a daughter, to rebuild the trading post at Cap-Sable,
leaving only Port-Royal and its immediate environs to the widow
d’Aulnay.35
Le Borgne, still in France, was
determined to recoup what the estate still owed them. In June
1651, he may have sent his 11-year-old son, Alexandre de Bélisle,
to Boston to improve relations with the New Englanders while
asserting his father's claims. In October, Le Borgne's
men seized Chédabouctou, which belonged to Denys, burned La Hève,
and swooped down on Fort St.-Pierre on Cape Breton Island.
Denys and a brother were at the fort.
Le Borgne's men slapped them in irons and took them to Québec as
prisoners. Learning that d'Aulnay's widow, at the behest of
the Capuchin fathers, had secured a powerful patron in France in
return for two Acadian seigneuries, Le Borgne's men seized
Port-Royal in 1652. They imprisoned two Capuchins and the
widow's agent's wife before taking them to France, but they left the
widow d'Aulnay alone.37
La Tour, determined to stay
clear of Le Borgne's henchmen and to solve the widow
d'Aulnay’s financial problems as well, agreed to marry the good
woman in February 1653; he was 60-year-old, and she was 38. He
brought her to Rivière St.-Jean, farther from the reach of her dead
husband’s creditors, and there she added to the number of La Tours
who called Acadia home. "His marriage to the widow of the man
who had ruined him and banished him from the colony as a pirate made
Latour sole master of all Acadia, with the exception of the fief
controlled by Nicolas Denys," one historian observes. But
financial matters are seldom solved so easily.36
Le Borgne himself came to Acadia
in 1653 and, in July, compelled the widow d'Aulnay, now Madame La
Tour, to verify his claims to her late husband's estate.
Le Borgne then seized Pentagouët, La Hève, Fort St.-Pierre,
and Nepisiguit and imprisoned Nicolas Denys, this time in
Port-Royal, before taking him back to France. Securing the
same powerful patron that d'Aulnay's widow had secured in 1652--the
Duc de Vendôme, the King's uncle--Le Borgne returned to
Acadia aboard the Châteaufort in 1654 to secure his and the
duke's claims in the colony. Denys, meanwhile, had returned to
Acadia with a royal commission as "governor" of his former domains
and had warned La Tour of Le Borgne's plans to seize
him and his fort on Rivière St.-Jean.36a
But all of Le Borgne's efforts
were for naught. In the summer of 1654, the English
re-appeared in force, and, again, they came to stay.
The English Seize the Colony Again
Much had transpired on the isle of
Great Britain since the English and Scots last held Acadia in 1632.
In the 1640s, civil war erupted in England, pitting King Charles I
against his recalcitrant Parliament, whose forces eventually were
led by the dour Puritan, Oliver Cromwell. By 1646, after much
bloody fighting, Cromwell’s New Model Army decisively defeated the
forces of the king. Charles, however, was a stubborn Scotsman
and refused to follow the reforms that Parliament had exacted from
him. He was arrested, tried, and convicted as an enemy of the
state! On 30 January 1649, he became the only monarch in
England’s history to be executed by his own people. His heirs,
sons Charles and James, fled to France to escape a similar fate.
England became a Commonwealth, the monarchy was abolished, and by
1653, Cromwell had become England's Lord Protector. Meanwhile,
war had broken out between the English and the Dutch, which Cromwell
ended successfully in 1654.37a
During that struggle, in 1654, an
English seaborne expedition under Robert Sedgwick of Boston, a
former lieutenant of Cromwell, was ordered to attack the Dutch
colony at New Amsterdam, south of New England. But before he
could attack New Amsterdam, Sedgwick learned that the war against
the Dutch had ended. He sailed north, instead, to Acadia,
where, in August, he seized Fort St.-Jean from La Tour, and
La Hève and Port-Royal from
Le Borgne The garrison at Port-Royal was commanded
by two Acadian pioneers, Germain Doucet
and his lieutenant, surgeon Jacques Bourgeois, who may have
been Doucet's brother-in-law. Doucet designated
Bourgeois as a hostage to insure that he fulfilled the articles
of surrender, and then Doucet, as ordered by the English,
returned to France. Emmanuel
Le Borgne, who claimed the seigneurie of Port-Royal, also signed
the surrender document. Sedgwick left Port-Royal in charge of
a council of inhabitants headed by syndic Guillaume Trahan.
Le Borgne returned to France in the Châteaufort.
La Tour and Denys made deals with their new English
overlords and continued their operations unmolested. In the
autumn of 1656, La Tour ceded Port-Royal, who he claimed was
his, to two Englishmen, Thomas Temple and William Crowne. The
fort on the St.-Jean no longer his,
La Tour returned to Cap-Sable, where his fortunes had
begun, and died in 1666, at age 73. Denys operated from Fort
St.-Pierre and from Nepisiguit on the Baie des Chaleurs. After
securing an arrêt against the grasping Le Borgne,
Denys remained in possession of his lucrative concessions, including
the trade in furs. In c1660, he established a new post at
Chédabouctou, today's Guysborough, Nova Scotia, but lost it to
another Frenchman, the Sieur de La Giraudière, in 1667. Two
years later, in 1669, Fort St.-Pierre was again destroyed by fire,
prompting Denys to retreat into virtual retirement at Nepisiguit.
He did not remain there long. By 1672, when he published his
two-volume Description Géographique et histoire des costes de
l'Amérique septentrionale, avec l'histoire naturelle du païs, he
was back in France, and died probably at Paris in 1688, in
his mid 80s.38
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Le Borgne
used two of his sons first to placate and then to harass the English
conquerors. In late 1654, after the surrender of Port-Royal,
Le Borgne left his oldest son, Emmanuel Le Borgne du
Coudray, then 18, as a hostage in Port-Royal before returning to
France. He left his second son Alexandre, only 14, in charge
of the family's interests at La Hève and other posts. The
English, under John Leverett, an associate of Robert Sedgwick,
agreed to the arrangement. Leverett and Sedgwick "enforced a
virtual trade monopoly on French Acadia for their benefit, leading
some in the colony to view Leverett as a predatory opportunist.
Leverett funded much of the cost of the occupation himself, and then
petitioned Cromwell's government for reimbursement. Although
Cromwell authorized payment, he made it contingent on the colony
performing an audit of Leverett's finances, which never took place."
As a result, Leverett was never compensated for the expense.
Meanwhile, Sir Thomas Temple, heir to the Alexanders of Stirling,
was named governor of Nova Scotia in 1656, replaced Leverett in May
1657, and consolidated his claims in the colony, including posts
claimed by the Le Borgnes. In December 1657, Emmanuel,
père replaced Charles La Tour
as proprietary governor of Acadia, but Emmanuel, père did not
return to the colony; he sent son Alexandre to Acadia, instead.
In May 1658, Alexandre, only 18 years old, "at the head of a force
of fifty men," retook the fort at La Hève and then attacked Temple's
fort at Port-La Tour, near Cap-Sable. Temple hurried to Acadia from
Boston, counterattacked, wounded the young Le Borgne,
captured him, and sent him to London as a prisoner of war, where he
was "held captive for some years." In September 1659, Temple
agreed to return La Hève to the Le Borgnes. In 1664, he
"forced out some French fishermen at Port Rossignol and established
himself there and at Mirliguèche...." The colony then fell
quiet. In 1668, a year after the treaty of Breda supposedly
returned the colony to France, Emmanuel Le Borgne named
his son Alexandre as governor of Acadia in his place.
Alexandre assumed the name Le Borgne de Bélisle and returned
to Acadia in October 1668 to take up his family's claims there.
He retook the fishing settlement of Port Rossignol, on the Atlantic
coast, but, after learning that England's King Charles II had
instructed Temple not to surrender the colony just yet, Alexandre
returned to France. He did not go to Port-Royal until the
English finally gave up the colony, but not as governor; as a
result, Alexandre Le Borgne de Bélisle was the last
proprietary governor of French Acadia.38a
The inhabitants of Port-Royal,
meanwhile, continued to live as they had done since the first of
them had arrived in the basin with d’Aulnay during the late 1630s.
A change in masters had not ended the trade that was essential to
the colony's survival, it had only redirected it; commerce that had
once linked them to France and Québec now centered on Boston.
As their numbers grew by natural increase, the settlers at
Port-Royal moved farther up the basin and into the valley above it,
creating new farm land from the marshes along the river with their
sturdy dykes and clever aboiteaux. While being held as a
prisoner at Port-Royal in 1653, Nicolas Denys observed the
remarkable growth of the settlement: "There are numbers of
meadows on both shores, and two islands which possess meadows, and
which are 3 or 4 leagues from the fort in ascending," he wrote in
his memoir published many years later. "There is a great
extent of meadows which the sea used to cover, and which the Sieur
d'Aulnay had drained. It bears now fine and good wheat."
He described how the settlers moved steadily upstream to get away
from the prying eyes of the authorities at the fort and to create
more farmland from the marshes. "There they have again drained
other lands which bear wheat in much greater abundance than those
which they cultivated round the fort, good though those were.
All the inhabitants there are the ones whom Monsieur le Commandeur
de Razilly had brought from France to La Have; since that time they
have multiplied much at Port Royal, where they have a great number
of cattle and swine." Denys observed all of this about the
time that the English seized the colony. "Although we may
accept Denys’s belief that [the inhabitants at Port-Royal] gave up
their homes near the fort to move away from immediate English
surveillance," one historian of the colony concedes, "the direction
of the move was a natural one if they were seeking more marshlands
and there is no evidence that the English paid much attention to
them. Certainly their new masters, whether from New or old
England, had not the slightest interest in settling or actively
developing the part of Acadia they controlled: their interest
was solely in furs and in the control of Indian attacks on New
England, and the Acadians at least were protected from attacks from
that area." Back in France, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the powerful
financial minister of King Louis XIV, ordered the inhabitants at
Port-Royal not to abandon their settlements in the face of English
occupation; he was confident the colony soon would be restored to
France. Some families defied Colbert’s order and returned to
France or moved on to French-held Canada, but many, if not
most, of them refused to abandon their farms in the Port-Royal
valley.39
This was their home now. They had
begun the unconscious process of becoming Acadians, not just
Frenchmen. Their sons and daughters grew up and found suitable
mates among their neighbors. Married sons moved even farther
upriver and, with the help of family and friends, wrested from the
salt marshes new plots of ground on which to raise food for families
of their own. The older folks looked forward to the birth of
grandchildren and the blessings of an extended family. A
spirit of independence and self-sufficiency had taken hold of these
French farmers. France, in spite of herself, had planted
sturdy roots in the troubled soil of Acadia.39a
Resurrection of French Control and
the First Acadian Census
Despite Colbert’s optimism, the English
clung to Acadia, including the entire coast of Maine, even after
1667, when the Treaty of Breda finally restored ownership of the
colony to France. The English governor at the time, still Sir
Thomas Temple, delayed turning over the administration of the colony
to France until 1670, when the new French governor of Acadia, Hector
d’Andigné de Grandfontaine, accepted the surrender of the English
garrisons at Pentagouët, on the St.-Jean, at Port-Royal, and at
Cap-Sable. Following orders from France, Grandfontaine
established his headquarters at Pentagouët, near the disputed border
with New England. Sixteen years of English occupation was
over. The colony was finally back in French hands, this time
under royal governance; the often chaotic rule of the proprietors
and concessionaires was over.40
The years of English occupation,
ironically, had been beneficial ones for the Acadians. During
the time of English control, a lucrative trade had sprung up between
Acadia and New England, and there had been a notable growth of
settlement in the Port-Royal basin. One historian records that
"there was a substantially larger number of settlers up the Port
Royal River above the fort than there had been sixteen years
earlier; in Acadian terms almost a generation had grown up."
He adds: "Documentation on the conditions of settlement and
agriculture is almost completely lacking. It has been inferred
that after 1654 many of the French settlers moved on to Quebec or
returned to France. For those who remained (and they were, we
think, the majority), we have to assume the gradual but inexorable
increase of numbers and expansion of agriculture, the planting and
reaping of grain, peas, flax, and vegetable crops, and the tending
of sheep, swine and cattle. If the period is largely a
tabula rasa in the historical record, it was nevertheless
one of consolidation and expansion of this nucleus of the Acadian
population."41
With the full resumption of French
control in Acadia under Governor Grandfontaine, immigration into the
colony resumed in earnest, and the Acadians' illicit trade with New
England merchants continued unabated. Members of the
Carignan-Salières Regiment arrived with Grandfontaine and his
lieutenants, and some of them married Acadian women. In the
spring of 1671, Colbert sent 60 new settlers to Acadia aboard
L’Oranger, which sailed from La Rochelle. Other settlers
arrived from Canada.42
That same spring, just before the
L'Oranger
reached Port-Royal, Grandfontaine ordered Father Laurent Molin to
conduct a census of the colony’s inhabitants—the first Acadian
census on record. The good priest counted a total of 68
families and over 300 inhabitants at Port-Royal, as well as much
smaller populations at Cap-Nègre, Pobomcoup, and
Rivière-aux-Rochelois, also called Port Rochelois, now Port Razoir,
near Cap-Sable; at Pentagouët in Maine; at Musquodoboit on the
Atlantic shore; and at St.-Pierre on Cape Breton Island. Here
was created a list of the First Families of Acadia, including
families that had lived in the colony for over three decades.43
The First Families of Acadia
Few of the men who fathered these first
families were fur traders or fishermen, as in the early days.
Some were artisans, laborers, soldiers, sailors, clerks, and even
high officials. Most, however, were farmers,
labourers, as the French called them, sturdy
members of the peasant class who put down deep roots in the rich
soil of Acadia--soil that they themselves literally created with
their dykes and aboiteaux.44
In the first census could be found the
names of two families whose progenitors had come to the colony with
Razilly in the early 1630s:
Germain Doucet, sieur de La
Verdure, had come to Acadia in his middle age and may have been
alive in 1671 (he would have been in his late 70s), but he was not
in Acadia. After the English seized the colony in 1654, they
compelled the "captain at arms" to return to France, and they would
not have welcomed him back as long as they controlled the colony.
Counted in the 1671 census, however, were Germain's two grown sons,
Pierre and Germain, fils, who had remained in the colony when
their father returned to France. Pierre had become a
bricklayer and, when he was nearly 40, married Henriette, a daughter
of Simon Pelletret and stepdaughter of René Landry
l'aîné, in c1660, when she was in her early 20s. Pierre
was 50 years old at the time of the census, and Henriette was 31.
With them were five children, three sons and two daughters.
They lived on 4 arpents of land along the basin and owned 7 cattle
and 6 sheep. (Henriette gave Pierre 10 children, including
five sons who created families of their own.) Pierre's younger
brother Germain,
fils,
had
married Marie, daughter of René Landry l'aîné, in
c1664. Germain, fils was 30 years old at the time of
the census, and Marie was 24. They had three children, all
sons, and lived on 3 arpents of land with 11 cattle and 7 sheep.
(Marie gave Germain, fils nine children, including five sons
who created families of their own.) Also in the census was
Germain,
père's older daughter Marguerite, called Marie-Judith by the
census taker, age 46, married to gunsmith Abraham Dugas, age
55. Germain,
père's second daughter, her name lost to history, had
married colonist Pierre Lejeune dit Briard in c1650,
but they do not appear in the first census; they may have left
Acadia by then, or both may have died before the first census was
taken.43a
Pierre Comeau
the barrel maker was still alive in 1671 and still working as a
cooper at age 75. He had married 18-year-old Rose Bayon
in c1649, when he was 51. Rose may have come to the colony as
a child aboard the St.-Jehan in 1636. Father Molin did
not give her age, but she would have been about 40 years old in
1671. Living with them on 6 arpents of land along the basin
were seven unmarried children, five sons and two daughters.
They owned 16 cattle and 22 sheep. (Rose gave Pierre nine
children, including five sons who created families of their own.)
Also counted in the first census was their oldest son Étienne, age
21, who had married Marie-Anne, daughter of Martin Lefebvre
of La Rochelle, the year before the census; she also was 21.
They were living with one child, an infant daughter, on "no
cultivated land," but they did own 7 cattle and 7 sheep.
(Marie gave Étienne only two more children, one of them a son who
created a family of his own.)
.
A few of the passengers who
had come to Acadia aboard St.-Jehan in 1636 were still living
at Port-Royal when the first census was taken:
Pierre Martin of
St.-Germain de Bourgeuil was 70 years old and his wife Catherine
Vigneau was 68 when they appeared in the first census.
They lived on 2 arpents of land along the basin and owned 7 cattle
and 8 sheep. Father Molin noted also that four of their
children, a son and three daughters, were married--Marie, age 35, to
Pierre Morin, age 37; Andrée, age 30, to François Pellerin,
age 35; and Marguerite, age 27, to Jean Bourg, age 26.
Older son Pierre, fils, age 45, and his first wife,
an Indian named Anne
Ouestnorouest dit Petitous, age 27, whom he had
married in c1660, were
living with four sons on
8 arpents of land and owned 11 cattle and 6 sheep. (Anne would
give Pierre, fils nine children, including two sons who
created families of their own. Pierre,
fils would remarry to Jeanne, daughter of Louis
Rousselière and widow of Pierre
Godin dit
Châtillon, in the late 1680s, but she would give him no more
children.) Pierre,
père's younger
son Mathieu, age 35, was still single and living on an unspecified
amount of land with 4 cattle and 3 sheep. (Mathieu married in
the early 1690s, in his early 50s, but he and his wife, whose name
has been lost to history, had no children. By the early 1700s,
they were living on his seigneurie at Cobiguit in the Minas Basin.)
Edge-tool maker Guillaume
Trahan
of Montreuil-Bellay also was 70 years old in 1671; his first
wife, François Corbineau, was dead. One of their two
daughters was counted in the census--Jeanne, age 40, married to
Jacques dit Jacob
Bourgeois, age 50. Guillaume and Françoise's younger
daughter, whose name has been lost to history, had married widower
German Doucet, sieur de La Verdure in c1654, the year he was
forced to return to France; she probably went with him.
Guillaume, too, had remarried in the colony, to Madeleine, daughter
of Vincent Brun, in c1665; Guillaume was 65 years old and his
bride only 19 at the time of the wedding; she was age 25 in 1671.
Living with them
on 5 arpents of land along
the basin were three
young sons, ages 4, 3, and 1. Guillaume and Madeleine owned 8
cattle and 10 sheep. (She gave Guillaume seven children,
including the three sons, all of whom created families of their own.
Third son Alexandre married Marie, a daughter of François
Pellerin, at Port-Royal in c1689; she gave him 14 children,
including eight sons who created families of their own. Oldest
son Guillaume, fils married Jacqueline dite Jacquette,
a daughter of Martin Benoit and widow of Michel de Forest,
at Port-Royal in c1691; she gave him eight children, including five
sons who created their own families. Second son Jean-Charles
married Marie, a daughter of Charles Boudrot, at Port-Royal
in c1693; she gave him a dozen children, including six sons who
created families of their own.)
.
Still alive in 1671 were some of the
early arrivals who some historians insist were from the village of
Martaizé in northern Poitou, where d'Aulnay and his mother had
controlled "vast seigneuries" and where some of the passengers
aboard the St.-Jehan may have been recruited:
Jean Gaudet's son Denis, who had
come to the colony with his parents and two sisters in the 1630s,
was 46 years old in 1671. He had married Martine Gauthier,
six years his senior, in c1645; she was 52 years old at the time of
the census. Living with them were three unmarried children,
two sons and a daughter, on 6 arpents of cultivated land along the
basin. They owned 9 cattle and 13 sheep, with "more lambs than
mature sheep," Father Molin noted. (Martine gave Denis five
children, including two sons who created families of their own.)
Also in the census were two of Denis and Martine's married
daughters: Anne, age 27, counted with husband Pierre
Vincent, age 40; and Marie, age 20, with husband Olivier
Daigre, age 28. In the census also were Denis's older
sister Françoise, age 48, counted with her second husband, Daniel
LeBlanc, age 45; and Denis's younger sister Marie, age 38, widow
of Étienne Hébert. Amazingly, Jean, père was
still alive in 1671. His first wife had died, and he had
remarried to Nicole Colleson, probably a young widow, in
c1652; she was 64 years old in 1671. They lived "on 3 arpents
of land at two locations," with 6 cattle and 3 sheep. Living
with them was an unmarried son, Jean, fils, age 18 (who
married Françoise, a daughter of Pierre Comeau the following
year; remarried to Jeanne Henry in c1680; and remarried again
to Jeanne Lejeune dit Briard, a widow, in c1694; his three
wives gave Jean, fils five children, only one of them a son
who created a family of his own). Father Molin noted that
Jean,
père was "the oldest
inhabitant of Port-Royal ..., the venerable doyen of the colony ...
then aged ninety-six years." Jean died at Port-Royal a few
years later, age 103.
Antoine Bourg, a bachelor when
he came to Acadia in the 1630s, remained in the colony and, in his
early 30s, married Antoinette, a sister of fellow colonist René
Landry l'aîné, in c1642. He was 62 years old in
1671, and she was 53. Living with them were seven unmarried
children, two sons and five daughters, on 4 arpents of land along
the basin. They owned 12 cattle and 8 sheep. (Antoinette
gave Antoine 11 children, including fives sons who created families
of their own.) Also in the census were Antoine and
Antoinette's three married sons and a married daughter:
François, age 28, was married to Marguerite, daughter of Michel
Boudrot; she was 23 in 1671. Living with them on 5 1/2
arpents of land were two young children, a son and a daughter.
They owned 15 cattle and 5 sheep. (Marguerite gave François
seven children, including two sons who created families of their
own.) Marie, age 26, was married to Vincent
Breau, age 40. Jean, age 24 or 25, was married to
Marguerite, daughter of Pierre Martin; she was 27.
Living with them on 15 arpents of land were two young daughters.
They owned 3 cattle and 5 sheep. (Marguerite gave Jean nine
children, including two sons who created their own families.)
Bernard, age 23, was married to Françoise, daughter of Vincent
Brun; she was 19. They lived with a daughter, age
unrecorded (she was still an infant), on "no cultivated land, " and
owned 6 cattle and 9 sheep. (Françoise gave Bernard 13
children, two of them sons who created families of his own.)
François Gautrot
had lost his first wife, Marie, in the early 1640s, but not
before she gave him a son. Charles, who preferred to call
himself a Gottreau, was 34 years old in 1671. He does
not appear with his father in the first Acadian census (though his
name and age are recorded as belonging to the family) because he no
longer lived in the colony. In October 1665, Charles had
married Françoise, a daughter of Martin
Cousin, at Québec and did not return to Acadia.
(Françoise gave Charles six children, including three sons, none of
whom married.) Meanwhile, François remarried to Edmée, one of
the Lejeune sisters, in c1644. He was 58 years old in
1671, and she was 47. Living with them were six children, five
sons and a daughter; two of the sons--Jean and François,
fils--grown but still unmarried. (Edmée gave François,
père
nine children, including three sons who created families of
their own, but their oldest son Jean was not be one of them.)
Also in the census were four of François, père's married
daughters: Marie, François's oldest child, age 34, was counted
with her second husband, Michel Depeux
dit Dupuis, age 37. Another Marie, age 24,
François's oldest child by his second wife, was counted with her
husband Claude Thériot, age 34. Renée, age 19, was
counted with her husband, Jean Labat
dit Le Marquis, age 33, whom she had just married.
Marguerite, age 17, was counted with husband Jacques dit
Jacob Girouard, age 23; they, too, were newly wedded.
Jean Thériot, who had come to
Port-Royal with wife Pérrine
Rau
in c1637, was age 70 and his wife age 60 in 1671. Living
with them on 5 arpents of land along the basin was their youngest
child, fifth son Pierre, age 17 (who married Cécile, daughter of
René Landry le jeune, in c1678). Jean and Pérrine owned
6 cattle and 1 sheep. (Pérrine gave Jean seven children,
including five sons, four of whom created families of their own.)
Also in the census were five of Jean and Pérrine's married children,
three sons and two daughters. Oldest son Claude, age 34, was
counted with wife Marie, age 24, a daughter of François Gautrot.
Living with them on 6 arpents of cultivated land were four children,
two sons and two daughters. They owned 13 cattle and 3 sheep.
(Marie gave Claude 14 children, including three sons who created
families of their own.) Jean's third son Bonaventure dit
Venture, age 27, was counted with wife Jeanne, age 26, a daughter of
Michel Boudrot. Living with them on 2 arpents of land
was a young daughter. They owned 6 cattle and 6 sheep.
(Jeanne gave Venture four children, none of them sons, but three of
their daughters married.) Jean's older daughter Jeanne, age
27, was counted with husband Pierre
Thibodeau, age 40. Jean's fourth son Germain, age
25, was counted with wife Andrée, age 25, a daughter of Vincent
Brun. Living with them on 2 arpents of land was a young
son. They owned 5 cattle and 2 sheep. (Andrée gave
Germain only three children, two of them sons who created their own
families.) Jean's younger daughter Catherine, age 20, was
counted with husband Pierre Guilbeau, age 32. Jean's
second son, Jean, fils, who would have been age 32 in 1671,
does not appear in the census; he may have taken his wife, who he
had recently married, to Canada (her name, as well as the names of
their children, if they had any, have been lost to history).
François Savoie (Father Motin
called him a
Scavois) came to Acadia in the 1640s and married Catherine,
the other
Lejeune sister, in c1651. He was age 50 and she was 38
in 1671. Living with them on 6 arpents of land were eight
unmarried children, three sons and five daughters, the youngest a
daughter who was only a year and a half old. They owned 4 head
of cattle and no sheep. Also in the census was a married
daughter, Françoise, age 18, who was counted with her husband, Jean
Corporan, age 25. (Despite François and Catherine's many
children, only their oldest son, Germain, age 16 in 1671, carried on
the family line. Germain married Marie, daughter of Vincent
Breau, in c1678; she gave him a dozen children, including five
sons who created families of their own.)
Daniel LeBlanc came to the
colony in c1645 and married Françoise, a daughter of Jean Gaudet,
in c1650. Daniel was age 45 and Françoise 48 in 1671.
They lived on 10 arpents of land along the basin with six unmarried
sons and owned 18 cattle and 26 sheep. Also in the census was
their second child and only daughter, Françoise, age 18, whom Father
Motin counted with her recently-wedded husband, Martin, age 24, son
of Jean Blanchard. (Of the seven children wife
Françoise gave Daniel, five of them were sons who took wives of
their own and helped create what would become the largest family in
all of Acadia.)
.
According to some historians, early
settlers counted in the first census may have come to the colony
from La Chaussée, another town in the Loire valley, near Blois,
upriver from St.-Germain de Bourgeuil and Martaizé:
Vincent Brun, like most of the
bachelors who had come to the colony during the Razilly years,
returned to France. In the 1640s, he married twice at La
Chaussée to Breau sisters and returned to Acadia later in the
decade with his second wife, Renée, and two daughters. Vincent
was age 60 and Renée age 55 in 1671. They were living on 5
arpents of land with two unmarried children, a son and a daughter.
They owned 10 cattle and 4 sheep. Also in the census were
three married daughters: Madeleine, age 25, was the second
wife of Guillaume Trahan, age 70. Adrée, age 24, was
counted with husband Germain Thériot, age 25. And
Françoise, age 19, was counted with husband Bernard Bourg,
age 23. (Son Sébastien, called Bastien, who was 15 in 1671,
married Huguette, a daughter of Antoine
Bourg, in c1675 and fathered seven children of his own,
including four sons who created their own families.)
François Girouard dit La
Varanne had come to the colony in c1640 with wife Jeanne
Aucoin, who was from La Rochelle. He was 50 years old
and she was 40 in 1671. They were living on 8 arpents of land
with two unmarried children, a son and a daughter. They owned
16 cattle and 6 sheep. Also in the census were three married
children: Older son Jacques dit
Jacob, age 23, was counted with wife Marguerite, daughter of
François Gautrot; she was only 17. They owned no land,
but they had an infant son, 7 cattle, and 3 sheep. (Marguerite
gave Jacques dit Jacob 14 children, including nine sons who
created families of their own.) François older daughter
Marguerite, age 20, was counted with her husband, Jacques Blou
or Belou, age 30; he was a cooper. They, too, owned no
land but had an infant daughter, 7 cattle, and a sheep.
Younger daughter Marie-Madeleine, called Madeleine, age 17, was
counted with her husband, Thomas Cormier, a carpenter, age
35. (François and Jeanne's younger son Germain, who was 14
years old in 1671, married Marie, a daughter of Jacques Bourgeois,
at Beaubassin, Chignecto, in June 1680. She gave him only
three children, one of them a son who created a family of his own.)
René Landry, later called
l'aîné, came to the colony in c1640 and married Pérrine, sister
of Antoine Bourg and widow of Simon Pelletret, in
c1645. René l'aîné
was age 52, and Pérrine was 45 in 1671. They were living
on 12 arpents of land along the basin with three unmarried children,
a daughter and two sons. They owned 10 cattle and 6 sheep.
Two of their married daughters were counted in the census:
Marie, age 24, with her husband Germain Doucet,
fils, age 30; and a second Marie, age 23 or 24, with her
husband Laurent Granger, a seaman, age 34. Also in the
census were René' l'aîné's married stepdaughters:
Henriette Pelletret, age 30 or 31, was counted with her
husband Pierre Doucet, age 50, half-sister Marie's
brother-in-law; and Jeanne Pelletret, age 27, was counted
with her first husband Barnabé Martin, age 35. (Both of
René
l'aîné and Pérrine's sons, Pierre and Claude, ages 13 and
8 in 1671, married and created families of their own. Pierre
married Madeleine, a daughter of Étienne Robichaud, in c1682;
she gave him six children, including five sons who created families
of their own. Claude married Marguerite, a daughter of Claude
Thériot, in c1683; she gave him 10 children, including four sons
who created their own families.)
Clément Bertrand, a carpenter,
came to Acadia in c1642. He married Huguette Lambelot
in c1645. He was 50 years old and she was 48 in 1671.
They were living on 6 arpents of land along the basin and owned 10
cattle and 6 sheep. They had no children.
Antoine Belliveau came to Acadia
in c1645 and married Andrée Guyon, widow of ____ Bernard,
in c1651. He was age 50, and she was 56 in 1671. They
were living on "no land" with two unmarried children, a son and a
daughter, and owned 11 cattle and 8 sheep. (In two years, son
Jean married Jeanne, a daughter of Antoine Bourg, and
remarried to Cécile, a daughter of Charles Melanson, in
c1703. His two wives gave him seven children, including four
sons who created families of their own.)
Vincent Brot or Breau
dit Vincelotte, whose sisters had married Vincent
Brun
back at La Chaussée in the 1640s, came to Port-Royal in c1652
and married Marie, daughter of Antoine Bourg, in c1661.
Vincelotte was 40 years old and Marie was 26 in 1671. They
lived on 4 arpents of land along the basin with four young children,
two sons and a daughter. They owned 9 cattle and 7 sheep.
(Marie gave him a dozen children, including five sons who created
their own families.)
.
Settlers from other parts of France who
were counted in the first census had come to Acadia in the 1640s,
during the years of struggle between La Tour and d'Aulnay:
Abraham Dugast or Dugas
of Chouppes, Poitiers, a gunsmith, came to the colony in c1640 and
married Marguerite, a daughter of Germain
Doucet, sieur de La Verdure, in c1647. In 1671, Abraham
was 55 years old and Marguerite, called Marie-Judith by census
taker, was 46. They lived on 16 arpents of land with six
unmarried children, three sons and three daughters. They owned
19 cattle and 3 sheep. Also counted in the census were two
married daughters: Marie, age 23, with husband Charles
Melanson dit La Ramée, age 28; and Anne, age 17, with
first husband Charles Bourgeois, age 25. (All three of
Abraham's sons married and created families of their own.
Oldest son Claude, who was 22 in 1671, married Françoise, a daughter
of Jacques Bourgeois, two years after the census; she gave
him a dozen children, including three sons who created families of
their own; Claude remarried to Marguerite, a daughter of Bernard
Bourg, in c1697, and she gave him 10 more children, including
five more sons who created their own families. Martin, who was
15 in 1671, married Marguerite, a daughter of Claude Petitpas,
in c1677; she gave him only two children, including a son who
created a family of his own. Youngest son Abraham, fils,
who was only 10 in 1671, married Jeanne, a daughter of Pierre
Guilbeau, in c1685; she gave him six children, including a son
who created his own family.)
Two Hébert brothers perhaps from
La-Haye-Descartes, Touraine, came to Port-Royal in c1640.
Antoine, the older brother, was a cooper and had married Geneviève
Lefranc in c1648. He was age 50 and Geneviève was 58 in
1671. They lived on 6 arpents "of cultivated land at two
locations" with three unmarried children, two sons, both grown, and
a teenage daughter. They owned 18 cattle and 7 sheep.
(Two of their children, a daughter and a son, created families of
their own. Son Jean, the second with the name, married
Marie-Anne, a daughter of Pierre Doucet, in c1676; she gave
him 14 children, including seven sons who created families of their
own.)
Younger brother Étienne Hébert
had married Marie, a daughter of Jean Gaudet, in c1650,
but died a year or so before the first census was taken; his age at
the time of his death was not recorded. Marie was 38 years old
in 1671 and lived on 3 arpents of cultivated land with eight
unmarried children, five sons and three daughters, the youngest a
son who was only a year old. The widow Hébert owned 4
cattle and 5 sheep. Also counted in the census was her oldest
daughter, Marie, age 20, with her husband Michel (originally Gereyt)
de Forest, age 33, a Dutchman who had converted to Catholicism
to marry his Acadian sweetheart. Younger daughter Marguerite,
age 19, had recently married Frenchman Jean-Jacques, called Jacques,
LePrince, who would have been in his mid-20s in 1671, but they
were not counted in the census; Jacques probably had taken her to
another part of the colony where Father Motin did not venture, or
perhaps they had gone to Canada (no matter, they returned to Acadia
by the 1680s and settled near her younger siblings in the Minas
Basin. Étienne and Marie's eight younger children included
five sons, all of whom created families of their own.)
Jacques dit Jacob Bourgeois
of Couperans-en-Brie, Germain
Doucet, sieur de La Verdure's home village, came to Acadia
aboard the St.-François in 1641 with his father Jacques,
père, an army officer who had been recruited by Claude Razilly.
Jacques dit Jacob became a surgeon and married, Jeanne,
daughter of Guillaume Trahan, in c1643; this made him a
brother-in-law of Sieur Germain. Jacques was 50 years old in
1671, and Jeanne was 40. They lived with nine unmarried
children, two sons and six daughters, on "more or less 20 arpents of
cultivated land at two different locations" along the basin.
They owned 33 cattle and 24 sheep. Oldest son Charles, age 25,
was counted with wife Anne, age 17, a daughter of Abraham Dugas.
They lived with a young daughter on 2 arpents of land and owned 12
cattle and 7 sheep. (Anne gave Charles four children,
including two sons who created their own families.) Also in
the census was Jacques and Jeanne's married daughter Marie, age 18,
who was counted with her first husband Pierre Sire or Cyr,
a gunsmith, age 27. (Jacques dit Jacob and Jeanne's two
younger sons, Germain and Guillaume, ages 21 and 16 in 1671, also
created families of their own. Germain married Madeleine, a
daughter of Antoine Belliveau, two years after the census;
she gave him three children, including a son who created a family of
his own; Germain remarried to Madeleine, a daughter of Abraham
Dugas, in c1682, and she gave him 10 more children, including
two more sons who created their own families. Guillaume
married Marie-Anne, a daughter of Martin d'Aprendestiguy de
Martignon, in the late 1680s; she gave him a daughter who
married a grandson of Daniel LeBlanc.)
Jean Poirier, a fisherman, also
had come to the colony aboard the St.-François in 1641, with
wife Jeanne
Chebrat of La Chaussée, to work in the fisheries established
by Nicolas Denys. Jean died in c1654, 17 years before the
first census was taken, but not before fathering a daughter and a
son, both of whom appeared in the first census. Their daughter
Marie-Françoise had married Roger dit Jean
Kuessy, Quessy, or Caissie, an Irishman, in
c1668. In 1671, Marie-Françoise was 22 years old, and Roger
was 25. Jean and Jeanne's son Michel was a 20-year-old
bachelor in 1671. He lived alone on "no cultivated land" but
owned 2 head of cattle. (Michel married Marie, a daughter of
Michel Boudrot, in c1673, and she gave him 11 children,
including seven sons who created families of their own.
Meanwhile, his mother Jeanne remarried to colonist Antoine
Gougeon soon after his father Jean had died and gave
Antoine a daughter, who would marry a son of Jean Blanchard
in c1673.)
Michel Boudrot of Cougnes, near
Le Rochelle, came to Port-Royal in the early 1640s with wife
Michelle Aucoin, a sister of François Girouard's wife
Jeanne. Michel, who served as one of the first syndics at
Port-Royal, was 71 years old in 1671, and Michelle was 53.
They lived on 8 arpents of land with eight unmarried children, six
sons and two daughters. They owned 20 cattle and 12 sheep.
Also in the census were three married daughters: Françoise,
age 29, was living with her husband Étienne Robichaud, age
31, but they had refused to give Father Motin any information about
themselves. Jeanne, age 26, was counted with husband
Bonaventure dit Venture Thériot, age 27.
Marguerite, age 23, was counted with husband François Bourg,
age 28. (Michel's oldest son Charles, age 22 and still a
bachelor in 1671, married his first wife, Renée, a daughter of
Antoine Bourg, a year after the census was taken. She
gave him eight children, including three sons who created families
of their own; Charles remarried to Marie, a daughter of Jean
Corporon, in c1686, and she would give him a dozen more children,
including five more sons who created their own families. All
of Michel's six younger sons created families of their own.
Michel, meanwhile, served as
lieutenant général civil et criminal, or colonial judge,
until his late 80s.)
Jean Blanchard came to the
colony by c1642, when he married Radegonde
Lambert
at Port-Royal. He was 60 years old, and she was 42 in 1671.
They lived on 5 arpents of cultivated land with three unmarried
children, two sons--Guillaume, age 21, and Bernard, age 18--and a
daughter, age 15. Jean and Radegonde owned 12 cattle and 9
sheep. Also in the census were three of their married
children: Oldest child Madeleine, age 28, was counted with
husband Michel Richard dit Sansoucy, age 41.
Anne, age 26, widow of François Guérin, was counted with five
young children (she remarried to Pierre
l'aîné, son of Denis Gaudet, the following year).
And son Martin, age 24, was counted with his new bride Françoise,
age 18, daughter of Daniel LeBlanc. They lived on 15
arpents of land with no children, but they owned 5 cattle and 2
sheep. (Françoise gave Martin three children, including a son
who created a family of his own; Martin remarried to Marguerite, a
daughter of Pierre Guilbeau, in the mid 1680s, and she gave
him eight more children, including four more sons who created their
own families. Martin's younger brother Guillaume married
Huguette, a daughter of Antoine
Gougeon, two years after the census, and she gave him a dozen
children, including five sons who created their own families.
Brother Bernard survived childhood but did not marry.)
René Rimbault came to the colony
in the early 1640s and married Anne-Marie, surname unknown, widow of
a settler named Pinet. Anne-Marie may have been a
métisse, or half-breed. René was age 55 in 1671, and
Anne-Marie was 40. They were living on 12 arpents of land with
five children, including Anne-Marie's son Philippe Pinet,
born at Port-Royal in c1654, who was being raised by his stepfather
and using the Rimbault surname in 1671 (but he go by his
biological father's surname,
Pinet, probably after her married). René and Anne-Marie
owned 12 cattle and 9 sheep. (Anne-Marie gave René seven
children, including a son, François, who married Marie, a daughter
of Antoine Babin; however, François and Marie had no children
of their own, so, except for its blood, this line of the Rimbault
family did not survive in the colony.)
Philippe Pinet, René Rimbault's
stepson, married Catherine, a daughter of Étienne Hébert, in
the late 1670s. She gave him a dozen children, including six
sons who created their own families.
Robert Cormier, a master ship's
carpenter from La Rochelle, signed an indenture for three years with
an associate of Nicolas Denys in early 1644. That spring, he,
his wife Marie Péraud, and their two young sons, Thomas and
Jean, sailed to Fort St.-Pierre on Cape Breton Island aboard Le
Petit St.-Pierre. After Robert fulfilled his contract, he
evidently took his family to Port-Royal, but he did not remain
there. He likely returned to La Rochelle with his wife and son
Jean in the 1650s, perhaps to escape the turmoil then brewing in the
colony. Robert's older son Thomas, however, who was a teenager
in the early 1650s, remained in the colony, where he, too, worked as
a carpenter. In his early 30s, he married Marie-Madeleine,
called Madeleine, a teenaged daughter of François Girouard,
in c1668. Thomas was 35 years old in 1671 and still being
described as a carpenter; Madeleine was only 17. Father Motin
counted only one child, a daughter, in their household. They
owned 6 arpents of land along the basin with 7 cattle and 7 sheep.
Madeleine probably was pregnant with their oldest son, François,
when the good priest came around. (Madeleine gave Thomas 10
children, including four sons who married granddaughters of Daniel
LeBlanc and created families of their own.)
Claude Petitpas, sieur de La
Fleur, a clerk who became a notary, came to Acadia in c1645 and
married Catherine, daughter of Bernard Bugaret, at Port-Royal
in c1658. In 1671, Claude was 45 years old, and Catherine was
33. Living with them on 30 arpents of land were seven young
children, four sons and three daughters. They owned 26 cattle
and 12 sheep. (Catherine gave him 13 children, including three
sons who created families of their own. One of their sons,
Claude, fils married a Mi'kmaq and became an agent of the
British; Claude, fils's oldest son, Barthélémy, also
served as agent-interpreter among the Mi'kmaq and befriended the
British; later, he turned against them and died in a Boston prison.)
Pierre Lejeune dit
Briard of Brie, as his name reveals, came to Port-Royal by
c1650, when he married a daughter of Germain Doucet whose
name has been lost to history. She gave him two sons, Pierre
dit Briard, fils, born in c1656, and Martin dit
Briard Labrière, in c1661. Father Motin counted none of them
at Port-Royal in 1671. They either were living in another
Acadian settlement, or they were living outside of the colony.
(The two sons and their families would be counted at La Hève, on the
Atlantic coast, in 1686, so the family remained in Acadia.
Pierre dit Briard,
fils married Marie, a daughter of Pierre Thibodeau,
at Port-Royal in the late 1670s, and she gave him nine children,
including four sons who created families of their own. Martin
dit Briard married Jeanne, also called Marie, Kagigconiac,
an Indian, in c1684, and she gave him five children, including a son
who created his own family; Martin dit Briard remarried to
Marie, daughter of Jean
Gaudet, in c1699, and she gave him seven more children,
including three more sons who created families of their own; Martin
dit
Briard's third wife, Marie Arnault or Renaud
dit Grislard, whom he married at Grand-Pré in October 1729, in
his late 60s, gave him no more children.)
.
Two soldiers who had come to the colony
in the early 1650s with Emmanuel Le Borgne
remained in Acadia, married, and became prominent settlers.
Also establishing a family in the colony was Le Borgne's
second son, who had come to Acadia with his father in the 1650s;
because of his actions against the English, however, the young Le
Borgne was forced to return to France, but, unlike his brothers,
he did not remain there:
Alexandre Le Borgne de Bélisle,
the last proprietary governor of French Acadia, would have been 31
years old in 1671. Father Motin did not count him in the
census, though he had returned to the colony in 1670. When he
did return, Alexandre, now calling himself
Bélisle or Belle-Isle, was recognized as the seigneur of
Port-Royal, though Governor Grandfontaine "told the people to regard
[Bélisle] as a simple habitant." According to
his biographer, "Very little is known about Belle-Isle's
activities in connection with Acadia between 1670" and his death at
Port-Royal in c1693. Evidently he did not get along well with
some of Acadia's royal governors. Grandfontaine did what he
could to limit Bélisle's powers, and François-Marie Perrot,
who governed during the mid-1680s, insisted that Alexandre "was
addicted to wine. When drunk he was capable of granting the
same piece of land to several settlers at once, which could not but
cause the farmers considerable vexation." Louis-Alexandre des
Friches de Meneval threw him in prison in November 1689, "because of
irregularities of this nature." Joseph Robinau de Villebon,
who was governor in the early 1690s, also had problems with the
Port-Royal seigneur. During most of that time, heirs of
d'Aulnay and Charles La Tour contested Alexandre's and his
family's claims in Acadia. Meanwhile, in c1675, Alexandre
married Marie, daughter of Charles
de Saint-Étienne de La Tour and Jeanne Motin de Reux,
but they were not counted at Port-Royal until 1686. (Marie
gave him seven children, including two sons who created families of
their own.)44b
Pierre Thibodeau, born in Poitou
in c1631, married Jeanne, a daughter of Jean
Thériot, in c1660. He was a miller by trade, so he
built a mill at Pré-Ronde above Port-Royal and soon became
prosperous. In 1671, Pierre was age 40 and Jeanne age 27.
They were living on 7 arpents of land with six young children, a son
and five daughters; the son was only a year old. They owned 12
cattle and 11 sheep. (Jeanne gave Pierre 16 children,
including seven sons who created families of their own. Pierre
founded the Acadian settlement at Chepoudy, on the upper Bay of
Fundy, in c1700.)
Michel Richard dit
Sansoucy of Saintonge married Madeleine, a daughter of Jean
Blanchard, in 1656. In 1671, Michel was age 41 and
Marguerite 28. They were living on 14 arpents of land with
seven children, including a set of twins who were only a few weeks
old. They owned 15 cattle and 14 sheep. (Madeleine gave
him 10 children, including four sons who created families of their
own. In c1683, Sancoucy remarried to Jeanne, a daughter of
Antoine Babin, and she gave him two more sons, who also
created their own families.)
.
Many of the Acadians who were counted
in 1671 had come to the colony during the English occupation of
1654-70, when immigration to Acadia from France and Canada was
supposed to have been curtailed. At least two of them were
Englishmen, one was a Dutchman in English service, one an Irishman,
and another from Flanders. The others came from France, one of
them perhaps from La Chaussée, another a Huguenot:
Antoine Gougeon married Jeanne,
daughter of Antoine Chabrat, probably at Port-Royal in c1654.
In 1671, Antoine was age 45, and Jeanne was 45 also. They were
living on 10 arpents of land with their only child, daughter
Huguette, age 14. They owned 20 cattle and 17 sheep.
(Huguette married Guillaume, younger son of Jean Blanchard,
in c1673, when she was only 16 years old. She gave him a dozen
children. In the late 1690s, Guillaume helped pioneer the
Acadian settlement at Petitcoudiac. Their sons settled there,
too, at what became known as Village-des-Blanchards.)
Pierre Melanson dit La
Verdure, a French Huguenot in English service, came to the colony in
the spring of 1657 with his English wife Priscilla and three sons,
who had been born in England. Evidently Pierre
dit La Verdure served as tutor of former govneror d'Aulnay's
children. When the English abandoned the colony in 1670,
Pierre dit La Verdure, his wife, and their youngest son John
retreated to Boston, but the two older sons remained at Port-Royal,
where they had converted to Catholicism and taken Acadian wives.
Older son Pierre dit La Verdure, fils married
Marie-Marguerite, called Marguerite, a daughter of Philippe Mius
d'Entremont, seigneur of Pobomcoup, at Port-Royal in c1665, in
his early 30s. In 1671, Pierre was age about 39 and was listed
as a tailor, and Marguerite was 21. However, Father Molin
noted, Pierre and his wife refused to answer any questions about
their farm or their family. Pierre and Marguerite would have
been living with their three oldest children, two sons and a
daughter, but the size of their farm in 1671 remains a mystery.
(Marguerite gave him 11 children, including four sons who created
families of their own.)44c
Pierre dit La Verdure
Melanson, père's younger son Charles
dit La Ramée married Marie, a daughter of Abraham
Dugas, at Port-Royal in c1663. Charles was a little
more cooperative with the census taker than his older brother.
He was 28 years old in 1671, and Marie was 23. They lived with
four small children, all daughters, but they did not give the size
of their farm. They did admit that they owned 40 cattle and 6
sheep. (Marie gave Charles 14 children, including five sons
who created families of their own.)
Laurent Granger of Plymouth,
England, also in English service, came to Acadia during the late
1650s, converted to Catholicism, and married Marie, a daughter of
René
Landry l'aîné, at Port-Royal in c1667. In
1671, Laurent, listed as a seaman, was age 34, and Marie was 24.
They were living on 4 arpents of land with two small children, a
daughter and a son, the youngest only 9 months old. They owned
5 cattle and 6 sheep. (Marie gave him nine children, including
five sons who created families of their own.)
Jean Pitre, an edge tool maker
probably from Flanders, came to the colony in the late 1650s.
In c1665, he married Marie, a daughter of Isaac Pesseley,
former major of Port-Royal who had been killed during the
civil war between La Tour and d'Aulnay. In 1671, Jean was age
35 and Marie age 26. They were living on "no land" with three
young children, a son and two daughters, the youngest one only 9
months old. They owned no sheep, but they did own 1 cow.
(Marie gave him 11 children, including four sons who created
families of their own.)
François Guérin (Father Molin
called him a Gudcin), who may have been from the Martaizé
area, came to Port-Royal by c1659, when he married Anne, a daughter
of Jean Blanchard. François died just before the first
census was taken, but not before fathering five children. In
1671, Anne was 26 years old and living with those children, three
daughter and two sons, the youngest one, a son, only 2 years old, on
6 arpents of cultivated land. She owned 6 cattle and 3 sheep.
(The older son, Jérôme, called Frivoline in the census, perpetuated
the family line in spades by fathering 13 children, including five
sons who created their own families.)
Geyret de Forest of Leyden,
Holland, came to Acadia in c1659 as a soldier in English service.
He, too, converted to Catholicism, and married Marie, a daughter of
Étienne
Hébert, in c1666. In Acadia, the "de" in his name did
not survive, nor did his given name. In 1671, Michel, as he
was called in Acadia, was 33 years old, and Marie was 20. They
were living on 2 arpents of cultivated land with three young
children, all sons. They owned 12 cattle and 2 sheep.
(Marie gave him six children, including four sons who created
families of their own. In c1686, Michel remarried to
Jacqueline dite
Jacquette, a daughter of Martin Benoit, and she gave him
another daughter who also survived childhood.)
René Landry le jeune, a
cousin of René
l'aîné, reached the colony by c1659, when he married
Marie
Bernard, a native of Port-Royal and a stepdaughter of
Antoine Belliveau. Strangely, Father Molin did not
count René le jeune and Marie in the 1671 census, but they
did appear in the second Port-Royal census of 1678; this counting
did not give any ages or the names of their children, but it did
give the size of their farm. Other colonial records, including
later censuses, provide their ages and the number of their children
when the first census was taken. René le jeune would
have been about age 37 and Marie about age 26 in 1671. They
would have been living with 6 children, four sons and two daughters,
the youngest a newborn. In 1678, they owned 22 acres of land
and 20 cattle, so their farm in 1671 probably was larger than most.
(Marie gave him 15 children, including eight sons who created
families of their own! The result would be an even larger
branch of the Landry family in Acadia.)
Antoine Babin arrived by c1662,
when he married Marie Mercier, a granddaughter of Jean
Gaudet. In 1671, Antoine was age 45, and Marie was 25.
They were living on 2 arpents of cultivated land with five young
children, two sons and three daughters, the youngest only a year
old. Another daughter was born to them soon after the census
was taken. They owned 6 cattle and 8 sheep. (Marie gave
Antoine 11 children, including three sons who created families of
their own.)
Pierre Vincent came to Acadia by
c1663, when he married Anne, a daughter of Denis Gaudet.
In 1671, Pierre was age 40 and Anne age 27. They were living
on 16 arpents of land with four young children, two sons and two
daughters. For some reason, their younger daughter, who would
have been only 3 years of age and who survived childhood, was not
counted. They owned 18 cattle and 9 sheep. (Their
youngest son, Clément, was not born until c1674. Like all of
his older siblings, he, too, survived childhood, and, like two of
his older brothers, he created a family of his own.
Interestingly, many of Clément's 12 children would use the
dit Clément as their surname instead of Vincent.)
Michel Dupuis (Father Molin
called him a Dupont), perhaps from La Chaussée, came to
Port-Royal by c1664, when he married Marie, a daughter of François
Gautrot and widow of ____ Potet. In 1671,
Michel, whom Father Motin called a Dupont, was age 37, and
Marie was 34. They were living on 6 arpents of cultivated land
with three young children, two sons and a daughter, the youngest, a
son, only 3 months old. Also living with them was 14-year-old
Marie Potet from Marie's first marriage. Michel and
Marie owned 5 cattle and 1 sheep. (Marie gave him five
children, including three sons who created families of their own.)
Étienne Robichaud came to
Port-Royal by c1663, when he married Françoise, a daughter of Michel
Boudrot. Father Motin noted in the census that Étienne
"did not want to see me. He left and told his wife that she
was not to tell me the number of his livestock or land." Nor
did Françoise reveal the names and ages of their children. In
1671, Étienne would have been 31 years old and Françoise 29.
They would have been living with three young children, two sons and
a daughter, the youngest one, a son, only 2 years old. Thanks
to Étienne's stubbornness, the size of his farm and the numbers of
his livestock in 1671 will forever remain a mystery. In 1678,
however, he owned 1 acre and 19 cattle, so his farm was small, but
the number of his animals was respectable. (Françoise gave
Étienne seven children, including four sons who created families of
their own.)
François Pellerin came to Acadia
from Québec by c1665, when he married Andrée, a daughter of Pierre
Martin, père. In 1671, François was age 35, and
Andrée was 30. They lived on 1 arpent of land with three
young children, all daughters, the youngest only 2 days old.
They owned 1 sheep. (Andrée gave him seven children, including
a son who created a family of his own.)
Guyon, son of Pierre Chiasson
or Giasson dit La Vallée and Marie Péroché
of La Rochelle, came to the colony by c1666, when he married Jeanne
Bernard, a stepdaughter of Antoine Belliveau, at
Port-Royal. Guyon and Jeanne were not listed in the 1671
census because they had moved to Mouchecoudabouet, now Musquodoboit
Harbor, near present-day Halifax, soon after they married, and they
were still there in late 1674. Not long afterwards, they moved
to Canada and then returned to Acadia, this time to Chignecto, with
Michel Le Neuf, sieur de la Vallière, the seigneur of Beaubassin,
probably in the late 1670s. Jeanne died at Chignecto in the
early 1680s. Guyon remarried to Canadienne Marie-Madeleine,
daughter of Pierre Martin of Sillery, at Québec in October
1683, and returned to Chignecto, where he died in the late 1680s or
early 1690s. (His four sons were by his first wife. They
all created their own families. The two older sons settled at
Chignecto, but his younger sons, one of whom called himself a
Giasson, settled in Canada. Second wife Marie-Madeleine
remarried to Michel Deveau dit Dauphiné at Chignecto
in c1693.)
Olivier Daigre came to the
colony by c1666, when he married Marie, a daughter of Denis
Gaudet. In 1671, Olivier was age 28, and Marie was 20.
They lived on 2 arpents of cultivated land with three young
children, all sons. They owned 6 cattle and 6 sheep.
(Marie gave Olivier 10 children, including two sons who created
families of their own.)
Barnabé Martin, probably no kin
to Pierre Martin of St.-Germain de Bourgeuil, came to Acadia
in c1666, when he married Jeanne, a daughter of Simon Pelletret.
In 1671, Barnabé was age 35, and Jeanne was 27. They lived on
2 1/2 arpents of land with two young children, a daughter and a son,
who was only 8 months old. They owned 3 cattle and 2 sheep.
(Jeanne gave Barnabé eight children, including two sons who would
help create an even larger branch of the Martin family in
Acadia. Barnabé's descendants, especially those from older son
René, tended to use their father's given name as a dit to
distinguish themselves from the other Martins in the colony.)
Pierre Lanoue, a "young scion of
a noble Huguenot family in France," after converting to Catholicism,
came to Acadia in c1667 as a cooper and settled at Port-Royal.
When asked his age, Pierre told Father Molin that "he felt fine but
would not give an answer." Pierre also refused to give the
size of holdings. In 1671, Pierre would have been only 23
years old. He was still a bachelor, so he may have owned no
property. (Pierre does not appear in the
Port-Royal censuses of 1678 and 1686, but he remained in Acadia.
He married Jeanne, a daughter of François
Gautrot, at Port-Royal in c1682. She gave him only one
child, a son, Pierre, fils, who married Marie, a daughter of
Laurent Granger, at Port-Royal in November 1702; Marie gave
Pierre, fils nine children, including six sons who created
families of their own.)
Jean Corporon came to the colony
in the late 1660s and married Françoise, a daughter of François
Savoie, only a year before the census. In 1671, Jean, whom
Father Molin called Jehan, was age 25, and Françoise was 18.
Their daughter, "6 weeks of age," the priest noted, was "not yet
named." They would call her Marie. Jean and Françoise
lived with little Marie on "no cultivated land," but they owned 1
cattle and 1 sheep. (Françoise gave Jean 15 children,
including three sons who created families of their own. Little
Marie survived childhood and married a son of Michel Boudrot.)
Pierre Guilbeau (Father Molin
called him a Guillebault) came to Acadia by c1668, when he
married Catherine, a daughter of Jean Thériot. In 1671,
Pierre was age 32, and Catherine was 20. They lived on 15
arpents of land with a 2-year-old daughter and owned 6 cattle and 5
sheep. (Catherine gave Pierre seven children, including a son,
Charles, who married Anne, a daughter of Bernard Bourg, at
Port-Royal in c1701; she gave him nine children, including four sons
who created families of their own.)
Roger dit Jean Caissie,
an Irishman, came to the colony probably during the late 1660s as a
soldier in English service. After his enlistment ended, he
married Marie-Françoise, a daughter of Jean Poirier, at
Port-Royal in c1668. Roger, whom Father Molin called a
Kuessy, was 25 years old in 1671, and Marie was 22. They
lived on "no cultivated land" with a 2-year-old daughter, but they
did own 3 cattle and 2 sheep. (Marie-Françoise gave Roger
seven children, including four sons who created their own families.
An historian of the Acadian experience says that Roger may
have introduced fruit trees to the Beaubassin settlement, where he
and Marie-Françoise moved probably in the late 1670s. Some of
Roger's descendants would use his given name as a dit,
which would evolve into the surname, Roger.)
Pierre Cyr, an armurier
or gunsmith, came to the colony by c1670, when he married Marie, a
daughter of Jacques Bourgeois. Pierre, who Father Molin
called a Sire, was age 27, and Marie was 18 in 1671.
They lived on 5 arpents of land with their 3-month-old son, Jean.
They owned 11 cattle and 6 sheep. (Marie gave Pierre only two
more children, both of them sons. However, they and their
oldest brother created families of their own.)
Also in the 1671 census was long-time
settler Philippe Mius, sieur d'Entremont
(Father Molin spelled it Landremont), the seigneur of
Pobomcoup, now Pubnico, at Cap-Sable, on the Atlantic side of the
peninsula. Philippe was age 62 in 1671. Father Molin did
not give the age of Philippe's wife, Madeleine Hélie Du Tillet,
whom Philippe had married in France in c1649 on the eve of their
coming to Acadia, but she would have been 45 years old in 1671.
Father Molin did say that Philippe and Madeleine lived with four
children, two sons and two daughters, ages 17 to 2, and that they
owned 26 cattle, 29 sheep, 12 goats, and 20 hogs on their barony at
Pobomcoup. Their oldest child, daughter Marguerite, age 21,
was counted at Port-Royal with her husband Pierre Melanson
dit La Verdure, fils, age 39. (Philippe and
Madeleine's sons Jacques
dit Pobomcoup, Abraham dit Pleinmarais, and Philippe
d'Azy, created families of their own, and, as his name
implies, oldest son Jacques inherited his father's seigneury.)44a
Also in the colony in 1671, but not
counted in the first census, was Poitou native Jean Serreau,
sieur de Saint-Aubin and seigneur of Ste.-Croix and Passamaquoddy,
site of the original Acadian settlement on the north shore of the
Bay of Fundy. Jean had married Marguerite, daughter of René
Boileau or Boisleau, sieur de La Goupillière and Joachine
Ferrand of St.-Jean Dersé, or Dercé, Diocese of Poitiers, in c1663.
Marguerite gave the seigneur four children, including two sons, born
at Québec, who created families of their own in France. Their
younger daughter Geneviève married first to Jacques, son of Claude
Petitpas, probably at Port-Royal in c1690, and then to
Barthélémy Bergeron dit d'Amboise in c1695.
Other Early Families in Acadia
In late 1678, French authorities
conducted another census at Port-Royal. Unlike Father Molin's
counting of 1671, however, the census taker in 1678 gave only the
names of family heads and their spouses. Most of the families
who had been counted in 1671 were still living along the basin, and
some had moved on to other settlements, including the new one at
Chignecto. Most interestingly, a few new family names appeared
in this latest counting, hinting that the Acadian population
continued to grow not only by natural increase but also by
immigration. Some of the new settlers had come to Acadia
aboard L'Oranger, which had reached Port-Royal in 1671, only
months after the first census had been taken. Others had
arrived on ships from France whose names have been lost to history.
Some had come to Port-Royal via Canada.
Half a dozen years later, in 1685-86,
Jacques de Meulles, seigneur de La Source, intendant of New France,
on orders from his superiors in France, spent months conducting a
tour of Acadia. His primary mission was "to report on the
resources of the area and particularly on the possibility of
establishing sedentary fishing stations, which would provide
employment for the Canadians and a market for [Canada's]
agricultural produce." He also was tasked with conducting a
detailed census of the Acadian population, which he began in early
1686. Again, as in the 1678 census at Port-Royal, familiar
names were found in the colony in even greater numbers, and many new
names appeared. Happily for historians and genealogists, the
census of 1686 was as detailed as the first one. Even more
significantly, the intendant counted Acadians not only at Port-Royal
but also at the newer upper Fundy settlements of Chignecto and
Minas; at the Atlantic-shore settlements of Pobomcoup/Cap-Sable, La Hève, Mirliguèche,
Canso, and Chédabouctou; at Pentagouët, Passamaquoddy, Rivière Ste.-Croix, and Megais in Maine and on the lower Fundy shore; and at Miramichi,
Nepisiguit, and Île Percé along the south shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.45
Many of the new settlers appearing in
de Meulles's census would create family lines in Acadia:
Pierre
Arseneau of Rochefort came to the colony on L'Oranger
and married Marguerite, a daughter of Abraham Dugas, in
c1675. Pierre does not appear in the Port-Royal census of 1678
because not long after their marriage he and Marguerite moved to the
new Acadian settlement at Chignecto. Pierre remarried to
Marie, a daughter of François Guérin, in c1686. That
year, in his census, De Meulles's noted that "Arsenault, who
resides in Port-Royal[,] owns in the seigneurie of Beaubassin
[Chignecto] 1 gun, 30 arpents, 8 cattle, 4 sheep, 6 hogs." De
Meulles insisted that Pierre was age 40 in 1686, and Marie was 24.
They were counted at Port-Royal with Pierre's two sons by his first
wife (who created families of their own. Second wife Marie
gave Pierre seven more children, including four more sons who
created their own families.)
Jean Doiron likely came to the
colony on
L'Oranger. In c1671, either in France or at Port-Royal,
he married Marie-Anne
Canol. They do not appear in the 1678 census. In
1686, de Meulles called him a Douaron and said Jean was age
37, and Marianne was 35. They lived at Port-Royal with seven
children, six sons and a daughter. De Meulles did not give the
size of their farm, but he noted that they owned 1 gun, 7 cattle,
and 1 sheep. (Marie-Anne gave Jean four more children,
including two more sons. In the early 1690s, Jean remarried to
Marie, a daughter of Guillaume
Trahan, and she gave him eight more children, four sons and
two daughters--so he fathered 19 children in all, including 11 sons
who created families of their own!)
Jacques, also called Jean-Jacques,
LePrince came to Port-Royal by 1671, perhaps aboard the
L'Oranger, and married Marguerite, a daughter of Étienne
Hébert, the year of the first census. They were not
counted at Port-Royal in 1678, but de Meulles found them there in
1686. He recorded that Jacques was age 40, and Marguerite was
35. They lived with four children, who de Meulles did not
name, and owned 5 sheep and 3 hogs. (Marguerite gave Jacques
six children, including three sons who created families of their
own.)
Martin Benoit or
Benoist dit Labriere, probably of Rochefort, may have
come to the colony aboard L'Oranger and married Marie
Chaussegros at Port-Royal in c1672. They were counted at
Port-Royal in 1678 and again in 1686. In 1686, Martin, called
a Benoist, was age 42, and Marie was 30. They lived
with six children, four sons and two daughters. De Meulles did
not give the size of their farm, but he noted that they owned 4
hogs. (Marie gave him 10 children, including five sons who
created families of their own.)
Martin
Aucoin, half-brother of the
Aucoin sisters who had come to the colony decades before
and married Michel Boudrot and François Girouard, was
a son of Martin Aucoin of St.-Barthélémy, La Rochelle, and
his second wife, Marie Sallé. Marie, interestingly
enough, had been counted in the first Acadian census of 1671, age
61, widow of Jean Claude, her second husband, and living at
Port-Royal alone, and again at Port-Royal in 1678, still a widow, no
age given, when son Martin Aucoin,
fils would have been ages 20 and 27, respectively.
However, Martin, fils appears in no Acadian census until
1686, and not at Port-Royal but at Minas. He married Marie, a
daughter of Denis Gaudet, at Port-Royal in c1673, but they
did not appear in the 1678 census. Evidently they were among
the early settlers at Minas. De Meulles noted that Martin,
fils was 35 years old in 1686, and Marie was 27. They
lived at Minas with eight children, four sons and four daughters,
the youngest one, a daughter, only 7 months old. They owned 1
gun, 15 cattle, 10 sheep, and 6 hogs. (Amazingly, Martin,
fils's mother, Marie Sallé, was still at Port-Royal in
1686, age 86, living alone. Marie
Gaudet
gave Martin 19 children, including nine sons who created
families of their own!)
Julien Lord, also Laure
and L'Or, dit LaMontagne married Anne-Charlotte,
called Charlotte, a daughter of François Girouard, in c1675.
De Meulles counted them at Port-Royal in 1686. Julien was age
33 and Charlotte 26. They were living with four children, the
youngest one, a daughter age 1. The intendant did not give the
size of their farm of the number of their animals. (Charlotte
gave Julien nine children, including four sons who created families
of their own.)
Étienne Pellerin, born in c1647,
was, according to one authority, François Pellerin's younger
brother (but another authority on the Acadians, followed here,
disagrees). Étienne came to Acadia after the first census and
married Jeanne, a daughter of François Savoie, at Port-Royal
in c1675. They remained in the Port-Royal area. At one
time Étienne owned Hog Island on Rivière au Dauphin, now the
Annapolis River, near Port-Royal. (In August 1714, soon after
the British took over the colony, Étienne was among the Acadians who
traveled to Île Royale, today's Cape Breton Island, aboard the
King's vessel La Marie Joseph to look at land with the
possibility of removing to the French territory. Evidently he
did not like what he saw on the island and returned to Port-Royal,
enduring British rule there.) Jeanne gave him 10 children,
including five sons, all born at Port-Royal, four of whom created
families of their own.
Dominique Gareau, born in France
in c1626, was a sergeant in the King's forces when he married Marie,
daughter of Jean Gaudet and widow of Étienne Hébert,
at Port-Royal in c1676. De Meulles counted them at Port-Royal
in 1686. Dominique, called Garault, was age 60; Marie's
age was unrecorded. They were living with two of Marie's
Hébert sons, ages 20 and 16, and with their only child, daughter
Marie, called Elarie, age 9, on three arpents of land. They
owned 4 sheep and 3 hogs. (Dominique's family was counted at
La Hève in 1693. Daughter Marie, who settled at Minas, married
twice, first to ____ LaChapelle in c1693, and then to Jérôme
Darois
in c1698. Sadly, she died on a prisoner ship in Virginia
during Le Grand Dérangement, when she was in her late 70s.)
François Levron dit
Nantois, probably of Nantes, married Catherine, a daughter of
François Savoie, in c1676. De Meulles counted them at
Port-Royal in 1686. François was age 33, and Catherine was 20.
They lived with four small children, a son and three daughters. The
intendant did not record the size of their farm, but he noted that
they owned 8 cattle and 7 sheep. (Catherine gave François 10
children, including three sons who created families of their own.)
Étienne Rivet or Rivest
married Marie-Jeanne or Marie-Anne, a daughter of Pierre Comeau,
in c1676. De Meulles them at Minas in 1686. Étienne was
age 34, and Marie was 24. They lived with three small
children, two sons and a daughter. The intendant did not
record the size of their farm, but he noted that they owned 3 cattle
and 1 hog. (Marie gave Étienne five children, including a son
who created a family of his own. In c1691, Étienne remarried
to Catherine, who surname has been lost to history, but she gave him
no more children. Étienne remarried again--his third
marriage--to Cécile, daughter of François Joseph dit
Lejeune, in c1694. She gave him three more children, including
another son who created a family of his own. Older son
Étienne, fils
married Anne, a daughter of Jacques LePrince, in c1708.
She gave him eight children, including four sons who created their
own families.)
François Brossard, later
Broussard, perhaps from Anjou, France, married Catherine, a
daughter of Michel Richard, at Port-Royal in c1678. De
Meulles found them still at Port-Royal in 1686. François was
age 33, and Catherine was 22. They lived with three children,
a son and two daughters, the younger daughter "not yet ... baptized"
at 11 days old. They owned 1 gun, 7 cattle, 6 sheep, and 5
hogs. (Catherine gave François 11 children, including five
sons who created families of their own. The activities of two
of those sons, Alexandre and Joseph dit Beausoleil, would
write the family's name large in Acadian history.)
Louis-Noël, called Noël, Labauve
married Marie, a daughter of René Rimbault, in c1678.
De Meulles counted them at Minas in 1686. Louis-Noël, called
de la Boue, was age 27, and Marie was 22. Living
with them a single arpent of land were four young sons, the youngest
one only 2. They owned 1 gun, 1 cow, 3 sheep, and 3 hogs.
(Marie gave Noël a dozen children, including six sons who created
families of their own.)
Michel, son of Pierre Larché
of St.-Pierre parish, Montdidier, Picardie, France, and an
unidentified Indian woman, was born at Trois-Rivières, Canada, in
c1653. Michel came to Acadia as a young servant of Michel Le
Neuf de La Vallière, the seigneur of Beaubassin, between 1678 and
1682. De Meulles counted him as a servant in the seigneur's
household at Chignecto in 1686. Michel was age 22 and single.
(He remained at Chignecto and married Anne, a daughter of Thomas
Cormier, in c1690. She gave him a dozen children,
including six sons who created families of their own. The
family's name evolved into Haché. Michel's sons used
his dit,
Gallant, which, in some of their lines, evolved into a
surname.)
François Léger, age 55, probably
another Canadian, also was counted as a servant in the seigneur of
Beaubassin's household in 1686. There is no evidence, however,
that François created a family of his own.
François Lapierre dit
Laroche married Jeanne, daughter of René Rimbault, probably
at Port-Royal in c1680. De Meulles found them at Minas
in 1686. François was age 38, and Jeanne age 24. They
were living with three children, two sons and a daughter, ages 5, 3,
and 1. De Meulles did not give the size of their holdings, but
he did note that they owned a gun. (Jeanne gave Laroche 10
children, including three sons who created families of their own.)
Claude Guédry dit Gravois
dit La Verdure married first to Kesk8a, an Indian, in
c1680, and then to Marguerite, daughter of Claude
Petitpas and widow of Martin Dugas, in c1681.
They lived at Mirliguèche, on the Atlantic side of the peninsula, as
well as at Port-Royal and Chignecto. De Meulles found them at
Mirliguèche in 1686. Claude, called La Verdure, was age 35,
and Marguerite, whose given name was not recorded, was 25.
They were living with one child, whose gender and age was not
recorded. Claude's daughter Jeanne by his first wife (their
only child) had been born at Beaubassin in June 1681, so she would
have been 5 at the time of the census. Only three of his
children by Marguerite--sons Claude,
fils, Jean-Baptiste, and Charles--would have been born by the
time of the census. Of these four children, only the second
son, Jean-Baptiste, seems to have survived childhood, so the child
counted at Mirliguèche may have been Jean-Baptiste.
(Marguerite gave Claude 11 children, including four sons who created
families of their own. Jean-Baptiste was one of them, but his
fate was not a pleasant one; along with his oldest son and three
Mi'kmaq Indians, he was hanged at Boston, Massachusetts, in November
1726 for piracy.)
Pierre Godin dit
Châtillon, an Canadian, born at St.-Vorle de Châtillon-sur-Seine,
France, in May 1630, was descended from Belgians who lived at Namur.
Pierre's grandfather, a dyer, settled at Châtillon-sur-Seine in
Burgundy in the late 1500s. Pierre's father Claude was a
carpenter. Pierre emigrated to New France in his early 20s and
married Jeanne, daughter of Louis Rousselière of Moëze,
diocese of Saintes, France, at Montréal in October 1654. They
were living at Charlesbourg, below Québec, in 1666, and at Verdun,
near Montréal, in 1681, before moving on to Acadia, where Pierre
worked as a carpenter at Chignecto probably in the employ of the
seigneur of Beaubassin, Michel Le Neuf, sieur de la Vallière.
Pierre and his family, in fact, lived with Irishman Roger Caissie
at Chignecto while completing his work there. Pierre also
owned property at Port-Royal., probably where he died before 1686.
That year, at Port-Royal, de Meulles counted Pierre's widow, Jeanne,
age unrecorded, living with three unmarried children, two grown sons
and a teenage daughter: Gabriel dit Châtillon was age 25,
Pierre dit Châtillon dit Desrochers was 20, and Anne,
the youngest child, was 13. De Meulles did not give the size
of Jeanne's farm or the number of her animals. Also counted in
the census were two of Pierre and Jeanne's married children.
Son Laurent dit Châtillon
dit
Beauséjour, called Laurens, was age 32, and his wife Anne, a
daughter of François Guérin, was 32. Living with them
were three young children, two sons and two daughters, the youngest,
a daughter, only five months old. De Meulles did not give the
size of their farm, but he did note that they owned 7 cattle and 7
sheep. Laurent was a miller, which may explain why the
intendant did not give the size of his farm. (Laurent took his
family back to Beaubassin in the early 1690s. Anne gave him 13
children, including three sons who created families of their own;
all of the sons, however, and six daughters who married, "returned"
to Canada with their father, who remarried at Pointe-Claire, near
Montréal, in June 1719.) Also counted in the 1686 census was
Pierre and Jeanne's fourth daughter, Marie-Madeleine, age 20, with
her husband Robert Henry, age 43, and their four young
children. (Pierre and Jeanne's second son Gabriel dit
Châtillon, like older brother Laurent, also returned to Montréal
after the 1686 census and married Andrée-Angélique, daughter of
Robert
Jeanne or Jasne, there in July 1690. She
gave him a dozen children, including eight sons who created families
of their own. Gabriel's oldest son and a married daughter
remained in Canada, but the younger sons and two younger married
daughters returned to Acadia and settled on Rivière St.-Jean and at
Minas. Pierre and Jeanne's youngest son, Pierre dit
Châtillon dit Desrochers, returned to Canada and married
Marie-Jeanne, daughter of Jacques
Cochon, at Château-Richer, below Québec, in July 1689.
They remained on the St. Lawrence. Marie-Jeanne gave him three
children, two daughters and a son; the daughters married at
St.-Antoine-de-Tilly, on the south bank of the St. Lawrence just
above Québec, and the son, Jean-Baptiste, died there in February
1723, age 18 and still a bachelor.)
Robert
Henry of Rouen, France, raised a Huguenot but a convert
to Catholicism, also came to Acadia from Canada, where he was
counted at Trois-Rivières in 1666 and 1667. He married
Marie-Madeleine, a daughter of Pierre Godin dit
Châtillon, probably in Canada in c1678 and followed her family to
Acadia. De Meulles counted them at Port-Royal in 1686.
Robert was age 43, and Marie-Madeleine was 20. They were
living with four small children, including two sons and a daughter,
the youngest child, only a baby, gender and name unrecorded
(probably daughter Geneviève, born in January), who had not yet been
baptized. De Meulles did not record the size of their farm,
but he did say that they owned 1 gun, 4 cattle, and 10 sheep.
(Marie-Madeleine gave Robert 13 children, including six sons that
created families of their own. One of their daughters,
Madeleine, gave birth to a son whose father is unknown; the boy
survived childhood, called himself an Henry, and also created
his own family.)
Nicolas Barrieau, also called
Barriot, Bariault, and Barillot, came to the
colony by c1682, when he married Martine, a daughter of Étienne
Hébert. De Meulles counted them at Port-Royal in 1686.
Nicolas, called a Barillot, was age 40, and Martine was 28.
They were living with a two-year-old daughter. The intendant
did not give the size of their farm or the numbers of their animals.
(Martine gave Nicolas nine children, including four sons who created
families of their own.)
Jean Préjean dit Le
Breton, evidently from Brittany, married Andrée, a daughter of
François Savoie, in c1683. De Meulles counted them at
Port-Royal in 1686. Jean was age 35, and Andrée was 21.
They were living with a two-year-old daughter on an arpent of land.
They owned 2 guns and 1 hog. (Andrée gave him a dozen
children, including eight sons who created families of their own.)
François Amireau dit
Tourangeau married Marie, a daughter of Jean Pitre, in
c1683. De Meulles counted them at Port-Royal in 1686.
François, called Tourangeau, was age 42, and Marie was 22.
They were living with a daughter, age 2. De Meulles did not
give the size of their farm or the number of their animals.
(Marie gave François 11 children, including five sons who created
families of their own.)
Mathieu, fils, son of Mathieu
D'Amours, sieur de Matane and Marie Marsolet de
Saint-Aignan,
was born at Québec in March 1657. Mathieu, père,
sieur de Matane was a member of the Conseil sourverain de Québec,
and his wife was from a prominent Canadian family, so it was
expected that their surviving sons, Louis, Mathieu, fils,
René, Charles, and Bernard, also would receive seigneuries in New
France; all five of them, in fact, received land grants on Rivière
St.-Jean, in present-day New Brunswick. Louis received his
seigneurie at Jemseg in 1683 and became Louis D'Amours, sieur
de Chaffours et de Jemseg. Mathieu,
fils's grant, which he received in September 1684, lay along
an upper stretch of the river between Jemseg and Nashwaak; with the
grant came the title, sieur de Freneuse. In October 1686, at
Québec, the sieur de Freneuse married Louise, daughter of Simon
Guyon and widow of Charles Thibault, a sister of Mathieu,
fils's older brother Louis's wife Marguerite. De
Meulles counted the D'Amours brothers on Rivière St.-Jean in
1686. Louis, sieur de Chaffours, was age 32, but wife
Marguerite's age was unrecorded. The intendant found them with
no children. Mathieu, fils, sieur de Freneuse, was age
28, but wife Louise's age was not recorded, nor did de Meulles
record them with any children. Also in the census, on Rivière
St.-Jean, was Louis and Mathieu, fils's younger brother,
René, sieur de Clignancour, still a bachelor. De Meulles did
not give the young sieur's age, but he would have been 26.
(Mathieu, fils and Louise had five children, all of them
sons, three of whom married into the Léger de La Grange,
d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, and Coutard families.
Mathieu, fils
died in October 1696 probably at Québec; he was only 39 years
old. One of his grandsons, Jean-Baptiste, son of his second
son, Louis de Chauffors, who married a daughter of
captaines de sauvages Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie, third Baron
de Saint-Castin, settled on his grandfather's seigneurie
along Rivière St.-Jean, used the surname D'Amours
dit de Louvière, the latter name an honorific
used by some of his cousins, married Geneviève, a daughter of Michel
Bergeron dit de Nantes, and created a large family of his
own.)
Jean or Joannis Bastarache
or Basterretche dit Le Basque of the Basque region
of southern France married Huguette, a daughter of Pierre Vincent,
at Port-Royal in c1684. De Meulles counted them at
Port-Royal in 1686. Jean, called Jean de Bastarache,
was age 25, and Huguette was 22. They lived with a daughter
who was only 7 months old. De Meulles did not give the size of
their farm or the number of their animals. (Huguette gave Jean
five children, including three sons who created families of
their own.)
Pierre Bézier dit
Joan dit LaRivière married Madeleine, daughter of Vincent
Brun and widow of Guillaume Trahan, in c1684. De
Meulles counted them at Port-Royal in 1686. Pierre, called
Joan, was age 60, and Madeleine was 47. They lived with
six of her unmarried Trahan
children, ages 19 to 9, and their own child, a daughter,
Susanne, age 2 months, on 8 arpents of land. They owned 10
cattle, 10 sheep, and 2 guns. (Susanne was Pierre Bézier's
only child; she married Pierre, a son of Jean
Comeau l'aîné, at Port-Royal in January 1704, so his
blood lived on.)
Claude Bertrand, no kin to the
childless Clément, married Catherine, a daughter of Jean Pitre,
in c1685. De Meulles counted them at Port-Royal in 1686.
Claude, called Bertran, was age 35, and Catherine was 18.
De Meulles noted that "they live at Cap de Sable." He counted
no children with them at Port-Royal. (Oldest child Claude,
fils was born the year of the census, so they probably were
childless when De Meulles counted them. Catherine gave Claude
10 children, including four sons who created families of their own,
but oldest son Claude, fils was not one of them.)
François Michel dit La
Ruine married Madeleine
Germon
in c1686, on the eve of de Meulles's census. He lived with
her briefly on Rivière-Ste.-Croix, but De Meulles counted them at La
Hève in 1686. François was 35 years old, and Madeleine was 40.
They had no children, but "a servant," Charles
Gourdeau, age 40, lived with them. (Madeleine gave
François no children. He remarried to Marguerite, daughter of
Jean Meunier, in c1695. She gave him a dozen children,
including two sons who created families of their own.)
.
Also in the colony in the
1680s were men who did not appear in de Meulles's census but who
would create significant family lines in Acadia. One of them,
in fact, was a high colonial official who fell in love with an
Acadian girl:
René Lambert, an
indentured servant to a rich widow, lived on the lower Rivière
St.-Jean after his term of service ended, moved to Port-Royal, and
married in c1680 to a woman whose name has been lost to history.
They do not appear in the 1686 census, so René may have returned to
Rivière St.-Jean. René's wife gave him two sons, the older
one, René, fils, born in Acadia the year after de Meulle's
census. The younger son, Jean, also was born in Acadia, date
unrecorded. Both sons survived childhood and created families
of their own.
Louis Saulnier, a
sailor, married Louise Bastineau
dit
Peltier in c1684, but they, too, were not counted in the census
of 1686, probably because they were living in the new Acadian
settlement at Minas. Louise gave him 14 children, all born at
Minas. Five of them were sons who created families of their
own.
François Moyse
dit Latreille, perhaps of Arcasson, France, married Madeleine, a
daughter of Pierre Vincent, in c1685. They also were
not counted in the census of 1686 perhaps because they had settled
on Rivière St.-Jean. Madeleine gave François six children,
including three sons who created families of their own.
Jean Roy dit
LaLiberté of St.-Malo, France, married Marie-Christine
Aubois, also called Hautbois and Dubois, an
Indian, perhaps a métisse, in c1686, evidently after de
Meulles's census. They were living at Cap-Sable in 1693 but
returned to Port-Royal later in the decade. Marie-Christine
gave him nine children, including four sons who created families of
their own.
François Savary, a
mason and stone cutter, was indentured to Antoine Héron "for the
company of Acadia" in 1686. In c1689, free from his contract,
he married Geneviève Forest probably at Port-Royal. She
gave him a son, André, who married Marie-Marthe, a daughter of
Bernard
Doucet, at Port-Royal in February 1712. Marie-Marthe
gave André 11 children, including three sons who created their own
families.
Nicolas Babineau
dit Deslauriers, probably a soldier, married Marie-Marguerite, a
daughter of Laurent Granger, in c1687. She gave Nicolas
six children, including four sons who created families of their own.
They remained at Port-Royal.
Nicolas's younger brother
Jean
Babineau married Marguerite, a daughter of Michel
Boudrot, in c1693. She gave Jean two daughters but no
sons. They, too, remained at Port-Royal.
Mathieu de Goutin, born in
France in c1663 to a family of the lesser nobility, ingratiated
himself to an influential marquis and came to Port-Royal in the late
1680s to serve as the King's lieutenant général civil et criminel,
or "general representative for justice," replacing the aging Michel
Boudrot in August 1688. He also served as écrivain,
or colonial secretary; as conseiller, or counselor; and as
trésorier, or paymaster, at Port-Royal. Despite the
disapproval of Acadian Governor Menneval, Sr. Mathieu married
an Acadian girl, Jeanne, a daughter of Pierre
Thibodeau, at Port-Royal in c1689. In 1691, Mathieu was
granted a seigneurie at Mouscoudabouet, today's Musquodoboit, on the
Atlantic side of the peninsula. He served at Port-Royal until
the British took over the colony in 1713. Jeanne gave him 13
children, including two sons who created families of their own.
Guillaume Le Juge married Marie,
daughter of ____ Mercier and Françoise Gaudet
and widow of Antoine Babin, at Port-Royal in c1688.
Marie gave Guillaume two children, both daughters. Older
daughter Élisabeth, or Isabelle, married first to Pierre le jeune,
son of Martin Benoit, in c1703, and then to François, son of
Jacques Michel, widower of Marie-Anne Léger, at Port
Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, in November 1751.
Joseph Prétieux, later
Précieux, of Charente, France, married Anne, a daughter of
François Gautrot, in c1688. She gave Joseph two
children, including a son who created a family of his own.
Daughter Anne gave birth to a son, Jacques, two years before she
married Pierre Lalande, alias Blaise des Brousses dit
Bonappétit. Jacques's fate is unknown.
René Bernard, probably not kin
to the other Bernards in the colony, married Madeleine, a
daughter of Pierre
Doucet, in c1689, probably at the new Acadian settlement at
Chignecto. Madeleine gave René eight children, all born at
Chignecto, including three sons who created families of their own.
Sr. Jacques Michel dit
Saint-Michel, perhaps a brother or cousin of François dit
La Ruine of La Hève, married Catherine, a daughter of Étienne
Comeau, at Port-Royal in c1689. Catherine gave Sr.
Jacques 13 children, including four sons who created families of his
own.
Pierre Cellier, also called
Le Solier, dit Normand married Marie-Josèphe, also
called Aimée, Lejeune in c1689. They settled at Minas.
Marie-Josèphe gave Pierre 10 children, including two sons who
created families of their own. Their daughter Cécile married
Jacques Guénard dit Gaudereau, originally James
Gainier, an Irish soldier, at Beaubassin, Chignecto, in July
1712.
Jean Ozelet of La Tremblade,
near Rochefort, France, emigrated to Newfoundland, then a part of
greater Acadia, probably in the 1680s and became a fisherman and
petit habitant there. He married Madeleine, daughter of
Louis Beaufet, at Plaisance, now Placentia, Newfoundland, in
c1692. Madeleine gave Jean eight children, all born at
Plaisance, including a son, also named Jean, who married a daughter
of François Moyse and created a family of his own.
.
During the 1690s, despite
nearly a decade of warfare between France and Britain, more settlers
appeared in greater Acadia and established families of their own:
An Allain, who
given name had been lost, came to Acadia by the mid-1680s and
married, but he created no lasting family line. Louis
Allain, a blacksmith, probably no kin to the other Allain,
married Marguerite, a daughter of Antoine Bourg, in c1690,
and built a sawmill on the river below Port-Royal. Marguerite
gave Louis two children, including a son, Pierre, who married a
daughter of Antoine LeBlanc and created a family of his own.
André Célestin
dit
Bellemère, another blacksmith, married Pérrine
Basile in France in c1685. They came to Acadian in
c1690 and settled at the new community of Minas. Pérrine gave
André seven children, including two sons who created their own
families. The older son Jacques's descendants used the family
dit Bellemère as their surname. The younger son
Antoine and his descendants continued the surname Célestin.
Alain Bugeaud of
Bois, Saintonge, France, in turn a churchwarden, surgeon, and
notary, came to Acadia in c1690, married Élisabeth or Isabelle, a
daughter of Pierre Melanson, in c1695 and settled with the
Melansons at Grand-Pré, where he held so many positions.
Élisabeth/Isabelle gave Alain six children, including four sons who
created families of their own.
Pierre
Brassaud or Brassaux married Gabrielle, a daughter
of Michel Forest dit Michel, at Port-Royal in c1691.
Gabrielle gave Pierre nine children, including a son who survived
childhood, married, and may have created a family of his own.
Joseph Gravois
married Marie, daughter of André Mignier dit La Gassé,
in c1691. Marie gave Joseph a son, also named Joseph, who
survived childhood, married a daughter of Pierre Cyr, and
created a family of his own. They settled at Chignecto.
Vincent Longuépée
married Madeleine, a daughter of René Rimbault, at Port-Royal
in c1692. They moved to Minas and then moved again to an even
newer settlement at Cobeguit. Madeleine gave Vincent six
children, including a son, Louis, who married Anne, a daughter of
Pierre Brassaud, in c1720, and created a family of his own.
Louis Mezerrolet
or Mazerolle dit Saint-Louis married Geneviève
Forest, 29-year-old widow of François Savary, at
Port-Royal in c1692. She gave Louis four children, including a
son, Joseph, who married first to Marie-Josèphe, a daughter of Jean
Doiron; she gave him a son named Simon. In his late 30s,
Joseph remarried to Anne, a daughter of Joseph Daigre, at
Minas, and there they remained.
Pierre Lavergne,
servant of the Père du Breslay of Port-Royal in the early 1690s,
married Anne Bernon
at Port-Royal in c1693. Anne gave him five children,
including a son, Jacques, who married Françoise, a daughter of
Claude
Pitre, at Annapolis Royal in February 1727 and settled at
Tintamarre, Chignecto.
Michel Deveau
dit Dauphiné married Marie-Madeleine, daughter of Pierre
Martin and Joachine Lafleur of Sillery, near Québec
(Canadians, not Acadians), and widow of Guyon Chiasson
dit La Vallée, probably at Chignecto in c1693.
Marie-Madeleine gave Michel six children, including four sons who
created families of their own.
Jean Lamoureux
dit
Rochefort, of Rochefort, France, married Marie-Madeleine,
daughter of Abraham
Pichot, at Plaisance, Newfoundland, then part of greater
Acadia, in c1693. Jean was a fisherman and served as a major
of the Plaisance militia. Marie-Madeleine gave him five
children, including a son, Jean-Baptiste dit Rochefort, who
created a family of his own.
Barthélémy Bergeron
dit d'Amboise, a soldier from Amboise, Indre-et-Loire,
France, reached Canada in c1685 and accompanied Pierre Le Moyne
d'Iberville, the future pioneer of the Louisiana colony, on an
expedition to Hudson's Bay during King William's War.
Barthélémy went to Acadia with Iberville in 1696, while the war was
still on. Barthélemy had married Geneviève, daughter of Jean
Serreau, sieur de Saint-Aubin, seigneur of Ste.-Croix and
Passamaquoddy, and widow of Jacques Petitpas, probably at
Québec in c1695. With his bride, Barthélémy settled at
Port-Royal and became a merchant. Geneviève gave him six
children, including three sons who created families of their own.
Many of Barthélémy's descendants continued to use his
dit, d'Amboise, though his second son, Michel, was called
dit
de Nantes. The Bergerons were among the hand full
of Acadian families who settled on Rivière St.-Jean.
Jacques Léger
dit La Rosette, a drummer in the sieur de Villeu's company,
detachment of Marine, stationed at Fort Nashwaak (now Fredericton,
New Brunswick) on Rivière St.-Jean, was born probably in France in
c1668. Around 1693, after his discharge from the King's
service, Jacques married Madeleine, a daughter of Guillaume
Trahan, père, at Port-Royal and took land on the
south side of Rivière au Dauphin, above Port-Royal. Jacques
and Madeleine had 11 children, including four sons, all born at
Port-Royal, three of whom created families of their own.
François Coste
of Martigues, bishopric of Marseille, France, a carpenter,
navigator, and coastal pilot, married Madeleine, a daughter of
Barnabé Martin, probably at Port-Royal in c1695.
Madeleine gave François eight children, including two sons who
created families of their own.
Étienne Poitevin
dit Parisien, evidently from Paris, married Anne, daughter of
Olivier Daigre, at Port-Royal in c1696. She gave
Étienne a dozen children, including a son who created families of
their own, but this son, Jacques-Christophe dit Cadien, did
not remain in Acadia; as his
dit
implies, he settled in Canada. Étienne's younger sons, who
did not marry, and his many married daughters remained in greater
Acadia.
Louis Chênet,
Chenais, or Chesnay dit La Garenne,
son of Bertrand, Sieur de Lothainville and Élisabeth Aubert,
born at Québec in August 1678, moved to Port-Royal and married
Jeanne, a daughter of Barnabé Martin, in c1697. She
gave him two children, including a son, Jean dit La Garenne,
who married a daughter of Jean Pothier and created a family
of his own.
François, fils, son
of François Viger or Vigé and a woman whose name has
been lost to history, married Marie, a daughter of Philippe Mius
d'Azy, probably at Pobomcoup in c1697. They were living at
Ouimakagan, near Pobomcoup, in 1705 and were counted at Cap-Sable,
probably Pobomcoup, in 1708. Marie gave François, fils
seven children, including a son who created a family of his own.
Their oldest daughter Marie-Josèphe married Martin, son of Jean
Corporon and widower of Cécile Joseph dit LeJeune,
in c1718, and remarried to Paul, son of Pierre Benoit le
jeune, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, in July 1750.
Jérôme
Darois,
also called d'Aroy and Darouette, of Paris arrived in
Acadia by c1698, the year he married Marie, daughter of Dominique
Gareau
and Marie
Gaudet, and widow
of ____ Lachapelle,
at Port-Royal.
They moved to Minas. In 1706, during Queen Anne's War, the
British held Jérôme as a prisoner in Boston, Massachusetts.
After the war, he returned to his home at Minas before moving his
family to Petitcoudiac, northwest of Chignecto, still French
territory, probably to escape British authority in peninsula Nova
Scotia. Marie gave Jérôme 10 children, including two sons who
married Breau sisters and created families of their own.
Jean Naquin dit
L'Étoille, a master tailor, married Marguerite, a daughter of
Jean Bourg, soon after the census of 1698. They settled
at Bélair near Port-Royal. Marguerite gave Jean five children,
including two sons who recreated families of their own.
Jean Pothier, also
called Poitiers, married Anne, a daughter of Michel
Poirier, in c1699, probably at Chignecto. Anne give
Jean three children, including two sons who created families of
their own. Jean remarried to Marie-Madeleine, a daughter of
Guyon Chiasson, in c1709. They remained at Chignecto.
Marie-Madeleine gave Jean seven more children, including three more
sons who created families of their own.
.
More future family
progenitors arrived during the final years of French control of
peninsula Acadia. Most of the first decade of the new century,
like the 1690s, was consumed by war, so it is no surprise that many
of these new Acadians were soldiers and sailors:
François Tillard
married Marguerite, daughter of Jacques LePrince, probably at
Port-Royal in c1700. They later settled at Minas.
Marguerite gave François four children, including a son who created
a family of his own.
Jean-Joseph, called Joseph,
son of perhaps Jean
Boutin
and Susanne
Rocheteau of
Québec, born perhaps at Québec, was a 25-year-old fisherman at
Port-Royal in 1701.
He married
Marie-Marguerite, a daughter of Pierre
Lejeune
dit
Briard, at Port-Royal in c1708.
They moved to La Hève on the Atlantic side of the peninsula
and then to Minas, but they did not remain there either.
Marie-Marguerite gave Joseph eight children, including five sons who
created families of their own.
Jacques Bonnevie
dit Beaumont of Paris, a corporal in the King's service, married
Françoise, a daughter of Philippe Mius d'Entremont, at
Port-Royal in c1701. Françoise gave Jacques five children,
including a son, Jacques dit
Jacquot dit Beaumont, who married daughters of Alexandre
Lord, Jean Comeau, and Paul Melanson.
Maurice, son of Paul
Vigneau and Françoise Bourgeois of Ste.-Famille, Île
d'Orléans, on the St. Lawrence, married Marguerite, daughter of
Pierre Comeau l'aîné, probably at Port-Royal in c1701.
Maurice worked as a charpentier du roi. Marguerite gave
him 11 children, including six sons who created families of their
own.
Mathieu dit La
Citardy spelled his surname Brasseur and sometimes
Brasseux and LeBrasseur, so he probably was not a kinsman
of Pierre
Brassaud/Brassaux. Mathieu married Jeanne,
teenage daughter of André Célestin dit Bellemère,
at Port-Royal in c1702; Mathieu, interestingly enough, was 39 years
older than his wife. They settled at Minas. Jeanne gave
Mathieu 11 children, including fives sons who created families of
their own.
Pierre Carret
or Carré, a soldier, married Angélique, a daughter of
Guyon Chiasson, probably at Chignecto in c1702.
Angélique gave Pierre 13 children, including four sons who created
families of their own.
Gabriel Moulaison
dit Recontre of Limoges, France, arrived in Acadia by 1702,
the year he fathered a daughter by Marie, daughter of Olivier
Daigre and widow of Pierre Sibilau, at Port-Royal.
Gabriel dit Recontre and Marie did not marry. (Their
daughter married into the Henshaw family.) In July
1706, at Port-Royal, Gabriel married Marie, daughter of Julien
Aubois of the Cap-Sable area. They settled at Pobomcoup, today's
Pubnico, near the cape. Marie gave Gabriel nine more children,
including four sons who created families of their own.
Élie, son of Jean
Gentil and Marie
Jolet of St.-Nazaire-sur-Charente, Saintogne, France, married
Cécile, a daughter of Barnabé Martin, at Port-Royal in
October 1702. Élie worked as a mason. Cécile gave him
two children, a daughter and a son. Their daughter Anne-Marie
or Marie-Anne married Jean-Baptiste, son of Michel Haché
dit Gallant
and Anne Cormier, at Beaubassin, Chignecto, in February
1719. The fate of Élie and Cécile's son is unknown.
Jean Clémençeau
dit Beaulieu of Bordeaux, France, a sergeant in the King's
service, reached Port-Royal before 1703, the year in which he ran
afoul of Acadian Governor Jacques-François de Mombeton de Brouillan.
The governor had authorized Clémençeau "to work on the
distribution of the King's provisions and munitions" at the
Port-Royal fort, but one of Clémenceau's superiors received
word that Clémençeau "was involved in some malfeasance." The
superior complained to the governor, who ordered the sergeant's
arrest when Clémençeau returned to the fort, "but shortly
thereafter he was released and his clothing was returned to him
...." Evidently the sergeant had found an ally in one demoiselle
Barat, "who promised to represent him whenever and as often as
would be necessary." Two years later, the war still raging,
Clémençeau married Anne, métisse daughter of Jean Roy
and Marie Aubois, in Boston, so the English must have
captured him. Back at Port-Royal in 1706, Jean and Anne's marriage
was blessed by a priest. Anne gave him six children, including
son son, Louis, who married a daughter of Jean Caissie and
created a family of his own. Jean remarried to Marguerite, a
daughter of Jean Corporon, at Port-Royal in c1711. She
gave him another son, Jean-Pierre, who married daughters of René
Martin and Claude Gautrot.
Charles dit
Champagne, son of Julien Orillon and Anne Roger of
St.-Thomas de La Flèche, Angers, France, arrived at Port-Royal in
c1703, early in Queen Anne's War, to serve as a soldier and mason in
the garrison at Port-Royal and also as a servant in the home of
Acadian governor de Bouillan. Not along after he reached the colony,
Charles
dit
Champagne married Marie-Anne, daughter of Jean Bastarache,
at Port-Royal in January 1704. This gave him good reason to
remain in the colony when the war finally ended in 1714.
Marie-Anne gave him nine children, all born at Port-Royal, including
five sons who created families of their own.
Jean,
son of Antoine
Mouton, maître d'hôtel de M. de Grignan, and Jeanne
Merlasse of Marseille, France, arrived in Port-Royal in c1703
and married Marie, 16-year-old daughter of Alexandre Girouard,
in January 1711. They moved to Grand-Pré in c1712, where
Sr. Jean earned his living as a surgeon, and then moved on to
Chignecto. Marie gave the surgeon 10 children, including five
sons who created families of their own.
Étienne DesRoches,
a native of Ploubalay, France, near St.-Malo, married Gabrielle
Le Manquet of Plaisance, Newfoundland, probably at La Baleine,
Cap Breton Island, in c1703; he was in his early 50s and she in her
early 20s at the time of the wedding. Étienne worked as a
resident fisherman, or habitant, at La Baleine. He and
Gabrielle had nine children, including four sons who created
families of their own.
Gabriel, fils, son
of Gabriel Samson and Françoise Durand of la Pointe de
Lévis, Québec, born at Cap-St.-Ignace on the St. Lawrence, married
Jeanne, a daughter of Barnabé Martin and widow of Louis
Chênet, at Port-Royal in April 1704. Gabriel, fils
was a constructeur, navigator, and carpenter. Jeanne
gave him 11 children, including three sons who created families of
their own.
Louis dit Poitiers,
son of René Marchand or Marcheguy and Jacquette
Gaillard of Bussière-Pointevine, Poitiers, France, a corporal in
the Port-Royal garrison and a habitant-gardener, married Marie,
daughter of Laurent Godin dit Châtillon, at Port-Royal
in November 1705. Marie gave the corporal five children,
including two sons who created families of their own.
Michel dit Le
Rigeur, son of Michel
Picot and Saintine Venarde of the bishopric of
Chartres, France, married Élisabeth, or Isabelle, a daughter of
François Levron, at Port-Royal in November 1705.
Élisabeth gave Le Rigeur two children, including a son, Michel III,
who created a family of his own.
Jean-François Flan
of Paris, France, married Marie, a daughter of Michel Dupuis,
at Port-Royal in January 1706. Jean-François served as clerk for the
Port-Royal fortifications--commis des fortifications--and for
a time oversaw the rebuilding of the town's defenses. After
the British gained control of Port-Royal and renamed it Annapolis
Royal, the former commis des fortifications moved on to
Minas. Meanwhile, Marie gave him five children, only one of
them a son, who probably did not marry. Three of Jean-François
and Marie's daughters did marry, into the
LeBlanc and Landry families, so the blood, at
least, of the Parisian Flans survived in Acadia.
François dit Paris,
son of Jean Testard and Jeanne Vignier of Beaumont in
Picardie, not Paris, France, married Marie, a daughter of Jean
Doiron, at Port-Royal in November 1706. Paris worked as a
carpenter and a navigator. Marie gave him seven children,
including a son, Jean-Baptiste dit Paris, who created a
family of his own.
Pierre dit La
Forest, son of Pierre Part and Catherine Piouset
of Mouzens, bishopric of Tulle, France, was a soldier in la
compagnie de Falaise, serving in the garrison at Port-Royal,
when he married Jeanne, a daughter of
Claude
Dugas, in
February 1707. Pierre dit La Forest became a blacksmith
at Port-Royal after his term of service expired. Jeanne gave
him six children, including three sons who created families of their
own.
Louis, son of François
Blin, also called Abelin, and Jeanne Barbier
of St.-Pierre, Lachine, Montréal, Canada, married Marie, a
daughter of Olivier Daigre, probably at Minas in c1707.
Marie gave Louis one child, a daughter born at Grand-Pré in December
1708. After Marie's death, Louis left British-controlled Nova
Scotia, returned to his native Canada, and remarried to Marguerite,
daughter of Jean Mineau dit Lumina, at Rivière-Ouelle,
on the lower St. Lawrence, in April 1709. Marguerite gave
Louis 14 more children, all born on the St. Lawrence. Daughter
Anne, however, by his first wife, returned to Nova Scotia and
married Michel Picot
III at Grand-Pré in February 1731.
Jean dit La
Giroflée, son of Claude Turpin and Anne Prission
of Sancerre en Berry, France, was a sergeant in the compagnie
de Duvivier at Port-Royal when he married Catherine, a daughter
of Jean Bourg, at Port-Royal in January 1708. Catherine
gave the sergeant seven children, including a son whose given name
and his spouse's name have been lost to history. Three of
Jean's daughters married into the Barrieau,
Robichaud, and Comeau families, so his blood survived.
Gabriel-Louis, son
of Gabriel
Rousseau, sieur de la Gorre et de
Villejoin, gentlehomme servant son altesse royale
Gaston de France, and Dame Marie
Baudron, born at St.-Honoré, Blois, France, inherited his
father's title, sieur de Villejoin, and served as an officer
in the Detachment of Marines at Fort Louis, Plaisance, Newfoundland,
then a part of greater Acadia. Gabriel-Louis married
Marie-Josèphe, daughter of Sr. François Bertrand,
colonel of militia and a member of the Order of St.-Louis, and
Jeanne Giraudet, at Plaisance in April 1708. Their
wedding must have been a big affair; Newfoundland governor Pastour
de Costebelle and dozens of other distinguished guests witnessed the
ceremony. Marie-Josèphe gave Sr. Gabriel-Louis six
children, including two sons who married daughters of fellow French
aristocrats, and who also were their cousins. Older son
Gabriel de Villejoin, whose second wife was a daughter of Chignecto
seigneur Michel Le Neuf de Vallière, was made a
chevalier of the Order of St. Louis and died in France after serving
the King as a brigadier. Gabriel-Louis's younger son Michel
d'Orfontaine married another daughter of Michel Le Neuf de
Vallière.
Pierre, son of Noël
Surette and Françoise
Colarde of Mauset, diocese of La Rochelle, France, was a
sailor when he married Jeanne, a daughter of Étienne Pellerin,
at Port-Royal in February 1709. They remained at Port-Royal
and settled in the parish of St.-Laurent on the haute rivière.
Although Pierre became a farmer along the upper Rivière au Dauphin,
he also continued to work as a sailor. Jeanne gave him nine
children, including three sons who created families of their own.
François Bodart of
Brussels, a navigator, married Marie, daughter of Charles Babin,
probably at Minas in c1709. Marie gave François five children,
all of them daughters. Their fourth daughter Marguerite
married Joseph, son of Michel Vincent, probably at Minas in
c1745.
Jean-Baptiste Dubois
dit Dumont of Montréal married Marie, daughter of
André Simon dit Boucher, at Port-Royal in c1710.
Jean-Baptiste died at Grand-Pré in c1713, but not before fathering a
son, Joseph dit Dumont, born at Port-Royal in c1712.
Joseph chose as his surname not Dubois but his father's
dit, Dumont, married a daughter of Jean-Baptiste Vécot,
and created a family of his own.
The Founding of New Settlements and
the Growth of Old Ones: Chignecto, Minas, Pigiguit, Cobeguit,
Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, Memramcook, Rivière St.-Jean, Pobomcoup, and
Port-Royal
Soon after the counting of heads by the
new Acadian governor and the arrival of the L'Oranger in
1671, some of the inhabitants of the Port-Royal basin became
pioneers again--"the first swarming of the Acadians to establish
their hive," as one historian describes it.
"Not long after 1671," writes another historian of the
colony, "Jacques Bourgeois, the former surgeon of d’Aulnay
and a well-to-do farmer of Port Royal, decided to move...."
His new settlement stood nearly a hundred miles northeast of
Port-Royal, along Rivière Missaguash just north of what is now the
Cumberland Basin, an arm of the Baie de Chignecto that, in turn, is
an extension of the Bay of Fundy.
Bourgeois "had known the area in younger days in the course
of extensive fur-trading activities and his move was undoubtedly
aimed at the freer activity of Indian trading as well as of farming.
But he persuaded five other families to go with him and the
prospects of farming were certainly bright enough with a situation
on the edge of the largest continuous expanse of dykable marshland
in eastern North America [the Tintamarre]. Even without
dyking, the resources of salt-marsh hay, and of grazing, must have
seemed limitless. Within five years the group was well
established, other settlers followed, more and more land was
reclaimed, and the flocks and herds increased." The location
of a new settlement so far from the prying eyes of French officials
in Port-Royal doubtlessly was another incentive to settle the place.
The small ships of New England merchants could slip quietly past
Port-Royal into Chignecto Bay and then up into the narrow basin,
where they could anchor near the settlements and engage in the trade
that was so important to the Acadians. Also, as one historian
points out, "the Shediac portage was an important relay station in
the sea communications between Acadia and Canada and a strategic
position commanding the isthmus and Baie Française."89
The other men who followed Jacques
Bourgeois to this distant new settlement were his older
sons Charles and Germain; his son-in-law Pierre Cyr and
future sons-in-law Jean
Boudrot
and Germain Girouard; Germain Girouard's
brothers-in-law Thomas Cormier and Jacques Blou, one a
carpenter, the other a cooper; and Pierre Arseneau, a
bachelor who had recently arrived at Port-Royal aboard L'Oranger.
In October 1676, Canadian Michel Le Neuf, sieur de La
Vallière, son of a governor of Trois-Rivières and son-in-law of
Nicolas Denys, secured seigniorial rights from Governor-General
Frontenac to a 10-square-league area around the new settlement and
named it Beaubassin after the narrow basin in which flowed several
area rivers, including the Missaguash. The collection of
settlements that arose in the area also was known by the Indian name
Chignecto, after the narrow, 15-mile-wide isthmus that these
settlements straddled. Acadian tradition insists that the
grant to La Vallière specified that "he leave undisturbed any
settlers there, together with the lands they used or had planned to
use for themselves; the Bourgeois group was thus protected."
La Vallière "established himself on an 'island' of higher ground in
the marshes," called Tonge's Island today. In the late 1670s
and early 1680s, the seigneur was the commander and then governor of
Acadia, so Beaubassin served as the colony's capital until it
returned to Port-Royal in 1684. During the following years,
Chignecto settlements appeared on either side of the Cumberland
Basin and Rivière Missaguash--at
Menoudy, Maccan, Nappan, La Planche, and Rivière-des-Hébert on the
east, and at Veshak, La Coupe, Welicook, Aulac, Le Lac,
Les-Richards, Tintamarre (also called Tantramarre), and La Coupe
west of the Missaguash. Several church parishes were created for the
area: Notre-Dame-du Ban Secours, also called
Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption-de-la-Trés-Ste.-Vierge,
at Beaubassin; St.-Louis at Pointe-de Beauséjour; and St.-Anne at
Tintamarre.90
With La Vallière came new settlers to
the Chignecto area in the late 1670s, among them Guyon Chiasson
dit
Lavallée, then in his middle age and married to his second wife, and
Michel Larché
or Haché dit Gallant, a young
servant of the seigneur who married Anne, daughter of Thomas
Cormier. From Port-Royal in the late 1670s and
early 1680s came Michel, son of Jean Poirier; and Irishman
Roger dit
Jean Caissie, brother-in-law of Michel Poirier; an
historian of the Acadian experience says that Roger may have
introduced fruit trees to Beaubassin. In the following years,
other settlers in the Chignecto area bore the names Belliveau,
Bernard,
Boucher,
Bourg, Brun,
Carret, Clémençeau, Daigre, Doiron, Doucet,
Dugas, Forest, Gaudet,
Gravois, Guénard, Hébert, Hugon, Labauve,
Lambert, Landry, Lanoue, Livois,
Martin,
Melanson, Mouton, Olivier, Orillon, Pothier,
Quimine,
Richard, and Thériot.91
Within a decade after the founding of
the Chignecto settlements, the Acadians swarmed again, this time to
a fertile basin half way between Port-Royal and Beaubassin.
The Bassin des Mines, or Minas Basin, 60 miles northeast of
Port-Royal and 50 miles south of Beaubassin, took its name from a
shiny metal substance found in the area that early explorers of the
peninsula believed was copper. Pierre Melanson,
the elder son of a French Huguenot who had come to Acadia with the
English, married a daughter of Philippe Mius d'Entremont and
became one of the most prosperous settlers at Port-Royal; in 1680,
Pierre sold
his property there and moved his large family to Grand-Pré, which
lay between two small rivers flowing into the basin, the
St.-Antoine, later called Rivière-des-Habitants and now the Cornwallis,
to the north; and the Gaspereau to the south. Two years
later, Pierre, the 26-year-old son of Jean Thériot, started
another settlement, on Rivière St.-Antoine, not far from
Pierre Melanson's homestead. "Being a popular and
generous man," one historian attests, Thériot "supplied wheat
without interest and housed many while their homes were being
built." Thériot had married a daughter of René
Landry
le jeune in c1678. They were not blessed with
children, but Pierre's nephews Germain, Jean, Claude, and Joseph,
sons of his older brother Claude, followed their uncle to Minas and
spawned a huge extended family. Soon the Melansons and Thériots
were joined by other pioneers and their families from Port-Royal who
settled along the many streams that flowed into the basin, including
Rivière-aux-Canards, north of the St.-Antoine. Antoine,
Claude, and René, sons of René Landry
l'aîné; Jacques, René, André, and Antoine, sons of
Daniel LeBlanc; Étienne and Michel, sons of Étienne Hébert;
their cousin Jean, son of Antoine Hébert; and Claude, son of
Michel
Boudrot, filled the basin with their progeny in the decades that
followed, as did other colonists from Port-Royal and Chignecto, and
new arrivals from France. Two church parishes arose in the lower
part of the basin: St.-Charles at Grand-Pré, and
St.-Joseph farther north on Rivière-aux-Canards.
Other settlers at Minas bore the names
Allain,
Aucoin, Babin, Bellemère, Bélisle, Benoit,
Bergeron, Bertrand, Blanchard,
Boucher, Bourg, Brasseur, Breau, Brun,
Bugeaud,
Clouâtre,
Comeau, Daigre, Darois, David, Doucet,
Dugas, Dumont,
Duon, Dupuis, Flan, Gautrot, Girouard,
Granger,
Labauve,
Lalande, Lebert, Longuépée, Mazerolle, Mouton,
Part, Pinet, Pitre, Précieux,
Renaud,
Richard, Robichaud, Saulnier, Semer,
Surette, Thibodeau, and Trahan.92
As the number of new settlers at Minas
attests, the place became an agricultural marvel. "This area,
which was to assume demographic and economic leadership among the
three Acadian farming regions in the eighteenth century, was the
last of the three major Acadian centers to get started," one
historian reminds us. "But its fine marshlands, the weakness
of its nominal seigneurial control [claimed by the Le Borgnes],
and, perhaps above all, its relative freedom from the attention of
both New England raiders and French officials, allowed it to expand
rapidly. From only 57 people in the Grand Pré area in 1686 the
population soared to more than 580 in 1707." He goes on:
"There is no doubt that agriculture flourished in Minas beyond any
experience at Port Royal or Beaubassin. It was the better
balanced than the latter; not neglecting livestock, in which
Beaubassin rather specialized, it developed the best and most
extensive arable farming in Acadia." Another plus for the
settlements at Minas was the fact that access to the basin from the
Bay of Fundy was easy enough for the Acadians to continue their
important trade with merchants from New England.93
Beginning around c1685, settlers from
Minas and Port-Royal moved a few miles southeast of Grand-Pré into
the upper stretches of what is now the Avon River just above its
confluence with the smaller St. Croix. They settled on both
sides of the Avon around present-day Falmouth and Windsor, Nova
Scotia. The Acadians called the settlement Pigiguit, Mi'kmaq
for "junction of the waters." The first church parish there,
Ste.-Famille, was founded in August 1698 and lay on the west side of
the river; a second parish, dedicated to Notre-Dame-de l'Assomption
and usually called L'Assomption, was founded in June 1722 for
inhabitants living on the east side of Rivière Pigiguit, whose wide
tidal flats made it difficult to cross to the west bank.
Settlers at Pigiguit bore the names Arsement,
Babin,
Barillot, Benoit, Boudrot, Boutin, Brasseur,
Breau, Broussard, Bugeaud, Comeau,
Corporon,
Daigre,
Doiron, Forest, Gaudet, Gautrot, Girouard,
Guédry, Hébert, Landry, LeBlanc,
Lejeune,
Martin,
Michel,
Mire, Prince, Richard, Rivet, Roy, Savary,
Thibodeau,
Trahan, and Vincent.94
In c1689, Mathieu Martin, "the
first born Frenchman in Acadia," secured a seigneurie at the extreme
northeast end of the Minas Basin, where he engaged in the fur trade.
Martin's seigneurie, called
Wagobagitik or
Wecobequitk (Mi'kmaq for "end of the water's flow," which refers to
the present-day Salmon River), also Ouëcobeguy, St.-Matheiu,
and eventually Cobeguit, lay 50 miles northeast of Grand-Pré and 55
miles southeast of Beaubassin. Although Martin married,
he and his wife, a fellow Acadian whose name has been lost to
history, had no children. As a result, Cobeguit was not
settled until over a decade after Martin received his grant.
By 1701, Martin Bourg,
Jérôme Guérin, and Martin Blanchard, all from Port-Royal, had
moved their families to Martin's seigneurie, which became an
important cattle-producing area. The church parish there was
dedicated to SS. Pierre-et-Paul. During the following years,
Cobeguit settlers also bore the names Aucoin, Benoit,
Breau, Carret, Doiron,
Dugas, Gautrot,
Guédry, Guillot, Hébert, Henry, Lejeune,
Longuépée,
Naquin,
Pitre, Robichaud, and Thériot.95
During the late 1690s and the early
1700s, another cluster of Acadian settlements sprang up in the
region, this time only a dozen miles west of Beaubassin, in an area
claimed by the seigneur of Chignecto, Michel LeNeuf de la Vallière,
and his son-in-law, Claude-Sébastien de Villieu. Chepoudy
settlement, now present-day Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, joined the
constellation of Acadian communities after Pierre Thibodeau,
who had come to Acadia with Emmanuel
Le Borgne de Bélisle during the early 1650s and married into the
Thériot
clan, explored a stretch of marshy coast on upper Baie de Chignecto
during the spring of 1698. Believing he had secured a
seigneurie from the colony's commander, Joseph Robinau de Villebon,
who had sent him to the area, Thibodeau prepared to establish
a settlement at the Chepoudy estuary. Three of his sons
wintered at Chepoudy in 1699/1700 and traded furs with the Indians.
Hearing of it, de Villieu protested their presence on his
father-in-law's seigneurie and called them squatters. Despite
a question of their claim to the land, Pierre, his sons, and some of
their neighbors from Port-Royal built at Chepoudy a flour mill and a
sawmill, using machinery they had purchased from New Englanders.
The church parish at Chepoudy was dedicated to
Notre-Dame-de-la-Visitation and was also called Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.
Meanwhile, Guillaume Blanchard of Port-Royal, younger son of
Jean, also believed he had secured a seigneurie from Villebon, on
the Petitcoudiac River near present-day Hillsborough, New Brunswick.
Blanchard started his new settlement about the same time that
his friend Pierre Thibodeau settled at Chepoudy. Pierre
dit Pitre Gaudet and René Blanchard were the first
settlers in the valley of the Memramcook, east of the Petitcoudiac.
In the years that followed, the settlers at Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac,
and Memramcook, called by the inhabitants the trois-rivières,
also bore the names Allain,
Babineau,
Bertrand,
Breau, Broussard, Brun, Comeau, Daigre,
Darois,
Doucet, Dubois, Hébert, Labauve,
Lalande, Landry, LeBlanc, Léger,
Martin,
Pitre, Préjean, Saulnier, Savoie,
Surette,
and
Trahan.96
While Acadians on the peninsula were
establishing settlements at the head of the Bay of Fundy and in the
Minas Basin, another, much smaller Acadian community, at least in
population, arose along the middle Rivière St.-Jean, or, rather,
came into its own. This was the area once controlled by
Charles La Tour and his lieutenants and for a time was the
center of the fur trade in greater Acadia. During the late
1600s and early 1700s, agricultural settlements grew up along the
river above the old fort at Jemseg: at Ste.-Anne-du-Pays-Bas, now
Fredericton; Ekoupag or Meductic, now Maugerville; and at Nashwaak.
The La Tours were still there, in the third generation, as
were the descendants of Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin and
his half-breed son Bernard-Anselme, who once held sway at Pentagouët
in Maine. Joining the
La Tours and the Saint-Castins, some with seigneuries of
their own, were families that bore the names Le Borgne de Bélisle,
Bergeron dit
d'Amboise, D'Amour or D'Amours de Louvière,
Dugas,
Godin dit Beauséjour, dit Bellefeuille,
dit
Bellefontaine, dit Boisjoli, dit Châtillon dit
Préville,
dit Lincour, and dit Valcour, Henry,
Part, and
Roy. The church on the upper St.-Jean, located at
Meductic, was dedicated to Ste.-Anne.97
Another Acadian community that had
sprung up in the early 1600s also came into its own late in the
century. Cap-Sable, at the southwestern tip of the peninsula,
was once controlled by the La Tours. The most populated
settlement near the cape was Pobomcoup, now Pubnico, north of the
cape. Philippe Mius, sieur d'Entremont of
Cherbourg, childhood friend of Charles La Tour, had received
the seigneurie of Pobomcoup from the governor in the early 1650s.
Half a century later, his family was still there, in the third
generation, and still in possession of their ancestor's seigneurial
rights. The d'Entremonts had coaxed families from
France, and especially from Port-Royal, to settle on their lands at
the cape, where they engaged in limited agriculture as well as in fishing.
The largest family at Pobomcoup were the Amireaus.
Families there also bore the names
Landry,
Moulaison, and Viger. Despite its relatively
small population, two church parishes arose in the Cap-Sable area:
Ste.-Anne at Cheboque, northwest of Pobomcoup, and Notre-Dame at Pobomcoup.99
Meanwhile, the Acadians
who remained in the Port-Royal valley built more dykes on both sides
of the river above and below the fort, claiming more arable land
from the basin. Settlers moved as far upriver as the terrain
and the salt marshes allowed, and others fanned out along the many
tributaries that flowed from the uplands into the basin. New
settlers arrived, took up new land, and married into the families
already there. Despite living under the noses of the French
officials who ran the colony, Port-Royal Acadians went about their
business much as their cousins and compatriots were doing in more
distant settlements. Two church parishes served the Port-Royal
area: the original parish for the colony, St.-Jean-Baptiste,
in the village near the fort on the lower river, and St.-Laurent
on the upper river. A high-ranking French official, Mathieu
de Goutin, the colony's head clerk or recorder and conseiller
du roi, who served from the late 1680s to 1710, married into an
Acadian family, the
Thibodeaus, at Port-Royal. Some settlers built
houses near the fort and engaged in legitimate commerce, among them
Abraham Boudrot, a son of De Goutin's predecessor as
lieutenant général civil et criminel, Michel Boudrot.
During the final decades of French rule
in Acadia, Alexandre Le Borgne de Bélisle and his
descendants, who used the family name Bélisle, held the
seigneurie at Port-Royal. Other families at Port-Royal, old
and new, also bore the names
Babineau, Bastarache, Belliveau,
Blanchard,
Bonnevie, Bourg, Bourgeois, Breau,
Broussard, Brun, Comeau, Doucet, Dugas,
Duon,
Dupuis, Forest, Gaudet, Gautrot,
Girouard,
Gousman, Granger,
Guédry, Guilbeau, Hébert, Jeanson, Landry,
Lanoue, Lavergne, LeBlanc, Léger,
Levron,
Martin,
Martin dit Barnabé, Melanson, Michel, Moyse,
Orillon, Part, Pellerin, Préjean,
Prince,
Richard,
Robichaud, Roy, Savary, Savoie, and Thériot.98
The Acadians and Their Seigneurs
A creation of France, Acadia from its
earliest days was burdened with French institutions more suitable
for the mother country than the North American wilderness. One
of these was the medieval institution of feudalism, especially its
component, manorialism, which in New France was called
seigneurialism. A seigneurie, like the Old World manor, was a
grant of land from the King to a vassal. In France, only
nobles held seigneuries. Not so in North America. Grants
were made to military officers, successful merchants, and to
favorites of governors and intendants. Along with land came
other feudal rights enjoyed by the seigneur. It was assumed
that a seigneur would attract to his land settlers known as
censitaires or habitants. As part of the essential
feudal arrangement, the seigneur was empowered to collect from his
inhabitants cens et rentes, or taxes for use of the land.
The seigneur also could impose inheritance taxes called lods et
vents and require his habitants to work for him for three days
of the year, usually on projects beneficial to everyone living on
the seigneurie.
In 1627, Cardinal Richelieu, in the
name of King Louis XIII, imposed a seigneurial system on New France.
In 1665, Canada's first intendant, Jean Talon, as direct
representative of King Louis XIV in the colony, was given the power
to grant and oversee the many seigneuries that lined both banks of
the Fleuve St.-Laurent, "the Highway of New France." Talon
demanded that the seigneurs actually live on their "long lots"
beside the St. Lawrence. Following French custom, women were
allowed to inherit their husbands' or fathers' seigneuries.
There was nothing in Acadia like
Canada's St. Lawrence, with its miles upon miles of long-lot
seigneuries lining both banks of the river. No great fleuve
ran for dozens of leagues into Acadia's interior, serving as a great
highway, both of communication and commerce, for the colony.
There was the Bay of Fundy, to be sure, with its smaller bays, its
inlets, and its wide, marsh-lined basins, but the generally rocky
coast of La Grand Baie Française, as Dugua and Champlain
called it, precluded settlement along its shore.
Dugua himself had been the first
"seigneur" of Acadia, though the institution did not take root there
until many decades later. As holder of the King's concession,
he possessed the power to grant seigneuries. His first grant
was that of Port-Royal to his lieutenant, Jean de Biencourt, sieur
de Poutrincourt et de Saint-Just. Upon Poutrincourt's death,
his oldest son, Charles de Biencourt de Saint-Just, inherited the
seigneurie. After Biencourt's death, Charles La Tour
claimed the young bachelor's seigneurial rights not only to
Port-Royal but to all of Acadia. After Isaac de Razilly became
governor of New France and Acadia, he granted Port-Royal to his
cousin and lieutenant, Charles de Menou, sieur d’Aulnay de Charnisay.
Another of Razilly's lieutenants, Nicolas Denys de la Ronde, held
wide-spread seigneuries at Fort St.-Pierre on Cape Breton Island; at
Canso, Chédabouctou, and Port Rossignol on the Atlantic side of the
peninsula; and along the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore all the way up
to Gaspé. Charles La Tour was granted, or, more
accurately, confirmed to have been holding, seigneuries at
Cap-Sable, on lower Rivière St.-Jean, and at Machias in Maine.
After Razilly's untimely death in 1636,
his successor, the Sieur d'Aulnay, assumed his cousin's hold on the
other concessionaires in the colony, even going so far as to destroy
or seize some of their holdings when they resisted him.
Meanwhile, d'Aulnay transferred the colony's agricultural operation
from La Hève to Port-Royal. There, perhaps under the
seigneur's supervision, the habitants began the practice of
reclaiming the salt mashes lining the basin with extensive dykes and
aboiteaux. Not only the construction but also the maintenance
of these mounds of earth and the delicate wooden clapper valves that
kept the salt tides out and allowed the rain water to cleanse the
soil behind the dykes required the collective effort of the
habitants. Three days a year of required collective labor made
no sense to these hard-working farmers. They worked together,
neighbor helping neighbor, not at the behest of a pushy seigneur but
when necessity required it, which was often. This collective
labor, along with their kinship networks, not seigneurial
obligations, became the glue that bound them tightly together and
helped to create a unique Acadian culture.
After the death of d'Aulnay in 1650,
the Acadian seigneurial system was shaken up again. Charles
La Tour granted a seigneurie at Cap-Sable to his boyhood friend
and lieutenant, Philippe Mius d'Entremont, whose descendants
retained it for nearly a century. One biographer insists that
Mius d'Entremont was among the few Acadian seigneurs who not
only lived on his manor but also encouraged immigrants from France
and especially Port-Royal to settle there and engage in agriculture.
La Tour, meanwhile, could not hold on to Port-Royal, even after
marrying d'Aulnay's widow. The largest settlement in the
colony fell into the hands of d'Aulnay's chief creditor in France.
Emmanuel Le Borgne, a wealthy Huguenot merchant from La
Rochelle, secured the seigneurial rights to the basin and its
environs and passed them on to his second son, Alexandre de
Bélisle. The seigneurial rights in the Minas Basin were
long disputed by the heirs of La Tour and
Le Borgne, some of whom had conveniently--or perhaps
inconveniently--married one another. The Le Borgnes,
La Tours, and
Mius d'Entremonts, like other Acadian seigneurs, held their
rights even after the colony was lost to England in 1654, and their
descendants were disputing seigneurial rights in the Minas Basin
long after the British took permanent possession of the colony in
1713.
Meanwhile, the governors-general of New
France, who after 1670 held sway over Acadia, awarded Acadian
seigneuries to their favorites. Sometime in the 1670s, Michel
Le Neuf de la Vallière, who would serve as commander and governor of
Acadia during the late 1670s and early 1680s, received the
seigneurie at Chignecto, which he called Beaubassin. He then
became Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière et de Beaubassin.
Tradition has it that Vallière was ordered to respect the rights of
the Chignecto settlers already established there, but this proud
Canadian likely would have ignored any diminution of his seigneurial
powers, if the caveat ever existed. In the 1680s, the sons of
Mathieu D'Amours, seigneur of Matane, a prominent member of
the Québec sovereign counsel, received seigneurial grants along the
middle stretches of Rivière St.-Jean in present-day New Brunswick,
then a part of greater Acadia. The D'Amourss managed to
lure a few families from the Port-Royal basin to their holdings
along the St.-Jean.
During the late 1680s and 1690s,
several habitants from Port-Royal with no claims to nobility
received seigneuries in other parts of Acadia. Mathieu
Martin, one of the first Frenchmen born in the colony, received
the seigneurie of Cobeguit at the northeastern corner of the Minas
Basin. Pierre Thibodeau became the seigneur of
Chepoudy, and Guillaume Blanchard of Petitcoudiac, and both
soon ran afoul of La Vallière of Beaubassin, who insisted that his
seigneurie included those two settlements.
These habitants-turned-seigneurs were
no more successful in collecting cens et rentes from their
habitants as their aristocratic "betters" in other parts of the
colony. Acadians were known as a hospitable people, clever in
trade, hard-working, devoted beyond measure to their wives and
children, ready and willing to help their neighbors, who more often
than not were siblings, cousins, or in-laws. But they also
were a stubborn lot, contentious, litigious, jealous of the
few rights they enjoyed as Frenchmen. Paying rent to a
seigneur, even if he was a kinsman, was not an obligation they
practiced with any frequency. Still, the obligation was real,
and it did not go away. After 1713, the British, who possessed
their own fair share of medieval institutions, respected Acadian
seigneurial rights ... until Acadia was no more.
It was Razilly who had brought the
first "permanent" families to Acadia in the mid-1630s.
Historian/geographer Andrew Hill Clark notes: "Every Frenchman
of the seventeenth century, at least every Frenchman north of the
Roman Law area, must have believed that the only way to hold land
was, as always, from a lord, a seigneur, who held it in turn from
the king. There is no reason to suppose that this was not true
of the Acadian emigrés from France. With whatever freedom they
took land in the Port Royal area, or moved to the new lands to the
north, on which they settled and farmed, they must still have
assumed always that their use of it was, somehow, by way of
concession from some individual or institution who, or which, in
turn, held it from the crown."
And: "The degrees of reality in
the seigneurial forms and procedures, such as they were, were
largely restricted to the settled areas of Port Royal and its river,
Minas, Beaubassin, and, to some degree perhaps, in the Pisiquid,
Cobequid, and Pubnico areas. These were, of course, the only
agricultural settlements. It is probable that the other
seigneurs had been more interested in fish or fur then in
agricultural lands in any event."
Clark further observes: "One may
conclude that the Acadian seigneurs, such as they were, performed
few if any of the traditional seigneurial functions, even in the
emasculated form in which these were represented along the St.
Lawrence. There is no record that they built mills, or
bake-ovens, for example, or, indeed, did anything but act as
landlords whose only role was that of rent-collector. One the
other hand they do appear to have confined their demands largely to
cens et rentes, with perhaps occasional lods et ventes (the
seigneur's commission on the sale of a roture, in effect, a fine of
alienation). We do not hear of corvée [forced labor], of
charges for fishing, for timber cutting, or the use of a common.
One hesitates to be too certain about many of these things because
we are so grievously lacking in evidence. Much of what paper
record may have existed from the activities of the notaries of Port
Royal, Beaubassin, and Minas has not been found and very likely has
been destroyed. But we do suspect that official correspondence
would have contained more hints if the 'system' had been more
elaborate or had had deeper impact on the people. Yet, flimsy
and fragmentary as the institution undoubtedly was, it provided the
only framework in which the Acadians could indentify the land they
held for right of occupation, for devisement to their heirs, or for
sale and exchange, and, as such, it may have performed a vital
service for the settlers."100
The Acadians and the Indians
An interesting and seemingly unique
aspect of life for these Acadian inhabitants was their relationship
with the local Indians. Unlike the English and Dutch colonists
down the coast, whose burgeoning settlements rose up suddenly where
the Indians also dwelled, the Acadian settlements never became
populous enough to threaten the Indians' way of life.
The Mi'kmaq, who occupied present-day
Nova Scotia, eastern New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island when
the Europeans came, were hunters, gatherers, and fishermen, not
agricultural Indians, and numbered about 3,000 during the first
decade of the 1600s. Although they spent most of their time
along the seacoast and the shores of the Bay of Fundy "taking
advantage of the wealth of food available there throughout all but
about six weeks of the year," the Acadian homesteads along the dyked
marshlands did not intrude on their nomadic way of life. Thus,
in Acadia, Natives and Europeans did not compete for precious land,
nor did they compete for other valuable resources. To be sure,
there was potential competition in the acquisition of furs, and the
Acadians were just as eager to acquire this precious commodity as
were the English and the Dutch who settled in the region or their
fellow Frenchmen in the St. Lawrence Valley. But, as has been
explained, from the beginning the French and the Indians in
peninsula Acadia chose cooperation, not competition, in the mutually
beneficial fur trade. The Indians trapped and skinned the
animals and traded the pelts for goods that only Europeans could
provide them. This was much easier for the Acadians than
trapping the fur-bearing animals themselves, and it guaranteed an
eager market for their trade goods. So, while colonists in
Virginia, New York, and New England died by the score in Indian
uprisings during the seventeenth century, the Acadians, for most of
their history, knew only peace with the Mi'kmaq bands who lived all
around them.139
Genealogical records, as well as tribal
oral history, reveal that the relationship of the Acadians with the
Mi'kmaq was more than socioeconomic. Many Acadian
families--d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, Aucoin, Blanchard,
Bourgeois, Cellier,
Clémenceau, Damours/Louvière, Denys de la Ronde,
Doucet,
Guédry,
Haché dit
Gallant,
Labauve,
Lambert,
Landry,
LeBlanc,
Lejeune, Martin, Mius, Pellerin,
Petitpas, Roy, Saint-Étienne de La Tour,
Serreau--can count members of the tribe among their ancestors.139a
The Mi'kmaq were part of a group of
Algonquian-speaking Indians that included the Maliseet and
Passamaquoddy of present-day New Brunswick and Maine, and the
eastern Abenaki and Penobscot of Maine--the so-called Wabanaki
Confederacy. These tribes, in turn, were related by language
and culture to other Algonquian-speaking tribes in the region, such
as the Ottawa of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River valley.
These Algonquian tribes also had in common an ancient rivalry with
the Iroquois tribes of upper New York. Champlain had
interjected the French into this ancient rivalry by accompanying the
Ottawa on the warpath against the Iroquois in 1609 and forever
earning the enmity of that powerful nation. In historical
times, at least, the Iroquois did not raid as far east as the
Acadian peninsula, but they enthusiastically fought their fellow
Iroquois-speaking Hurons and the Abenaki and other
Algonquian-speaking tribes that threatened their hegemony in the
region. In these wars along the Indian frontier, the French
Canadians played their part as allies of the Algonquian people.
The founders of Acadia--Dugua, Poutrincourt, Biencourt, and La
Tour--and later Razilly and d'Aulnay, emulated Champlain in
Canada. They, too, used the Indians not only to gather
precious furs but also to provide a buffer of protection against the
enemies of the colony, be they Indian or European. The Indians
were an essential weapon especially in the struggle against the
English, whose colonies always far outnumbered the French
settlements to the north. French traders threatened to
withhold their wares if the Indians refused to help them fight the
English. Missionary priests, especially the Jesuits, were keen
to the realities of trade and security and took advantage of Indian
vulnerabilities in order to convert them to Roman Catholicism.
It was not unusual for Algonquian bands to take to the warpath with
one or two "black robes," such as Father Sébastien Râle, padding
along to give spiritual sustenance to the painted warriors.
"Their methods were often cruel and ruthless, being based chiefly on
political necessities, and the higher principles of the Christian
faith were subordinated for the time being to these considerations,"
an historian has described these warrior-priests. One doubts
if these sturdy Jesuits were troubled by their consciences. In
their eyes, the English and the Dutch were unrepentant heretics who
were worse than savages.140
The traders and priests were not the
only ones who maintained influence with the Indians. Some of
the so-called seigneurs of Acadia, especially on the mainland, were capitaines
de sauvages, or captains of the Indians, "who," according to one
historian, "trained Indians for the defence[sic] of
territories put in their charge. The most famous of the
captaines de sauvages was Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie, third Baron de
Saint-Castin, who came to Acadia as an ensign in the Carignan
Regiment in 1665. After his marriage to Mathilde, the daughter
of Abenaki chief Madokawondo, in 1670, Saint-Castin founded a kind
of feudal principality that was half Indian at Pentagouët on the
Penobscot River. He soon became the supreme chief of the
entire Abenaki tribe, subjecting them to dictatorial rule."
The French governors of Acadia, like those of Canada, used these
French-led Indians to protect their colony especially from the
English. "It was an ingenious defence system for the Acadian
territory: integration of the Indians into the organization
helped the comparatively small Acadian colony against the more
populous English colonies in New England, especially Massachusetts,
bordering Acadia. When war broke out, these captains ordered
out the Indians who repelled attacks or carried out bloody raids
directly into the heart of the English colonies." But there
was always a price to pay for such a scheme. "Expeditions
carried out by some of these captains and their Indian infantry into
enemy territory often were for reasons other than mere defence;
consequently, the peaceful Acadian colonists often suffered painful
counterattacks as as result. Furthermore, the raids built up
animosity and hate for the Acadians among the Massachusetts settlers
in particular." This became manifest in the almost continuous
warfare that erupted in North America towards the end of the first
century of Acadia's existence.141
The Acadians and Their
Sun King
The settlers of Acadia had known only turmoil from the arrival of
their first families in 1636 to when the English seized the colony
in 1654. Ironically, English control, which lasted 16 years,
brought peace at last to the hard-pressed Acadians, and peace
continued for 19 more years after the return of Acadia to France.
It ended suddenly, however, in 1689 with the coming of full-scale
war with England. For nearly a quarter of a century, until
1713, the peace-loving Acadians once again would live in a world
gone mad all around them.
The end of the long peace had much to do with the man to whom the
Acadians tried to be loyal subjects. Louis XIV, who would
fashion himself the Sun King, had declared upon the death of his
regent, Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661 that "henceforth he would rule
France without a chief minister, something no French king had done
in living memory." Through the application of will and
calculated ruthlessness, Louis created for France a divine-right
monarchy the likes of which Europe had not seen since the time of
the Roman emperors. During his long reign, he never once
called into session the ancient national legislature of France, the
Estates-General. He did not feel constrained to answer to his
people. His rule, he and his ministers believed, was absolute.
His famous words, if they were ever uttered, L'état, c'est moi
("I am the state"), would not have been an idle boast of the Sun
King. He created his magnificent palace at Versailles not only
to control his unruly nobles and provide a center for the arts, but
also to erect a personal monument of glory and splendor worthy of an
absolute monarch. The heady atmosphere of Versailles, however,
did not blind the king to the realities of the French character.
He "understood that he must rule within the constraints of the laws
and customs of his kingdom. Louis consulted widely with his
nobles and ministers, and he met weekly with members of his high
council. He created an informal cabinet, which was eventually
led by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister of finance."142
One of the goals of Louis's reign was to establish borders for
France that he could defend against attack from his enemies.
The English with their superb navy were not the worst of these
enemies. He was especially vexed by the powerful Habsburg
kingdoms of Spain and Austria, whose far-flung possessions--much of
the Low Countries (today's Belgium, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands), and most of Germany and Italy--hemmed France in on
three sides. The dangerous northern frontier in what was then
called the Spanish Netherlands, which stood so close to Paris and
Versailles, worried Louis most, and it was there that most of his
wars were fought. Coupled with his determination to secure
defensible borders for France was Louis's ambition to place on the
throne of Spain one of his Bourbon heirs. Louis had married
Marie-Thérèse, the eldest daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, in
1660. "The marriage was arranged via a treaty that explicitly
excluded Marie's heirs from inheriting the Spanish crown once Philip
had paid her dowry. However, the full dowry was never paid.
Consequently, Louis refused to relinquish his family's claim to the
Spanish inheritance...."143
The result was almost constant warfare
during the last three decades of Louis's long reign of 72 years.
During the War of the Devolution
(1667-68) that followed the death of Philip IV of Spain, Louis
invaded the Spanish Netherlands to secure the vulnerable northern
border and to assert his family's claim to the Spanish throne.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the fighting soon after it
began. Louis returned some of the fortified towns he had
captured in Belgium and secured rights to the Spanish throne if
Philip's Hapsburg successor, Charles II, should die without an heir.
This sudden French aggression along their southern frontier alarmed
the Dutch, who had fought long against Spanish rule to secure their
independence and refused to be threatened by the French as well.
War erupted between Holland and France in 1672 and lasted for six
long years. "In a sweeping campaign, Louis almost succeeded in
conquering Holland. To protect themselves, the Dutch opened
their dikes, flooded the countryside, and turned Amsterdam into a
virtual island." During the struggle, in August 1673, the
Dutch were joined by Spain, Austria, and Lorraine, but not England.
Louis had signed a treaty with London in June 1670 "to keep the
English navy neutral." It was this agreement with the English
that had restored French control of Acadia in 1670. But Acadia did
not escape the war unscathed. In the summer of 1674, a Dutch
privateer captain, Jurriaen Aernouts, out of Curaçao in the Dutch
West Indies, attacked the Acadian outpost at Pentagouët in Maine,
which at the time was the military headquarters of the colony, and
captured it after only a few hours of fighting. The Dutchman
took the wounded Acadian governor, Jacques de Chambly, prisoner,
captured Jemseg on Rivière St.-Jean, and plundered the area around
it before going on his way.144
The war with Holland ended with the
Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. "Louis had achieved a defensible
perimeter around the core of his inheritance," but he also had
alienated his northern neighbors, those Protestant stalwarts, the
Dutch. And he was not done with Spain. In October 1683,
Louis invaded the Spanish Netherlands ... again ... and France was
at war with Spain until the following August.145
But it was religion that led to the
most important decision of Louis's long reign, one that would plunge
France deeper into conflict with her Protestant neighbors, with far
reaching consequences for her colonial possessions. Cardinal
Mazarin had taught Louis the intricacies of statecraft, but his
mother, Anne of Austria, a devout Catholic like all of her Habsburg
kin, had given her son his spiritual education. "Throughout
his life Louis remained devoutly religious and attempted to
eliminate Protestantism in France." His grandfather, Henry IV,
had been a Huguenot before he declared that Paris was well worth a
mass. Henry had granted the Protestants freedom of worship and
protection from persecution with his Edict of Nantes in April 1598.
Louis's father had honored his own father's edict, and, despite
continued pressures from the Catholic majority to conform to Roman
orthodoxy, the Huguenots thrived in the fortified cities that Henry
had granted to them for their protection. "Within these cities
dwelled highly skilled Huguenot craftsmen, who were an integral part
of Colbert's economic program," a program that kept France happy and
prosperous throughout much of the first half of Louis's reign.146
The Sun King was determined to rule
absolutely in the spiritual as well as the temporal realm. In
1685, two years after Colbert's death, while the Acadians thrived in
the Port-Royal valley, at Chignecto, and in the infant communities
of the Minas Basin, their king, without the wise council of his
great minister, "by an extravagant act of piety and sovereignty,"
suddenly revoked the Edict of Nantes and plunged their mother
country into economic turmoil. Between 1685 and 1710, hundreds
of thousands of Huguenots fled France rather than convert to
the Roman Catholic faith. Most of them went to Holland and
Britain, "where they were greeted as martyrs. The loss of many
highly productive citizens depressed the French economy." By
this time, "France was recognized as the dominant continental power,
and its strength threatened other European nations. The
Catholic powers, especially Austria, were fearful of Louis's designs
upon Spain's possessions. Meanwhile, the Protestant states,
especially England and Holland, worried about the revival of
religious warfare." The English were so worried about French
designs on their North American colonies that in November 1686 they
negotiated with the Sun King a treaty at Whitehall that guaranteed
"a True and Firm Peace and Neutrality" between the North American
colonies if war should break out in Europe. Nevertheless, by
the late 1680s, as a result of Louis's aggressions and the heated
nature of religious intolerance, only a spark was needed to ignite
the powder keg of frustrations that lay between France and her
enemies.147
"The Glorious Revolution" and King
William's War
The spark came with Louis's attack
across the Rhine in September 1688 to intervene in German politics
and England's so-called Glorious Revolution of the same year.
Three years before, in 1685, the year that Louis XIV had revoked the
Edict of Nantes, King Charles II of England, who had been restored
to the throne 25 years earlier, died without a legitimate child to
succeed him. His younger brother, James, Duke of York, became
King James II of England and James VII of Scotland. James had grown
up a Protestant, had married a Protestant wife, Anne Hyde, daughter
of an English earl, and raised his two daughters, Mary and Anne, as
Protestants. He converted to Catholicism, however, in 1668,
when he was 35 years old and still married to Anne. She died
in 1671, and two years later James remarried to Mary of Modena, a
devout Roman Catholic from Italy. In 1677, he consented to the
marriage of his daughter Mary to William, the Protestant prince of
Orange, stadtholder, captain general, and admiral of the United
Provinces of the Netherlands and the implacable enemy of Louis XIV
of France. Parliament declared Mary and William as next in
line to the throne behind James, and the English Protestant majority
breathed a sigh of relief that James would not be able to create a
Catholic dynasty for England. James's succession to the throne
in 1685 was peaceful. However, his attempts to rule
autocratically like his father, coupled with his policy to place
Catholics in influential positions, fueled his opposition and ruined
what little popularity he had with the people. The birth of a
son to him in 1688, insuring that his heir would be Catholic,
precipitated the so-called Glorious Revolution. Staunch
Protestant nobles, with the consent of Parliament, invited William
of Orange and an army of 15,000 Dutchmen to land in northern
England, march to London, and seize the throne from the hapless
James, who could muster virtually no support. James fled, was
captured, and allowed to escape to France, and in 1689 William and
Mary ruled jointly as William III and Mary II. Louis XIV, ever the
staunch Catholic, refused to recognize the legitimacy of William and
Mary and clung to the fiction that James and not William was the
legitimate king of England, Scotland, and Wales.
It was William who had opened the dykes
in Holland back in 1672 to save Amsterdam from the invading French.
After the conclusion of the six-year struggle with the Sun King,
William had strived to build a European coalition against Louis to
block further French aggression on the continent. This effort
came to fruition in 1689, the year William succeeded to the English
throne, when he created a Grand Alliance with Austria, Holland,
Spain, and Savoy to halt the French offensive in western Germany.
For the next eight years, war raged between William's alliance and
the forces of Louis XIV. But the conflict was not confined to
Europe and the high seas. It erupted also in America despite
the Treaty of Whitehall... and war came to Acadia again.148
The English made the first aggressive
move that brought war to French Acadia. Soon after ascending
to the throne, James II had revealed his autocratic tendencies by
abolishing self-government in the New England colonies. He
appointed a fellow autocrat, Sir Edmund Andros, as governor of a new
colonial entity that would be ruled by decree, not assembly--the
Dominion of New England. This new dominion subsumed the
colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Haven,
Connecticut, and New Hampshire--that is, New England--and eventually
New York and East and West Jersey. The people of these
colonies were very unhappy, not only with the loss of self-rule but
also with the despotic personality of Sir Edmund. Political
chaos ensued, and Andros became even more tyrannical in his
treatment of the colonists. He also alienated the Indians of
the region and looked for any excuse to antagonize the French,
violating the spirit of the treaty that guaranteed neutrality for
the colonies in America if war should break out in Europe.149
In the spring of 1688, while James II
still occupied the English throne, Andros descended on Pentagouët on
the coast of Maine. During the governorships of Grandfontaine
and de Chambly (1670-78), Pentagouët had been the capital of French
Acadia. Though subsequent governors moved the capital to
Beaubassin and then back to Port-Royal, the French considered
Pentagouët an important part of the colony. Jean-Vincent de
Saint-Castin was still the seigneur there, and his hold on the
Abenaki in the area was still absolute. Andros insisted that
the Penobscot River region belonged to his dominion, and he used
this boundary dispute as an excuse to commence hostilities with the
French and their Indian allies. After seeing the ramshackle
condition of Saint-Castin's fort, however, Andros changed his mind
about holding Pentagouët. But before he returned to New
England, he plundered Saint-Castin's house and thereby antagonized
the old Frenchman and his fierce Abenaki relatives. Further
depredations by English officials against the Indians in Maine and
the establishment by Andros of new English garrisons along the coast
of that province stirred the Abenaki against the English, and in
1689 the war exploded in earnest.150
The first English town to suffer at
the hands of the Abenaki was Dover, New Hampshire, on the border
with Maine. In late June 1689, warriors from two bands sneaked
up on the village during the night and massacred many of the
settlers. After subduing the men, the Indians burned the
garrison-houses and forced many of the women and children into
captivity, where they were kept or sold as slaves, as the English
had done to their people years before.151
Saint-Castin, meanwhile, planned his
revenge against the English. In early August 1689, he fell on
Pemaquid, now Woolwich, Maine, at the mouth of the Kennebec River,
the farthest English outpost along the Maine coast. With him
were two bands of Abenaki with their war paint on. They
completely surprised the settlers, killing many of them in the open
fields, and the next day forced the surrender of the survivors who,
fleet of foot, had managed to make it into their stockade, Fort
Charles. Again, the victorious Indians took women and children
into captivity and treated them as slaves. The English were
appalled by such barbarity, though they, too, in previous wars with
the Indians had acted just as barbarously. That same August,
in fact, their allies, the fierce Iroquois, 1,500 strong, descended
on the Canadian town of Lachine, near Montréal, and butchered or
captured nearly everyone in the place, prompting the French
authorities to abandon some of their fortifications on the upper St.
Lawrence and the Great Lakes.152
In the weeks that followed, the Maine
frontier erupted in almost continuous warfare. So far, the
fight there had been between the Indian allies of the French--the
Abenaki bands of Maine--and the hapless New Englanders, first under
the despised Andros, then, after his ouster when the New Englanders
learned of the Glorious Revolution, under the new governors of the
restored, independent colonies. In the summer of 1689,
however, word arrived in Boston that, in the spring, war had
officially been declared between England and France--the War of the
Grand Alliance, called King Williams's War in the colonies.
Word of the war came to Québec in July, and in October the
newly-arrived governor-general of Canada, 69-year-old Louis de
Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, stood poised to jump into
the fight against the English colonies alongside his Indian allies.153
Frontenac, an old soldier of formidable
talents, chose late winter as the moment in which to surprise the
English colonies from his base on the St. Lawrence. From
Montréal, using the relatively swift route via the Richelieu River,
Lake Champlain, and Lake George, 300 Canadian militia,
coureurs de bois, and "Christianized" Iroquois, led by
French officers, hit Schenectady, then called Corlaer, New York, on
a frigid night in February 1690. The result can be described
as nothing less than a massacre. The New Yorkers suffered so
keenly from the raid that it essentially took them out of the war,
leaving New England to fight it out alone. Another, smaller
column of Frontenac's fighters, this one from Trois-Rivières, struck
Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, near the burned-out village of Dover,
in late March and destroyed that settlement, too. The third of
Frontenac's expeditions, out of Quebec, hit in late May the Maine
village of
Casco, at present-day Portland, which was
defended by ramshackle Fort Loyal. Despite the neglected
condition of the palisade fort, the survivors of the initial ambush
defended Fort Loyal gallantly for three days before surrendering to
the French officers in charge of the expedition. The English
commander asked for terms, but the French refused to hold back their
Indian allies. More Maine settlers, men, women, and children,
became Indian slaves, and for the next several months, the Abenaki
pillaged as many Maine and New Hampshire settlements as they could
reach.154
After over a year of fighting in
earnest in New York and on the New Hampshire-Maine frontier, King
William's War was proving to be a disaster for the English. It
was time for them to devise a new strategy that would take the war
to the enemy. "Up to this time," notes a principal historian
of the conflict, "the people of New England seem to have had no
thought of invading Canada themselves, or felt much fear of being
invaded from there. Thus far the war, on their part, had been
a purely defensive one. But it was now clear to everyone that
the real struggle was not so much between the English and Indians,
as between the English and French, who kept the Indians constantly
supplied with the means of carrying on hostilities, while enjoying
entire immunity from its ravages themselves. The relation was
as close as that between the hand and the weapon. Two
flourishing provinces lay at the mercy of hostile incursions, which
no power could foresee or prevent. The entire depopulation of
both was imminent. All this continuous harrying of
defenceless[sic] villages, with its ever-recurring and
revolting story of captivity and massacre, was fast turning the
border back into a wilderness, which, indeed, was what the enraged
savages aimed at. Every attempt to reach and destroy these
vigilant foemen in their own fastness proved worse than futile.
New England was losing ten lives for one; and in property more than
fifty to one."155
Accordingly, in early May 1690,
delegates from New York and three of the New England colonies met at
New York City to plan an English offensive against New France.
New York pledged 400 men, and Massachusetts, Plymouth, and
Connecticut a total of 350 militiamen for an attack on Montréal via
Albany and Lake Champlain. The Iroquois later promised to join
the expedition with nearly all their warriors. It would be
Frontenac's turn to suffer the trauma of invasion.155a
But the New Englanders did not invade
Canada first. They chose instead a closer, much easier target
which, in truth, contained Frenchmen who had done them no harm.
The New Englanders, however, did not see it that way. "For
years Acadia and its harbors had been a safe retreat for privateers
and corsairs, who robbed and ill-used the New England fishermen
until those seas were become no longer safe," the good Puritans
believed. "Bad as it had been, the evil was now made tenfold
worse by a state of war. For depredations of this sort,
Acadia, or Nova Scotia, is remarkably well placed, and as New
England subsisted mostly by her fisheries the alternatives were
either to see them destroyed or to put them beyond the reach of
future spoliation." This was the same Acadia to which New
England trading ships had sailed for years to ply their wares among
the peaceful farmers of Chignecto and Minas. Miraculously,
those vessels had entered and exited the Bay of Fundy without being
molested ... but truth is an enemy of rationalization.156
In late April, before the conference in
New York and the attack on Casco, but after the French and Indian
assault on Salmon Falls, an expedition of seven ships containing 700
New Englanders left Nantasket, Massachusetts, for Port-Royal,
Acadia. In command of this expedition was a remarkable fellow,
38-year-old Sir William Phips of Boston. Phips had once been a
humble ship's carpenter but, through luck and pluck, had risen to
the rank of a gentleman in his native New England. His most
notable exploit, besides marrying a rich widow, had been the
recovery of a fantastic treasure from the hull of a sunken
Spanish ship off the coast of Haiti, an effort which earned him his
title. His expedition arrived at Port-Royal on May 11, and 400
of his men hurried ashore to overwhelm the garrison of only 70 men
under Governor Louis-Alexander des Friches de Meneval, who asked for
terms. After extracting from the New Englanders the promise
that they would spare private property, leave the church untouched,
and send him and his troops to Québec or to France, Meneval yielded
without resistance. To protect his force from the irate
settlers who lived near the fort, Phips threatened to make them all
prisoners of war if the men did not assemble in the church and swear
allegiance to the King and Queen of England. Most took the
oath, and their property was spared. Those who refused to take
the oath had to stand by helplessly as the New Englanders plundered
their belongings. Discovering that some of the Port-Royal
merchants had carried off property into the surrounding woods during
the parley with Meneval, Phips nullified the surrender agreement and
turned his New Englanders loose on the town. "We cut down the
cross," remembered one of the Puritans, "rifled their church, pulled
down their high altar, and broke their images." They also
burned 28 houses near the fort as well as the church and left
Port-Royal in charge of a council of settlers who were instructed to
answer only to the government of Massachusetts. Among the
councilors were Alexandre de Bélisle
(who, with Pierre Melanson, had acted as interpreters during
the surrender negotiations), René Landry le jeune,
and Daniel LeBlanc. While Phips oversaw the destruction
of Port-Royal, he sent an expedition under Captain Cyprian Southack
to attack La Hève, Chédabouctou, and other Acadian settlements on
the Atlantic side of the peninsula. Another of Phips's
lieutenants, Captain John Alden of Plymouth, who had already seized
Saint-Castin's post at Pentagouët, took his sloop Mary into
the Bay of Fundy to overawe the Acadian settlements at Minas and
Chignecto, where the settlers were compelled to take Phips's oath of
allegiance. With Meneval, two priests, 21 cannon, and 59
captured French soldiers in tow, the victorious treasure hunter
hurried back to Boston, leaving no troops to hold the Acadian
capital. A few months later, taking advantage of Phips's easy
victory, English freebooters in two ships belonging to Jacob Leisler
of New York descended on the defenseless town, plundered what was
left of it, and hanged two unidentified Acadian settlers.157
[map]
Port-Royal was only a secondary
objective for the determined New Englanders. Their principal
objective was Québec, which they would assault with an even larger
force of 34 ships, including 4 men of war, and 2,200 men. The
Massachusetts council gave to the despoiler of Port-Royal the
command of this formidable force. Phips's expedition against
Québec would cooperate with a land force from Connecticut and New
York that would assault Montréal via Lake Champlain--the invasion of
Canada that had been planned at the New York conference in May.
The land expedition met one disaster after another, however, and got
no farther than the head of Lake Champlain. Only a small party
of 29 militiamen and 120 Indians under Captain John Schuyler of New
York made it to the St. Lawrence valley, where they fell upon the
settlement of La Prairie, across from Montréal, burned the houses,
barns, and hayricks, slaughtered the cattle, and killed or captured
25 Canadians, including several women, before hurrying back to the
main force on Lake Champlain. Meanwhile, Phips's fleet took
longer to assemble and leave Boston than he had anticipated.
He did not depart the rendezvous at Nantasket until August 9, and,
because he failed to take along a St. Lawrence River pilot, he did
not reach the river below Québec until mid October, late in the
campaigning season. Governor Frontenac and his lieutenants,
meanwhile, made Montréal safe and transformed Québec into a
fortress.158
Phips was no match for the wily old
Frontenac. Having lost a substantial number of men on
shipboard from a break out of small pox, Phips's first effort at
Quebec was not military but diplomatic. Before a single shot
was fired, on the morning of his arrival, Monday, October 16, he
sent an envoy with terms of surrender to Frontenac, who rebuffed
such arrogance then invited the English commander to do his best to
take the city. That afternoon, Louis-Hector de Callière, the
governor of Montréal, arrived with 300 fresh men, including regulars
and hot-blooded coureurs de bois aching for a fight, raising
Frontenac's force in Quebec to a formidable 3,000. But Phips
stayed, and for six days he and his militia commander, Major John
Walley, menaced Québec from land and water. Phips called
another council of war and cobbled together a plan that he was
certain would give him the fortress city. Walley would land
his 1,300 Massachusetts militiamen at Beauport, just downriver from
Québec, swing his column around to a ford on the St. Charles River
behind Québec and attack the city's rear, which Phips wrongly
assumed was unprotected. Walley's militiamen landed on the
morning of Wednesday, October 18 and fought their way up the slope
towards the St. Charles, driving off a small force of French
sharpshooters sent out to delay them. Before the New
Englanders could cross the St. Charles, however, Phips lost patience
and ordered his warships to open fire on Frontenac's defenses.
The exchange of cannon fire rumbled for two days, crippling Sir
William's warships and doing little damage to the tough old count's
defenses. Walley, unable to regain contact with Phips's
vessels because of the fierce bombardment, and, not equal to the
task given him, waited helplessly in his camp above Beauport, his
men freezing, starving, and suffering from the small pox that they
had contracted during their long stay in the lower St. Lawrence.
On Friday, October 20, while Walley consulted with Phips aboard the
commander's battered warship, Walley's officers pushed their
Puritans to the ford on the St. Charles, where Frontenac met them
with three battalions of French regulars and a Canadian flanking
force under two of the Le Moyne brothers. The New Englanders
fought valiantly, but they were no match for the French regulars and
the Canadian militia, who laid one ambush after another. The
following day, Saturday, October 21, Walley withdrew his militiamen
from in front of Québec against token opposition; Frontenac and his
Frenchmen were exhausted, too. Phips and his beaten Puritans
lingered aboard their ships for two days, the men resting, the
officers counseling their harried commander, until Phips finally
weighed anchor and fell back down the St. Lawrence on Tuesday,
October 24. Phips anchored several leagues below the Île
d'Orléans to repair his battered ships so that they could be made
seaworthy for the long sail back to Boston. Leaving the
English unmolested, Frontenac agreed to a prisoner exchange, mostly
women and children captured in the fighting in Maine. Phips's
expedition suffered more damage at the hands of Nature when it
retreated into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A storm drove at
least one ship onto Anticosti Island, and some of his vessels were
blown down the coast all the way to the West Indies! The only
success of the expedition was Captain William Mason's assault on the
French settlement of Percé, on the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula, which
he destroyed with two frigates.159
The victory at Quebec saved Canada, but
the English still clung to Acadia.
While Phips was dallying on his way to
Quebec, a royal proclamation in London, dated 7 October 1690,
decreed that Acadia was now part of Massachusetts. Colonel
Edward Tyng was named the new governor of English Acadia, and soon
he arrived at his post in Port-Royal, though he did not stay there.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Massachusetts were determined to
chastise the Abenaki. They chose as the leader of a new
expedition the noted Indian fighter from the old Pilgrim settlement
of Duxbury, 51-year-old Major Benjamin Church. Fourteen years
earlier, Church had won fame by defeating the Wampanoag chief
Metacom, whom the whites dubbed King Philip, during the bloodiest
Indian war in New England history. In September 1689, Church
had fought the Abenakis in a small expedition in the Casco Bay area
with mixed results. He now took command of a force of 300 men
and headed back to Casco Bay, which he reached on 11 September 1690.
This expedition, which lasted two weeks, was no more successful than
Church's earlier venture against the Abenaki. For the rest of
1690 and into 1691, the Abenaki still held the upper hand in the war
along the Maine frontier.160
With the defeat of Phips at Québec,
Frontenac turned his attention to the liberation of Acadia. In
1691, he sent Joseph Robinau de Villebon, nephew of the sieur de La
Vallière of Beaubassin, to seize Port-Royal from the English, who
had left no garrison there, and to serve as commandant of Acadia in
place of the captured Meneval. Perhaps to spare the Acadian
settlements anymore grief, Villebon chose the Rivière St.-Jean as
his base of operations. He moved up the river to a new, more
easily-defensible site at Nashouat, across from present-day
Fredericton, New Brunswick. On the St.-Jean, he captured a
prominent New England merchant as well as the erstwhile Governor
Tyng and sent them to Québec as prisoners of war. In the
King's name, Villebon took possession of Acadia and joined
Saint-Castin and his Abenaki in Maine with a contingent of Maliceet.161
Villebon and Saint-Castin took the war
to the enemy's door with as much energy and violence as Frontenac's
attacks two years before. In February 1692, a force of Indians
from the Penobscot River, under the leadership of Jesuit Father
Louis-Pierre Thury, laid waste the Maine town of York, massacring
many of the settlers and taking more women and children into
captivity. In late May, a sea borne expedition of three ships
that Phips has sent to destroy Villebon's new fort appeared in the
lower St.-Jean. Villebon was back at Nashouat, but most of his
soldiers and Indians were still in Maine. He prepared to meet
the English with the small force at hand. In early July,
however, the English ships disappeared from the lower St.-Jean. They
sailed across the bay to Port-Royal, instead, "where an effort was
made to induce the settlers to submit to English rule, but no
definite promise could be obtained from them. With the
announcement that a strong garrison would soon be sent from Boston,
[the English] took their departure."162
Meanwhile, in June, another force of
Abenaki, this time led by Saint-Castin, with a hand full of Canadian
officers under René Robinau de Portneuf, Villebon's brother,
descended on the fortified Maine outpost of Wells. This nut
proved too hard to crack, however, and Portneuf and his force gave
up the siege. But they had done damage enough to liberate this
part of Acadia from English occupation, except for Pemaquid, where,
in late summer of 1692, at great expense, the New Englanders erected
a sturdy edifice of stone which they named Fort William Henry.
In October, Frontenac sent a sea borne expedition under Canadian
naval officer Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville to subdue the new
fort. At Mount Desert Island, up the coast from Pemaquid,
Iberville interrogated a boat load of suspicious Canadian captives
and concluded that the new fort's stone walls and a reinforced
garrison, plus the presence of powerful New England ships in the
area, likely would overwhelm his force, so he abandoned the proposed
attack on Pemaquid. In fact, the fort was unfinished and could
easily have been captured, and the New England vessels in the
vicinity had left the area against Phips's orders and returned to
Boston. Iberville granted permission to Saint-Castin and his
Abenaki to besiege the fort at Pemaquid, then he sailed down the
coast as far as Nantucket to harass New England shipping. He
even lay off the harbor at Boston, hoping to destroy more English
vessels, before sailing on to France.163
The war died down that winter of
1692-93. Villebon left another brother, Daniel Robinau de
Neuvillette, in charge of the fort at Nashouat and spent the winter
at Chignecto. "There he was in constant communication with
Minas and Port Royal and the other settlements. He dispatched
messages to the Indians in various parts of Acadia asking them to
join him in the spring to take part in a new expedition."
Beaubassin had become the new headquarters of Acadia. Villebon
sent Abraham Boudrot, a pilot from Port-Royal disguised as a
trader, on a spy mission to Boston. Boudrot's job was
"to obtain information about conditions there, and learn if any
plans were being made." Weeks later, the wily Acadian returned
from Boston with much useful information. In the spring of
1693, Villebon learned that a merchant from Boston who traded
regularly with Port-Royal was coming to Chignecto. Such was
the importance of trade between Acadia and New England that not even
a full-blown war could stop it. "The settlers were in urgent
need of various necessities," so the commandant "decided to make a
trip to Minas so that he might not be present when the vessel
arrived, for it would be impolitic for him to sanction such
unauthorized trade. When he returned at the end of April, he
learned that the vessel had arrived, but, instead of unloading
goods, a party of men had disembarked and fired on the settlers,
leaving an impression that they were pirates." This would not
be the last time in this war that Englishmen molested the settlers
of Chignecto.164
In August 1693, most of the Abenaki
chiefs of Maine signed a peace treaty at Pemaquid with the new
governor of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips. They left five
of their leaders with Phips as hostages to seal the agreement.
The French authorities in Canada were alarmed by this development
and did their best to stir the Abenaki bands against their former
enemy. Meanwhile, the fleet the English had gathered at Boston
for another go at Québec was sent, instead, to the West Indies to
capture the French island of Martinique. Tropical disease
devastated the ranks of the English soldiers and sailors, and when
the fleet returned to Boston, it was in no shape to take on
Frontenac again. Other than an expedition in the far north by
England's Hudson's Bay Company that recaptured three posts in St.
James Bay which Iberville had taken from them a few years before,
the war seemed to be over. Peace had finally come to mainland
Acadia. New England settlers, wanting to believe that the war
was over, rebuilt and even expanded the farms and villages that the
French and Indians had pillaged over the past four years. New
England authorities prudently strengthened their garrison towns
along the New Hampshire-Maine frontier and waited to see if the
Abenaki had truly buried the hatchet.165
Peace had come to peninsula Acadia,
too, or so it seemed. The council of inhabitants that Phips
had set up in Port-Royal three years before continued to run the
town, and the English never bothered to send a garrison to
Port-Royal. The settlers there and at Chignecto and Minas went
about their business of building new dykes and transforming more
salt marsh into pasture and field. In 1693, Commandant
Villebon ordered a new census to be taken of the Acadian settlements
from Pentagouët to La Hève. Port-Royal, with its wide basin
and gentle-flowing river, remained the largest settlement with 504
inhabitants, and this despite the recent depredations at the hands
of the English. The Minas settlements, which probably included
Pigiguit, numbered 307 settlers, Chignecto 119, Cap-Sable 32,
Rivière St.-Jean 21, Pentagouët 14, Passamaquoddy on the Ste.-Croix
7, and La Hève 6, a total of 1,022 men, women, and children counted
in the colony, compared to 373 in the first census at Port-Royal in
1671 and not quite 900 in the census of 1686. Contrast this
with the number of Frenchmen in all of New France at the time, about
15,000, and in the English Atlantic colonies, over 100,000!166
Except for a bloody raid by several
bands of Abenaki into New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the summer
of 1694, an expedition that autumn led by Iberville to retake the
Hudson's Bay posts, and sundry raids along the Maine coast the
following summer, the uneasy peace between the New Englanders and
the French and their Indians allies persisted for nearly three
years. In February 1696, however, an incident occurred outside
the gates of Fort William Henry that ended the tenuous peace and set
the Maine frontier aflame once again. Three Abenaki chiefs
appeared at the fort under a flag of truce to parlay for an exchange
of prisoners. Something went terribly wrong in their
negotiations with the hotheaded new commander of the post, and in
the resulting melee the New Englanders killed two of the chiefs.
Soon the inhabitants of the Maine-New Hampshire coast felt the wrath
of the vengeful Abenaki. York was hit again, and Portsmouth,
and Dover. King William's War was on again.167
Even worse for the hopes of New England
security, Governor Frontenac, with urging from the King, launched
another sea borne assault against Fort William Henry. The
redoubtable Iberville set sail from Québec in two warships in July
1696. One of the vessels was commanded by Germain, son of
Jacques
Bourgeois, founder of the Chignecto settlement a
generation before. On the way down to Pemaquid, Iberville
waylaid two English men of war in the Bay of Fundy, driving off one
and dismasting the other, which he refitted as a third vessel for
his expedition. Continuing on to his objective, he picked up a
force of Indians under Governor Villebon at Rivière St.-Jean and a
contingent of Abenaki on the Penobscot under Saint-Castin.
Iberville's flotilla arrived at Pemaquid on August 14 and quickly
invested the stone bastion by land and sea. Amazingly, only
100 men defended the fort, and they were still under the command of
the hotheaded incompetent who had killed the Abenaki chiefs, Captain
Pascho Chubb. On the afternoon of the 15th, Iberville's
batteries were ready, and he demanded that Chubb surrender the fort
or be blasted out. The New Englander retorted with defiant
words, and French shells soon exploded inside the fort. That
was enough for the hotheaded New Englander. Fort William Henry
surrendered after Chubb and his New Englanders put up a cursory
defense. Only the intervention of the honorable Iberville
prevented the Abenaki from massacring Chubb and his Yankees.
They were paroled, instead, and some were allowed to return to
Boston. The French dismantled the stout stone walls before
returning to Penobscot. From there, Iberville sent messages to
the Massachusetts governor, William Stoughton, acting for Phips,
offering to exchange the New England prisoners he still held for
French prisoners languishing at Boston. Stoughton ignored him.
Shrugging off the stubborn Englishman, Iberville released his
remaining prisoners to Saint-Castin, who promised to return them
safely to Boston. Iberville then sailed his little flotilla to
Newfoundland to launch another offensive against the English side of
the peninsula.168
The authorities at Boston, meanwhile,
had enlisted Benjamin Church to organize yet another expedition
against the Abenaki. When Chubb and his parolees returned from
Pemaquid, the Boston fathers threw the hapless captain in jail,
where he languished for nearly a year, and they urged Church to
hurry up his preparations for a strike against the enemy.
Meanwhile, five armed ships hurried from Boston to intercept
Iberville's flotilla, but the clever Canadian got clean away.
In September, Church and his 500 New Englanders, with 50 Indian
allies of their own, finally sailed out of Boston and headed north
for the coast of Maine. They hurried to Pemaquid and then to
Penobscot Bay and up the river as far as Bangor, searching in vain
for Abenaki to waylay and destroy. Somehow the wily Indians
had got word of his coming. Moving east to Mount Desert Island
and finding no enemy there, the angry Church swung out to sea again
and sailed northeast ... to Acadia.169
This time it was the settlements at
Chignecto that bore the brunt of New England vengeance and Church's
frustration at not finding the Abenaki. When Church arrived at
Chignecto, Germain Bourgeois, back from his adventures at
Pemaquid, met the old Puritan on the shore and "produced a document
which indicated that Phips after the fall of Port-Royal in 1690 had
promised immunity to those who swore fealty to King William.
Church accompanied Bourgeois to his house, but his men lost
no time in plundering and burning the settlement while the settlers
took refuge in the woods." Church remembered the scene vividly
in his memoirs. The people of Chignecto, he wrote years later,
"were troubled to see their cattle, sheep, hogs, and dogs lying dead
about their houses, chopped and hacked with hatchets." Church
could not contain his Puritan righteousness in the face of his
hapless enemy. "The inhabitants, both French and Indian, fled
at his coming, but some of the former returned upon promise of good
usage. After reading them a sharp lecture upon the barbarities
practiced by the savages upon the English, and forcibly contrasting
it with his own magnanimity in now keeping his Indians from knocking
them all in the head, Church took his departure for the St. John
River." One must wonder if the sights and smells of their
burned-out dwellings and barns, of their dead animals, even of their
pets, lying butchered all around them, would have brought the word
"magnanimity" to the minds of these simple farmers who would take
years to repair the damage the old Puritan had done.170
On the St.-Jean, Church skirmished with
some workmen who were building a fort at the mouth of the river.
He killed one and wounded another, who revealed where the big guns
for the new fort were hidden. Church secured the pieces and
called a council of war to see what his lieutenants thought of the
notion of heading up the river to attack Villebon's fort at
Nashouat. They agreed that the season was too late and the
river too low, so they gathered up their spoils and headed back to
Boston. To Church's chagrin, on his way down he encountered a
reinforcement coming up the coast to meet him and was replaced in
command by Lieutenant Colonel William Hathorne, who outranked him.
Hathorne turned the force around and headed back to Rivière St.-Jean
to destroy Villebon's fort and the capital of Acadia. The
French defenders sent them flying back to Boston, however, and so
ended the latest New England expedition against the French in
Acadia.171
Meanwhile, Iberville and his elusive
flotilla rounded the Acadian peninsula and Cape Breton Island and
sailed up to Plaisance, the French settlement on the west coast of
Newfoundland. Despite the machinations of the French governor
at Plaisance, Jacques-François de Mombeton de Brouillan, at the end
of November Iberville seized St. John's on the Atlantic side of the
island, an essential port for New England's cod fishing fleet.
Iberville could not hold the place, however, because "no measures
had been concerted to hold what had been gained." Brouillan
burned St. John's while Iberville and his Canadians destroyed the
other English settlements on the peninsula.172
Frontenac, Iberville, Villebon,
Brouillan, and their Indian allies could smile contentedly as 1696
came to a close. "For the English this had been a year of
disasters, with hardly one redeeming feature for which to build hope
for the future. At its close the advantage rested wholly with
the enemy. East and west, the hostile tribes were now acting
together as one man. Acadia had been lost, Pemaquid
demolished. Much had been expected from the expeditions of
Church and Hathorne; nothing realized." Such was the
perception of the New Englanders and of Frontenac and his
lieutenants. The Acadians at Chignecto, however, would not
have given such a rosy summation of the year's results.173
But for a bloody raid by Canadian
Indians against Haverhill, Massachusetts, in mid-March, 1697 proved
to be a much quieter year than the one before. Then news
arrived in Boston during the summer that a fleet of warships had
left France a few weeks before and was heading to North America to
do the New Englanders no good. It looked like Louis XIV was
determined to end the war by destroying Boston itself, and there was
some truth in the observation. In late winter 1697, Louis,
through his Minister of Marine, Louis Phélypeaux, comte de
Pontchartrain, appointed the Marquis de Nesmond to gather together
in Brest and Rochefort a squadron of 13 warships and four fire ships
to sail to North America for the purpose of laying waste the New
England coast from Boston up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, one of the Le Moyne brothers would take five other
warships from Rochefort to Plaisance and, after rendezvousing with
brother Iberville, head north to Hudson Bay to recapture the
valuable fur-trading posts that Iberville had seized twice during
the war but that the English had again reclaimed.
Pontchartrain sent Frontenac secret orders to prepare 1,500 men, a
formidable force in Canada, to move to at a moment's notice when he
should receive further orders, the purpose of the expedition not
revealed to him in order to maintain strict security. Nesmond
would sail first to Plaisance, where Frontenac would meet him,
capture St. John's, Newfoundland, to protect his rear, and then end
the war in North America once and for all by destroying Boston.
Luckily for the New Englanders, Nesmond's fleet did not reach
Plaisance until July 24, he did not appear before St. John's until
the end of August, and he failed to capture the place. By then
it was early September, too late in the season to move on Boston, so
Nesmond returned to France. The New Englanders nevertheless
prepared for a climactic battle that never came. Summer turned
to fall with only the usual Indians raids marring the relative quiet
of this ninth year of war.174
Peace came at last with the signing of
the Treaty of Ryswick that autumn of 1697, news of it reaching North
America by early December. Some territory had been won and
lost in Europe, but little had changed in America other than that
Acadia was guaranteed as a French possession despite English claims
to it, and, thanks to Iberville's end-of-the-war exploits, the
French controlled the posts in Hudson Bay. The New Englanders
celebrated the end of the war as wildly as Puritans allowed such
things, as well they should have, for the war had cost them dearly.175
The war had cost Acadia, too, at
Pentagouët, Port-Royal, and Chignecto, but it was minor compared to
New England's loss. The Acadians nonetheless had learned a few
valuable lessons from the long struggle with England. The most
bitter lesson was an ironic one. They could see that the thing
which made possible their peacetime trade with the English, the New
Englanders' dominance of the coastal waters, could turn against them
during wartime when their erstwhile trading partners--"our friends,
the enemy"--turned into implacable foes. They also learned
that when danger should come from the sea again, they should be
ready to defend themselves, not to submit meekly, otherwise their
homes and possessions would be destroyed for nothing. The New
Englanders also remembered, among other important lessons, that,
despite a long history of trade with the peace-loving Acadians,
these Papist Frenchmen still were the enemy, still a part of the
complex killing machine that sought to destroy their homes and
families and their way of life. With peace, trade would resume
in earnest between these two very different people, but they would
never look at one another quite the same again.175a
Queen Anne's War and the End of
French Rule in Peninsula Acadia
The peace that followed the end of King
William's War was frustratingly short and tenuous. Indian
raids continued along the New England frontier into 1698. No
treaty that was negotiated an ocean away could solve the Indians'
most pressing problem of losing land to the aggressive New
Englanders. In Acadia, new settlements soon appeared near
Chignecto at Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook, but, again,
these habitants hugged the tide lands of the upper bay and did not
threaten the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet who lived above them.176
A sticking point unresolved in the
Treaty of Ryswick was the boundary between French Acadia and New
England. The English claimed the Ste.-Croix River, while the
French claimed the Kennebec. In 1700, the contending parties
compromised and named the St. George River as the boundary between
the two provinces.177
A new century greeted the Acadians in
1701. In a few years it would be a full century since Pierre
Dugua, sieur de Mons and his companions had left their homes in
Europe and founded Port-Royal and the Acadian venture. And it
was in Europe again that events piled one atop the other to threaten
the peace that had finally come to this corner of New France.
On 17 September 1701, James Stuart,
England's former king, died in exile at St. Germain near Paris at
the age of 67. At least one account placed Louis XIV, now 63
and in the 59th year of his reign, at James' deathbed. Louis
promised the dying king that his son, James Francis Edward Stuart,
whom Louis insisted was the Prince of Wales, would be recognized as
the new English monarch when James breathed his last. Eleven years
before, early in the War of the Grand Alliance, in an attempt to
keep William III from leading troops to the Continent, Louis had
supported a counterrevolution in Ireland that he hoped would restore
James to the throne, but the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690 had
frustrated that effort. And although one of the provisions of
the Treaty of Ryswick was French recognition of William III as the
legitimate ruler of England, if the story of James's deathbed
encounter is accurate, Louis obviously had not given up on his hopes
of restoring a Catholic monarch to the thrown of England.178
In March 1702, the Sun King's most
hated rival breathed his last. William III died in London from
injuries suffered in a fall from his horse, Sorrel. He had
ruled alone since the death of Mary in December 1694, and she had
given him no surviving children. He was succeeded by Mary's
Protestant sister, Anne, with whom he and Mary had fallen out early
in their joint reign. Louis XIV opposed the accession of Anne,
of course, but the Sun King's principal concern at the time was who
would be successor to the childless Hapsburg king of Spain, Charles
II. Louis feared that if the Austrian Hapsburgs regained the
throne of Spain after the passing of Charles II, France would again
be surrounded by implacable enemies. After years of
negotiations involving Louis's oldest son and then his oldest
grandson, it was the grandson, Philip of Anjou, who, upon the death
of Charles II in November 1700, ascended to the Spanish throne as
Philip V. Now the Bourbons ruled Spain as well as France, and
Louis's southern flank was secure. Moreover, new Spanish and
French customs policies were keeping English and Dutch merchants
from exploiting the lucrative Caribbean trade, especially in
slaves--the coveted
asiento. The English, the Dutch, the Austrians, and
many of the German states would have none of this. By early
1702, Louis's enemies had formed a new Grand Alliance against him,
and in May England declared war against France and her allies,
Spain, Portugal, Bavaria, and Savoy. The resulting conflict,
which lasted this time11 years, was called in Europe the War of the
Spanish Succession and in America Queen Anne's War.179
The war along the North American
frontier got off to a much slower start this time, but when it did,
the same savage pattern of warfare erupted between New England,
whose population had risen to 120,000, and Canada, with its much
smaller pool of settlers and a dwindling number of Indian allies.
The Abenaki and other Algonquian tribes, despite the recent treaties
they had made with the New Englanders, were as eager as ever to aide
their French benefactors. There were just fewer warriors to
take up the tomahawk this time because of New England retaliation in
the previous war and European diseases. When the war began in
Europe and he was certain that it would spread to the colonies
again, Philippe de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil, the new
governor-general of New France who had replaced the dead Frontenac,
ordered the Abenaki to fall back into Canada and take up villages on
two rivers along the south side of the St. Lawrence between Québec
and Montréal. This would give Canada a buffer of protection if
the New Englanders struck the first blow. Acadia, under
Governor Jacques-François de Brouillan, his headquarters back in
Port-Royal, was left as usual to its own devices, with no protection
from attack by sea.180
The first "confrontation" between the
Abenaki and the New Englanders, strangely enough, was not a bloody
raid but a peace conference in which only words were exchanged.
The new governor of Massachusetts, Joseph Dudley, invited the
Abenaki chiefs to parlay with him at the new fort at Casco, and
several of the chiefs arrived there on 20 June 1703. Promises
were made by both parties, and they held a ceremony at a pile of
rocks called the Two Brothers, which stood near the fort. When
the council was breaking up and each side fired its customary
salute, the English fired first, using blank cartridges, but they
noticed that some of the Indian celebrants used real bullets when
they fired their salute. Years later, after the war had turned
bloody, Dudley sent a letter to the then governor of Acadia, Daniel
d'Auger de Subercase. In the letter, Dudley laid bare what he
considered to be the treachery of Subercase's predecessor,
Brouillan. An historian of the conflict notes:
"Subercase had accused the provincial troops of committing a
sacrilegious act in digging up the heart of Brouillan from the place
where it was buried. Dudley responds in these terms:
'About five years since[,] I had gone to Casco Bay to make an
agreement with the Indians of my government.
There came to that place two Frenchmen of Port Royal, to whom M. de
Brouillan had promised two hundred pistoles to kill me. These
Frenchmen came to Casco Bay disguised as Indians, and were present
when I was making my agreement, but their hearts failed them in what
they had undertaken. Some time after, one of the two, being a
prisoner, and brought here [to Boston], acknowledged it to me, in my
house, on his knees.'" One wonders who the two cowardly
Acadians might have been, especially the humble penitent ... or if
they really existed.181
Two months after the conference at
Casco Bay, on August 10, the frontier war erupted again when
Abenaki, Canadians, and so-called Mission Indians, under Lieutenant
Alexandre Le Neuf de Beaubassin, attacked coastal villages from
Wells east to Falmouth along the coast of Maine. After nearly a week
of fighting, the French and Indians had killed or captured 130
settlers and destroyed most of the coastal settlements of the
province. Meanwhile, other bands of Abenaki attacked
settlements in New Hampshire. Governor Dudley beseeched the
other New England colonies to help him throw together a retaliatory
force. Connecticut sent a troop of cavalry, but Rhode Island
ignored the plea. In October, a contingent of New Englanders,
360 strong, marched into upper Maine to chastise the treacherous
Abenaki, but they lost their way on the seldom used trails, and
nothing came of the venture. Meanwhile, the Abenaki struck
again and again, and English retaliation remained feeble. In
exasperation, the Massachusetts authorities in September offered a
bounty of twenty pounds for each Indian scalp a settler would bring
in. At least one Puritan clergyman heartily applauded the
measure! This action led to the formation of at least seven
companies of rangers who scoured the Maine woods for the grisly
trophies that winter. The rangers, or "snowshoe men" as they
were called, enjoyed limited success, but they brought a new level
of intensity to the fighting that would characterize the rest of
this war. Indian attacks continued, with persistent savagery,
into early 1704.182
In Québec, Governor-General Vaudreuil,
no doubt mindful of the successes of his predecessor in the previous
war against England, set into motion a plan of attack against the
Massachusetts settlements in the Connecticut River valley.
At least 250 Canadian rangers and probably a larger force of
Indians, including Iroquois and Abenaki, under Jean-Baptiste Hertel
de Rouville, braved an especially severe winter to get at the valley
settlements. On the early morning of 28 February 1704, they
fell on the snow-covered town of Deerfield, burned most of the
houses, killed 50 or so of the inhabitants, and took into captivity
perhaps 100 more, 19 of whom perished on the long, cold trail back
to Canada.183
The New Englanders were
understandably horrified. Retaliation was sure to follow.
Again, the hero of Duxbury, Benjamin Church, promoted to colonel,
was empowered to lead an expedition against the French. And,
again, peninsula Acadia was chosen as the target of retribution.
But Port-Royal would escape violence this time. Massachusetts
"Governor Dudley would not sanction an attack on Port-Royal, though
Church strongly desired to destroy that nest of contraband traders,
among whom, it was whispered, some New England merchants might be
found, base enough to turn the enemy's wants for carrying on the war
against them to their own profit."184
In April, Church gathered a force of
550 men, including friendly Indians who were incorporated into the
colonial companies. Many of the men were armed with fine new
muskets that had just arrived from England. To convey them up
the coast, Church secured two British warships and a Massachusetts
armed vessel. Aboard these larger vessels were numerous
whaleboats that would be used to land the troops at any point along
the coast. There were enough of these boats to propel half the
command against any point at once. "In short, the expedition
in all respects was as well, if not better, equipped as any that had
been sent out on the same errand."185
The colonel's strategy was predictable.
"Church was too old a campaigner not to know that the prospect of
coming upon the hostile Indians unawares was poor indeed.
Burning their deserted wigwams might be compared with burning so
much old brushwood. They were almost as easily rebuilt as
destroyed; and it was too early in the season to lay waste the
Indian cornfields. Church therefore had proposed to himself
the rooting out of as many of the French trading and fishing
stations of Nova Scotia as he should have time to visit, satisfied
in his own mind, as he was, that it was there he could do the enemy
the most harm. It being impracticable to reach Canada, he
argued that the next best thing to do was to strike where the enemy
was most vulnerable--that is through Nova Scotia. This was
rude strategy, to be sure, but it was the only means left of making
reprisals for such murderous raids as that of Hertel de Rouville."
Governor Dudley ordered that "all homes in Acadia be burned, that
dikes protecting recovered land be smashed and that everything that
could be carried be taken along with as many prisoners as possible."186
Sailing up the coast in early May,
Church picked up reinforcements in New Hampshire and then fell upon
the French settlements on Penobscot Bay. Next, he attacked
Mount Desert Island and then Machias, where he continued to scout
out any French settlement he could destroy. But Mount Desert
and Machias were deserted. In early June, his expedition
reached the French settlement in Passamaquoddy Bay at the mouth of
the Ste.-Croix River. One of his units scoured nearby
Campobello Island, the future summer home of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. A small French settlement up the treacherous
Ste-Croix--Gourdain's--fell to Church's force on June 8. The
hand full of Frenchmen who had the temerity to resist Church's men
were "knocked in the head" on the old colonel's orders before he
moved the force up to the falls of the Ste.-Croix, where he
destroyed a tiny French fishing settlement.187
Church next turned on
his primary target, peninsula Acadia. In early July, he sent the
large ships to blockade Port-Royal and then led his whaleboats up
the peninsula to the Minas Basin. They arrived at evening low
tide and had to wait overnight for the morning flood before they
could run the boats into the basin. Meanwhile, the Minas
inhabitants drove off their cattle to keep them out of the hands of
the New Englanders. Church's men pursued the Acadians, who
waited in ambush for the incautious Yankees. A Lieutenant
Baker and a private died in the confrontation--Church's only fatal
casualties in the entire expedition. That evening, Church
ordered his men to burn the Minas settlements and to destroy the
precious dykes, and with them the Acadians' ripening crops.
Lands that had taken the Acadians years to reclaim from the basin
were again covered with salt water. Church rounded up as many
hostages as he could find, threw them aboard the whaleboat
transports, and hurried back up the peninsula to Port-Royal.188
Amazingly, Church and
his much superior force simply lay before Port-Royal and did not
attempt to take the fort that guarded the heart of Acadia. The
little garrison put on a brave demonstration, but mostly they held
their collective breaths and waited for the onslaught that surely
would doom them. It never came. In late July, Church
burned and pillaged what he could along the basin, rounded up more
prisoners, and headed back up the Bay of Fundy, to Chignecto, which
he had attacked eight years before.189
On 28 July 1704, Church
fell on Beaubassin during a heavy fog. This time, however, the
Chignecto Acadians did not attempt to negotiate with the old
Puritan. Having heard of Church's attacks down the coast and
suspecting that they soon would be his next target, they drove their
cattle out of harm's way and prepared to resist the invaders.
Church landed his force and deployed his men. The Chignecto
defenders fired a few shots and then disappeared into the
countryside. Again, the New Englanders plundered and burned an
Acadian settlement before rounding up more unlucky hostages to be
used in negotiating for the release of the New England captives the
French were holding in Canada. The old soldier and his men
returned to Boston the way they had come, stopping at Passamaquoddy,
Mount Desert, and Penobscot again to chastise any French and Indians
there, but this time they found no one. At Casco, Church found
orders directing him to attack the French mission at Norridgewock,
up the Kennebec, but, responding to his men's' desire to return to
their homes, he did not bother to go there.190
And so ended Colonel
Benjamin Church's final raid on Acadia. The New Englanders had
expected him to take Port-Royal and expressed keen disappointment
when they learned that he had not. When it became public
knowledge that Governor Dudley had discouraged Church from taking
the Acadian capital before the expedition had even begun, a cloud of
gloom and frustration settled over the Bay colony. In late
July, the French and Indians from Canada struck in force again along
the Connecticut River valley and massacred more settlers in western
Massachusetts. The war had degenerated into another stalemate
and promised to drag on as long as the last one.191
The winter of 1704-05
offered hope for an end to the fighting when the belligerents in
Boston and Québec opened a dialogue for an exchange of prisoners.
Governor Dudley took advantage of this lull in the fighting to offer
Governor-General Vaudreuil a treaty of neutrality, which would
essentially have ended the war in the colonies. These
negotiations continued into 1706, and the frontier between Canada
and New England enjoyed a peaceful respite. A number of
prisoner exchanges during this period, some no doubt involving
Acadian settlers, gave colonists on both sides reason to hope that
the war at last was over. But the spring of 1706 brought not
only a renewal of nature but also a resumption of hostilities.192
The French and Indians
from Canada struck the first blow in raids along the western
Massachusetts frontier that continued into summer. At
Port-Royal, meanwhile, a small merchant vessel arrived from Boston
under a flag of truce ostensibly for a prisoner exchange. The
New Englanders who owned the vessel, however, were just as intent on
trading goods with the Acadians, who were eager to receive them.
An exchange of prisoners was made, and soon the New Englanders
returned for another trade. The dubious business ended when
the good Puritans back in Boston learned of the contraband trading.
A public scandal erupted, followed by a trial that imposed heavy
fines on all of the merchants involved. Even Governor Dudley
was implicated in the scandal. As the strong public feeling
against trading with the enemy revealed, the war was far from over.193
In the spring of 1707,
Governor Dudley sought to redeem himself by organizing yet another
assault against Port-Royal. There would be no trading in goods
this time. The New Englanders were intent on destroying the
place. Colonel John March, who had been successful in earlier
fighting against the French and Indians in Maine, took command of a
force of two regiments of militia infantry raised in Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, and a battery of militia artillery.
March's force numbered 1,100 men, twice the size of the expedition
that Church had taken to Acadia three years before. The force
would have been even larger if the governor of Connecticut had
cooperated with his fellow New Englanders. Still, it was
unusual for three New England colonies to join in such a venture.
The size of the force and the perceived quality of its leadership
gave every promise of success.194
Acadia, meanwhile, had
received a new governor when Brouillan died on his way back from
France in 1704.
Daniel d'Auger de Subercase, former governor of Placentia and
recent recipient of the Order of St.-Louis, would prove to be the
last French governor of Acadia. Alerted evidently by his
intelligence system, Subercase was ready for March when the New
Englanders dropped anchor in the Port-Royal basin on 26 May 1707.
In the fort at Port-Royal on its imposing hill overlooking the
countryside was not only the small force of French regulars under
Subercase, but also Acadian militia from the surrounding
settlements; 150 Abenaki under Bernard-Anselme de Saint-Castin; and
60 Canadians from Québec under naval officer Louis Denys de La
Ronde, brother of Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure, who had run the
colony before Subercase arrived from France. March's New
Englanders greatly outnumbered the defenders, but the Frenchmen made
up for it with the twin advantages of standing on the defensive
behind prepared works and, in the case of the Acadians, fighting to
protect their own homes.195
On the afternoon of the
26th, March landed a thousand men in two columns seven or eight
miles below the fort, one on the north shore, across from the fort,
to serve as a covering force, the other, commanded by March himself,
on the south side of the basin, on the direct approaches to the
fort. Unfortunately for the New Englanders, because of the
late hour of its landing this main column could not reach the fort
before darkness fell. Subercase sent out skirmishers to delay
both columns, and armed inhabitants swarmed to the area to ambush
any New Englanders they could find. Meanwhile, women and
children hurried to the fort to seek its protection. The next
morning, the 27th, a ragtag force of Acadians ambushed March's
advance along Allain's Creek, inflicting a number of casualties and
further delaying its arrival at the fort.196
When March's column
finally reached its objective on the afternoon of the 27th and threw
itself into battle lines beneath the ramparts of the fort, the New
Englander hesitated to assault Port-Royal with its sturdy walls and
40 guns, including some 36-pounders. He chose, instead, to
hold back his infantry and to knock down the fort with his
artillery. The artillery that could do that was not his,
however, but belonged to the Royal Navy, whose officers insisted
that their big guns could not be landed under the fire of the fort,
and so it was not done. Even March's own artillery commander
refused to bring up his guns under the fire of the fort. March
lay siege to the fort, instead, and the morale of his colonials
plummeted with every swipe of the pick and shovel. On May 31,
after investing the place for only four days and consulting yet
another council of war, March concluded that Port-Royal was just too
strong to subdue by siege. A week later, on June 6, March
lifted the siege, re-embarked his men, and retreated to Casco,
Maine. There he awaited further orders from the authorities in
Boston, to whom he sent three of his officers, including his
troublesome artillery commander, to inform them of his failure.197
News of the disaster at
Port-Royal reached Boston before March's officers arrived in the
city. A virtual mob of colonists greeted them at the dock and
on the streets, mocking their military bearing and shouting, "Port
Royal! Port Royal!" Governor Dudley was mortified by the
official news and chose to send March right back to Port-Royal to
finish it off properly this time. Two prominent civilians
accompanied the hapless colonel as advisors and with the power to
overrule him if necessary. Some of March's original force
refused to accompany him on the second venture--men mostly from
Plymouth and New Hampshire; and, again, Connecticut did not join in
the venture--but his force remained largely intact and arrived
before Port-Royal on August 10. Subercase, meanwhile, had
strengthened his position by erecting field fortifications where
March's besiegers had camped beneath the guns of the fort. The
Acadian governor was surprised to see the New Englanders back so
soon, but, again, his soldiers and Acadians, with the help of
Saint-Castin's Abenaki, stood ready to repulse another English
assault.198
March landed all of his
troops on the north side of the basin this time, evidently with the
object of using his artillery from that side to reduce the fort at a
distance. Subercase seized the initiative, however, and kept a
steady fire on March's camps with his big guns, limiting their
ability to maneuver during the day, while his skirmishers ambushed
and harassed any New Englanders who ventured out into the
countryside to gather provisions or to reconnoiter the approaches to
the fort. The besiegers soon became the besieged, with a
predictable result. Breaking under the strain of another
failure, Colonel March relinquished his command to a trusted
subordinate, Colonel Francis Wainwright of Massachusetts.
Wainwright wasted no time putting his troops into action. He
moved a column of infantry up the river to a point above the fort,
with artillery to follow under cover of darkness. His plan was
to cross at night with the infantry and artillery and fall upon the
rear of the fort the following morning. Subercase learned of
the movement from a loose-lipped New England prisoner and foiled the
crossing by setting bonfires all along the upper river.
Wainwright pulled his force back to a point opposite the fort, but
Subercase shelled him out of the position. Wainwright then
moved farther down the basin, out of the range of the fort's big
guns. Desperate to get at the fort and overwhelm it with raw
numbers, on August 20, ten days into the siege, Wainwright crossed
the lower basin with his entire force to attack Port-Royal from the
south side, as March had tried to do two months before. The
ever watchful Subercase sent Saint-Castin's Abenaki to ambush the
New Englanders as they approached his lines. Wainwright hoped
to draw Subercase's entire force out of the fort and into a
knock-down, drag-out fight in the open, but the wily Frenchman
refused to budge. Wainwright ordered his men back to their
boats, and soon the big English ships opened their sails and headed
back to Massachusetts.199
Thus ended the third
siege of Port-Royal in as many years, each a humiliating defeat for
the New Englanders. Would there be a fourth, or would the
Englishmen finally relent and leave the Acadians alone? In 1707,
Governor Subercase conducted a census of the colony. The
result showed "a continued advance in numbers" in Acadia's major
settlements: 570 were counted at Port-Royal; 271 at Chignecto;
585 at Minas, including Pigiguit; and 82 at Cobeguit, for a total of
slightly over 1,500 colonists, probably an undercounting. One
historian estimates that the "total for all of Chignecto and the
peninsula would be between 1,700 and 1,800" in 1707. The
following year, another census counted 53 at Cap-Sable, 15 at Port Rachelois, and 42 at La Hève and Mirliguèche.199a
The war dragged on into
its sixth and seventh years with more pillaging and murder along the
New England frontier. The hapless village of Haverhill,
Massachusetts, was the hardest hit when French and Indians from
Canada swooped down on its inhabitants in late August 1708.200
Meanwhile, the Acadian
settlements remained unmolested. The war again seemed to be a
distant thing, although the settlers at Minas had only to look at
their dykes to be reminded of how quickly that could change.
New houses appeared there and at Port-Royal and Chignecto to replace
the ones that the New Englanders had burned. Families grew,
new settlers arrived, more land was reclaimed from the marshy
wetlands, and Acadian life went on. Governor Subercase was not
lulled by the interlude of peace that followed the retreat of
Wainwright's force. He beseeched the French Minister of Marine
to send him funds, reinforcements, and provisions without delay so
that he could be ready for the New Englanders when they returned, as
he was certain they would do. The only assistance he received,
however, were two small ships loaded with Parisian boys, and
provisions too meager to feed his garrison. He received
indirect assistance from French privateers, including Denys de La
Ronde, who preyed on English shipping along the Atlantic coast and
used Port-Royal as a base of operations. Unfortunately for the
Acadian farmers in the Fundy settlements, the success of the
privateers ruined what little trade there was between New England
merchants who ignored the war and Acadians who were always eager to
trade for English goods. Worse yet, these depredations against
New England's primary industry fueled the angry Bostonians' resolve
to destroy the Port-Royal menace once and for all.201
In the spring of 1709,
two colonial shakers and movers, Colonels Samuel Vetch and Francis
Nicholson, returned to Boston from London with orders from Queen
Anne herself to end the war in the colonies. It would be done
not by negotiation but by force of arms, and Canada would be the
primary objective, Port-Royal a secondary one. For the first
time since Phips's failed attempt to take Quebec 19 years before,
the English would try to capture Montréal and Québec, again with
overwhelming force.202
No two more interesting men could have
been chosen to lead the venture. The 41-year-old Vetch was a
native of Scotland who had settled in Albany 10 years before and
established a successful trade with the Indians. In 1706, he,
too, had been implicated in the illegal trade with Port-Royal and
fined heavily. His conviction, however, had been overturned by
a friendly court ruling, and he remained in the good graces of the
English authorities in London. The plan of campaign was
essentially his. The queen's government empowered him to raise
the necessary force in the colonies to subdue New France.
Nicholson, who was age 54 at the time, was one of the most
distinguished colonial administrators of the age. He had
served as lieutenant governor of the ill-starred Dominion of New
England two decades before and had fled with Sir Edmond Andros to
England when a revolt in New York toppled Andros's regime in 1689.
The next year Nicholson returned to the colonies as lieutenant
governor of Virginia. He governed Maryland from 1694-98 and
returned to Virginia in 1698 as governor general. Quarrels
there led to his ouster in 1705. He nevertheless remained a
favorite of Queen Anne and her ministers, was made a colonel and
placed in command of the Canadian operation.203
An historian of the war describes the
objective of the expedition: "In brief, the plan of operations
was this: The campaign was to be opened by a combined attack
upon Quebec and Montreal, both by sea and land. The fall of
Canada would, of course, involve that of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland,
and all the rest of the French possessions on the continent, which
would then come definitively under British rule, once and forever."
To this end, Massachusetts would supply 1,000 militiamen, Rhode
Island 200, for the attack against Québec by sea from Boston.
The larger force for the sea borne operation would consist of five
regiments of redcoat regulars, 3,000 men, for a total of 4,200 men
in the attack upon Québec. For the land expedition against
Montréal, to be commanded by Nicholson with Vetch as his second in
command, Connecticut would raise 350 men, New York 800, Pennsylvania
150, and New Jersey 300, a total of 1,600 militiamen to rendezvous
at Albany in May. The combined force of nearly 6,000 regulars
and militiamen and hundreds more sailors and marines was over twice
the size of Phips' expedition of 1690. Surely if all went well
for the English, both Canada and Acadia would be theirs at last and
they would dominate North America.204
Things went terribly for the hapless
British. Colonel Nicholson's part of the operation started
badly when New Jersey and Pennsylvania refused to furnish the 450
men allotted to them. Undeterred, Nicholson made this up by
employing 600 Iroquois warriors and their families, keeping his
total force for the attack on Montreal at a respectable 1,500 men.
He moved up the Hudson from Albany on schedule, cutting a road for
his supplies and a possible retreat route, and halted at Wood Creek,
which would take his force into Lake Champlain. Here he waited
for word of the larger movement from Boston, built canoes and waited
for flat boats to be floated up the Hudson and dragged overland to
his position. At Wood Creek he skirmished with a small French
force from Montréal, which quickly slipped away to alert the big
French garrison.205
In Boston, meanwhile, Governor Dudley
and his lieutenants, including Vetch, gathered their transports and
waited for the British squadron filled with redcoats and marines to
arrive from England. Spring slipped quietly into summer, which
gave way to autumn, and still they waited. Nicholson's force
waiting at Wood Creek dwindled with each passing day when dysentery
struck the troops in their filthy camps. Finally, a dispatch
vessel from London arrived at Boston: the English squadron and
the redcoats the queen had promised them had been sent to Portugal
instead. The stout walls of Québec and Montréal would remain
untouched by English fire.206
Colonel Nicholson would not give up.
"Unwilling to throw away what had cost so much time, trouble, and
expense to get together, the New England governors met Nicholson,
Vetch, and Moody at Rehobeth, October 14th, to see what was to be
done. It was unanimously decided to send the New England
forces against Port Royal, provided the queen's ships then at Boston
and New York would co-operate." The Royal Navy balked,
however, and there was nothing left to do but disband the entire
force and send them home.207
And, again, Colonel Nicholson, Captain
Vetch, and Governor Dudley refused to give up on an attack against
the Acadian menace. A recent historian of the conflict
describes the preparations for yet another expedition against the
French colony: "Though deeply disappointed, the dogged New
Englanders did not give up all hope of reprisal; once again they
lowered their sights from Quebec to Port Royal. England was
again persuaded to provide ships, and in 1710 Massachusetts again
rounded up its semidrilled throng of farmers, mechanics, plowboys,
clerks and apprentices. The soldiers of 1709 were asked to
enlist again, this time lured by the promise that they might keep
the muskets supplied them. Once again, when volunteers fell
below quotas, the colony calmly drafted the reluctant. Seamen
were impressed by the forefathers of that nation which would fight a
war to protect its seamen from British press gangs, and the parents
of those sturdy provincials who would make mock of the dainties in
the elaborate war train of Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne did not
hesitate to vote 20 sheep, 5 pigs, 100 fowl and 1 pipe of wine for
the table of General Nicholson. A dinner was held at the Green
Dragon Tavern in honor of Nicholson, Vetch and Sir Charles Hobby,
the British squadron commander, and on the following morning,
September 18, the expedition numbering about 40 ships, large and
small, sailed for Acadia." Nicholson commanded the expedition
with Vetch as his chief of staff. The New England force
numbered 2,000 men, including a regiment of Royal Marines and four
battalions of provincial militia commanded by colonels Sir Charles
Hobby and William Tailer of Massachusetts, Colonel William Whiting
of Connecticut, and Colonel Shadrach Walton of New Hampshire.
A force of Iroquois also accompanied the expedition.
Nicholson's ships reached the entrance to the basin at Port-Royal on
September 24.208
Daniel d'Auger de Subercase, the
successful defender of Port-Royal in 1707, still governed the
Acadian colony in 1710. In the fort this time were only about
260 French regulars, "the greater part of whom he was afraid to
trust outside of the fort for fear of them deserting." Worse
yet, the fort itself was in a ramshackle condition, its ramparts
hardly defendable. When the English ships appeared at the
entrance to Port-Royal basin, Subercase rushed a dispatch to the
authorities in France stating that "if the garrison received no
succor, there was 'every reason to fear something fatal.'"209
How true were his words.
Deserters from the French garrison met the English in the basin and
revealed the weakness of the fort to the enemy. Though one of
Nicholson's ships ran onto the rocks at the entrance to the basin
and sank with the loss of 26 men, his other vessels anchored safely
in sight of the fort. The next day, September 25, the English
landed virtually unopposed. They moved immediately against the
fort, two battalions under Vetch attacking from the north, two under
Nicholson attacking from the south. Subercase did not sally
out to meet them. The only resistance to the English approach
came from some of the Acadians living on the line of march who fired
at the New Englanders from their houses before hurrying into the
countryside. Meanwhile, the English warships lobbed shells
into the fort while Subercase fired what artillery he had at the
approaching New Englanders. Moving within easy artillery range
of the fort, Nicholson brought up his field artillery and supervised
its emplacement. Three breaching batteries stood ready on
October 1, when they opened fire on the dilapidated old fort from a
range of only 100 yards. After a desultory fire, "Subercase asked
for terms. Once more the golden Bourbon lilies came fluttering
down Port Royal's flagstaff; the French soldiers--about 250
men--came marching out with drums rolling, colors flying and arms
reversed; the English troops went marching in, the Union Jack went
up the pole, the Queen's health was drunk--and in the morning the
distressed French ladies of the fort were treated to a breakfast by
the English officers."210
No one could know it, but the
fleurs-de-lis would never fly over Port-Royal again. Then
again, perhaps Francis Nicholson
could
see into the future when he renamed the place in honor of his queen.
One hundred and five years after Poutrincourt had christened the
fledgling French settlement that he and Dugua had planted on the
shores of the wide basin, the name "Port-Royal" slid quietly into
history. The village that clustered around the old French fort was
re-christened Annapolis Royal and was often called simply Annapolis. The British resurrected "Nova
Scotia" as their name for the entire colony.211
Determined to punish the Acadians for
their role in the war that had just gone terribly against them,
Nicholson then turned on the inhabitants of Nova Scotia. The
terms of surrender provided protection only to those Acadians who
lived within three English miles of the fort: the 481
inhabitants dwelling in what was called the banlieue, who, to
secure protection, were compelled to take an oath of allegiance to
Queen Anne. All others--those in the upper river above
Port-Royal, at Minas, Pigiguit, Cobeguit, Chignecto, the
trois-rivières, Rivière St.-Jean, Pobomcoup, and other settlements,
that is, the great majority of Acadians--would be "treated as
prisoners at discretion, or as subject to such penalties as the
conquerors might see fit to impose." Nicholson promptly sent
envoys overland to Québec to inform the Canadian governor-general,
still Vaudreuil, that Port-Royal was now in English hands. He
warned the Frenchman that "if the discriminate massacre of innocent
women and children by his hired cut-throats was persisted in, then
the Acadians would be treated in a like manner." He left Vetch
to govern the captured garrison, with a battalion of 450 Royal
Marines and New Englanders to assist him. No committee of
citizens would be left to run the town as Phips had decreed 20 years
before. The French garrison took ship for La Rochelle. A
few Acadian families joined them. Some families packed up and
headed for Canada, but the majority of the Acadians stayed in their
homes, determined to endure whatever else history threw at them.212
As autumn slipped into winter with its
snow and ice and spring finally arrived with its welcome thaw, the
Acadians became more and more agitated over the prospect of
remaining under English rule. One of the provisions of the
hated terms of surrender dictated by Nicholson and Vetch was that
"All French must be deported outside the country, save those who
adopt Protestantism. That it would be most advantageous for
the Crown that this measure be effected with all possible speed and
that they be replaced with Protestant families from England or
Ireland ...." The inhabitants within cannon shot--three
miles--of Annapolis Royal were not affected by this decree, but
every other settlement in Acadia fell under it. The Acadians
were devout Catholics who would never dream of converting to
Protestantism or of giving up their land to foreigners. They
were not the sort of people who would sit idly by while the English
destroyed their way of life.213
An incident on haute rivière that
winter no doubt soured relations between the British at Annapolis
and the Acadians in the basin. Historian John Mack Faragher relates: "The first sign of Acadian resistance came
in January 1711. Vetch had sent the garrison's commander, a
Huguenot from Bordeaux named Peter Capon, to negotiate the purchase
of grain from Pierre Leblanc, captain of the Port Royal
militia and chief inhabitant of the haute rivière.... As the
two men sat talking in Leblanc's house one evening, a group
of armed Acadians burst in 'with their firelocks cocked,' seized
Capon, and dragged him out into the night. Leblanc
quickly put an end to the incident by going after them and arranging
for Capon's release, paying a ransom of 20 pistoles; but
Vetch kept the pot boiling by sending an officer and fifty armed men
to Saint-Laurent chapel in the haute rivière the following Sunday
morning to arrest Father Justinien Durand, priest of the parish of
Saint-Jean-Baptiste [on the lower river], as well as a score of
leading inhabitants--merchants Louis Allain and Germain
Bourgeois along with their eldest sons; wealthy inhabitant Jean
Comeau; François Broussard; and Captain Pierre Leblanc
himself. 'This was done in reprizal of what they had Mr.
Capon,' Vetch announced. There is no evidence that any of them
had anything to do with planning the incident, and Leblanc
had been the one to rescue Capon. But Bourgeois was
well known as the man who had bravely confronted Major Benjamin
Church and his invaders at Beaubassin in 1696, and Broussard
was acknowledged to be a dissident, and would raise two sons who
would become prominent leaders of the resistance to British rule.
The hostages would not be released, Vetch declared, until the
Acadians delivered the persons responsible for Capon's abduction."
The aftermath likely was never forgotten by area Acadians.
"The men remained in the dungeon for several weeks, and Bourgeois
died soon after his release, according to his family, as the direct
result of his suffering. [Father] Durand was sent to Boston,
where he languished in jail for nearly a year before being released
in a prisoner exchange with French authorities in Quebec. But
although numerous inhabitants surely knew the identity of the men
responsible, no one informed the British."213a
The settlers at Minas and Chignecto
heard, no doubt, about the arrest and imprisonment of their fellow
Acadians at Annapolis Royal. They also heard that the garrison of
royal marines, who had not fared well over the Acadian winter, had
been replaced by semi-drilled New England militiamen, and that
sickness and desertion had reduced the ranks of the New Englanders
by over half, making them vulnerable to attack. The Acadians
appealed to Anselme de Saint-Castin and his trusty Abenaki at
Pentagouët to help them retake the old fort. In late June
1711, Saint-Castin and his Abenaki crossed the Bay of Fundy
undetected by the English and joined a group of armed settlers from
Minas and Chignecto for a go at Annapolis. They
approached to within a dozen miles of the fort and fell upon a party
of 70 Englishmen searching for building timber at a place still
called Bloody Creek. A sharp skirmish left over a dozen of the
Englishmen dead and the rest captured. With the garrison much
reduced and more armed Acadians sure to appear, the chances of
retaking the fort were even greater. The Acadians and
Saint-Castin appealed to Vaudreuil for reinforcements. They
also alerted the governor of Plaisance in Newfoundland, who promised
to send them what cannon he could spare via the ship of a French
privateer named Morpain. June became July as the Acadians
patiently waited for the men and cannon that never came.214
Unfortunately for the Acadians, their
timing was terrible, and the assault on Annapolis Royal never came
off. Only days before the clash at Bloody Creek, "the most
formidable armament ever dispatched to these shores" began to drop
sail in Boston harbor. Colonel Nicholson, the indefatigable enemy
of the Acadians, had done much to bring this virtual Armada to
America. Flushed with victory, he had returned to Boston after
his easy capture of Port-Royal and soon sailed to England to stir up
the Queen's government for another go at Québec and Montréal.
His timing could not have been better. The Tories had just
ousted the Whigs from power, and the Queen's new Tory ministers were
"eager to discredit the Duke of Marlborough, whose stunning
victories over the French and Spanish had made him the darling of
the Whigs. The Tories reasoned that if France could be evicted
from America, it could be shown that this triumph would be of
greater value to England than all Marlborough's victories, which
were already being belittled as of more benefit to Holland and
Austria than to Britain." The Queen's new government cobbled
together a force of 12,000 men, including seven regiments of
Marlborough's veterans sent to England from Holland for the
expedition, nine ships of war, two bomb ketches, and about 60
transports and supply vessels, 600 marines, and the requisite
artillery, to be supplemented by 1,500 colonial militia to be raised
in New England and commanded by Samuel Vetch. Nicholson was
given the same mission he had tried mightily to complete the year
before, to move a large force of New York militia and Iroquois from
Albany to Lake Champlain and to fall upon Montréal when the
formidable force from England fell on Québec by way of Boston.
The armada began arriving in Boston on 24 June 1711, and, after
turning Boston inside out for supplies and recruits, set sail for
the St. Lawrence on July 30. Commander of the fleet was an
armchair admiral, Sir Hovenden Walker. In command of the army
forces was a political appointee who had never seen battle,
Brigadier John "Honest Jack" Hill, brother of the queen's new
favorite, Mrs. Masham. It was this force that gobbled up the
cannon headed from Newfoundland to Acadia and reinforced the ailing
garrison at Annapolis Royal with a fresh contingent of New England
militiamen. Saint-Castin's warriors alerted the force of 200
Canadians marching to the aid of their Acadian brethren. Vaudreuil's
men, reluctant to attack a fort without cannon, turned back, and the
enterprise against Annapolis Royal was ruined. Meanwhile, on
the foggy night of August 22, as he approached the mouth of the St.
Lawrence River, Admiral Walker allowed part of his fleet to be
dashed against the treacherous north shore of the lower St.
Lawrence. At least 900 soldiers and sailors perished in one of
the worst maritime disasters of the age. Despite still having
a large enough force to capture Québec easily and ignoring the
entreaties of Colonel Vetch, Walker and Hill sailed back to England
and blamed the disaster on the Bostonians, whose hopes of destroying
the Canadian menace once and for all were dashed once again, and
perhaps forever, this time literally on the rocks of the
Île-aux-Oeufs.215
Queen Anne's War sputtered on along the
New England-Maine frontier, but the Tories in London had had enough.
Peace negotiations began in earnest at Utrecht in Holland, where, in
April 1713, Britain and France signed the first in a series of
treaties that ended 11 years of warfare in Europe and America.
Among the complex provisions of the Peace of Utrecht was a clause
that affected the Acadians in a most profound way. Having won
the recognition of a Bourbon to occupy the throne of Spain, the
reason why the conflict in Europe was called the War of the Spanish
Succession, France agreed, among other things, to cede some of its
foreign territory to Britain--its holdings along the shore of Hudson
Bay, the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, the region of Newfoundland,
and, in the treaty's Article 12, Acadia "with the ancient
boundaries."216
Unfortunately for everyone, especially
the hapless Acadians, the treaty was vague about "the ancient
boundaries" of the territory the French had called Acadia.
They would claim for decades that they had
ceded only
peninsula Acadia. The British would insist that the
Peace of Utrecht had "made them owners, not only of the Nova Scotian
peninsula, but of all the country north of it to the St. Lawrence,
or at least to the dividing ridge or height of land." No matter, the deed was done.
Acadia now was Nova Scotia, a name the English and Scots adopted in
the 1620s. The great majority of
Acadians lived on tidal lands bordering the deep inlets of the Bay
of Fundy--along the shore that France clearly had ceded to Britain.
The long years of warfare with their implacable enemy, as well as
the vaguely worded Peace that ended the conflict, sowed seeds that
would bear terrible fruit for simple farmers
who wanted nothing more than to be left alone.217
End of an Era: The
Passing of the Acadian Pioneers
By the end of French
control in peninsula Acadia, most of the colony's first-family
progenitors had breathed their last. Many lived to a ripe old
age, witnessing the birth of grandchildren and even
great-grandchildren. Some were not so lucky. Most of
them died on their farms along the basin near Port-Royal. A
few had moved on to Chignecto and Minas and passed their final days
there:116
Germain Doucet,
sieur de La Verdure, was forced by the English to leave Acadia in
1654, when he was in his late 50s. He did not return to the
colony, and his death date is unknown. As far as is known, the
first family founder to die in Acadia was the fisherman turned
farmer Jean Poirier, who died probably at Port-Royal in
c1654, age unknown. Étienne, the younger of the two Hébert
brothers, died at Port-Royal between 1669 and 1671, on the eve of
the first census; his birth year is unknown, but he probably died in
his middle age.
François Guérin
probably was in his middle age, also, when he died before the
first census.
Other first-family
founders died in the colony during the 1670s. Jean
Gaudet died in the middle of the decade, over 100 years old.
Several progenitors were counted in the colony in 1671 but not in
1678 or 1686, so they probably died during the 1670s. Jean
Thériot would have been in his 70s. François
Savoie would have been in his 50s. Vincent Brun
would have been in his 60s.
François Pellerin
died in c1678, age 43.
Antoine Gougeon
also died that year, age 52. Pierre Martin,
père
died late in the decade, in his 70s.
René Landry
l'aîné
died between 1678 and 1686, perhaps in his early 60s.
Étienne Robichaud also died between 1678 and 1686, in his
mid- or late 40s. Pierre Lejeune dit Briard may
have died during the decade, age undetermined. Pierre
Cyr died probably at Chignecto in c1679, age 35.
More first-family
founders died during the peaceful 1680s. Pierre Vincent
died perhaps early in the decade, in his early or mid-50s.
Guillaume
Trahan
died in c1684, age 83. Vincent Breau died in c1685,
in his mid-50s. Pierre Comeau was counted at Port-Royal
in 1686; the census taker, Sr. de Meulles, said he was age 88
at the time; Pierre died before the next census in 1693, in his late
80s or, more likely, in his early 90s. Antoine Hébert
died in the late 1680s or early 1690s, in his late 60s or early 70s.
Jean Blanchard
died between the censuses of 1686 and 1693, in his late 70s or
early 80s. Olivier Daigre died about the same time, in
his early 40s. Barnabé Martin also died about then,
probably in his late 40s. Michel Richard dit
Sansoucy died between 1686 and 1689, in his late 50s. Jean
Pitre
died after the census of 1686, perhaps later in the decade, in
his early 50s. Antoine Babin died between 1686 and
1688, in his late 50s. Antoine Belliveau may have died
late in the decade, in his 60s.
René Landry
le jeune died between 1686 and 1693, perhaps in his late 50s.
Michel Boudrot
died between August 1688 and 1693, in his late 80s or early 90s.
First-family founders
died during the turbulent 1690s. Antoine Bourg died
between October 1687 and 1693, in his late 70s or early 80s.
Thomas Cormier died at Chignecto in c1690, in his mid-50s.
His father-in-law, François Girouard, died at Port-Royal in
the early 1690s, in his early 70s. Guyon Chiasson
dit La Vallée died probably in the early 1690s, in his mid-50s.
Michel/Geyret de Forest died probably in the early 1690s, in
his early 50s. Claude Petitpas died in c1691, in his
mid-50s. Alexandre Le Borgne de Bélisle, former
governor and seigneur of Port-Royal, died there in c1693, in his
early 50s. François Gautrot died in c1693, age
80. Daniel
LeBlanc died between 1695 and 1698, in his late 60s or early
70s. Abraham Dugas died during the decade, in his late
70s or early 80s.
First-family founders
died during the final days of French control of peninsula Acadia,
and a few were still alive when the British officially took over the
colony in 1713. Philippe Mius d'Entremont,
retired seigneur of Pobomcoup, died probably at a daughter's home at
Minas in 1700 or 1701, age about 91. Charles Melanson
dit Le Ramée, the younger brother, also died in 1700 or 1701,
in his late 50s. Jacques dit Jacob Bourgeois,
founder of the Chignecto settlement, died probably at Port-Royal in
1701, in his early 80s. Laurent Granger died between
1700 and 1703, in his late 50s. Michel Dupuis may have
died early in the 1700s, perhaps in his early 60s. Pierre
Guilbeau died in November 1703, age 64. Pierre
Thibodeau, founder of the Chepoudy settlement, died at
Pré-Ronde, near Port-Royal, in December 1704, in his early 70s.
Jean Serreau, sieur de Saint-Aubin, seigneur of Ste.-Croix
and Passamaquoddy, died at Port-Royal in March 1705, age 85.
Philippe Pinet died in October 1710, in his late 50s.
Pierre Lanoue died between 1707 and 1714, in his late 50s or
early 60s. Jean Corporon died in February 1713, age 66.
Pierre Melanson dit La Verdure, fils, the older
brother and son-in-law of the old seigneur of Pobomcoup and pioneer
of Grand-Pré, died there after the 1714 census, probably in his
early 80s.
Roger dit
Jean
Caissie died probably at Chignecto, perhaps in the mid-or
late 1710s,
in his late 60s.
Five years after he was imprisoned by the British in Fort Anne,
François Broussard died suddenly at his farm on haute rivière
in December 1716, in his early 60s.
Acadian Geography and Culture
By the time the British
seized control of peninsula Nova Scotia in 1710, some of the oldest
Acadian families were in their third and fourth generations.
They could be found at Pobomcoup near Cap-Sable, and at
Mirliguèche
and other small fishing settlements on the Atlantic side of the
peninsula; in the basin above and below what the British called
Annapolis Royal; at a dozen settlements in the Minas Basin,
including Grand-Pré, Pigiguit, and Cobeguit; and in a half dozen more
settlements, including Beaubassin, Rivière-des-Héberts, Maccan,
Nappan, Vechkock, and Menoudy, east of the Missaguash at Chignecto.
Others could be found in territory claimed by both France and
Britain west of the Missaguash, at Aulac, Tintamarre, Chepoudy,
Petitcoudiac, Memramcook, Shediac, and Miramichi; along the middle
reaches of Rivière St.-Jean, northwest of Chignecto; along Rivière
Ste.-Croix and the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay on the border of
present-day New Brunswick and Maine; and along the Maine coast at
Machias and other distant places, all the way down to the mouth of
the Kennebec. After three quarters of a century of settlement,
these fecund Acadians, along with more recent arrivals, could be
counted in the thousands. Most importantly, during the times of peace and frequent
conflict, they had created a culture of their very own.
Ironically, it was not until after a dozen-year war brought peace to
greater Acadia that this culture entered a kind of Golden Age.
After the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713, thirty years of
relative peace descended on North America. To be sure,
seventeenth-century Acadia had seen years of quiet in the struggle
between the imperial rivals--from 1632 to 1654, and from 1658 to
1689--but after a quarter century of nearly continuous warfare,
burdening an entire generation, the Acadians welcomed another
respite of peace, even under the rule of their former enemies.123
.
By 1710 and for the next four
and half decades, the major Acadian
communities, as well as
the so-called outlying settlements, possessed, or would come to
possess, characteristics both
unique and universal in the context of Acadian geography and culture.
Annapolis Royal, described
as "the old 'home' settlement of the Acadians," founded in 1605, two
years before Jamestown in Virginia and three years before Québec in
Canada, differed from the other Acadian settlements in several ways.
First, there was Fort Anne, which stood on a wide point of land
along the south bank of the lower Annapolis River seven miles or so
above Goat Island, which stood at the confluence of the river and
the lower basin. Until the summer of 1749, the fort was one of
only two fortified garrisons in all of peninsula Nova Scotia (the
other, on Great Canso Island, was so ramshackle an affair and
contained so few troops that it hardly deserved the name of
fortification, and, in fact, had no name). A fort of some kind
had stood on the site of Fort Anne, or close to it, since the time
of the Scots in the 1620s, and d'Aulnay had built his fort on this
exact spot during the late 1630s. No place in Acadia/Nova Scotia had
seen more military action than the site of this old fort; during the 1720s and 1740s,
in fact, the old fort would see action again.
For the first four and a half decades of British occupation, Fort
Anne held around a hundred officers and men, as well as a small
community of officials. Here, until 1749, the colonial council
met. Near the fort, in Annapolis village, dwelled several New
English traders, who, along with the garrison, "lived a life apart
from the general Acadian community, although a few Acadian families,
generally those living near the fort," historian Andrew Hill Clark
reminds us, effected a partial integration by marriage of their
daughters to soldiers of the garrison." Here, Clark observes,
stood "a special sort of area that consumed and did not produce.
It provided a market for agricultural products, although the
residents of the basin below the fort, and of the valley above it,
felt that it was a forced market with prices kept at as artificially
low a level as the garrison dared try to enforce." No other
major Acadian community lay farther in time and distance from
French-controlled Canada and Île Royale, but none stood nearer to Boston and the rest of New England.
The water approach to Annapolis Royal required careful navigation,
however. Ships had first to negotiate the Gut, called today
the Digby Gut and also St. George's Strait. Here was a narrow,
windy, tide-distracted, often fogged-plagued cut through the heights
of the Granville Peninsula on the east and Point Prim on the west.
Once through the Gut and into the lower basin, a ship had to take
care to approach Goat Island along its north, not its shallow south,
channel. There, however, the tides were even more dangerous
than the ones plaguing the Gut, so a pilot likely would wait for a
strong leading wind before negotiating the channel past Goat Island.
The five-mile stretch of water between Goat Island up to Annapolis
Royal "formed a commodious harbor with six fathoms even at extreme
low tide. The river was navigable for small vessels about
eighteen miles above the fort," to present-day Bridgetown.
Boats could continue the nine miles farther up to "the falls" if the
tide allowed it and the boat was maneuverable enough to be beached
when the tide pulled out. Back at the colonial capital, thanks
to commerce and the trappings of government, "Such hints of elegance or of exotic sophistication as there were in
housing, clothing, and furniture, were confined closely to the
banlieu of the fort," with perhaps one exception.
Bellaire, the home Joseph-Nicolas Gautier, a merchant born in
Rochefort, stood on a capacious plot of land along the river above the fort.
Gautier's wife was Marie, daughter of blacksmith and landowner Louis Allain
and his wife,
Marguerite Bourg, so the merchant was connected to "regular"
Acadians by marriage. By the 1740s, Gautier,
who operated a small commercial fleet of his own,
was worth about 80,000 livres, making him one of the wealthiest men
in the colony, if not the richest. A hand full of Acadian
merchants lived at Annapolis Royal, but their connections with
Boston could not match that of their English contemporaries.
According to historian Andrew Hill Clark, from the 1680s
well into the early 1700s, the Acadian population of the Annapolis
valley tended to be older than in the upper Fundy communities, due
mainly to the migration of recently-married couples into the
newer communities, where, among other things, they could find more
dykable marshland on which to start their own families.
Acadian farms dotted the basin and riverside from Goat Island "to as
far as five leagues above the fort as early as 1720." The
location of the dykable marshland tended to create a settlement
pattern of "nodes, almost hamlets, commonly of five to ten
families." The largest hamlet circled the Belle Île marsh,
which lay six to eight miles above the fort; there, "within a space
of two miles," dwelled 30 families of 150 to 200 people.
Annapolis valley Acadians, as they had since the late 1630s, engaged
not only in farming but also in hunting, fowling, trapping, and
fishing. Some also engaged in lumbering and used mills of
their own making, either tide- or wind-driven, to fashion their
planks and shakes. During the summer, between planting and the
harvest, it was not unusual for younger men from large families who
enjoyed a surplus of labor on their farms to hire themselves out to
the cod fishery. As in other Acadian communities, the farm
houses of the Annapolis valley, as well as the houses of the
Acadians in Annapolis village, were modest affairs, described by a
1745 visitor as "'... wretched wooden boxes, without conveniences,
and without ornaments, and scarcely containing the most necessary
furniture...." Buildable stone and masonry skills were in
short supply throughout the colony, so of course the Acadians'
houses would have been made of simple, unprepossessing wood. Two church parishes
continued to serve the Acadians of
the Annapolis area, St.-Jean-Baptiste on the lower river, and
St.-Laurent above. Both structures also were built of wood and
were no more prepossessing than the parishioners' homes.128
If one traveled up the
Annapolis River, past "the falls" and the last of the Acadian
dwellings, to the stream's farthest reaches, one would enter a rocky upland
where there was no settlement for a number of miles. Following the old
Indian track eastward along the slope of North Mountain, over and then down an almost imperceptible
divide, one would reach the headwaters of today's Cornwallis River,
called by the Acadians Rivière-St.-Antoine in the 1600s and Rivière-des-Habitants
in the 1700s. If one followed this small, winding tidal stream
down to its mouth, one soon would encounter more dykable
marshes and, beside them, more Acadian dwellings. Here was the
center of the breadbasket of British Nova Scotia and the colony's
most populous district--what Andrew Hill Clark calls Minas Proper,
which comprised the eastern valley of the basin, "between North
Mountain and the mouth of the Pisiguid (Avon) estuary."
Clark notes that, during the time that Britain controlled the
colony, "Annapolis grew more slowly and Minas more rapidly than the
Acadian average." Rivière-des-Habitants was only one of five important tidal streams
that flowed from the highlands west of the Annapolis valley into the
Minas Basin. Farthest north was Rivière Pereau, more a creek
than a river. A few miles farther south flowed Rivière-de-la-Vieille-Habitation,
and then Rivière-aux-Canards north of des-Habitants. The most
southern of the four streams was Rivière Gaspereau, which drained
the granite upland at the northern edge of South Mountain; this
dramatic little stream flowed through a 500-foot gorge it had carved
out of the granite upland before winding through its own series of
tidal marshes, the first of which lay five miles above its mouth.
According to Clark, "There were settlements along all of these
[streams] by 1714," the year in which Father Félix Pain conducted
his census of British Nova Scotia for the governor of Île Royale.
In that year, Father Pain counted 530 settlers at Minas: 37 on
Rivière Gaspereau; 287 at Grand-Pré, which lay between des-Habitants
and the Gaspereau; 95 on led-Habitants; 76 on Rivière-aux-Canards;
and 36 on Rivière Pereau and Vieille-Habitation. The following
year, acting governor Thomas Caulfield called Minas "'by much the
best improvement in This Collony.'" In 1720, colonial engineer
and future lieutenant governor Paul Mascarene described Grand-Pré as
"'... a platt of Meadow, which stretches along for near four
leagues, part of which is damn'd in from the tide, and produces very
good wheat and pease.'" In Grand-Pré itself, Mascarene added,
"'the houses which compose a kind of scattering Town, lyes on a
riseing ground along two Creeks which runns betwixt it, and the
meadow, and makes of this last a kind of Peninsula.'" The
marsh, or meadow, was at least a thousand acres in extent. As
many as 200 houses, spread along two or three miles atop the ridge
overlooking the great meadow, comprised the village of Grand-Pré,
which remained the largest population center in the district until
the British destroyed it in 1755. Here stood the church of
St.-Charles-des-Mines, where New English Colonel John Winslow would
detain the Grand-Pré men and boys in July of that terrible year
before sending them and their families to the deportation ships.
On the lower Gaspereau were two settlements, called Gaspereau and
Melanson, that sometimes were considered part of Grand-Pré.
It was here, in early February 1747, that Canadian officers
encountered a wedding feast in the midst of a raging snow storm on
their way to destroying a New English force billeted at Grand-Pré.
One of the few New English officer who survived the attack described
the dwellings in Grand-Pré village as "'low Houses fram'd of timber
and their Chimney fram'd with the Building of wood & lined with Clay
except the fireplace below....'" At the center of town were a
few stone houses, in one of which the New English commander was shot
in his bed. "So scattered were the individual houses that '...
our Quarters must have been extended above a mile (even) had we
taken up the nearest houses in the thickest part of it....'"
The second most populous area in Minas Proper was
Rivière-aux-Canard, also with its own church, dedicated to
St.-Joseph. Canard "had a comparable stretch of marshland in
its broad river valley" and, according to Clark's estimation,
boasted a population of 2,500 people by the early 1750s.
English engineer George Morris, who survived the Grand-Pré attack of
1747 and surveyed parts of the colony in the early 1750s, noticed at
Canard an unusually large use of uplands for agriculture and
reported that '... for the production of Grain (it) well answer'd
their Labour; but not like their Marshes, but much more uplands are
here improved then (sic) in any other District.'"
Historian Clark adds: "Apart from homes, barns, and stables,
the only buildings [in these villages] were the churches and mills."129
South of Grand-Pré, at the
southeastern edge of the Minas Basin, stood the scattered communities
of Pigiguit, an area of settlement in the basin second only in size and population to Minas Proper.
Andrew Hill Clarks estimates its population in the mid-1700s at
1,400 to 1,500 individuals, a dramatic increase from the 351 people
Father Pain counted there in 1714. Here, Rivière Pigiguit,
today's Avon River, flowed westward and then northward from the
highlands of the central peninsula, and, after being joined by the
Rivière St.-Croix and then the Rivière Quenetcou, now Kennetcook,
two smaller streams emptying into it from the east, formed an
impressive channel flowing slightly northwestward that emptied into
the basin west of Grand-Pré. The navigational approach to
Pigiguit, then, was up the wide eponymous river, which did not
produce dykable marshes until the confluence with the Kennetcook, on
to a wide peninsula formed by the confluence with the St.-Croix;
Pigiguit, in fact, was Mi'kmaq for "junction of the waters."
However, "The great tidal range created problems for water
communication. Large vessels usually had to lie well out and
even then were usually aground at low tide, but small vessels could
come up to all the settlements if they could withstand beaching.
Anchorage was also a problem so rapidly did the tidal race enter and
leave the channel." The largest concentration of settlement
seems to have been up and down the west bank of the Pigiguit above
and below today's Falmouth. Here stood the parish of
Ste.-Famille, or Holy Family, created in 1698, not long after the
settlement was founded. Along the east bank of Rivière
Pigiguit and on both banks of the St.-Croix, above and below
present-day Windsor and as far up as today's St. Croix, stood the
parish of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, usually called L'Assomption.
This newer parish was created in June 1722 because of the difficulty
faced by settlers living east of the river in crossing the wide,
muddy tidal flats to the church of Ste.-Famille. Acadians in
the area tended to settle in "villages" named after a family or
family head. Along the St.-Croix stood, on the L'Assomption
side of the Pigiguit, stood Village LeBlanc, Village
Thibodeau, and Village Vincent. Also on the
L'Assomption side, between the St.-Croix and the upper reaches of
the Pigiguit, stood Village Trahan, Village Breau, and
Village Abraham Landry. Farther down the Pigiguit,
still on its east side, stood Village Pierre Germain Landry
and Village Pierre Landry. On the west, or
Ste.-Famille, side of the Pigiguit stood Village Babin and
Village Forest. After 1749,
the upper, or southern, hamlets at Pigiguit were the closest Fundy
settlements to the new British base at Halifax, across the peninsula
on the Atlantic. Indian raids against Halifax and its adjacent
Protestant settlements often came through Pigiguit, so British
authorities blamed the Acadians there for these bloody attacks.
There was no question that settlers at Pigiguit aided the Canadians
and Indians in their attack on Grand-Pré in February 1747, but,
except when assisting Acadian partisans like Joseph Broussard
dit Beausoleil, the habitants at Pigiguit usually were
innocent bystanders during the bloody raids against Halifax.
British authorities punished the habitants at Pigiguit by forcing
them
to labor on the overland track between Halifax and Minas. As a
result, during the early 1750s, many Acadian moved away from
Pigiguit and resettled at Chignecto, Tatamagouche, Île St.-Jean, or Île
Royale--as far away as they could get from their British oppressors.130
At the northeast corner of
the Minas Basin lay the sprawling community of Cobeguit.
According to Andrew Hill Clark, when the seigneur of Cobeguit,
Mathieu Martin, died in 1724, "his rights [were] assumed by
the Crown ..., but as far as we know the area never had been
properly surveyed or assessed and the hand of the government from
Annapolis, tentative enough in its reach at Minas and Pisiquid,
scarely ever poked its fingers into Cobeguid's affairs."
In other words, Cobeguit, like Chignecto and trois-rivières, was one
of those settlements to which Acadians could flee to escape the
prying eyes of British officials. Here, Clark says, "the
settlers were much more scattered in pockets over more than a
hundred miles of shoreline and had much less social cohesiveness
than" other settlements, even those of the Annapolis valley.
Along the south shore of the bay, Cobeguit settlements ran from
Tennycape eastward to the head of the bay, and along the north shore
from Grosse Île, today's Parrsboro, to the the head of the bay at
present-day Truro, which lies on the south bank of the flood plain
of today's Salmon River, just above the river's mouth.
Tradition says that the Acadian name for the settlement at today's
Truro was Ville Bois-Brûlé, or village of the burnt wood. The
original name for the Truro area was Wecobequitk, Mi'kmaq for "end
of the water's flow" and from which the word Cobeguit evolved.
As at Rivière-aux-Canards across the Minas Basin, the relatively
limited stretches of tidal marshland compelled some Cobeguit
settlers to cultivate the uplands above the bay shore.
According to Andrew Hill Clark:, "The densest settlement was,
naturally enough, close to the most extensive marshes," which on the
south shore could be found from the mouth of Rivière Shubenacadie up
to Wecobequitk, and on the north shore from
Cove, also called Cap, d'Église, today's Masstown, up into Rivière
Wecobequitk. The Shubenacadie, which flowed northward
from the interior highlands into the bay, was an important route
into the interior and, via a portage, to the Atlantic coast
community of Chebouctou, where the British built Halifax.
Cobeguit's church parish was dedicated to SS. Pierre et Paul, and
included two churches, or chapels, at Wecobequitk and Cove d'Église.
A third church in the area could be found at the Ste.-Anne mission
for Mi'kmaq 20 miles up the Shubenacadie, near present-day Stewiacke,
south of Truro. (From the late 1730s until 1749, except for
the last few years of King George's War [1745-49], the Shubenacadie
mission was run by the notorious Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre. In
1749, after the British created Halifax, Le Loutre moved his mission
to Chignecto to put distance between his Mi'kmaq and the new British
garrison.) Clark estimates that in 1748 the population of the
Cobeguit region numbered about 900 individuals. Starting on
the south shore of the bay and moving eastward, there were 25 at
Tennycape; 50 at Ville Noël; 25 at Ville Robert, today's Maitland;
25 on the west side of the Shubenacadie estuary; 100 along the
Shubenacadie up to the Ste.-Ann mission; 180 from the Shubenacadie
estuary east to Wecobequitk, including villes Percé, Bourq,
Michel Aucoin, Jean Doucet, and others. On the
north shore of the bay moving westward from the mouth of Riviére
Wecobequitk, there were
100 at Rivière Chiganois and Isgonish, today's Lower Onslow;
100 at Cove d'Église; 75 from Debert to Point Economy; 30 at the
Five Islands; and 40 from the Five Islands westward to Cap d'Or,
which lies on the northern shore of the entrance to the Minas Basin,
west of and on the opposite shore from Cape Split. Cobeguit
lay only a few dozens miles south of the Mere-Rouge, today's
Cumberland Strait, and was connected to the Gulf-shore settlements
of Tatamagouche, Remsheg, and Baie Verte by overland tracks.
It was to Tatamagouche via the valley of Rivière Chiganois, along a
trail that ascended to a thousand feet, that the settlers at
Cobeguit ran their herds of cattle for transportation to the French
fortress at Louisbourg during the 1740s--trade that was entirely
illegal, of course, the entire time the British "controlled" the colony.131
In the mid-1750s, there were a dozen families living in Gulf shore settlements that "must have spread through an extent of
one hundred square miles along the present French and Waugh rivers"
above Tatamagouche. This was the far southern shore of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, not an inlet of the Bay of Fundy, so the tidal
ranges here were not dramatic. Consequently, there was little dykable marshland
along the shore or on any of the rivers that flowed into the Gulf.
The habitants who engaged in farming here would have been
forced to clear the forests and cultivate the uplands. As a result, most Gulf shore
settlers made a living more from "ferry services to Isle St-Jean and
Cape Breton than in agriculture." Andrew Hill Clark adds:
"Tatamagouche was second only to Baie Verte as a depot of illegal
export and emigration, and the connection with Cobequid by land may
have allowed greater secrecy for such movements than that from and
via the Chignecto isthmus." Future lieutenant governor Paul
Mascarene observed this movement as early as 1720. When war
came to the region in 1744, Baie Verte became a staging area for
Canadian forces operating in Nova Scotia. On the eve of
Le Grand Dérangement, a British official found at Baie Verte "four
families who cut hay for their cattle in their 1,000-acre 'midden,'
but who 'subsist wholly on their trade to and with Louisbourg and
Canada.'"
In the Pictou area
east of Tatamagouche "There was some exploitation of the forests ...
by the French from Cape Breton...." Clark reminds us:
"... whatever the English claims to the peninsula, the Gulf of St.
Lawrence was a French sea and protests from Annapolis Royal or
Canso," the only British garrisons in Nova Scotia until the end of
the 1740s, "was ineffective." Settlers at Baie Verte, Remsheg,
Tatamagouche, and Cape John thrived on the illegal traffic to Île
St.-Jean and Île Royale, but the lack of an agricultural base kept
the Gulf shore population small and scattered. During the
early 1750s, small settlements appeared along the shore east of
Tatamagouche: on Caribou Island, at Pictou, Little Harbour, Merigomish, and Antigonish, but, again,
no agricultural base developed there.132
Second only to the
Annapolis valley in tenure of settlement, the Chignecto isthmus lay
in an area claimed by both imperial rivals after 1713. Unlike
the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore, where intensive agriculture was not
possible, the southern end of the isthmus, touched by the Fundy
tides, was an agricultural paradise only Minas could overshadow.
Following Andrew Hill Clark, one could use the name Chignecto Proper
for that part of the isthmus facing what is called today the
Cumberland Basin. At the center of Chignecto Proper was
Rivière Missaguash, which forms part of the present boundary between
the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but no
"boundary" between that which was French and that which was British
existed there until the summer of 1750. The oldest Chignecto
settlement, Beaubassin, dating back to the early 1670s, lay just
east of the Missaguash and was aptly named. A British engineer
counting Acadians for Lieutenant Governor Lawrence on the eve of Le
Grand Dérangement observed that the area, with its "panorama of the
ridges rising like islands or peninsulas in a sea of marshy
grassland was '... one of the most Beautiful prospects the Bason of
Chignecto affords in Summer for which Cause it is called by the
French Beau Basin here may be seen a Number of Villages built on
gentle rising Hills interspers'd with Gardens and Woods the Villages
divided from each other with long intervalls of marshes and they at
a great distance bounded by Hills covered with Trees the Natural
growth of the Country here may be seen Rivers turning and winding
among the Marshes then Cloath'd with all the Variety of Grain.'"
Both the French and British "were uniformly impressed with the
potential of the area and recognized its strategic location for
trade with the Indians and for commercial, military, or
ecclesiastical intercourse with Quebec, Isle St-Jean, and Cape
Breton."
The British noticed the coal deposits at present-day Joggins,
overlooking the shore of the Baie de Chignecto west of Rivière-des-Héberts;
"its veins could be seen in sailing by but the lack of labor and the
range and rapidity of the tides made it difficult to exploit."
But Chignecto was especially noted for its agricultural
potential. At the northwestern edge of Chignecto Proper, in
today's New Brunswick, lay the Tintamarre, also called the Tantramar,
"the greatest of the North American Atlantic tidal marshes," drained
by rivières Tintamarre and Aulac. East of the Aulac flowed the
Missaguash, and east of that, in today's Nova Scotia, flowed Rivière
La Plance, all four streams running down from a divide southwest of
Baie Verte into the Cumberland Basin. South of the La Plance,
flowing northward into the eastern arm of the basin, was Rivière
Maccan and its tributary, Rivière Nappan. Between the Maccan
and the southeastern shore of the Baie de Chignecto, also running
northward and into the eastern arm of the basin, was Rivière-des-Héberts,
which, with the Maccan, formed a prominent estuary at the southeast
end of the Cumberland Basin. Along the lower stretches of each
of these streams and along both sides of their estuaries stood miles
and miles of dykable marsh--much of it still waiting to be exploited
when Le Grand Dérangement came early to the eastern half of
Chignecto Proper. By the mid-1740s, settlements in the
Chignecto area numbered over a dozen: from west to east stood
Westcock, also spelled Weskak, Wehehauk, Oneskak, and Peshkak, on
the western arm of the basin; Pré des Bourgs, today's
Sackville, north of Westcock; Prés des Richards, today's
Middle Sackville; Tintamarre, today's Upper Sackville; La Butte; Le
Lac on the Jolicoeur Ridge in the middle of the isthmus; Portage, at
the head of the Missaguash near Baie Verte;
Le Coupe;
Aulac, just west of the Missaguash, overlooking the basin;
Beaubassin, which today lies at the northwest edge of Amherst, Nova
Scotia; Maccan, also spelled Makan; Nappan or Nepane;
Rivière-des-Héberts; and
Menoudie, also spelled Minudie, north of Rivière-des-Héberts on the
peninsula formed by the arms of the Cumberland Basin.
Even more so than Cobeguit, the Chignecto settlements were a place
to go if one sought to escape the watchful eyes of the colonial
authorities at Annapolis Royal. Chignecto's distance from the
colonial capital also affected the accuracy of the censuses taken
there. Father Pain counted about 350 settlers at Chignecto in
1714. In 1720, colonial engineer Paul Mascarene counted 450.
By 1748, population estimates in the area ran as high as 3,000 to
4,000. Clark notes: "In the late forties the situation
became confused with the coming and going of armed bands and
activity in trade and emigration by way of Baie Verte to Isle
St-Jean and Cape Breton. It was further complicated by [Abbé
Jean-Louis] Le Loutre's policy of attempting to get all the Acadians
in the area east and south of the Missaguash to move to de facto
French territory." Clark provides population estimates for
the Chignecto area on the eve of the abbé's scorched-earth policy,
which began in the fall of 1750: 175 at Menoudie, 125 on
Rivière-des-Héberts, 75 on Rivière Maccan, 150 along Rivière Nappan,
50 along Rivière La Planche, and 275 at Beaubassin village, for a
total of 850 east of the Missaguash; 225 along Beauséjour Ridge, 150
at Aulac and La Coupe, 150 at Tintamarre, 25 at Pré des Bourgs,
75 at Pré des Richards, and 25 at Baie Verte, for a total of
650 west of the Missaguash. Clark also includes 100
individuals scattered around the Cumberland Basin.
133
West of Chignecto Proper,
well inside territory not only claimed but also controlled by
Versailles and Québec, lay the settlements of the
trois-rivières--Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook. The
first of these settlements was located between the mouth of Rivière
Chepoudy, a small river that flowed westward into the Baie de
Chepoudy, which, like the Baie de Chignecto to the east, was an arm
of the upper Bay of Fundy, and the mouth of Rivière Petitcoudiac,
farther up the coast. The other two settlements stood along
the Petitcoudiac and its tributary to east, the Memramcook.
These settlements had the distinction of the being the last ones
founded in the Fundy region, during the early 1700s.
Here were some of the highest tides on the Bay of Fundy, creating
dykable marshes in such numbers that many more Acadians could have
settled there. Here was the ultimate refuge for Acadians who
sought to escape British authority in Nova Scotia without moving on
to the Maritime islands. Here were the largest percentage of
Acadians who spurned neutrality and took up the gun as partisans.
Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, the most notorious
Acadian partisan, whose fight against the British began in 1726,
lived with his older brother Alexandre and their families at
Village-des-Beausoleils, today's Boundary Creek, above the city of
Moncton--as high up the Petitcoudiac as Acadians had settled.
In 1750, before refugees from Chignecto flooded into the area,
Andrew Hill Clark estimates the trois-rivières population as 500 at
Chepoudy, 400 along the Petitcoudiac, and 300 on the Memramcook, a
total of 1,200 for the area.134
.
The so-called outlying
settlements--those along the lower southern shore of the Bay of
Fundy and the Atlantic coast from the mouth of St. Mary's Bay south to Cap-Sable and back up the coast northeast to
Canso--were spread over a vast area that circumscribed much of the
peninsula. Except at Halifax and its adjacent communities after 1749, each of these
settlements contained small populations, and all of them were
isolated from other population centers along the vast littoral.
Geographer Andrew Hill Clark points out that these Acadian
settlements "were largely fishing and trading stations."
During the late 1680s, M. de Gargas, a French official conducting a
census of the outlying settlements, found "that they were most
precariously situated, depending for food on fishing, hunting, or
what they could obtain from trading vessels," and recommended "that
the settlers should be obliged to cultivate the soil and establish
deeper roots," which proved to be more difficult than le Monsieur
could know.239
Clark says of Acadian settlement patterns along the
southwestern coast facing the Atlantic: "It is ironic that we have no record of any pre-dispersion occupation or
exploitation of St. Mary's Bay or the Digby Shore where the greatest
post-dispersion concentration of Acadians in Nova Scotia was to take
place." This area lay at the juncture between the lower Bay of
Fundy and the western Atlantic coast. No settlement seems to
have survived at Cap-Forchu, today's Yarmouth, although Commander
Villebon found a small one there in 1699 supporting a cod fishery.
South of Forchu and still on the southwestern coast, an Acadian
settlement arose at Chebouge, also spelled Tibogue, Tebak, and
Thebok, in the 1740s, despite the refusal of British officials to
grant permits to raise dykes there or even to farm the upland.
The Acadians who had applied to go there were allowed only to spend
a season fowling or fishing. Typically, they did what they
pleased, and by 1748, a dozen families had settled at Point Chebouge.
A lack of dykable marshes forced them to clear the upland forests
for agriculture. Southeastward from Chebouge, farther down the
same coast, there
had been settlement at Pobomcoup, today's Pubnico, since the
mid-1600s, where upland forests also had to be cleared for farming. Here was the seigneurie of Philippe Mius
d'Entremont and his descendants, which encompassed the littoral
and its hinterland from Pobomcoup down to Cap-Sable and around to
Cap-Nèigre, including the settlement at Port-Latour.
In September 1714, Denis and Bernard Gaudet of haute-rivière
in the Annapolis valley reported three habitants at "the Passage de
Baccareau," today's Barrington Passage, on the mainland north
of Cape Sable Island, but the Gaudet's said that they had moved on
to Île Royale. Despite efforts by the descendants of Mius
d'Entremont and Charles La Tour to lure Acadian farmers
to the seigneurie, the Pobomcoup/Cap-Sable area remained lightly
settled: 14 individuals in 1671; 15 in 1686; 22 in 1687/88; 24
in 1689; 32 in 1693, 40 in 1702, 53 in 1708; and only 15 to 20
Acadian families, as well as a few
Indian families, by the 1750s.135
Above Cap-Sable, along the
southeastern coast, lay settlements at Port Razoir and Port Rochelois, today's
Shelbourne; Port Mouton; and Port Rossignol, today's Liverpool, each
supporting the offshore fishery. A small fur-trading
settlement stood at Petit-Rivière, today's Little La Have River.
Jacques de Meulles, intendant of New France who conducted a
colony-wide census of Acadia in the mid-1680s, was critical of the
occupation of the hand full of settlers at Petit-Rivière, but he
also was aware of their recent history. "As he correctly
pointed out," Clark relates, "the fur trade did not result in
people's striking their roots in the country, as they would if they
became farmers. Although they liked to fish, they had been
pillaged so many times they had pretty well given it up."
Colonial Commander Villebon, during the late 1690s, believed
that La Hève retained the qualities that Isaac de Razilly had seen
there in 1636. Villebon, engaging in a bit of hyperbole,
reported that La Hève possessed "... the best harbor and the most
magnificent situation on the east coast. Like the others it is
surrounded by hills but has much more land suitable for cultivation.
It is true that there is not much beach available for a large
fishery industry, but it could be extended; moreover, flakes could
be used, and they without question produce the finest quality of
fish. The old fort is at the mouth of the very beautiful
river, and vessels of 50 guns can enter and anchor under its cannon.
Lumber mills could be built, for pine and spruce fir (?) are
plentiful. Two families are at present living there.
There is plenty of hunting, and many good things to eat, such as
herring and mackerel in season, eels at all times, as well as
plaice, lobsters, oysters and other shell fish."
By the mid-1700s, the largest settlement in the
area was Mirliguèche, where, since the late 1600s, Acadians,
mostly traders and boatmen, lived alongside Indian families, as they
did at nearby La Hève. Villebon's description of Mirliguèche
was concise: "... the soil was fair and ... there was a large
number of red oaks." Populations at La Hève and Mirliguèche,
like at Pobomcoup/Cap-Sable, always had been small during French
control of the colony: 13 individuals in 1686, 22 in 1687/88,
20 in 1689, 6 in 1693, 75 (including métis and Indians) in 1701, and
42 in 1708. After the British took over the colony in
1713, the population of the two settlements seems to have shrunk; in
September 1745, the governor-general and the intendant of New France
reported only eight individuals at Mirliguèche and two at
nearby Petit-Rivière. A few years later, Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre, chaplain of
the Indians in the region, found a dozen "French" families at
Mirliguèche, eight families at La Hève, and 200 to 300 "sauvages" in
the area. In 1749, Nova Scotia Governor Edward Cornwallis,
founder of Halifax, visited Mirliguèche and reported: "There
are but a few families with tolerable wooden houses covered with
bark--a good many cattle and cleared ground more than serves
themselves.... (They) say they ... have their grants from
Colonel Mascarene, the governor of Annapolis," who was Cornwallis's
predecessor. In June 1753, on the eve of Le Grand Dérangement,
The British settled German Protestants at nearby Lunenburg, which
quickly overshadowed the tiny Acadian/Indian community.
Farther up the eastern coast, Clark says "There are no references to
Mahone Bay, the Chester area, or St. Margaret's Bay" in regard to
settlement before 1755.136
Along the eastern coast
above St. Margaret's Bay only a hand full of small Acadian
settlements arose--at Chebouctou, Chezzetcook, Musquodoboit, and
Jeddore, all devoted to the offshore fisheries.
In 1686, census taker de Meulles found on three or four settles at
Chebouctou. A year later, Gargas found only a single house,
three French settlers, and 33 Indians. In the 1690s, Cadillac
called Cheboutou "the most beautiful and best harbor on the coast."
Villebon evidently was not impressed. That
Chebouctou was indeed one of the finest harbors in North
America, where an entire fleet of oceangoing vessels could take
shelter from the storm, was demonstrated in the fall of
1746, during King George's War, when the remnants of the duc
d'Anville's fleet took refuge in the harbor after a stormy passage
from La Rochelle. From the superb harbor ran two overland
tracks, one, via a portage to the head of Rivière Shubenacadie, ran
north to Cobeguit. The other, a much shorter one, ran,
eastward across the peninsula to the upper villages on Rivière
Pigiguit. Chebouctou also served as "a common resort" for
Mi'kmaq bands. Despite its many attributes, only a hand full
of Acadians involved in the offshore fishery bothered to settle on
Chebouctou Bay. The same held true for Chezzetcook, just up
the coast, where only "a man and his three children" were living in
the summer of 1745. By 1748, seven or eight families were
reported there. The first Acadian census of 1671 counted 13
people at Musquodoboit, where French colonial official Mathieu
de Goutin would be given a seigneurie 20 years later.
Evidently he did not put much effort into populating his holding;
only a few settlers were living there in the late 1740s, on the eve
of British settlement at Chebouctou. The demographics of the
area changed dramatically when the British transformed Chebouctou
into Halifax in June 1749.
Later in the year, another fortified British settlement arose at
Bedford, west of Halifax at the head of its harbor. In 1750,
Dartmouth was founded across the harbor from Halifax. In June 1754, a year before the Acadian dispersal, Lawrencetown appeared
up the coast at Chezzetcook.137
Before the founding of
Halifax, Canso and its fortified fishing post was the most important
British "settlement" on Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast.
Perhaps the oldest "settlement" in peninsula Nova Scotia, Canso was
the landing site of one of Dugua's ships in the spring of 1604.
When difficulties arose at Dugua's Port-Royal a few years later, the
survivors retreated to Canso.
Even at that early date, Canso had long
served as a rendezvous point and a drying station for offshore
fishermen. There, in 1607, the French writer Marc Lescarbot
met an old Basque fisherman named Savalet who was on his
fifty-second annual trip to the Acadian coast. Canso's
location guaranteed continued occupation and active service as a
fishing station throughout the century of French control in Acadia.
In the late 1680s, Gargas reported that "Canseau is one of the best
places for codfishing. There are several fine beaches to dry
the fish on and several small islands where ships can be sheltered.
In this place," he reminded the officials in France, the Company of
Acadia "have established their fishing station."
Lack of dykable marshes, however, would have forced any farmers who
chose to live there to cultivate the highlands. As a result,
the population at Canso remained relatively small and was almost
exclusively devoted to the fishery. New Englanders began fishing out
of Canso two years after the British took control of Nova Scotia. "[R]epeated difficulties with French
and Indians in the next few years led to the fishermen themselves
building a small fort and the detachment of a few of the Annapolis
garrison to occupy it in 1720." The fort with its small
garrison lay on the western end of Great Canso Island, which
overlooked Canso Harbor. The fort also controlled the
important watering station on the mainland facing the harbor.
"The fishery in the Canso area was simply an extension of the New
England schooner fishery on the various banks (from Georges to
Grand...) which had developed so strongly in the previous two or
three decades," Clark tells us. "No residents or byeboatmen were involved; there
was virtually no shore-based boat fishery there in the period nor
did fishing ships come from England. The schooners came from
New England in spring, from late March to early May, and returned
home in late September or early October. The voyages to the
banks, fifty to one hundred miles away, lasted from ten days to a
month, depending on the fishing and the weather, during which time
they caught, split (headed and cleaned), and temporarily put down in
salt 150 to 250 quintals (hundredweight) of cod. This took a
hogshead of salt for each ten or twelve quintals of fish. Upon
arriving at Canso the fish were washed out in the sea and then laid
out on clean gravel beaches or roughly constructed tables, or
'flakes," to dry. A rather elaborate process of repiling and
respreading went on until the fish were completely hardened and
cured. Many entrepreneurs (usually with one schooner, but some
operators had four or five) had some shore hands in the season but
most of the work on land and sea was done by the five hands (rarely
fewer or more) who, including the master, manned each vessel.
The schooner crews generally worked on a share basis. From
three to five trips to the bank and back from Canso might be
ventured each season." Here was employment for young
Acadians as far away as the Fundy settlements whose labor could be
spared on the family farm. The number of New England schooners
working out of Canso varied from a few dozen to over 200 a year.
The old fishing station also served as a center of trade "involving
England, New England, the Mediterranean, and the West Indies."
Sack ships, as they were called, arrived from Britain or Boston each
year, bringing supplies and returning with dried fish. The
largest market for the best of the dried cod were the Mediterranean
countries of southern Europe; the lower quality fish found a market
in the West Indies and the southern English colonies, where they fed
the many slaves there. "From four to a dozen sack ships came
from England each year and as many as eight (perhaps also partly to
fish) from the American colonies." The physical plant for this
activity, involving "many buildings to store gear, supplies, and
fish and to shelter the shoremen during the season, dozens of stages
for loading or unloading vessels, and acres of flakes for drying
them, was spread over many miles of beach of both mainland and
adjacent islands and must have been an impressive sight in
mid-season." The soldiers on Great Canso and the "half dozen
or fewer permanent residents" lived away from the fishing plant and,
during the season, their numbers were dwarfed by the fishermen.
During the winter, the local residents, including servants from
southern Ireland and Newfoundland, occupied themselves by watching
and repairing the flakes, stages, and buildings owned by the New
Englanders. There were 10 to a dozen licensed taverns to serve
the locals and especially the fishermen, but many unlicensed
grogshops also could be found in the storage buildings.
British officials also were troubled by the fishery based on Île
Madame, only 10 miles to the north, which belonged to the French
colony of Île Royale. The Frenchmen were not supposed to fish
in Canso waters, but they did so anyway. A thriving smuggling
trade also plagued officials of both colonies. The boom years
of the late 1720s and early 1730s ended in the late 1730ss with the
coming of another imperial conflict. After 1739, the French
and Indians harassed the New English fishermen, who chose to go
elsewhere. As a result, "Canso became something of a ghost
town during the many years of the open English-French hostilities of
the forties and fifties, although some New England schooners
continued to come each year."138
West of
Canso lay Chédabouctou Bay, approached from Canso Harbor via narrow channels.
Geographer Andrew Hill Clark reminds us that "Chedabucto Bay ... was
too open and deficient in coves to provide shelter" for a fishery,
with two exceptions. At Martingaud, present-day Whitehaven,
just west of Canso, Cadillac found "a sedentary fishery" in c1690,
but, he reported, "'the war has ruined their project and their
means.'" At the head of Chédabouctou Bay, "in the estuary now
known as Milford Haven, behind a treacherously shallow bar, there
was a natural harbor ... and soil more suitable for cultivation than
at any place on the south coast east of Mirliguèche." The
site, today's Guysborough, the French named after the bay. In
1682, directors of the Company of Acadia sent one of their
associates, La Rochelle merchant Clerbaud Bergier, to
Chédabouctou to
build Fort Louis "with a storehouse and a barracks for the men."
Bergier, named the King's lieutenant of the colony in 1684, boasted
that he "had sowed wheat, rye, and barley on May 28, reaped it on
September 16," and took it to France to prove that Chédabouctou
could provide an agricultural base for the area. Bergier
claimed that "he had taken out vines and all sorts of fruit trees
from France and that flax, hemp, peas, beans, and all manner of
vegetables did well. He thought it comparably superior to
Quebec." Over the years, a dry-fish and seal fishery developed
at the site, but later visitors were not impressed with what they
found.
In 1686, de Meulles reported only 15 or 20 "domestics" and four
families "working the land" at Chédabouctou. In 1687, "Gargas
was openly depreciatory; he thought the soil not very good and said
little land had been cleared." He did find the fishing "fairly
good," and reported the presence of an iron mine. Saccardy,
the engineer, visited Chédabouctou in 1690 and found little to
recommend the place: "'There is no natural wood or wood for
carpentering; nor are there three acres of meadow in ten leagues of
the countryside. It is scarcely possible to make a garden, for
the sand is too dry and too light, and water is too scarce and too
distant to be used. The house (block hour, or fort) is built
of stone and mud, and is about to fall down.'" He found only
seven settlers and 12 soldiers, "who depended entirely on imported
food and other supplies." New Englanders had sacked Fort Louis
in 1688 and would sack it again in 1690. The French abandoned
it for a time, and the Company of Acadia disappeared with the fall
of Port-Royal in 1710.
After 1713, taking advantage of the vagueness of the Treaty
of Utrecht on the subject of imperial boundaries in the region, the French on
nearby Île Royale asserted their sovereignty over Chédabouctou as the
French Canadians were doing at Chignecto. In September 1718,
in the opening action of a new frontier war, Fort Louis, now home to
some 300 fishermen, many of them Acadians, was attacked by a
British warship, the HMS Squirrel, under Cyprian Southack. On September 23, Southack
pillaged and burned the village next to the old fort. After
the British left, the survivors abandoned Chédabouctou and moved on to Île Madame and Petit Degrat,
off the south coast of Île Royale. The British garrisoning of
nearby Canso in 1720 discouraged anymore French settlement in the Chédabouctou
area.238
Nevertheless, the entire Atlantic littoral, especially Canso,
retained its importance in the eyes of European shakers and movers
from the beginning of Acadian history; the offshore cod fishery was
there in the beginning, and it never lost its significance.
Arthur Hill Clark provides the grand perspective: "A final
observation on the cod fishery is that in the eyes of officials in
London and Paris it was of such critical nation importance as to
make all the enterprises and activities of all the Acadians fade
into relative insignificance. Canso meant far more to London
and Boston than Annapolis, Minas, and Chignecto combined. As
has been observed, there were many more men engaged in the fishery
operating from Nova Scotia's Atlantic coves in any normal year than
farmed Fundy's tidal marshlands. Furthermore between the
activities of the Acadians and the New Englanders the cod fishery
made the whole coastline of Acadia known in much detail, even if it
was not always adequately charted."240
Still, any detailed
geographical survey of Nova Scotia reveals that from the time of d'Aulnay
in the late 1630s until the great dispersal of the 1750s,
the Bay of Fundy
stood
at the center of Acadian life, while the Atlantic and Gulf of St.
Lawrence shores remained on its periphery, at least in relation to
the Fundy's impact upon Acadian culture. Interestingly, during the four and a half decades of
British rule in Nova Scotia, no new Acadian settlements appeared in
the Fundy region, though the many that existed grew
dramatically in population mostly through natural increase. But it
was not overcrowding that drove more and more Acadians from the
Annapolis Basin to the outlying settlements up the Fundy
shore. Living farther up the bay made it easier to engage in
commerce, legal or otherwise, away from the prying eyes of colonial
officials. Andrew Hill Clark reminds us that "Above all, the Acadians sought to live their own
lives in their own way and outward expansion had in it much of the
same search for freedom and escape from restraint that sparked so
much of the westward movement by other European settlers to the west
and south in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries."
Wherever they did settle, the Acadians
expanded their agricultural boundaries to the farthest limits of the
tidal marshes, and farming remained their chief occupation.
"The economy of the Acadians in the major settlements did include
fishing, hunting, lumbering, the building of boats and small
vessels, a great many household industries, blacksmithing, trading
locally with the Indians for furs, and trading their surplus
livestock and grain to the New Englanders or to vessels from France
for a wide variety of goods which they could not produce themselves,"
Clark tells us.
"But, for the vast majority, for most of each year, the occupation
was farming and, so far as cropping was concerned, almost
exclusively the cultivation of the tidal marshlands after these had
been dyked in from the sea. Indeed this had been so since soon
after the reestablishment of settlement in the Port Royal area in
the late 1630's."232
.
By the beginning of
British rule, then, the Acadians had been dyking the marshes of the
Annapolis valley for over seven decades; four decades at
Chignecto; three decades at Minas; and
two decades at Cobeguit and in the trois-rivières area. As
long as the Fundy tides delivered their water-born sustenance to the
region's coastal marshes, the Acadians were certain they could count
on Nature to provide more farmland for their growing families.
"The tides carry along with them great quantities of sediment (fine
sands, silts, and clays) as they erode, transport, and deposit,"
a student of Acadia's geography has observed. "In the
tidal creeks this sediment is commonly up to 2 per cent by volume.
Unquestionably the high tides deposit the sediment across the
flatter areas on their flood and they also take sediment out again
into the deep parts of the bay on their ebb, but the very existence
of the marshes supports the opinion that the tides deposit more than
they erode: one tide can deposit up to two inches of sediment.
Examination of the strata of the tidal marshes of the Fundy area
indicate that, essentially, they have all been built up in this way.
Borings have indicated that in depth they may reach thicknesses of
at least eighty feet...." The region's tides had varying
ranges, but none more dramatic than in the Bay of Fundy. "The
tidal range on the coast of the Strait of Northumberland," along the
southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence," varies from more than
two to less than five feet; at Halifax," which originally was called
Baie de Chebouctou, "it is about four feet, at Cape Sable six feet,
and at Yarmouth," originally Port-Forchu, facing the Atlantic north
of Cap-Sable, "over twelve feet. But it is within the bay that
spectacular ranges of thirty to forty feet at normal tides, and
fifty feet or more at spring tides, occur. The ranges are
still higher when gales are combined with spring tides...." As
the Acadians learned, the Fundy tides had their predictable seasons,
but also their sudden, violent surprises: "... the highest
ranges occur in spring and fall and there is special danger of
floods between August and November when the prevailing winds drive
up the bay from the southwest sometimes reinforced by the tail-end
effect of hurricanes which, every few years, can be felt even this
far north along the coast."223
Although major tidal
flooding was rare, when it did come, it could be devastating.
Andrew Hill Clark tells us:
"In a report of 1706 [colonial official Mathieu] De Goutin
described the great flood of November 5, 1705, that had overflowed
'tous ceux du pays sans exception [all of the country without
exception].' While the extent of the damage may have been
exaggerated (he was arguing the turning of attention to the
uplands), there is no question that the land flooded would regain
its previous level of production only after a desalinization period
following rebuilding of the dykes. There is a good deal of
disagreement on the length of such a period after chance inundation,
doubtless depending upon how long the land had remained under salt
water. A mémoire of 1701 states that four years were
necessary, but during that time drains could be dug and increasing
use made of the marshes for hay and pasture, as the vegetation
association changed rather rapidly." The great flood reported
by de Goutin occurred in wartime, a year and a half after
Colonel Church and his New Englanders had destroyed the dykes at
Grand-Pré and Beaubassin.223a
There was another price
the Acadians were forced to pay for their intense dyking operations.
Andrew Hill Clark explains: "Natural processes have been
markedly affected by the dyking of the marshes to exclude salt
water, the cutting of drainage channels on their surfaces, and the
construction of sluice gates (aboiteaux), large and small,
which allow the fresh water to drain out at low tide but exclude the
salt water automatically when they close with the incoming tide.
When the dykes were built high enough and maintained well enough to
keep out the salt water and its silt over long periods, the natural
settling, together with the compaction attributable to the working
of the land, brought them to steadily lower elevations. The
French [Acadians] rarely used deliberately the remedy that would
have helped to maintain them best--that is, the compartmentalization
of the marshes into polders with dividing dykes, and the periodic
admission of silt-laden salt water to build up their level again.
To be sure, however, nature did the job whenever unusually high
tides, neglect of the dykes, or their destruction by marauders from
New England, admitted the salt water. But clearly there was a
good deal of interference with what could be called 'natural'
processes.'"224
But there was good reason for the Acadians to embrace such
labor-intensive agriculture: "...under no circumstances
existing since Europeans first attempted to use them for agriculture
have any of Nova Scotia's soils, apart from the dyked tidal
marshland, been considered of high fertility, and at no time has
more than a small proportion of the province's surface been improved
for agricultural or pastoral use." D'Aulnay saw this in the
late 1630s, and it was one reason why he moved the first families
from La Hève on the Atlantic to Port-Royal on the Bay of Fundy.
Whether he taught them how to dyke the marshes, or they had
experience in the process from their time in France, the first
families resorted to dyking in response to the challenges of this
particular frontier environment. Their reasoning was clear:
They were farmers as well as trappers and fishermen; the upland soil
was rocky, thin, and infertile; here stood the coastal marshes with
their potential for fertility; so up went the dykes with their
aboiteaux. Without this innovation, farming would have been so
impractical in the region that only a small population engaged in
the meanest of subsistence agriculture could have survived there.
Acadia would have remained an industrial colony devoted to furs,
fish, and lumber, not a agricultural colony with a settled
population.224a
The
Sieur de Dièreville, a French botanist and surgeon, who visited
Port-Royal in the autumn of 1699, was the first to describe the
dyking process in detail: "... it is done in this way; five or
six rows of large logs are driven whole into the ground at the
points where the tide enters the Marsh, & between each row, other
logs are laid, one on top of the other, & all the spaces between
them are so carefully filled with well-pounded clay, that the water
can no longer get through. In the centre of this construction,
a Sluice is contrived in such a manner that the water on the Marshes
flows out of its own accord, while that of the Sea is prevented from
coming in. An undertaking of this nature, which can only be
carried on at certain Seasons when the Tides do not rise so high,
costs a great deal, & takes many days, but the abundant crop that is
harvested in the second year, after the soil has been washed by Rain
water compensates for all the expense. As these Lands are
owned by several Men, the work upon them is done in common; if
they belonged to an Individual, he would have to pay the others, or
give to the Men who had worked for him an equal number of days
devoted to some other employment; that is the manner in which it is
customary for them to adjust such matters among themselves."
Andrew Hill Clark points out that the first problem in dyke
construction, regardless of where it was located, "was to get the
dyke built in the face of the rapidly moving tides. This was
done by cutting deep sods (held together by the matted roots of
salt-marsh grasses) in rectangular or trapezoidal shapes (rather
like peat-turf) and erecting a barrier perhaps five feet high and
with a base twice or more the width." The peripheral shape of
the dyke was dictated by the shape of the tidal marsh to be
enclosed. Some were built in narrow strips along a coast or a
river, others in
huge blocks, "where single units of up to one thousand acres of
marshland existed," like at Grand-Pré at Minas, at Pré
Ronde on the Annapolis River, and at Tintamarre at Chignecto.
The typical dyke stood up to two meters high, and some were four
meters wide. Isaac Deschamps, a native of Switzerland (some
sources say England), came to Nova Scotia in 1749 and became chief
justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court after the Acadian
dispersal; while touring his new home, he was much impressed with
what he saw of the Acadians' handiwork. "'The dykes,'" he
wrote in an unpublished, undated manuscript, "'are in General on the
Main Rivers 11 and 12 feet thick at bottom and gradually slope till
they become a foot & half thick at top, and are five feet in
height.'" They were so sturdy, in fact, that most of them
supported foot paths along their crests.224b
Andrew Hill
Clark's research reveals that "The methods of dyking, the building
of aboiteaux ... to drain the fresh water and exclude the salt, and
the digging of intra-marsh ditches apparently changed very little
from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth." But
there were changes in dyke construction over the years, and
they revealed a mastery of physics, hydrography, and topographical
engineering acquired by these largely illiterate farmers in the
school of trial and error. "The earliest seventeenth-century
dykes had been 'running dykes' protecting small areas of river
margin," Clark tells us, "closed off by local high spots or by
turning the dykes inland and thinning them out up-slope. But
no considerable area could be so enclosed without some exit lest it
become water-logged and swampy: it had to be drained.
Many of the marshes had natural creeks that drained not only the
uplands behind but the marshes themselves at low-tide. The
aboiteau was placed as near the sea on the creek as possible to
provide the largest possible area of marsh behind and to minimize
the amount of 'running dyke' required. The more seaward it was
placed the higher the bounding dyke had to be and the stronger the
aboiteau itself to withstand the tide." Deschamps stood before
these marvels and described them for posterity: "'Across the
large Creeks are considerable dams composed of spruce Brush and sods
from the salt marshes with large Sluices in which are two or three
gates or valves for stopping the sea water and drawing off the fresh
water, and the dimensions of the trunk is according to the size of
the creek, or sluice. From these dams the dikes run along the
sides of the main Rivers.'"224c
The results of this labor were just as impressive as the dykes
and aboiteaux themselves: "The Acadians
harvested for hay the grasses that naturally colonized the marsh
areas. When they had dyked a section ... they
sometimes grew crops of wheat, peas, and other grains, pulses, or
vegetables, and sometimes simply let volunteer grass colonize the
area for grazing. The silts were rich and, as the salt was
slowly washed out and the water table lowered by ditching, the
better grasses and clovers took over naturally. Whether as
permanent pastures or as rotational leys with other crops, these
improved grasslands were important in supporting the livestock for
which the Acadians became locally noted."
According to
Andrew Hill Clark, "That the marshlands were of high and
lasting fertility is attested abundantly." George Morris, who
surveyed parts of Nova Scotia in the early 1750s, proclaimed that
"'They are Naturally of a Fertile Soil and produce (communibus annis)
about twenty Bushells of Wheat from an Acre English Measure
and they are of so strong and Lasting a Nature that their Crops are
not Diminished in ten or twenty Years Constant Tillage.'" The
amazing fertility of the dyked marshland allowed the Acadians to
keep much of it out of cultivation at any given time, which, like
crop rotation, only enhanced the soil's fertility. Clark
observes: "It must be borne in mind that much more marshland
was dyked at any one time than was actually in use. The
breaking of dykes, overflowing at excessively high tides,
concentrating of salt in old fields, and the constant bringing of
new land into production, with a desalination period under ordinary
rainfall of two or three years, lead us to conclude that in any
given year a substantial area cannot have been in crop.
Moreover some of it was used for pasture. Perhaps as little as
two-thirds of the dykeland was cropped in a given season. ...
One must also remember that much of the undyked marshland provided
salt hay, cut at low tide and dried and cured on dry land, so that
the use of dyked lands for grazing may not have been very
extensive."225
The dyking operations had their critics, of course, mostly outsiders
who were ignorant of Acadian geography. A New English
historian, describing Colonel Church's assault on Grand-Pré in the
summer of 1704, during which the colonel ordered his men to destroy
the local dykes, informed the reader that "They [the Acadians] made
the mistake of cultivating the low meadows instead of the uplands,
to avoid the labor of felling the timbers." One could argue
that it was no mistake to "cultivate the low meadows" as long as
others did not tamper with the dykes, though, as in November 1705,
there were times when Mother Nature emulated Colonel Church and his
New England raiders. Considering the prodigious effort it took
to build and maintain these dykes and aboiteaux, the implication in
the New English historian's statement that the Acadians were lazy
because they avoided chopping down forests can be attributed to
English prejudice against all things French. The bias was
shared by British officials. Governor Richard Philipps, who
spent little time in the colony but enough to imagine he understood
the Acadians, was caustic in his evaluation of their farming
practices as well as their collective behavior. "Writing in
1734, he found them '... rather a pest & Incumbrance, than of an
advantage to the Country being a proud, lazy, obstinate and
untractable people, unskillfull in the methods of Agriculture....
they have not in almost a Century clear'd the Quantity of 300 Acres
of Wood Land. From their Corn and Cattle they have plenty of
Dung for manure which they make no use of it but when it increases
to become troublesome then instead of laying in on their Lands they
get rid of it by moving their barnes to another Spot....'" Two
decades later, surveyor Charles Morris also revealed his ignorance
of what he was observing throughout the colony. He saw the
Acadians as "'... but indifferent Husbandmen in General, and do no
more labour than what necessity urges them to, and their Land being
so easily Cultivated, it does not take up one third of their time."
Even
their fellow Frenchmen had disdained the Acadians' reliance on dyking
the region's marshlands. A French official at Port-Royal
disdainfully called the Acadians défricheurs d'eau, or "water
clearers." Another official complained that the Acadians
"diked the marshlands because they were 'unwilling to clear the
uplands (where) the work is too hard,'" also implying that the
Acadians were lazy. Governors, engineers, and census takers,
French and British alike, echoed these official complaints.
Geographer Andrew Hill Clark
concludes:
"There is an air of unreality about all the complaints regarding
failure to use the uplands; the observers were making comparisons
with France and with much better soils than the Nova Scotia uplands
provided. In the conditions of the time and place the Acadians
followed what was, for them, the most sensible policy. As long
as there was productive marshland to be dyked they preferred to move
to where it was easily available.... They were not afraid of
axe-work as they amply demonstrated. They simply observed the
comparatively poor yields and short life of unfertilized upland
soils and made, for their situation, a good judgment." Clark found two studies from the early twentieth century
which "estimated that there is ten times as much dyked marsh land
around the Bay of Fundy as along the entire Atlantic coast of the
United States."226
Lazy, indeed.
In truth, one cannot overstate the role of dyking in the creation of
a unique Acadian culture. The dykes even dictated the shape
of Acadian habitation. Andrew Hill Clark asserts:
"Every farm [in Acadia] that amounted to anything had its small
parcel of marsh above an aboiteau." The natural and
therefore uneven
distribution of dykable marshland contributed to a contour for
Acadian farms that was unique in New France. The
rotures of Canada facing the St. Lawrence as well as the
Chaudière and other tributaries of the St. Lawrence, were "of
severely oblong rectangularity," says Clark. This shape also could be
found at Chéticamp on Île Royale, and along the lower Mississippi
River after the founding of New Orleans. However, as Clark
points out, "The conditions that created and maintained parallel
strips with dimensions of ten or twenty to one elsewhere simply did
not exist in Acadia." Moreover, the labor necessary to build
and maintain the dykes and aboiteaux in these oddly-shaped tidal
marshes required a substantial work force which, in warm climates,
was provided by slaves imported from
Africa. In Acadia, the workers were not human chattel or even
hired hands but rather sons and grandsons, uncles, cousins, friends,
and neighbors. Cooperation, not rugged individualism,
sustained the Acadian way of life.
"Dièreville remarked that the dyked fields were sometimes jointly
owned, sometimes the property of a single farmer, but always jointly
worked. Payment for labour might be in kind, the owner working
in his turn for those who gave him labour, or in coin."226a
The dyking process and what it produced also dictated the
Acadians' seasonal routines. During the final years of their
tenure in British Nova Scotia, Isaac Deschamps
described the Acadians' working of the land: "They plougd the land
Intended to be sown with wheat, between the month of august or
middle of September, and the month of Decr. and if the whole
intended to be sown was not plough'd by that time and that they
found the Ground (which in some seasons was the Case) clear of snow
in february, they ploughd more, and as soon as possible in the month
of april they sewed wheat, & they laid it down as a rule, never to
sowe Wheat, after the month of april.... There is a particular
nicety required in ploughing them, & ploughs are constructed on
purpose; about an inch and half is the depth of the first ploughing,
and must never Exceed three inches, the Crop of Grass will yield two
tons of hay to an acre."226b
What the Acadians grew on their oddly-shaped fields
and on the land they cleared above the marshes provided plenty to
eat and plenty to trade. Antoine Laumet dit
Lamothe, known as Cadillac, future founder of Détroit and governor
of Louisiana, conducted a survey of Acadian farms in the Port-Royal
Basin during the early 1690s. He noted that the Acadians
produced wheat and rye, which was "'sown about 15 of April, and is
reaped towards the end of August,'" Indian corn, "'every kind of
legumes (vegetables?) and pot herbs, especially headed
cabbages....'" According to Andrew Hill Clark, "Cabbages
were grown so extensively as often to be considered a field crop but
the residents also depended upon beans and a wide variety of other
garden truck."
Cabbages and turnips were made into a soup.
"Interestingly," Clark says, "the turnips were stored in cellars
(possibly usually under houses) whereas the cabbages were left in
the fields after being pulled and covered with snow."
Joseph Robinau de Villebon, commander of French Acadia during
the 1690s, noted that the Acadians grew in abundance cabbages,
beets, onions, carrots, chives, shallots, turnips, parsnips, peas,
"and a variety of salad greens." Peas and wheat were
especially important in the Acadian diet and were sown together.
Acadian grain fields held not only wheat but also oats, rye,
and barley, but Indian corn was rare. The Acadians grew flax,
which the women could transform into linen, and hemp for rope,
"but," according to Clark, "apparently less than enough for domestic
needs."
"[M]ost farmers also kept
pigs, sheep (for wool), and poultry. Every farm had a kitchen
garden." During the 1700s, as new markets opened up to them,
Acadians experimented "with a few specialty crops like tobacco."226c
Cadillac also commented on the fruit the
Acadians produced. Known for the native blueberries and
cranberries they grew on their dyked lands, they also maintained
orchards of apple, plum, pear, and cherry on the borders of the
marshland or on the higher ground above
the marsh. During the early 1630s,
Razilly's habitants had planted apple trees above the fields at
La Hève, and a visitor found these trees still flourishing in 1701. Villebon described the Port-Royal valley as "'a little Normandy for
apples. They might have a great many more, and could easily
make cider,'" he said of them, "'but apart from the fact that they
are not very industrious and most of them work only enough for a
bare living, they neglect the propagation of fruit trees for use as
the country opens up.'" At Port-Royal and the other
settlements, the Acadians grew Calvilles, akin to Calvados, green or
yellow Rambours, also called Rambures, Reinettes, "and three or four
other varieties" of apple. The Sieur de
Dièreville noted that the Acadians at Port-Royal kept their apples
"'carefully in their cellars to eat during the Winter.'"
Dièreville also compared the Port-Royal apples to the ones he had
seen in his native Normandy, "but with the difference that the trees
[in Acadia] were not grafted."
He was especially impressed with the Acadians' Calvilles, and
observed the production of apple cider, though he made a bigger fuss
over "the brewing of spruce beer (new tips [of the tree] fermented
with yeast and molasses), a well-known anti-scorbutic of the
seventeenth century that had apparently caught on in Acadia."
The Acadians also grew two kinds of cherries, red ones and
red-and-white ones, though the more severe winters at Chignecto may
have prevented their cultivation there. As late as 1757, two
years after the Acadian dispersal in Nova Scotia, an English
observer noted the "extensive groves of apple and pear trees, the
boughs bending under the weight of their fruit: '... finer-flavoured
apples, and greater variety, cannot in any other country be
produced; there is also great plenty of cherry and plumb trees; but
the fruit were either gathered, or had rotted and fallen off.'"227
The Acadians were noted for their livestock; they raised hogs,
sheep, horses, and cattle, including oxen for heavy pulling and
dairy cows for milking, in each of their communities.
Chignecto was especially suited for cattle production, though beef
was produced in the other Fundy settlements as well.
An observer noted in the 1680s the "vast extent of meadows, thought
capable of supporting a hundred thousand cattle, and the upland
borders with virgin forests" at the head of the Baie de Chignecto.
He also found there "More than a score of dwellings had been built
on the borders of the marsh or on the 'islands' above the tide.
Each farmstead had many outbuildings and had perhaps a dozen to
twenty cattle, a dozen pigs, and as many sheep. The livestock
were stabled only for two or three months in the winter or for
fattening before butchering...." The observer believed that
this open-range method of cattle raising "resulted in undue loss
from wolves." Also, "The dependence on livestock had meant a
neglect of field crops but he thought they had cultivated enough
land to raise the hope that they might soon be independent in bread
grains." (That two gristmills appeared at Chignecto by the
late 1680s attests to the habitants' success in the cultivation of
bread grains as well.) The number of cattle held at any given
time was dictated by the seasons. Winters were long and cold,
so the cattle had to be taken in during the coldest months.
Winter fodder was always in short supply, so the autumn slaughter
could be heavy. This created a great demand for salt since the
beef could not be kept frozen over the entire winter, as in the
colder climate of Québec. As a result of the autumn slaughter,
"December counts may have been 30 per cent to 40 per cent less than
those of the previous June in some years." Geographer
Andrew Hill Clark's research reveals that "The major role of cattle
in supplying much needed surplus agricultural commodities for sale
is stressed again and again." Perhaps because of this trade, the number of
cattle Acadians held in their various settlements tended to remain stable, while the numbers of
their swine and sheep
gradually increased. Many British and New Englanders, however,
especially the garrison at Annapolis Royal, were not impressed with
the quality of Acadian beef: "scrawny and poor would sum up
the many comments," Clark tells us. He adds: "If these
comments do not reflect simply the anti-French bias of the English
garrison they describe a situation not unusual for colonial cattle
during a winter season when, as wintering feed grew short, the least
promising animals were butchered. All reports tend to
emphasize that adequate amounts of wild marsh hay were made but it
was not a very nutritious feed. However, there are other
suggestions that the best animals were killed in the autumn to be
salted away for sale or use, or were driven and shipped at that
season to Cape Breton or sold to the New England trading ketches."227a
Evidently Acadian sheep were another matter. Cadillac
observed that they
were "as fat and big as in the Pyrenees, and their wool is as
fine.... The ewes bear young twice a year and have two young
each time.'" Dièreville also was impressed with the sheep he
found at Port-Royal, insisting
that they were "as big as those of Beauvais," which
weighed as much as a hundred pounds. He noted that
since the Acadians kept their sheep for wool the sheep were rarely
slaughtered. Andrew Hill Clark explains: "The function
of sheep in Acadia was chiefly to provide wool, especially for caps,
stockings, and other knitwear. How heavily they depended on
homespun woven clothe we don't know. In their increasingly
active trade the Acadians imported much cloth, including woolens and
linens. Sheep must have had some care to have allowed steady
increases in numbers in the face of active predators such as wolves,
bears, and wild dogs."
Dièreville noted that Acadian pigs were "wintered
on scraps of turnip and cabbage and on the offal of slaughtering:
'The Acadians are great lovers of fat bacon ...," he observed,
"which they prefer before partridges and rabits (sic)....
They never eat veal, nor lamb, but let them all grow up, and throw
the sheeps heads, trotters and pluck to their swine."
Clark tells us: "Swine, like sheep, were ubiquitous and
apparently present in comparable numbers. Pork was an
important element of the diet; indeed with wheaten bread, peas, and
cabbages it was one of the four mainstays of the daily fare.
The pigs appear to have had little attention and may have subsisted
largely on offal, garbage, deadfalls, and other waste, together with
mast and roots in the forest."
The
Acadians also raised horses, but they did not become important until
the eighteenth century. This was due to "the infrequent use of
plows ... and the very poor roads" in the colony. Cadillac
insisted: "'The horses there are of fine build,
broad-shouldered, well legged, with lasting hoofs, the head a little
large, but no care is taken in raising them.,'" but he was the only
one to comment so glowingly on Acadian horses.
Cadillac also
"observed that 'there is also much poultry,' including geese and
pigeons as well as barnyard fowl (coqs d'Inde)."
Dièreville also commented on the "plenitude of poultry but felt
that, in a country of such abundant game, it did not serve much
purpose." Commander Villebon, noting that Acadian livestock
had suffered from "long and unselective inbreeding," reported in
October 1699: "... another thing which appears indispensable
is our need to obtain from them [New Englanders] mares and stallions
for breeding purposes and for trade in the Islands [French West
Indies], and cattle, so that the stock may be changed entirely.
The Acadian cows do not yield a third of the amount of milk which
the cows of Boston give, and even that with difficulty."
Acadian butter "was not considered good; the settlers made and kept
only a small supply, preferring to use the milk. Of the latter
Dièreville thought they were too fond: '... on y aime trop
le lait [they love milk too much].' This desire for milk
he saw as a major reason that calves were rarely killed for veal,
for '... it is the peculiarity of the Cows in that Country, that if
a Calf is taken from its Mother, her udder yields nothing more.'"
George Morris, a New Englishman who surveyed parts of Nova Scotia on
the eve of dispersal,
quipped about Acadian dairy products: "'a little bad Butter
but no Cheese.'"228
Livestock nevertheless remained an important part of Acadian
agriculture. "In all the settlements, cattle represented the
major focus of livestock interest throughout" the late 1600s and
early 1700s. "In general sheep and swine are seen to have
advanced in proportion slightly through the period. Of the
two, through time, swine declined and sheep increased in relative
importance. At any time swine were somewhat more prominent in
the newer settlements than in Port Royal, sheep increasing in
significance only as fields were abandoned to pasture from
cultivation, perhaps, or as more forest land was opened, offering
both more grazing and less danger of predators." But "in any
settlement at any time, there was a good deal of variation as
between different farming families in the proportions of different
livestock held." And throughout the period, livestock,
especially cattle, when held in surplus, served as an essential
component in Acadian commerce with French Canada and especially New
England. As long as the Fundy Acadians lived close to water,
whether on an estuary, as at Chepoudy; up a river, as at Port-Royal,
Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook; or inside a basin, as at Port-Royal,
Minas, Cobeguit, and Chignecto, their livestock, either alive or
slaughtered, could be taken aboard ship and sent to distant markets,
licit or otherwise.228a
Throughout Acadian history, water remained the chief means of
transportation and communication as well as commerce. Thus,
"The stringing out of population along lines of communication was
characteristic of a great deal of North American settlement, both
French and English. And in the Acadian areas it had a powerful
incentive beyond the concentration of attention on the marshlands.
The roads or tracks along the river [or the basin] were slow to be
made suitable for vehicles; the river [or the basin] itself was the
major avenue of communication in all seasons--by canoe for most of
the year, and by snowshoe when it was frozen over and
snow-covered--and this perpetuated the stringing out" of the
homesteads. Only the Indians used the colony's inland trails
with any frequency, but they, too, favored water-borne
transportation. They were, in fact, the ones who taught the
Acadians how to build canoes and fashion snowshoes. "The
dependence of the Acadians on canoes and the skill of men, women,
and children in using them was cause of frequent comment by
observers. Cadillac remarked: 'The creolles
(i.e., the Acadians) ... travel most of the time by bark canoes.
Their wives do the same, and are very bold on the water.'" Andrew
Hill Clark describes this essential craft: "The
canoe had few distinctive features other than an inverted,
double-cusp, undulating profile of the gunwale which suggests
diffusion to or from Newfoundland where a similar peculiarity was
noted in Beothuk canoes. Essentially it was the same vessel
made and used almost everywhere in North America that Betalus
papyrifera [the paper birch] could be found in abundance.
Locally, slats were made of white fir, the ribs, of cedar; spruce
roots were used to sew the bark, and spruce gum (or often an
adhesive made by boiling the gum with animal or fish fat) to seal
the stitches or tears that might appear. A canoe might take a
week or two to build and with reasonable care might last twenty
years (spruce and birch for repair work was ubiquitous in ...
Acadia)." Meneval, who was governor during the late 1680s
"described the use by Acadians of '...
canots d'escorse comme les sauvages, ou d'autres petits canots
qu'ils font eux mesme d'une troue d'arbre creusé.' [smaller
versions of canoes like the ones the Indians made from hollowed tree
trunks]. Longer and stronger boats of the fishing-skiff type
were also used, especially for moving heavier goods." During
British control of the colony, "all vessels of five tons or more had
to have an official license from Annapolis before engagin in trade."229
Water provided the Acadian not only with a means for transportation,
communication, and seaborne commerce, but also with a good meal and,
for some, a livelihood. The cod fishery, as much as the fur
trade, created the Acadian colony, but, by the late 1600s, most
Acadians were living far from the fisheries. If an Acadian
wished to lead the life of a cod fisherman, he would have to move to
the Atlantic side of the peninsula, to the so-called outlying
settlements, especially Canso, where they would find "a shore-based
boat fishery and ... drying grounds for fish caught on the offshore
banks." The great majority of Acadians, however, lived along
the Fundy shore, where only in summer, and only at the mouth of the
bay, did the codfish migrate in any numbers, but nothing compared to the Atlantic offshore banks.
Still, young Acadian men from large
families, freed from work on the families' farms, sometimes hired
themselves out to the Atlantic fishery until they were needed on the farm
again. Andrew Hill Clark found that, during the final decades
of French control,
"Sometimes the Acadians did go out to the open
Atlantic to participate in the increasingly international fishery
there. Encouraged by Bergier [a La Rochelle merchant], of the Company of Acadia, who
was established at Chedabucto [in the early 1680s], the inhabitants of Port
Royal once fitted out six small craft for the fishery, but these
were taken by New England buccaneers and although Acadians continued
to have some interest in the Atlantic fisheries, it was a
relatively haphazard one." One historian hints that
Pierre Landry of Port-Royal may have been one of these cod
fishermen. Undaunted, Acadians persisted
in exploiting what cod fish they could find in Fundy waters, especially
after 1713, when New Englanders became their fellow British subjects
and no longer posed a threat to them. Acting
governor Caulfeild observed at Minas in 1715 "'between Thirty and
fourty Sale of vessells which are employed in fishing, Built by
themselves." Clark reminds
us that "The Acadians were intricately involved with the activity of
the fishery and the fishermen, but they were not of them to
any significant degree." He adds: "The number of New
Englanders making fish along Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast in any
summer season of the 1720's and 1730's, at least, was far greater
than the total number of Acadian settlers there. Although they
were concentrated at Canso, they frequented many other coves as far
as Cape Sable, despite the ever-present threat of Indian attack.
Although a scattering of Acadians lived in these same coves, their
participation was relatively insignificant." In the late
1740s, New English engineer George Morris described the Fundy
Acadians' pursuit of the codfish, a seasonal pasttime they
probably had enjoyed since the beginning of British rule: "...
they had some shallops, in which they employ'd themselves in the
catching of Fish just upon their Harbours; being out but a few days
at a Time; This was rather for their Home Consumption then foreign
Market the Surplusage being no great Quantity was generally sent to
Boston for a Market in the New England Traders. The present
Inhabitants being settled Chiefly in the Bay of Fundy are not
conveniently situated for the Fishery. It is only in the
Summer Season that the Fish strike into the Bay they are then to be
taken in the greatest plenty on two small Barks, one a league north
of Grand Passage the other about three Leagues West of Long Island (Digby
peninsula). The Borders of the Shores afford fishing but they
are not in so great plenty as to make any considerate Tairs."
The so-called "refuse codfish" from Acadian waters that made
their way to the docks at Boston "went to tropical plantation areas
as slave food."229a
Cod, of course, was not the only fish caught in Acadian waters. In 1699, Commander Villebon visited
Port-Royal and remarked that "'The settlers catch codfish for food,
and there are small rivers opening into the Basin which yield many
fish such as bass, shad, sardines, gaspereau and plaice. Large
numbers are taken in weirs built across the rivers so that the fish
are caught when the tide goes out.'" That same year, Villebon
visited what would become the most populous Acadian settlement,
Minas. "He remarked on the lack of cod fishing but on the
presence of shad and gaspereau (alewives) in the tidal streams."
The Minas settlement of Grand-Pré, in fact, lay north of Rivière
Gaspereau, a stream named after Alosa pseudoharengus,
commonly known as the alewife, a kind of shad. One suspects
that the Acadians not only at Minas but also in the other Fundy
communities devoured these bony but delicious fish, baked Indian
style over hot coals, during the spring spawning runs along the many
streams flowing into the bay. The gaspereau's natural enemies,
the striped bass and the Atlantic salmon, both highly edible, also
could be found in the bay and its tributaries, along with eels,
herring, mackerel, and halibut. Shell fish abounded in the mudflats, as
did the American lobster in deeper water. For centuries, all
of these sea creatures, and fresh-water fish as well, had been
important food sources for the Mi'kmaq and other coastal tribes.
As part of the local "Columbian exchange," the Indians taught the
Acadians not only how to catch but also how to cook and eat these
aquatic delicacies. They could, in fact, serve as a kind of
emergency food source. "Although food shortages were rare in
the settlements at Minas and Chignecto they did occur periodically
at Port Royal where the garrison, officials, and merchants put an
extra strain on the food supply. No doubt when storms and
unusually high tides flooded the dyked marshlands, or when English
raiders disrupted the economy by cutting dykes and burning haystacks
and harvests stored in barns, interest in fishing, as in hunting,
took an upswing. Indeed at such times local supplies of fish
were of the utmost importance; once, of a population of 753 at Port
Royal, one-third were said to be living on shellfish."47
The great majority of Acadians were never far from the sea.
The typical Acadian homestead lay "on the edge of the marsh and the
few acres of dyked marshland that each [habitant] cultivated."
Although this arrangement, dictated by the vagaries of the
marshland, did not lead to a series of uniform long-lots facing the
nearest water course, as along the St. Lawrence or on
the lower Mississippi above and below New Orleans, there generally
was a greater depth than width in the configuration of the typical
Acadian homestead. As old maps of the colony reveal, the
Acadians also tilled the higher ground above their homesteads if the
soil was fertile enough and not too rocky, but, again, these patches
of cultivation were miniscule in size and numbers compared to the
dyked fields below. Acadian domestic architecture likely
evolved during the late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century.
Andrew Hill Clark notes: "Rameau [whose
major study was published in 1889] describes housing in the colony
in general at the turn of the [eighteenth] century; how much he
depends on documentary sources not available to the writer and how
much on his imagination or inference is uncertain. Many
houses, he says, were built by driving large piles (presumably side
by side) in the earth and filling in the cracks with moss and clay.
The chimneys were built with posts and pounded clay and the roof
covered with reeds, bark, or on occasion even with sod. The
better ones were built en pièce-sur-pièce, that is to say
with stout logs, squared off, piled one on the other and interlocked
(s'enchévetrant) at each corner. These were easily
built from the abundant wood and at the first alarm they could be
abandoned without worry and lost without excessive regret, a matter
of some importance in a place [Port-Royal] so frequently attacked.
We have nothing to go on for the houses of the farming community
away from the town but presumably they were at least as roughly if
perhaps more solidly built." Historian Naomi Griffiths
observes: "... small houses place a premium on civil behaviour
among those who live in them. Acadian houses, like those of
New England, were mostly a storey or a storey and a half, log-built,
almost always with a basement, and the ground floor was rarely
subdivided. While more definite description must await further
archeological research, it would be a mistake to imagine Acadian
houses as all the same. Dièreville rented one that he said was
the largest in Port Royal, with three rooms on the ground floor, a
basement, and a loft. Further, many farming families would
have outbuildings near or attached to the living quarters.
However, for much of the year, the ground floor of the house would
be a crossroads of activity."230
Near their homesteads and villages, Acadians engaged in a basic form
of industry related to farming. Mills
appeared at Port-Royal along Rivière Allain, just below the village,
and also upriver; Pierre Thibodeau, for instance, built a
mill at Pré-Ronde, halfway up the valley and did very well with it.
The first mills were current-driven, and, in the upper Fundy
settlements, some may have been powered by the tides. The
Acadians also constructed windmills, "a sound idea, for an
occasional summer drought (as that of 1707) stopped the water
mills." Evidently the French at Louisbourg and the New
Englanders with whom they traded were not impressed with the quality
of flour produced by these mills. In the late 1740s, George
Morris "reported flour of 'a moist Quality.'" As a result, New
England traders used Acadian wheat and flour "to make ship's
biscuits."230a
Acadians used their water-powered mills not only for grinding grain
but also for sawing timber. In 1692, Cadillac noted that the
sawmill at Port-Royal "was neglected because of a lack of market."
Nevertheless, "The Acadians could make planks of pine of any desired
length, width, or thickness because of the height and diameter of
the trees." Cadillac reported that "They used cherry wood, the
best wood they had and better than anything in France; it was a bit
heavy but very durable. Oak was rare but there was ample
material for ship-building." Andrew Hill Clark gives us
the larger picture of lumbering in Acadia: "All rural
settlements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in eastern
North America were heavily dependent on a plentiful supply of
wood, and that of the Acadians more than most. From the
forests came their fuel, their building material for houses and
barns, furniture, sluice gates, fences (where they existed), and
bridges, and most of the material for the construction of
implements, tools, household utensils, carts, and sheds. To
the degree that they built their own boats and vessels the forest
supplied most of the raw material. Thus, although the Acadians
cleared relatively little land for agriculture, they must have been
felling timber constantly, and without its bountiful supply the
relatively comfortable life they led would have been impossible.
Yet they made very little use of it as a raw material for export, a
matter of some surprise since they had many sawmills scattered
throughout the settlements and their economy was, indeed, commercial
to a degree."
Clark explains: "A major reason may be that timber for masts,
chiefly white pine, was not plentiful near the Acadian settlements
and it was masts, above all, which interested the French before 1710
and the British afterward." In 1715, acting governor Caulfeild
believed he found mast-quality trees at Chignecto, and pines for
shorter masts could be found in the Cap-Sable area, but the tallest,
straightest white pines in the region, perfect as main masts for
naval ships and large merchant vessels, could be found on the north
shore of the Bay of Fundy and along the Gulf of Maine. The
Royal Navy was so determined to monopolize the trade in colonial
white pines that Parliament passed the first of the "obnoxious White
Pines Acts" in 1711; others followed in 1720, 1721, 1722, and 1729.
New Englanders were so stunned by this assertion of royal privilege,
and the violation of their trading rights, that they did what they
could to prevent the laws' enforcement. The only wood in the
settlements of British Nova Scotia that ever generated conflict
between King and settler related to the firewood the Acadians
provided for the garrison at Annapolis Royal; reacting to what they
considered exorbitant prices, the colonial council insisted that
"... his Majesty hath an undoubted right to the woods & they [His
Majesty's settlers] only to the Herbage & Vesturage of the Lands And
Entitled only to the benefit of Such Woods as they may have
immediate Occasion for their own proper use of buildings'"--a
tightfisted way for British officials to save a pound or two in
their trade with Acadians. It was hardly a cause célèbre that
helped foment all-out revolution. The French, meanwhile, found
white pines adequate for their masts, and especially oaks that
served well for ships' planking and timber for their fortifications,
growing in abundance near Pictou, on the southeastern Gulf of St.
Lawrence shore between Remsheg and George Bay. This was
British territory after 1713. Nevertheless, in the early
1740s, French lumbermen from Louisbourg wintered at Pictou and
harvested the trees in late winter before a Royal Navy man of war
arrived at Canso in the spring for the annual resupply. Trees
along along the Fundy shore were not so valued. In the late
1740s, George Morris insisted that in his thorough investigation of
the settlements there he found not a single oat tree standing, which
also helps explain the dearth in Acadian exportation of timber.
The Fundy Acadians, Morris tells us, were forced to use ash, beech,
and maple to build their vessels. As a result, Acadian fishing
vessels,
unlike their sturdy birch bark canoes,
tended to last "not above four or five Years after which they are
unfitt for any sea Voyage."241
By the mid-1700s, a relatively small percentage of the Acadian
population had congregated in villages. Annapolis Royal remained
the largest one, and Grand-Pré and Beaubassin also could boast a
relatively substantial population. Villages, or, more accurately, hamlets,
tended to congregate around parish churches, which, on the eve of
the Grand Dérangement, numbered a little more than a dozen in
greater Acadia.
Acadian
villages, however, were devoted more to agriculture, commerce, and
industry than to worship. "We know that there was much
specialized activity and exchange of labor throughout the
settlements and particularly in the village of Port Royal and the
quasi-villages of Grand-Pré and Beaubassin," Andrew Hill
Clark relates. "Even the
agricultural activities required a good deal of artisan skill at
times, notably in planning and building of dykes and sluice-gates.
It is quite possible, indeed probable, that many of the tradesmen
were also farmers and that farming may have absorbed most of their
time in summer. But in the winter season, when the varied
household industries were unusually active, the specialists could
make wider use of their particular skills." Occupations found
in the first census of 1671, other than farmer, included surgeon,
weaver, cooper, farrier, gunsmith, joiner, mason, carpenter, tailor,
and edge tool maker. These occupations, and others, such as
sawyer, shingle-maker, locksmith, nail-maker, stocking maker, and
even shoemaker, could be found among the Acadians of subsequent
generations. Cobblers would have found less work in Acadia
than the other specialists; "we know that to some degree the
Acadians followed the Indian practice of using the skins of wild
animals for moccasins," Clark continues, skin from the moose
and the seal as well as from the deer. What a sight it must
have been to see an Acadian surgeon making his summer rounds in
moose-skin mocassins.231
That they lived simply and with few material needs is a typical
description of Acadian life, but, like most stereotypes, the actual
picture was much more complex. François-Marie Perrot, the
Acadian governor who restored Port-Royal as the colony's capital in
1684,
"painted a picture of a contended, if sparse and simple, pastoral
existence among the Port Royal folk in the 1680's. He reported
that they lived better than the Canadians, and never were without
meat and bread, although they were less industrious and never
thought of saving against bad harvests or other disasters. He
attempted to gauge the meagerness of their life by an accounting of
their dowries; seldom, he indicated, did a dowry amount to more than
twenty or twenty-five francs in goods, a cow in calf, a ewe, a sow,
and, in the case of the better-off families, perhaps a feather bed.
In the Acadian context this sounds quite satisfactory." Another
observer from the 1680s noted of the Acadians at Chignecto:
"The women made both linen and woolen cloth for clothing and, for
shoes, both sexes wore Indian moccasins that they made themselves."
Andrew Hill Clark
notes: "The role of hunting and
gathering in providing food (meat and berries), and articles for
trade (feathers, hides, and fur) may have been very large. Yet
references by observers to such dependence on the wilds is rather
infrequent and generally unfavorable when it appears. This
was 'la vie sauvage,' too much like that of the Indians and
too distracting from a settled agricultural life to appeal to
governor, trader, priest, or casual observer from France."233
But a simple life need not have been an austere life devoid of
material comfort. The Acadians
did have material needs that their self-reliance could not
provide; "even in their closely knit group of communities," the
Acadians "were by no means self-sufficient. ..." Andrew
Hill Clark asserts: "The romantic picture of the self-sufficient
Acadian household, which Longfellow's
Evangeline has imprinted so firmly, needs a good deal of
modification."
The Acadians, like other modern-age people, relied on trade to
provide not only the luxuries but also the simple necessities of
life. To be sure, during the three decades after 1670 when the
France "controlled" the colony, administrative officers from both
Old and New France did what they could to encourage Acadian trade,
ideally within the context of French mercantilism (though at least
one governor, Meneval, during the late 1680s, engaged in lucrative
trade of his own with Boston and tended to look the other way when
the Acadians did the same). "In so far as they gave any
attention to the agricultural settlements at Port Royal, in Minas
Basin, and at the heads of Chignecto Bay, [these French
administrators] were concerned chiefly with trade. They wished
to encourage Acadian commerce with France and Canada and to prohibit
or greatly diminish that with New England." The Acadians,
after all, were subjects of Louis XIV. Their establishment at
Port-Royal in the late 1630s had been for the benefit of a French
commercial venture in fish and furs, not to provide another market
for New English merchants. In the eyes of French and Canadian
elites, the fur trade was still the raison d'être for French
presence in North America. During those three decades after
1670, "The fur trade from the peninsula declined steadily but
continued to yield cargoes for France up until the time of the
British takeover. On the Saint John and the other rivers
leading from the Gulf of Maine into the interior the French interest
in furs was more active. The fur supply was diminishing there,
too, but the strategic problems of attack and defense vis-à-vis
the New Englanders were inextricably tied up with their relations
with the Indians, who, in turn, remained closely associated with the
trade." The "water clearers" in Acadia, on the other hand,
were just not as important.233a
Perceiving the peripheral nature of their commercial relationship
with old and New France, the Acadians tended to
write off their fellow Frenchmen as viable trade partners.
They turned, instead, to
nos amis les ennemis--"our friends the enemy."
Dating from the earliest years of Acadian settlement and continuing
virtually unabated until the Acadians no longer were around to
trade, such commerce, of course, had its costs, in more ways than
one. A French observer lamented in the 1680s that "The New
Englanders were now the suppliers of Acadian needs, taking furs in
exchange and thus depriving France of both furs and markets for
manufactured goods. The New England connection also led to
Acadians' seeking work with the English, especially in the fishery,
to pay off debts, or simply to earn the money that was so often in
short supply" in French Acadia. Except for the years when the
English controlled the colony--1654 to 1670, and after 1710--this
trade was illicit, and French officials did what they could
to suppress it, though more often than not it was more convenient to
look the other way. When mercantilist policies were
enforced, it only pushed more Acadians away from prying eyes and on
to more distant settlements up the Fundy shore. By the
mid-1670s, there were enough settlers at distant Beaubassin to
welcome New English traders to the upper reaches of the Baie de
Chignecto. At Minas, by the mid-1680s, "the small vessels
out of Boston made the journey through the tidal race north of Cape
Split, allowing themselves to be stranded far 'inland' at low tide
for friendly trades as the privateers [larger ships] could hardly
risk doing." In each of their communities, the Acadians
"imported a good deal in the way of tools, implements, and other
hardware." From the late 1600s into the 1700s, their
basic farm tools "were still of the simplest: pickaxes,
spades, axes, hoes, sickles, scythes, flails, and wooden forks and
rakes for the most part," the spade, pickax, and hoe being
especially important for the dyking process.
Spades, especially, were "vital for dyking and making
drains, but it also, with the hoe, was a major tillage implement."
Although they eschewed clearing the forested uplands, Acadians
needed axes, saws, and other wood working tools as much as other
North American frontiersmen. Wood was essential for fuel and
for building many of the things in their lives. The dykes, framed with logs and planks, as
well as the aboiteaux within them, required much timber that only
axes, saws, and adzes could fashion. The Acadians seldom used plows, but,
until they had enough blacksmiths of their own, they likely traded
for sickles. Also important in their trade were "carpenters'
tools, blacksmithing equipment, and bar iron with which some of the
needed tools could be made.
Similarly the import
of much of the necessary hardware, sails, and rigging for small
vessels made their modest but vital building of boats and small
vessels possible."
When the French, either from the homeland or from Canada, could
not provide these essential tools and implements or the metal to
make them, and they generally did not, the Acadians got them from New England.
In exchange for these essential products,
the Acadians offered furs, timber, cattle, either on the hoof or
transformed into salted beef, salted pork, wool from their sheep,
and salted fish from their coasts and streams. From Minas, the
colony's bread basket, came wheat and other grains.
Acadian trade goods, however, were as varied as the
products of their farms. "Almost every year the Acadians
shipped furs, feathers, wheat, and beef to New England," which
remained their primary commercial market. The New England
trade network was so extensive that Acadian products found their way
all the way down to the tropical West Indies (a cold irony for the
French mercantilists who had long dreamed of, but never established,
Acadian trade with the French Antilles), and products from the West
Indies--brandy, sugar cane, molasses, among other things--found
their way into Acadian homes through their New English suppliers.234
After 1713,
British officials in "control" of Nova Scotia found themselves
in the unenviable position of trying to suppress illicit trade
between the Fundy Acadians and the new French colony of Île Royale,
centered at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. This trade, via
Baie Verte and Tatamagouche on the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore, was
occurring at the same time that New English trading schooners, often
without the proper license, found their way to the Fundy settlements
in greater numbers. Such competition increased the prices of
Acadian agricultural products, which was a boon for the Acadians,
but it was a problem for the commissary officers at Annapolis Royal,
who were forced to pay ever higher prices to sustain the British
garrison there. Typically, the Acadians lost little sleep over
the troubles and tribulations of their overlords. "Such
trading, especially to Cape Breton," Andrew Hill Clark explains, "is
often referred to as clandestine although it was so widely known and
so openly practiced that the adjective loses much of its meaning.
What is meant is that the trade to Louisbourg was completely, and
that with the New England vessels, intermittently, illegal and
contrary to the frequent proclamations of a governor and council
powerless to stop it." Along with the usual "textiles, metal
goods, brandy, rum, [and] tobacco," the Acadians acquired from this
vigorous trade something for which they had "developed a peasant
passion that observers described as miserly"--precious specie,
which, like in most colonies, was chronically in short supply and
was essential in supplementing their barter trade.250
.
The Acadians also enjoyed a rich internal life that reflected their
common frontier experience. Outsiders, engaging in what
sociologists call cultural ascription, were quick to perceive
certain stereotypical traits among these self-reliant farmers.
In 1701, Acadia's new commander and soon-to-be governor,
Jacques-François de Mombeton de Brouillan, journeyed from Plaisance,
Newfoundland, where he had commanded during King William's War, to
his new post at Port-Royal. Brouillan landed at Chebouctou on
the Atlantic coast, today's Halifax. Using the Rivière Shubenacadie
portage, he traveled to Cobeguit, at the northeastern end of the
Minas Basin, only then being settled, and on to the Minas
settlements along the western shore of the basin before continuing
on to Port-Royal probably via the portage from the head of Rivière
St.-Antoine to the head of Rivière-au-Dauphin. As a result, the new commander had an
opportunity to observe the Minas Acadians at length. After
reaching Port-Royal, he reported to his superiors the impressive
numbers of cattle and the quantity of wheat among the settlers at
Minas, but he lamented that "the inhabitants were half-republican,
of very independent character, and accustomed to deciding things for
themselves!" The arrogant Frenchman would learn soon enough
that this "half-republican" independent-mindedness was
characteristic of most Acadians. Brouillan's predecessor,
Joseph Robinau de Villebon, was among a number of French officials
who had complained of the Acadians' "laziness," concluding that
"they worked only to maintain themselves and showed little ambition
to 'get ahead.'" What an ambitious French aristocrat perceived
as lack of ambition, the Acadian would have seen as contentment with
his lot in life. After 1713, "the easy going attitude of
the Acadians mystified and irritated the observers from both New and
old England."
Even French native Paul Mascarene, who understood the Acadians better than any other
British official, believed of them in 1720, when he was serving in
the colony as an army engineer: "'... for the generallity
[they are] very little industrious, their land not improved as might
be expected, they liveing in a manner from hand to mouth, and
provided they have a good feild of Cabages and bread enough for
their familyes, with what fodder is sufficient for their Cattle they
seldome look for much further improvement.' He went on to
point out that they spent their time in hunting and trapping," as if
those activities were idle pursuits for farmers trying to feed their
families.46
Over the decades,
Acadians developed another attitude that infuriated
their social "betters"--an abiding sense of egalitarianism, also a
consequence of their shared frontier experience. To be sure,
there were economic inequalities among them--their communities,
after all, were human creations--but the gap between "rich" and
"poor" was nothing like in the Europe of their day or in modern-day
capitalist societies. Again, it was the frontier, and
geography, that made it
so. Their northern climate, well above
the middle latitudes, precluded the production of lucrative cash
crops such as tobacco, indigo, rice, sugar, or cotton. What
they could grow during the relatively short growing season had to be
limited to grains and vegetables--healthy, even essential products
to be sure, but nothing that could create a plantation economy with
a master class and exploited labor.
As a result, slavery did not take hold in Acadia.
The Mi'kmaq were too powerful to allow Europeans to enslave them,
and most Acadian families were so large and healthy, and their
communities so tight-knit, that there never was a shortage of labor
in their fields and pastures or out on the open sea.
Cooperation, not rugged individualism or the exploitation of others,
was an essential element in the Acadian character.50
But cooperation, even among the Acadians, had its limits.
Historian Andrew Hill Clark observes: "The Acadians evidently
had a very keen property sense from the number of boundary disputes
that are reported. If a more readily available legal apparatus
had existed they might well have proved as litigious as their
Canadian neighbors. Thus they were careful to mark divisions
between individual holdings on the upland with barriers or fences of
wood--or at least piles of brush and trunks of trees.
The marshland drainage ditches, shared with a neighbor, seem to have
served such purposes admirably."50a
To the other important culture in the colony, boundary markers
had no meaning. Although not free from the typical prejudices of their times,
Acadians looked upon the Mi'kmaq and other native tribes in the area as
more or less their equals. They learned much from these
wandering tribesmen, and, thanks to the efforts of French
missionaries, they shared a common faith with them. Many
families also shared a common blood. Pierre Martin,
fils, born at St.-Germain de Bourgueil, France, four years
before he came to the colony with his parents in 1636, married Anne
Questnorouest dit Petitous, an Indian woman, at
Port-Royal in c1660; although Pierre, fils remarried 20
years later, all of his children came from his first wife.
Claude Guédry dit Grivois dit La Verdure,
progenitor of an important Acadian family, married
Kesk8a,
an Indian, in c1680, before remarrying to Marguerite Petitpas,
who gave him his sons. Martin Lejeune dit Briard
married Jean, also called Marie, Kagigconiac, an Indian, and
lived in the métis community at La Hève during the 1680s; one of
their sons married a Gaudet. Amazingly, recent yDNA
tests reveal that Germain, fils, younger son of Acadian
pioneer Germain Doucet, sieur de La Verdure, may have been a
full-blooded Mi'kmaq adopted by the captain at arms and raised as
his own; Germain, fils married a Landry and is
the ancestor of many Doucets in Canada and the United States.
Such close ties among these and other families helped foster a
kinship between the two people. Thanks to imperial politics, Acadian-Mi'kmaq
relations turned sour by the early 1750s, but when the British deported the Acadians in 1755, the
Mi'kmaq were not happy to see them go.49
A concomitant to their sense of egalitarianism was another
stereotypical attitude that also derived from their relative
isolation from the rest of New France--anticlericalism. In the
beginning, there were almost as many Protestants as Catholics in
Acadia, but, as a result of Jesuit, Recollet, and Capuchin
influences and the devout Catholicism of the Bourbon kings who
succeeded Henry IV, when French families were finally established in
the colony during the late 1630s, Protestantism had been largely
purged from the Acadian population. For the rest of French
rule in the colony, Huguenots were not welcomed there. Pierre
Melanson dit La Verdure was a devout Protestant, but his
presence in the colony during the 1660s was the result of English
occupation. When the English left in 1670, so did he; his two
older sons, Pierre, fils and Charles, remained, but by then
they had converted to Catholicism in order to take Acadian wives.
Laurent Granger, an Englishman who also came to the colony
during the late 1650s, converted to marry his Acadian bride, a
Landry. So did Geyret de
Forest of Leyden, Holland, who married an Hébert and
changed his name to Michel. Scotsman William "Billy"
Johnson, who came to Acadia as a British soldier in 1710, had to
denounce Protestantism before he could marry a Corporon even
while the British controlled the colony. Acadians clung
to their Catholicism after the British took control of the colony in
earnest in 1713. But there were limits to their devotion.
An historian of the Acadian experience notes: "Acadians had
come to view the Catholic church in the same light as the colonial
government--that is, an agency established solely to provide
essential services. Such services were to be provided without
disruption of the parishioners' routine secular activities and
without undue financial burden. Any deviation from this
conceptual framework precipitated spontaneous outbursts....
For many if not most late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Acadians, Catholic missionaries were shadowy figures who provided
the settlers minimal contact with the church hierarchy. Forced
to fend for themselves, even to the point of conducting
paraliturgical services, the [Acadians] ultimately came to divorce
religion from the area's traditionally dominant religious
institution. Priests consequently became little more than
petty religious administrators, stripped of their cloak of religious
invincibility and vulnerable to personal criticism...."
Another historian of the Acadians has quipped: "the Acadians
were scarcely more willing to pay tithes than quitrents."
During
British rule, "There were never more that five priests, at any one
time, working within the colony and usually only three or four," so
their influence, in both the ecclesiastical and the civil realm, was
limited. Among them, however, were priests who threw
themselves into the imperial struggle with such enthusiasm and
force, even violence, that they would use any means at their
disposal to work their will on their hapless parishioners. As
a result, Acadian anticlericalism was only hardened by the
activities of priests like Sébastien Râle, Pierre Maillard, and
Jean-Louis Le Loutre, whose fanatical devotion to Mother France
would cause the Acadians no end of trouble with the local Indians
and British officials.48
Acadian anticlericalism also extended into the secular realm.
The French had looked upon Acadia as a civil as well as a commercial
backwater, and the Acadians took full advantage of this.
Deferring to their elders or their priests in everyday matters, they
avoided as much as possible appealing to the colony's chief judicial
officer or to the governor, who, if he did not reside in distant
Pentagouët,
Nashouat, or Beaubassin, often was absent from the
colonial capital. Under British rule, the Acadians continued
their
ad hoc form of self-rule, appealing to a colonial council in
Annapolis Royal only if they could not resolve a local matter among
themselves. By the 1730s, however, unresolved squabbles
between neighbors became more and more frequent. Land
disputes, complaints of unruly cattle destroying fences and other
property, and habitants who did not bother to repair their dykes,
provided much business for a commission set up by the colonial
council to handle such disputes. Lieutenant Governor
Armstrong, no friend of the Acadians, complained to the Lords of
Trade in London that "'... they are a Litigious Sort of people and
so ill natur'd to one another as Daily to Encroach upon their
Neighbours propertys....'" This led to yet another stereotypical view of them which had a solid
basis in fact: they were a stubborn, independent-minded, even
intransigent people accustomed to getting their own way. That they
were difficult to govern is an understatement, as their British
overlords learned soon enough.51
Acadian intransigence was especially apparent in the realm of land
tenure. This problem had vexed seigneurs and habitants alike
during the last 70 years of French control of Acadia and did not end
when the British gained control of peninsula Nova Scotia in 1710.
If anything, under the British the question of land tenure became
even more complicated. British governors insisted that seigneurial
payments be "made to the Crown, but with little success." In 1730,
Governor Phillips complained of the efforts of a La Tour heir, Agatha
La Tour Campbell, wife of a British military officer, to assert her
seigneurial rights at Annapolis and Minas, rights which Phillips refused to honor. In 1733, the
good lady, after pulling the right strings in London, won a substantial
settlement in her favor and the right "to collect her own rents."
One would suspect that the Acadians of Annapolis and Minas observed the proceedings with some amusement.
Historian Andrew Hill Clark observes: "Thereafter [1733] the collection of old
seigneurial dues and some rents now clearly owed to the crown involved
much discussion, accounting, and correspondence but never much cash or
kind. Various detailed accounts of cens et rentes and fines
of alienation are scattered through the documents. In 1734
rents due for the two previous years for the Annapolis district were
thus recorded: for cens, 20 deniers parisis, 72
deniers tournois, and 6 oboles parisis; for
rentes, a beaver tail, 4 partridges, 2 pullets, roughly
150 capons, 200 bushels of wheat, and a few small payments of cash.
Commuting to cash values in New England currency the amount due was
only about L68 (including some L8 or more in fines of alienation)
and of this some L48 was collected. On this amount a little
more than L7 was paid in commission, and the net yield of nearly
L41, when converted to sterling at 260 per cent discount, amounted
to only slightly more than L11 for the two years. In 1745
[Lieutenant Governor] Mascarene observed that the settlers paid no
taxes but '... only a small Quit-Rent for their Lands in Fowles and
Wheat amounting in the whole to about L15 Sterling excepting what
they voluntarily allow to their Priests....' Rents, seigneurial
dues, and fines of alienation on land were no burden to the
Acadians." In the fringe settlements of the peninsula,
especially in the Chignecto area, one would suspect that
independent-minded habitants did not bother to pay even this
pittance.119
Land squatting, in fact, was endemic among the Acadians. A
British official noted in 1748: "'Their Title of Lands arise
from Old French Grants, but these extend only to their Old
Settlements; But since the Rendition of that Country (i.e., in 1713)
many are settled contrary to the order of Government and have no
other Title than the Law of Possession.'" This was especially
evident in the trois-rivières area--Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and
Memramcook--a favored destination of Acadians who, such as the
Beausoleil Broussards, sought to put distance between
themselves and British officials at Annapolis Royal. That the
trois-rivières area also was claimed by France meant little to these
British officials, who believed that their imperial claims extended
beyond the Chignecto isthmus into present-day eastern New Brunswick.
Moreover, the farther one lived from Annapolis Royal, the less
likely ones land had been properly surveyed. During the 1720s
and 1730s, British efforts to settle Irish and German Protestants in
Nova Scotia led to surveys of the proposed areas of settlement, but
these surveys were halted when the settlement schemes fell through.
In 1731, Lieutenant Governor Armstrong proposed a general survey of
the colony so that the inhabitants could be forced to pay taxes to
the crown. By December 1733, when Armstrong appointed Acadian
syndic Prudent Robichaud, père to collect "all
quitrents, fines of alienation, etc." along the Annapolis River,
only that area of the colony had been properly surveyed.
During the years following, Armstrong,
either through priests or deputies, instructed the Acadians at
Minas, Chignecto, and even faraway Chepoudy, to submit to the
council their land records, but few likely complied.120
Another indication of Acadian stubbornness and independence was the
difficulty of British officials in controlling their movements
within the colony. Habitants were required to petition the
colonial council to go anywhere in Nova Scotia even for a seasonal
visit--a sort of internal passport system. For example, during the summer of
1740, eight Acadians from an unspecified settlement applied for
permission to winter at Chebogue on the western Atlantic coast,
south of
present-day Yarmouth. They went there before permission was
granted--that is, before they could be issued the required
passports--"were called back, and finally allowed to go for the one
season provided they engaged only in fowling and fishing and dyked
no land." In other words, they were not allowed to settle
there, but they remained there anyway. One suspects that if there had been a expanse of salt
marsh suitable for dyking
at Chebogue,
yet another substantial Acadian settlement would have appeared on the
peninsula, British officials and their quitrents be damned.121
Andrew Hill Clark concludes: "... the Acadians themselves
had always had a rather specific conception of their own plots of
land, that they were ready to argue with anyone about their limits,
that they paid the token fees involved in seigneurial dues without
too ill a grace, and that most Acadians, in 1710, had some sort of
tradition of individual tenure of the lands they occupied and
worked. As the British intentionally or unwittingly destroyed
or undercut the old system, the Acadians became increasingly
uncooperative. They appeared to associate the payment of
quitrents to the British government with the hated oaths which they
were being pestered to take. The hope of restoration of French
sovereignty remained strong and was fanned by officials of the
nearby French areas of Cape Breton, Isle St-Jean, and Quebec, and by
the French missionaries. As with most conquered people they
tended to act as independently as circumstances allowed and they
very quickly discovered that British power as represented by the
governor and council at Annapolis had little bit to it."122
Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of Acadian life contributed to
another stereotype based in fact, that the Acadians placed family
above everything else. Many of them did
establish large, healthy families essential to sustaining their way
of life, and many of them enjoyed a kinship network that reached
into every corner of the colony. The creation of large
families began early at Port-Royal. One study claims that,
by the end of the French period,
four
families made up "the kernel of Port Royal society": the Boudrots, the Bourgs, the
Dugass, and the Melansons. Historian Naomi
Griffiths explains: "All four families were neighbours of one another on either side of the Rivière-du-Dauphin,
close to its mouth." These families allied with many of the
other early families: the Boudrots
with the Thériots and Landrys; the Bourgs with
the Dubois, Robichaud, Gaudet, and LeBlanc
families; the Dugass with the Bourgeois and LeBlanc
families; and the Melansons with the Granger,
Petitot, and Babineau families. The same study
claims that the extensive kinship networks created by these and
other early families "was one of the reasons why Acadians
assimilated newcomers after 1685 with a minimum of hostility.
Family connections were expected to provide help and support to the
kin group. Once married to an Acadian, a person quickly
assumed the obligations and benefits of the partner's kin." By
the early 1700s, these networks, fueled by children and
grandchildren who created families of their own, extended out from
Port-Royal to Chignecto, Minas, Pigiguit, Cobeguit, and the trois-rivières, as well as to the so-called outlying settlements on
the Atlantic coast and along Rivière St.-Jean.124
Two stereotypes of Acadian family life--the frequency of
consanguineous marriage and the rarity of extra-marital
affairs--have solid bases in fact. Andrew Hill Clark observes: "The
Acadian population has been supposed to have been rather highly
inbred genetically and the records, especially those at Annapolis,
tend to bear this out." Records of St.-Jean-Baptiste
parish between 1727 and 1755 reveal dispensations for consanguinity,
especially between second cousins, in 44 per cent of the 297
marriages recorded.
"Pre-marital
pregnancy, a standard reason for such dispensations and less than a
major sin if followed by marriage, may have been the usual reason
for the dispensation--the officiating priest or missionary often
adds that it was for good reasons known to him." Clark maintains
that the "reputation of the Acadians for the avoidance of
extra-marital liaisons" is "undoubtedly deserved" and "may have
carried over to pre-marital experience between young lovers
(although the latter is common enough in farming communities and
generally condoned if followed by marriage). What is
reflected, unquestionably, is simply the degree of isolation,
whether the marriages were forced or not, and the sheer difficulty
of finding someone to marry who was not a second cousin."127
Most Acadians embraced with enthusiasm the creation of children
within their church-sanctioned marriages. Andrew Hill Clark
explains: "We have no evidence on which to base birth and
death rates. We conclude that there was no substantial loss of
life in military action during the period [of British control of
Nova Scotia] nor have we any record of epidemic disease or of
serious shortages of food. Most young people married at least
by their early twenties and set up for themselves as soon as they
could. There were few spinsters over thirty and widows were
quick to remarry. However, the nominal censuses of [the French
period] often included many young men and women in their twenties as
children in families and so unmarried and the parish registers show
very few marrying before eighteen. Indeed, most Acadian girls
were in their twenties when they wed. Anything approaching
child marriage was unknown."
Naomi Griffiths adds: Acadian women, like their
contemporaries in other North American frontier societies, tended to
marry younger than their European contemporaries. Acadian
women who married before age 20 had an average of 10 children,
between ages 20 and 24 an average of nine, and between ages 25 and
29 an average of seven. Even more amazing was the survival
rate of their children, reflecting, among other things, the quality
of their diet. "Thus, one of the most striking aspects of
Acadia, at the close of the seventeenth century, was the
omnipresence of children."126
Living on the North American
frontier, Acadians raised their offspring not unlike members of
other frontier cultures. Naomi Griffiths explains: "For both men and women, the
parenting of children was a given. Women, inevitably, were
primarily responsible for the early years of child raising.
The birthrate would often mean that an individual woman had four
children under six to look after; while she carried out the daily
household routine. Both parents, however, were closely
involved in preparing the young for adult life. As was normal
in rural society until recently, even young children were given
chores to do and the idle adolescent would be rare indeed.
Dièreville commented that children helped their parents from a young
age, this allowing them to save the daily wages that otherwise would
have been paid to casual labour. Particular skills--weaving,
woodworking, food preservation, and animal husbandry--were handed
down through the generations. Perhaps the most vital
discipline that would be inculcated was the knowledge that one was
at the beck-and-call of forces beyond one's control. Sheep
have their own timetable, cows need milking twice a day, and the
weather dictates rhythms of sowing and harvesting. No family,
however successful in establishing itself, could survive without
community support. Interdependence was the crux of Acadian
life, not only because of the demands of the dykes but also for the
host of tasks that needed doing, from barn building to ploughing and
harvesting. Acadians valued children and the community gave
considerable support to young parents."
The smallness of the typical Acadian farmhouse, however, required
the establishment of close relations. This would have been
especially important in households that included three or even
four generations. "There would be little
chance of solitude within the home. If continual bickering and
quarreling was not to be the norm, a conscious effort had to be made
to establish an affectionate relationship. The spacing of the
children roughly two years apart meant that, for the first year or
so, a child had a relatively secure and tranquil time, breast-fed
and frequently nursed, although the pattern of babe-in-arms,
toddler, and small child must have left many a woman physically
exhausted. Several lullabies, some traceable to France, others
seemingly of Acadian origin, show adult pleasure in the new life.
Even if the infant was one of the younger siblings, there would
still be a sense of intimacy in the household and, once the eldest
sibling was seven or eight, an increase in the number of people
ready to comfort the baby. Further, words for toys and for
group play, such as hide-and-seek and catch-as-catch-can, are part
of Acadian vocabulary and argue for a tradition that accepted the
right of children to amusements."125
But there was a dark side even to this fulfilling part of
Acadian life. Naomi Griffith observes:
"... Acadian family life was not uniformly pleasant for all.
Even in a generally healthy community like Acadia, illness occurred
and could produce great stress for the family. Not only that,
but in-laws could be oppressive as well as supportive; closeness
could be suffocating as well as nurturing; and sibling relationships
could result in bitter rivalries as easily as they could give rise
to life-long affection. While family size would mean that
aging parents had greater possibilities for support when health
failed and strength diminished, such support might come, often
enough, with the loss of personal control. My point, then, is
not that the Acadians built an exceptionally loving community on the
strength of their family connections, but that such connections did
exist and were a crucial two-way conduit between choices made
within the home and the level of support for those choices which was
to be found in the community." The strength of their family
connections was often sorely tested, by land disputes, personal
conflicts, and especially war, when some members of the family chose
to cling to neutrality, while others took up the gun and became
partisans. The greatest test would come during their Grand
Dérangement, which would reveal the stereotype's essential reality,
that the Acadians' obsession with family was their principal
weapon in the struggle to maintain
their unique identity.114
More New Families in British Nova Scotia, 1710-55
An indication of British
difficulty in administering Nova Scotia was the appearance of many
new French families in the colony after the fall of Port-Royal in
October 1710--something probably not welcomed by colonial officials
at Annapolis Royal. Most of the new settlers came from France,
but a few slipped in from Canada, at least one from
French-controlled Île Royale, and a Spaniard arrived at Annapolis
Royal on the eve of the Acadian Grand Dérangement. Many
of these new families settled in the Minas Basin, which was clearly
British territory. Others settled at Chignecto in territory
claimed by both powers. During the so-called Father La
Loutre's War of the early 1750s, the abbé and
his Mi'kmaq warriors, after attacking the new British-German
settlements on the Atlantic side of the peninsula, coaxed some
of the French- and German-speaking Foreign Protestants, as they were
called, to move to the Fundy settlements. One wonders if any
of the new families described below were among these disgruntled
settlers:117
François, son of merchant
Jean Richard and Anne Christin, d'Auray of Vannes,
Brittany, probably not kin to Michel
Richard dit Sansoucy, married Anne, a daughter of Jean
Comeau l'aîné, at Port-Royal in October 1710, only a
few weeks after the fort at Port-Royal fell to a New English force
from Boston. François and Anne remained at Port-Royal, which
the British promptly renamed Annapolis Royal. Anne gave
François five children, including two sons who created families of
their own. François remarried to Marie, daughter of René
Martin dit Barnabé, at Port-Royal in October 1722.
Marie gave him three more children, including another son who
created his own family.
Pierre Lalande,
alias Blaise des Brousses dit Bonappétit, a soldier in the
King's service, married Anne, daughter of Joseph Prétieux, at
Port-Royal in November 1710, only a month after the Acadian capital
fell. Anne gave Bonappétit eight children, including four sons
who created families of their own.
François dit
Blondin, son of Nicolas Boisseau and Anne Bouchotait
of Montargis, Orléanais, France, born at Paris, married
Marie-Anne, daughter of Louis Saulnier, at Grand-Pré in the
Minas Basin in October 1711. Marie-Anne gave Blondin eight
children, including three sons who created their own families.
François Blanchard
dit Gentilhomme from St.-Marc-le-Blanc, Brittany, France, no kin
to Jean, reached Acadia in c1712 and married Anne Corne at
Grand-Pré in c1719. He remarried to Marguerite Carret
of Chignecto in c1725. He and his family moved on to Malpèque,
Île St.-Jean, in c1737.
Philippe Lambert,
probably not kin to
Radegonde and René
Lambert but likely a native of France, married
Marie-Madeleine, a daughter of Michel Boudrot, in c1712 and
settled at Chignecto. Marie-Madeleine gave Philippe five
children, all born at Chignecto, including two sons who created
families of their own.
Jean-Jacques, son of
Alexandre Nuirat and Anne Audier of Martigues,
bishopric of Arles, France, married Marie-Jeanne, daughter of
Charles Bourgeois, at Beaubassin in 1712 and remained at
Chignecto. Marie-Jeanne gave Jean-Jacques 10 children,
including three sons who married, two of whom created families of
their own.
Jean-Baptiste
dit
Lyonnais, son of Jean-Louis
Duon
and Jeanne Clémenson
of St.-Nizier, Lyon, France, married Agnès, 17-year-old daughter of
Antoine Hébert,
at Annapolis Royal in February 1713; Jean-Baptiste dit
Lyonnais was 30 years old at the time of the wedding.
Jean-Baptiste served as
a notary in Acadia, so he must have had some formal education.
Agnès gave him 13 children,
including eight sons who created families of their own.
Jean, fils, son of
Jean Fougère and Marie Barré of Poupry, Beauce,
Diocese of d'Orléans, France, married Marie a daughter of Abraham
Bourg, at Port-Royal in November 1713. Jean, fils
worked as a navigator and a fisherman, as well as a farmer.
Marie gave him eight children, including two sons who created
families of their own. Jean, fils remarried to
Marie-Madeleine, daughter of Jean Belliveau, at
Port-Toulouse, Île Royale, today's Cape Breton Island, in c1728.
That is probably where he worked as a navigator and a fisherman.
Marie-Madeleine gave him 10 more children, including two sons who
created families of their own.
Jean Lebert dit
Jolycoeur of Paris reached Annapolis Royal by May 1714, when he
married Jeanne, 30-year-old daughter of Vincent Breau dit
Vincelotte. Jean dit Jolycoeur and Jeanne moved to
Minas in c1720. Despite her age, Jeanne gave the Parisian
eight children, including four sons who created families of their
own.
Jean-Baptiste, son of
François
Vécot, also called Veco, Vescot, Bécot, and
Bécault, and Françoise Poirier of Boucherville, Canada,
married Marie, daughter of Sébastien Chiasson, at Beaubassin,
in June 1714. Marie gave Jean-Baptiste a dozen children,
including two sons who created families of their own.
Pierre Bertaud
dit
Montaury, who, according to Acadian genealogist Bona Arsenault,
was born in France, came to Nova Scotia in the early 1700s, where he
worked as a fisherman and a maître de grave. Pierre
married Marie, daughter of Pierre Martin of Port-Royal,
probably at Annapolis Royal in c1714.
Jacques, son of Daniel
Quimine and Marie
Torel of Pennemart, Nantes, France, born in the late 1690s,
came to Nova Scotia by February 1715, when he married Marie-Josèphe,
daughter of Gabriel Chiasson, at Chignecto.
Marie-Josèphe gave Jacques eight children, including two sons.
Jean-Baptiste, son of Jean
David and Jeanne Bell, and probably not kin to the other
Davids in Acadia, was born at Château-Richer, Québec, in c1693.
He married Marguerite, daughter of François
Lapierre
dit Laroche, at Grand-Pré in March 1715.
They lived at Annapolis Royal in 1716-17 but settled at Minas in
1718. Jean-Baptiste and Marguerite had 10 children, including
three sons, all born at Grand-Pré, who established families of their
own.
Jacques, son of Étienne
Dingle and Anne Laseux, a surgeon from Ville de
Grauelline, Flanders, married Marie-Josèphe, daughter of Jean
Landry, at Grand-Pré in July 1716. They resettled at
Louisbourg, Île Royale.
Jean, fils, native
of the isle of Guernsey, son of Jean Semer and Maguerite
Héron, married Marguerite, daughter of Michel
Vincent, at Grand-Pré in November 1717; the priest who
recorded the marriage called Jean, fils a Lemer.
Marguerite gave him at least three sons, all born at
Grand-Pré.
Louis Arnaud dit
Renaud or Renault dit Provencal, born probably
in Provencal, France, son of Antoine Arnaud and Marie
Samson of St.-Martin, Marseille, came to Nova Scotia by c1718,
the year he married Marie, daughter of François Lapierre
dit Laroche, at Grand-Pré. They raised a large family of
17 children, 11 of them sons.
Ignace dit
Saint-Jacques
Carret, born in France, probably was not kin to soldier
Pierre Carré, also called
Carret, who had come to French Acadia in c1702.
Ignace arrived in Nova Scotia by c1718, the year he married Cécile,
daughter of Robert Henry of Cobeguit. They settled at
Ste.-Famille, Pigiguit, in the Minas Basin, and had at least seven
sons.
Pierre Olivier, a
tailor from the Parish of St.-Mederic, Paris, came to Nova Scotia by
1718, the year he married Françoise, daughter of Jacques Bonnevie,
at Annapolis Royall. They had eight children, including three sons,
all born at Annapolis Royal, who created families of their own.
Louis Hugon, native
of Villefagnan, Angouleme, France, married Marie Bourgeois at
Chignecto in April 1720. They had six children, four sons and
two daughters. Two of the sons, both born at Chignecto, created
families of their own.
Jean-Michel, called
Michel,
Part, probably Apart, a native of France and probably
not kin to Pierre Part dit La Forest of Port-Royal and
Louisbourg, married Élisabeth, daughter of Michel Hébert,
probably at Minas in c1720. They had at least five children
there, two sons and three daughters, before moving to Cobeguit in
the 1730s.
Pierre LeMire
dit
Mire, born in Paris, came to Nova Scotia in the 1720s and
married Marie-Josèphe Forest in c1726. They settled at
Pigiguit. Marie-Josèphe gave Pierre two children, a daughter
and a son. Pierre dit Mire remarried to
Isabelle, daughter of Claude
Thibodeau, at Annapolis Royal in July 1738. Isabelle
gave him five more children, two daughters and three sons.
Pierre-Claude Arsement,
born in France, married Marie-Josèphe
Thériot
in c1722 and settled at Pigiguit. They had eight children,
including four sons, one of whom was a twin to one of his sisters.
Pierre Cloistre dit
Clouâtre, a gunsmith, reached Nova Scotia by 1722, the year
he married Marguerite, daughter of André LeBlanc, one of the
pioneers of the Minas settlement. Pierre and Marguerite
settled at Grand-Pré and had at least a dozen children, including
five sons, all born at Minas.
Toussaint, son of Jean
Blanchard and Pétronille Ferrier of Évran, near St.-Malo,
France, no kin to Jean and François dit Gentilhomme, married
Angélique, daughter of Claude Bertrand, at Port-Royal in
c1727 and also settled at Petitcoudiac. Toussaint and
Angélique had at least three sons: Ambroise, born in c1734,
Michel in c1741, and Joseph in c1746. One wonders if any of
them created families of their own.
François Nogues of
Piriac, Diocese of Nantes, France, married Madeleine, daughter of
Jean Doiron, père and his second wife Marie Trahan,
in c1728. Madeleine gave him at least six children, two sons
and four daughters. In c1750, they moved on to Anse-du-Nord-Ouest,
Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, where they were counted
in the summer of 1752; with them was Madeleine's widowed mother, age
80.
Pierre Bonnier
or Bonnière, a tailor from Raqueil, bishopric of Rennes,
Brittany, married Madeleine-Josèphe, daughter of Michel Forest
of Pigiguit, probably at Pigiguit in c1730. Madeleine-Josèphe
gave the tailor turned farmer at least seven children, four sons and
three daughters. One Acadian historian insists that the family
moved to Île St.-Jean in 1750; if so, they likely returned to the
Minas Basin by 1755.
Surgeon Claude-Antoine, son of Claude Duplessis and
Marie Derivie of St.-Jean de St.-Quentin, Noyons, Picardy,
France, reached Nova Scotia by September 1736, when he married
Catherine, daughter of Pierre Lejeune and widow of Antoine
Lanoue, at Grand-Pré; she was eight years older than he was.
In the 1740s, Claude-Antoine moved his family to
Chignecto. Catherine gave him at least three children, two daughters
and a son.
Pierre Arostey or
Arosteguy came to Acadia probably from Bayonne, Gascoigne,
France, by May 1737, when he married Marie, daughter of Charles
Robichaud dit Cadet, at Grand-Pré. They settled on
the Beauséjour ridge at Chignecto.
Jean, son of Guy Cousin
of Dol, Brittany, France, reached Nova Scotia by November 1737, when
he married Judith, 16-year-old daughter of Paul Guidry and
Anne Mius d'Azy, at Grand-Pré. Jean and Judith settled
near her family at Ministigueshe, near Cap-Sable, where a daughter
was born in c1748.
Étienne-Michel, son of Jean David dit
Saint-Michel and Madeleine Monmellian dit
Saint-Germain of Québec and Louisbourg, born at the French fortress
in c1720, married Geneviève, daughter of Michel Hébert, at
Grand-Pré in January 1744. Like his father, Étienne-Michel was
a blacksmith.
Pierre Boucher
married Marie, daughter of Jean Doiron, probably at
Chignecto in the early 1750s. They had at least one child,
daughter Marie-Anne, born "at Beaubassin" in c1754, on the eve of Le
Grand Dérangement.
Jean, fils, son of
Jean Gousman, père and Marie Granielle, born
probably at St.-Nicolas, Andalusia, Spain, came to British Nova
Scotia by c1755, when he married Marie Barrieau
probably at Annapolis Royal. She died without giving him
any children. The Spaniard's second wife, Rose, daughter of
Acadian Jacques dit Jacquot Bonnevie dit
Beaumont,
fils of Port-Royal and Île St.-Jean, whom he married at
Restigouche in January 1760 during Le Grand Dérangement, gave him at
least two children, a daughter and a son.
Joseph Marant, born
in c1729, married Angélique Dugas probably at Chignecto in
c1755.
Joseph Dubois, a
seaman, probably no kin to the other Duboiss in Nova Scotia,
married Anne Michel in 1756. They most likely lived at
Cap-Sable, where they had at least one child.
Pierre Noël, born in c1725, married Marie-Madeleine
Barbe perhaps at Minas. One wonders who his parents may
have been and if the first of his family came to Acadia after the
British took over the colony.
.
At least one new arrival from France went not to Nova Scotia but to
Rivière St.-Jean, which the French had not relinquished.
Philippe de Saint-Julien Lachaussée, a surgeon, born in
Picardie, France, married Françoise, daughter of Jean-Baptiste
Godin dit Lincour, in c1754, settled with her on the
river, and became the area's surgeon.
.
A circumstance perhaps
only just tolerated by the British authorities was the settlement of
their own soldiers in francophone Nova Scotia, with predictable
results:
In July 1712, nearly two years after the fall of Port-Royal to the
British, James, son of Andrew Gainier and Margaret Benard
of Dublin, Ireland, was serving as a soldier with the British army
when he married Cécile, daughter of Pierre Cellier of Minas,
at Chignecto. James later called himself Jacques Guénard
dit Gaudereau, signifying his entrance into Acadian society.
Jacques and Cécile had three children, including a son, Timothée,
who created a family of his own.
William, called "Billy,"
Johnson, a native of Scotland, came to Port-Royal in the autumn
of 1710 as a British soldier. He got into trouble with his
superiors, who branded him a thief. Billy escaped to the
nearby Acadian community, denounced Protestantism, and became a
Catholic. (How he eluded the British authorities, who retained
their hold on the area after Billy's escape, is anyone's guess.)
In c1714, he married Isabelle, a daughter of Jean Corporon,
at Annapolis Royal and "became" an Acadian. Among his Acadian
in-laws he was called Guillaume Johnson
dit Jeanson. Isabelle gave him four children,
all sons, all of whom created families of their own. Each of
them retained their father's dit, Jeanson, as their
surname. ...
French Maritimes
Acadia: Île Royale and Île St.-Jean
The treaties signed at
Utrecht in 1713 did not grant all of French Acadia to the
victorious British. France continued to claim two large
Maritime islands: Cape Breton lay east of peninsula Nova
Scotia across the narrow Strait of Canso and, like the Atlantic and
Gulf of St. Lawrence shores, remained on the periphery of Acadian
life. Île St.-Jean,
today's Prince Edward Island, lay at the southern end of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and was only a day's boat ride across the Mere Rouge, now
Northumberland Strait, from Baie Verte. The French renamed Cape Breton Island Île
Royale and created a colonial administration for their Maritime
islands at a fishing port
on the Atlantic side of Île Royale, Havre-à-l'Anglois, or
English Harbor, which they renamed Louisbourg.
But, because of the Utrecht treaty's failure to establish clear-cut
boundaries for the region, the new Maritimes colony existed at first
where there was only a
claim of territory. This changed in
September 1720,
when French diplomats,
"with the Regent's full support, insisted that Canso Island was a
part of Île Royale, and the British accepted that any islands lying
north of the mainland (i.e., peninsular Nova Scotia) and in the Gulf
of St. Lawrence were French possessions."245
The new Maritimes colony played an important role in French imperial
plans for North America. First was the resettlement of
Frenchmen in French-controlled territory, particularly the Acadians
of British Nova Scotia. The islands also would serve as a base
from which to protect the lucrative cod fisheries in the region,
guard the approaches to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which was the
gateway to Canada, and check British power in peninsula Nova Scotia.
Beginning in 1719, at great expense, the French constructed
fortifications around Louisbourg based on Field Marshall, the
marquis de Vauban's most elaborate configurations. By the
early 1740s, Louisbourg had become one of the most formidable, and
expensive, fortresses in the New World.
Evidently the need to escape British authority in Nova Scotia, as
well as a desire for new opportunities, overcame any compunction
some Acadians may have had about moving to a new colony. It
was, after all, French. But there were compelling reasons not
to resettle there.
In September 1713, Father Félix Pain, a Recollet missionary, shared
with the governor of Île Royale reasons why Acadians were reluctant
to go there: "'It would be to expose us manifestly (they say)
to die of hunger, burthened as we are with large families, to quit
the dwelling places and clearances from which we derive our usual
subsistence, without any other resource, to take rough, new lands,
from which the standing wood must be removed.... One-fourth of
our population consists of aged persons, unfit for the labor of
breaking up new lands, and who, with great exertion, are able to
cultivate the cleared ground which supplies subsistence for them and
their families.'" The following
June, in fulfillment of the Utrecht provision which allowed Acadians
to resettle in French territory within a year of the treaty's
signing, Acadian heads of family were granted permission to go to
Île Royale and inspect the settlements there. In August,
French authorities sent the ship Marie Joseph to Nova Scotia
to transport to Île Royale the Acadian families who liked what they
had seen there. As Father Pain's letter anticipated, most of
the Acadian migrants returned to Nova Scotia, but others chose to
remain on the island, not only at Louisbourg but also at
Port-Toulouse,
formerly Fort St.-Pierre. Although the rocky
island could never become an agricultural paradise like the
settlements along the Fundy, agriculture was possible there, not
only grain cultivation but also livestock production; huge stands of
timber on the island waited to be exploited; and many island
Acadians, as some had done in Nova Scotia, turned to the sea for
their living. They worked not only as fishermen but also as
navigators, coasters, and ship builders. Port-Toulouse was
especially well-positioned for the ship-building trade.242
In 1716, colonial officials conducted a census at Port-Toulouse.
Settlers' names included Étienne Comeau; (Jean-Baptiste?)
Corporon, age 39?; François Coste,
age 45; Joseph Dugas; Étienne Hébert; the Widow
Landry; Antoine, age 54?, Jacques, age 65?, and René
LeBlanc, age 59?; Nicolas
Petitpas; Jean Pitre, age 36; the Widow
Richard; and Étienne Rivet, age 33--all
peninsula Acadians who had chosen to resettle on the island; the
first-families of Île Royale, one could say. During the
following decades, more Nova Scotia Acadians settled at a dozen
other places on Île Royale: at St.-Esprit, L'Ardoise,
La Briquerie, Rivière-aux-Habitants, Pointe-à-La Jeunesse,
Baie-des-Espangnols, Baie-de-L'Indienne, Baie-de-Mordienne,
Rivière-de-Miré, Anse Darambourg, and on Île Madame, including the
islet of Petit Degrat,
off the big island's southern coast. In June 1745,
a large force of New Englanders captured Louisbourg, and the French surrendered
the rest of Île Royale to the victors. The British deported
most of the population of Louisbourg to France, but some managed to
escape and find refuge on Nova Scotia. The Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in April 1748, restored Louisbourg and the
Maritime islands to France. By 1752, Acadians on Île Royale
also bore the names
Allain,
Arceneau,
Barrieau, Benjamin, Benoit,
Blanchard,
Boucher,
Boudrot,
Bourg, Boutin,
Braud,
Broussard, Carret, Cousin,
Daigre,
Doiron,
Fougère,
Gaudet,
Giroir,
Guédry, Guérin, Henry, Labauve,
Lambert,
Langlois,
Lapierre,
Lavergne,
Lejeune, LePrieur dit Dubois,
Longuépée,
Marchand, Mius, Olivet, Ozelet,
Pinet,
Poirier,
Préjean, Roy, Samson,
Sauvage,
Sire,
Testard, Thériot,
Thibodeau, Trahan,
Turpin,
Vigneau, and
Vincent. Some
of them had come to the island from Chignecto in 1750-51 to escape
the growing conflict in that part of Nova Scotia.246
...
.
During the late 1710s, the
Compagnie de l'Île St.-Jean, headed by a consortium of
investors led by the Comte de Saint-Pierre, created a settlement and
fishing station at
Havre-St.-Pierre, on the northeast shore of
the island, facing the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The community
later was called St.-Pierre-du-Nord, after the parish church that
was built there. The "First inhabitant of the said island,"
that is, the first permanent European settler, is believed to have
been François Douville of St.-Denis-le-Gratz in Normandy.
Douville, like many Normans of his day, may have worked in
the cod fishery on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf
of St. Lawrence before the Compagnie de l'Île St.-Jean hired him.
Still a bachelor in his mid-30s, he settled on his first claim at
Havre-St.-Pierre in 1719. Three years later, at age 38, he
married Marie, daughter of Gabriel Rogé or Roger of La
Rochelle, one of the first merchants at Havre-St.-Pierre.
Marie gave François 11 children. In 1752, a French official
found the couple at Nigeagant, near St.-Pierre-du-Nord. Living
with them were seven of their children, four sons and three
daughters, ages 24 to 3. The census taker addressed François
as le sieur and Marie as dame, so the 62-year-old
fisherman, navigator, and ploughman, and his 42-year-old wife, who
owned 8 oxen, 8 cows, 4 heifers, 8 calves, a horse, 22 ewes, 9 pigs,
4 geese, 50 fowl, and 20 turkeys,
were upstanding members of the island's middle class.
The census taker noted that François owned two other parcels of
land, at nearby Le Fond des Étangs, which included a flour mill, and
at Pointe-du-Havre-St.-Pierre-du-Nord, which had been granted to him
in 1736. François also owned a garden and a beach front for
drying cod, which he caught with a fishing bateau and two boats.
Sadly, the census taker also noted that the family had recently
suffered "a fire in which they lost all of their effects and their
house was burnt."
Next door to François and Marie lived Le Sieur
Louis-Charles, son of Nicolas Talbot and Marguerite Aubry
of St.-Georges-de-Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, born in the parish of
St.-Benoist, Paris, who, in November 1739, had married
Marie-Françoise, called Françoise, the Douvilles' oldest
daughter. In 1746, Louis-Charles and his family were counted
at Québec, but they returned to Île St.-Jean.
Françoise gave Louis-Charles eight children, all born on Île
St.-Jean.
The census taker in 1752 called Louis a fisherman and said that he
had been "in the country twenty years." Louis and Françoise
owned only a single parcel of land, at Nigeagant, but they owned
even more animals than Françoise's parents, and they owned two boats
as well.
François Douville lived to a ripe old age. He died at
St.-Pierre-du-Nord in January 1757, age 72--nearly two years to the
day when his widow and children landed at St.-Malo, France, as
exiles from their beloved island. Members of the family were
allowed to return to North America, but not to Île St.-Jean; they
resettled, instead, on the French-owned islands of Île St.-Pierre
and Île Miquelon, off the southern coast of Newfoundland. One
of François's grandsons served as a lieutenant in the Continental
Navy during the American Revolution.249
As François Douville and other early settlers proved, Île
St.-Jean gave every promise of becoming another agricultural
paradise. Many of the island's inlets and rivers were lined by
steep sandstone cliffs, but farther inland, where the cliffs gave
way to more gentle shores, the soil generally was rich enough for
growing wheat, peas, and fodder, and some of the island's many bays
were bordered by extensive coastal marshes, ready for dykes and
aboiteaux. Like Île Royale, this island also was ideal for
those who made a living from the sea; in fact, like the island's
original settlers, some of the Acadian farmers, especially along the
island's north shore, owned their own boats, or a share in a boat,
and fished for cod when they were not farming. And, like on
Île Royale, the virgin stands of timber on Île St.-Jean gave promise
of a lucrative lumber industry.
Acadian emigration to Île
St.-Jean came a few years after their kinsmen began settling on Île
Royale, but it began only a year after the original French
settlement appeared on the north shore of the island. Michel
Haché dit
Gallant of Chignecto was one of Île-St.-Jean's "first
European settlers," and perhaps the first Acadian to go there.
Around 1720, he and his wife, Anne
Cormier, built their new home on a red sandstone cliff now
called Rocky Point, overlooking a promising harbor. The
settlement they helped establish, Port-Lajoie, often rendered as
Port-Lajoye, stood across the channel from today's Charlottetown,
the capital of the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.
Michel dit Gallant
remained on the island and died after falling through the ice at the
mouth of Rivière-du-Nord, near Port-Lajoie, in April 1737; he was 74
years old. Other Haché's came to Île St.-Jean during
the next quarter century and settled mostly at Rivière-du-Nord-Est,
closer to the north end of the island.243
During the following
decades, many more communities appeared on Île St.-Jean, most of
them settled by Acadians. These settlements included
Rivière-du-Ouest, Rivière-du-Nord, Rivière du-Nord-Est, Rivière-de-Peugiguit,
Rivière-du-Moulin-à-Scie, Anse-au-Compte-St.-Pierre, Anse-au-Matelost,
Grande-Anse, Grande-Ascension, Pointe-au-Boulleau, Anse-de-la-Boullotière,
Pointe-Prime, Anse-à-Pinet, Havre-la-Fortune, Trois-Rivières,
Tranchemontagne, Pointe-de-l'Est, Le Nigeagant, Tracadie,
Étang-des-Berges, Malpec or Malpèque, Bedec, La Traverse,
Rivière-des-Blonds, Rivière-au-Crapaud, Anse-du-Nord-Ouest, and
Anse-au-Sanglier. During King George's War, Île St.-Jean
surrendered to the British in August 1745, two months after the fall
of Louisbourg. A "group of Acadian insurgents from Île St.
Jean" joined the force of Canadians, Indians, and Acadians who
destroyed a garrison of New Englanders at Grand-Pré in February
1747. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle restored Île St.-Jean to
France in April 1748, and migration from Nova Scotia resumed. Beginning in October 1750, the
disruption of Acadian settlements at Chignecto led to a mass
migration of settlers from that area to Île St.-Jean; 600 or 700 of
them came to the island in October 1750 "in pitiable condition";
during the rest of that year and into 1751, a total of 1,188
Acadians migrated from mainland villages to Île St.-Jean, leading to
severe overcrowding in the settlements there. By 1752, the
population of Île St.-Jean stood at 2,200, so approximately half of
the Acadians counted on the island that year were recent refugees
from the mainland. Acadians from Nova Scotia who followed the
Hachés to the island, both before and after October 1750, bore
the names Allain, Apart,
Arceneau,
Arsement, Aubin, Aucoin, Babin,
Barrieau, Belliveau,
Bertrand,
Beurit,
Blanchard, Blanchard dit Gentilhomme, Boisseau,
Bonnevie, Bonnière, Boudrot, Bourg,
Bourgeois, Brassaud, Brasseur, Braud,
Broussard,
Bugeaud,
Caissie, Carret, Cerié, Chauvel, Chenel,
Chênet, Chiasson, Clémenceau, Clément,
Comeau, Corporon,
Daigre, Darois, Deschamps, Deveau,
Dingle,
Doiron, Doucet, Dugas, Duplessis, Dupuis,
Forest, Gaudet, Gautier, Gautrot, Giroir,
Granger,
Guédry,
Guérin, Guillot, Hébert, Henry, Hent,
Labauve,
Landry, Langlois, Lapierre, LaVache,
Lavergne, LeBlanc, Léger, Lejeune,
LeJuge,
LePrieur dit Dubois, LePrince, Longuépée,
Lucas, Martin, Martin dit Barnabé,
Mazerolle, Melanson,
Michel, Mius,
Naquin,
Nogues,
Nuirat, Olivier, Oudy, Pinet, Pitre,
Poirier,
Poitevin, Pothier, Prétieux, Quimine,
Raymond, Richard, Renaud, Robichaud,
Roy,
Saulnier,
Savary, Savoie, Sellier, Simon, Sire,Thériot,
Thibodeau,
Tillard, Trahan, Tureaud, Vécot, and
Vincent.247
.
New arrivals from France
and Canada settled among the itinerant Acadians on the Maritime
islands. The earliest of these new families came in the 1710s,
not long after the French established the colony. They were
still coming to the islands on the eve of, and even during, the
Grand Dérangement:118
Jean David dit
Saint-Michel, a Canadian, probably not kin to the Canadian Davids
who settled at Minas in British Nova Scotia, became a master
blacksmith and married Marie-Madeleine, daughter of Jean-Baptiste
Monmellian dit Saint-Germain, probably at Québec in
c1717. They settled at Louisbourg, Île Royale, where he worked
his trade. Marie-Madeleine gave the blacksmith 13 children,
including nine sons, all born between c1718 and c1737, most, if not
all of them, at Louisbourg. Son Étienne-Michel, born at
Louisbourg in the early 1720s and a blacksmith like his father, left
Île Royale in the early 1740s and married Geneviève, daughter of
Michel Hébert, at Grand-Pré, British Nova Scotia, in January
1744.
Pierre Arbour
dit Carrica, native of Bayonne, France, married Susanne
Moreau probably in c1721. They settled at
St.-Pierre-du-Nord on Île St.-Jean, and were among the first
Acadians to settle there. Pierre and Susanne had four daughters and
at least three sons.
Laurent, son Jean Neveu
and Catherine Cayer of Santon, La Rochelle, France, a
widower, married Jeanne, daughter of Pierre Robin of
St.-Jean, La Rochelle, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, in November
1721. Laurent and Jeanne settled at Havre de Tracadie on the
north shore of the island.
Louis Closquinet dit Dumoulin, a carpenter, born at
Verrier, Reims, France, married Marguerite Longuépée at
Louisbourg in c1722. In c1737, they resettled at
Rivière-du-Nord-Est on Île St.-Jean. They had at least eight
children, most, if not all, of them born on Île St.-Jean.
Charles, fils, son
of Charles Fouquet and Claude Duvivier
of St.-Jean-de-la-Roise, Avranches, Normandy, France, came to
the French Maritimes in c1722. He married Marie-Judith,
daughter of Étienne Poitevin, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord, Île
St.-Jean, in September 1724. They settled at
St.-Pierre-du-Nord and raised nearly a dozen children.
Joseph
LaForest,
later La Forestrie and De La Forestrie, born at
Angers, France, reached St.-Pierre-du-Nord on Île St.-Jean in c1722.
Four years later, he married Marie, daughter of Guyon
Chiasson
dit
La Vallée of Chignecto and widow of Jean
Pothier.
They had three sons, all born at St.-Pierre-du-Nord. Two of
the sons married, but only one of them seems to have fathered a son
of his own.
Robert, son of Gilles
Heusé or Huezé and Jeanne Rose of Presde, Dole,
France, came to the French Maritimes by February 1724, when he
married Françoise, daughter of Pierre Gatinant of
St.-Nicolas, La Rochelle, France, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean.
In 1724, Jean dit Arnaud, son of Pierre Renaud and
Marie-Madeleine Gainné of Rochefort, France, came to Île
St.-Jean, where he married Marie-Madeleine, daughter of Jean
Pothier, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord in October 1733. Jean
dit Arnaud and Marie-Madeleine settled at Havre au Sauvage and,
from 1734 to 1758, she gave him at least 10 children.
René, son of Jean
Rassicot and Marguerite Crosnier of St.-Jean-Ursin,
bishopric of Coutances, France, reached Île St.-Jean in the late
1720s. He married Marie, daughter of Michel Haché
dit Gallant and Anne Cormier of Chignecto and
widow of François Poirier, at Port-Lajoie on the island in
October 1729. Marie gave René six children, five of them sons,
at least two of whom created families of their own.
Brothers Michel and
Pierre, sons of Jean Grossin and Pérrine Pétain
of Carolles, Avranches, France, came to Île St.-Jean and settled at
St.-Pierre-du-Nord in the late 1720s. Michel married Marie,
daughter of Jean Caissie, probably at St.-Pierre-du-Nord in
c1730. Pierre married Cécile, daughter of another Jean
Caissie, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord in July 1733. Both
brothers raised large families, including five sons each.
Christophe Delaune,
born at Periers, Avranches, Normandy, France, probably no kin to
Jean Delaunay of Brittany, came to the Maritimes in c1729.
He settled at Havre-la-Fortune on Île St.-Jean, where he married
Marguerite Caissie of Chignecto in c1738. They had
seven sons and three daughters, all born on the island.
Charles Lacroix
dit
Durel, son of Pierre Lacroix and Jeanne Deville
of St.-Denis-Le-Gast, Coutances, France, married Judith, daughter of
Gabriel Chiasson of Chignecto, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord on Île
St.-Jean in September 1730. Judith gave him a son and five
daughters, all born at St.-Pierre-du-Nord. Charles's
descendants used his dit,
Durel, as their surname.
Brothers Louis and Julien
DesRoches of Avranches, Normandy, settled at Malpèque on Île
St.-Jean. They probably were not kin to the other
DesRochess in the region. Louis married Marguerite,
daughter of Pierre Arseneau, probably at Malpèque in c1731.
They had at least eight children, including three sons, all born
probably on Île St.-Jean: Eustache in c1736, Alexandre in
c1740; and Joseph in c1743. Julien married another
Arseneau, Marie, daughter of Jacques, probably at Malpèque in
c1743. They had at least six children, born probably at Malpèque:
Julien, fils in c1745, Félix in c1747, Joseph in c1750, Jean
in c1754, Basile in c1755, and Mathurin in c1756.
Jean Hamon or
Hémond, born probably in France, married Marie
Blanchard and settled probably on Île St.-Jean. They had
at least three sons, born probably on the island, the first one in
c1732.
Émilien dit
Sans-Chagrin, son of Dominique Ségoillot of St.-Pierre, Autun,
Bourgogne, France, and Marie Boulet (one authority says
Étiennette Ducharme), served in the Louisbourg
garrison as a senior sergeant in the Troupes de la Marine beginning
in the early 1730s. Probably after he retired from the King's
service, he moved to Île St.-Jean and married Élisabeth-Blanche,
daughter of François LaVache and Anne-Marie Vincent,
at Port-Lajoie in September 1752. Later that year, a French
official counted them at Grande-Anse on the island.
Élisabeth-Blanche gave Émilien dit Sans-Chagrin a son,
François-Dominique, born at St.-Pierre-du-Nord in July 1753.
The old sergeant remarried to Marguerite, daughter of Jacques
Naquin of Cobeguit, at Port-Lajoie in September 1755.
Marguerite gave him a daughter, Marie, born probably at Port-Lajoie
in c1756.
Jean, son of Eustache
Delaunay, also Delaunois, born at St.-Ca or La
Casse, St.-Brieuc, Brittany, France, probably no kin to Christophe
Delaune
of Normandy, married Marie-Madeleine, daughter of Pierre
Arseneau, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord, Île St.-Jean, in May 1735.
Marie-Madeleine's family was from Malpèque, also on Île St.-Jean.
Jean and Marie-Madeleine had 10 children, four sons and six
daughters, all born on the island.
Jean, son of Oliver
Hamon and Françoise
Pireau, of Reintembault, near Dol, France, probably not kin
to Jean Hamon of Île St.-Jean, emigrated to Louisbourg, Île
Royale, by January 1736, when he married Marie, daughter of Joannis
Daguerre, at Louisbourg. Jean may have been a soldier
stationed in the garrison. He and Françoise had at least six
children at Louisbourg, including three sons.
Jean-Baptiste dit
Ladouceur, son of François Massier, later De La
Mazière, and Marguerite Lemoine of Véraise, bishopric of
Saintes, France, was a soldier in the détachement de la marine
when he came to the Maritime colony. He married Marie,
daughter of François Poirier of Chignecto, at Port-Lajoie,
Île St.-Jean, in February 1737. Marie gave the soldier at
least five children, including two sons, all born on Île St.-Jean.
Pierre Livois, born at Drago or Drayé, Normandy, France, came
to the French Maritimes in c1740. He married Anne, daughter of
Denis Boudrot, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, in May 1751.
They had a single child, daughter Marie-Anne, born at Port-Lajoie in
March 1752. Pierre remarried to Marie-Madeleine, daughter of
Michel Poirier, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord, Île St.-Jean, in
January 1753. Marie-Madeleine gave him three more children, a
son and two more daughters, all born at St.-Pierre-du-Nord:.
Louis dit
Langevin, son of René Valet or Vallée and Marie
Jouis of St.-Pierre, bishopric of Angers, France, was a soldier
in la compagnie de Dangeac when he married Marie-Brigitte,
called Brigitte, daughter of Noël Pinet, at Pierre-du-Nord,
Île St.-Jean, in October 1740. Brigitte gave the soldier six
children, one of them a son.
Guillaume, son of Louis
Patry and Mathurine Mahez of St.-Cloud, St.-Malo, France,
born at Thiou, married Françoise, daughter of Gabriel Chiasson
and widow of Guillaume Gallet, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord on Île
St.-Jean in October 1741. Guillaume and Françoise gave Guillaume
four children, two sons and two daughters, including a set of twins,
all born at St.-Pierre-du-Nord. Guillaume remarried in France.
Pierre Darembourg,
born probably in France, married Marie, daughter of Louis
Mazerolle of Port-Royal, and settled St.-Pierre-du-Nord on Île
St.-Jean, where Pierre died in May 1742. They had at least
four children, all born at St.-Pierre-du-Nord.
Louis Dantin dit
La Joye, born in Paris, married Marguerite, 25-year-old daughter of
Marc LaSonde or LaSoude, in c1741 and settled at
Port-Toulouse on Île Royale, where Marguerite was born and where her
father had held land for many years. Louis and Marguerite had
at least 10 children, all born probably at Port-Toulouse. In
1752, a French official counted Louis, Marguerite, and five of their
children there. Between 1752 and 1758, five more children were
born to them.
François, son of Mathurin
Legendre and Marie Morel of Maillard (some sources say
St.-Malo), France, came to Louisbourg perhaps in the 1740s and
worked as a pécheur en chaloupe, or fisherman, there.
He married Marguerite, daughter of Antoine Labauve of
Grand-Pré, at Louisbourg in April 1750. They settled at
Saint-Pierre-du-Nord on Île St.-Jean by 1751 and had at least three
children there, including a son.
Louis Latier, or
Lasté, married Anne, daughter of Étienne Trahan and widow
of Jean-Baptiste Benoit, at Louisbourg, Île Royale, in
c1751. An historian of the Acadians notes: "Louis Latier
seems to have been part of the military at Fort Louisbourg ...."
André Templé, a
Norman sailor, born at Menibeaux, Avranches, France, settled at
Port-Toulouse, now St. Peter's, on Île Royale, probably in the late
1740s. In c1751, he married Marie, daughter of Pierre
Devaux of Chignecto, probably at Port-Toulouse. They had
at least four children, two sons and two daughters, all born at
Port-Toulouse. André remarried to Marguerite, daughter of
probably François
LeBlanc of Minas and widow of Charles Breau, in France,
and she gave him 13 more children, including 11 more sons.
Claude-Joseph, called
Joseph, son of Jean-Claude Billeray and Anne-Monique
Godard, born at Vermier-Fontaine, Diocese of Besancon, France,
married Brigitte, daughter of Michel de Forest,
fils, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, in June 1752. Joseph
and Brigitte had at least two children at Port-Lajoie, a daughter
and a son.
Pierre, fils,
son of Pierre Neveu
and Jeanne Tarando of St.-Pierre-de-Sales, Bordeaux, France,
probably not kin to Laurent of La Rochelle, came to Louisbourg by
November 1753, when he married Catherine, daughter of Jean
Vinette of Rochefort, France, at the French fortress. They
had at least one child, Catherine, born at Louisbourg in 1754.
Yves, son of Guillaume
Crochet and Julienne Durand, born at Megrit,
Brittany, France, perhaps was a soldier or a sailor when he settled
at Louisbourg in the 1750s. In February 1758, he married
Pélagie, daughter of Acadians Claude Benoit and Élisabeth
Thériot of Pigiguit, at Louisbourg. Not long after their
marriage, the British deported them to France.
The "French Neutrals"
The treaty signed at Utrecht in 1713 decreed that the French
inhabitants of Nova Scotia who "are willing to remain there and to
be subject to the Kingdom of Great Britain, are to enjoy the free
exercise of their religion according to the usage of the Church of
Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same."
If any of them chose to leave the colony and forgo British rule, the
treaty gave them a year to do it.218
At first, many Acadians gave serious thought to abandoning the
colony and moving to Canada or some other French possession.
In 1714, the King's lieutenant of the new French colony of Île
Royale, Joseph de Monbeton de Brouillan dit Saint-Ovide, sent
two French officers, Louis Denys de La Ronde and Jacques d'Espiet de
Pensens, to Nova Scotia to solicit Acadians for Île Royale.
During the following months, 139 family heads at Minas and 17 at
Cobeguit succumbed to de La Ronde's eloquence and signed on to the
venture. "But," being Acadians, "they were canny enough to
send a few of their number to Cape Breton to look things over.
This group was not impressed: the main body did not move and
then it was ruled that the time for allowing them to do what
probably very few of them wanted to do had elapsed." The
British, meanwhile, had contemplated a policy of deportation to rid
the province of these troublesome Frenchmen, but, as their response
to Saint-Ovide's efforts reveal, they rejected that radical measure.
Sensing this, most Acadians decided to remain, for
several compelling reasons.218a
First was the confusion created in North America by the
Peace of Utrecht. The treaty also said that "all of Nova
Scotia or Acadia comprised in its ancient limits, as also the city
of Port Royal" now belonged to the victorious British. A
provision of the treaty empowered commissioners from Britain and
France to determine the exact boundaries between the two nations in
the region around the Bay of Fundy. The commissioners argued
for months over what exactly were the "ancient limits" of Acadia.
Did the old French colony include not only peninsula Nova Scotia but
also Maine, the valley of the Rivière St.-Jean, Île St.-Jean, Cape
Breton Island, and Newfoundland as well? Such was the view of
the British commissioners. The French commissioners saw things
differently. They conceded to the British only Newfoundland
and the peninsula of Nova Scotia; the rest of old Acadia--the region
east of the Kennebec in Maine, including the Ste.-Croix and St.-Jean
valleys, and all of the Maritime islands in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, including Île St.-Jean and Cape Breton Island--still
belonged to France. In the end, nothing was settled, and for
the next half century the boundaries remained a bone of contention
between the two powers. Kept informed of this dispute by their
parish priests, the inhabitants of Chignecto and the trois-rivières
insisted that they still resided in French territory. The
inhabitants of the Minas Basin were confident that, although they
clearly resided in territory awarded to the British, their new
masters in Annapolis Royal would be able to control them no more
effectively than the French officials had done from Port-Royal.
Moreover, who could say that the British would remain in "control"
of the peninsula? They had "ruled" it before and given it
back. Why would this time be different?219
There
was also
a strong psychological reason for Acadians to remain in British
Nova Scotia: despite the lure of French Canada and the kinsmen
who had gone there, as well as incentives for them to resettle in
the new French colony of Île Royale, Acadians still viewed their
Fundy settlements as the heart and soul of their identity as a
people. Their roots were deep there. By 1713, some
families had lived in the colony for nearly three-quarters of a
century. The pioneers of Beaubassin had farmed the Chignecto
peninsula for over 40 years. The inhabitants at Minas had been
transforming that incomparable basin into an agricultural paradise
for three decades now, time enough to see their children produce
children of their own. They had expended so much time and
energy wresting their pastures and fields from the bay and its
tributaries, why would they want to abandon their lands simply
because of a temporary change of masters?
Queen Anne, in her final days, had given them incentive to stay.
In late 1713, Louis XIV, in a rare fit of compassion, had "emptied
France's prisons of all Protestants jailed because of their
religious beliefs. Queen Anne was so moved that she felt
compelled to reciprocate, and she wrote her new governor in Nova
Scotia 'to continue our subjects, to retain and enjoy their said
lands and tenements without molestation, as fully and freely as our
other subjects do or to sell the same, if they shall rather choose
to remove elsewhere'"--a clear rejection of deportation.
A few families sold their land to fellow Acadians or even foreigners
and abandoned the
colony, but most of them remained. They would take their
chances with the British, come what may, as their ancestors had done
before.220
There
was a price to pay for staying, however. After the year of
decision was up, the treaty authorized the British authorities in
Annapolis Royal to impose on the remaining habitants an oath
of allegiance to the new British monarch, George I, who had
succeeded his cousin Anne upon her death in 1714. In their
attempts to compel the Acadians to take this oath, British officials
learned first hand how stubborn these putative Frenchmen could be.
Refusing to take up arms against their fellow Frenchmen, the
Acadians resisted taking an unconditional oath of allegiance to the
British crown, playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with their
foreign overlords. This game went on for over four decades and
was played skillfully by these simple farmers, until history once
again came crashing down on them.221
At first
the mouse had certain advantages over the cat. For nearly four
decades after the fall of Port-Royal, the only British presence of
any consequence in Nova Scotia were two small garrisons at Annapolis
Royal and on Great Canso Island on the Atlantic side of the
peninsula. Sustaining these garrisons with annual resupplies
from Britain or even New England would be expensive and inefficient.
Even more onerous would be the trouble and expense of resettling
Nova Scotia with British Protestants, even New Englanders. And
where would the Acadians go if they were compelled to leave the
colony? Many likely would move to Canada, but most of them
probably would resettle on Île Royale, thus strengthening the
French presence in the region. If the Acadians remained in
Nova Scotia, they could serve as "a settled farming population to
supply the garrison" at Annapolis Royal. And so they did.222
It did
not take the Acadians long to see that Britain was neglecting its
Nova Scotia colony as much as France and New France had eschewed
Acadia in their day. From the beginning, British governance at
Annapolis Royal was riddled with confusion and corruption.
Port-Royal's conqueror, Francis Nicholson, was formally named
governor of Nova Scotia and Placentia in Newfoundland in October
1712 and also appointed royal commissioner to audit the accounts of
the failed Walker expedition against Québec. Typically,
Nicholson performed these duties in Boston, while Samuel Vetch
served at Annapolis Royal. Meanwhile, military engineer George
Vane, who had been serving at Annapolis since 1711, accused Vetch of
extorting money from the inhabitants and treating them "more like
slaves then[sic] anything else." Nicholson supported Vane,
turned on Vetch, and accused him of "maladministration." Vetch
evaded charges by fleeing to Britain in April 1714, leaving behind
his wife and two children. British authorities named Major
Thomas Caulfeild, who also had been serving at Annapolis since 1711,
to replace the ousted Vetch. Again, Nicholson remained at
Boston, and Caulfield served at Annapolis. Nicholson was at
Annapolis from August to October 1714 to oversee Acadian
resettlement on Île Royale, but then he was summoned to London to
answer charges laid against him by Caulfeild and Vetch. George
I had only recently ascended to the throne of Great Britain and
appointed a Whig ministry. This was unfortunate for Nicholson,
who was a noted Tory. The Whigs replaced him with Samuel Vetch
in January 1715. Vetch, who was never popular with the
Acadians, was governor of Nova Scotia, in absentia, until
1717. Again, Thomas Caulfeild served at Annapolis, and it was
he who dealt with the Acadians on a regular basis. In August
1717, Richard Phillips, colonel of the 40th Regiment, succeeded
Vetch as governor of Nova Scotia, but, during the 32 years that
Phillips held the post, he spent most of his time in England.
A series of lieutenant governors, "sometimes without the title and
usually without the emoluments of office, sometimes two at once (at
Canso and Annapolis Royal), sometimes overlapping in terms of
appointment, and sometimes without command of the troops with whose
presence, weak although they invariably were in numbers and morale,
the actual power lay"--John Doucett from 1717 to 1725, Lawrence
Armstrong from 1725 to 1739, Alexander Cosby in 1739 and 1740, and
Paul Mascarene from 1740 to 1749--acted for Phillips, who spent no
more than five years in the colony.222d
The
confusion extended to participation in colonial governance.
The British created for Nova Scotia a colonial council, to sit at
Annapolis, "for which the governor when in residence, the
lieutenant-governor, or the senior councillor present (in the
absence of either of the above) served as president. This
body, as well as it could, exercised not only the executive but the
judicial and ... "de facto legislative powers of the
province." Unlike its sister colonies to the south, Nova
Scotia was not given a legislative assembly. The reason was
simple--the great majority of the population were French, not
English, and, more importantly, their religion "barred the
inhabitants from assuming any of the duties upon which the design of
government, to be modeled after Virginia, was based. The Test
and Corporation Acts forbade their taking oaths allowing them to
vote for, or serve in, the required elective assembly." As in
Virginia and the other British colonies, Roman Catholics were barred
from voting and thus serving in any elective or appointed capacity.
"Excepting Celtic Britain and, possibly, the beginnings of New York
and Jamaica overseas, this was the first attempt of a British
government to rule a large number of alien people."222e
This
form of governance certainly was novel for the British, but the
Acadians had grown accustomed to it during the decades of French
rule. They had no assembly then; after 1670, Acadian governors
answered to the governors-general and royal intendants in Québec,
and Canada's Supreme/Superior Council had no equivalent in Acadia,
which the French looked upon as a civil as well as a commercial
backwater. Nor was French Acadia given anything like the
Superior Council that the new proprietary government for Louisiana
had recently created. As a result, the Acadians had more or
less "governed" themselves, looking to their elders and especially
their priests in everyday matters before appealing to the colony's
chief judicial officer--the King's
lieutenant général civil et criminel--or even the governor
himself, if a matter could not be resolved locally. Under
British rule, the Acadians did what they had always done, but this
time they appealed unresolved local issues to "a largely military
council [composed of British officers and officials which] had to
meet on call in a civil judiciary capacity to decide matters of
meum and tuum ... usually brought to them by deputies who
were elected, or otherwise chosen, to represent each district."
This "quasi-representative system" was created informally in 1710 by
Captain Paul Mascarene, formalized by 1714, and continued even after
the British moved the colonial administration to Halifax in 1749.
By that time, "the system had become formalized and elaborated:
according to Mascarene, eight deputies were chosen from eight
districts on the Annapolis River and Basin and sixteen others from
the outlying districts around Minas and Chignecto." These
deputies were generally appointed at first, and so the inhabitants
viewed them as simply another arm of the colonial government.
To compel the Acadians to take their own deputies and, with them,
the colonial government, more seriously, in 1730, Phillips's
lieutenant governor, Lawrence Armstrong, insisted that all of them
be elected. By the late 1730s, on the local level, "in theory
at least, there was also in each district a messenger called a
constable and a notary, who acted as a recorder of legal documents
and receiver of quitrents. At Canso, justices of the peace
were appointed from the garrison soldiers or the three or four
settlers wintering there."222f
In 1748,
Massachusetts Governor William Shirley sent one of his militia
officers, Captain Charles Morris, "to survey land in the Bay of
Fundy area for English settlement." Morris's report included a
description of the Acadians' "quasi-representative system" as seen
through the eyes of a disdainful New Englander: "Indeed they
have some officers of Publick capacity call'd Deputys, but they have
no Power Committed to them being only servants to the People, they
are annually chosen by the several Districts .... The use of
these Deputys is to call the District together, to Publish
Proclamations and orders to receive the minds of thee People and to
transmit their results to the Govr and Councill.... Besides
the Deputy they have a Register or Clark in each District ... to
record orders of Government, Deeds and Conveyances and to keep the
Publick papers, besides these I know of no other Civil Officer among
them....'"222g
An
element of political life in British Nova Scotia involving another
kind of "Civil Officer" greatly troubled the Protestant overlords
sitting at Annapolis Royal. Captain Morris' prejudice against
the Acadians was especially discernible when describing the role of
Canadian missionaries in Acadian life. Morris "thought the
priest's judgment ('Sentence') '... generally Definitive, for if the
offending Party comply's not he excommunicates them which to a
People so Superstitious is very terrible ....'" British and
New English prejudice against the "Superstitions" of Roman
Catholicism blinded these devout Protestants to the true nature of
Acadian anti-clericalism, but perception was more compelling than
truth. Although the Treaty of Utrecht guaranteed
the free exercise of their religion according to the usage of the
Church of Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the
same,"
the British viewed their Acadian subjects as simple-minded
people who were pawns in the hands of troublesome French clerics.
These priests, no more than five of them at any one time, and
sometimes only three or four, answered not to British authority at
Port-Royal but to the Bishop of Québec or to ecclesiastical
superiors residing at Louisbourg. British officials at
Annapolis Royal "were confident, with reason, that the missionaries
were not always careful to distinguish between inculcating loyalty
to the Roman Catholic faith and to His Most Christian Majesty in
France." This mindset, communicated to the ministers in
London, led to orders that all missionaries in Acadia be approved,
if not selected, by Annapolis authority "and that their location and
movements should be closely regulated by British orders."
Lieutenant governors on numerous occasions attempted to expel
troublesome priests--Father Félix Pain of Grand-Pré among them--but
the pastors generally ignored the expulsion order and went about
their business. Sometimes they appeared before the colonial
council to endure a verbal reprimand, and only rarely did any of
them spend some time in the dilapidated prison inside Fort Anne.
"Perhaps the greatest pressure came from refusal to allow new
churches to be built or old ones to be repaired. Yet somehow
the churches got built and the government did not risk having them
torn down."222h
To be
sure, the missionaries performed a substantive role in Acadian
communities, but they, too, had to contend with Acadian reluctance
to submit to distant authority. Geographer/historian Andrew
Hill Clark explains: "The chief civil function performed by
the priests, and one which profoundly irritated the governors, was
the settlement of a host of minor civil differences between their
parishioners. Presumably their ukase was usually accepted
gracefully; when it was not and the priests resorted to
ecclesiastical penalties the reaction sometimes reached Annapolis.
Certainly the Acadians who felt put upon were not above appealing to
Annapolis from the discipline of the church. [Lieutenant]
Governor Mascarene wrote menacing letters to Abbé Desenclaves, one
of the missionaries, because he refused absolution to some
individuals who did not wish to make some retributions he had
ordered them to do. But since there was almost no workable
alternative to the clergy acting as substitute minor civil
magistrates, it is clear that they continued to do so. The
criteria they applied in their judgments came from the only bodies
of law they knew, those of the church and the ancient coûtumes
of France, which often differed sharply from the precedents of
English common law."222i
British
and New English prejudice against all things French and papist
resulted in two attempts to eliminate these influences among the
Acadian population. One proved to be an utter failure, the
other an annoying accommodation. Authorities in London,
Boston, and Annapolis Royal failed miserably in their repeated
attempts to convert the Acadians to Protestantism. Also an
utter failure were efforts "to bring in substantial numbers of
Protestants to be settled among them to dilute their faith and
allegiance...." Not even the creation of a British enclave at
Halifax at mid-century, on the Atlantic side of the peninsula,
achieved this grand ambition, much to the detriment of the Acadians.222j
The
other attempt was less draconian but hardly more successful:
the administering to the Acadians of an oath of allegiance to the
present British monarch. Oaths of allegiance were "nothing out
of the ordinary for the subjects of either France or England.
It was also a common enough procedure both in New France and in
Britain's North American colonies. Admittedly, in the latter,
the issue was a little more complex. Since there was
considerable variation of belief among the various settlements--in
principle Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was founded to foster
a particular form of Protestant belief, and Pennsylvania was
committed to allowing all variations of Protestant doctrine--the
linking of an oath of allegiance and oaths involving a more specific
religious creed was to be avoided. But, that said, oaths of
allegiance on the transference of a colony from one empire to
another was an accepted practice of international law, in North
America and Europe alike." This meant little to the typical
Acadian, whose actions were dictated by his own peculiar
circumstance, not by imperial custom, international law, or his
relationship, cultural or political, to the imperial powers who
proposed to rule him. Historian Naomi Griffiths insists:
"A distinct Acadian identity was unimaginable to those, whether
British or French," who attempted to rule these people. As a
result, both the British and the French failed to grasp the nuances
of Acadian identity, including an evolving Acadian sense of
"neutrality" in the struggle between the imperial powers. An
integral but as yet unarticulated part of their collective identity
by time Port-Royal fell to the British, Acadian neutrality was based
on "the belief, which had developed from the days of first
settlement and particularly between 1670 and 1710, that they were
the rightful inhabitants of the land on which they lived, not just
negotiable assets to be moved about as pawns for the purposes of a
distant empire." This unarticulated perception, after 1713,
evolved into a policy of Acadian neutrality, "something that
was never fully accepted as a reality by either British or French."222l
As to an
unqualified oath to a distant British monarch, in 1713 and 1714,
following the dictates of the Treaty of Utrecht, Acadian attention
was focused more on the decision to remain on their traditional
lands or to move on to Île Royale, where their fellow Frenchmen
promised them new lands. After 1714, when deputies stood
before the council at Annapolis representing the majority of
Acadians who remained in Nova Scotia, "any request from the British
officials was transmitted to the generality of the inhabitants
through men who had been approved by the British; of these, some had
also been selected by the British, but most were chosen by their
villages. Thus, when the question of an oath of allegiance
arose" after 1714, "it became a subject of debate between the
Acadians and the British, rather than a matter of immediate
compliance. All the responses that the Acadians gave
reaffirmed their conviction that they had a group existence and the
right to debate the political conditions of their lives.
Indeed, the very fact that they were represented by deputies meant
that their response to the demand for the oath was more than the
expression of the opinions of a number of separate individuals; it
was an expression of group opinion. And the oath of allegiance
demanded of the Acadians was at the centre of their political
relationship with the British." The oath, in fact, took center
stage in the struggle to maintain their sense of "neutrality."222k
After
taking Port-Royal in 1710, Colonel Nicholson had forced an oath to
Queen Anne upon the residents of the Port-Royal banlieue, and the
Acadians took it without protest. When word reached Nova
Scotia of Queen Anne's death, another oath was demanded of the
residents of Annapolis Royal in the winter of 1714, this time to the
new monarch, George I. In January 1715, instructions
containing the text of an oath to George I, to be administered by
Lieutenant Governor Caulfeild to all the inhabitants of Nova Scotia,
was sent to the colony. It read: "We the french inhabitants
whose names are underwritten now dwelling in Annapolis Royal and the
adjacent parts of Nova Scotia or Lacadie formerly subjects to the
late french King who by the peace concluded att Utrecht did by
articles therein deliver up the whole country of Nova Scotia and
Lacadie to the late Queen of Great Britain, wee doe hereby for the
aforesaid reason and for the protection of us and our Familys that
shall reside in Annapolis Royall or the adjacent parts of Nova
Scotia or Lacadie, now in the possession of his most sacred Majesty
George, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, and doe declare
that we acknowledge him to be the Sole king of the said country and
of Nova Scotia and Lacadie and all the islands depending thereon and
we likewise doe declare and most solemnly swear before God to own
him as our Sovereign King and to obey him as his true and Lawfull
subjects in Witness whereof we set our hands...." The
Acadian response probably surprised the lieutenant governor:
they created conditional oaths of their own! In these oaths,
they acknowledged George I as their sovereign, but they included
such qualifications as "as long as I stay in Acadie or Nova Scotia
and it is permitted that I shall go there where I judge proper with
all my moveable goods and effects when I judge it right without
being hindered by anyone." The Acadian at Minas included a
similar qualification, adding that "while we remain here, in Acadia,
to do nothing against His British Majesty King George." During
the next few years, whenever the official oath was pressed on them,
the Acadians responded with similar conditions, refusing to take an
unqualified oath to a King who soon might no longer be their
sovereign. By 1720, the qualification included not only the
possibility of emigration to French territory--"we promise you we
shall be equally as faithful as we have hitherto been and that we
shall not commit any act of hostility against any right of his
Britannic Majesty, so long as we shall continue to remain within the
limits of his dominions"--but also a stipulation about taking up
arms--"they will Oblige themselves to be good subjects in every
respect excepting that of taking up arms against the King of
France." Following a war with the Wabanaki Confederacy during
the early 1720s that included a failed attack by the Indians on the
fort at Annapolis Royal, the new lieutenant governor, Lawrence
Armstrong, called local deputies to a council meeting in September
1726 and asked them to retake the oath of allegiance, which he
himself had fashioned. The Acadians after hearing the oath
read in French, "requested that a clause be inserted into it
'whereby they might not be Obliged to Carry Arms.' Armstrong
responded by saying that 'they had no Reason to fear Any Such thing
as yt it being Contrary to the Laws of Great Britain yt a Roman
Catholic Should Serve in the Army.'" Nevertheless, Armstrong
reluctantly "'Granted the same'--the right not to bear arms 'to be
writt upon ye Margent of the french Translation in order to gett
them over by Degrees.'" After receiving word of the death of
George I in 1727, Armstrong took advantage of a new king's elevation
by sending Ensign Robert Wroth to the Fundy settlements to secure
new oaths from the habitants there. In his report to the
council in November, the ensign acknowledge that he had "succeeded
by giving the following written assurances: that they would
have the free exercise of their religion and missionaries to
instruct them in the beliefs of Roman Catholicism; that they would
never be required to bear arms under any circumstances; that their
rights and those of their heirs to their lands were recognized; and
that they were at liberty to leave the province as and when they
wished." The council was not pleased with so many concessions
to the habitants and declared the oaths null and void. The
council soon relented, but Armstrong was determined to punish the
Acadians for their insolence. He denied them permission to
trade with English merchants for their grain. In
November 1729, Governor Phillips made a rare appearance in the
colony. After hearing the Acadian's many complaints about
Armstrong's heavy-handedness,
Phillips made a verbal agreement with them that the oath they
had taken before Armstrong three years before would exempt them from
bearing arms in any future conflict.222m
Here was
a policy
of neutrality that most Acadians could cling to. But it was a
policy that had its drawbacks, as well as its terrors. Andrew
Hill Clark reminds us: "The Acadians continued to live on
their ancestral lands for the next four decades without any
resolution of the vexing questions of their right to the lands they
farmed or their duties to their new sovereign and his
representatives. There was no lack of pronouncements,
ordinances, warnings, and exhortations, but until mid-century either
the will or the means (or both) were of insufficient strength to
enforce the political anglicization of the population." And
what of the annoyance of playing the scapegoat? During the
decades under British rule, many of the forays conducted by the
Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia "were often charged to the Acadians' account.
And should the Acadians have decided to sacrifice their friendship
for the Indians to their fear of British accusations they ran,
themselves, the risk of becoming victims of the 'hit and run' raids
which the Micmac, despite their limited population, could manage so
successfully, easily foiling retributive pursuit by dispersing in
the forested, lake-strewn interior wilderness."222c
Just as
dangerous was an element among the Acadians themselves, always a
minority of the population but troubling nonetheless--habitants who
refused even the pretense of neutrality. "That there was
widespread sympathy and even passive support for the French among
many of the Acadians is unquestioned," Andrew Hill Clark tells us.
"[U]nderstandably this was greater in Minas than Annapolis, stronger
in Pisiquid and Cobiquid than at Grand Pré, and most evident in the
Chignecto settlements. Indeed the principal support for the
authorities in Canada and Cape Breton (and through them for France)
lay in the Chignecto region--the Acadian fringe and the doorway to
Quebec and Cape Breton Island." The Acadians most supportive
of the French lived in the trois-rivière settlements. When
Samuel Vetch attempted to overawe the residents of the haute rivière
in early 1711, one of the habitants he ordered arrested and jailed
was 58-year-old François Broussard, married to a daughter of
former soldier Michel Richard dit Sansousy and the
father of a large family. Two of Broussard's sons,
Alexandre and Joseph, both called Beausoleil, were 12 and 9,
respectively, at the time of their father's imprisonment.
Alexandre married a granddaughter of Pierre Thibodeau at
Annapolis Royal in February 1724, and Joseph married his brother's
wife's sister in September 1725. The younger brother, Joseph,
was a natural-born leader and not a man to cross. In 1723, he
was brought before the council at Annapolis, charged first with
consorting with local Mi'kmaq, which the British considered a
criminal offense. Found guilty, he spent time in the same
dungeon that had held his father a dozen years before. A few
months after his marriage, Joseph faced charges of assaulting a
fellow colonist, but unusual circumstances at Annapolis led to the
charge's dismissal. A year after
his marriage, Joseph again was hauled before the Annapolis council
and charged, this time, with fathering the illegitimate
granddaughter of Marie Daigre and refusing to provide for the
child's care. Again, he spent time in custody while details of
the matter were being worked out. Joseph's standing in the
community now ruined, he and Alexandre took their families to
Chepoudy, which their wives' grandfather had founded two dozen years
before. After quarreling with their neighbors over land
claims, the Broussards moved on to the upper Petitcoudiac,
where they founded Village-des-Beausoleil, near present-day Moncton,
by 1740--a quiet refuge from British authority in Nova Scotia.
The Broussards and many of their neighbors in the
trois-rivières area would have nothing to do with neutrality.
They lived in a region claimed by both imperial powers, and no
British official would have the temerity even to offer an oath of
allegiance to them. If--more likely, when--another war broke
out between Britain and France, there was no question that they
would become a part of it, not as neutrals but as fighters.222n
The
Acadians' choices were not happy ones during the unending struggle
between the imperial rivals and their Indian allies. The
three-decade-long peace before the early 1740s was, in truth, a hit
and miss affair. Although conflict did not burst directly upon
them during that usually quiet time, sometimes it came uncomfortably
close. And it usually involved their oldest neighbors, the
Mi'kmaq and their fellow Wabanaki.
Father Râle's War and
the Acadians, 1718-25
The European diplomats who
negotiated and signed the treaties at Utrecht in 1713 ignored an
important player in the rivalry for North America. No
representative of the Wabanaki Confederacy was invited to take part
in the treaty negotiations, nor did any of the imperial officials
take it upon themselves to give Native wishes much heed.
Representatives of the Confederacy did sign the Treaty of
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Massachusetts and New Hampshire
representatives in 1713, but, again, no definitive boundaries were
set, at least none acknowledged by the signers. The
Confederacy chiefs at Portsmouth insisted that they, not the
French, and certainly not the British, owned Lnue'gati--that
is, greater Acadia. European refusal, on both sides of the
Atlantic, to acknowledge ancient Indian claims in the region served
only to sour relationships between the Confederacy and New England.
With the coming of peace,
New Englanders in Maine pushed their trading posts and resulting
settlements into the disputed area between the Kennebec and the
Penobscot. The French responded by fortifying their Catholic
missions at major Confederation villages in the disputed
territory--at Nanrantsouak, today's Norridgewock, on the Kennebec,
the major eastern Abenaki village; at Indian Island on the lower
Penobscot, where the Penobscot lived; and at the Maliseet village of
Meductic on Rivière St.-Jean, above the Acadian settlements.
By the 1710s, the French
had established a fourth Wabanaki mission in the region, this one in
British Nova Scotia--Ste.-Anne's for the Mi'kmaq on Rivière
Chibenacadie, more commonly
called Shubenacadie.
Ste.-Anne's lay south of the Acadian settlement of
Cobeguit, athwart "a major route from the Atlantic coast to the Bay
of Fundy." From Shubenacadie, Mi'kmaq warriors could strike
new British outposts in peninsula Nova Scotia wherever they
appeared. In May 1715, Englishman Cyprian Southack had
established a settlement on the southeast end of the peninsula at
what he called Cape Roseway, today's Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, near
the former Acadian settlement of Port-Razoir. The few Acadians
who had lived on the little harbor had abandoned the site after
enduring privateer raids in 1705 and 1708, during Queen Anne's War.
Southack hoped to establish a permanent fishing station at Cape
Roseway, but in July, Mi'kmaq, probably from Shubenacadie, burned
him out. Southack was determined to avenge the destruction of
his fishing station. When he acquired the wherewithal to do
it, he chose a place that he had successfully attacked a quarter of
a century before, during the early months of King Williams' War.222a
On 17 September 1718, in
what is considered to be the opening action of
a new frontier war, Southack, aboard the HMS. Squirrel,
attacked the settlement at Chédabouctou, on the northeast side of
the peninsula, in what is called the Squirrel Affair.
Most of the 300 fishermen who lived at Chédabouctou were Acadians,
and it was they who manned the fort protecting the harbor, Fort
St.-Louis, which Southak had reduced so many years before. On
September 18, British marines landed at nearby Lasconde's Grave and
sealed the entrance to the harbor. Southack besieged the fort
for three days, taking aboard the Squirrel Acadians in the
area who had not taken refuge inside the fort. He executed
some and imprisoned others, so his goal was to destroy this Acadian
settlement as thoroughly as the Mi'kmaq had destroyed his fishing
station down the coast three years before. On September 19,
British troops from the Squirrel landed at nearby Salmon
River and worked their way around to the rear of
Chédabouctou
village. Meanwhile, the Squirrel attempted to enter the
harbor but was driven back by cannon fire from the fort. The
redcoats captured the village later in the day, cutting the
Acadians' escape route. On the following day, the Squirrel
managed to force its way into the harbor and battered the walls of
Fort St.-Louis with its cannon. On September 23, Southack
pillaged and burned the village, loading his plunder onto several
Acadian vessels he had captured in the harbor. But the
Englishman was not done with the hapless Acadians. He
transported his prisoners to the Canso islands and left them
stranded there without food or extra clothing. The survivors
made their way to Île Madame and Petit Degrat, off the southern
coast of Île Royale.222b
Southack encouraged Nova Scotia's new governor, Richard Phillips, to
fortify Canso. In August 1720, in retaliation for the raid on
Chédabouctou, a force of 50 to 73 Mi'kmaq, probably from
Shubenacadie,
with French and Acadian fishermen from Petit Degrat,
attacked the British fort at Canso while it was still being built by
Phillips's New Englanders. But the cycle of conflict did not
end there.
At Norridgewock in
present-day Maine, the priest assigned to the eastern Abenaki was
Jesuit Father Sébastien Râle (sometimes spelled Rasle), born at
Pontarlier, Diocese of Besançon, France, in January 1657, who had
come to New France with Frontenac in 1689. Father Râle had
served at the Abenaki mission of St.-François, near Québec,
mastering their language and compiling a dictionary of their tongue,
before moving on to the mission at Kaskaskia in Illinois. By
the early 1690s, he was back with his beloved Abenaki at
St.-François. In 1694, in the midst of King William's War, he
established a mission for them at Norridgewock on the Kennebec, in
the heart of their ancestral land. During the rest of King
William's War and especially during Queen Anne's War which followed,
the middle-aged priest accompanied his Abenaki on several of their
raids against New England towns. After the especially bloody
raid on Wells, Maine, in August 1703, the New Englanders offered a
bounty for the priest's head. In the summer of 1704, New
England Colonel Benjamin Church, following his raid against the
Fundy Acadians and the French settlements along the Maine coast, was
ordered to move up the Kennebec and attack Norridgewock, no doubt to
finish off Father Râle. To the chagrin of the Boston
authorities, however, Church did not bother to go. By 1713,
now in his late 50s, Râle had become one of those black robes who
considered the English nothing more than heretic demons encroaching
on ancestral Indian land. He did not welcome the peace that
came with the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1713, in which the New
Englanders insisted that the Abenaki had sworn allegiance to
Britain. He was especially disturbed by an agreement to allow
New England trading posts on coastal Abenaki land. When
land-hungry New Englanders began moving to the trading posts along
the lower Kennebec, Father Râle encouraged his charges to retaliate.
The result was a resumption in 1720 of the frontier warfare that had
plagued the region during the previous two conflicts between Britain
and France. The death of the old Abenaki chief soon after the
resumption of warfare led to entreaties by the new chief to stop the
fighting. He offered the New Englanders
compensation in beaver pelts for damages to their homesteads
and agreed to send them hostages to guarantee peace. Enraged
by this virtual surrender, Father Râle continued to incite "his"
warriors against the New Englanders, and the frontier conflict
resumed.
In the summer of 1721,
Abenaki reinforcements from the St.-François mission arrived at
Norridgewock. Ominously, they were painted for warfare and
carried a French banner. Father Râle, along with his
missionary superior, Father Pierre de la Chasse, led a flotilla of
90 canoes to the Maine coastal settlement of Georgetown, on an
island in the Kennebec estuaries, where he demanded the return of
the Abenaki hostages and withdrawal of all New English, traders as
well as settlers, from Abenaki land. If they refused to
comply, they would be killed and their settlements destroyed.
The New Englanders retaliated in January 1722 when Colonel Thomas
Westbrook and 300 militia surrounded Norridgewock for the purpose of
capturing the troublesome priest. Luckily for them, Father
Râle and most his people were on a hunting expedition, but Colonel
Westbrook found the priest's papers, in which was a letter from
Governor-general Vaudreuil at Québec promising assistance in the
fight against New England. Râle and his Abenaki sacked
Brunswick, near Georgetown, and other villages in retaliation.
In July 1722, Governor Samuel Shute of Massachusetts declared war
against the Wabanaki Confederation. The resulting conflict,
which spread from the Kennebec into other parts of Maine, down into
Massachusetts, into far-away Vermont, and even to the shore of the
Bay of Fundy, goes by many names--Lovewell's War, Drummer's War,
Greylock's War, the Three-Years' War, the Fourth Indian War, The
Wabanaki-New England War of 1722-25 ... and Father Râle's War.
The end came for Father
Râle and his Abenaki mission in August 1724. A militia force
of only 80 men, guided by three Mohawks and led by Captain Jeremiah
Moulton, surprised Norridgewock mission in the middle of the
afternoon. Amazingly, the priest had allowed the mission
stockade to fall into disrepair, and at the time of the raid the
palings were gone. The Abenaki, and Father Râle, put up a
spirited resistance, but the element of surprise and cool, steady
fire of the New Englanders left 26 dead and 14 wounded, including
women, children, a sachem, and one of the old chiefs. Among
the dead was the 67-year-old priest, shot in the head while
reloading his musket. The New Englanders and the Mohawks
scalped the dead, including Father Râle, and returned downriver from
whence they had come. A Mohawk returned to fire the village,
which the surviving Abenaki soon abandoned. By 1725, they had
relocated to St.-François and Bécancour on the St. Lawrence.
Although the major Acadian settlements along the Bay of Fundy stood
300 miles east of the Kennebec, disturbances in Maine between the
Indians and the New Englanders always affected the Acadians.
Moreover, the Mi'kmaq, with the Abenaki and the Maliseet, belonged
to the confederacy of Algonquian tribes, so the enemy of one was the
enemy of all. Mi'kmaq warriors, some perhaps from the mission
at
Shubenacadie, raided
the British
installation at Canso in 1720, 1722, 1723, and 1725, and even
captured New England trading vessels in the Bay of Fundy in 1722,
bringing the conflict between the British and the Wabanaki
Confederacy much too close to home. And then the war came to
the Fundy shore.
In the spring of 1724, two French priests--Fathers Charlemagne
Cuvier of Annapolis Royal and Félix Pain of Grand-Pré--called a
special "service" at the church at Grand-Pré, which was attended by
Acadians from all along the Fundy shore, including Joseph
Broussard dit
Beausoleil of haute rivière; the year before, Broussard had
been charged and convicted by the Annapolis council of consorting
with the Indians, so his presence at Grand-Pré surprised no one.
As soon as they got there, the Acadians were apprised of the
priests' true intentions: they wished to confiscate the
Acadians' canoes and boats to assist a force of nearly a hundred
Mi'kmaq and Maliseet to free 22 Mi'kmaq hostages being held at Fort
Anne! The priests recruited several young Minas Acadians to
gather subsistence for the expedition. Some of the Indians,
meanwhile, refused to go on, but a force of 60 or 70 pressed the
attack. They ambushed a small detachment of soldiers unlucky
enough to be away from the fort when the Indians approached; the
Indians killed and scalped two of the soldiers, including a
sergeant, and wounded four. The attack on the fort was easily
repulsed. During the attack, the Indians burned two English
houses near the fort and captured two soldiers and an English woman
and two of her children. Before fleeing the area, the Indians
turned their captives over to the Acadians, who promptly returned
them to the fort. After the Indians no longer were a threat,
Lieutenant Governor Doucett and his officers called a council
meeting, and their response was swift and brutal. The dead
sergeant, a fellow named McNeil, had been served as aide to the
lieutenant governor, who regarded the sergeant as a friend.
Doucett ordered that one of the Mi'kmaq hostages, who had been held
in the fort for two years and who had nothing to do with the raid,
be taken out to the place where Sergeant McNeill had fallen.
There, the hapless warrior was shot and scalped in similar fashion.
In July, Doucett ordered an inquiry into why none of the inhabitants
had warned the fort about an impending attack. Witnesses were
interviewed, including Father Cuvier and several Acadians from
Grand-Pré. Also appearing to answer questions were two
troublemakers from the Annapolis area, Jacques Michel,
fils and Joseph Broussard. Beausoleil was summoned
not only because the officials suspected his involvement in the
attack but also because he had been accused of assaulting a fellow
colonist, newcomer Louis Thibaut. Broussard's
remarkable defense was that, at time of the alleged assault, he had
not been at Annapolis but at Minas, with the priests and the
Indians! The council concluded that the priests had organized,
or at least approved, the attack and ordered their removal from the
province. Doucett brought no charges against any of the
settlers, not even against Broussard, whose assault charge he
conveniently ignored. Doucett knew that if he imprisoned
Acadians for helping the Indians, he did not have the resources to
quell a rebellion, especially one stirred up by the troublesome
Broussards and their neighbors along the haute rivière.
The lieutenant governor rationalized, with some justification, that
sending their priests out of the colony would be punishment enough
for the Acadians.248
The affair at Annapolis complicated life for all the Fundy Acadians;
British officers and soldiers hardened their attitudes not only
against the Indians but against the inhabitants as well. For a
decade now, Acadians had been trading legally with New
England merchants, but they feared now that their trading partners
might perceive them as belligerents once again. The Acadians
had always been reluctant to disturb their generally happy
relationship with the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet; resumption of
warfare so close to their settlements complicated this delicate
balancing act and risked attack from their well-armed neighbors.
What more could they do but to go about their business and cling
tenaciously to their policy of neutrality?
King George's War and
the Acadians, 1744-48
For decades after the British acquired the colony in 1713, the
Acadians had insisted that they were "neutrals" in the interminable
struggle between France, Britain, and their Indian allies.
They steadfastly held on to their culture, their French language,
their French customs, and their Roman Catholic faith, but most of
them scrupulously avoided aiding their fellow Frenchmen when
conflicts erupted between the imperial rivals. Still, the
Neutral French, as they came to be called, were not above trading
illegally with Louisbourg. They drove entire herds of cattle
from Chignecto to the southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
where the cattle could be loaded on ships bound for the French
fortress. Distrustful of these Frenchmen with their foreign
ways and their clever trade arrangements, British officials at
Annapolis Royal tried mightily to compel the Acadians to take an
unqualified oath of allegiance to the British crown. The
Acadians refused to take such an oath and clung stubbornly to
neutrality. For the most part, the British governors shrugged
off the matter; only the Acadians and their fecund farmsteads could
guarantee steady subsistence to the garrisons in Nova Scotia.
The Acadians lived as they had always done, constructing more dykes
to create new grain fields and providing the necessities of life for
their trading partners as well as for themselves. They
prospered and multiplied under generally benevolent British rule,
which they believed would remain benevolent as long as they
maintained a strict neutrality.57
This handy arrangement began to unravel with the coming of another
war in North America between Britain and France in May 1744.
The British were alarmed to learn that not-so-neutral Acadians,
especially in the Chignecto/trois rivières area, were eager to aid
their fellow Frenchmen in the fight against Britain. But they
should have been pleased that, during the four-year conflict, the
great majority of the Acadians in Nova Scotia remained scrupulously
neutral in their relations with the imperial powers.
.
The seeds of this new war had been planted in Europe not long after
the War of the Spanish Succession had finally ended. The Sun
King, after reigning for 72 years, breathed his last at Versailles
in September 1715. His successor, a great-grandson, Louis, duc
de Anjou, was only five years old. After the usual
maneuvering, a Regent was chosen for the young king--his uncle,
Philippe, duc d'Orléans, who wasted no time reversing many of the
policies of Louis XIV. The Regent created a Triple Alliance
between France, Britain, and Holland. This led to a brief war
between France and its former Bourbon ally, Spain, in 1719. In
October 1722, the young King Louis XV, now 12, was
officially crowned at Reims. The Regent died in December 1723,
replaced
as chief minister
by the duc de Bourbon and then by the King's former tutor,
André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, known as Cardinal Fleury,
who assumed office in 1726. The cardinal expended much effort
in the improvement of life in France, and foreign trade increased
exponentially, but, as usual, the Court generally ignored its
remaining colonies. Fleury, when he gave any thought to the
colonies, seemed interested only in throwing more money into the
fortress at Louisbourg while maintaining the shaky alliance with
Britain and pursuing reconciliation with Spain. Peace, of
course, was a good thing, especially for neglected colonies, but in
1733, Louis XV,
having married a Polish princess in September 1725,
threatened the European peace by intervening in the Polish War of
Succession. The only happy result for France was the seizure
and retention of the duchy of Lorraine, which had been falling under
Austrian Hapsburg influence. Peace returned in November 1738
with the Treaty of Vienna, but it did not last.
In Britain, George II succeeded his father to the British
throne in June 1727. Like his father, George II retained his
title as Elector of Hanover; unlike his father, the second George
was a militarist, always eager for war. Britain fought Spain
from 1727 to 1729 during the first years of the new king's reign.
During the Polish War of Succession, Britain supported Spain and
France against Austria but only diplomatically; the war was
essentially a continuation of the struggle between the Hapsburg and
Bourbon dynasties for influence on the Continent. In October
1739, again over the issue of commercial dominance, war broke out
between Britain and Spain--the so-called War of Jenkins's Ear.
The fighting lasted until the early 1740s and was confined to the
Caribbean, Central and South America, Florida, and Georgia, but it
soon merged into a greater conflict, yet another imperial world war.
In 1740, Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI died and was succeeded by his
daughter, Maria Theresa. Sensing an opportunity, King
Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia in December 1740,
precipitating a war with Austria--the War of the Austrian
Succession. Cardinal Fleury, now elderly and ailing, could not
resist the anti-Austrian element at Court. King Louis XV, who
soon would rule without a chief minister, threw France into the
fight on the side of Prussia. In 1742, Maria Theresa found
allies in Britain and Holland. Britain joined the fight in
1743; King George himself led the allied army to victory against the
French at Dettingen, Bavaria, in June of that year (the last British
monarch to lead troops in battle). France and Britain declared
war against one another in March 1744, and the war soon spread to
North America--called King George's War there.54
.
There had been many changes in the governance of Nova Scotia during
these "quiet" years in Europe. John Doucett,
Richard Phillips's first lieutenant governor, whom the Acadians
managed to tolerate,
was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Armstrong in May
1725. Doucett remained at Annapolis as a member of the the
colonial council, but, despite this awkward situation, the two men
worked well together, until Doucett died at Fort Anne in November
1726 after a short illness. Doucett's replacement wasted
little time alienating the Acadians. During his long service
of 14 years, Lieutenant Governor Armstrong clashed with the Acadians
incessantly, especially over their trading rights and the status of
their priests. On the morning of 17 December 1739, Armstrong
was found in his room at Fort Anne with five puncture wounds in his
chest, his sword lying "carelessly" near him. An inquest of
officers concluded that Armstrong, in a state of "Lunacy," had
committed suicide; the question of murder was never brought up.
After Armstrong's death, Alexander Cosby, Governor Phillip's
brother-in-law, who also had quarreled incessantly with Armstrong,
looked after Phillip's interests in Nova Scotia, but he did not
succeed Armstrong as head of government in Phillips's absence.
A dispute arose as to the proper succession, and it was not until
April 1740 that a new lieutenant governor could assume his duties at
Annapolis Royal.55
Their new lieutenant governor was a familiar face to the Acadians.
Thirty years before, it was he who had initiated the role of
district deputies to represent Acadian interests before the colonial
council. A native of Languedoc, Paul Mascarene's parents were
French, but, being Huguenots, they were banished from the kingdom in
1685 when son Jean-Paul was but an infant. Paul, as he came to
be called, was raised by relatives until 1696, when they smuggled
him to Geneva. He was educated in the Protestant city and
emigrated to England in c1706, while in his early 20s. He
secured an ensigncy in the Regiment of French Foot, recruited from
Huguenot immigrants like himself. By April 1706, he was a
lieutenant. Three years later, he went to North America for
the first time as part of the British invasion force gathered at
Boston to invade Canada. After drilling colonial troops for a
planned offensive against Port-Royal, Mascarene was promoted to
captain in the spring of 1710. He participated in Nicholson's
assault on Port-Royal in October of that year. After
Subercase's surrender, Mascarene "'had the honour to take possession
of [the captured town] in mounting the first guard.'" Thus
began his long relationship with the place and with the Acadians of
British Nova Scotia.
Mascarene's command of French, which after all was his native
language, his "attention to detail, and a capacity for analysis,"
made him a valuable asset to the colonial government at Annapolis
Royal. He served under Samuel Vetch, for whom he acted as a
kind of strongman in extorting money from the inhabitants. His
first experience with the Acadians was in November 1710, only a
month after the fall of Port-Royal. Sent to extract 6,000
livres in "tribute" from the habitants at Minas, he "could assemble
only a small portion, the Acadians pleading poverty...." He
spent a week in the place and learned much about these people, who
he soon understood were a class of Frenchman different from all
others. For the rest of his time in the colony, he served as
Vetch's secretary and interpreter. He followed Vetch to Boston
in October 1711 and remained there for the next year and a half.
It may have been during this time that he married Elizabeth Perry of
Boston, who gave him four children. In early 1714, he returned
to Acadia with a fellow captain to discuss terms with French
officers from Île Royale about Acadian immigration to the new French
colony. For the next five years, he spent time in Boston with
his family and at Placentia, Newfoundland, where he served as
captain of infantry. In August 1717, he was given a captaincy
in the newly-formed 40th Regiment, whose colonel was Richard
Phillips. Mascarene's superiors considered him an accomplished
engineer and artilleryman as well as a commander of infantry.
On a visit to England he was appointed as an engineer on the Board
of Ordnance. He returned to Boston in 1719 and, as an
engineer, was sent to Annapolis to report on the condition of Fort
Anne. It was during that time that Richard Phillips, appointed
governor of Nova Scotia in 1717, spent a winter in Boston and
"gained his favourable opinion of Mascarene." The governor and
the engineer arrived at Annapolis Royal in April 1720, while Doucett
was still lieutenant governor. Phillips appointed Mascarene as
the colony's chief engineer and a member of the colonial council.
Mascarene surveyed the coast, rebuilt the fortifications at Canso,
and did what he could for crumbling Fort Anne. As a relief
from the onerous work of a colonial official, he visited his growing
family at Boston as often as he could.
Mascarene was at Annapolis when Governor Phillips failed to exact an
unqualified oath of allegiance from the Acadians in 1720. It
was Mascarene who was the first to express the true relationship
between the pitifully weak garrisons at Annapolis and Canso and the
scattered Acadian communities along the Fundy shore. Phillips
asked him to write a report for the Board of Trade on the condition
of the colony. Mascarene's analysis became a blueprint on how
British authorities should best handle the Acadian situation:
"He recommended a stronger military force, to be divided among the
major settlements, and the administration, once this force was sent,
of an unqualified oath, with those who still demurred being moved to
French territory. English-speaking Protestant settlers should
be introduced in any event. He noted that the French
authorities were themselves not anxious to receive the Acadians,
since it was to their advantage to have a self-sufficient population
on the mainland [peninsula], accessible to influence from Île Royale
through their priests." Here was a cold analysis of the
situation, containing seeds of a harder policy that would be
nurtured by conflict.
Following the war with the Wabanaki Confederacy, Mascarene went to
Boston in 1725 to represent Nova Scotia in peace negotiations with
the Indians. He returned to Nova Scotia in 1729, while
Armstrong was lieutenant governor. Affairs at Annapolis had
become so chaotic during Armstrong's misrule that Phillips, who had
returned to England in 1722, returned to Annapolis in November 1729
to set things straight in his colony. Phillips alienated
Mascarene by appointing his former brother-in-law, Major Alexander
Cosby, as president of the council in May 1730. Cosby lacked
seniority in the governing body; his only qualification for
president seemed to be his relationship with the governor. To
Phillips's surprise, the usually tractable Mascarene "objected
strenuously" and spent as much time in Boston as he could manage to
avoid the mess in Nova Scotia. Having failed to overawe the
Acadians and to end the chaos at Annapolis, Phillips returned to
England in 1731, and Armstrong resumed his role as lieutenant
governor. While quarreling bitterly with Cosby, Armstrong used
Mascarene as a go-between with Massachusetts governor Jonathan
Belcher, Sr. in urging New Englanders to follow Mascarene's
blueprint and move to Nova Scotia. During the rest of the decade,
Mascarene spent most of his time in Boston, "building his 'Great
Brick house'" and raising his children, now motherless. By
then he had been promoted to major of the 40th Regiment. He
did not remarry.
Hearing of Armstrong's suicide, Mascarene returned to Annapolis
Royal in March 1740 and asserted his right to succession as the
president of the colonial council and the colony's lieutenant
governor. Senior councilor John Adams, age 68, a petty
merchant from Boston who had witnessed the fall of Port-Royal in
1710 and who had settled at Annapolis, opposed Mascarene's
succession, complaining of his long absences from Nova Scotia
(later, in his complaints to the Board of Trade, Adam also tried to
use Mascarene's French nativity against him). Upon Armstrong's
death, Adams had been elevated to president of the council and thus
the head of civil government. "In a stormy meeting of the
council on 22 March 1740, both Mascarene and Adams claimed the right
of presiding." The other councilors decided unanimously in
favor of Mascarene, elevating him to the lieutenant-governorship; he
was 55 years old. Unfortunately for Mascarene, on the same day
as the stormy council meeting, Alexander Cosby was promoted to
lieutenant colonel of the 40th Regiment, which made him Mascarene's
superior officer. This proved a complication for the new
lieutenant governor until Cosby's sudden death at Annapolis in
December 1742. Mascarene was promoted to lieutenant colonel in
Cosby's place.
War having broken out again in Europe, and Britain's war with Spain,
now in its second year, likely to lead to war also with France,
Mascarene looked to the colony's sad state of defense. Fort
Anne was falling apart again, and the garrison at Canso "had
scarcely a roof over its head."
In June 1740, soon after he became lieutenant governor, Mascarene
warned the Duke of Newcastle, the British secretary of state, that
"He did not think that the Acadians 'could be depended upon in the
event of war with France, it is as much as can be expected if they
can be kept from acting against the government.' He went on to
say: 'The Government of Cape Breton [Île Royale], by means of
emissaries may stir them up, and to their bigotry to the Romish
religion may contribute.' Mascarene pointed out that 'there
are not above half a dozen English families in the Province, except
those belonging to the garrison here and at Canso, so that there are
at least thirty French to one British subject, including officers
and soldiers in both garrisons.'" Despite his wording in the
missive to Newcastle, Mascarene believed that the Acadians were
British subjects, "however imperfect their behaviour might be...."
He was especially concerned about the Acadians at Chignecto, who
lived farthest from the British capital, but he did what he could to
appease them, as well as their cousins in the other Acadian
settlements. Ignoring his blueprint
of the 1720s and remembering the failures of his predecessors, he
did not push for an unqualified oath; he believed "that the matter
of the oath of allegiance had been settled ten years before," when
Phillips had assured the Acadians that they would not be compelled
to take up arms. Ever the pragmatist, Mascarene would give
them good reason to cling to their neutrality by "administering
impartial justice ..., and in all other respects treating them with
lenity and humanity, without yielding anything wherein His majesty's
honor or interest were concerned.'" He warned them through
their deputies that the coming of war would complicate their
relationship with the British Crown and urged them not to give His
Majesty's government any reason to suspect their loyalty. The
Annapolis Acadians assisting in the repair of Fort Anne seemed to be
proof of loyalty at least in that community. Mascarene was
concerned about the missionary priests, who he insisted were "in the
colony as foreigners, on sufferance from His Majesty's government."
Eschewing Armstrong's confrontational style, he opened communication
with Fathers Claude de La Vernède de Saint-Poncy,
Charles de La Goudalie
at Minas, and Jean-Baptiste de Gay Desenclaves of the Fundy
settlements, and even Jean-Louis Le Loutre at Shubenacadie. He
met with them and attempted to befriend them,
hoping to mitigate their influence over the habitants.
His "wide experience of life in France, Great Britain, and
Massachusetts" allowed him to believe "strongly that he would be
able to bring the Acadians to a state of contentment with British
rule, 'to wean them from their old masters,' although he admitted
that 'to do this effectually a considerable time will be required.'"56
As to the state of the colony's defenses, Mascarene faced the same
attitude in London towards Nova Scotia that he had witnessed over
the previous three decades. Seeing no help from that quarter,
he turned, instead, to the new governor of Massachusetts, William
Shirley, for assistance in preparing Nova Scotia for war.
Mascarene hoped that Shirley could raise a force of New English
militia that could overawe the Acadians if they abandoned
neutrality. The governor responded to Mascarene's proposals
sympathetically;
for the actual raising of troops and the dispatch of supplies,
however, much depended on Shirley's control of the assembly in
Boston. Both Shirley and his assembly were very much aware, of
course, of the importance of Annapolis Royal in protecting New
English shipping from the depredations of French privateers out of
Île Royale. Shirley, like Mascarene, thought regionally, not
locally, which had much to do with the depth of their relationship;
time would show that the grand-strategic vision of the Massachusetts
governor would greatly influence the history of the Acadians of Nova
Scotia.76
.
Meanwhile, at Louisbourg, the governor of Île Royale,
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Le Prévost Duquesnel, received instructions from
Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Comte de Maurepas,
the French Minister of Marine, to attack the British in Acadia as
soon as war was formally declared. Duquesnel had before him
two attacks plans, one written by
François Dupont Duvivier, fils, a great-grandson of Charles
La Tour and Philippe Mius de'Entremont, who was a
captain serving in the Louisbourg garrison. In his memorandum,
Duvivier was certain that his fellow Acadians would be eager to
assist the French in recovering Acadia.58
News of a war declaration reached Louisbourg in early May 1744,
before it reached Annapolis Royal. Duquesnel wasted little
time in commencing hostilities. His first target was the
British fishing station at Canso, from which British guard vessels
for years had attempted to interdict trade between Acadia and
Louisbourg. That spring, in fact, Louisbourg had suffered a
food shortage because of this harassment. After fighting
commenced, possession of Canso would secure Duquesnel's only
reliable supply base--the north shore of peninsula Acadia.
On May 23, Duvivier, a 39-year-old French captain with no combat
experience, left Louisbourg with two privateers, including the
Succés, a supply sloop, and 14 fishing boats carrying 20 Swiss
and French officers, 80 French soldiers, 37 Swiss mercenaries, and
212 sailors; it would be the first combat operation not only for the
expedition's commander but also for the Louisbourg garrison.
The British commander of the fortified fishing post, Captain
Patrick Heron of the 40th Regiment, surrendered his 87 officers and
men soon after Duvivier's flotilla appeared on May 24.59
Duquesnel then gathered a force for the inevitable attack against
the Nova Scotia capital; he "planned a combined land-and-sea assault
on Annapolis Royal and he waited upon ships from France."
Mascarene, meanwhile, had learned of the war declaration at the same
time he learned of the fall of Canso. Concerned about
Mascarene's efforts to suppress Acadian trade with Louisbourg,
Duquesnel urged
Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre to use Indians and Acadians to stop
Mascarene's efforts.77
Son of papermaker
Jean-Maurice Le Loutre Després and Catherine Huet, daughter of a
paper maker, Jean-Louis Le Loutre was born in the parish of
St.-Mathieu, Morlaix, Brittany, in September 1709. In 1730,
his parents now dead, Jean-Louis entered a seminary in Paris.
Seven years later, his studies completed, he transferred to the
Seminary of the Foreign Missions to fulfill his dream of serving the
Church in some foreign land. During the late 1730s, most of
his fellow priests from the Paris Foreign Missionary Society were
being sent to Asia, but Father Jean-Louis was tapped, instead, for a
mission in New France, so he prepared to go to the New World.
He arrived at Louisbourg in the fall of 1738, the replacement for
Abbé de Saint-Vincent. Before moving on to his mission station
at Shubenacadie, Le Loutre spent time at Malagawatch, now Merigomish,
on the Gulf shore of Île Royale, to learn the Mi'kmaq language from
Abbé Pierre Maillard, who, with Le Loutre's help, developed a
written form of the Algonquian tongue. Abbé Le Loutre, as he
was now being called, left Île Royale for Mission Ste.-Anne four
days after his twenty-ninth birthday. His enthusiasm for the
work and love for the people made him immediately popular with his
Native charges.
Like the hand full of
other priests in Nova Scotia, Le Loutre served not only as a
spiritual guide to Acadians and Indians but also as an informal
military agent for the French. Abbé Maillard and the French
officials on Île Royale no doubt had apprised the new priest of
regional politics, including their views of the Acadians and their
character. The late 1730s was still a time of peace in the
region. The Acadians, having taken their "Oath of neutrality"
at the start of the decade, clung stubbornly to the concept, which
the new missionary to the Mi'kmaq respected, at least at first.
By 1744, Le Loutre had been named vicar general of the Bishop of
Québec in "French Acadia." When war broke out in the region
that year, he no longer tolerated Acadian neutrality.237
Not until the second week of July
was Le Loutre able to gather a force of 300 Mi'kmaq, Maliseet,
and Acadian partisans under Joseph Broussard
dit Beausoleil for an attack on Fort Anne. By then,
Mascarene and his 150 officers and men had been given two months to
prepare their defenses. On July 5, a week before Le Loutre's
attack, Governor Shirley had come through for Mascarene and sent
reinforcements to Annapolis. The ship then carried the fort's
women and children to safety in Boston. Le Loutre's attack,
when it came, "was a desultory affair." On July 16, another
ship, the Prince of Orange, arrived from Boston with 53
additional soldiers for Mascarene. Lacking heavy weapons and
receiving no reinforcements themselves, Le Loutre's force returned
to Minas. After the Indians and partisans retreated, Mascarene
was pleased when Annapolis Acadians helped restore the garrison's
provisions and "'testified their intention to keep to their fidelity
along long as the fort is kept.'" Meanwhile, a force of
Mi'kmaq "were molesting the Acadian farmers in the Beaubassin area,
killing cattle and looting instead of harassing the English."
This alienated more Acadians from the French, who the Acadians
believed were responsible for stirring up the Indians. The
following October, New England declared war against the Mi'kmaq
nation, which only served to stir up deeper fears among the neutral
Acadians, especially those who shared blood with the local Indians.60
In late July, one of the ships from France, Le Caribou,
reached Louisbourg, and Duquesnel's force finally departed for Nova
Scotia, its mission the conquest of the British province.
Duvivier, the hero of Canso, at the head of 50 colonial regulars,
100 or so Mi'kmaq from Île Royale led by Abbé Pierre Maillard, about
30 Mi'kmaq from Nova Scotia, and 70 or so Maliseet from Rivière
St.-Jean, landed at Baie Verte on August 8. Abbé Le Loutre,
though he was still in the area, did not join this expedition.
Mindful of his Acadian roots, Duvivier "cast himself as the Acadian
liberator back among his own." The typical Acadian would have
viewed him in a different light: a French aristocrat who
considered the great majority of Acadians to be little more than
common peasants. Expecting to pick up a large reinforcement of
Acadian fighters along the route of march from Chignecto to
Annapolis, Duvivier,
according to one account,
"despite strong emotional appeals ... succeeded in detaching
no more than a dozen Acadians from [their] strict neutrality...."
It was harvest time, so even if the Acadians had chosen to abandon
neutrality, they could have provided only a small number of young
recruits for Duvivier's polyglot force. Without active Acadian
cooperation, Duvivier could depend on no reliable source of resupply
as he moved against the British capital, so he exacted from them a
promise to "hold the region tranquil" and to continue their trade
with Louisbourg.62
Although Duvivier picked up few Acadian recruits at Chignecto, he
did receive a substantial reinforcement, as well as subsistence,
from an element of the Acadian population who spurned their cousins'
neutrality. A student of the Acadian partisan movement says that
"many of the able-bodied men in the Petitcodiac region" followed
Alexandre and Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil to the
mouth of the Petitcoudiac, where they awaited transports that would
take them across the bay to Minas for a rendezvous with Duvivier's
force. From the Missaguash valley at Chignecto, Pierre
Surette, fils and his brothers Joseph, Paul, and Honoré,
along with Jean and Michel Bourg, provided the boats that
took the Petitcoudiac fighters across the bay. The Acadians
from Petitcoudiac and Chignecto also took along substantial
supplies--"food, clothing and ammunition"--to sustain Duvivier's
offensive. Meanwhile, wealthy Annapolis Royal merchant
Joseph-Nicolas, called Nicolas, Gautier dit Bellaire, who for years had served as a spy for the Louisbourg commanders,
sent one of his vessels to Louisbourg to pick up supplies for Duvivier's force. Gautier's ship sailed along the Atlantic
shore, slipped into the Bay of Fundy, and joined Duvivier at Minas.
On board Gautier's ship "were fifty French marines and 170 Mi'kmaq
and Malicite warriors, as well as supplies for the battle ahead."
Added to the 60 or so resistance fighters and Mi'kmaq reinforcements
from trois-rivières and Chignecto, Duvivier's force numbered about
450 men. At Minas, a hand full of local Acadian hotheads also
joined the group. They included Amand Breau and Joseph
LeBlanc dit le Maigre, who, with the Broussards,
had joined Fathers Cuvier and Pain and their Mi'kmaq warriors in an
attack against Fort Anne in the spring of 1724. LeBlanc
served as Duvivier's impromptu commissary at Minas, purchasing 104
knives from two blacksmiths, four axes from local farmers, and
employed a local gunsmith for the repair of French and Indian
weapons. Here was the hardcore of an Acadian resistance that
could only grow larger as the habitants were forced by incessant war
to choose one side or the other.63
Despite the support of Acadians from trois-rivères, few Acadians at
Minas joined Breau and LeBlanc in supporting
Duvivier's mission. Even the priest at Rivière-aux-Canards,
Father Jean-Pierre Miniac, angered the French commander "by
challenging his view that the laws of England were fundamentally
anti-Catholic." Duvivier dismissed the priest as "a little
pope" and, showing his true nature, ordered the Minas deputies, "on
pain of death," to gather the habitants to hear his commands.
He threatened the Minas Acadians with the usual reprisals if they
did not provide him horses and powder. He warned them that
"disobedience would be treated as rebellion and those who did not
obey would be given up for punishment to the Indians." He then
imposed "a pledge of fidelity" on the populace, refusal of which
also would result in Indian reprisals. He later claimed that
his threats against the Minas Acadians were a ploy to protect them
against future British reprisal, but the habitants would have viewed
the Frenchman's threats in a different light. Despite the
larger population of the Minas Basin,
Duvivier recruited no more reinforcements there than he had at
Chignecto, so it was lucky for Duvivier that 70 Maliseet warriors
from the mainland arrived at Minas while he was there.65
"After a few days rest and a much-needed blessing from the priests,"
on August 30 Duvivier's force moved against Annapolis by land and
sea and arrived there a week later. On the land route to
Annapolis, 11 Minas Acadians "drove wagons loaded with general
supplies, including munitions," which, according to one historian,
"was probably the most important help Duvivier received" from the
Fundy Acadians. Duvivier hoped that the presence of fighters
from trois-rivières, Chignecto, and Minas would stir the Annapolis
Acadians to action, but, again, he misjudged their commitment to
strict neutrality. Some of them, in fact, helped the British
during the siege. One such collaborator was Louis, son of
Prudent Robichaud, père; the elder Robichaud
was an Annapolis syndic and judge who had a long history of
cooperating with British officials; during the siege, Louis passed
on information about the French and Indians to Lieutenant Governor
Mascarene. Not so Joseph-Nicolas Gautier, who, in spite of his
French birth, considered himself an Acadian, at least by marriage;
his father-in-law was Annapolis valley blacksmith and
landowner Louis Allain, who married a Bourg. Duvivier used Gautier's fine
house, Bellaire, as his headquarters, and much of Duvivier's force
encamped on Gautier's substantial property. Duvivier naively
hoped that the superiority of his force--approximately 400, as
opposed to Mascarene's 250--would overawe the British commander, but
Mascarene refused to surrender, though at the beginning of the
siege he seems to have promise to lay down his arms when a French
naval force expected from Louisbourg appeared in the basin.
From September 7, Duvivier struck the crumbling walls of Fort
Anne in a series of "desultory attacks," but failed to exploit the
tactical and psychological advantages afforded by the sad condition
of the British fortifications and the low morale of Mascarene's men.
On September 15, Duvivier demanded an immediate surrender, but
Mascarene demurred. A week of parlaying followed, with
Duvivier insuring the British commander that a flotilla of three
warships carrying hundreds of reinforcements soon would arrive in
the basin. Duvivier resumed his attacks on September 23.
Three days later, two ships sailed into the basin, but, luckily for
the British,
the vessels were not French; Governor Shirley had dispatched more
supplies and reinforcements to succor the Annapolis garrison.
Aboard one of the ships was Captain John Gorham and 60 of his
fearsome Mohawk and New English "rangers." Duvivier failed to
stop the reinforcement, which worsened the morale of the besiegers.
On October 2, French Captain Michel de Gannes de Falaise arrived
from Louisbourg via Baie Verte and informed Duvivier that the naval
squadron had not yet sailed when he had left the French fortress.
He presented orders to Duvivier recalling him to Louisbourg and
assumed command of Duvivier's force.64
The French flotilla still not having arrived, on October 4, De
Gannes, over Duvivier's objections, led the French and Indian force
back to Minas, which they reached on October 10. (Only later
did they learn that Duquesnel had ordered the French naval vessels
"intended" to rendezvous with Duvivier to protect, instead, the
fisheries and local sea lanes from British privateers.) They
had received precious little sustenance from the Annapolis Acadians
before they left the valley, so they were forced to forage for
supplies at Minas.
Joseph
LeBlanc dit le Maigre again came to the rescue; he
secured food for the French and Indians and boats to ferry the
Maliseet back across the bay to Rivière St.-Jean. Other Minas
Acadians helped the French, including Jean Landry and Pierre
LeBlanc.
De Gannes's orders called for his 54 French regulars and 80
Mi'kmaq to winter at Minas, but the great majority of the habitants,
clinging tightly to neutrality and fearing for the welfare of their
families, refused to provide lodging and subsistence to the French
and Indians. Minas deputy and notary Alexandre
Bourg dit Bellehumeur gave de Gannes a letter
detailing the situation at Minas: "The letter argued that,
because the harvest had been much less prolific than expected,
providing the French with the grain and beef requested would force
the settlers to kill all their cattle and use up their seed grains
for next year's crops. The letter went on to express the hope
that de Gannes could not wish to plunge them and their families into
the misery of complete destitution and that, as a result, he would
withdraw both the Indians and his troops from the settlements.
'We are,' the text continued, 'under an easy and peaceful regime and
we have every reason to be content with it.'" Undone by the
Acadians' plea, De Gannes moved his men to Chignecto, which they
reached on October 19. Waiting for de Gannes there was a
reprimand from Louis Dupont Duchambon, the new governor of Île
Royale, who had replaced Duquesnel after the latter's death on
October 9; unfortunately for de Gannes, Duchambon was Duvivier's
uncle. Duvivier, having been relieved of command, hurried back
to the citadel, which he reached on October 23. De Gannes
returned via Port-Toulouse and reached Louisbourg three weeks later.
This gave Duvivier plenty of time to turn his uncle and the
townspeople against his fellow officer, who produced Alexandre
Bourg's letter in his defense, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, a small naval force
commanded by Claude-Élisabeth Denys de Bonaventure, consisting
of one merchantman and a privateer brigantine and carrying 50
reinforcements, reached the Annapolis Basin
on the night of October 25-26. Finding no French force
there, Denys de Bonaventure returned to Louisbourg and reported the
failure of the French offensive, which the new governor blamed on de
Gannes. In November, Duvivier returned to France with his
uncle's dispatches and was so successful in touting his small
successes in Nova Scotia that the King awarded him the coveted Order
of St.-Louis at Brest the following May.61
While the French at Louisbourg were pointing fingers of blame at one
another, Mascarene informed his correspondents that the French
offensive against Nova Scotia had failed for two reasons:
timely assistance from Governor Shirley, and the forbearance of the
Acadians at Annapolis not to join their fellow Frenchmen in the
attack on Fort Anne. An historian of the Acadians avers:
"Mascarene held out at Annapolis with a decaying fort and a
dispirited garrison 'only through a combination of personal courage,
New England aid, poor French leadership, and the honest neutrality
of the great majority of the Acadians.'"52
Not all of the area Acadians had remained neutral, so, during late
winter and early spring of 1744-45, Mascarene and the colonial
council launched investigations of their own. Acadian deputies
and habitants were questioned about their actions during Duvivier's
campaign. The deputies from Cobeguit insisted that none of
them joined "the enemy" or gave them sustenance unless they were
forced into it. Mascarene was especially interested in the
illicit trade between the Minas and Chignecto Acadians and
Louisbourg via Baie Verte and Tatamagouche. The Cobeguit
deputies reported that two Acadians, Joseph LeBlanc dit
Le Maigre and Joseph Dugas of Minas, were responsible for
"two droves of black cattle and sheep" going to the French fortress.
Mascarene and the council clamped down on trade from Minas,
especially in merchandise, such as blankets, favored by the Indians.
The council also decreed that all the Acadian deputies inform their
communities that Nova Scotia was formally at war with France,
Canada, and Île Royale and that no assistance to the enemy,
including trade, would be tolerated. The deputies also were
tasked with informing their communities that they were obligated to
forward information about French and Indians movements and to
refrain from sharing information about the British with the enemy.
This was the council's way of reminding the Acadians that they "were
British subjects who, even though they were to be considered as
non-combatants in any war with France, nonetheless owed a measure of
obligation to the British crown." Closer to home, Mascarene
uncovered the actions of
Joseph-Nicolas Gautier before and during the siege and ordered his
immediate arrest and the confiscation of all his property.
Gautier had fled, so Mascarene jailed the merchant's wife, Marie
Allain, and son Nicolas, as well as Paul Surette, who
also had helped Duvivier. On New Years Eve night, the three of
them escaped and joined a growing number of Acadians being forced
into exile.66
War had changed many things for a people caught in the middle.
Historian Naomi Griffiths explains: "As the winter months
passed, the picture of the Acadian behaviour that emerged was of a
people caught, unexpectedly, in a situation where political beliefs
had immediate and uncomfortable consequences. The colony had
been without major strife for thirty-four years, and any settler
younger than thirty-four had been born under the British regime.
But the influence of France was a part of their lives, intertwined
with the religious practices of the majority. During 1744, the
existence within the villages of a minority who felt passionately
about the political situation of the colony, whether those who had
made terms with the British administration or those who cherished
the links that remained with Louisbourg, raised the level of
political consciousness of all Acadians. Nothing was as
certain or as simple in the fall of 1744 for the settlers as it had
been earlier in the spring and summer. Then, the public
actions of particular individuals were very much their own affair
and had only an economic or social, rather than a political, impact
on the community; now, actions such as a trading trip to Louisbourg
or supplying wood for the repair of the fort at Annapolis Royal were
liable to be seen as representative of the political views of a much
greater part of the community." Governor Shirley and many New
Englanders looked askance at the Acadians who had assisted Duvivier
and began to doubt the population's commitment to the British crown;
Shirley even broached the subject of Acadian deportation. At
the same time, French officials at Louisbourg, despite the
continuing trade with the Nova Scotia settlements, were chagrined by
the Acadians' refusal to give more support to Duvivier.
Mascarene alone remained open-minded about Acadian neutrality, but
his forbearance had its limits.
His personal experience as "a member of a family that was
ideologically split" gave him insight into the Acadian dilemma.
"He could appreciate the extent to which Duvivier's expedition was,
for some of the Acadians, as much a civil conflict as a war between
competing states." However, after noting that area
Acadians, at the point of the gun, furnished "guides, cattle, and
nearly two hundred draft horses" to the French during the second
attack against Fort Anne, the aging Huguenot speculated that "if the
Acadians could be removed and Protestant subjects established in
their place, the interests of Britain and New England would be well
served." Back at Village-des-Beausoleil on the upper
Petitcoudiac, there were no political dilemmas. Joseph
Broussard, brother Alexandre, and many of their neighbors had
learned much from their months in Nova Scotia, first with Father Le
Loutre and then with the incompetent Duvivier. The abbé, with
his undisguised hatred of the Protestant interlopers and his hold on
the Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia, would loom large in their lives now that
they were committed to destroying the farce of Acadian neutrality.
As the war continued and these forces collided, militarily as well
as politically, the age of Acadian contentment, if there ever had
been one, slowly, inexorably, came to an end. Leaders on both
sides, believing "that neutrality was an unacceptable moral choice,"
were determined to overawe the Acadian population, with force if
necessary.67
.
In May 1745, while Duvivier was being awarded a royal decoration he
did not deserve, a force of several hundred Canadians and Mi'kmaq
led by Paul Marin de La Malgue appeared at Annapolis Royal--the
third attempt by the French and Indians to seize the British
capital. Marin had departed Québec in January at the head of
200 Canadians and Indians, including Abenaki, Algonquin, and Huron.
Moving down the St. Lawrence to Rivière-du-Loup on the southern
shore, they followed the Lac Témiscouata/Rivière St.-Jean route to
Chignecto, which they reached a month later. At Chignecto,
they waited orders from Louisbourg, which had promised to provide
assistance in the way of a combined land-and-sea attack on Annapolis
Royal. Marin moved to Minas in early April and from there
moved on to Annapolis Royal. By then, Marin likely had been
joined by a substantial force of local Mi'kmaq, and the size of his
force may have risen to 700. Mascarene received intelligence
on the French force only a few days before it reached the Annapolis
basin. Marin did not remain long before Fort Anne; as soon as
he reached the capital, he received word from Duchambon at
Louisbourg that Shirley's New England force had appeared before the
citadel. Duchambon ordered Marin to come to his assistance.
After capturing two English schooners in the basin, Marin's force
retired, and, for the third time, Mascarene and his garrison emerged
triumphant.68
Mascarene's struggle with the French from Louisbourg and Québec held
the rapt attention of a man who would loom large in Acadian history.
Governor Shirley "had become convinced that the defence of Annapolis
Royal, indeed the security of all New England, required the
reduction of the French stronghold at Louisbourg." This was
not a new idea among British shakers and movers. Earlier plans
to capture Louisbourg, however, had posited a naval expedition from
England with overwhelming British force and only a minor role for
colonial troops. Shirley was advocating a different sort of
venture, one "financed, directed, and carried out by the colonies
alone, with perhaps some support from the British naval units
stationed in American waters." The Massachusetts assembly was
unenthusiastic at first, but pressure from colonial zealots, led by
influential Maine merchants William Pepperell and William Vaughan,
secured approval for the enlistment of 3,000 volunteers and whatever
funds were necessary to capture the French citadel. Pepperell,
50 years old at the time and a native of Kittery Point in Maine, had
assumed control of his family's mercantile business at an early age,
transformed it into one of the most successful maritime ventures in
New England, had long served as judge and then chief justice of his
native county court, and, most important of all for Temple's plan,
had risen through the ranks of the Maine militia and now served as
the region's commanding colonel. Pepperell also was a member
of the Massachusetts General Court. Governor Shirley and
Pepperell's fellow Yankees could see that "The task of raising an
army, keeping it intact, maintaining a respectable standard of
discipline, and keeping relations with the Royal Navy on an even
keel demanded those personal qualities" for which Pepperell was
noted, and so the governor beseeched the colonel to lead the
expedition. Pepperell demurred at first but then accepted the
command. He and his fellow militia commanders knew that
colonial troops would be no match against French troupes de
marine in open battle even if they greatly outnumbered them.
Their plan, drafted by Shirley with the assistance of other colonial
leaders in February, called for a surprise attack against the French
fortress and avoiding battle in the open field. Pepperell's
orders, however, gave him wide discretion on how to deploy his
troops at Louisbourg.69
Luckily for the New Englanders, the fortress at Louisbourg, like
Fort Anne at Annapolis Royal, was in sad condition. "The fort
itself needed repairs, especially the barracks. The solders
were in poor condition, many old and sick, and the garrison
generally needed supplies and reinforcements." Morale was so
poor in the French garrison, in fact, that the new commandant,
Duchambon, had to quell a mutiny of French and Swiss soldiers in
December 1744. Part of the problem was the fortress's
commissary agent, François Bigot, who sold the best of the troops'
rations to the townspeople for his own profit and issued to the
troops inadequate rations in both quality and quantity. The
rigors of winter, combined with the arrogance of the officers, only
made things worse. Two days after Christmas, the Swiss
contingent in the garrison presented a list of grievances to their
officers. The troupes de marine soon joined the
protest, and Duchambon, who was proving to be an indecisive leader,
gave in to the demands of the mutineers. As a result, the
quality and quantity of their food increased, but, French officers
and officials being who they were, morale still remained a problem
for the garrison of 1,300. This was not the worst of
Duchambon's problems, however. Louisbourg's chief source of
supply was not an agricultural base in the vicinity of the fortress
or even an annual resupply from France; the isolated French garrison
derived the major part of its subsistence from trade with New
England merchants and the Acadians of Nova Scotia! One
historian notes: "In 1743 seventy-eight vessels from New
England and Acadia traded with Louisbourg, a number not only greater
than the fifty-eight ships from France but also greater than the
number of ships, from France, New France (seven), and the French
West Indies (thirty-two) combined." One can be certain that
these merchants noted every flaw in the defenses of the French
fortress during their frequent visits to Louisbourg, information
they passed on to Governor Shirley, who shared it with General
Pepperell. In France, Minister of Marine Maurepas, from the
beginning of the war, had hoped to dispatch ships and reinforcements
to Louisbourg, but French interests in the Mediterranean and the
Caribbean held priority over those in North America.70
In early 1745, not long after he had "quelled" the mutiny, Duchambon
received word from Québec that preparations were being made in
Boston for an assault against Louisbourg. An historian of the
Acadian resistance movement relates that Duchambon summoned both
Abbé Le Loutre and Joseph Broussard to the citadel to consult
on the use of the Mi'kmaq and Acadian partisans against a British
attack. When Broussard joined Le Loutre, probably at
the abbé's Shubenacadie mission, 300 Mi'kmaq warriors were ready to
take the warpath. They hurried on to Canso, from which
Duchambon's ships would ferry them up to the fortress.73
Pepperell's troops, aboard a fleet of transports, including smelly
fishing boats commandeered for the purpose, left Boston for Canso on
24 March 1745. After a stormy passage, the first of the New
England vessels arrived at the former British fishing base on April
4, not long after Le Loutre and
Broussard reached the area. That morning, an Indian scout
alerted the priest and the partisan of the arrival off Great
Canso Island of many vessels flying the Union Jack. Unable to
rendezvous with Duchambon's vessels, Le Loutre and Broussard
could only watch from concealment as more enemy ships arrived.
Here were contingents from New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and
Rhode Island joining the Massachusetts vessels, followed by a
British naval squadron of 11 ships, carrying 550 guns, commanded by
Commodore Peter Warren. After the arrival of Warren's
squadron, Le Loutre was certain that the route to Louisbourg was
closed to his force. Unable to warn, much less help, their
compatriots in the soon-to-be beleaguered fortress, the Indians and
the partisans packed up their gear and left.74
After the arrival of the other colonials,
Pepperell commanded an estimated 5,000 men--one of the most
formidable forces ever assembled in colonial North America.
They remained at Canso for three weeks, waiting for the coastal ice
to break up. During this time, the armed colonial vessels and
Warren's warships drove off a French frigate, the Renommée,
and blockaded Louisbourg's harbor, still choked with ice.
Pepperell's force arrived off Louisbourg at the end of April.
Governor Shirley's naive plan to surprise the enemy while they slept
was quickly abandoned. "With the help of good luck, good
weather, and good boatmanship, nearly 2,000 men gained the beach at
the head of Gabarus Bay within the space of eight or ten hours."
Pepperell's arrival was not a surprise, but his choice of landing
place took the French unawares. A French force under Pierre
Morpain launched an ineffective sortie against the British lodgment.
Despite having taken fewer and lighter cannon than the French could
use against him, Pepperell resorted to a formal siege. The
French expected the New Englanders to approach the fortress walls by
parallel trenches and zigzag approaches, advancing their guns in
slow, successive stages. The New Englanders, ignorant of
professional tactics, dragged their heavy guns through a marsh that
the French were certain was impassable and moved more guns into
position under cover of night and fog. More successes
followed. "The second morning of the landing, a small party
under William Vaughan discovered that one of the key points of the
[French] defences--the Grand (Royal) battery--had been abandoned.
Vaughan occupied it, and soon the guns of the battery were brought
into action against the town."71
After so many early successes, Pepperell's siege dragged on longer
than he had anticipated. Commodore Warren's command of the sea
and heavy foraging from the surrounding countryside sustained the
New English force, but "several unsuccessful and costly attacks
against the Island battery," which commanded the entrance to
Louisbourg harbor, damaged New English morale. When
Pepperell's men "established a battery on Lighthouse Point,
overlooking the Island battery," however, Warren's ships could enter
the harbor with impunity, and the French fortress was doomed.
On June 15, Governor Duchambon asked for terms. After two days
of negotiating, the seven-week long siege finally ended. "The
terms of the capitulation included permission for the officers and
townspeople to remain in their homes and to enjoy the free exercise
of their religion until they could sail for France, and a guarantee
that no personal property would be disturbed." The surrender
also encompassed the rest of Île Royale; Île St.-Jean fell in
August; without their military base at Louisbourg, the French could
not hold the colony. In July, the captured troupes de
marine were transported to France, to be exchanged for British
prisoners of war; with them went the inhabitants of Louisbourg.72
When news of the victory reached Boston, the townspeople celebrated
as wildly as Puritan decorum allowed and of course attributed the
fall of the French citadel "as affirmation that they were much
favoured of God...." London also celebrated the victory, more
remarkable because of the nature of the besieging force. King
George II commissioned Pepperell a colonel in the regular forces,
gave him his own infantry command--the 66th Regiment of Foot--and
conferred on him a baronetcy; he now
was Sir
William Pepperell. At Louisbourg, the victorious New
Englanders chafed under orders against plundering and threatened to
mutiny. Relations between the colonials and the blue jackets
deteriorated after rumors spread that the commodore was claiming
chief credit for the victory. The colonial troops simmered
down only after Governor Shirley appeared at the citadel in
mid-August and promised to deliver on the large increase in pay that
Pepperell had promised them. Reinforcements arrived, but most
of Pepperell's men remained at Louisbourg. The following
winter and spring took a dreadful toll on the colonial garrison; the
estimated number of deaths among them ranged from 1,200 to 2,000!53
Meanwhile, in late July, Pepperell summoned Abbé Le Loutre to
Louisbourg, but the priest was too clever to fall into his trap.
Le Loutre went to Québec instead, taking several of his Mi'kmaq with
him. He would return to Nova Scotia only if Canadian
authorities could promise him more power over French activities
there and enough food and arms for his Mi'kmaq and the Acadian
partisans to be effective against the stronger British presence in
the region. The Canadians informed him that France already was
preparing a major expedition to recover Louisbourg and that Le
Loutre, his Mi'kmaq, and the partisans were expected to play a
significant part in it. Meanwhile, in retaliation for the
capture of Louisbourg, the Wabanaki Confederacy launched an
offensive against New English settlements in Maine.
Le Loutre returned to Nova Scotia in September 1745 and learned that
the British had placed a 100-livre bounty on his head.
Unconcerned, he traveled through the province whenever and wherever
his business sent him and spent the winter of 1745-46 at Minas, from
whence he kept a close eye on Mascarene at Annapolis Royal.75
Not all of the priests in Nova Scotia shared Abbé Le Loutre's
passion for the cause. Abbé Jean-Pierre Miniac of
Rivière-aux-Canards, who also
served as the Bishop of Québec's vicar general in "English Acadia,"
"expressed
great anxiety over the impact that LeLoutre's aggressive actions
against the British were having on neutral Acadians." Abbé
Miniac believed that his colleague's and the partisans' attacks in
Nova Scotia "had placed the Acadians in an untenable position."
French military leaders in Québec decried Father Miniac's calls for
Canadian restraint. The bishop, Henri-Marie Dubreil de
Pontbriand, who had taken office in 1741, agreed with Abbé Miniac
and fretted over the military involvement of his priests in the
coastal provinces. Abbé Le Loutre ignored his colleague as
well as his ecclesiastical superior. He would follow the
orders of the governor-general, not the wishes of his bishop, and
continue to wage war against the Protestant enemy.79
.
When Minister of Marine Maurepas learned of the fall of Louisbourg
in mid-August 1745, he cobbled together a plan to recapture the
fortress and secured nearly universal support at the French court.
The governor-general of New France, Charles de Beauharnois de La
Boishe, and the intendant, Gilles Hocquart, urged Maurepas to hurry
along his plans to recover the fortress. Maurepas instructed
Beauharnois to send another force to the Chignecto area, "prepared
to attack Annapolis Royal once a massive fleet had arrived in the
region." The fleet, commanded by Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Frédéric
de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, marquis de Roucy and duc d'Anville, who
was chosen for his rank, not his experience, sailed from La Rochelle
on 22 June 1746, its destination a fine harbor in Chebouctou Bay on
the eastern coast of Nova Scotia. Evidently the duc and his
officers let the rumor circulate among the men that they were
heading to Britain to aid Bonnie Prince Charles and his Jacobite
rebels to restore the Catholic Stuarts to the British throne.
D'Anville commanded 45 troop transports, supply ships, and
merchantmen, escorted by 10 ships of the line, a hospital vessel,
three frigates, and two corvettes. Aboard were 3,500
infantrymen and an artillery train. Counting the many sailors
and auxiliaries, the young duc's force numbered an astonishing
11,000 men "embarked in over 25,000 tons of shipping."
D'Anville's mission was the height of French hubris: he not
only would recapture Louisbourg but also liberate Acadia and
Newfoundland, protect Canada, and ravage the New England coast from
Maine down to Boston and beyond! Five months later, what was
left of the once-formidable fleet limped back to France or to the
French Indies, none of its lofty goals accomplished. It was,
by any measurement, one of the most disastrous French failures in
modern military history. "Somewhere between a half and
two-thirds of the eleven thousand men who had set sail had been
lost." Beset by storms in its trans-Atlantic crossing, the
fleet took three months to cross to North America. A quarter
of the vessels never reached Nova Scotia, and those that did arrived
at Chebouctou in dreadful condition.80
The Canadian offensive against Annapolis Royal never materialized.
On June 5, seven ships commanded by Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de
Ramezay, carrying 700 Canadian marines
and Abenaki, sailed from Québec to Baie Verte, which they reached on
July 10. Ramezay's orders from Governor-general Beauharnois
and Intendant Hocquart "were drawn up in the belief that the
Acadians were only waiting for the right circumstances to declare
their wholehearted support for France." On July 15, Ramezay
sent Captain Louis de La Corne with 200 men to Minas to cut
communications between those settlements and Annapolis Royal.80a
Abbé Le Loutre, back from Québec the previous autumn, also took a
prominent part in the operation. With him was an assistant,
Abbé Maurice de La Corne, whose mission was to assume Le Loutre's
post among the Mi'kmaq if someone collected the 100-livre bounty
still placed on the head of his fellow priest. After learning
of Maurepas's plan to recapture Louisbourg and liberate Acadia, Le
Loutre and his Mi'kmaq, along with trois-rivière partisans led by
Beausoleil Broussard, took station at Chebouctou Bay to
rendezvous with d'Anville's fleet and a smaller naval force from the
French West Indies. Le Loutre sent messengers to all of the
Mi'kmaq villages in the area with orders to report to him at
Chebouctou. The Canadians, Indians, and Acadian partisans were
eager not only to help recapture Louisbourg but also to attack the
English stronghold at Boston. Anticipating the size of
d'Anville's force, Le Loutre oversaw the task of gathering food,
especially fish, for the French armada. Drying huts were set
up on Île Raquette, future Georges Island, in middle of the harbor;
firewood was cut, split, and stacked; and Mi'kmaq and Acadians
herded cattle along an Indian trail that ran from Minas to
Chebouctou. Acadian partisans not only from trois-rivières but
also from other Fundy settlements shook hands and exchanged stories
at their campsites along the heights overlooking the beautiful bay.
The Broussards were joined by Pierre
Surette, fils and his brothers Paul and Joseph,
Joseph-Nicolas Gautier, no longer the wealthiest man in Nova Scotia,
and the redoubtable Joseph LeBlanc dit Le Maigre, who
was responsible for the herds of cattle coming up the trail from
Minas.81
Preparations at Chebouctou progressed to the point that Le
Loutre could return to his priestly duties. He returned to
Chebouctou in time to see the arrival of two French frigates,
L'Aurore and Le Castor, which had had been cruising in
the area. One of the
Surettes piloted the big ships safely into the harbor, out of
sight of any British vessels that might sail into the bay. Le
Loutre, seeing an opportunity, hurried a message to Ramezay
suggesting that he attack Annapolis Royal immediately with the force
he had. Not bothering to consult their captains, the priest
assumed that the Aurore and the
Castor would be ready to raise sail immediately and rendezvous
with Ramezay in the Annapolis Basin. The Canadian ignored Le
Loutre and sent a small expedition, instead, to Port-Lajoie on Île
St.-Jean to recapture that post. The raiders returned with 40
prisoners from the redcoat regiment occupying the island, and
Ramezay eventually sent them under guard to Québec. By the end
of August, having distributed his forces from Baie Verte to Minas
but moving only against Port-Lajoie, the inevitable consequences of
remaining in camp too long during the hot summer months began to
their their toll on Ramezay's men. Illness struck them hard,
and Ramezay was forced to detail men to guard British prisoners.
The deputies at Minas complained about having to feed La Corne's men
as well as their own families; the Acadians were especially
concerned about their livestock. They also reminded Ramezay of
what the British would do them if they abandoned neutrality.
Ramezay told them that he was only following orders and promised to
forward their concerns to his superiors in Québec. In hopes of
securing more food for his men, Ramezay moved to Beaubassin on
September 1, leaving a detachment at Baie Verte to guard his rear.
Unfortunately, the area was in the midst of a summer drought, so
Ramezay's men found little food at Beaubassin. The Acadians in
the area also did their best to cling to neutrality, which meant
helping this new invasion force as little as they could. Other
Acadians, of a very different sort, were unhappy with the incessant
waiting. At Chebouctou, Beausoleil
Broussard and some of his men, joined by Mi'kmaq eager to fight
the enemy,
turned one of the supply schooners that accompanied the
frigates into a privateer vessel and set out in search of British
booty. A few days later, to the cheers of their compatriots on
shore, they returned to Chebouctou with two English prizes. Le
Loutre, perhaps not realizing the irony of his words, claimed in his
memoirs that he was hard-pressed to protect the captives "'from
outrages by the savages.'"82
The French West Indian flotilla reached the rendezvous at Chebouctou
in mid-summer and waited until the first of September for
d'Anville's fleet. By then, d'Anville's armada was a month
overdue. Le Loutre dispersed his Mi'kmaq, knowing that he
could call them back to the rendezvous at a moment's notice.
He provided the Acadian partisans who chose to remain at Chebouctou
the secret codes for communicating with d'Anville's warships and
showed them the best places along the coast from which to perform
lookout duty. Le Loutre, the Broussards, and the
remainder of their force moved overland to Chignecto in early
September. Soon after their arrival, however, they received a
message from Chebouctou announcing the arrival of 44 of d'Anville's
ships, including the duc himself, who anchored in the harbor on
September 14.83
Ramezay, his force reduced to 300 by disease and detachment, led his
Canadians
to Minas to prepare for a fourth assault against Annapolis
Royal. Le Loutre sent messengers to the Mi'kmaq chiefs,
calling their warriors back to arms, and, with the Broussards
and other partisans, hurried back to Chebouctou. What they
found there disheartened them. Diseases of every kind--scurvy;
pulmonary, venereal, and other infections; as well as typhus and
smallpox--killed hundreds of the Frenchmen, en route as well as at
anchor in the bay. Thousands more were rendered hors de
combat; so many sailors were too ill to perform their jobs that
French naval officers, among the most arrogant of martinets, had to
join the few able-bodied seamen in manning the lines that raised and
lowered the sails of their ships. "Using sails and spars, the
French set up a make-shirt hospital on the shore of the inner bay of
the harbour ... and the dying continued." Le Loutre sent
messages to all of the Fundy communities, beseeching them to hurry
supplies to the French at Chebouctou Bay. D'Anville himself
was not immune to the terrors that plagued his venture--he died "of
an attack of apoplexy" aboard his flagship on September 27, having
just celebrated his 37th birthday. Some suspected murder,
others suicide. The duc was buried on Île Raquette without
ceremony. His second in command did not succeed him, having
attempted suicide, so command of the venture fell to the
vice-admiral aboard the flagship Northumberland, the
newly-promoted governor-general of New France, Jacques-Pierre de
Taffanel de La Jonquière, marquis de La Jonquière.
The marquis cancelled the attack not only against Louisbourg but
also against Annapolis Royal, which he had set in motion by ordering
Ramezay to invest Fort Anne.
Other than four of the transports, escorted by the warship
Renommée, which went on to Canada, the remnant of the fleet,
still commanded by La Jonquière, returned to France, the expedition
an utter failure.84
At Annapolis, Ramezay, now joined by Le Loutre and the Broussards,
stood before Fort Anne for three weeks, his force too weak for a
direct attack. Mascarene's garrison had been reinforced, was
well provisioned, and the old fort's walls had been repaired again,
so Ramezay had no choice but to wait for the fleet to arrive.
During the siege,
Ramezay's force was sustained by a herd of cattle from Minas driven
to Annapolis by Joseph LeBlanc dit Le Maigre.
When
Ramezay finally received a message from La Jonquière on November 3,
the new governor-general informed him that he was returning to
France and ordered Ramezay to abandon the attack on Fort Anne.
Ramezay returned to Minas by November 8 and waited there two weeks
for an early snow storm to abate. He and most of his force
then returned by water to Beaubassin, while a detachment marched
overland from Minas to Baie Verte, from which they could protect the
rear of Ramezay's main force. Frustrated by defeat and the
rigors of campaigning, the Canadians, now only 200 of them, were
certain that the local Acadians were informing the British of their
miserable condition.84a
Hearing of the arrival of a French vessel at Chebouctou after La
Jonquière had departed, Le Loutre and the Broussards hurried
back to the harbor, where they found La Sirène
sitting at anchor. The priest and the partisan beseeched the
captain of the vessel to assist them in an attack on Annapolis
Royal. Learning of d'Anville's fate and seeing the paucity of
Le Loutre's force, the captain refused to join in such a venture.
Instead, he took on stores and returned to France, taking the abbé
with him.85
.
D'Anville's expedition was so grandiose that the British had no
trouble learning from their many spies the size and destination of
d'Anville's fleet. At Louisbourg, Shirley's and Pepperell's
militia force, now much reduced, were replaced by British regulars
under lieutenant colonels Peregrine Thomas Hopson and John Horsman
of the 29th and 59th Regiments of Foot, and the New Englanders
finally could go home. At Annapolis Royal, Mascarene had
little time to celebrate the withdrawal of Ramezay's force. In
November, he and his council learned that French plans for a
fifth attack on Fort Anne were underway. Shirley and the
governors of Rhode Island and New Hampshire sprang to action,
gathering a thousand troops at Boston and hurrying them on to Nova
Scotia. A storm and a French privateer turned back part of the
fleet, but 450 men under Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Noble of the 2nd
Massachusetts Regiment made it to Annapolis.86
By then, Acadian anxiety was running higher than ever. They
had heard that their cousins at Louisbourg had been deported along
with the French garrison after the fall of the fortress the previous
summer, and rumors were circulating that the Acadians of Île
St.-Jean, which also had fallen, would meet a similar fate. If
Ramezay's Canadians and Le Loutre's Indians failed to capture
Annapolis Royal, the Fundy Acadians feared similar treatment
at the hands of the British. Mascarene got wind of this
disturbing rumor and knew that Ramezay and Le Loutre were behind it.
Mascarene reminded the authorities in London that British control of
Nova Scotia could not endure if the Acadians, succumbing to pressure
from the French, abandoned their neutrality. The Board of
Trade ordered Governor Shirley "to issue a proclamation effectively
reassuring Acadians that they had nothing to fear from a British
victory." By then, Shirley, who had given serious
consideration to mass deportation, "had changed his mind about the
desirably of evicting the Acadians." He issued a proclamation,
signed on September 12, before d'Anville's fleet reached Chebouctou,
"asserting that he knew of no intention on the part of the British
ministers in London to deport the Acadians." But his
proclamation included these words: "'those who shall do
otherwise and join the Enemy, Especially those from Canada ... they
may expect to be treated as his Majesty's English subjects are
treated in the like provoking cases.'" Mascarene, of course,
did what he could to distribute the message in all of the Acadian
communities. In late November, Shirley reported to the Board
of Trade that some of the couriers sent out to the Acadian
communities had been intercepted by Canadians and partisans but
that, through word of mouth, the Acadians had received his message.
He was confident they were reassured that they would not be removed
from their lands.87
With Ramezay's Canadians still hovering at Minas, British control of
the Acadians along the Fundy shore was difficult if not impossible.
To restore British dominance in the area, Lieutenant Colonel Noble,
with Captain John Gorham and his rangers in tow, moved on Minas in
late December and reached Grand-Pré on New Year's Day 1747.
Ramezay and the partisans, apprised by Mi'kmaq scouts of the New
English movement, wisely remained at Chignecto. After six
months of fruitless effort, Broussard's partisans were tired
and dispirited and wanted to rejoin their families during this
coldest time of winter, so Beausoleil had to use all of his
considerable powers of persuasion to keep most of them at Beaubassin
for another go at the English. At Grand-Pré, Noble
rendezvoused with his ships from Annapolis, aboard which he had
stacked pre-fabricated blockhouses to be used by his men to occupy
the Minas villages. The frozen ground prevented their erection
until spring. Noble then forced his remaining New Englanders
upon the Grand-Pré Acadians, "while he and his officers took over a
small stone house at the centre of the village."
Among his officers were commissary Edward How, who "had extended kin
connections among the Acadian elite," and Nova Scotia councilman
Erasmus James Philipps, whose task was to inform Mascarene of the
state of neutrality among the Acadians.
In early February, Noble sent Gorham and his rangers back to Fort
Anne with orders to return to Minas in the spring.88
One of Noble's missions was to choose new deputies among the Minas
Acadians and send them on to Annapolis as soon as possible.
Back in late November, deputies from Grand-Pré and Pigiguit had
attended a council meeting at Annapolis to deliver a letter that
gave an "'account of their Miserable state during the war with
Acknowledgments of Obligations to govr Shirley for his Letter and
Promises strictly to observe and adhere to their Oath of
neutrality.'" They described the French occupation of their
villages, recently ended, and the impact it had on their lives.
Always concerned about their state of neutrality, Mascarene pressed
them to name those individuals who cooperated with Ramezay and his
Canadians. The deputies demurred, reminding the lieutenant
governor that they would be forced to name their own kin, and this
they would not do. Historian Naomi Griffiths explains:
"The Acadian sense of neutrality clearly encompassed a belief that
individuals were not obliged to offer information, to either party,
about the activities of others within their communities.
Family arguments about information given to either side, and about
the amount of aid that would be offered to those faced with an armed
force, were arguments within families and among the villagers.
To outsiders, whether French or British, Acadians proffered little
about the activities of their kin." Could even Mascarene have
been so naive to think that new deputies would violate this code?108
By late January, snow was still falling and the streams were
frozen, but Noble and his men should not have rested peacefully.
Walking among them were Acadian spies reporting everything they saw
and heard to Broussard and Ramezay at Beaubassin.
On January 8, an Acadian spy reported to Ramezay that Noble's force
numbered 220 or so and that 300 more were expected in the spring.
The spy also described the pre-fabricated blockhouses lashed to the
deck of Noble's vessels. He may also have reported the fact
that Noble had left "the shot for the cannon on boats in the river
rather than with the gun emplacements in the village...." With
this information, Ramezay threw together a plan for a winter attack
on Noble's garrison. He would use the Canadians still with
him, the Acadian partisans, and as many Indians as abbés Maillard
and Girard could assemble at Cobeguit in time to join him. He
also asked the priests to scour the outlying settlements for
provisions. His Canadians and Indians had been in the
Chignecto area, off and on, since the previous summer, so provisions
there were scarce. His forward base at Minas was now occupied
by hundreds of enemy soldiers, which also cut him off from any
provisions he could have obtained from the Annapolis valley.
Recapturing Minas was essential for another strike against Fort
Anne. Without occupying Grand-Pré himself, Ramezy could not
liberate Acadia.78
Ramezay was suffering from an injured knee, so he handed the
Grand-Pré operation to his second in command. Captain
Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers, age 39, was an experienced
Canadian officer who had seen action against the Fox in the Lake
Michigan region and had earned promotion for gallantry. With
Coulon de Villiers was another talented officer, Captain Louis de La
Corne, now was second in command, who had operated in the Minas area
under Ramezay's command a year and a half before. La Corne was
four years older than Coulon de Villiers, but, unlike the younger
officer, had not seen combat of any note. He nonetheless was
respected by his fellow Canadians and would prove his mettle in the
fight ahead. Also with the attacking party would be Ramezay's
19-year-old nephew, Ensign Charles des Champs de Boishébert, who
would play a greater role in Acadian history than any of the other
Canadians there. The Broussards and their fellow
partisans also would go to Minas, where they would draw blood for
the first time in many months. Also coming to Chignecto were
several dozen Mi'kmaq and Maliseet under Abbé Charles Germain, as
well as "a group of Acadian insurgents from Île St.-Jean...," whose
settlements had fallen to the British a year and a half before.101
On January 21, Coulon de Villiers and his men began their journey
overland from Baie Verte through Remsheg, Tatamagouche, Cobeguit,
Shubenacadie, and Pigiguit, picking up Acadian partisans along the
way. The long line of men--Indians, Canadians, and
Acadians--trudged cross country
on snowshoes, using dog teams to haul wicker sleighs heavily laden
with supplies
and arms through blizzards that piled snow ever higher and turned
every stream into an icy obstacle. At Cobeguit, they were
joined by Abbé Maillard and more Acadian partisans. By then,
Coulon de Villiers commanded 300 Canadians and dozens of partisans
and Indians--substantially more than the New English force encamped
at Grand-Pré. The Mi'kmaq contingent would have been larger
were it not for the epidemic that swept through their villages after
they had stripped the clothing from the dead soldiers and sailors at
Chebouctou the previous autumn.102
Along Coulon de Villiers's line of march Acadian families provided
them shelter against the wind and snow as well as food to fill their
backpacks. The Acadians at Pigiguit were especially
accommodating. Some expected compensation, others did not.
That a good part of the force consisted of Acadian partisans, many
of them their cousins, must have stirred their ancient hatred of all
things English. Joseph Broussard, universally known if
not universally respected, commanded the loyalty of many, who were
eager to reveal to the partisan leader the exact location of the New
English intruders. As a result, "about a score of young men
joined their ranks and acted, above all, as guides and as informants
about the organization of the British force." After a 17-day,
120-mile trek through ice and snow, the attacking party reached the
vicinity of Grand-Pré on midday of February 10. Determined to
attack the enemy after nightfall, Coulon de Villiers awarded his men
a few hours rest along Rivière Gaspereau, only two miles from
Grand-Pré. In the house where Coulon de Villiers and his
officers chose to rest, Acadians were holding a wedding feast!
"The guests
were much startled at this sudden irruption of armed men; but to the
Canadians and their chief the festival was a stroke of amazing good
luck, for most of the guests were inhabitants of Grand Pré, who knew
perfectly the houses occupied by the English, and could tell with
precision where the officers were quartered. This was a point
of extreme importance. The English were distributed among
twenty-four houses, scattered ... for the distance of a mile and a
half" along a ridge overlooking the dyked marshes. That such a
large attacking force made it so close to the New English garrison
without an alarm ringing out gives an idea of the quality of Noble's
security and the loyalty of the local habitants.
Before darkness fell, some of the partisans slipped
unobtrusively into the village to conduct a final reconnaissance.
While local spies pointed out to them which of the houses sheltered
a certain number of Noble's New Englishmen, there can be little
doubt that some of the Grand-Pré residents recognized their partisan
cousins.103
What followed next was the most significant moment in King George's
War for the Acadians.
At three o'clock in the morning of February 11, in the midst of yet
another snow storm, Coulon de Villiers led his force into the
sleeping village, divided his men into 10 groups of 50 each, and
directed them to follow the Acadian partisans to the houses where
Noble's men were billeted. Coulon de Villiers, with the
Broussards and the Surrettes, crept up to the stone house
where Noble and some of his officers slept. The attackers
already knew that the small cannon at the front of the building were
unmanned. When the signal was given, the Canadians, Indians,
and Acadians raised their muskets, stormed each building, and opened
fire on the soldiers within. The result was a bloodbath.
Most of the New English killed or wounded were shot in their beds,
Lieutenant Colonel Noble, his brother Francis, and three other
officers being among the dead. The attacking force lost six
dead--an Acadian partisan, two Indians, and three Canadians.
Fourteen of the attackers were wounded, including Coulon de Villiers
himself, whose left arm was shattered by a musket ball, and Ensign
Boishébert, whose wound was less severe. Coulon de Villiers
fell wounded soon after the attack began, so it was Louis de La
Corne who commanded the attacking force during most of the action.104
The remaining New Englanders, under Commissary Captain Benjamin
Goldthwait, resisted as best they could but were forced to surrender
by afternoon of the following day. When the dead and wounded
were tallied, the engagement proved to be "the bloodiest fight ever
to take place in the colony...." Noble's garrison suffered
from 154 to 174 casualties--76 dead, including six officers; 38
wounded; and between 40 and 60 captured. Coulon de Villiers's
"articles of capitulation" were generous: the New English
troops who had surrendered with Goldthwait must leave Grand-Pré
within two days; they would be accorded "the honours of war" and
given "six days of provisions, their knapsacks, a pound of shot and
one of powder'"; those taken prisoner before the capitulation would
remain; the boat and schooner in the basin would remain in Canadian
hands, as would the British possession pillaged by the Indians; most
generous of all, the
seriously wounded and the sick would be taken to nearby
Rivière-aux-Canards and cared for by the habitants there until
Mascarene could collect them; finally, no one who had fought at
Grand-Pré could serve at Minas, Pigiguit, Cobeguit, or Chignecto for
the next six months (this essentially confined them to the Annapolis
valley or compelled their return to New England).
On the eve of his departure, Captain Goldthwait invited the French
officers to share an evening meal with him and his New Englanders
"so that they all might become better acquainted over a bowl of
punch." On February 14, the New Englanders who could manage
began their journey back to Annapolis Royal. When he learned
of the fate of Noble's force and how the Canadians had treated them,
Mascarene "expressed his sincere gratitude for the chivalrous
behaviour of the French" who had just killed so many of his men.105
Such was the nature of eighteenth-century warfare.
On February 19, less than a week after the New Englanders departed,
the Minas delegates approached Captain La Corne and pointed out to
him how difficult it would be to provision his force for the rest of
the winter. Accordingly, La Corne left Grand-Pré on February
23, and most of his men had reached Baie Verte by March 7. By
then, Ramezay had received orders to send most of his officers and
men back to Québec, via the long, grueling overland route via
Rivière St.-Jean this time.
Ramezay would remain at Beaubassin with a part of his force until
June. Frustrated over his failure to hold Grand-Pré and having
failed to liberate the province, he sent a message to the Minas
Acadians, reminding them that they now were under French
jurisdiction and would suffer reprisal if they communicated "'with
the inhabitants of Port Royal'"--that is to say, their cousins.
The priest at Annapolis Royal, Abbé Desenclaves, concerned with the
welfare of the Acadians at Minas, urged them to remain neutral.
The good father need not have bothered. Most of the Acadians
had seen this cycle of conflict and retribution before: the
British were certain to retaliate, and any abandonment of neutrality
would be duly noted and used against them, even as a pretext to send
them out of the country! Acadians in all of the Minas
settlements sat down with his families and neighbors to discuss
their predicament. Most of them would have concluded that even
the perception of movement towards one side or the other could
result in dire consequences for all of them. Mascarene and his
garrison had not been defeated; no Acadian in the province could
ignore that. The Canadians, despite their signal victory at
Grand-Pré, were the ones who quit the country, leaving the habitants
to the mercy of the British once again. Such was the
inescapable logic of their circumstance. It was best to cling
to neutrality as if it were life itself.106
In March 1747, sure enough, a hundred New Englanders under Captain
John Rous returned to Grand-Pré, and Minas was part of the British
realm again. The Minas deputies communicated with both
Ramezay, to whom they explained their predicament, and to Mascarene,
to whom they pledged their loyalty to the British crown.
Ramezay response was unwelcome: he ordered the Minas settlers
to remove themselves to Chignecto, where they would take up arms
against Britain "or face certain death." Having heard this
threat before, few, if any, complied. Mascarene demonstrated
his usual constraint, but his mentor, Governor Shirley of
Massachusetts, now the most influential governor in New England,
"was more than ever convinced that only the establishment of
garrisons throughout the peninsula could provide 'an effectual
Security to the Province against the enemy and oblige the
Inhabitants in a little time to contribute towards the protection &
Expence of the Government....'" The governor also revealed his
darker side. Hearing of the role played by Acadian partisans
in the attack on Grand-Pré, during late autumn 1747 he "issued a
proclamation declaring twelve of them outlaws and offering a reward
of L50 sterling for the capture of each, if delivered within six
months." He offered a pardon to any of them who turned in the
others, revealing a towering ignorance of the Acadian mindset.
The dozen outlaws named in Shirley's proclamation were Beausoleil
Broussard, Joseph-Nicolas Gautier, his sons Joseph and Pierre,
Armand Bigeau, Joseph LeBlanc dit Le Maigre, Pierre
Guédry, Charles and François Raymond, Charles and Philip LeRoy,
and Louis Hébert. Mascarene believed that the Acadian
partisans who had helped the French were "chiefly outlaws" from "the
Island of St. John and from St. Peter on Cape Breton." When
the offer of pardon expired the following spring, neither Mascarene
nor Shirley held a single Acadian partisan in any of their dungeons.
But by then it did not matter so much--King George's War was over.107
A Tenuous Peace and the Construction of Halifax
The War of the Austrian
Succession,
despite the amazing victory of a New England militia force that
captured Louisbourg in June 1745, proved as indecisive as the
earlier world conflicts between the imperial powers. It ended
with a treaty signed at Aix-la-Chapelle in April 1748. By this
treaty, Nova Scotia remained in British hands ... but the Maritime
islands--both Île Royale and Île St.-Jean--were exchanged for
Madras, India. The fortress at Louisbourg was back in French
hands, and they were determined to make the most of it.
Dramatic changes had
occurred in New France during the final months of King George's War.
Charles de Beauharnois de La Boische, marquis de Beauharnois, had
served as governor-general of New France since August 1726. In
1747, Beauharnois was age 76, having been born at his family's
chateau at La Chaussée near Orléans in the year the first Acadian
census was taken! His replacement was Jacques-Pierre de
Taffanel de La Jonquière, marquis de La Jonquière,
age 62, a native of Albi, France. It was La Jonquière, as a
rear admiral, who had come to Nova Scotia with the duc d'Anville in
September 1746. After succeeding the duc in command of that
disastrous expedition,
La Jonquière
had returned to
France that autumn, intending to take his post as governor-general
at Québec as soon as he could manage it. In May 1747, he left
Île d'Aix with a division of three frigates and two ships of the
line, including his flagship, the 64-gun Sérieux, and a
convoy of merchant vessel. Only four days out, a
British squadron under Vice-admiral George Anson, whose second in
command was Rear-admiral Peter Warren, the victor at Louisbourg,
waylaid the marquis and his vessels
off Cape Ortegal, Spain. The merchant ships managed to escape,
but the British engaged the French men of war, who were great
overmatched, in a five-hour exchange of fire and blood. Anson
and Warren captured all of the French warships, as well as the
admiral/governor-general, who had been wounded in the fray.
La Jonquière spent the rest of the war at Portsmouth, England, and
was unable to take up his post at Québec until August 1749, nearly a
year and a half after the peace was signed.109
Back at Québec, La
Jonquière's place was taken by Roland-Michel Barrin de La
Galissonière, a native Rochefort, who had first come to Canada in
1711 while still a midshipman. He, too,
was a naval officer, the
son of a lieutenant-general of naval forces, and, on his mother's
side, was a nephew of Michel Bégon, intendant of New France.
La Galissonière spent
most of his naval service at his native Rochefort, but he also
sailed to Canada
and Île Royale during his time at sea. In May 1738, more as a
result of family connections than distinguished service, he was
awarded the coveted Cross of St.-Louis. He saw much service
during the War of the Austrian Succession, holding the rank of
captain. His administrative skills were such that he was
offered the governor-generalship of St.-Domingue in early 1747, but
he refused the office, preferring to continue his naval career.
A few months later, after the capture of La Jonquière, Minister of
Marine Maurepas offered La Galissonière the interim
governor-generalship of New France, and the marquis reluctantly
agreed to take it.
He left Rochefort
for Québec aboard the Northumberland in September 1747.
He had been to Canada a number of times, but he knew the place only
as a sailor. He consulted with his predecessor, Charles de
Beauharnois, who, because the war was still on, had not yet returned
to France, and with Intendant Hocquart, who was staying.110
Although the war was
going well for the French in Europe, it had not gone well for them in North
America. After evaluating the condition of New France, the new
governor-general chose a purely defensive policy--there would be no
more expeditions against Annapolis Royal or Louisbourg, only the
strengthening of positions still held by the French. In
Canada, La Galisonnière believed that an alliance with the Iroquois
would do much to strengthen the colony's defensive position.
In order "to draw the Indians into the French orbit," he dusted off
part of La Salle's old plan of joining Canada and Louisiana with "a
line of posts along the Ohio valley...." Unfortunately for
such an expensive scheme, the colony's finances were in shambles.
There were no funds available, for instance, to mount on the
fortifications of Québec and Montréal new guns that had been
authorized two years before after the sudden loss of Louisbourg!111
When the war ended in
April 1748, La Galissonière was still serving as interim
governor-general. Clinging to his idea of fortifying the Ohio
country and winning over the Indians there, in June 1749 he sent
Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville from Montréal to the Lake
Ontario and Ohio region to evaluate Indian alliances and British
influence there. Céloron, who had fought with Bienville
against the Chickasaw in Louisiana a decade before, was well
acquainted with the area. He reported that British influence
in the region was increasing, primarily because of the growing
activity of the Ohio Company, which offered cheaper trade goods to
the Indians than any Canadian trader could match. The colony's
finances were still precarious, and peace had come, so La Galissonière concentrated on building a single post, on Lake
Ontario, from which the Canadians could lure the Iroquois from
British traders. The Great Lakes and the Ohio, and the growing
British influence there, would occupy French attention for years to
come.112
La Jonquière finally
reached his post at Québec in August 1749. Unfamiliar with New
France, he conferred with La Galissonière, who had been recalled to
France. La Jonquière agreed with his predecessor's policies, especially
towards the Indians. He also had to contend with the fallout
from the diplomatic coup that returned Île Royale and Île St.-Jean
to France. For the strengthening of the fortifications at
Louisbourg and the projection of French power into the Maritimes
region, including British Nova Scotia,
he deferred to the new
governor of Île Royale, fellow naval officer Charles Des Herbiers de
La Ralière, who had reached Louisbourg in June 1749.
By then, British reaction to the return of Louisbourg had created a
new element of danger and intrigue in that part of New France.113
.
Reaction in New England to the loss of Louisbourg was "immediate and
visceral." Not only the governors but also the people were
appalled by the diplomatic surrender. Men from Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had captured the French
citadel, and hundreds of them were buried there, lost during the
brutal winter of occupation. British diplomats, and King
George himself, could brush off New English sacrifice, but the
colonials could not, and talk in Boston turned to revolution.
The reaction of the British Lords of Trade and Plantations to the
outrage in New England changed dramatically the geography of the
imperial conflict in North America. Moreover, there would be
no peace in spite of the "peace" signed in a city on the far side of
France. In June 1749, without having notified the French at
Louisbourg and spurning negotiations with the Mi'kmaq elders,
the new governor of Nova Scotia, Colonel Edward Cornwallis, arrived
with 13 transports and the HMS Sphinx
at
Chebouctou Bay.
Aboard the transports were not only British regular troops but also
1,176 settlers--most of them so-called Foreign Protestants who would
transform the area into a British stronghold facing the French at
Louisbourg. Some of the settlers were from the British Isles,
but recruitment there had not gone well--the poor of Great Britain
and Ireland had every reason to emigrate to the New World, but most
preferred more southern climes. Cornwallis had lured most of
his new settlers from the upper Rhine principalities of western
Germany, especially Württemberg, from the Protestant regions of
northeastern France, especially Montbéliard, and from Switzerland
and the Netherlands.235
On the west side of the deep inlet flowing into Chebouctou Bay,
beneath a commanding height, Cornwallis ordered the construction a
new stronghold, which he named Halifax, after George Montague-Dunk,
second Earl of Halifax, president of the Board of Trade and
Plantations. Atop the commanding height, promptly dubbed Fort
Hill, Cornwallis built a wooden palisade he called Fort George.
The following year, the British built another fortification to
protect their new stronghold from sea-borne attack, on an island at
the entrance to Halifax harbor. Cornwallis named the new
palisade Fort Charlotte, after Britain's Queen, and the glacial
drumlin on which the new fort stood he named after the King
himself--Georges Island.235b
Not satisfied with this,
Cornwallis imported more colonists, again all Protestant, mostly
Rhinelander Germans, to populate several more settlements along the
coast above and below Halifax. Bedford, with its Fort
Sackville, was built at the narrow head of Halifax harbor to give
the area defense in depth from attack via the interior.
Dartmouth arose in 1750 between Halifax and Bedford.
Lunenburg, founded by an Englishman but, as its name attests,
populated by Germans, began in June 1753 on a wide bay down the
coast from Halifax near the site of the old but sparsely-populated
Acadian settlement of Mirliguèche. Lawrencetown was built in
1754 on an inlet above Halifax near the Acadian fishing village of
Chezzetcook.
Lawrencetown was named
for Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lawrence, who, as a 40-year-old
major, had come to Halifax in July 1749 soon after the new
headquarters was established. Lawrence was unmarried when he
came to Nova Scotia and remained a life-long bachelor. He had
been commissioned in the 11th Regiment of Foot in 1727 and served in
the West Indies during the 1730s before returning to London to work
in the War Office. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1741 and
to captain in 1742. Three years later, in May 1745, he fought
in the Battle of Fontenoy, Belgium, and was wounded. After his
recovery, Lawrence was promoted to major in the 45th (Warburton's)
Regiment
and joined it at
Louisbourg in 1747 as part of the occupying force. His rapid
rise in rank was due mainly to his competence as an officer--"He was
popular in the army and was known to be strong, energetic, and
direct in his methods," one of his biographers tells us--but
Lawrence also enjoyed the patronage of the second Earl of
Halifax through a family connection. At Halifax, he served as
a company commander in the 40th Regiment beginning in December 1749.
No one could have known it, but the new British major would soon
play a major role in Acadian history.235a
Once British troops cleared land and built appropriate shelter at
the new headquarters, Cornwallis moved the colonial capital from
Annapolis Royal to Halifax. Acadians who had to appear before
the colonial council now had to travel to the Atlantic side of the
peninsula, dozens of miles from their major settlements. But
the new governor's next move was even more troubling for the Fundy
habitants. Within months of establishing Halifax, Cornwallis
asserted his authority over the entire peninsula by sending redcoats
from Annapolis Royal and Halifax to several of the largest Acadian
settlements. There they built palisade forts to house and
protect what Cornwallis intended to be permanent new garrisons.
Fort Edward arose on a height overlooking the forks of the river at
Pigiguit, on the l'Assomption side of the stream. Near
Grand-Pré, not far from the battlefield of February 1747, appeared
Fort Vieux Logis, named for the site on which it was built near a
landing on Rivière Gaspereau. A year later, in the fall of
1750, a third palisade, named Fort Lawrence, was constructed at
Chignecto on the site of the burned out village of Beaubassin.
Annapolis Royal already had its Fort Anne, which the British had
improved as best they could since they seized Port-Royal in 1710.
Perhaps because of a lack of troops, Cornwallis did not bother to
send a garrison to Cobeguit, at the northeast corner of the Minas
Basin, where John Gorham's rangers had built a blockhouse during
King George's War.236
.
Despite these troubling
developments,
most of the Acadians clung to their neutrality, trading with
Louisbourg and the new French post at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, as
well as the scattered British outposts in Nova Scotia, both old and
new. This was a dangerous game for the independent-minded
habitants, but one that they were certain they could play
indefinitely. The fortress at Louisbourg had limited
agricultural resources, so the French there paid good prices for
cattle and grain transported from Chignecto via Baie Verte and
Tatamagouche. Protestant settlers in the colony now numbered
in the hundreds, but they could not yet produce enough food to
provision the scattered British garrisons, which still depended on
the Acadians for much of their subsistence. To facilitate
trade with Halifax, the Acadians widened an existing track from
Minas, used only a few years before by Indians and Acadian
partisans, down which they drove their cattle and grain-laden wagons
to the new colonial capital facing the sea.236a
The Acadian trade with Louisbourg angered the British, so, in August
1749, the new governor pressured the Acadians to take an unqualified
oath of allegiance to the British crown. As they had done so
often with the other governors and lieutenant governors, the
Acadians politely but firmly refused a new oath of allegiance.
Acadian deputies, bearing the signatures or marks of over a thousand
of their compatriots, appeared at Halifax later in the month to
remind Cornwallis of their previous oaths, which had exempted them
and their posterity from taking up arms in future imperial conflict.
After talking in private with the deputies, Cornwallis allowed them to return
to their homes. There the matter stood, at least for now.
The war was over. Peace had returned. Some Acadians,
responding to French blandishments, packed up their belongings,
their animals, and their children, and slowly made their way to the
French side of the bay. But most of them remained and went
about their business, expecting their new neighbors to do
the same.115
_______________________________________
BOOK TWO BOOK
THREE
BOOK FOUR
BOOK FIVE
NOTES - BOOK ONE
01.
Quotation from Historical Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 22, p.47.
See also ibid., 1: plates 21 & 28, for the evolution of the migratory
bank fishery & the distribution of North American cod in
Europe.
Much of the information in this chapter is general
knowledge that can be found in any good textbook, encyclopedia, or
Wikipedia article dedicated to the Age of Exploration. A recent
detailed treatment of the subject is Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders,
chaps. 4-6.
Taylor, A., American Colonies, 25-26, offers a
review of Islam's triumph over the European Crusaders & further Muslim
advances in southeastern Europe during the 15th century that created "a
powerful sense of geographic and religious claustrophobia" among
European thinkers, which, ironically, motivated them "to break out and
circumvent the Muslim world." Quotations from p. 26. On p.
29, Taylor emphasizes the private, capitalistic nature of the Genoese &
Iberian ventures down the northwest coast of Africa, including the
discovery & exploitation of the Canaries, Madeira, & the Azores.
The Norsemen or Vikings settled in North America during
the early 11th century, perhaps even in present-day Nova Scotia, but
nothing came of their discoveries other than temporary settlements in
the region. The rest of Europe did not hear of these ventures much
less benefit from them economically or intellectually. See Clark,
Acadia, 7, 74. On p. 5, he uses the term Ultima Thule,
"an end of the world," for the Norse perspective of what became Nova
Scotia.
<Micmac
History> asserts: "The first known contact [between Mi'kmaq &
Europeans] was made in 1497 by John Cabot who took three Micmac with him
when he returned to England. The Micmac may not have appreciated
this, since Cabot disappeared in the same area during his second voyage
a few years later."
Other early explorers of the region were the Portuguese
Corte Real brothers, who sailed along the North Atlantic coast from
Newfoundland down to Nova Scotia in 1500-01, not long after Cabot's
voyage, and a Portuguese navigator named Fagundes who, in 1520 & 1521,
sailed along the coast of Nova Scotia and into the mouth of the Bay of
Fundy. See the superb map in Historical Atlas of Canada, 1:
plate 19, which tracks the voyages of every known explorer of the North
American coast from 1497 to 1632. See also Clark, p. 75.
For descriptions of the fishing & fur trading operations
in the St. Lawrence region & along the Nova Scotia shore & their
significance to the history of Acadia, see Clark, pp. 7-9, 22-24, 74-75,
78 note 6, 88; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 5; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, chap. 2; &
below. Mathé Allain, in her essay "Colbert's Colony Crumbles," in
Conrad, ed.,
The French Experience in Louisiana, 32, says that the Canadian
fur trade was "Born of the fishing industry." See also Taylor, A.,
pp. 94ff.
The first Indians to make contact with European
fishermen were the Beothuk of Newfoundland, Thule Inuits from Labrador
who moved to the northern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Montagnais
on the upper St. Lawrence coast, and Mi'kmaq on Cape Breton Island,
peninsula Nova Scotia, and the Gaspé Peninsula. See Historical
Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 20. For a history of the natives of
French Acadia, from Paleolithic to historical times, see Clark, pp. 5,
8-9, 56-70. For a poignant description of the impact of European
contact on native peoples in general, see ibid., p. 9.
02. See Clark,
Acadia, 7-8. Ibid., p. 74, asserts that, in his explorations
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cartier visited present-day Prince Edward
Island.
For a discussion of the origin of the name "Acadia," see
ibid., pp. 71-72, especially note 1; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
6; Parkman,
France & England, 1:184n. (One
of Clark’s sources in this discussion is P. C. Cormier’s
L’Origine et l’histoire du nom Acadie, avec un discours su d’autres noms
de lieu Acadiens, published in 1966.)
Arsenault, History, 11, insists that Verrazzano “was so
overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of the primeval forest reaching
down to the sea that it reminded him of descriptions of Arcadia in
ancient Greece.” Current scholarship says that the French
corruption of a Mi'kmaq word, La Cadie, which means "fertile
place," not Verrazzano's "Arcadia," is the true origin of the colony's
name. Whatever. The colony came to be called L'Acadie
or Acadie &, most importantly, the colonists called themselves
Acadiens/Acadiennes ... Acadians.
François I did not believe that simply seeing territory
constituted a claim to it, so all that Verrazzano did for France was
seek the elusive passage to the Orient & map a part of the coast of
North America. See Allain, "Not Worth a Straw," 2.
Not until Jacques Cartier in the 1530s did France start making "claims."
Verrazzano's name is variously spelled Verazzano &
Verrazano.
The attempted settlement of Canada led by Admiral
Jean-François de la Rocque, sieur de Roberval, in the early 1540s came
to nothing; Cartier for a time served as captain-general of the
expedition. Parkman, 1:145ff, gives a detailed account of the
ventures of Verrazzano, Cartier, & Roberval. On 1:149, he points
out that the Frenchman Denis of Honfleur had explored the Gulf of St.
Lawrence as early as 1506. Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 12ff,
provides a recent account of Cartier's voyages and his sojourn on the
St. Lawrence. See also Taylor, A., American Colonies, 92.
For an un-translated copy of Roberval's instructions from the French
court, dated 1540, see Jerry A. Micelle, "From Law Court to Local
Government Metamorphosis of the Superior Council of French Louisiana,"
p. 422 n. 32, in Conrad, ed., The French Experience in LA.
See Allain, "Not Worth a Straw," 2-3, for a summation of François
I's & his Valois successors' ideas of legitimate claim & mention of the
Roberval effort.
Milner, "Chignecto," says that Diego Homen, "a
Portuguese settled at Venice," ventured into the Bay of Fundy in 1558 &
"made a map showing Chignecto Bay." Milner goes on to say:
"It is probable that Portuguese and French fishermen cast their nets
into these waters even before that date." Milner implies that not
until Dugua's appearance in 1604 did a European expedition sail along
the Chignecto shore.
02a. Quotation from
Allain, "Not Worth a Straw," 1, who mentions de Gonneville & the
role of Breton, Norman, & Basque fishermen in French Atlantic commerce.
See also ibid., p. 2.
03. Quotation from
Roberts, Europe, 230-31. See also Eccles, Canadian
Frontier, 17; Parkman, France & England,
1:175. It was of course the Edict of Nantes of 13 Apr 1598
that gave the Huguenots these guarantees.
03a. Quotation from
Johnson, American People, 10. Eccles, Canadian Frontier,
18, says the Portuguese attacked the Huguenot colony at Rio in 1560.
For the classic study of these Huguenot efforts in Brazil & FL, see
Parkman, France & England, 1:33-123, whose dates & details are
used here.
04. Quotations from
Allain,"Not Worth a Straw," 3; Johnson, American People,
10. See also Clark, Acadia, 78, note 6.
Allain offers a broad view of Coligny's efforts in the
context of French colonial policy, quoting another scholar as saying
that Coligny "conceived of colonization as a tool of foreign policy," as
"a factor in geopolitics." She also says, pp. 3-4, that Queen
Catherine de Medici's "fear of Iberian reprisals" was one of the reasons
for the Massacre of 1572. "Certainly Spaniards and Portuguese
celebrated the demise of the admiral with a grandiose Te Deum."
See Taylor, A.,
American Colonies, 76-77, 92, for a concise, more recent
interpretation of Menéndez's actions in FL & their result.
Unlike Ribaut, Laudonnière managed to elude the Spanish
swords & return to France, where he wrote a stirring account of the fate
of Fort Caroline & its inhabitants. In 1568, a French expedition
under Dominique de Gourgues attacked Fort Caroline, renamed Fort San
Mateo, & killed most of the Spanish garrison in revenge for Menéndez's
slaughter of Ribaut & the Huguenot settlers. Gourgues, however,
did not re-establish a French settlement in Florida; he was there only
for vengeance; nor was he able to get his hands on Menéndez, who was in
Spain at the time. See Parkman, 1:124ff.
Samuel Wilson, Jr., "Colonial Fortifications and
Military Architecture in the Mississippi Valley," p. 379, in Conrad,
ed., The French Experience in LA, describes Fort Caroline as "a
triangular timber structure with bastions and a symmetrical arrangements
of buildings within."
05. Clark, Acadia,
9, 77, mentions the failed attempts of Troilus, Marquis de La Roche
de Mesgouez, to establish a French colony in the New World, first in
1578 & then in the late 1590s on Sable Island, employing convicts. On p.
78, note 6, Clark points out that de La Roche's "record of continuous
failure" was "unrivaled in the history of the northeastern shores of
North America." Miraculously, the poor souls left by de La Roche
on Sable Island survived there for five years, until they were rescued
in 1603, probably by fishermen who frequented that coast. For
details of La Roche's Sable Island venture, see Parkman, France &
England, 1:176ff, who says the convicts survived on the remote
island for 12 years before being rescued. Eccles, Canadian
Frontier, 20, mentions a failed settlement at Tadoussac on the lower
St. Lawrence River in 1600. See Parkman, 1:179ff, for details of 3
failed attempts to establish a fur-trading settlement at Tadoussac in
the early 1600s.
See Rudin, Remembering & Forgetting in Acadie,
passim for the slow, even reluctant, recognition by Acadians
themselves that 1604 was the "birthday" of their history.
06. Quotation from
Parkman, France & England, 1:184, who notes that the French
considered
La Cadie to run from the 40th to the 46th degree of north
latitude, "or from Philadelphia to beyond Montreal." See also Clark,
Acadia, 71-72.
Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 20, says that Dugua
received the title "Vice-admiral and Lieutenant General of New France"
from the king. Dugua's family name also is spelled du Guast. See
Parkman, 1:184. For a discussion of the evolution of Dugua's name
in Acadian historiography, see Rudin, Remembering & Forgetting in
Acadie, 18, 281 note 3. Most sources call him De Monts or a
variation of that name. George MacBeath, "Du Gua de Monts,
Pierre," in DCB, 1:291-94, is a detailed treatment of Dugua's
life.
See Allain, "Not Worth a Straw," 8, for a review
of Henry IV's use of commercial companies, the first one chartered in
1602 for Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe. Allain says that de
Chastes had formed a partnership with Pierre Chauvin & Mr. Pontgravé in
1600 & sent Pontgravé & Champlain to explore Acadia in 1603. After
de Chastes's death in 1603, Dugua succeeded to the monopoly.
Allain points out that the de Chaste/Dugua venture was the first of 75
commercial companies established by French monarchs between 1599 & 1789.
06a. See Clark,
Acadia, 8-9, 77-78; Parkman, France & England, 1:1071,
2:928-29; Ganong, Champlain's Island, 20.
Taylor, A., American Colonies, 92ff, gives
a recent analysis of the historiographical debate over the nature of the
Canadian fur trade & its place in the French settlement of North
America. It includes the role of Tadoussac in the trade.
Clark, pp. 9, 77, mentions a religious aspect to
France's exploitation of the fur trade in what became New France.
For Acadia's strategic value to New France, see ibid.,
p. 77.
06b. Quotation from
Ganong, Champlain's Island, 79, citing Champlain's narrative of
1613.
A recent detailed account of the Dugua expedition is
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, chap. 1. See p. 7 for
the list of cities from which the bankrolling merchants came. She
lists, on p. 7, several of the merchant-investors, including Samuel
Georges & Jean Macain of La Rochelle, & Corneille de Bellois of Rouen.
Arsenault,
History, 10, says more than 120 men crossed with Dugua; Clark,
Acadia, 78, says 79; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 2,
says 75; Parkman, France & England, 1:189; & Historical Atlas
of Canada, 1:48, say 79; Ganong, p. 21, says "somewhat over 120."
It is likely that the original expedition contained 120 men, & that the
expedition was reduced to 79 after Poutrincourt & Pontgravé returned to
France in Aug.
The name of the 150-ton vessel is from Griffiths, p. 7.
She says Dugua was on the smaller ship, so the larger one must have been
Pontgravé's. She calls the larger ship the Bon Renommé.
Parkman, especially 1:180ff, is a good source for
details of Champlain's life & adventures before he sailed to New France
with Dugua, including an exploration of the upper St. Lawrence River
under Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, a year or so before the
Dugua expedition. Parkman points out that de Chastes held the
royal patent to settle New France before Dugua did, but de Chastes died
before he could return to the St. Lawrence Valley. The king then
gave Dugua the monopoly on the fur trade & the concession to start a
colony. See 1:184. Rudin, Remembering & Forgetting in
Acadie, 18, points out that Champlain was not a nobleman, that he
added the "de" to his name later to give the impression that he was from
the nobility. DCB, 1:186-99, is a detailed treatment of
Champlain's life.
Champlain was born in Brouage & Dugua in Royan.
Brasseaux,
Founding of New Acadia, 151, calls Poutrincourt a Protestant.
Griffiths, p. 7, followed here, calls both Poutrincourt & Champlain
devout Catholics.
Arsenault, p. 10, calls Dugua's second in command
Dupont-Gravé; Clark calls him Gravé du Pont; Faragher uses Pontgrave;
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, prefers Gravé Du Pont;
Parkman, 1:179ff, calls him Pontgrave. Ganong's translation of
Champlain's 1613 narrative favors Pont.
Other names in Dugua's expedition, found in Ganong, are:
Sieurs d'Orville, Champdoré, Boulay or Boulé, Champlain's future
brother-in-law, Genestou, Sourin, Beaumont, la Motte Bourioli, &
Fougery, none of whom established families in the colony. That
would not happen for another 30 years. Griffiths, pp. 7-8, includes:
Jean Ralluau, Dugua's secretary; Sieur d'Orville; Sieur de Beaumont;
Fougeray de Vitré; La Motte Bourgjoli; Nicholas Aubry, a Catholic
priest; Daniel Boyer, a tile maker; François Rocques, a roofer; & Robert
Lescuyer, a mason.
Ganong is the source for use of the pinnace to explore
the coast & the Bay of Fundy. Dugua's expedition sailed in 3 ships
of various sizes similar to Columbus's first voyage of 1492 & the VA
expedition under Christopher Newport in 1606-07. The taking along
of a pinnace, which was little more than an open longboat with sails,
was essential for exploration of rock-strewn coasts, shallow bays, &
rivers, where full-sized ships could not go.
07. For the French
name of the Bay of Fundy, see Historical Atlas of Canada, 1:
plates 29, 30, the standard for all Acadian and Canadian place name
spellings here; Arsenault, History, 11; Clark, Acadia, 80;
Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 20, 22. The French name for the bay
is so little known that, except in the case of context which calls for
the French name, the more modern name for the bay will be used here.
See Clark, pp. x-xi, for his struggle with Acadian names, both
geographical & personal.
It is interesting to note that during the several weeks
in which Dugua & Champlain explored the coast of present-day western
Nova Scotia & southern New Brunswick before determining upon a
settlement site, they laid eyes on the future sites of most of the major
Acadian settlements--Cap-Sable; St. Mary's Bay, which would become a
refuge for post-dispersal Acadians after the 1760s; Port-Royal; Minas; &
Chignecto. They probably observed the mouth of the river up which
Cobeguit would be established, as well as the Chepoudy shore & the
mouths of the Petitcoudiac & perhaps the Memramcook.
The highest tides in the Bay of Fundy come in the
spring, the time of year in which Dugua and Champlain first observed
them. Geographer Andrew Hill Clark writes: "...it is within
the bay that spectacular ranges of thirty to forty feet at normal tides,
and fifty feet or more at spring tides, occur." See Clark, pp. 24,
28, Fig. 2.4. They also happen to be the highest tides on the
planet.
07a. Île
Ste.-Croixe, also called Dochet (pronounced DOE-shay) Island,
Met-a-neg-wis, Isle Saincte Croix, St. Croix, Dosias, Doceas, Docias,
Dochez, Doshays, Doucett, Douchette, Douchet, or Ducie Island, Big
Island, Great Island, Neutral Island, Bone Island, De Monts Island, &
Hunt's Island, is on the United States side of the St. Croix River
estuary. The best map of its location vis-à-vis the surrounding area is
Ganong, Champlain's Island, 29, Fig. 4. In a revised &
expanded edition of a work published originally in 1902 that includes
translations of many passages from Champlain's 1613 narrative, Ganong
also provides a comprehensive history of the island & its brief time as
the "capital" of Acadia. Perrin, W.A., Acadian Redemption,
2, says, without citation, that "Dugua named the island St. Croix
because it was near the confluence of rivers resembling the arms of a
cross." Ganong, pp. 22-23, 45, says that the story of the
cross-shaped river originated with Marc Lescarbot, who came to Acadia
after the Île Ste.-Croixe settlement was abandoned but was a companion
of Champlain at Port-Royal in 1606-07 & visited the island in the latter
year; see note
09, below. Ganong also points out that
the eventual name of the river, St. Croix, came from the island, not
vice versa. The original French version of the name--Ste.-Croixe--is
used here for the time in which the settlement existed.
08. Quotation from
Arsenault, History, 12. See also Clark, Acadia, 78;
Ganong, Champlain's Island, 24, 62-69, including maps from
Champlain's narrative of 1613, 80, 82-86.
The French called the Indians in the area of Île
Ste.-Croixe the Etechemins. Champlain in fact called Rivière Ste.
Croixe the River of the Etechemins. Only later did the river take
the name of the island. See Ganong, p. 63;
map. The actual Indians in the area were the Passamaquoddy, after
whom the bay into which the Ste.-Croix flows is named. See Rudin,
Remembering & Forgetting in
Acadie, 20.
The death toll during the winter on Île Ste.-Croixe was
34, 35, or 36, depending on the source, all of which agree that after
Pontgravé & Poutrincourt left, 79 remained with Dugua and Champlain.
Ganong, p. 24, says 59 fell sick & 34 died. Champlain's 1613 narrative
says 35. See also Ganong, p. 83.
08a. A detailed
account of Dugua's exploration down the coast from Nova Scotia to the
Cape Cod area in 1605 is in Parkman,
France & England, 1:191ff, taken largely from Champlain's 1613
narrative. One account says that Champlain chose the name
Port-Royal because he was so impressed with its spacious anchorage.
See Drake, Border Wars, 55n; Griffiths, From Migrant to
Acadian, 10. Parkman, 1:187-88, says that Poutrincourt was so
impressed by the beauty of the basin that he named it in honor of the
king. Faragher,
A Great & Noble Scheme, 10, says Poutrincourt called the fort at
Port-Royal his "manor house" because he owned it.
09. See Clark,
Acadia, 79; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 1-9.
Clark, p. 80, Fig. 4.2, is entitled "Port Royal Basin and Valley in the
Seventeenth Century."
Faragher, p. 1, says: "The French colonization of
l'Acadie began in earnest on 13 May 1606, when the Jonas, a
vessel of 150 tons, loaded with provisions and carrying forty men,
weighed anchor at the port of La Rochelle and sailed for the infant
outpost of Port Royal on the far side of the Atlantic." This was
Poutrincourt's return voyage. The Jonas
stopped at Canso before moving on to Port-Royal. Parkman, France &
England, 1:196-98, provides details of Poutrincourt's return to
Acadia & the condition of the settlement in 1606.
The French name for the Micmac or M'ikmaq (pronounced
MICK-maw) was Souriquois. See
map.
Among the new personnel who came with Poutrincourt to
Acadia in the summer of 1606 was Louis Hébert, an apothecary and
horticulturist & a relative of Poutrincourt by marriage, whose surname
one day would be added to the prominent families of Acadia, though Louis
himself was not the progenitor of the Acadian Héberts (see
Appendix).
Hébert moved later to Champlain's Québec, where he arrived in
1617 with his wife & 3 children. He was in fact the first
permanent settler of what was then only a fur trading post. See
Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 24, 34; Parkman, 1:305,
319. (Throughout this narrative, Acadian family names in bold
are the ones who lived in Acadia & LA, some, like the La Tours,
going to the Mississippi valley colony only via their "blood.")
Also arriving with Poutrincourt in 1606 was Marc
Lescarbot, a gifted writer & friend of Dugua who also was Poutrincourt's
lawyer. After he returned to France in 1607, Lescarbot wrote a
history of the Acadian colony which was published in 1609, 4 years
before Champlain's history of the venture appeared. For a copy of
Lescarbot's imaginative map of Port-Royal, included in his 1609
publication, see Clark, p. 104.
Clark, p. 89, asserts: "Poutrincourt brought his
wife briefly...." Would this have been in 1606?
An amazing result of Dugua's Protestantism was that the
Port-Royal settlement harbored not only a priest but also a Huguenot
minister. The two clergymen, according to a disgusted Champlain,
who was Catholic, often came to blows over theological differences.
As the story goes, when the contentious clergymen died, their fellow
colonists buried them in the same grave in hopes that they could live in
peace at least in the afterlife. See Champlain's description of
these characters in Milling, Exile Without End, 3, which claims
that Acadia harbored a number of Huguenot adventurers & settlers well
into the 17th century. Milling, pp. 3-4, points out, however, that
"no Protestant congregation survived" due to the influence of the
priests and intermarriage with the Catholic majority.
10. Quotation from
Clark, Acadia, 79. See also Parkman, France & England,
1:145-47. The old fisherman Lescarbot met was a Basque named
Savalet. See Parkman, 1:205.
For the relative of importance of the fur & fishing
industries in Acadia as late as 1632, see note
15a, below.
11. Quotation from
Clark, Acadia, 79. See also ibid., pp. 85-87; Faragher,
A Great & Noble Scheme, 14.
Despite the one good winter at Port-Royal, the severity
of the winters in the Bay of Fundy region drove Poutrincourt & Champlain
in late 1606 to try again to find a more southern location for the
colony. Parkman, France & England, 1:199ff, details their
second exploration down the coast as far as present-day Hyannis,
Massachusetts, & a fatal encounter with hostile Indians on the eastern
shore of Cape Cod that discouraged further thought of settling south of
Port-Royal. Lescarbot was left in charge of Port-Royal when
Poutrincourt & Champlain explored to the southward.
Parkman, 1:200ff, using Lescarbot as his major source,
describes the settlement at Port-Royal in fine detail, including
Champlain's L'Ordre de Bon-Temps, or the Order of Good Times,
which kept the notables of the colony well fed. See also Faragher,
pp. 15-16, who includes Membertou & his Mi'kmaq in the Order.
12. Quotations from
Arsenault, History, 13; Clark, Acadia, 79.
Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 22, insists "The
amount of furs obtained from the Indians was insufficient to offset the
costs of maintaining the settlement at Port Royal." Faragher, A
Great & Noble Scheme, 18, agrees & adds that Poutrincourt beseeched
some of his men to stay at Port-Royal but that all of them chose to
return to France with him.
It was Marc Lescarbot who reported that, in
contradiction to the king's expectations, "after three years of enjoying
the said privileges, he [Dugua] made no [Indian] converts as yet."
See Mathé Allain, "Colbert's Colony Crumbles," in Conrad, ed., The
French Experience in Louisiana, 34, for a discussion of the role of
conversion in French colonization, including the statement:
"Evangelization of the natives was an obligation every charter imposed
on companies or individuals granted a colonial monopoly."
Parkman, France & England, 1:205-06, concludes
about France's early efforts in Acadia and the role of religion:
"First of Europeans, they had essayed to found an agricultural colony in
the New World. The leaders of the enterprise had acted less as
merchants than as citizens; and the fur-trading monopoly, odious in
itself, had been used as the instrument of a large and generous design.
There was a radical defect, however, in their scheme of settlement.
Excepting a few of the leaders, those engaged in it had not chosen a
home in the wilderness of New France, but were mere hirelings, without
wives or families, and careless of the welfare of the colony. The
life which should have pervaded all the members was confined to the
heads alone. In one respect, however, the enterprise of De Monts
was truer in principle than the Roman Catholic colonization of Canada,
on the one hand, or the Puritan colonization of Massachusetts, on the
other, for it did not attempt to enforce religious exclusion."
12a. For Champlain
at Québec, see Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 23ff; Parkman,
France & England, 1:241-324. Parkman calls the site of Québec
Stadacone. Historical Atlas of Canada calls it Stadacona.
See 1: plate 33.
Parkman, 1:198, emphasizes the good relations of Dugua's
settlers with the local Mi'kmaq, who were sad to see the Frenchmen go.
Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 9-14, details the good
relations between the "Normans," as the Mi'kmaq called them, & the
Indians at Port-Royal, with emphasis on the role of Membertou.
Parkman, 1:266, also relates the efforts of Dugua to
re-establish his monopoly on the fur trade in New France & its ultimate
failure, made hopeless by the assassination of King Henry IV in 1610.
A. Taylor, American Colonies, 99-100, touts the
superiority of Canada in the trade for furs but its inferiority in
matters of agriculture & contrasts the "open access" of peninsula Acadia
with the superior defensive geography of the St. Lawrence River valley.
13. See Mathé Allain,
"Colbert's Colony Crumbles," in Conrad, ed., The French Experience in
Louisiana, 34; Clark, Acadia, 79-81; Faragher,
A Great & Noble Scheme, 22-29.
Clark, p. 89, says that Poutrincourt brought his wife to
Acadia "briefly," but does not say when.
Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 22, says that the
Jesuit presence at Port-Royal in 1611 was the first mission of the order
in New France. Parkman, England & France, 1:216, concurs &
devotes two chapters (1:207-23) to the efforts of the Jesuits to intrude
themselves into the Acadian venture. The 2 original Jesuits were
Pierre Biard & Énemond Massé.
For Biencourt's age when he arrived in Acadia, see
Parkman, 1:210. Biencourt's ship on this voyage was the Grace
de Dieu.
The younger Pontgravé, whose name was Robert, built his
camp on the Rivière St.-Jean 6 leagues up the river. See Parkman,
1:216ff.
For a detailed account of the assassination of Henry IV,
see Parkman, 1:210-11.
Parkman points out, 1:221, 1071, that the Marquise de
Guercheville's domains included all of North America from the St.
Lawrence down to Florida, excepting only Poutrincourt's settlement at
Port-Royal. For details of the Jesuit venture on Mount Desert
Island, called St.-Sauveur, see ibid., 1:224ff. The 1613 Jesuit
expedition, under La Saussaye, sailed in the Jonas, the same ship
that Poutrincourt had hired for his return trip to Port-Royal in 1606.
14. Quotations from
Clark, Acadia, 81; Eccles, Canadian Frontier,
23.
For details of Argall's character, his attacks on the
Acadian settlements, & the fate of the French captives, see Parkman,
France & England, 1:228ff; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
29-33.
Argall's Jesuit guide was Pierre Biard, who had
quarreled bitterly with Poutrincourt & Biencourt at Port-Royal.
Jamestown was founded, of course, by a joint stock
company of London merchants in the spring of 1607 after the English had
failed miserably to settle their North American claims two decades
before at Roanoke Island in present-day NC. Parkman makes a strong
case against "the lawless inroads" of Dale & Argall, whom he says had no
authority to molest the Acadian settlements. Quote from 1:1072.
Dale & Argall felt justified in destroying French settlements in
territory claimed by the London Company charter.
See Historical Atlas of Canada, 1:48, for a list
of failed English settlements in Newfoundland in the three decades after
the founding of Jamestown: at Conception Bay in 1610, Renews in 1617,
Harbour Grace in 1617, Renews again in 1623, St. John's in 1624, &
Ferryland in 1632, this last failed venture led by George Calvert, later
Lord Baltimore, who founded Maryland 2 years later; & Ferryland again in
1638. It took a while for the stubborn English to realize that
sustainable agriculture was not possible in this frozen, forbidding
land, only fishing and fur trading, so they concentrated their efforts
farther south, along the Chesapeake and Cape Cod bays. For more details
of English colonial efforts down the coast, see
below.
The Newfoundland sites can be located on plate 22 of Historical Atlas
of Canada,
1. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 37, on the other
hand, says that the English settlement at Ferryland was well established
by the late 1620s.
15. See Clark,
Acadia, 82; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 33.
Louis Hébert was one of the Port-Royal settlers
who returned to France with Poutrincourt.
Parkman, France & England, 1:239, 1072, says that
Biencourt rebuilt Port-Royal & built a fort at Cap-Sable called Fort
Lomeron.
15a. Quotation from
Parkman, France & England, 1:1072. See also Clark,
Acadia, 87.
Claude La Tour's full name was Nicolas dit
Claude Turgis dit de Saint-Étienne, sieur de La Tour.
For more on the La Tour
family, who were from Champagne, see George MacBeath, "Saint-Étienne, De
La Tour, Claude de," in DCB, 1:596; Arsenault, Généalogie,
1643-46; White,
DGFA-1,1431.
At Pentagouët, the local Algonquian-speakers would have
been the Penobscot & Abenaki, & on Rivière St.-Jean they would have been
the Maliseet as well as the Mi'kmaq, all part of what came to be called
the Wabanaki Confederacy. See Clark, pp. 57, 82. René
Baudry, "Menou D'Aulnay, Charles de," in DCB, 1:503, says that
Claude de La Tour founded the Pentagouët post in c1625.
Clark, p. 88, places the relative importance of
agriculture, fur trading, & the fisheries in Acadia before 1632 in stark
perspective: "In numbers of men involved, the value produced, the
areal distribution of activity, and the interest in Europe, it is clear
that the agricultural experiments and even the fur trade remained of
very minor importance in comparison with the cod fishery. The
events on which the majority of the historians of the area have focused
most of their attention were economically and demographically rather
incidental. The overwhelming significance of the apparently
inexhaustible codfish near the shores and on the offshore banks, and of
the hundreds of miles of deeply broken Atlantic coastline offering
innumerable coves for shelter, refreshment, and the erection of drying
flakes, cannot be overlooked in any geographical assessment of the area.
Indeed, the fur-trading and settlement activities, such as they were,
were heavily dependent on the ease with which small vessels could move
along the coast, from Havre à l'Anglois (Louisburg[sic]), to Cape
Fourchu (Yarmouth), or even around the shores of the Bay of Fundy,
'hopping' from one of the closely spaced harbors to another."
16. Quotations from
Clark, Acadia, 58, 67-69. See also ibid., pp. 82, 87.
For a thorough history of the Mi'kmaq, see <Micmac
History>. For a recent discussion of the Frenchmen in Acadia
at the time of Biencourt's leadership & their relations with the
Indians, especially with Indian wives & children, see Griffiths, From
Migrant to Acadian, 34-37. For Mi'kmaq numbers & the approximate
range of their territory during the first decade of the 1600s, see
Clark, p. 58.
The only French missionaries in Acadia at the time were
Franciscan Recollets, who, from 1620-24, established posts at
Port-Royal, on Rivière St.-Jean, & at Miscou on the Baie des Chaleurs,
as well as in Canada. The Jesuits had abandoned their efforts in
Acadia when Poutrincourt abandoned Port-Royal, & they would not return
to New France, & then only to Québec, until 1625. When the English
held Québec from 1629-32, only a single Jesuit remained at the post.
With the restoration of Canada to France in 1632, the Recollets were
entirely replaced by the Jesuits, who turned Québec into a mission post
as well as a center for trade with the Indians. See Arsenault,
History, 20; Parkman, 1:309-10, 328, 403ff. Clark, p. 83, note 21,
adds that "In the period 1619-24 four Recollet missionaries spent some
time in the area."
17. Arsenault, History, 18,
says that Biencourt died in 1624 and was buried at La Prée Ronde (Round
Hill), near Port-Royal.
Clark, Acadia,
82-83; & Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 37, say that
Biencourt died in 1623. Clark adds that after Biencourt's death
the headquarters of the Acadian venture moved from Port-Royal to the
Cap-Sable area, where Charles La Tour held sway. See also ibid.,
p. 87.
18. The history of early VA & the
founding of Plymouth Colony in present-day MA, like the discussion of
Columbus and other early explorers of the New World, are too well known
to document here. Consult any good
encyclopedia for details of these important historical events. See
Parkman, France & England, 1:312, 314-15, for a classic, &
entirely biased, expression of the contrast between authority-ridden New
France & liberty-loving New England.
One must also
keep in mind that in the early 1600s the Indians of VA were part of a
powerful Indian confederacy that had escaped the white man's diseases
until the English came, but the Indian tribes of the Massachusetts Bay
area had been devastated by European diseases by the time the
Separatists appeared on the scene. It was easier for the Pilgrims
& the Puritans to overawe the MA Indians because there were so few of
them left.
For a recent study of the VA & New England
colonial ventures that does justice to Native & African contributions,
see Taylor, A., American Colonies, chaps. 6-9.
19. See Clark, Acadia, 83-84;
Arsenault,
History, 19; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 40-43;
Parkman, France & England,
1:1071-72.
Clark, p. 83, note 22, says that Cape Breton Island & today's Prince
Edward Island were taken from Alexander's fiefdom & given to another
Scotsman, Robert Gordon of Lochinvar. On pp. 83-84, he attributes
the Port-aux-Baleines settlement to James Stewart, Lord Ochiltree.
René Baudry, "Daniel, Charles," in DCB, 1:248, calls Ochilltree's
settlement Fort Rosemar.
Clark, p. 91, says the Scottish fort at
Port-Royal was built adjacent to the old French one. However,
Griffiths, p. 43, says that the younger Sir William Alexander, who chose
the site, built the Scots fort "close to what would be the site of the
later Fort Anne, on the banks of what would be named the Allaine
(or Lequille) River," that is, near present-day Annapolis Royal, across
the basin & upriver from the old French fort. See Historical
Atlas of Canada, 1:29. Clark, p. 84, note 24, hints that there may
have been women, that is, families, in the Scots settlement. On p.
89, he says that 3 women "may have accompanied the Alexander settlers of
1628 or 1629." On p. 100, he speculates that "Perhaps as many as
seventy [settlers] wintered in one year, but the numbers are believed to
have fluctuated widely and, generally, to have dwindled progressively
during the four years [1628-32]."
Leckie, Wars of America, 14, places the
1629 English expedition against Québec into the context of Europe's
Thirty Years War of 1618-48. According to Leckie, Champlain had
"only 16 starving men inside his rickety fort when Lewis Kirke sailed up
the St. Lawrence and summoned him to surrender." Champlain was
taken to England as a prisoner and released after the treaty of 1632 was
signed. Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 33-34, details the
activities of the Kirkes in Canada, says their names were David and
Jarvis, & that they were brothers. Parkman, 1:316-17, says that
Gervase, not Jarvis, Kirke led the family group that included his
sons
David, Lewis, & Thomas. Clark, p. 84, note 24, agrees with
Parkman, who offers the most detailed narrative of the plight of Québec
at the hands of the Kirkes. See 1:316ff. Griffiths, p. 40, says
that there were 5 Kirke brothers, David, Lewis, Thomas, John, &
James.
Griffiths, p. 42, details the Daniel
expedition on Cape Breton Island. Clark, pp. 84-85, says that
Daniel established Fort Ste.-Anne, at present-day St. Ann's, on Cape
Breton Island after he expelled the Scots under Ochiltree at
Port-aux-Baleines. For more on Daniel, including the establishment
of Fort Ste.-Anne, see Baudry, "Daniel," 1:247-48. Baudry says
that after he destroyed Ochilltree's settlement, Daniel took the Lord &
17 prisoners to France via England, where he dropped off one of the
officers. Daniel returned to Fort Ste.-Anne & used it as his base
for trading operations, ranging from Miscou to Tadoussac, for the next 4
years. In the 1630s, Daniel was an associate of Charles La Tour
in the Acadian fur trade. Clark, p. 96, note 51, in a discussion
of Acadian geography, says that "it is not known whether [today's
Baleine, Cape Breton Island, NS] was the same site [as Ochilltree's
settlement] in the early seventeenth century."
20. Quotation from Arsenault,
History, 20, citing Charles de Menou, sieur d’Aulnay de Chanisay,
who clashed with
La Tour during the 1630s-40s over control of the colony.
For the capture of Claude La Tour, see
Arsenault, p. 19. Parkman, France & England, 1:1072-73,
says that the elder La Tour, a widower, married well in England,
&, being a Protestant, renounced his French allegiance. Sir
William made the La Tours "baronets of Nova Scotia." Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 43-44, details the life & adventures of the
elder La Tour & points out that son Charles refused to accept the
English honor & remained loyal to French interests in Acadia. See
also MacBeath, "Saint-Étienne de La Tour, Claude," 1:596-97.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 103,
says "The term, métis, was never employed in Acadia." He
goes on to say: "The degree to which peaceful relations between
Acadian settlers and Mi'kmaq people were consolidated by marriage and
similar unions is unclear." See also Clark, Acadia, 89.
21. Quotation from Arsenault,
History, 21. See also Clark,
Acadia, 91, note 36; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
48-49.
Parkman, France & England, 1:1074,
calls Razilly Claude, not Isaac; Claude, whose full name was Claude de
Launay-Rasilly, was Isaac's brother. Massignon, "Trahans of
Acadiana," 119; & Griffiths, p. 48, call him Claude de Launay-Razilly,
but White,
DGFA-1 English, 289, followed here, spells Claude's surname de
Launay-Rasilly. White, DGFA-1, 1369, says that Isaac de
Razilly's parents were François de Razilly & Catherine de Valliers, that
he was born at the chateau d'Oiseaumelle in Touraine on 5 Jul 1587,
calls him the colonizer & governor of Acadia, says he was capitaine
dans les troupe de la Marine, & that, according to G. de Rasilly, a
descendant, died at La Hève on 2 Jul 1636. Isaac, then, was age 45
when he came to Acadia & died 3 days shy of his 49th birthday.
White gives him no wife, so he evidently did not marry. For more
details on his life, see George MacBeath, "Razilly (Rasilly), Isaac de,"
in DCB, 1:567-69. Ibid., 1:567, calls brother Claude "a
ship's captain and commodore."
Ibid., 1:567, says that Razilly, who was a
knight of the order of St. John of Jerusalem & a distinguished naval
officer, lost an eye in the attack on the Huguenot bastion at La
Rochelle in 1625 "when one of the vessels in his fleet blew up."
MacBeath says that supplies for Champlain at Québec & La Tour at
Cap-Sable, organized by Razilly, naval commander for Richelieu's
Company, were intercepted by an English squadron in the spring of 1628.
Ibid., 1:568; & Baudry, "Daniel," 1:247, say that Richelieu's Company
sent Razilly to Morocco to protect French shipping from Moorish pirates
in the Mediterranean; they give no dates of this deployment, but it
probably was in c1630.
MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:567, points out that in
1626, 2 years prior to Richelieu's founding of the Company of New
France, the cardinal asked Razilly, by then a respected naval officer
with vast experience, to write a report on the state of French commerce.
MacBeath writes" "The report that resulted stated frankly that the
nation's trade was at a low ebb owing to the government's mistaken
notion that trade was not vital to the country's welfare. Refuting
this idea, Razilly went on to observe that mastery of the sea would also
bring France great power on land. In the section dealing with New
France, he proposed that a large trading company with capital of 300,000
livres be organized, that steps be taken to block any English
encroachment north of the 36th parallel [approximately the middle of
Chesapeake Bay], and that three to four thousand colonists be placed on
the land both as a means to developing resources and to further ensure a
hold on the country." MacBeath asserts: "This report from a
man of renown and high reputation was received favourably by Richelieu
who set about putting the various proposals into force." In other
words, Razilly had much to do with the creation of the Company of New
France. As to the "three to four thousand colonists," neither the
Company nor any other French entity ever came close to that number,
especially in Acadia.
Griffiths, p. 39; & Parkman, 1:313, offer
details of the founding of Richelieu's Company of New France. In
1632, Richelieu also reclaimed Québec from Thomas Kirke, who had held it
since its capture in 1629. The Héberts,
sans patriarch Louis, now dead, had remained at Québec under English
rule. Champlain returned to command at Québec in the spring of
1633. He died there on Christmas Day, 1635, at age 68. See
Parkman, 1:320, 326ff.
Allain, "Not Worth a Straw," 9, says
that Richelieu created the Company of Morbihan, or Company of the
Hundred Associates, in 1626, but that opposition from ports outside of
Morbihan doomed the effort. Richelieu then created the Nacelle de
Saint-Pierre Fleurdlisée Company in 1627. The Company of New
France, "specifically to colonize," under Isaac de Razilly, followed in
1628. Allain notes that Razilly was chosen not because of his
kinship with the cardinal but because Razilly "had ample experience
already with Champlain." Allain, pp. 9-10, then provides deep
background to French use of commercial monopolies in their colonies.
Clark, p. 91, points out that the Scots'
activities in Acadia & Canada during the late 1620s delayed the
Company's efforts in Acadia. On pp. 90-91, he insists that none
of the 17th-century proprietary companies authorized by either
French or English monarchs met the settlement quotas written into their
charters. On p. 91, he is especially tough on Richelieu's efforts
to colonize Acadia: "Between 1632 and 1635 some 3,700,000 arpents
of land in Acadia were granted to the Company, but for all of their
interest in land as such it might as well have been 3,700 arpents, or
very little more."
MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:568, offers this
detailed nuance of Razilly's activities on the eve of his going to
Acadia: "Early in 1632 Cardinal Richelieu invited Razilly to
accept the post of lieutenant-general of New France, but he declined,
requesting instead to serve as a ship's captain under Champlain 'because
he is more competent in colonial affairs.'" But the cardinal would
not be dissuaded. "On 27 March," MacBeath continues, "Razilly and
Richelieu signed an agreement by which Razilly was to take possession of
Port-Royal ... for the company and France under terms of the Treaty of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye and to make Acadia a French colony.
Necessary authority to undertake this action was given Razilly in a
royal commission dated 10 May. While the company also wished
Razilly to begin settling the country, the losses it had suffered in the
recent war with England had left it short of funds. The solution
arrived at was to accord a part of its trading privilege to companies on
condition that such groups participate financially. So it was that
Razilly and some of his friends formed a private trading association
that came to be known as the Razilly-Condonnier company. While the
Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France provided an equipped vessel and the sum
of 10,000 livres for the 1632 expedition to Acadia, it was
Razilly's private trading group which advanced the greater part of the
money required. On 19 May, the company named Razilly
lieutenant-general for the king in New France and granted him a tract of
land at Sainte-Croix measuring 12 leagues by 20 leagues." Baudry,
"Menou," 1:503, says that the Razilly-Condonnier Company was not
organized until 1634.
21a.
White,
DGFA-1, 1171; & White, DGFA-1 English, 251, say that Razilly
"came to Acadia" on 4 Jul 1632. Parkman, France &
England,
1:1074, says he & his expedition reached
Port-Royal in August. MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:568, says that
Razilly's expedition left Auray on 23 Jul, "were joined by a ship from
La Rochelle," & reached Acadia on 8 Sep. Clark, Acadia, 91,
says Razilly left France on 4 July in L'Esperance à Dieu,
"shepherding two transports," & arrived at La Hève on 8 Sep.
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
49, agrees with Clarks's dates, used
here.
Why did Razilly's expedition sail from Auray,
which is in southern Brittany, west of Nantes? Was this the
headquarters of the Razilly-Condonnier Company?
Razilly named his settlement & its
fortifications at La Hève Fort Ste.-Marie-de-Grace. See Griffiths,
p. 50. La Hève is now La Have, near present-day Lunenburg, Nova
Scotia. MacBeath, 1:568, adds: "On the site of the present
village of Riverport [a few miles southwest of La Have, in the opposite
direction from Lunenburg & also in Lunenburg County], Razilly built a
habitation consisting of his own residence, a store, and Fort
Sainte-Marie-de-Grace. A chapel for the Capuchins and other
buildings for the families and the unmarried workmen were erected
nearby. It was here at La Hève, too, that the Capuchins opened the
first boarding-school in New France, one that was for the use of the
colonists and especially the Indians."
As to women with Razilly, Professor Griffiths,
whose study is recent & thoroughly researched, points out on pp. 48,
50-51, that it still cannot be determined by the historical record if
there were women & children in the 1632 expedition. She concludes:
"It seems most unlikely that women were part of this particular
expedition. ... No women are reported as passengers on any of these
ships." Clark, p. 91, says that Razilly's 1632 expedition
consisted of "mostly men." He notes on pp. 88-89 that the lack of
women, if allowed to continue, would likely have doomed the agricultural
component of the colony: "But it may be that one notable lack in
the 'equipment' of the settlements was primarily responsible for their
failure. In the history of the transference of people, plants, and
animals overseas from northwestern Europe to the mid-latitude lands
overseas colonized by them, it has been abundantly demonstrated that an
agricultural colony needs its own women and the stability of family
life. Poutrincourt brought his wife briefly, and two women may
have accompanied the Alexander settlers of 1628 or 1629, but if there
were any more we have no record of them." Yet, on pp. 94-95, Clark
estimates that there may have been "a dozen or fifteen women in the
original group," & assumes that they had children at La Hève!
MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:568, says that "12 to 15 families of colonists
were recruited" for the 1632 venture, which would have included women,
perhaps the source for Clark's "a dozen or fifteen women."
MacBeath adds: "In all '300 hommes d'élite,' including six
Capuchins and a number of noblemen made up the expedition."
For the forced return of the Scots at
Port-Royal to Britain, see Griffiths, p. 49. MacBeath, 1:568, says
that the takeover,which occurred in mid-Dec, was peaceful.
MacBeath even names the Scots settlement's commander: Capt. Andrew
Forrester. MacBeath asserts: "While a few of the Port-Royal
settlers probably joined Razilly's colonists, most accepted his offer of
passage home to England where they arrived in February 1632/33."
Clark, p. 91, is more specific; he says that "the Scottish settlement at
Port Royal was taken over, and all but the possible one or two families
who elected to remain departed...." One wonders which "one or two
families" this may have been. White,
DGFA-1, the most reliable source on early Acadian genealogy,
reveals no Scottish family that remained at Port Royal. White
insists that there were no "permanent" families in Acadia before 1636.
Arsenault, History, 37, agrees. Perhaps Clark is referring
to the Melansons, who once were thought to be of Scottish
ancestry but, in fact, were French Huguenots who did not come to Acadia
until 1657. See White, p. 1145; White,
DGFA-1 English, 247.
22. See Arsenault,
History, 21-22; Clark, Acadia, 91-92, 95.
MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:569, says that "Razilly had a good working
relationship with Charles de La Tour who shared with him, under
terms of the commissions issued by the Compagnie de La Nouvelle-France,
control of the land and the coasts of Acadia."
Clark, p. 92, note 38, gives the date 1633 for La Tour's
"extensive privileges which were to last for six years." Clark
adds: "There appears to be no definitive documentation but it is
argued by the La Tour apologists that before his death, Razilly
had set up three lieutenants: the coast of present Maine west of
the St. Croix River for d'Aulnay; from St. Croix to Canso for La Tour;
and Canso to Gaspé for Denys." Clark points out that "Denys became
something of an apologist for La Tour," which makes sense in
light of how d'Aulnay treated Denys after Razilly's death.
Parkman, France & England, 1:1074-76,
1078, says that
La Tour preferred the name Fort La Tour for his Rivière St.-Jean
holding, but it was more commonly called Fort St.-Jean. Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 44, 479 note 14, says it was called Fort
Ste.-Marie & that Fort La Tour was the name of La Tour's
establishment on the Atlantic coast. Clark, p. 85, note 26, says
that the fort on the Atlantic, near Cap-Sable, was first called Fort
Lomeron & then Fort St.-Louis & then Port La Tour. See also ibid.,
p. 92, note 32. Arsenault, Clark, and others assume that La
Tour's fort on the St.-Jean was located at Jemseg, about 70 miles up
the river. Parkman, 1:094, note 1, insists that the fort was
located at the mouth of the river, specifically Portland Point, "on the
east side of the St. John, at its mouth," and offers compelling evidence
that is followed here. Griffiths agrees & says that La Tour
built his fort on the St.-Jean around 1630, 2 years before Razilly's
expedition reached Acadia. One of the fort's purposes was to give
La Tour a place from which to keep a close eye on the Scots
settlement at Port-Royal across the bay.
Griffiths, pp. 44, 47-48, 52, also points out
that Charles La Tour's commission as lieutenant general of Acadia
dated from Feb 1631, which was more than a year before Razilly reached
Acadia, & that La Tour's commission was not revoked after Razilly
came to Acadia, probably the basis of their compromise.
Clark, p. 92, says that La Tour moved
his headquarters from Cap-Sable to Rivière St.-Jean in 1635, soon after
Isaac de Razilly died, but the most reliable source says that Razilly
died in Jul 1636. See note 25,
below.
Clark, p. 95, says he found "suggestions in
the mid-1640's of a hundred or more residents at the mouth of the Saint
John River, near the fort or forts at Cape Sable, and at Pentagouët and
other posts on the Maine coast. Some of these would have been from
the group of colons which La Tour brought with him in
1633, almost certainly as hands for his fishing or trading enterprises."
So La Tour also had the sense to establish an agricultural base
for his trading ventures. How else could he have reduced his
dependence on French merchants in providing sustenance for his men?
(Clark notes that "The distinction between colons and engagés
was, simply, that the latter were indentured and the former were not.")
Baudry, "Menou," 1:503, calls the La Tour
outpost at Pentagouët the Vieux-Logis, though it was less than a
decade old in 1632.
22a.
Arsenault, History,
22, gives the ages of d'Aulnay & Denys as 36 & 34, respectively.
Baudry, "Menou," 1:502, says that d'Aulnay was born in c1604, so he
would have been 28 in 1632. White,
DGFA-1, 487, 1170, gives the birth years of the 2 men as
c1604 & 1603, respectively.
Parkman,
France & England,
1:1075, note 1, explains the variations in the spelling of d'Aulnay's name,
using a descendant of d'Aulnay as authority for his version of the name,
d'Aunay, which differs from Arsenault, Clark, Griffiths, White, & most
other sources, which prefer d'Aulnay, like the French town in the Aunis
region. Chaunisay also is spelled Chaunizay; see White,
DGFA-1,1170, & White
DGFA-1 English, 251.
Interestingly,
d'Aulnay's biography in DCB does not use Chaunisay or any of its
variants in his name, though the biographer says that d'Aulnay was born
at the Château de Charnisay. See Baudry, "Menou," 1:502, who says
that d'Aulnay's parents were René de Menou, councillor of state under
Louis XIII, & Nicole de Joussenard. Baudry adds: "D'Aulnay
belonged to a very ancient noble family that originated in Perche.
His second name came from the seigneury of Aulnay, near Loudun,
bequeathed to him by his mother." Loudun, in northern Poitou, is
on the southern edge of the Loire River valley. Baudry says that
d'Aulnay not only was a cousin of Isaac de Razilly but that in the navy
he served as Razilly's lieutenant, so their relationship was based on
experience as well as blood. Baudry, 1:503, says that d'Aulnay
recruited settlers for Razilly, perhaps from the Loudun area.
Mathé Allain, "Colbert and the Colonies," in
Conrad, ed.,
The French Experience in Louisiana, 15ff, provides a discussion
of the seigneurial system of Canada & LA which also could be applied to
Acadia/Nova Scotia. See also Clark, Acadia, 95, 106, who
says on the latter page: "Something has been made of the 'feudal'
nature of the seigneurial grant to Razilly, and its inheritance by
d'Aulnay, as the transference of an Old World system to Port Royal.
But it has been argued that this is a misinterpretation even for New
France: 'A society in which everyone enjoys equal protection from
the state, and in which everyone is on the same footing with regard to
public duties is not feudal.'" For a more extensive discussion
here of the seigneurial system in Acadia, see note
100, below.
22b.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 70, 77; MacBeath, "Razilly,"
1:568. MacBeath adds: "Working towards the goal of
establishing the colony on a solid basis, Razilly set some of the men to
farming. Land for this purpose was cleared at Petite-Rivière
(Green Bay) [southwest of present-day La Have] and in the course of time
some 40 people were settled there." See also Clark, p. 98.
See Clark, p. 95, for Razilly's allotments at
La Hève. The governor's assessment of the richness of Acadian soil
attests to his being a much better sailor than he was a landsman.
22c.
Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 24. See also ibid., pp. 28,
Fig. 2.4, which shows the highest tides at the far end of the bay, in
the Minas Basin & Chignecto Bay. Still, the tides at Port-Royal
coming thru the Gut would have been substantial, especially higher up in
the Port-Royal Basin, where lay extensive salt marshes as far as the
tides could reach. See Historical Atlas of Canada, 1: plate
29. Clark, pp. 154-55, describes the agricultural potential at La
Hève, c1686-88, when only a hand full of families, mostly Indians &
métis, lived there.
See Clark, p. 95, for the quality of the
drumlin-based soil at La Hève.
23. See Clark, Acadia,
90-95, 98; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 50; MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:568.
Clark, pp. 93-94, says Denys did not build the
post at “St. Peters” until 1650. During
the short life of the French colony of Île Royale (1713-58),
headquartered at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, St. Peters was called
Port-Toulouse.
24. For the founding of Massachusetts Bay &
Boston, see Arsenault, History, 22; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 44.
Parkman, France & England, 1:1078-79, says that Englishmen from
Plymouth had established the trading post at Machias in the early 1630s.
There had been 5 Englishmen there, but La Tour had killed 2 of them when
he attacked the place. Ibid., 1:1079, says that Englishmen from
Plymouth also built a trading post at Castine, which was Pentagouët,
also spelled Pentagoët.
Griffiths, pp. 52-53, says that Razilly sent d'Aulnay to seize
Pentagouët "Later that year," that is, 1635. MacBeath, "Razilly,"
1:569, says that d'Aulnay captured the post in Aug. Baudry,
"Menou," 1:503, says that Charles La Tour had agreed to assist
Razilly in retaking Pentagouët but refused to do so in league with
d'Aulnay, which would have been an early warning of the the rivalry
building up between the 2 lieutenants.
24a.
Quotation from George MacBeath, "Thomas, Jean," in DCB, 1:642.
See also MacBeath, "Marot," in DCB, 1:490; MacBeath, "Razilly,"
1:568-69. MacBeath, in his bio. of Thomas, calls the Canso
incident "the first Indian revolt against the French in Acadia."
25.
See Arsenault, History, 22-23, 25; Clark, Acadia, 92-94;
Parkman, France & England, 1:1075; White, DGFA-1 English,
251.
Arsenault, pp. 22-23; Baudry, "Menou," 1:503;
Clark, p. 92; & Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 53, say
Razilly died in 1635. MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:569, says Dec 1735.
White, in
DGFA-1, 1369, & DGFA-1 English, 289, followed here, says 2
Jul 1636. Arsenault, p. 23, says that Razilly was buried at La Hève but
that his remains were removed to Louisbourg in 1749.
Griffiths, pp. 53-54, points out the dubious
nature of d'Aulnay's claim to Razilly's title & interests in Acadia.
Clark, p. 92, note 38, states: "Razilly's intention with regard to
division of authority between himself (and d'Aulnay), La Tour,
and Nicolas Denys has been argued but not resolved." White, p.
251, is clear that brother Claude inherited Isaac's estates but named
d'Aulnay as his chief lieutenant in Acadia, which in turn led to the
King's naming d'Aulnay lieutenant-general of the colony in Feb 1638.
Evidently Claude spent most of his time in France & let d'Aulnay
represent his interests in New France.
MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:569, cites 2 documents
that he says "may indicate that Claude de Launay-Rasilly was in Acadia,"
implying that Claude, unlike his brother, did not spend much time there,
& that there were questions about his spending anytime there at all.
MacBeath says that Claude was an associate of the Razilly-Condonnier
Company as well as the Company of New France & 2 other ventures that
were active in the St. Lawrence valley, which would have made him a very
busy fellow. MacBeath adds: "When, in 1634, the Compagnie de
la Nouvelle-France was unable to repay the Razillys the money they had
loaned, the company conceded them in the name of Claude de Rasilly the
forts at La Hève and Port-Royal as well as half of the profits to be
derived from the fur trade over the next ten years," so Claude was fixed
up in Acadia even before his brother died. After Isaac's death,
evidently business interests required Claude to remain in France, hence
the designation of d'Aulnay as his agent in Acadia. MacBeath
notes: "However, he [Claude] remained actively interested in the
affairs of the colony and in all probability it is he who was largely
responsible for continuing his brother's successful experiment of
establishing farmers in Acadia." MacBeath says "it seems
reasonable to suggest that some 120 permanent inhabitants were brought
to Acadia by the Razilly brothers." This would include the
passengers of the St.-Jehan of course. In early 1642,
Claude "sold his interests in the Razilly-Condonnier company to d'Aulnay
and, with this act, participation of the Razillys in affairs here
[Acadia] ceased." Baudry, 1:503, says that even before Isaac's
death, Claude had been granted Port-Royal, La Hève, & Île de Sable "in
his own name, and inherited his brother's shares in the Compagnie de
Razilly-Condonnier. His family responsibilities and his post in
the navy prevented him from coming personally to Acadia," hence his
naming cousin d'Aulnay as "his lieutenant in Acadia, while he himself
looked after the company's affairs in France."
26.
Quotation from Clark,
Acadia, 103. See also ibid., 92, 94-95, 97-98, 100;
Arsenault,
History, 25; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 54.
Baudry, "Menou," 1:503, suggests that d'Aulnay
made the move from La Hève not only because he believed the soil at
Port-Royal was more fertile, but also because "it was hoped to establish
salt-pans there, in order to be able to gather near at hand the salt
needed for the fisheries." See note 33,
below, for speculation on how salt-gathering at Port-Royal may have
contributed to the Acadians' adoption of dyking technology in the basin.
On soil & weather conditions at Port-Royal
compared to La Hève, Clark, p. 98, says: "This decision to move
from La Have was to be of critical importance for the changing geography
of the Acadians for more than a century afterward.... [But] the
motive of finding a more satisfactory spot for agriculture may have to
be discounted. As far as we know there had been no use of the Bay
of Fundy's tidal salt marshes for agriculture before 1635 and the upland
soils previously used in the Port Royal area were not significantly
better (and may have been worse) than those around La Have estuary.
It is true that the shelter of North Mountain [above the Port-Royal
Basin] from the prevailing northwest winds of winter has been advanced
as an attraction, yet Annapolis [today's Port-Royal], in fact, has lower
temperatures in January and February than has the Lunenburg coast [where
La Have is found today]." For a general discussion of the geology
of Nova Scotia, including the nature of the soil on the peninsula & Cape
Breton Island, see Clark, chap. 2.
Continuing his discussion of d'Aulnay's move,
Clark, p. 99, compares the harbors at La Hève & Port Royal & considers
the latter to be superior in defensibility only if the French had
employed elaborate defenses at the Gut & "a series of message
relay-stations for warnings to the fort," which they never did. He
concludes: "Indeed there are few harbors outside of the
Mediterranean Sea that have had as sorry a history of vulnerability to
sea attack as did Port Royal."
Clark reminds us that d'Aulnay "was primarily
interested in quick profits from the fur trade," so he moved his
headquarters from La Hève to Port-Royal to be "nearer to the chief
source of furs which was on the continent, not on the peninsula," an
advantage that La Tour, on Rivière St.-Jean, already enjoyed.
See pp. 98-99, quote from p. 98. Clark, p. 92, hints that another
reason for the move from La Hève to Port-Royal was that La Hève lay in "La
Tour country."
Clark, p. 100, suggests that the move from La
Hève to Port-Royal "perhaps was underway before 1635 and largely
concluded by 1640." Clark, remember, believed that Razilly had
died in 1635, not in Jul 1636, followed here.
D'Aulnay chose a different location for his
headquarters at Port-Royal than the site of the old fort occupied by
Dugua, Poutrincourt, & Biencourt in earlier days. The old fort, as
previously noted, was located on the north shore of the basin opposite Goat Island.
D'Aulnay chose a site 8 miles farther up, or east, of the old fort in a
bend on the south side of the main river channel that flows into the
basin, at the present site of Annapolis Royal. The French called
the river that flows into the basin Rivière-au-Dauphin & also Rivière
Port-Royal; it is today the Annapolis River. See Clark, p. 102,
map, Fig. 4.3.
Clark says on p. 85: "In none of [the
posts that existed in Acadia when Razilly arrived in 1632] was
agriculture of any importance. Yet agriculture had been practiced
in the period, first most tentatively at St. Croix [in 1604], and then
more extensively and intensely at Port Royal [1605-13 & 1628-32], with
enough success to suggest that permanent colonies could be assured of
self-support in food." He goes on to detail the agricultural
efforts at Île Ste.-Croixe & Port-Royal in the earliest days of the
colony, especially the efforts of Marc Lescarbot at Port-Royal.
Clark also details the animals kept by the early Port-Royal colonists.
See pp. 85-86. Clark says on pp. 96, 98: "Perhaps there were
members of the Poutrincourt-La Tour group at Port Royal each year
from 1613 to 1628 [when the Scots settled there], and of the
Razilly-d'Aulnay group from 1632 to 1635, but continuous agricultural
settlement in this seedbed of the Acadian people dates from the firm
establishment there of d'Aulnay's 'habitans' from La Have in the late
1630's."
Clark, pp. 94-95, says that Denys counted only
40 habitants at La Hève in 1635 but goes on to say: "Apparently
there were but a dozen or fifteen women in the original group.
Assuming that most of these survived, and that they had a reasonable
number of children, we may estimate roughly a hundred people in all
living at La Have in 1635." White, DGFA-1, finds no
"permanent" families in Acadia before 1636. Arsenault, History,
37, agrees.
For the métis community at La Hève, see
Clark, pp..95, 128-29, the source for calling that settlement a métis
community. Clark, pp. 128-29, writing in 1968, notes: "It
has been observed before that the absorption of Micmac by the Acadian
community has not been well studied. There was a rather
conspicuous métis settlement in the La Have-Mirligueche region which,
Rameau [ in 1889] estimated, numbered seventy-five or more at the turn of
the [17th] century. This settlement had a continuous history from
the arrival of Razilly's settlers in 1632. It has been assumed
that those who did not move to Port Royal later in the decade included
many who had made alliances with Indian women; further recruitment may
have involved daughters of the Port Royal settlement (especially those
with Indian blood) or Indian girls from the interior. It is likely
that, in any event, this group became highly inbred, but that was a
situation characteristic of the small Acadian groups everywhere."
Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 188-89, writing in 1987,
makes the remarkable assertion that "offspring of mixed blood were
generally exiled to the isolated Atlantic coast community of La
Hève." Italics added. "Exiled" seems to be too-harsh a term
for a community whose history predates the "white" community at
Port-Royal by several years.
For Pierre Comeau
and his family, see Arsenault. Généalogie, 484ff; White,
DGFA-1, 369-93; White
DGFA-1 English, 83-88; Dave Comeau, descendant of Pierre.
Pierre Comeau did not marry until c1649, when he was 51 years
old. Age did not slow him down a bit; he fathered 9 children, the
last one born when he was 67!
For Germain
Doucet and his family, see Arsenault, Généalogie,
505ff; White, DGFA-1,
526-51; White,
DGFA-1 English, 112-16. White calls him sieur de La Verdure,
which denotes membership in the lesser nobility. Arsenault says
simply
dit Laverdure. According to White, Doucet was
married in France in c1620; his son Pierre was born in c1621, his
daughter Marguerite (Arsenault calls her Marguerite-Louise) in c1625
(Arsenault says in c1634), so they would have been 11 & 7 if they had
accompanied their parents to Acadia in 1632. White does not say if
Doucet
took his family with him to Acadia in 1632; he probably did not (see
above). A second Doucet daughter, unnamed, was born about
this time (she married at Port-Royal in c1650, so if she was 18 at the
time of her marriage, she would have been born in c1632).
Doucet's second son, Germain, fils, was born in c1641
probably at Port-Royal (Arsenault says the second Germain was the son of
Pierre & thus the grandson of the first Germain, but, according to
White, Pierre did not marry until c1660). According to White, all
4 of these children were from Germain père's first wife, whose
name has been lost to history, as has the name of his second wife, whom
Germain married in c1654 & who, according to White, gave him no children
who survived in Acadia. White, DGFA-1 English, 112-13,
shows evidence, however, that Germain's second wife may have been the
sister of surgeon & prominent settler, Jacques Bourgeois, who
served as Doucet's "lieutenant" in 1654 when the English seized
Port-Royal & who married Jeanne Trahan in c1643. See
Appendix
for more on these Acadian pioneers.
In the case of Acadian genealogy, whenever
there is conflict of information between Arsenault & White, not an
unusual occurrence, this author follows White, the more recent and more
accurate of the two genealogical sources, unless otherwise
noted. Recent yDNA findings among nearly a dozen male descendants of
Germain Doucet,
fils, however, call into question the relationship between the 2
Germains. The yDNA evidence tends to point to the conclusion that
Germain, fils was a full-blooded Mi'kmaq whom Sieur Germain
adopted, implying that Sieur Germain's second wife may have been a
Mi'kmaq who had children by a previous Indian husband & that she was not
a fellow French colonist's daughter.
27.
Quotation from Arsenault, History, 44. Griffith, From
Migrant to Acadian, 193, calls Mathieu Martin "one [of] the
first children born in Acadia, both of whose parents were European ..."
For Pierre Martin's family, see White, DGFA-1, 1125.
For the founding of Cobeguit, see note 95,
below.
27a. See
Arsenault,
Généalogie, 673-74, 816; Arsenault,
History, 37-38; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 54-55.
For the importance of women & families to an
agricultural settlement, see Clark, Acadia, 88-89.
La Chaussée, in the Orleanais region, is 75
miles northeast of Martaizé. Professor Barry Ancelet in Zachary
Richard's video, "Against the Tide," asserts that many of the early
Acadian settlers knew one another before they reached Acadia, that about
60 percent of them came from a 20-mile radius around a small community
in northern Poitou. He must be referring to Martaizé & Bourgueil,
which are 20 miles apart. For the significance of these towns in
Acadia's early settlement, see the list in
Appendex
of the names, known dates of arrival, origins, & occupations of the
pioneers of Acadia. Note also the author's caveat about research
on the origins of the first Acadians: "The reader must keep in
mind that the years of arrival and the origins of the patriarchs of
Acadia given in this history come mostly from Arsenault, Généalogie,
whose dearth of documentation renders the information not much more than
speculation. The arrival dates and origins in White, DGFA-1,
based on more careful research, are used when they are available.
Arsenault's information is based largely on the research of Ms.
Geneviève Massignon, whose findings have been questioned by Father
d'Entremont (see his article reprinted in AGE, October 2003, pp.
66-68; May 2004, pp. 31-32). Father d'Entremont reminds us that
the Port-Royal church records before 1700, which could have provided the
true origins of the Acadian pioneers, were burned, and this information
is therefore lost to history. He contends that Ms. Massignon's
basic assumption about the origins of the early Acadians--that people
with names similar to the early Acadians lived in the area from which
the sieur d'Aulnay recruited the first settlers of the colony,
particularly Martaizé and La Chaussée in the Loire valley--is a flawed
assumption. First, Razilly, not d'Aulnay, recruited the earliest
Acadian families; second, the names of these families can be found in
other regions of France as well."
Isaac de Razilly's brother, Claude de
Launay-Rasilly, also recruited settlers for the colony. See
MacBeath, "Razilly," 1:569.
Isaac Pesseley served as major
of Port-Royal and died in Apr 1645 during the civil war between d'Aulnay
& La Tour. Pesseley's youngest daughter Marie, born at
Port-Royal about the time of his death, is the matriarch of all the
Pitres of Acadia. See White, DGFA-1, 1288-89, 1318.
Pesseley's wife's family name also is spelled Barjolet,
Bajol, Bayols. She, too, was from Piney. A recent
article by Acadian historian/genealogist Father Clarence d'Entremont in
AGE (May 2012), pp. 50-52, details the family's history in France
& Acadia. According to Fr. d'Entremont, Isaac likely brought his
wife & daughter Marguerite to Acadia aboard St.-Jehan & says
their other 5 children, 4 daughters & a son, were born in Acadia.
However, White, cited above, gives the couple 8 children in all,
including a son Étienne, born at Piney in Oct 1630, Marguerite at Piney
in 1633, and daughter Perrette at Piney in 1634. It is possible
that Étienne and Perrette died in France before 1636 & only Marguerite
was alive when St.-Jehan sailed. White gives no death dates
for Étienne & Perrette, implying, perhaps, that they did not survive
childhood. Of Pesseley's 8 children, in fact, White shows
marriages only for Marguerite (to Antoine Hervieu de Herviste at
St.-Jean de La Rochelle, France, in May 1652), & Marie, to Jean Pitre
in c1665, & to François Robin in c1690.
Arsenault gives Guillaume Trahan's age
in 1636 as 35, but he was 60 at the time of the first census of Acadia
in 1671, placing his birth in c1611, so he was actually only 25 when he
left France for Acadia. Guillaume's second daughter, whose name
has been lost, is the one who married Germain Doucet, sieur de La
Verdure. For a detailed analysis of the origins of the Martins
& Trahans of Acadia, see Massignon, "Trahans of Acadiana," which
also mentions, on p. 117, the birth of Mathieu Martin & his
distinction as "first-born" in Acadia. Massignon spells Françoise
Corbineau's family name Charbonneau. Françoise died by
c1666, when Guillaume
Trahan
remarried to Madeleine, daughter of Vincent Brun, at Port-Royal.
See White, DGFA-1, 1536. Massignon also notes, pp. 118-19,
that Guillaume Trahan had been severely fined in 1634, 2 years
before his passage on the St.-Jehan, for cutting down trees in
the forest of Bourgueil, a possible motivation for his going to Acadia,
where trees could be felled with impunity. See
Appendix
for more on Antoine Bourg, Vincent Brun, Jean Gaudet,
& François Gautrot. Arsenault, History, 37, is the
source for Jeanne Motin's heading the list of passengers aboard the
St.-Jehan. Her marriage to d'Aulnay is in White, DGFA-1,
1170. Faragher,
A Great & Noble Scheme, 51, says they were married in France.
For details of Jeanne Motin's life, see George MacBeth, "MOTIN (Mottin),
Jeanne," in DCB, 1:514.
Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records,
1-A:547, 788, is the marriage of Pierre Martin & Catherine
Vigneau on 30 Jun 1630 in France, & 1-A:203, 767, is the marriage
of Guillaume, son of Nicolas Trahan & Renée Desloges, to
Françoise Corbineau of the parish of St.-Étienne, on 13 Jul 1627,
both in France. See also White, DGFA-1, 1125, 1288-89,
1535-36; White, DGFA-1 English, 243, 323-34. The
St.-Jehan left La Rochelle on Apr 1, & its passenger role bears that
date.
Arsenault, History, 26, days that
d'Aulnay married Jeanne Motin in 1636, which would have been soon
after she reached Acadia. Baudry, "Menou," 1:503, says d'Aulnay
married Jeanne Motin in 1638. White, DGFA-1, 1170,
followed here, agrees. Baudry, 1:503, adds that Jeanne was
sister-in-law of another of d'Aulnay's associates, Nicolas Le Creux du
Brueil, & that marrying her "was a clear indication of his intention to
settle in the country." She was age 23 at the time of the wedding;
he was 34. She gave him 8 children, none of whom married:
Marie, born at Port-Royal in Sep 1639, was named Dlle de Poussay in
Lorraine in 1676; Charles, fils, born probably at Port-Royal in
c1642, was still a bachelor when he died in military service; Renée
became a nun in Touraine; Jeanne, born probably at Port-Royal in c1646,
also became a nun; René, born probably at Port-Royal in c1648, also was
a bachelor when he died in combat; Anne, born probably at Port-Royal in
c1649, became a nun at Jouarre; & Paul, born probably at Port-Royal in
c1650, the year of his father's death, became a captain in the regiment
of Maréchal de La Ferté, was promoted to major, & died in the siege of
Luxembourg in 1684. See White, pp. 1170-72.
27b.
Quotation from Taylor, D. J., "Bruns-Lebruns," 33. Lucie LeBlanc
Consentino's website <acadian-home.org>
contains an English translation of the St.-Jehan's passenger
list, found in the records of the Department of Charente-Maritime at La
Rochelle & in the Paris archives. On it can be found Isaac
Pesselin (from Champagne), Pierre Martin (laborer ... from
Bourgueil), & Guillaume Trahan (an "officer of the cavalry" ...
also from Bourgueil), but not Antoine Bourg, Vincent Brun,
Jean Gaudet, or François Gautrot. Note that White,
DGFA-1, 221-22, 289, 666-67, 691-92, does not include
Bourg, Brun, Gaudet, & Gautrot as passengers
aboard St.-Jehan. Arsenault, Généalogie, Port-Royal
section, 448, 554, 566, 718, says that Bourg, Gaudet,
Gautrot, & Pesseley arrived in "c1636"; Arsenault includes
only Martin & Trahan on the 1 Apr 1636 La Rochelle
passenger list, but, unlike White, does not name the vessel. Were
the presence of Bourg, Brun, Gaudet, & Gautrot
aboard the vessel simply family legend? No matter, they were among
the first settlers in Acadia.
28.
Quotation from White, DGFA-1 English, 251. See also
Arsenault,
History, 25. Detailed accounts of the struggle between
La Tour & d'Aulnay can be found in Parkman, France & England,
1:1075-95, part of chap. 1 & all of chap. 2 of his volume, The Old
Regime in Canada, long a classic description of this era in American
colonial history; Baudry, "Menou," 1:503-05; George MacBeath,
"Saint-Étienne de La Tour, Charles," in DCB, 1:594-95.
Clark, Acadia, 90, who spares us the
details of the struggle, says of the conflict between La Tour &
d'Aulnay: "The history of these twenty-two years [1632-54] has
often been written as a sort of opéra bouffe libretto based on
the vendetta between Charles de La Tour
and Charles de Menou d'Aulnay for control of the fur trade. It is
true enough that the energies of the settlers were greatly occupied by
that miniscule civil war between rival fur-trading seigneurs.
The struggle originated and persisted for many reasons: because of
the inconsistency and inaccuracy in the statement of terms of the
grants, or the failure to annul earlier rights in granting new ones;
because the responsible people in Paris knew little of Acadia and cared
even less; because Acadia was too far away for adequate enforcement of
authority from France or Quebec; and because in Acadia there was no
single authority. Of importance to us is that this armed feud
diverted so much attention from the actual settlement and its
agricultural activities that the few settlers brought out, when they
were not drafted for service on attack or forced to be active in their
own defense, were often left to fend for themselves." Second set
of italics added. Clark, p. 93, note 39, writing in the late
1960s, says that "Feelings among historians partial to one side or the
other still run as high as those of the early seventeenth-century
antagonists themselves. A bibliography of the literary feud would
be long." He then highlights some of more notable sources on the
La Tour/d'Aulnay feud.
29.
Quotations from Baudry, "Menou," 1:503; Arsenault, History, 25,
26; Parkman, France & England, 1:1090.
Baudry, "Menou," 1:504, calls Le Borgne
"a Huguenot merchant of La Rochelle...." Mason Wade, "Le Borgne,
Emmanuel," in DCB, 1:433-35, says nothing of Le Borgne
being a Huguenot. Parkman, 1:1102, calls him, simply, "a merchant
of La Rochelle...." Perhaps Baudry assumed that Le Borgne's
being from La Rochelle made him a Protestant, but, according to Wade,
Le Borgne was a native of Calais who married a woman from La
Rochelle & settled there.
Arsenault says the assault on Port-Royal was
in Aug; Parkman, followed here, says Jul. For the 14 Jul 1640
inquiry at Port-Royal, see White, DGFA-1 English, 113, 274, 324.
Baudry, 1:503, says that La Tour
made the first aggressive move in the conflict by inciting the Indians
against d'Aulnay, calls the struggle between the rivals "a minor war,"
says it "half ruined" both of them as well as burdened the colony, &
points out that in 1640, during the conflict, "the Dutch made a number
of forays on the Acadian coasts...." Ibid., 1:504-05, details
d'Aulnay's trip to France during 1641-42. Arsenault, p. 25, says
that "During his frequent trips to France, d'Aulnay recruited many
families and hired hands for Acadia from around Touraine, Poitou, Anjou,
Saintonge and Champagne," which would have made him a very busy fellow
there.
29a.
Quotation from ibid., 1:504-505.
30.
Quotation from Arsenault,
History, 27, who says that there were 50 men with Madame La
Tour at Fort St.-Jean. Parkman's number is used here.
Arsenault says that d'Aulnay lost 33 men in the assault. Baudry,
"Menou," 1:505, agreeing with Parkman's number of men with Madame La
Tour, says that d'Aulnay lost 8 men in the siege/assault & "paid
compensation to their families."
According to Parkman, France & England,
Madame La Tour was the former Marie Jacquelin, a Huguenot,
"daughter of a barber of Mans," who "proved [to be] a prodigy of mettle
and energy, espoused her husband's cause with passionate vehemence, and
backed his quarrel like the intrepid Amazon she was." Quotations
from 1:1079, 1080. Parkman's account of La Tour's adventures
after his loss of the fort and "his indomitable wife" is found on
1:1098ff. White, DGFA-1, 1433, calls her Françoise-Marie
Jacquelin, daughter of nobleman & doctor of medicine Jacques Jacquelin
of Nogent-le-Rotrou, & Hélène Lerminier, & says that Marie died in May
1645. White says that she was Charles La Tour's second
wife.
Among those killed in the assault on La
Tour's fort on Rivière St.-Jean was Isaac Pesseley, a
merchant from Piney in Champagne and major of Port-Royal who had
come to the colony with a wife & 3 children aboard the St.-Jehan
in 1636. Pesseley had testified against
La Tour in d'Aulnay's inquiry at Port-Royal in Jul 1640 &
remained a staunch ally of the governor. Pesseley left
behind a wife & 8 children, the youngest of whom was a newborn daughter
named Marie. Twenty years later, Marie married Jean Pitre,
an edged tool maker who came to Acadia during the late 1650s, and with
him created a vigorous line of Acadian settlers. See White,
DGFA-1, 1288-89, 1321-26; White,
DGFA-1 English, 274.
31. See
Baudry, 1:505; Clark,
Acadia, 93-94; Parkman, France & England, 1:1091-92,
1096-97, who details d'Aulnay's successful peace missions to Boston in
1644 and again in 1646 conducted by a Capuchin friar dressed as a
gentleman, "one Monsieur Marie."
D'Aulnay's seizures on the Gulf of St.
Lawrence & on Cape Breton Island were challenged in the admiralty courts
& at Paris, of course, but by then d'Aulnay was so well connected at
Court that nothing was done to him.
32. See
Arsenault,
History, 28; Baudry, "Menou," 1:505; Clark, Acadia, 93;
White, DGFA-1 English, 251. Parkman, France & England,
1:1099-1100, concludes, p. 1100: "Acadia, in short, was made an
hereditary fief, and D'Aunay and his heirs became lords of a domain as
large as a European kingdom." Parkman & Baudry say nothing of the
concession to Denys. Baudry details d'Aulnay's forays in the mid-1640s
against other competitors in the fur trade, including fishing vessels
from the Basque region, Bordeaux, & Brittany.
Baudry says that Le Borgne traveled to
Port-Royal to confront d'Aulnay about the unpaid debts, amounting to
200,000 livres by 1648, but that d'Aulnay sent the merchant back
to France with an empty ship. D'Aulnay then found other suppliers
among the merchants at Nantes & Bayonne.
Louis XIV, born in 1638, had become king on
the death of his father, Louis XIII, in 1642. Because of Louis
XIV's youth, his mother ruled as his regent until 1651, when her lover &
the young king's godfather, Cardinal Mazarin, essentially took control
of the kingdom as Louis XIV's chief minister. This arrangement
lasted until Mazarin's death in 1661, after which Louis XIV, now in his
early 20s, ruled without a chief minister.
33.
Quotation from Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 49. Ibid.,
pp. 48-50, details the construction of aboiteaux, & also says on p. 49:
"Although [Nicolas] Denys attributed the diking to d'Aulnay, it is
doubtful that the lieutenant-governor had much to do with it." See
Clark,
Acadia, 53-55, for a discussion of dyking in the context of
Acadian soil fertility. In a review of subsistence farming in the
Port-Royal valley from 1605-36, Clark says on p. 87: "There is no
evidence whatsoever of the dyking of the salt marshes, the successful
establishment of fruit trees or, indeed, of any lasting improvements
that could be part of the capital equipment of subsequent settlers," so
the dyking operations did not begin until the late 1630s, that is,
during d'Aulnay's time as Acadian proprietor. Giovanni Cherubini,
in his essay "The Peasant and Agriculture," in Le Goff,
Medieval World, 115, notes: "... in Brittany and Poitou ...
peasants successfully drained the salt marches...," so the technique was
well known in France. For more details on the dyking process, see
note 225, below.
Clark, pp. 101, 103, published in 1968, adds:
"In speculation on the localities of the Acadians in France there has
been little advance beyond Sulte's conclusion of 1905 that '... their
dialect would indicate their place of origin to be in the neighborhood
of the Bay of Biscay and the mouth of the River Loire,' except for the
recent research of Geneviève Massignon [1962] which implies that the
1632 settlers and perhaps others introduced by d'Aulnay before
mid-century, may have come chiefly from the Loudunais area in
northeastern Poitou (the northern part of the present Département of
Vienne). The discussion of origins is amplified in the Appendix
[his pp. 397-400], but the significance of Massignon's conclusions, if
we accept them, is that few of the earliest settlers would have come
from the vicinities where dyking of tidal marshes, recently introduced
from the Netherlands, was in progress at the time they left France.
Yet we may also suppose that the men even of inland Poitou, perhaps
occasionally following river tributaries flowing into the Loire and so
to Nantes and the sea, may well have known of such activity along the
coasts and estuaries from the Loire to the Gironde. Certainly
dyking got under way in the basin near the mouth of the Dauphin
(Annapolis) River within the first decade or two after d'Aulnay's move
to Port Royal." Clark further adds on p. 103, note 66: "In
the reign of Louis XIII (1610-43) extensive reclamation of tidal
marshlands by dyking had taken place near La Rochelle and in Saintonge
and Poitou, under the supervision of Dutch engineers. Many of the
Razilly group (or others) might have been familiar with the techniques."
Thus, the early Acadians from those regions would have had knowledge of
this process, either direct or observed, when they came to Port-Royal.
D'Aulnay certainly would have known if his farmers had such knowledge &
would have encouraged their efforts, especially after he would have seen
that the system worked. See Historical Atlas of Canada, 1:
plate 29, for a detailed depiction of the extent of salt marsh dyking in
the valley of the Rivière au Dauphin by 1710. (For a critique of
the Massignon thesis, see
Appendix.)
Clark, p. 103, says that at Port-Royal
d'Aulnay "developed two large farms for his own use worked by his own
engagés." One wonders if he experimented with dyking the salt
marshes on one or both of these farms.
Baudry, "Menou," 1:503, hints that the dyking
operation at Port-Royal may have been motivated not only by the lure of
better soil in the basin but also by the need to produce an essential
product--salt. Baudry writes: "He [d'Aulnay] very soon
decided, no doubt in agreement with his chief [Claude de Rasilly, the
dead Isaac Razilly's brother], to set up the colony's principal post at
Port-Royal. This site offered a double advantage: it had
fertile lands, which La Hève lacked, and it was hoped to establish
salt-pans there, in order to be able to gather near at hand the salt
needed for the fisheries. Claude de Rasilly sent salt-makers, and
the construction of the dikes was begun." Baudry does not explain
how sea salt leeching from the tidal marshes via an aboiteau would
provide, with the use of salt-pans, the essential ingredient for the cod
fishery. Perhaps at low tides, after a hard rain, salt-makers,
called sauniers by the French, could capture the salt from the
water running out of the dyked fields via the sluices by the use of
salt-pans, though, over time, the amount of salt thus captured would
diminish, compelling the sauniers to move on to newly-dyked fields.
Waste not, want not, the Acadians would say. Salt was a valuable
commodity in France; so much so that the government monopolized its
production & distribution. Salt would not have been less valuable
in Acadia, especially considering the importance of the cod fishery to
the colony's economic well-being. What Baudry seems to be saying
is that d'Aulnay showed the settlers how to dyke the marshes to produce
salt for the fisheries, or, more likely, encouraged the ones who
understood the technique to commence dyking not only to create pasturage
& grain fields with which to feed the colony, but also to help the
sauniers capture salt for the fishery. Or perhaps Rasilly's
sauniers, encouraged by d'Aulnay, showed the settlers how to dyke the
marshes & produce salt for the fisheries, & the settlers figured out for
themselves how to create salt-free pasturage & crop soil using the
dyking technique. No matter, perfection of the dyking operation
would have taken years & would not have been sustainable until dozens of
families lived in the basin & could have provided the necessary manpower
to build & sustain the dykes. This was achieved by 1653, when
Denys observed the operation & attributed it to d'Aulnay. See note
39, below. For details about the Bay
of Fundy tides that made the use of aboiteaux possible, see note
223, below. It is not possible to
overstate the role of dyking in the development of a unique Acadian
culture.
34.
Quotations from Parkman, France & England, 1:1100.
Arsenault,
History, 28-29, 31, says that d'Aulnay was traveling alone and
that he died of exhaustion and exposure.
Baudry, "Menou," 1:505, does not mention the valet & says that d'Aulnay
"was engaged upon clearing further tracts of land when he died
suddenly," that "His canoe capsized in the Port-Royal basin, and he died
of exhaustion after remaining an hour and a half in the icy water."
Moody, Acadians, 17, indicates that d'Aulnay may have been
pushed from the canoe and thus murdered, an accusation this researcher
has found nowhere else. Parkman, cited above & followed here, says
that d'Aulnay traveled with his valet, that they were "in a birch canoe
in the basin of Port Royal, not far from the mouth of the Annapolis,"
and that d'Aulnay died "not from drowning but from cold, for the water
still retained the chill of winter." Griffiths, From Migrant to
Acadian, 61, says d'Aulnay "drowned in a canoe accident on the Saint
John." All other sources this researcher has seen say that
d'Aulnay died at Port-Royal. See, e.g, Clark, Acadia, 93;
Baudry, "Menou," 1:505; Parkman, cited above; Arsenault, cited above.
D'Aulnay was 46 at the time of his death.
He left his widow with 8 children, including 4 sons who perished on
French battlefields and 3 daughters who became nuns. See White,
DGFA-1, 1170-72, DGFA-1 English, 251, for details of
d'Aulnay's birth, marriage, & the lives of his children. See also
Parkman, p. 1103.
Baudry says that d'Aulnay's father, René de
Menou, became his grandchildren's guardian, which means that they likely
were sent to France & lived out their days there. See note
27a, above.
34a.
Baudry, "Menou," 1:505-06, sums up d'Aulnay's contribution: "What
he achieved was appreciable. According to the testimony of the
earliest settlers, he had had three forts built, equipped with 60
cannon, and he maintained garrisons there. He had fetched some 20
families from France, and in order to establish them he had brought
grass-lands under cultivation, organized two farms at Port-Royal, and
cleared stretches of land at Pentagouët and the Saint John River.
To supply his settlers, he had three or four ships come each year from
France; he had two mills constructed, and built two small ships of 70
tons, five pinnaces, and several sloops. He had also established
two schools, and at his death he left a population of about 500 souls,
divided among four posts and served by 12 Capuchins." Baudry
concludes: "These results may seem rather slight, but they assume
considerable proportions when one remembers that d'Aulnay obtained them
by his own efforts, with no official help. Such achievements
betoken a high degree of intelligence and energy. While his rivals
were almost entirely concerned with trade, d'Aulnay's ambition was to
establish a lasting colony, and he realized that this could be done only
by settling families in the country and by giving them the means of
subsisting on the spot and by themselves, through the cultivation of the
land, through fishing, and through industry. The colony that he
left in Acadia was well rooted and vigorous enough to resist the English
occupation and the 20 years of neglect that followed. That is
enough for d'Aulnay to deserve consideration as a great colonizer and as
one of the first architects of the plan to give to the Atlantic
provinces a European population."
Parkman, France & England, 1101, sums
up d'Aulnay's character: "He seems to have been a favorable
example of his class, loyal to his faith and his king, tempering pride
with courtesy, and generally true to his cherished ideal of the
gentilhomme Français. In his qualities, as in his birth, he
was far above his rival, and his death was the ruin of the only French
colony in Acadia that deserved the name."
35.
Quotation from Wade, "Le Borgne, Emmanuel," 1:433. See also
Arsenault, History, 31, 32; Clark, Acadia, 93, who says
that
La Tour was "resting" at Québec & "stood off" Le Borgne;
Parkman, France & England, 1101-03, who suspects that the
proclamation naming La Tour as governor and lieutenant-general of
Acadia was a fabrication. Parkman is no more impressed with Le
Borgne's claims to d'Aulnay's assets, which in Parkman's account
sound more like extortion than a creditor's claims. See especially
p. 1102. For a chronology of Le Borgne's dealings with d'Aulnay
& Denys & his efforts to recoup the large debt, see See White,
DGFA-1 English, 218. For details of Le Borgne's
progeny in Acadia, who eventually called themselves
Bélisle, and also the descendants of Mius d'Entremont,
follow the hyperlinks in
Appendix.
Parkman, 1:1102, implies that, soon after he
secured acknowledgment of d'Aulnay's debt to him from the dead
governor's father, Le Borgne himself went to Port-Royal to shake
down d'Aulnay's widow. Arsenault, Généalogie, 406, hints
that Le Borgne did not go to Acadia, his two sons in tow, until
1654, the year of the English attack. Wade, followed here, says
that Le Borgne himself did not go to Acadia until 1653.
See DCB, 1:510, for a short biography
of Philippe Mius d'Entremont written by Acadian historian Father
Clément Cormier. According to Fr. Cormier, d'Entremont &
Charles La Tour had been friends from childhood. Soon after
ordering the rebuilding of the post at Cap-Sable, Gov. La Tour
granted his childhood friend the seigneurie of Pobomcoup at Cap-Sable.
Fr. Cormier adds: "To reward him for his services, La Tour
offered d'Entremont in 1651 or 1653 the letters patent of the
Pobomcoup fief, as a barony. The feudal rights conferred upon the
baron a territory stretching from Cap Nègre to Cap Forchu (Yarmouth).
The feudal castle was built near the entry to the natural harbour of
Pubnico, on the east side." Clark, Acadia, 116, Fig. 5.2,
says that Mius d'Entremont's seigneurie was "a subgrant from
Charles La Tour. The precise date is uncertain, but may
have been in the early 1650s." Despite La Tour's mercurial
relationship with French authorities, the Crown evidently approved the
grant. Amazingly, the Mius d'Entremonts held the barony for
over a century, until the Acadian expulsion of the 1750s.
36. Quotation
from Arsenault,
History, 32. See also Parkman, France & England,
1102-03, who says that Mme. d'Aulnay initiated the marriage, which took
place on 24 Feb, for the benefit of her children. After summing up
La Tour's activities after the death of his rival and noting that
descendants of the old outlaw remained in Acadia up to the present day,
Parkman, p.1104, leaves us with these sad words about the fate of La
Tour's old rival: "As for D'Aunay, no trace of his blood is
left in the land where he gave wealth and life for France and the
Church." George MacBeth, "Motin (Mottin), Jeanne," in
DCB, 1:514, says that La Tour married d'Aulnay's widow in
Jul 1653, that they lived for a time on the St.-Jean but moved to
Cap-Sable in c1656, where she died by 1667.
White, DGFA-1, 1433-35, followed here,
details Charles La Tour's remarkable family. His first
wife, an unnamed Indian woman who he married in c1625, gave him 3
daughters, Jeanne, born in c1626, who married Martin d'Aprendestiguy de
Martignon at Pentagouët in c1655; Antoinette, who became a nun in Jul
1646; & a third daughter whose name has been lost to history & who also
became a nun. His second wife, François-Marie, called Marie,
Jacquelin, who he married at Fort St.-Louis, Cap-Sable, in c1640, gave
him a son, whose name has been lost, born at Fort La Tour on
Rivière St.-Jean in c1641, who died young. Charles La Tour's
third wife was d'Aulnay's widow, Jeanne Motin de Reux, whom he
married at Port-Royal in Feb 1653 (the marriage contract is dated 24
Feb), when he was 60 & she was 38, & who gave him most of his children &
both of his surviving sons: Marie, born in c1654, who married
Alexandre Le Borgne de Bélisle at Port-Royal in c1674; Jacques,
born in c1655, who married Anne, daughter of Charles Melanson, in
c1685; Marguerite, born in c1658, who married first to Abraham Mius
de Pleinmarais in c1676, & then to Jean-François Villatte at Port-Royal
in Jun 1705; Anne, born in c1661, who married Jacques Mius
d'Entremont de Pobomcoup in c1678; & Charles, fils, born
probably at Port-Royal in Mar 1663, who married Jeanne-Angélique Loreau
in c1700. Jeanne Motin de Reux died giving birth to son
Charles, fils probably at Port-Royal in Mar 1663; she was only 48
years old.
36a. See
Wade, "Le Borgne, Emmanuel," 1:434.
37. See
Arsenault, History, 32, 33; Clark, Acadia, 94;
Parkman, France & England, 1:1103; Wade, "Le Borgne,
Emmanuel," 1:433-34. Interesting,
Bélisle's biography, Clément Cormier, "Le Borgne de Belle-Isle,
Alexandre," in DCB, 1:435-36, says nothing of the boy's
remarkable mission to Boston at such a tender age, so one wonders if it
actually happened.
37a. See
Clark, Acadia, 99, for a summary of conditions in Europe during
the 1630s & 1640s, including the Thirty Years War on the continent,
civil war in France, & the English Civil War, that, he avers, were "Of
much more importance to the development or neglect of Acadia" than
conditions in Acadia itself.
38. See
Arsenault, History, 32-34; Arsenault, Généalogie, 456,
505; Clark, Acadia, 94, 107-08, 113, note 5, 415; Cormier, "Le
Borgne de Belle-Isle, Alexandre" 1:435; Parkman, France & England,
1:1103; Wade, "Le Borgne, Emmanuel," 1:434.
For the Doucet/Bourgeois
part of the story, see White, DGFA-1 English, 113.
Nepisiguit,
also spelled Nepigiguit, Nepisquit and Nipisiquit, is today's
Bathurst, New Brunswick.
Arsenault, History, 34, says that Denys
was 90 years old when he died. White, DGFA-1, 487, says he
died probably at Paris in Jul 1688 at age 89, but White gives his
birthday as 2 June 1603.
38a.
Quotations from "John Leverett," Wikipedia; White, DGFA-1 English,
218-19; Clark, Acadia, 107; Cormier, "Le Borgne de Belle-Isle,
Alexandre" 1:435-36. See also Griffiths, From Migrant to
Acadian, 77; Wade, "Le Borgne, Emmanuel," 1:434;
Appendix.
Clark, p.
111, note 1, says of the English governor: "Sir Thomas Temple was
the heir to the claims of the Alexanders [Stirling]. With William
Crowne and Charles La Tour (who had turned his coat for the
purpose), the Commonwealth granted him the government and monopoly of
trade in the area after Robert Sedgwick's expedition had captured the
forts on both shores of the Bay of Fundy. La Tour then made
an arrangement to occupy and exploit the Cape Sable area. The rest
was under strictly English control, more or less de jure until
1667, and
de facto until 1770." Temple's possession of inheritance
rights to Nova Scotia would explain his reluctance to let it go when the
Treaty of Breda was signed in 1667. See also Parkman, France &
England, 1:1103.
Clark, p. 107, says that Alexandre de
Bélisle's authority as governor also encompassed La Tour's
holdings from Baie Verte to Canso & around to New England. La
Tour, remember had died in 1666, 2 years before the young Le
Borgne was named governor.
Alexandre de Bélisle may have returned
to Acadia by 1660 to engage in fur-trading activities. See Clark,
p. 107, note 74. Wade, "Le Borgne, Emmanuel," 1:434, says that
Bélisle "went to Acadia to take possession on 9 Oct. 1668...."
Clark, p. 119, note 11, says: "There is a tendency to confuse the
Le Borgnes, fils et père. 'Belle-Isle' should be
used only for the son, who adopted the title." Alexandre was not
counted in the first Acadian census of 1671 & married a daughter of
Charles La Tour in c1675, probably at Port-Royal. His
father did not die until Aug 1675. See Wade, "Le Borgne,
Emmanuel," 1:433; White, DGFA-1, 1025, 1027.
39. Quotations
from <acadian-cajun.com/denys.htm>,
quoting Denys, Description, 123-24; Clark, Acadia, 108.
See ibid., pp. 103, 105, for the same long quotation from Denys's
Description. Arsenault, History, 35, 36, asserts that
the English occupation "had prevented new immigration to Acadia," but
his own genealogy contradicts this.
The Port-Royal valley included the Rivière au
Dauphin, now the Annapolis River, which forms a basin at it widens on
its way out to the Bay of Fundy via a narrow exit at the base of North
Mountain, called today the Digby Gut. See Historical Atlas of Canada,
1: plate 29. Clark, p. 102, Fig. 4.3, a map, is entitled "Port
Royal Basin and Valley: Population, 1636-1654," & includes the
location of tidal marshlands during that time.
Clark, pp. 100-01, offers this survey of the
Acadian population from the early 1630s to 1654: "There are
records of contrats d'engagement for Acadia in large numbers, by
the notaries of La Rochelle, for the period between 1630 and 1654.
It is true that few of their names, as far as we know them, are found in
the first Acadian census of 1671, but, while serving their contracts of
from one to three years, they must have swelled the population not only
at Port Royal but at the outlying posts as well. Among those
recruited for Port Royal by Emmanuel Le Borgne were five sawyers
in 1645 and a gunsmith in 1646. Even more numerous were those sent
out to Charles de La Tour by his intendant, Guillaume Desjardins.
For example, in 1640 his engagés included a gunsmith and a joiner
and, in 1641, a nailmaker-blacksmith, a sawyer, a mason, and a baker; in
1642 these were joined by twenty-two men who were hired as laborers and
soldiers for the fort on the Saint John. In addition we know that
some twenty-five men and five women were signed for Acadia in 1640, but
we know neither their names nor their destinations. Couillard-Després
quotes at length from a contemporary sources a list of sixty-three men
sent out on the vessel Saint-Clement in 1642 to reinforce La
Tour. Rameau concludes that d'Aulnay also imported some
families in 1640, and Lauvrière estimates that, at one time or another
before his death, d'Aulnay may have added a score of married couples or
families to the original La Have nucleus," most of whom moved on to
Port-Royal. Clark continues: "For 1650 an estimate of
forty-five to fifty European households at Port Royal and La Have has
been made, with some sixty single men--possibly 300 or 350 people in
all. Denys estimated perhaps 270, perhaps considerably more, when
the English captured Port Royal in 1654, including Le Borgne and
'... six vingts hommes des siens avec les habitans qui, faisoient (sic)
bien cent cinquante [86 men with the inhabitants who numbered a good
150?]....' We can be satisfied that at least two to three hundred
folk, half of them in settled families, lived in the Port Royal area at
the time of its capture in 1654." For the first Acadian census,
see note 43, below.
A personal note: I am convinced that my
Acadian ancestor, Robert Cormier, whose contrats d'engagement
for 3 years service were notarized at La Rochelle in Jan & Mar 1644,
fulfilled his indenture as a master ship's carpenter at Fort St.-Pierre
on Cape Breton Island, but he did not remain in Acadia. He slipped
back to France with his wife & younger son sometime in the early 1650s
or during the English occupation, certainly before the first Acadian
census. His older son Thomas, however, remained at Port-Royal and
established the Cormier family in Acadia. See
Appendix.
39a. See
Clark, Acadia, 109; Moogk,
La Nouvelle France, 176; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
95, 99-100. The authors of Historical Atlas of Canada
offer this insightful summary on 1:48: "The chartered colonization
schemes [of Dugua, Poutrincourt, Biencourt, Razilly, & d'Aulnay for the
French, & the many English ventures in Newfoundland] were financial
disasters for their investors, but they demonstrated that overwintering
and extended residence were possible, and they left behind a few men who
began prosecuting the fishery on their own accounts, encouraging
settlement to develop out of the migratory fishery. In Acadia
descendants of a few colonists sent after 1632 began to farm the tidal
marshes around the Bay of Fundy." From many failed efforts to
exploit the fishery and the fur trade in the first decades of the 1600s
emerged an almost accidental permanent agricultural venture--the colony
of Acadia.
Clark, p. 90, says: "For twenty-two
years after the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye in 1632, the Acadian lands
were in French hands and there became established by 1654 a resident
population, more or less sedentary and agricultural, from which a large
proportion of the later Acadians were descended. Indeed this is
the real beginning of French settlement in Acadia. An enduring
lodgement of agricultural settlers, with a social structure adequate to
their needs, was made at Port Royal in the Annapolis Basin and several
new posts were established around the coasts. Husbandry and
population expanded to the point that the intrusion of France into these
maritime lands assumed an air of permanence." Clark adds:
"As was to be characteristic of Acadia, these events took place almost
in spite of, rather than in conscious and studied direction from, the
leaders in the New World or the authorities in the Old." Clark, p.
386, summarizes the importance of the 1654-70 period in the development
of an emerging Acadian culture.
40. See
ibid., pp. 107-08.
Arsenault,
History, 35, says of the new French governor:
“Unlike his predecessors in Acadia, Grandfontaine was not just a
mere concessionary but the designated representative of the King of
France,” who was still Louis XIV.
“However, like all French governors who succeeded him in Acadia,
Grandfontaine received his instructions from the Governor of Canada, his
immediate superior.” In other words, Acadia was now a royal
colony, not a proprietary one, as it had been when it was in the hands
of the French before and even during the English occupation. This
royal arrangement also placed Acadia under the jurisdiction of the
powerful royal intendants of Canada. See Parkman, France &
England, 1:1288ff, for a detailed explanation of the relative roles
of the governors-general & royal intendants of New France, a scheme
initiated by Louis XIV in 1663 while Acadia was still under English
occupation. Also as part of the royal arrangement, the parish
priests of Acadia were subject to the ecclesiastical authority of the
Bishop of Quebec, the first of whom, Laval, took office in 1659, during
the English occupation of Acadia. All of this followed Louis XIV's
assumption of full royal power after the death of Mazarin in 1661.
See also Clark, p. 111.
Another, more recent, perspective on the
transition from proprietary to royal colony is offered by Mathé Allain
in her essay, "Colbert and the Colonies," p. 6, in Conrad, ed., The
French Experience in LA: "... he [Colbert] understood the
distinction between settlement colonies and trade colonies.
Therein lies Colbert's contribution, and in its corollary, that a
settlement colony needed to produce so as to export and needed to be
populated so as to produce. Eventually another corollary would
follow: while the trading colonies, colonies d'exploitation
commerciale, could be entrusted to companies, the colonies de
peuplement
would be administered directly by the Crown since they were to be
overseas extensions of the mother country." Consider this:
the peopling of Acadia began in earnest in the early 1630s, but not
until 1670 did it become a royal colony. Louisiana would begin as
a trading colony in 1699 & become a royal colony in 1733.
Each colony, then, (Acadia from 1632-70, Louisiana from 1699-1733), took
over 3 decades to evolve from trading colony to settlement colony.
Although the rule of proprietors &
concessionaires was over, the seigneuries granted before 1670 were still
honored by the French Court.
Clark, p. 112, points out that from 1670 to
1710, the 40 years in which the French held Acadia as as royal colony,
"More often than not [the] headquarters [of the Acadian governors &
commandants] were elsewhere than at Port Royal; on the Penobscot or the
Saint John or, in the case of La Vallière, Beaubassin." During
much of that time, from 1689-97, 1702-10, France was at war with
England, so perhaps this gives an idea of the vulnerability of
Port-Royal to seaborne attack.
Alexandre de Bélisle came to Acadia
with Grandfontaine to protect the family's interests.
Grandfontaine insisted that the young Le Borgne, now age 30, was
just another habitant. See Wade, "Le Borgne,
Emmanuel," 1:434.
41. Quotation from Clark,
Acadia,
108. See also ibid.,
pp. 111, 139, 143, 149, 175-76; Arsenault, History, 36.
42. Arsenault, History,
36, says 50 came aboard L'Oranger. Parkman, France &
England, 2:243, note 1, says, "In 1671, 30 garcons and 30
filles were sent by the king to Acadia, at the cost of 6,000 livres."
Was this L'Oranger? Clark, Acadia, 130, says "When
Grandfontaine arrived at Port Royal in 1671 an accompanying vessel
brought sixty passengers including four girls and one woman. There
is also a record of provision for passage money and feeding of thirty
boys [garçons] and thirty girls [filles], but the records are so
incomplete we are not certain of their destination." Was this
L'Oranger? See also Clark, p. 131. Judging from
genealogical records, the new male arrivals aboard the Oranger
did not settle for very long in the Port-Royal valley. Some of
them helped pioneer newer settlements along the Bay of Fundy. See
Appendix.
For a brief history of the Carignan-Salières Regiment,
see Parkman, 1:1233. It was this regiment that arrived in Canada
with the French viceroy, the Marquis Pouville de Tracy, in the summer of
1665, "the first regiment of regular troops ever sent to America by the
French government." De Tracy used it to chastise the Mohawks and
to intimidate the English in upper NY in early 1666. See Parkman,
1:1240-45. Clark, p. 130, says: "Grandfontaine sent a score
or more of soldiers to Acadia in 1670 (he actually dispatched a company
of fifty men but twenty-six of them were lost in a shipwreck).
These probably were mostly used in the posts along the northern shores
of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine from the Saint John to the Penobscot."
In discussing French mercantilism and the role of
monopoly, Mathé Allain in "Colbert and the Colonies" in Conrad, ed.,
The French Experience in Louisiana, 23, note 34, says: "It
should be noted ... that Colbert was willing to expand freedom of trade
to include foreigners when necessary; he, for example, encouraged trade
between Acadia and New England because commerce between Acadia and
Canada was expensive and difficult." One should not forget,
however, the Acadians' collective stubbornness, which probably was well
developed by 1670. The trade with New England after that date not
only would have been important in sustaining their quality of life, but
also would have served as a mark of independence from official
interference in their everyday lives. However, since Port-Royal
was essentially a cul-de-sac for ships, not until the Acadians moved
higher up the Fundy shore would they have been able to trade with the
Yankees, sanctioned or otherwise, without being observed by French
officials. See Clark, pp. 111, 386.
43. See Arsenault,
History, 43; LeBlanc, Acadian Miracle, 21, which reproduces
the census with errors and omissions. The copy of the 1671 census
used here comes from <acadian-cajun.com>,
which says that Fr. Molin counted 392 colonists in Acadia, 350 of them
at Port-Royal, & that MA at the time had about 40,000 inhabitants!
The 1667 census of Canada had counted 4,312 souls. The town of
Québec alone contained 448 people, more than in all of Acadia. See
Parkman, France & England, 1:1270, note 1. For an explanation of
why so relatively few French men & women emigrated to New France during
the 17th century, especially in contrast to English North America, see
Taylor, A., American Colonies, 368-69.
Clark, Acadia, 121, note 15, explains:
"Unhappily, the nominal census has a number of duplications:
married daughters and sons are counted in two households (their own and
their parents'), or married daughters (whose husbands may be living
elsewhere) are counted in both places. What appear to be precise
numbers, therefore, are actually estimates in this and later censuses."
Clark, p. 121, goes on to say that in the first census, "In all, nearly
400 heads were counted of whom some 375 were in the territory that is
now Nova Scotia. The census was most nearly complete in the Port
Royal area: it clearly was both incomplete and ambiguous in the
outlying settlements. Assuming an additional twenty or thirty
settlers with year-round homes in various harbors on the southwestern
and southern coasts (and even ignoring completely the large seasonal
influx o[f] fishermen and traders), there cannot have been many fewer
than 500, of whom roughly 450 must have been on the present Nova Scotia
peninsula." Clark, pp. 121-22, sums up Port-Royal's population as
340 to 350 individuals in "perhaps" 67 families, including "roughly" 65
men, 67 wives or widows, 125 sons, & 91 daughters. His Fig. 5.3 on
p. 122, entitled "Port Royal Basin and Valley: Population,
1671-1710," provides an illustration of the settlement's population
distribution. Clark, pp. 121-22, says that "Perhaps 400 arpents
were cultivated; there were some 650 cattle and about 430 sheep."
Clark, pp. 131-32, says of these First Families and
their impact on Acadian history: "It is clear that a relatively
significant infusion of new blood had been made [ in Acadia between
1671-1713], but the family names in the nominal census of 1693 were
still predominantly those recorded in Port Royal in 1671. Indeed,
Geneviève Massignon appears to support Rameau's [1889] conclusion that
at least two-thirds of the Acadians of the mid-eighteenth century were
descended from people recorded in that first, 1671, count. It may
be worth noting here that the identification of Acadians in the
twentieth century, whether in Maritime Canada or elsewhere in the
country, in Europe or in the United States is very largely by name.
Massignon estimates [1962] that seventy-six Acadian names borne by at
least one hundred families each in the mid-twentieth century, covered
fully 86 per cent of present [1968] Acadians."
For another analysis of the census, its shortcomings as
well as its invaluable insights into the state of the colony, especially
at Port-Royal, see Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 90-99.
Griffith's numbers for the census are different from other sources; on
p. 90 she says that the total number of men, women, & children "of
European descent, living in six different locations" in the colony
(Port-Royal, Pobomcoup, Cap-Nègre, Pentagouët, Musquodoboit], &
St.-Pierre on Cape Breton Island) was 302; on p, 92 she says that the
Port-Royal population numbered 68 families of "just over 250
individuals: 65 men, 67 women, and 125 sons and daughters."
43a. Recent yDNA
tests on direct male descendants of German Doucet, sieur de La
Verdure, thru his second son reveal that Germain, fils may have
been a
Mi'kmaq
adopted by Germain,
père & given his name, or perhaps Germain, fils was
the son of Germain, père's second wife & thus his stepson.
See
Appendix.
44.
Arsenault,
History, 38, contains a list of families. See
Appendix
for my own list of Acadian pioneers counted in the first census, those
who arrived aboard the L'Oranger, and those who came to Acadia
after 1671, with emphasis on the progenitors of the families that
emigrated to LA.
White, DGFA-1, & Arsenault,
Généalogie, provide most of the information used in the biographies
of the Acadian pioneers. The most accessible copy of this, or any
Acadian census, can be found at <acadian-home.org>.
White, the most conservative, & thus reliable,
source on Acadian genealogy, is silent on the birth places of many of
the early Acadian pioneers who some writers, especially Geneviève
Massignon & Bona Arsenault, claim were from Martaizé & La Chaussée.
See
Appendix for a brief discussion of this controversy.
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 65-66, is especially good in
questioning the Massignon thesis & pointing out the realities of French
immigration. Clark, Acadia, 101, brings up the old question
of Scottish origins among early Acadian settlers. He mentions the
surnames Peselet [Pesseley here], Pitre, Caissie,
Colleson, & Melanson, & concedes, correctly, that, among
these, only Caissie was of Celtic origin, concluding that it was
Irish. See White, DGFA-1, for the best evidence concerning
the origin of these family names in Acadia.
44a.
Other families listed in the 1671 census at Port-Royal but not included
in this narrative were those of Pierre Morin; Jehan LaBatte;
Marie Salé, widow of Jehan Claude; & Barbe Bajolet,
widow of Savinien de Courpon. The 1671 census also counted
the families of Amand
Lalloue at Cap-Nèigre; & Guillaume Poulet at
Rivière-aux-Rochelois, also not in this narrative. See
Appendix
for some of them.
44b.
Quotations from Wade, "Le Borgne, Emmanuel," 1:434; Cormier, "Le
Borgne de Belle-Isle, Alexandre," 1:436. See also ibid.,
1:435.
44c. For
Pierre dit La Verdure, père's serving as tutor to the
d'Aulnay children, see Clark, Acadia, 148.
45.
Quotation from W. J. Eccles, "Meulles, Jacques de," DCB, 2:473.
Again, the best source for this, & all, Acadian censuses is <acadian-home.org>.
46.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 150, 231. For Brouillan's
activities during King William's War as governor at Plaisance, see note
172, below. For more on Mascarene,
see note 56, below.
47.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 150, 179. See also ibid., p.
246; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 175, 180; Wikipedia "Alewife."
Clark, pp. 151-57, provides an overview of the
so-called outlying settlements, including seafood found along the
coasts.
48.
Quotations from Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 155-56;
Clark, Acadia, 195; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 331. For the
genealogies of the families mentioned here, see White, DGFA-1,
621-31, 761, 873-74, 1145-50. For the role of priests in Acadian life,
including their service as French agents, see notes 222h
& 237, below.
49. For the
genealogies of the families mentioned here, see White, DGFA-1,
526, 530-31, 771-72, 1049, 1054-55, 1056, 1126-27. See also
Bunnell, French & Native North American Marriages, passim.
I have been
told by a Doucet descendant that, in spite of the compelling yDNA
evidence, some Acadian genealogists do not subscribe to the Mi'kmaq
origins of Germain Doucet, fils. Keith Doucet to the
author via email, Jul 2012.
50. See
Clark, Acadia, 164, for substantial differences in the size of
farmsteads in the Port-Royal valley during the 1690s. For a solid
interpretation of the Acadian character upon their arrival in LA during
the 1760s, including their egalitarianism, see Brasseaux, Founding of
New Acadia,
passim.
50a.
Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 238. See also ibid., p. 198,
note 28.
51.
Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 198, note 28. See also ibid.,
pp. 190, 238. For details of Acadian governance
during French & British rule, much of it taken liberally from Clark, see note
222f, below.
52.
Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 192. See also ibid., p.
194; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 344-45.
53.
Quotation from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 354. See
also ibid., p. 353; Byron Fairchild, "Pepperell, Sir William," in DCB,
3:508; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 52-53, which, on p. 53,
counts 900 deaths among the New English at Louisbourg during the winter
of 1745-46--"from starvation, exposure and disease."
Griffiths, p. 354, notes that "In London,
rejoicing at the victory was the greater because of the crushing defeat
of Great Britain and its allies at Fontenoy/Fantan in early May."
54. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 331.
55.
Quotations from ibid., p. 331; Sutherland, "Armstrong," 2:23. See
also Griffiths, pp. 298, 332.
Griffiths, p. 331, followed here, says that
Armstrong was found dead on Dec 17, but Sutherland, 2:23, says Dec 6.
56.
Quotations from Maxwell Sutherland, "Mascarene, Paul (born
Jean-Paul)," in DCB, 3:436-37; Barry M. Moody, "Adams, John," in
DCB, 3:4; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 332-34.
See also Clark, Acadia, 194; Griffiths, pp. 335-36; Barry M. Moody, "Cosby, Alexander," in
DCB, 3:143-44.
Moody, "Cosby," 3:144, says that Cosby died
suddenly on 27 Dec 1742; Griffiths, p. 332, gives the date 7 Jan 1743.
Cosby, a native of Ireland, had married Richard Phillips's sister
Elizabeth. He remarried to Anne Winniett in c1726; her father,
William Winniet, was a prominent English merchant at Annapolis Royal.
Cosby's brother William served as governor of NY & NJ from 1731-36 &,
according to Moody, shared brother Alexander's habitual quarrelsomeness.
In the context of Mascarene's dealings with
the Acadians over the oath of allegiance & their neutrality, Griffiths,
p. 333, makes the interesting point that, "When all was said and done,
the Acadians were no more rebellious than the populace of New York and
Boston, who were given to much more serious rioting against government
authority. Nor were the Acadians any more recalcitrant than their
contemporaries in Wales and the Scottish Highlands when it came to
resisting cultural assimilation by the English." And then there
were the Catholics of Ireland, who would fight the English for centuries
to secure their independence from Great Britain. Griffiths also
points out the limited nature of British "democracy" during the 18th
century.
Griffiths, p. 334, reminds us of the Mascarene
family's persecution at the hands of Louis XIV, the memory of which may
have inclined him "to see diversity of opinion as something that must be
accommodated," though Mascarene's own words reveal that he harbored the
typical Protestant prejudices against the "bigotry" of the "Romish
religion."
For biographical information on Le Loutre, see
note 237, below; Clark, p. 193.
57.
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 337, cites a British report
from Canso, dated 1 Sep 1743, which "estimated that the Acadians shipped
annually a minimum of '6 or 700 Head of Cattle, and about 2000 sheep' to
Louisbourg." See also note 250,
below.
58. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 336-37; Bernard Pothier, "Du
Pont Duvivier," Joseph," in DCB, 3:206; White, DGFA-1,
1204.
Griffiths, p. 336, says that Duquesnel was
appointed governor of Île Royale on 1 Sep 1740, after the death of
Isaac-Louis de Forant, who was governor for barely a year.
According to a note attached to Pothier, "Du
Pont, Duvivier, Joseph,: 3:205, François Dupont Duvivier, fils is
often confused with his brother Joseph. Despite receiving the
Cross of St.-Louis, François, fils was noted more for his
business acumen than his military abilities, as his performance in Nova
Scotia demonstrated.
59. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 337; Pothier, "Du Pont
Duvivier, Joseph" 3:206.
Griffiths, p. 335, says that Heron had only 87
troops at Canso in 1744, not the 4 companies of 30 men each that were
authorized for the post. Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 34,
failing to cite her sources, says that Duvivier's force numbered 357,
that it left Louisbourg on May 13, that fire from "Duvivier's privateer
Succés" killed 1 man & injured 7 of Heron's "eighty-seven
inexperienced soldiers of the 40th Regiment," who were taken completely
by surprise, & that Heron held out for a week before he surrendered.
Griffith & Pothier say that Heron was indeed surprised & offered no
resistance.
60.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 338.
See also ibid., pp. 341, 350.
61.
Quotation from ibid., p. 343. See also ibid., pp. 342, 344;
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 40; Pothier, "Du Pont Duvivier,
Joseph" 3:206-07; H. Paul Thibault, "Gannes de Falaise, Michel, de," in
DCB, 3:236.
For Alexandre Bourg dit
Bellehumeur's genealogy, see White, DGFA-1, 222-23.
62.
Quotations from Pothier, "Du Pont Duvivier, Joseph," 3:206; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 340. See also ibid., pp. 338-39;
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 36-37.
Griffiths, p. 339, notes: "From the
outset, Duvivier acted as if the enterprise was the return of a native
son to liberate his people from a foreign yoke. Four of his six
officers were related to him in one way or another, one of them was his
brother, and all, of course, had relatives among the Acadians."
But she does not name these officers. Duvivier's father, François,
père, a native of Serignac, Saintonge, had died at Louisbourg in
1714, soon after he was posted there. Before his death, François,
père
had served as a naval officer in France & as a captain of colonial
regular troops--troupes de marine--in Acadia. He caused a
scandal by marrying Marie, daughter of Jacques Muis d'Entremont &
Anne de Saint-Étienne de La Tour, at Port-Royal in Jan 1705
without having secured permission from his family or his commanding
officer. Marie's father Jacques was a son of Philippe Mius
d'Entremont. Her mother Anne was a daughter of Charles La
Tour & his third wife, Jeanne Motin de Reux, who had first
married the Sieur d'Aulnay. Although Duvivier's commanding
officer, Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure, chided Duvivier for being
one of those officers who married a young woman "of obscure birth and
humble circumstances," most Acadians would have considered Marie's
pedigree to be quite the opposite. There was no "regular" Acadian
family in François Duvivier, fils's maternal line that would have
endeared him to the majority of Acadians. Quotation from Bernard
Pothier, "Du Pont Duvivier, François [père]," in DCB,
2:206. See also ibid., 2:206; White, DGFA-1, 1204. François,
fils's brother Joseph, who is sometimes confused with him,
married a cousin, Marie-Josèphe, granddaughter of former Acadian
governor Alexandre Le Borgne de Bélisle, another aristocratic
Acadian family; Marie-Josèphe's mother was Anastasie d'Abbadie de
Saint-Castin. So there was nothing "humble" about the Duvivier
clan. See White, DGFA-1, 1029-30.
Griffiths, p. 339, quotes liberally from
Duvivier's speeches to the Acadians on his way to Annapolis. She
says on pp. 339-40, that "An approximate number of possible [Acadian]
recruits [in the Beaubassin area] would be around two hundred and fifty,
but, given the fact that this was a labour-intensive farming region, the
number who would be available to join the army, let alone to 'go for a
soldier,' would not be large." She concludes, p. 340, that he took
with him from Chignecto "only ten new recruits."
63.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 37-38. See
also ibid., p. 39; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 341-42.
Clark, Acadia, 247, calls Gautier
"Nicholas Gauthier of the Belle Isle community up river from
Annapolis Royal" & says that he may have owned "two or three vessels
'before the War [King George's] that used the West India Trade.'"
Griffiths mentions Joseph LeBlanc
dit Le Maigre, but not the Broussards, in detailing Acadian
assistance to Duvivier at Minas. For LeBlanc's genealogy,
see White, DGFA-1, 989-90.
64.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 38; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 341-42. See also Marshall, p. 40;
Pothier, "Du Pont Duvivier, Joseph" 3:206; Thibault, "Gannes de
Falaise," 3:236.
According to Griffiths, p. 335, the force at
Annapolis Royal in Sep 1744 was supposed to number 500, but there were
"no more than 150" there. However, on p. 341, she says that
Mascarene had 250 men when Duvivier attacked him, which may account for
reinforcements from Boston Le Loutre's Jul attack. Pothier, "Du
Pont Duvivier, Joseph," 3:206, says that Mascarene had "no more than 75
able-bodied soldiers" when Duvivier struck Annapolis.
Marshall, pp. 39-40, says that, on the second
day of the siege, Duvivier sent his brother Michel to inform Mascarene
of the approach of a fleet from Louisbourg but that Mascarene,
"suspicious of the officer ... and after consulting his senior officers,
flatly refused" to surrender. Thibault, "Gannes de Falaise,"
3:236, followed here, says that "At the beginning of the siege Duvivier
obtained from the English commandant, Paul Mascarene, a promise of
surrender as soon as the French ships arrived."
Sutherland, "Mascarene," 3:438, does not
address the question of a promised surrender but does mention Gorham's
arrival "with 60 Indians rangers," which "led Duvivier to abandon his
goal." John David Krugler, "Gorham (Goreham, Gorum), John," in
DCB, 3:260, says that Gorham brought 50 "'picked Indians and other
men fit for ranging the woods' ...." Krugler goes on to say that
most of Gorham's fighters were "full blood Mohawks" & that they remained
to protect the fort after Duvivier's force retreated. Gorham's
Mohawk & New English cutthroats would play a dark role in Acadian
history. Marshall, p. 64, describes them as "a motley collection
of mercenaries consisting mainly of Mohawks and New Englanders.
They were skilled wilderness fighters who could take on resistance
fighters and Natives on their own terms."
For Robichaud's genealogy, see White,
DGFA-1, 1407-08. Griffiths, p. 342, speculates that Louis's
collaboration may have been motivated by his kinship with the Winniett
family, 4 of whose daughters married British officers; however,
Griffiths adds, one of Robichaud's first cousins supported the
French besiegers. Here was another sad consequence of Acadian
neutrality--the political alienation of extended families.
Griffiths, p. 343, says that one of Gautier's daughters was
married to one of Duvivier's brothers. Gautier's unwavering
support of the French would cause him grief, including the loss of his
fortune.
Griffiths, p. 342, reminds us that de Gannes
also had an Acadian mother--Marguerite Leneuf de la Vallière, another
member of the Acadian social elite who did not share the culture of the
great majority of Acadians. Like his nemesis Duvivier, de Gannes
father also had been a French army officer. See Thibault, "Gannes
de Falaise," 3:235.
65.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 341.
See also ibid., pp. 340-41; Clark, Acadia, 195, note 16.
66.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 344, 348.
See also ibid., p. 347; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 40-41,
which details Gautier's wife's escape from the dungeon at Fort Anne.
67.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 344-45, 347;
Clark, Acadia, 194.
See also Griffiths, pp. 346, 348-49; Marshall, Acadian Resistance,
41-42. Griffiths, p. 349, says of Shirley & Acadia: "From
the moment that he decided to dispatch troops and provisions to
Annapolis Royal in June 1744, the governor of Massachusetts played a
crucial role in Nova Scotian affairs."
68. See
Clark, Acadia, 192; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
351.
69.
Quotations from Fairchild, "Pepperell," 3:507. See also Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 349, 351-53.
70.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 337.
See also ibid., p. 354. Griffiths's math notwithstanding, the
point is made--trade between Louisbourg & New England/Nova Scotia on the
eve of King George's War was substantial. For conditions at
Louisbourg, including the Dec 1744 mutiny, see Marshall, Acadian
Resistance, 45-48. Marshall, p. 50, says that the Louisbourg
garrison numbered 1,500 at the time, so Pepperell's MA force alone would
have been at least twice the size of Duchambon's garrison.
Griffiths, p. 353, says that the Louisbourg garrison numbered not quite
1,300, "less than a third of whom were regular troops," that is to say,
French troupes de marine.
Parkman, France & England, 2:639, says
that when Pepperell arrived in Apr Duchambon had in his garrison 560
regular troops & 1,200 to 1,400 militia, from the town as well as the
countryside. See ibid., 2:640, for Parkman's take on the Dec 1744
mutiny & his evaluation of Duchambon's leadership, concluding that he
"was not a man to grapple with a crisis, being deficient in decision of
character, if not in capacity."
71.
Quotations from Fairchild, "Pepperell," 3:507-08. Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 353, calls Pepperell's force "'the largest
New England force recruited to fight a foreign war in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries'..." & says that CN, NH, NY, & RI contributed
2,000 men to supplement the 1,000 sailors and 3,000 troops from MA.
Fairchild, "Pepperell," 3:507, says the number of New Englanders at
Louisbourg ranged as high as 4,300. Marshall,
Acadian Resistance, 50, says that Pepperell's & Warren's armada
consisted of 90 vessels & that the "battle" at Louisbourg began on May
11.
For details of the New Englanders' time at
Canso before moving against Louisbourg, including the force left there
to man the fishing post, Warren's arrival, & the blockade of Louisbourg
harbor before the arrival of Pepperell's force, see Parkman, France &
England, 2:637-38. Parkman notes that Shirley placed his armed
vessels under Warren's command after the commodore reached Canso.
Gabarus Bay was not free of ice until late Apr, so Pepperell had no
choice but to wait at Canso, where he drilled & reorganized his units.
Parkman, 1:638-39, provides a detailed description of Louisbourg--its
harbor, its fortifications, its town.
One of the officers in the seizure of the
beach at Gabarus Bay was Lieutenant Colonel John Gorham of the 7th
Massachusetts Regiment, & it was Gorham & Colonel Arthur Noble who would
lead the assault on the island battery at Louisbourg. Gorham
was the leader of the famous New England "rangers" who would play a dark
role in Acadian history, & Noble would die at Grand-Pré in Feb 1747.
See Krugler, "Gorham (Goreham, Gorum), John," 3:260.
72.
Quotations from Fairchild, "Pepperell," 3:508. See also Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 353, 356, who says on p. 353, that
"Pillaging and insult was the lot of those who withstood the siege,
while they waited to be transported back to France"; Marshall,
Acadian Resistance, 50-51, who says on p. 51 that Duchambon's loss
was 50 men & also says that in France the mutineers faced court martial,
that 1 died in prison, 7 were hanged, & 2 were sentenced to life
imprisonment as galley slaves; Parkman, France & England, 2:672.
Griffiths says nothing of the mutiny or its consequences.
73. See
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 48-50, who, on p. 49, has Le Loutre
already on the Missaguash at Chignecto in Mar 1745, but he did not
transfer his base from Shubenacadie to Pointe-à-Beauséjour until late
1749.
74. See
Fairchild, "Pepperell," 3:507; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 51;
Parkman, France & England, 2:636-37. For a detailed map
of the Canso area, including Great Canso Island & Canso Harbor, see
Clark, Acadia, 226, Fig. 6.3.
75. See
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 51-52.
76. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 349-52. Griffiths, p.
351, notes that during the summer & early fall of 1744, after war had
been declared, "'some thirty New England ships of from twenty to 180
tons were carried into Louisbourg along with six shallops and 1350
quintals of cod.' The value of the vessels was estimated at
114,409 livres." This was something no Yankee merchant
could afford to ignore.
William Shirley, a native of England, had
resided at Boston since 1731, built a successful legal practice, &
served as advocate general of the colony's Admiralty Court after 1733.
He succeeded Jonathan Belcher, Sr. as governor of the Province of
Massachusetts Bay on 14 Aug 1741, a year after Mascarene became
lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. Shirley was 50 years old in
1744. See Griffiths, p. 352.
77.
Quotation from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 338.
For participation of Acadian partisans under
Broussard in the Jul attack, see Marshall, Acadian Resistance,
34-36, who says that Le Loutre raised his force "In no time at all" &
emphasizes the Broussard brothers' resentment of the imprisonment
of their father at Fort Anne 33 years before as a motivation for their
joining Le Loutre. Griffiths does not mention the partisans in her
account of the assault. Marshall maintains that Le Loutre's
Indians were setting up firing positions at Annapolis at the end of Jun
& that Le Loutre's force moved against the fort on Jul 1.
Griffiths, followed here, says that the assault did not begin until Jul
12. Griffiths also maintains that Le Loutre "took a while" to
gather his force. Marshall's description of the fight is quite
detailed, but she fails to cite her sources.
78.
Quotation from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 363.
Ibid., p. 362, says that Minas Acadians did warn Noble of the
possibility of a winter attack, which Noble passed on to Mascarene.
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 65, provides Noble's numbers.
79.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 52. See also
ibid., p. 53; Jean-Guy Lavallée, "Dubreil de Pontbriand, Henri-Marie,"
in DCB, 3:196.
80.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 354-55.
See also Clark, Acadia, 192; Étienne Taillemite, "La
Rochefoucauld de Roye, Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Frédéric de, Marquis de Roucy,
Duc d'Anville," in
DCB, 3:356.
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 55, says
that the diversion of so many French troops to North America helped lead
to Charles Edward Stuart's defeat at Culloden, Scotland, in Apr 1746.
Griffiths, p. 357, says that, by war's end, "British leaders were
working on the assumption that the Acadians would never become loyal
subjects to the crown, an attitude sharpened by the events of the Stuart
uprising in 1745...."--offering a grand perspective on the history of
subjugated peoples.
80a.
Quotation from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 357. See
also Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 55, who says that Ramezay
moved on to Beaubassin after dropping anchor at Baie Verte.
Griffiths, pp. 357-58, followed here, does not place Ramezay at
Beaubassin until Sep 1 & implies that he remained at Baie Verte.
81. See
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 55-58; Griffiths, From Migrant
to Acadian, 359.
Marshall's chronology & movements differ from
Griffiths's, followed here. Marshall has the priest
& the partisan rendezvousing with Ramezay at Beaubassin soon after
the Canadians reached Baie Verte. After taking up arms &
ammunition furnished by the Canadians, Marshall says Le Loutre &
Broussard moved on to Cobeguit, taking part of Ramezay's force with
them, & then followed the overland route from there to Chebouctou.
Georges Island would figure large in the life
of the Broussard brothers a dozen years hence.
82.
Quotation from ibid., p. 58. See also ibid., p. 59; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 358-59.
Marshall says the 2 frigates were part of
d'Anville's fleet, but Griffiths, followed here, says that they were
"two frigates cruising in the area."
83. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 355; Marshall, Acadian
Resistance, 59.
84.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 60; Taillemite, "La
Rochefoucauld," 3:356. See also Griffiths, From Migrant to
Acadian, 355-56, 359; Marshall, pp. 59, 61; Étienne Taillemite, "Taffanel,
de la Jonquière, Jacques-Pierre de, Marquis de La Jonquière," in DCB,
3:610.
Marshall, p. 61, says that "An autopsy,
however, did not reveal the cause of his [d'Anville's] death."
Taillemite, "La Rochefoucauld," is followed here.
Taillemite, "La Rochfoucauld," 3:356, lists
the expeditions casualties, as of Oct 15, as 587 dead & 2,274 ill, out
of a total of 7,006 soldiers & sailors--all this without having fired a
shot. He believes that more than bad luck doomed d'Anville's
expedition. He adds: "The failure emphasized forcefully the
weakness of the French navy and also the difficulties of assisting the
French colonies in North America. These were the logical
consequences of the neglect of the French navy since the death of Louis
XIV [1715]: the ships were insufficient in number, and, since they had
done little sailing for years, the officers as well as the crews were
inadequately trained."
84a. See
Clark, Acadia, 192-93; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
359-60, 363; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 61-62.
85. See
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 62.
86. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 355, 361; Marshall,
Acadian Resistance, 55, 60, 63.
Griffiths says that Noble, a native of Ulster,
had settled on the Kennebec in Maine & was in the New English militia
force that captured Louisbourg in Jun 1745.
87.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 64; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 360. See also Griffiths, p. 361.
Ibid., p. 360, includes other quotes from Shirley's proclamation.
Needless to say, Shirley employed the classic carrot-&-stick approach
used by all imperial powers. For British talk of Acadian
deportation throughout the war, see Griffiths, pp. 349, 356-57. On
p. 349, she reminds us: "It is important to remember that ... the
British crown considered transportation of recalcitrant or rebellious
populations, whether Scots, Cornish, or English, an acceptable
procedure."
Île St.-Jean had fallen to British naval
forces under Peter Warren in Aug 1745, 2 months after the fall of
Louisbourg. See Griffiths, p. 356.
88.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 65; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 361, who adds: "The communication
[from Gov. Shirley] of 12 September 1746 was important, not only because
of its impact among the Acadians, but also because it meant that British
orders for the expedition to Minas were drawn up with some belief in the
possibility of the neutrality of the majority of the Acadians."
Griffiths, p. 361, says that Noble "had about
four hundred men under his command," but not all of them would have been
with him at Grand-Pré in Feb.
Krugler, "Gorham (Goreham, Gorum), John,"
3:261, says that Gorham & his rangers left Grand-Pré 2 days before the
French attack of 10 Feb 1747. By then, Gorham & his rangers had
been in Nova Scotia for many months & were intimately familiar with much
of the country.
89.
Quotations from Erskine, Nova Scotia, 30; Clark, Acadia,
141; Clément Cormier, "Bourgeois, Jacques (Jacob)," in DCB,
2:94. See also Arsenault, History, 48-49;
Clark, pp. 109.
Milner,
"Chignecto," provides a delightful description of the area around
Beaubassin written by a Jesuit priest during an expedition to the
isthmus in the early years of the colony. Father Briand, who
accompanied Gov. Jean de Poutrincourt & 4 Indians on the expedition,
wrote: "At Chignecto, there is a beautiful prairie as far as you
can see. Several rivers discharge themselves into the Bay.
The Indians number 60 or 80 souls, and they are not so vagabondish as
others, because this spot is more retired and more abundant in chase for
food. The country is for the most part agreeable and to my mind of
great fertility if cultivated."
The
traditional date of the founding of the Chignecto settlement is 1672.
See, for example, Arsenault, pp. 47, 48; Cormier, "Bourgeois,"
2:94. Clark, p.139, says 1671.
The importance
of the trade with New England is well documented in Arsenault, Clark, &
other sources. See, for example, Clark, pp. 139, 388.
Clark, p. 386, offers this important
observation: "It may have been the attempts by French governors
after 1670 to re-establish a firm, paternal, central control which
encouraged migration from Port Royal to Chignecto and Minas and the
fact, or threat, of such movement was enough to lighten the official
hand in the mother settlement lest the local supplies of food on which
the officials depended so heavily should be seriously threatened by
depopulation. Governors were constantly complaining of 'demi-republicaine'
attitudes in the outer settlements." See also ibid., pp. 113, 139.
90.
Quotations from Clark,
Acadia, 142. See also ibid., pp. 109-11; Arsenault,
Généalogie, 393, 457, 827, 845, 859, 909, 929, 976, 1012; Arsenault,
History, 47-48; <acadian-cajun.com>.
Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 116-117, says that, although there is no
question that Jacques Bourgeois & his family were the first to
settle at Chignecto, it was not until "either immediately before or at
the very time" of Bourgeois's settlement that the governor of New
France, Count Frontenac, awarded Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière a huge
grant in the area. La Vallière's grant was dated 24 Oct 1676, &
his seat was on present-day Tonge's Island, a ridge overlooking the
Missaguash, and originally was called Île La Villière. Clark, pp.
141, is certain that
Bourgeois came to Chignecto before La Vallière.
Griffiths, p. 116, adds: "A number of
writers quote La Valliere's concession as containing a clause that
enjoined him not to disturb 'inhabitants of the province that are to be
found in possession of land and inheritance that they are cultivating,
living on and working to increase its value,' but documentation of this
does not seem to have survived." J.-Roger Comeau, "LeNeuf de la
Vallière de Beaubassin, Michel (the elder)," in DCB, 2:409, which
details La Vallière's grant from Frontenac, says nothing about any
stipulation that LeNeuf not disturb the Chignecto habitants
already there. One has to ask the question, what aristocrat would
agree to such a limitation on his seigneurial rights? Clark, p.
142, details a lawsuit in 1682 in which La Vallière sought to collect
rent from 11 censitaires at Beaubassin, and concludes: "... either
they [the habitants] had taken new lands outside of the Bourgeois
'reserve' or La Vallière was asserting at least nominal control over the
whole area." This may be a hint that the agreement not to disturb
the original settlers never existed.
La Vallière served as commander & then
governor of the colony from 1678-84, but his governorship was not
confirmed by the king until 1683. See Griffiths, p. 117.
According to Milner, "Chignecto": "La
Vallière was a member of the Poterie family, that came with the
Repentigny family from Caen to Quebec in 1638," & that the Poteries,
along with the Repentignys, were among the 4 noble families in Canada
who lived by the sword, not by the plow, and who were helpless without
"their official pay." Milner goes on: "Outside of his
poverty, La Valliere was a man of consequence. While he held the
Commission of Captain of the Court's guards, he was a voyageur, a wood
ranger, a mariner, a trader and a diplomat, and in one capacity or
another was constantly on the move on the frontiers of French domain in
Canada--at one time in the wilds of Hudson's Bay and at another a beau
gallant at Boston." According to Comeau, "LeNeuf de la Vallière de
Beaubassin, Michel (the elder)," La Vallière, while a part of his
father-in-law's operations, "In 1672 ... is supposed to have set up a
fur-trading post on the isthmus of Chignecto, while devoting part of his
time to the fishing industry, farming, settlement, and soldiering."
This still would have been about the same time, if not slightly after,
Bourgeois began the Chignecto settlement. One wonders what
role the supposed fur-trading post played in La Vallière's securing the
seigneurial rights to the area from Frontenac in 1676.
Interestingly, Jacques Bourgeois did
not remain at Chignecto but returned to Port-Royal, where he died in
c1701. See Cormier, "Bourgeois, Jacques (Jacob)," 2:94.
See
Appendix for Acadian church parishes.
91. See
Arsenault,
History, 48; Arsenault, Généalogie, 629, 729, 846, 863,
884, 886, 946, 952-53, 959-60, 964, 982-84, 989, 1007-09, 1013-14, 1026,
1030-31, 1054, 1057, 1067, 1086; White, DGFA-1, 348, 791.
For the genealogy of Gabriel Chiasson,
see Arsenault, Généalogie, 897; White,
DGFA-1, 350; White, DGFA-1 English, 78-79.
For the genealogy of Michel Haché
dit
Gallant, see Arsenault, Généalogie, 983-4; White,
DGFA-1,
791-94; White,
DGFA-1 English, 162-63. The family name evolved into Haché-Gallant
then
Haché then Achée
by the time Michel's descendants reached Louisiana. The family name in
Canada is usually spelled Gallant, but also Galland, Hachey,
Larché dit
Gallant. Milner, "Chignecto," says that La Vallière "had a
secretary named Hache Galand, who married an Acadian lass named
Anne Courmier and their descendants today [1911] number hundreds
of families." So spelling isn't everything.
Clark, Acadia, 142, says: "After
1686 there seems to have been little migration from Port Royal to the
Chignecto area and it probably grew largely by natural increase,
although some accretions from the fishing fleet, from France, or even
from New France are assumed." Clark, p. 144, adds: "By the
later 1680's both La Vallière and Bourgeois built gristmills at
Beaubassin and the latter appears to have had a sawmill as well.
Grain was being produced in some quantity. Gradually the settlers
adopted all of the field crops and animals known at Port Royal, and
fruit trees (plums, pears, and apples) were well established by the turn
of the century, perhaps introduced by Roger Quessy (Kessey,
Casey? [Caissie]), one of the early settlers.
Apparently the more severe winter of Beaubassin kept out cherries."
Clark, p. 144, notes: "Beaubassin failed
to achieve the rate of growth of the Minas Basin settlements. The
departure of La Vallière and his family for Canada and the actions of
this son-in-law and agent, Sébastien de Villieu, probaby were factors,
but the raids from New England under Benjamin Church in 1696 and 1704,
with their destruction of buildings and cattle, were reason enough for
discouragement. Nonetheless, ... agricultural statistics over a
twenty-year period [1686-1707], shows a substantial steady growth."
See notes, 170 &
190, below, for Church's raids.
Clark, p. 114, adds: "The Chignecto isthmus was, still, rather a
crossroads for Indians moving from the Bay to the Gulf or from the
mainland out to the peninsula and their frequent presence may deterred
some more timid souls."
Clark, pp. 210, offers detailed, though always
estimated, population figures for Chignecto during British control of
the colony. For geographical & historical details of the Cobeguit
area after the British took over Acadia, see note
133, below.
92.
Quotation from Arsenault,
History, 53; See also ibid., p. 54; Arsenault, Généalogie,
804-05, 1081, 1086, 1092, 1101, 1104-05, 1108, 1116, 1121, 1125,
1132-34, 1136-38, 1143, 1150-51, 1153, 1155, 1158, 1160, 1170, 1174,
1183, 1195, 1198-99, 1216-17, 1261-62, 1273, 1276, 1279-80, 1284, 1285,
1293-94, 1303, 1308; Clark, Acadia, 109, 139, 148, 214-17; White, DGFA-1,
1098; White,
DGFA-1 English, 130. Arsenault's genealogy says that Pierre
Thériot & Cécile Landry were married in 1685, but White,
DGFA-1, 1484, 1489, says in c1678.
Clark, Acadia, 148, says that the
settlement at Minas began around 1682.
The Minas settlement also was called Les Mines
and Mines. The name Grand-Pré is often applied to all of the
settlements at Minas, but, in truth, Grand-Pré was only one of the many
settlements in the area; Clark, p. 148, calls Grand-Pré " that
much-storied settlement," which probably explains why the name loomed
large among the Minas communities. Besides Grand-Pré, there were,
from north to south, Rivière Pereau, Rivière-de-la-Vieille-Habitation
(today's Habitant Creek), Rivière-aux-Canards, Rivière-St.-Antoine (also
called Rivière-des-Habitants, today's Cornwallis River), & Rivière
Gaspereau. See Clark, p. 209, Fig. 6.2, entitled "Minas and
Pisiquid: Population, 1714."
The gaspereau, taxonomic name Alosa
pseudoharengus, commonly known as the alewife, is a kind of shad;
however, gaspereau is the name favored in Atlantic Canada, though in
southwest Nova Scotia it is also called the kiack or kyack, probably
from the Mi'kmaq. Sadly, today it is a "species of concern" not
only in its natural habitat along the Atlantic littoral, but also in the
Great Lakes, which it invaded during the early 1800s via the Welland
Canal, which bypasses Niagara Falls. See Wikipedia., "Alewife."
One suspects that the Acadians devoured these bony but delicious fish
during their spawning runs up into the many streams flowing into the Bay
of Fundy. See Clark, p. 150.
Pigiguit also could be considered a Minas
settlement because Rivière Pigiguit, now the Avon River, also flows into
the Minas Basin. Cobeguit lay at the extreme northeastern corner of the
basin, more distant from Minas than Pigiguit but still a part of the
Minas region. See Clark, pp 109-10. Clark, p. 140, Fig. 5.9,
offers a good map of the entire basin with Acadian & modern-day place
names. See Clark, p. 209, Fig. 6.2, for rivers & settlements in
the Grand-Pré area, c1714, that also includes population estimates for
that year.
93.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 148, 149. See also ibid.,
pp. 113, 139; Arsenault, History, 56.
Clark, p. 148, says that at Minas in 1686
there were 83 arpents, probably dyked lands, in cultivation.
For the Le Borgne seigneurial claim to
the Minas Basin, see Clark, p. 149, who says: "...their hold was
light, their claims small..., and they did nothing to assist the
settlers or, apparently, even to guide them." Clark says the
early settlers at Minas may
have "squatted" but that Pierre Melanson, fils "acted as
their seigneurial agent or procureur fiscal (and was the "captain
of militia" in the area and the recognized leader or local authority),
guided them in their location."
A French colonial official during the late
1680s averred that the new Minas settlement was "'... too remote for
commerce; only small vessels can risk going there.'" See Clark, p.
149, who continues: "This in fact expresses correctly the degree
of isolation but it is not correct in terms of commerce, for these
people, like those at Port Royal and Beaubassin, depended on New England
goods...."
Clark, p. 149, says that "All the Minas Basin
settlements [including Pigiguit & Cobeguit] enjoyed the fruits of their
own abundant natural population increase greatly aided by the continued
migration of young couples from Port Royal with the wives at the peak of
their child-bearing capacity." Clark, pp. 208-10, offers
detailed, though always estimated, population figures for the Minas
Basin during British control of the colony. He concludes, on p.
208, "On the basis of any reasonable assumption or evidence, the
population grew more rapidly in the Minas district than in those of
either Annapolis or Chignecto."
For geographical & historical details of what Clark calls
Minas Proper after the British took over Acadia, see note
129, below.
94. See
Arsenault,
History, 56; Arsenault,
Généalogie, 1320, 1322, 1330, 1336, 1346-50, 1365-68, 1374, 1383,
1386, 1388-89, 1392, 1401, 1411, 1415, 1419-23, 1427, 1430, 1432, 1434,
1441, 1454; Clark, Acadia, 149, 217-18.
Griffiths, From Migrant to
Acadian, 193, points out that the original land grants in the
Pigiguit area have been lost, so no one can now say who founded the
settlement.
Pigiguit, pronounced PIDG-ee-gwit, also is spelled
Pesaquid, Pisiguit, Pisiquid, Pisiquit, Piziguit, Piziquid, Piziquit.
The settlement was large enough to support 2 church
parishes--Ste.-Famille on the west side
(today's Falmouth), & Notre-Dame-de-L'Assomption, or L'Assomption, on
the east side of the Avon River (today's Windsor), but a shortage of priests usually meant that only 1
priest served both parishes. Wikipedia, "Pisiguit," citing
Flannery Surrette, Mapping Catholic Acadia - Parishes, Churches,
Chapels, and Missions, published by Saint Mary's University in 2005,
says that the first parish at Pigiguit was Ste.-Famille, followed by
L'Assomption, & gives the founding dates used here.
Clark, p. 149, says that by 1701 there were 33
families of 188 individuals at Pigiguit & that it grew "at a slightly
more moderate rate" compared to its sister settlement at Cobeguit.
For geographical & historical details of
Pigiguit after the British took over Acadia, see note
130, below.
The St. Croix River at today's Windsor, NS,
should not be confused with the St. Croix River that forms today's
international boundary between ME & NB. See
Clark, p. 209, Fig. 6.2, for a good map of the Pigiguit area, c1714,
that also includes estimated population figures.
95. See
Arsenault,
History, 56-57; Arsenault, Généalogie, 1465, 1470-71,
1474, 1480-82, 1484, 1488, 1490, 1492-94, 1496, 1504, 1506-07, 1511,
1528; BRDR, 1a(rev,):155; Clark, Acadia, 116 (Fig. 5.2),
209 (Fig. 6.2), 218-20; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 193.
Clark, p. 127, Fig. 5.7, entitled "Northern
and Eastern Acadian Settlements: Population, 1707," is a map,
replete with mileage scale, that shows the distances between the Beaubassin, western Minas,
Pigiguit, & Cobeguit settlements.
Arsenault, History, 56, says that
Mathieu Martin "was given a seigneury on the Wecobequitk (Cobequid)
River in 1689," & Clark, pp. 118, 219, agrees, but Cobeguit was settled much
later. In the censuses of 1693 & 1700, Mathieu Martin,
Martin Bourg, & Martin Blanchard, who Arsenault, p. 57,
lists as pioneers of the settlement, were still being counted at
Port-Royal. See <acadian-cajun.com>;
<acadian-home.org>.
Not until 1701 were Martin Blanchard, Martin Bourg, &
Jérôme, called Giraud, Guérin counted at Cobeguit, the only 3
families there; Mathieu Martin himself was not counted there
until 1714! See <acadian-cajun.com>;
<acadian-home.org>;
Clark, pp. 129, 149; White, DGFA-1, 145, 229, 778, 1135.
Clark, p. 116, Fig. 5.2, which includes a list of the seigneuries
granted in peninsula Acadia, replete with location & dates of the grant,
includes Martin's grant in the category of "The date is
uncertain," & is the source for the names Ouëcobeguy & St.-Mathieu.
Arsenault, p. 56, implies that Mathieu
Martin secured his seigneurie at Cobeguit because he was the
first-born Frenchman in Acadia, which follows Massignon, "Trahans of
Acadia", 117. Griffith, p. 193, a more careful historian, calls
Martin "one [of] the first children born in Acadia, both of whose
parents were European ..." & says, "The early years of settlement [at
Cobeguit] were troubled with disputes over ownership with [colonial
official Mathieu] de Goutin." For Mathieu Martin's
marriage (his wife's name has been lost to history), & his
childlessness, see White, DGFA-1, 1134, which says that Mathieu
died before Apr 1724, when he would have been in his early 80s.
Clark, p. 149, says that Mathieu Martin, who called himself
Sieur Mathieu de Saint-Martin, did receive his seigneurie at
Cobeguit in 1689, but he evidently traded in furs there before he
invited settlers to the place. The settlement thrived. By
1707, there were 17 families & 82 individuals at Cobeguit.
Cobeguit also is spelled Cobequid, Cobequit.
Since Cobeguit, today's Truro, NS, lay at the extreme
northeastern corner of the Minas Basin, it may be considered a part of
the Minas region. Clark, p. 219, says that Mathieu Martin's
seigneurie ran "east of the longitude of the mouth of the Shubenacadie
[River]."
Clark, p. 209, offers detailed, though always
estimated, population figures for Cobeguit during British control of the
colony.
For cattle production at Cobeguit & illegal
trade of the settlers there with the French at Louisbourg via
Tatamagouche, see Clark,
pp. 171-73, 219.
For geographical and historical details of
Cobeguit after the British took over Acadia, see note
131, below.
96. See
Arsenault,
History, 50; Arsenault, Généalogie, 431, 508, 643-44, 646,
807, 1535, 1539-40, 1543, 1545-46, 1557-62, 1564, 1566, 1568-69, 1572,
1574, 1581; Clark, Acadia, 111; Clément Cormier, "Thibaudeau
(Thibadeau, Thibodeau), Pierre," in DCB, 2:629-30.
Clark, p. 116, Fig. 5.2, says that Chepoudy
was granted "to Sieur de Villieu (son-in-law of the Sieur de La Vallière)."
He adds, on p. 144: "La Vallière [the seigneur of Chignecto] may
have got on well with his own servants or engagés but his son-in-law, de
Villieu, made himself unpopular by, among other acts, getting eviction
orders for settlers who had squatted in Shepody Bay and dispossessing
them. No doubt this was within the rights of a rather expansive
seigneurial grant but it did not encourage settlement, for others could
not be induced to replace them." Clark, p. 145, calls Pierre
Thibaudeau, as he spells his name, "A miller of Pré Ronde, up the
river from Port Royal...," & says on pp. 145, 147, that Pierre & his
sons explored the Chipoudy area in 1698, encouraged the Blanchards
to settle at nearby Petitcoudiac, & that "The first wintering by three
of Thibaudeau's sons was in 1699/1700, when they did well trading
furs with the Indians." It was then that de Villieu "heard of the
activity and immediately protested that they were on his father-in-law's
seigneurie without permission, although the precise boundaries of La
Vallière's grant are almost impossible to determine from the wording of
the concession." Clark says that Thibaudeau, who "had
dreamed of a seigneurie of his own, like that of his old friend Mathieu
Martin at Cobeguid ..." offered to comprise, but de Villieu
refused & pressed his case with authorities in France. In 1702,
however, Villieu offered to compromise, but "the Thibaudeau
group, believing that a petition of their own to Paris would succeed, in
turn refuses." They were so certain of success that they dyked the
salt marshes, erected a gristmill & a sawmill, & otherwise took
possession of the Chepoudy coast. In the end, they won & then lost
their claims: "In 1703 they had their lands confirmed but 'without
prejudice' to the rights of La Vallière. The old man [Pierre
Thibodeau] died [in Dec 1704, in his early 70s, at Pré-Ronde, not
Chepoudy] thinking himself a true seigneur but, in an arrêt of June 2,
1705, the
Thibaudeaus' right to the land was expressly granted as a concession
from La Vallière's seigneurie. Officially, the Thibaudeaus
could not extend their lands, nor could others settle without assuming
the legal position and charges consequent to being censitaires of the
seigneur of Beaubassin." Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
191-92, also offers a detailed description of the founding of these
settlements, including the conflict of land claims between the
Thibodeau & Blanchard
settlers & La Vallière/de Villieu. See also White, DGFA-1
English, 319-20. Complicating Thibodeau's case against La
Villière & de Villieu, Villebon died suddenly in 1700 & was succeeded,
as temporary commander, by de Villieu, who controlled the colony until
Jacques-François de Mombeton de Brouillan took over as colonial
commander in 1701.
Clark, p. 147, says that in 1702 there were 7
households of roughly 33 individuals at Chepoudy, & 5 households of 13
individuals at Petitcoudiac. By 1707, Chepoudy & Petitcoudiac held
14 families & 7 engagés, a total of 55 individuals, with 12 horses, 70
cattle, & 50 sheep. Expansion was slowed, however, by the on-going
war with Britain & de Villieu's obstructions. During Queen Anne's
War, Chepoudy, despite being a coastal settlement, "never actually was
raided but English ships effectively cut it off from Port Royal and
Quebec." Approximately 50 to 75 individuals, "four-fifths of them
of European blood," lived at Chepoudy in 1715. Clark, pp. 147-48,
adds: "It [Chepoudy] became a favorite summer camping spot for
Indians, both Micmac and Malecite, and at least one engagé started a
métis family with an Indian bride." By 1734, settlers in the
trois-rivières area numbered "some" 65 families, & "an estimated further
hundred families by 1750." (In this study, I spell the name of the
Chepoudy/Petitcoudiac/Memramcook area "trois-rivières," using lower-case
letters, so as not to confuse the reader with the prominent Canadian
settlement of Trois-Rivières, on the St. Lawrence between Québec &
Montréal. There also was a Trois-Rivières on the east coast of Île
St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island.)
Chepoudy also is spelled Shepody.
Petitcoudiac is sometimes spelled Petitcodiac & Petit Codiac. See,
for instance, Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind, 28, 30, 33;
Clark,
passim. Clark, pp. 210-11, offers detailed, though always
estimated, population figures for Shepody during British control of the
colony.
A chronology of the history of Memramcook can
be found at the end of the article "Memramcook: Birthplace of the New
Acadia" at <acadian-home.org>.
The time line was taken from the Monument Lefebvre at Memramcook.
For the best map of the Bay of Fundy
settlements, using colors to show topography & including the standard
spellings of place names used here, see the incomparable Historical
Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 29. This map even includes the tidal
ranges in meters: 7-9 at Port-Royal, 13-14 in the Bassin
des Mines, 15 at Cobeguit, 13 at Beaubassin, Chepoudy, & Petitcoudiac.
In feet this is ... awesome. Few other places on earth have such
dramatic tides.
97. See
Arsenault,
Généalogie, 1614-49. Clark, Acadia, 157, says of the
settlements on the St.-Jean: "They became, increasingly, simply
fur-trading posts and bases for raids on New England. The Acadians
in the [Fundy] settlements appear to have had almost nothing to do with them
[the fur traders & the capitaines de sauvages], and they were little
more relevant to their farming community than the more distant Canadians
people along the St. Lawrence. The north shore of the Bay of Fundy
and east to the Penobscot River appears to have had fewer than one
hundred settlers in any of the seventeenth-century accounts.
Rameau [published in 1889] estimated a total of ninety-six for 1701, on
the Saint John River and westward."
98. See
Arsenault, Généalogie, 391-819; Clark, Acadia, 122 (Fig.
5.3, entitled "Port Royal Basin and Valley: Population,
1671-1710"), 132-38, 206 (Fig. 6.1, entitled "Annapolis Basin and
Valley: Population, 1714), 212-14; Cormier, "Le Borgne de
Belle-Isle, Alexandre," 1:436.
For geographical & historical details of the Annapolis
valley after Acadia fell to the British, see note
128, below.
99. See
Arsenault, Généalogie, 1585-1609; Clark, Acadia, 116, 118,
151-53. See also note 35, above.
100.
Quotations from Clark,
Acadia, 113-14, 118-19, 120-21. Clark, p. 115, adds:
"For almost all practical purposes the censitaires of the Acadian
seigneurs might as well have been freeholders with nominal quitrents or
land taxes." See also note
22a, above. Clark, p. 116, figure
5.2, entitled "The Acadian Lands: Seigneurial and Territorial
Grants in the Chignecto Region and Peninsula Nova Scotia," is a detailed
map, complete with dates & appended explanations, of all the known
seigneurial grants in that part of greater Acadia. Clark, p. 119,
says that some of the weakest seigneurial claims were in what became the
richest part of Acadia, the western portion of the Minas Basin around
Grand-Pré & Pigiguit. Clark, pp. 106-07, adds: "... after
1654 [when the English took over the colony for the second time] Acadia
never had whatever degree of institutionalization was known in New
France; the relation between seigneur and habitant was loose and fluid
and one would have been hard put to it to have recognized anything like
our traditional conception of seigneurial forms and practices in any of
the later Acadian settlements. It may be that the form had some
substance at La Have [from 1632-36, when Razilly was governor] ... but
we have little evidence on which to go." See also ibid., pp.
195-200.
Clark, p. 144, contradicts himself by saying
that "By the later 1680's La Vallière [seigneur of Beaubassin] and
Bourgeois [the pioneer settler there] had built gristmills at
Beaubassin...." Pierre Thibodeau, seigneur of Chepoudy,
also built a gristmill at that settlement when he moved there from
Port-Royal during the late 1690s; he had built a grist mill at Pré-Ronde
on the river above Port-Royal, so he was familiar with the technology. See Arsenault, History,
50.
See Cormier, "Thibaudeau (Thibadeau,
Thibodeau), Pierre," for Pierre's fight with La Vallière of
Beaubassin over seigneurial rights to the Chepoudy area. Cormier
points out that, in the end, Pierre lost his suit against La Vallière,
who could wield much more influence at Court than Thibodeau the
commoner.
It is worth noting that, on the insistence of
King Louis XIV, French LA, founded in 1699, never had a seigneurial system. All
lands granted there, even to the highest officials, were given
en routure, that is to say, without seigneurial privileges.
101. See
W. J. Eccles, "Coulon de Villiers, Nicolas-Antoine," in DCB,
3:149-51; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 65-66; Parkman, France
& England, 2:698-99; C. J. Russ,
"La Corne, Louis (Jean-Louis, Pierre, Louis-Luc, Louis-François),
de," in DCB, 3:331-32. Marshall does not name the
partisans from Île St.-Jean, only mentions "another group of Acadian
insurgents" from there.
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, a
solid history, says on p. 363 that Ramezay handed over command of the
Grand-Pré expedition to Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, "a
captain in the regular troops. He was thirty-three, the eldest son
of a 'typical Canadian military family.'" Strangely, Griffiths
then cites Eccles, "Coulon de Villiers, Nicolas-Antoine, 3:149-50, for
the comment. Joseph de Jumonville was only age 28 or 29 in Feb
1747, & was one of the youngest sons of Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de
Villiers, père. W. J. Eccles, "Coulon de Villiers de
Jumonville, Joseph," in DCB, 3:150-51, says nothing of Joseph's
presence at Grand-Pré in Feb 1747. (It would be Joseph de
Jumonville whom George Washington would kill in western PA in May 1754
at the beginning of the French & Indian War.) Parkman,
2:698, says that Coulon de Villiers "seven years later, defeated
Washington at Fort Necessity," so he is giving the command in the attack
on Grand-Pré to Nicolas-Antoine's brother Louis!
For the fall of Île St.-Jean in Aug 1745, see
Griffiths, p. 356.
102. See
Griffiths, Migrant to Acadian, 363; Marshall, Acadian
Resistance, 63-64, 66; Parkman, France & England, 2:699-700,
whose detail remains incomparable.
Griffiths said that it took the Canadians
"almost two weeks to organize men and supplies" for the expedition &
that the force being split between Beaubassin, on one side of the
isthmus, & Baie Verte on the other, contributed to the delay.
Marshall, p. 66, says that Coulon de
Villiers's force numbered "more than 300 Canadians and another 300
resistance fighters and Natives...." Griffiths says that the force
consisted of "some three hundred men, mostly regular French troops but
with approximately sixty Mi'kmaq and Malecite...."
Parkman, 2:699, mentions "dog-teams."
103.
Quotations from Griffiths, Migrant to Acadian, 363; Parkman,
France & England, 2:701-02. See also Griffiths, p. 364;
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 66-67; Parkman, 2:700.
Marshall says that Coulon de Villiers gave his
men "a few days to rest" after they reached Grand-Pré. Griffiths &
Parkman say that the attacking force reached Pigiguit on Feb 9, the
vicinity of Grand-Pré at mid-day on Feb 10, & did not take over
dwellings along Rivière Gaspereau until early that evening, so there
would not have been "a few days" of rest to give to his men, only a few
hours. The dwellings along the Gaspereau put them only about 2
miles from Grand-Pré village.
Clark, Acadia, 193, says that the
houses at Grand-Pré were dispersed "over a stretch of two and a half
miles...."
One wonders if Coulon de Villiers's force
would have gotten so close to their objective without detection if Noble
had not sent Gorham & his rangers back to Annapolis Royal only a few
days before the attack. See note 88,
above.
One also wonders who were bride & groom being
feted along the Gaspereau that day.
104. See
Eccles, "Coulon de Villiers," 3:150; Griffiths, From Migrant to
Acadian, 364; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 67; Russ, "La
Corne," 3:331.
Coulon de Villiers's wound proved to be
mortal. The following Oct, he went to France for treatment at a
thermal spring, but the therapy was unsuccessful. He was awarded
the Cross of St.-Louis in 1748, returned to Canada in 1749, where he was
promoted to major, & was forced to endure the amputation of his left arm
in Apr 1750. He did not survive the operation & was buried at
Montréal.
La Corne also received the Cross of St.-Louis,
in May 1749, for his leadership at Grand-Pré. Like Boishébert, he,
too, would play a significant role in Acadian history.
105.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 364;
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 68. See also ibid., p. 67;
Barry M. Moody, "Goldthwait, Benjamin," in DCB, 3:259-60.
Marshall, p. 67, gives Noble's losses as 140
"killed," but Griffiths says: "The New England force lost not only its
commander but five other officers and seventy men, according to their
records. As well, thirty-eight others had been wounded and between
forty and sixty had been taken prisoner." This adds up to total
casualties of 154 to 174. (There is a difference
between soldiers killed & soldiers who are listed as causalities.)
Marshall, p. 68, says that during the evening
meal shared by French & British officers, a toast was made "while the
bodies of 146 men lay in nearby sheds!" implying that the ground was too
frozen to bury them, but Griffiths, who mentions the meal but not the
sheds, buries the dead "mostly in a common grave in frozen ground...."
Griffiths says that it was Goldthwait who invited "the French officers
to dine with him and his men, so that they all might become better
acquainted over a bowl of punch." Griffiths also details the
"articles of capitulation."
Moody, "Goldthwait," 3:360, does not mention
the bowl of punch, but he points out that Goldthwait served as a major
under Colonel John Winslow in the capture of Fort Beauséjour in Jun 1755
& that "he later assisted in the deportation of Acadians from the
Chignecto region to the American colonies."
106.
Quotation from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 68. See also
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 365.
Griffiths, p. 355, notes: "But in terms
of the Acadians themselves, the fall of Louisbourg and the failure of
this [d'Anville's] expedition shaped their lives as much, if not more
than, the policies of the British and French governments and the
negotiations of imperial diplomats." Ibid., pp. 356-57, is a
summary of the war's impact on the Acadians, including the increasing
talk among British leaders--especially Gov. Shirley & naval captain
Peter Warren, who governed Île Royale from 1745-48--about Acadian
deportation.
107.
Quotations from Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 68-69; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 365.
One wonders why Mascarene did not consider the
Broussards as part of the attacking force at Grand-Pré.
108.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 362.
109. See
ibid., p. 366; S. Dale Standen, "Beauharnois de La Boische, Charles de,
Marquis de Beauharnois," in DCB, 3:42, 50; Taillemite, "Taffanel,"
3:609-10.
110. See
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 366; Étienne Taillemite, "Barrin
de La Galissonière, Roland-Michel, Marquis de La Galissonière," in
DCB, 3:26-32. For his prompt & efficient ass"umption of the
governor-generalship of New France, La Galissonière was promoted to
rear-admiral in Feb 1750. See Taillemite, "Barrin, 3:27.
111.
Quotations from Taillemite, "Barrin," 3:28. See also ibid., 3:27; Griffiths,
Migrant to Acadian, 366.
112. See
Taillemite, "Barrin," 3:28.
113. See
John Fortier, "Des Herbiers de La Ralière (La Ratière), Charles," in
DCB, 3:182-83; Taillemite, "Taffanel," 3:610.
114.
Quotations from Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 177-78.
See also ibid., p. 180.
115. See
Parkman, France & England, 2:911-13; "Father Le Loutre's
War," Wikipedia.
116. The
death dates, exact or approximate, for these men are best found in
White, DGFA-1, which is alphabetical based on family name.
117.
Marriages from 1710-14 may be found in White, DGFA-1.
Marriages after 1714 may be found in Arsenault, Généalogie, which
is organized by settlement & then alphabetically by family name.
See Clark, Acadia, 203-04, for an
analysis of marriages at Annapolis Royal & in the Minas Basin from the
late 1720s thru the early 1750s. Clark concludes: "... the
records of Grand Pré show the precise opposite of bucolic isolation," &
"Even the Annapolis records suggest a good deal of contact outside of
that settlement...."
118. See
Arsenault, Généalogie.
119.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 197-98. See also ibid., pp.
195-96. For a discussion of the seigneurial system in Acadia, see
note 100, above.
120.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 198-99. See also ibid., p.
200. For settlement of the trois-rivières area, see note
96, above. For Robichaud, see
White, DGFA-1, 1407.
The surveyor employed by Armstrong was George
Mitchell, who, along with the Annapolis valley, also was tasked with
surveying the Minas Basin, including Pigiguit & Cobeguit; Cap D'Or, on
the north end of the entrance to the Minas Basin; Chignecto; & the
northern coastline of the Bay of Fundy from Chepoudy west to
Passamaquoddy Bay. Not surprisingly, Clark has found evidence only
of the Annapolis survey. See p. 199, note 32.
121.
Quotation from ibid., p. 200. For more on these settlers, see note
135, below.
122.
Quotation from ibid. See also ibid., p. 238.
123.
Clark, Acadia, 200-01,
reminds us: "With the end of official French government we also
come to the end of those frequent, detailed annual censuses which have
provided so much information about Acadia's human geography. In
their place we have estimates, often simply of numbers and families, and
such counts as of those rounded up and deported in 1755 and succeeding
years." As a result, counts of Acadian populations after 1710 are
purely speculative. The only useful & reliable count, Clark says,
was that of Father Félix Pain, who conducted a census of the Nova Scotia
population in 1714 at the request of the government of Île Royale.
"More than 2,300 were named and a population of at least 2,500 is
assumed, including the extension of the Chignecto area to the estuaries
of Shepody Bay." See ibid., p. 201. From less accurate
estimates Clark postulates an Acadian population of about 5,000 in the
early 1730s & more than 10,000 by the 1750s--"a doubling of the
population in, roughly, each twenty years. This is a remarkable
rate of growth for its time in that it seems to have involved little
or no immigration." Italics added. See ibid., p. 201.
For evidence of immigration into British Nova Scotia during British
rule, see note 117, above. Clark,
p. 201, adds: "That rate of growth, as far as we can tell, was
remarkably constant from 1671 to 1748 if our estimates are reliable.
From 1671 to 1714 numbers roughly quadrupled, from 500 to 2,300 and by
mid-century, in approximately the same period of time, it may have again
increased fives times to between ten and fifteen thousand."
Clark, p. 207, Table 6.2, entitled "Population of the four Bay
settlements in 1737," gives the following figures: Annapolis
Royal, 1,406; Pisiquid, 1,623; Minas, 2,113; all of Chignecto, 1,816,
for a total of 6,958.
124. Quotations from Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 173. See also ibid., pp. 174, 179-80.
For the 4 "kernel" families of Port-Royal,
Griffiths cites a study of Jacques Vanderlinden, published in the late
1990s. See her bibliography, p. 605.
125. Quotations from ibid., pp.
176-77. Clark, Acadia, 202, hints at 3-or 4-generational
households in Acadian communities but, because of lack of data, cannot
give numbers or even percentages.
126. Quotations from Clark,
Acadia, 201; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 173.
See also Clark, p. 202.
Clark, p. 201, note 36, adds: "An examination of the parish
records of St. Jean Baptiste of Annapolis River from 1727 to 1742 and of
St. Charles of Grand Pré from 1730 to 1748 revealed that of 224
marriages for which the age of both partners are given, only sixteen of
the brides were younger than 18 and only one, at 15, younger than 16.
The median age of girls at marriage was 21, the modal age 20.
Thirty-four were 25 or older at first marriage. In twenty-five
cases, slighting more than 10 per cent, the woman was older than the
man. In the cases (189) where the man was a year or more older,
the median difference in the ages of the partners was four years; the
modal differences were two and four years."
127. Quotations from ibid., pp.
204-05.
128. Quotations from ibid., pp. 212-14.
See also ibid., p. 231.
Ibid., pp. 205, 207-08, also offers detailed,
though always estimated, population figures for the Annapolis Basin
during British control of the colony. See also ibid., p. 206, Fig.
6.1, entitled "Annapolis Basin and Valley: Population, 1714."
Clark, p. 212, says that "The principal church
of the region was twelve miles from the fort, upriver on the north side,
and formed the Acadian social nucleus of the Annapolis area, although
there were 'chappells of ease' elsewhere." A very detailed map of
Annapolis Royal in 1710, found in
Historical Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 29, shows near the fort the
site of a "Church burned in 1707," so one wonders if Clark is telling us
that St.-Jean-Baptiste was rebuilt a dozen miles upriver.
Considering the population of Annapolis village, this makes no sense.
The church he is referring to as the "social nucleus of the Annapolis
area" is likely St.-Laurent.
The
word "banlieu" or banlieue" is French for the outskirts of a city, or
suburb.
For details on Gautier, also spelled Gauthier,
including his rise from obscurity to prominence & wealth,
see Clark, p. 247; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
342-43; White, DGFA-1, 13.
For the names of some of the families who
lived in the Annapolis valley, see note 98,
above.
129.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 215-17, 235. Ibid., p. 140,
Fig. 5.9, entitled "Northern and Eastern Settlements as of the Early
Eighteenth Century, Modern Place Names," places the Minas Basin in its
geographical context. Ibid., p. 209, Fig. 6.2, entitled "Minas and
Pisiquid: Population, 1714," provides more geographical detail.
See also ibid., p. 251, Fig. 6.4, entitled "The Acadian Lands:
Routes of Communication, 1710-1748."
Clark, p. 235, has found an estimate of 4,100
acres of marsh dyked at Minas in 1755, but he does not say if this
figure encompassed only Minas Proper or if it included nearly Pigiguit.
For the founding of the Minas settlements &
the names of some of the families who lived there, see note
92, above. For the wedding feast at
Gaspereau & the attack on Grand-Pré in Feb 1747, see note
103, above.
130.
Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 218. See also ibid., 217;
ibid., p. 140, Fig. 5.9; ibid., p. 209, Fig. 6.2.
For the founding of Pigiguit & the names of
some of the families who lived there, see note
94, above. For Pigiguit's participation in the attack on
Grand-Pré in Feb 1747, see note 103,
above.
131.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 218-19. See also ibid., pp.
219-20; ibid., p. 140, Fig. 5.9; Wikipedia, "Truro, Nova Scotia," for
the name Ville Bois-Brûlé.
Clark, p. 135, has found an estimate 1,000
acres of marsh dyked at Cobeguit in 1755.
For the founding of Cobeguit & the names of
the families who lived there, see note 95,
above.
Cobeguit's present name, Truro, is named after
a city in Cornwall, England, & came from the Scots & Irish from New
England who settled there in 1761, years after the Acadians had
abandoned the site. See Wikipedia, "Truro, Nova Scotia."
132.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 220, 222, 229. See also ibid., pp. 219,
230, 250.
133.
Quotations from
ibid., pp. 220-22. See also ibid., pp. 140 (Fig. 5.9), 223, 250. For the founding of the Chignecto settlements & the names of
the families who lived there, see note 91,
above.
Personal notes: the author's Cormier
ancestors lived on Rivière-des-Hébert before being driven to the Aulac
area.
134. See
Clark, Acadia, 222; Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 27,
30-31. For the founding of the trois-rivières settlements & the names of
the families who lived there, see note 96,
above.
135.
Quotations from
Clark, Acadia, 223, including note 83. See also ibid., pp.
151-53, 230. For the founding of the
Pobomcoup/Cap-Sable settlements & the names of
the families who lived there, see note 99, above.
136.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 224, 154-55; Webster, Acadia,
135. See also Clark, p. 153.
Villebon found a son of Philippe Mius
d'Entremont at Port Razoir in 1699, so that place also may have been
part of the the family's seigneurie.
137.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 155, 225. See also ibid., p. 224.
138.
Quotations from
ibid., pp. 156, 227-29. See also ibid., pp. 143, 225, 231, 247-48.
Clark, p. 23, Fig. 2.3, entitled "Atlantic
Canada: Continental Shelf and Fishing Banks," gives an idea of the
many offshore banks served by the fishery at Canso & its ideal location
relative to those banks.
Clark, p. 226,
Fig. 6.3, entitled "Canso: Peninsula and Islands," is a detailed
depiction of the Canso area, including
the location of Little Canso & Great Canso islands, & the site
of the British fort on Great Canso.
For Lescarbot & Savalet in 1607, see note
10, above.
139.
Quotation from <museum.gov.ns.ca/infos>.
See also Arsenault,
History, passim; Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia,
188; Clark, Acadia, 10, 56-70, 85, 361; Griffiths, From
Migrant to Acadian, 11, 56; Taylor, A., American Colonies, 99.
The name preferred by members of the tribe
today is pronounced MICK-maw & is often written as Micmac, the original
French term. The French also called them the Souriquois. See
Clark, p. 58. M'ikmaw is singular, M'ikmaq plural. See
Faragher, p. 494, note 2. The Mi'kmaq & their descendants call the
area of old Acadia Mi'kmaq'i or
Lnue'gati. See Griffiths, p. 390, which includes a
cogent explanation of Mi'kmaq independence based on ownership of the
land that
comprised much of greater Acadia--something they never fully conceded
even to their French & Acadian allies.
For Mi'kmaq numbers, see Clark, p. 58, whose
chap. 3 is a detailed description of the tribe's history & culture.
Greer, People of New France, 93-94,
offers a succinct summary of the relationship between the Mi'kmaq &
Acadians.
Thanks to implacable imperial rivalries & the
machinations of French missionary Abbé Le Loutre, Acadian/M'ikmaq
relations turned sour during the early 1750s. Before then,
however, with the exception of the Thomas incident at Canso in 1635, the
two cultures lived in remarkable harmony, including intermarriage.
See especially Clark, pp. 361, 387.
For a poetic description of the English lust
for Indian land, see Leckie, Wars of America, 7-8.
139a.
See Arsenault, Généalogie, & White, DGFA-1, for Acadian
family lines. See also Bunnell, French & Native North American
Marriages, passim, for reviews of known Acadian-Indian
marriages.
Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
46-48, published in the mid-2000s & reflecting current ethnic
sensibilities, emphasizes, with many examples, the role of métissage,
or the intermarrying of Acadian & M'ikmaq, in the cultural relationship
between the two people. Clark, p. 68, published in the late 1960s,
plays down the influence of intermarriage: "Gradually they came to
a position of mutual interdependence with the French and in places, as
at La Have (La Hève), interbred with them to produce small métis
populations. However, although some Micmac contributions to the
subsequent Acadian gene-pool must thus have taken place, the mixed-blood
offspring generally were raised as Micmac by their (almost exclusively)
Indian mothers and the physical results of miscegenation were seen much
more among the Indians than the French." On p. 89, Clark notes:
"Resort to Indian women must have been common enough among the fur
traders but it never became an accepted or established practice in the
organized settlements, in good part because of the influence of the
priests. In any event, dalliance with the Indian maids was more
likely to lead the men to the forest than the women to the cornfields.
There is no doubt that the blending of French and Micmac genes did get
underway in the period [the 1600s] and that this process continued,
clandestinely at least, through the remaining Acadian residence,
somewhat diluting the 'genetic purity' of both Acadian and Acadian
groups (principally the latter)." Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux, in his
ground-breaking
Founding of New Acadia, 188-89, makes the interesting
observation: "Forged by the eastern Canadian frontier and tempered
by 150 years of isolation, Acadian society had become fiercely
independent and equalitarian by the middle of the eighteenth century.
These cultural characteristics fostered peaceful coexistence with
Acadia's indigenous inhabitants, and an economically symbiotic
relationship with the region's red men. Group boundaries, however,
were rigidly maintained by thinly veiled racism in the red and white
camps, and offspring of mixed blood were generally exiled to the
isolated Atlantic coast community of La Heve." Italics added.
To be sure, members of the
Guédry, Lejeune, Petitpas, & Roy families
lived at La Hève at one time or other, but the term "exiled" may be a
bit too strong. See Clark, p. 387, for a possible influence.
140.
Quotation from Webster,
Acadia, 213-14. See also ibid., pp. 211-12; Clark,
Acadia, 57; Greer, People of New France, 84; Leckie, Wars
of America, 3-5.
The Maliseet are also called Malecite.
See Clark, p. 57, note 3.
For a classic description of the Indian tribes
from New England to the Hudson Bay & the heroic efforts of French
missionaries to convert them to Catholicism, see Parkman, France &
England, 1:345-402 & ff, also 2:115, 162. Griffiths, From
Migrant to Acadian, 138-39, provides a careful analysis of the
difficulties the eastern Abenaki endured with the English settlers in
Maine.
Clark, p. 89, describes the Mi'kmaq's
conversion to Roman Catholicism as "often superficial."
For Fr. Râle, see note
248, below.
141.
Quotations from Arsenault,
History, 45-46, which says that Saint-Castin, also spelled Saint-Castain,
came to Acadia with Grandfontaine in 1670 & married the chief's daughter
in 1680. See also Clark,
Acadia, 111; Webster, Acadia, 27; Pritchard, In Search
of Empire, 336.
Parkman, France & England, 1:1281-87,
provides the classic description of the Canadian gentilhomme, or
untitled nobleman, from whose ranks sprang the captaines de sauvages.
White, DGFA-1, 6, gives the marriage date to Mathilde,
Saint-Castin's first Indian wife, of 1670; Arsenault, Généalogie,
1646, gives no date for this marriage & calls her Marie-Mathilde
Pidicwanmiskwe, but Arsenault is describing Saint-Castin's second wife,
whom he married in c1685, and who, according to White, p. 7, was named
Marie Pidiwammiskwa & was a sister of the first wife
Mathilde. Saint-Castin fathered 10 children by the first wife,
including Bernard-Anselme, his sixth child & second son, born in c1689,
who married Charlotte d'Amours de Chauffours at Port-Royal in
October 1707; Bernard-Anselme also became a
captaine de sauvages. Jean-Vincent's second wife bore him 2
daughters.
142.
Quotation from "Louis XIV", Encarta, "III. Absolute Monarchy."
Again, Parkman says it most eloquently: "The king [of France],
once powerless among a host of turbulent nobles, was now a king indeed.
Once a chief, because his equals had made him so, he was now the
anointed of the Lord. This triumph of royalty had culminated in
Louis XIV. The stormy energies and bold individualism of the old
feudal nobles had ceased to exist. They who had held his
predecessors in awe had become his obsequious servants. He no
longer feared his nobles; he prized them as gorgeous decorations of his
court, and satellites of his royal person." Quote from France &
England, 1:1274; see also 2:138-39.
Jerry A. Micelle, "The Superior Council of French Louisiana," p. 27, in
Conrad, ed., Readings in LA History, uses more precise
language in describing the role of absolutism in France, focusing on the
final years of the Sun King's reign: "The strength of custom and
tradition in eighteenth-century France lies hidden behind the facade of
legal documents by which the French crown attempted to realize the ideal
of absolute government. The theory of absolutism was based, not
upon the experience of the French kings, but upon the idea of a united
kingdom which constant civil strife had made desirable. As a
result, the formality of using the king's name on all legal documents
was based, not upon the fact of the monarch's actual power, but rather
on a rationalization of the diversity of customs that prevailed in a
kingdom where ideal unity constituted an impossible dream."
143.
Quotations from "Louis XIV", Encarta, "II. Early Life," and "V. Early
Reign."
144.
Quotations from "Louis XIV", Encarta, "VI. Expansion of French Power in
Europe." For the action in Acadia, see <acadian-cajun.com>;
Clark, Acadia, 112.
The secret Anglo-French treaty between
England's Charles II & Louis XIV, signed in June 1670, is called the
Treaty of Dover. See Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 268,
part of a chapter (pp. 267-300) that details the Franco-Dutch War of
1672-78 & its impact on French colonies, especially in the West Indies.
The Treaty of Dover came at the beginning of the Third Anglo-Dutch War
of 1670-72, "a brief two-year struggle," Pritchard notes, that was
"fought entirely at sea." The treaty allowed the English to fight
the Dutch without French interference. The English response to
France's aggression in the Low Countries in 1672 was to step aside as
the French had done in 1670. England was an erstwhile ally of
France during the first years of the war, but in Feb 1674, Parliament
denied Charles II funds for the war against Holland, & so Charles
abandoned his ally & made peace with the Dutch in the Treaty of
Westminster, leaving the French to fight the Dutch coalition alone.
This emboldened the Dutch & led to their attack on the French West
Indies, which was repulsed at Martinique. See Pritchard, cited
above.
For the Dutch attack on Acadia, see Pritchard,
p. 282, which adds that Aernouts had been encouraged to attack French
Acadia by the English at New York, whom the Dutchman had overawed on his
way north from the West Indies. Pritchard adds that "At Fort
Jemseg on the St. John River, he [Aernouts] captured Chambly's
lieutenant." Jemseg lay about 70 miles up Rivière St.-Jean, so the
fort that the Dutchman attacked probably was Charles La Tour's
old fort at the mouth of the river. See note
22, above, for a discussion of the fort's location & identity.
145.
Quotation from "Louis XIV", Encarta, "VI. Expansion of French Power in
Europe."
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 269,
concludes that Louis XIV's "victory" over the Dutch in 1678 "set the
stage for the subsequent struggle between the English and French in the
Americas." He adds: "By excluding the Dutch from major
political and military roles in the New World, the French also brought
to the fore the irreconcilability of their own and England's colonial
ambitions, a consequence they had not envisioned"--a consequence that
would greatly influence Acadian history.
In Aug 1684, France & Spain negotiated a truce
at Regensburg & agreed to call off hostilities for 20 years.
146.
Quotations from "Louis XIV", Encarta, "II. Early Life" and "VII. The
Beginning of Decline."
147.
Quotations from Glenn R. Conrad, "Alsatian Emigration to Louisiana," p.
164, in Conrad, ed., The French Experience in LA; "Louis XIV",
Encarta, "VII. The Beginning of Decline" and "VIII. The European Wars."
Conrad says that 400,000 Huguenots fled France between 1685 & 1710.
Other estimates range from 210,000 to 900,000. Louis XIV's
evocation of the Edict of Nantes was accomplished by the Edict of
Fontainebleau in Oct 1685. Huguenots fled to England, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, Brandenburg-Prussia, Denmark, the Protestant
area of the Holy Roman Empire, South Africa (where they became Boers),
and the English colonies of North America, especially SC & VA.
For the Treaty of Whitehall, see Clark,
Acadia, 112; Webster, Acadia, 1, 8, 228, which provides the
text of the treaty that includes the colonies. Webster speculates
on p. 1: "It is doubtful if the terms of the Treaty of Whitehall
were ever known in the Colonies." However, Parkman, England &
France, 2:127-28, hints that it was known at least to the French in
the summer of 1688. Clark, p. 112, says that it "was ignored, if,
indeed, it was widely known of across the Atlantic," that is to say, in
North America.
In Sep 1783, Colbert's son, Jean-Baptiste
Colbert,
fils, marquis de Seignelay, had replaced his father as
finance minister.
148. The
account of the rise of William of Orange and the fall of James II is
from the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.
149. This
description of Andros is from the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth
Edition. Andros, born in 1637, had served as governor of NY from
1674-81, during the reign of Charles II, & had not been popular with the
colonists. This did not deter James II from appointing him
governor of the Dominion of New England. In early April 1689, when
the colonists in Boston heard of the overthrow of James II, they
revolted against Andros & sent him packing. He returned to England
as a prisoner of war along with other officials of his government.
They were soon released. Later, Andros found favor with King
William & also with Queen Anne & served as governor of VA (1692-97) and
of Guernsey (1704-06), his birthplace. See also Parkman, France
& England, 2:124-25, 164.
150. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 10-11, 27; Parker France & England, 2:162-64.
La Vallière, the seigneur of Beaubassin, also served as the unconfirmed
governor of Acadia from 1678 to 1684, and it was he who moved the
military capital from Pentagouët to Chignecto. One of his
successors, Meneval, who became governor in 1687, moved the capital back
to Port-Royal. See <acadian-cajun.com>;
&
Appendix.
If one counts European incursions against
Indians as part of the conflict between the European powers, the North
American antecedents of the war that erupted between England & France in
1689 go back even farther than Andros's depredations in Maine in the
spring of 1688. In July 1687, the governor of Canada, the Marquis
de Denonville, with nearly 3,000 French regulars, Canadian militia,
coureurs de bois, & Indian allies, the largest force mustered in
Canada up to that time, had waged a campaign against the Seneca in
northern New York & destroyed their villages before returning to
Montréal in August. Before Denonville struck the Seneca, some of
his men had seized two parties of New York traders in the Great Lakes
area. After he struck the Seneca, Denonville built a new fort on
Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River in territory claimed by
the English. The governor of New York colony at the time, Thomas
Dongan, protested mightily. The Iroquois exacted their revenge in
the months that followed until they signed a treaty of neutrality with
Denonville in late 1688. These events are not considered by
historians to be part of King William's War, but they certainly are part
of the causation of the conflict. They had stirred animosities
between the English & the French in North America, as well as the wrath
of the Iroquois Confederation against the French & their Indian allies
in the late 1680s and thus played a part in the eruption of all-out war
between the various antagonists in 1689. See Parkman, 2: chapters
8 & 9; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 333, 341.
Pritchard, p. 341, notes: "The local
conflict involving the Indians known as Abenaki was over sovereignty and
influence along 150 miles of coast between the Kennebec and Sainte-Croix
rivers in present-day Maine and the access of New England fishermen to
offshore waters off Acadia. Neither issue directly concerned
Acadian colonists, whose relations with neighbouring New England were
friendly and subordinate." Italics added.
In August 1688, New Englanders attacked and
destroyed the French fishing establishment at Chedabouctou, on the
Atlantic coast of Acadia. This also factored into the developing
conflict between France & England. See Pritchard, p. 342.
151. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 14-22, 34; Parkman, France & England,
2:163-65.
152. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 27-30; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 335,
342. Parkman, France & England, 2:163, note 2, citing a
French source, says that 143 men, women, & children were killed in the
raid on Pemaquid. See Parkman, 2:165-66, for details of the
attack; he says little about Saint-Castin's role in the raid & much
about the Abenakis' spiritual leader, a Jesuit called Père or
Father Thury, adding: "Religion was one of the impelling forces of the
war. In the eyes of the Indian converts, it was a crusade against
the enemies of God. They made their vows to the Virgin before the
fight; and the squaws, in their distant villages on the Penobscot, told
unceasing beads, and offered unceasing prayers for victory." One
has only to study the so-called King Philip's War of 1675-76 to see how
barbarous the hyper-religious English Puritans could be when their
battle blood was up. Brebner, Canada, 62, says 1,400
Iroquois attacked Lachine. Parkman, 2:133, says the Iroquois who
fell on Lachine numbered 1,500 warriors & got into the settlement
undetected during a violent hailstorm the night of August 4-5.
Denonville was still governor of New France at the time. Details
of the Lachine fight, described by Parkman as "the most frightful
massacre in Canadian history," can be found in 2:133-34. Parkman
says that at the head of the 200 French regulars from Montréal who
arrived at Lachine in the wake of the massacre was a French officer
named Subercase, the name of the last governor of Acadia (1706-10; was
this the same man?). Parkman, 2:133, describes the fate of some of
the Lachine men, women, & children who fell into the hands of the
Iroquois--"scenes ... of indescribable and nameless horror."
Parkman, 2:136, note 1, is convinced that the Iroquois struck Lachine on
their own, without instigation from the English officials in New York.
He does not give the Abenaki who struck the Maine settlements such
open-minded treatment. See 2:163. For French
abandonment of Fort Frontenac on lower Lake Ontario & other posts before
Denonville's successor, Count Frontenac, arrived at Quebec, &
Frontenac's anger over this, see Parkman, 2:143-44.
153. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 38-43. In England, King William's War was also
known as the War of the League of Augsburg, but the more accurate
European name may be the War of the Grand Alliance. It was also
called in Europe the War of the Palatinate. Pritchard, In
Search of Empire, 303, uses a different name entirely for the
1688-97 struggle, with the following explanation: "The War of the
League of Augsburg is a misnomer. the name fails to link the great
maritime struggle between 1689 to 1697 to the European continental
conflict. Known in American and English historiography as King
William's War or the War of William III, these names do not capture its
complexity either. Various Indian nations in North America were
major participants rather than imperial pawns. Some historians
have recently referred to it as the War of the English Succession, for
it was the arrival of an heir to James II of England in the summer of
1688 and William of Orange's coup d'état in early November that
rapidly transformed Louis XIV's attack inthe Rhineland into a larger war
involving the United Provinces, the Emperor, Spain, and England, and
reached across the Atlantic to the Americas, but this new designation
ignores the fact that Louis XIV initiated the war. Though not
entirely satisfactory, the neutral appellation, the Nine Years' War, is
used hereafter." Pritchard, p. 341, adds: "An unofficial war
between the French and English had been in progress in Acadia for at
least two years before European hostilities began," making the name Nine
Years' War a misnomer when applied to New France.
Leckie, Wars of America, 14, says that
Frontenac was the first "professional soldier on the new European model"
to appear in the New World. Frontenac, born in 1620, first arrived
at Québec as governor-general in 1672 and left 10 years later after
quarreling bitterly with the bishop and the intendant of Canada.
But, luckily for the French, he was restored as governor-general in the
autumn of 1689, replacing the Marquis de Denonville just in time for the
war against England; it was the outbreak of war between the European
powers that doubtlessly motivated the king to restore Frontenac to the
governorship of his most important colony. See Parker, France &
England, 2:139. For details of Frontenac's life &
accomplishments, including the interesting relationship with his
headstrong wife, see Parkman, 2: chapters 1-4, 10-20, the bulk of the
volume entitled Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV;
W. J. Eccles, "BUADE DE FRONTENAC et de Palluau, Louis de," in
DCB, 1:133-42, which, according to Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
242 n.42, demolishes "the myth created by Francis Parkman."
154. See
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 335-36. For Frontenac's
preparations for the raid into New York & New England with the limited
resources available to him, see Parkman, France & England,
2:143-46, 154-55. For details of the Schenectady raid, see
Brebner, Canada, 62; Leckie, Wars of America, 15, 17-18;
Parkman, 2:155-61. Sixty or more settlers died at Schenectady,
including 22 women and children, and between 80 and 90 settlers were
taken as prisoners. There were 400 residents of the town in Feb
1690, yet a New York official estimated that only 1/6 of the inhabitants
of Schenectady escaped death or capture. See Parkman, 2:160n.
Only 1 Frenchman died in the assault. Interestingly in the context
of this narrative, three of the French officers on the Schenectady raid
were sons of prominent Canadian nobleman Charles Le Moyne, one of whom,
Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville, would pioneer French settlements in
the Gulf of Mexico during the late 1690s & early 1700s.
Remember that Frontenac arrived at Quebec only
two months after the massacre at Lachine, and that the Le Moynes and
other colonists, as well as the Christian Iroquois, witnessed the
aftermath of the Lachine massacre, which may have stimulated the
ferocity of the attack on Schenectady and the New England settlements.
Drake, Border Wars, 45n, addresses this assertion: "It is
claimed that this [the Schenectady massacre] was done in retaliation for
outrages committed by the Iroquois in Canada. But the Iroquois
also were savages, neither governed by the rules of civilized war, nor
led by English officers." The Trois-Rivieres column,
commanded by François Hertel, numbered 24 Frenchmen, 20 Sokoki Abenakis,
& 5 Algonquins; their surprise attack resulted in "about thirty persons
of both sexes and all ages ... tomahawked or shot; and fifty-four,
chiefly women and children, ... made prisoners." See Parkman,
2:161-62, 167-68, quote from 167. The third column, led by René
Robineau de Portneuf, brother of a future governor of Acadia, left
Quebec in Jan with only 50 Frenchmen & 60 Abenakis. However, when
it reached the Kennebec in May, it numbered 400 or 500 men, mostly
Abenaki reinforcements, some of them under Saint-Castin, & 36 men under
Hertel who had fought at Salmon Falls. See Parkman, 2:168-71.
For other overviews of Frontenac's grand offensive, see Drake, chap. 6;
& Crouse, Lemoyne d'Iberville, chap. 3, which highlights the
participation of the Le Moyne brothers & details the attack on
Schenectady, then called Corlaer.
The raid on Schenectady was the only fruit of
a grand scheme to capture Albany & New York & to dispossess the entire
colony of its Protestant inhabitants, a plan concocted not by Frontenac
but by his predecessor, Denonville, Denonville's second in command,
Callieres, governor of Montréal, & Louis XIV himself. See Parkman,
2:140-42, who, in pointing out that Frontenac could not have captured
the entire New York colony with the resources given to him, makes, on
p.142, the sad assertion: "In the next century, some of the people
of Acadia were torn from their homes by order of a British commander.
The act was harsh and violent, and the innocent were involved with the
guilty; but many of the sufferers had provoked their fate, and
deserved it." Parkman goes on to say: "Louis XIV.
commanded that eighteen thousand unoffending persons should be stripped
of all that they possessed, and cast out to the mercy of the wilderness.
The atrocity of the plan
is matched by its folly. The king gave explicit orders, but he
gave neither ships nor men enough to accomplish them; and the Dutch
farmers, goaded to desperation, would have cut his sixteen hundred
soldiers to pieces. It was the scheme of a man blinded by a long course
of success. Though perverted by flattery and hardened by unbridled
power, he was not cruel by nature; and here, as in the burning of the
Palatinate and the persecution of the Huguenots, he would have stood
aghast, if his dull imagination could have pictured to him the miseries
he was preparing to inflict." Italics added. If Parkman were
alive today (he died in 1893), any descendant of those hapless Acadians
would be happy to remind him of the difference between a plan &
an actual event, that what happened to our ancestors in the 1750s
transcended a mere scheme of some distant king.
155.
Quotation from Drake,
Border Wars, 55. See also Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
336.
155a.
See Drake,
Border Wars, 58, note 3. Parkman, France & England,
2:173, says that "the plan of a combined attack on Canada seems to have
been first proposed by the Iroquois" & that the English colonists met in
New York City to embrace the plan. Parkman goes on to describe the
Iroquois pledge to join the expedition with all their warriors as
"worthless." Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 336, insists
that the English colonials "intended to conquer New France," not just
retaliate against Frontenac's offensives.
156.
Quotation from Drake, Border Wars, 57. See also Leckie,
Wars of America, 18-19. Parkman, France & England,
2:174, says that depredations against New England's commerce from French
cruisers "which found convenient harborage at Port Royal" occurred that
winter of 1689-90, and that hostile Indians also drew supplies from
Port-Royal, hence the necessity of a New England expedition against
Acadia, which Parkman characterizes as "less remote and less critical"
than the attack on Canada.
One is hard put to find balanced history viz.
the Acadians in the works of New Englanders like Drake & Parkman.
Still, they are valuable secondary sources, though Parkman's work,
especially his point of view, is now just as "historical" as the things
he describes.
157.
Quotation from Parkman,
France & England, 2:174. See also Arsenault,
History, 63; Clark, Acadia, 112-13; Cormier, "Le Borgne
de Belle-Isle, Alexandre," 1:435; Drake, Border Wars, 55-58;
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 150-55; Leckie, Wars of
America, 19; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 343; C. P.
Stacey, "Phips, Sir William" in DCB, 1:544-46; Webster, Acadia,
9-10.
Parkman, 2:174-79, also provides details of
the embarkation from Nantasket, a peninsula a few miles southeast of
Boston, & Phips's remarkable rise to power. Arsenault says that
Phips's Port-Royal expedition arrived on May 19 & numbered 30 ships &
2,000 men and that he burned 30 houses. Drake, p. 57, gives no
date of arrival & says 8 vessels & "seven or eight hundred men afloat."
Leckie, p. 19, says that Phips' force arrived on May 11, numbered 7
ships & 500 militia, & that Meneval's garrison numbered only 70.
Parkman, 2:174, agrees with Leckie's date & numbers, listing 7 ships,
288 sailors, & 400 to 500 militia, & giving Meneval only 70 soldiers.
Pritchard, p. 343, says Phips took with him a frigate of 44 guns, 6
small sloops & ketches, & "about 700 men." Drake, p. 57, insists
that Phips's expedition against Port-Royal was the first of its kind by
New Englanders. He seems to have forgotten the 1654 assault on
Acadia by Robert Sedgwick of Boston. Meneval later testified that
Phips's New Englanders were "excessively irritated at the late slaughter
of settlers at Salmon Falls and elsewhere" & obviously took it out on
the Port-Royal settlers. See Parkman, 2:174-175n, quotation from
2:174.
Despite the widespread destruction & the
mayhem, fueled by vengeance, that would have accompanied it, no one was
killed at Port-Royal as a result of this expedition. Another
factor in the relatively mild treatment of the Acadians by Phips's
Puritans is hinted at in Parkman, 2:193, when discussing the rude
welcome that Phips received at Quebec later in the year: "Phips
imagined that the Canadians would offer little resistance to the Puritan
invasion; for some of the Acadians had felt the influence of their
New England neighbors, and shown an inclination to them. It
was far otherwise in Canada, where the English heretics were regarded
with abhorrence." Italics added. Parkman doubtlessly is
referring to the relationship established between the New Englanders &
the peninsula Acadians by their illicit but extensive trade over the
years--the Acadians, in fact, referred to their New Englander trading
partners as "our friends, the enemy." Names of the Port-Royal
councilors are from Griffiths, p. 155. Phips was back at Boston on
May 13, only 2 days after he had descended on Port-Royal. See
Parkman, 2:175. Arsenault says that Phips brought away 38 French
soldiers; Parkman's number is used here. The pirate depredations
are from Clark & Webster. Leisler's part in the attack is from
Webster, p.9n, who calls him "a Walloon settled in New York."
Parkman, 2:157, describes Leisler as a New York demagogue who tried to
take over the colony after the ouster of Andros in 1689.
Pritchard, p. 343, adds a cynical motivation
to the New England expedition: "Massachusetts's attack on Port
Royal at the end of May in 1690 was in response to the attacks of
combined French and Indian war parties sent out from Canada. The
officially sanctioned private war begun in Massachusetts by land
speculators, fishing interests, and Boston merchants was going nowhere
until news of the Canadian attacks on Schenectady and Salmon Falls
reached New England and reinvigorated the plan by allowing Puritan
divines to portray the proposed attack on Port Royal as a religious
crusade, disguising its true nature as an affair of pillage with no
strategic or military objective."
As a side note, according to
Yves F. Zoltvany,
"Laumet, Antoine, dit de Lamothe Cadillac," in
DCB, 2:352: "In May of the previous year [1690] his
[Cadillac's] Acadian habitation [on Mount Desert Island, on the ME coast]
had been destroyed, along with several other houses in the vicinity of
Port Royal, by Sir William Phips." Cadillac, of course, after
returning to Canada, became a shaker & mover in that colony & later
governor of LA.
158.
Drake,
Border Wars,
58-60, says 32 ships & 2,300 men in Phips's expedition; Leckie, Wars of
America, 19-21, counts 36 ships and 2,200 men; Parkman, France &
England, 2:179-81, 191-92, says 34 ships, including 4 large ones, &
that the 2,200 men in the expedition included sailors. Parkman,
2:179, details the failed efforts of the Massachusetts authorities to
seek aid for the attack from the mother country, something New England
had never done. Despite this fact, the English government refused
the aid because "its resources were engrossed by the Irish war" that
King William had begun earlier that year. After some bickering
among colonial officials, the land expedition was placed under command
of a Connecticut officer, Fitz-John Winthrop. The expedition
failed for a number of reasons, among them contention between the New
York political factions that had grown out of the recent rebellion
against Andros, lack of birch & elm bark to fashion more canoes, small
pox, & reluctant Iroquois. See Parkman, 2:173, 181, 187-89.
For Frontenac's almost comic struggles with the supreme council in
Québec after he assumed the governorship, see Parkman, 2:181-84.
For his preparations to secure Québec & the other settlements against
the Iroquois & the English, including the happy arrival at Montréal of
hundreds of Indian allies from the Great Lakes, laden with furs, about
the time that Phips's expedition had departed Boston, see Parkman,
2:184-91. Final, vital additions to the defenses at Québec were
supervised by the city's mayor, Prevost, while Frontenac was at
Montréal. See Parkman, 2:190, 192-93.
159. See
Arsenault,
History, 63; Drake, Border Wars, 59-65; Leckie,
Wars of America, 20-22, a most entertaining description of the fight
at Québec based on Parkman; Parkman, France & England, 2:189-91,
chap. 13, the best account of the entire Québec venture. For a
description of the dilapidated condition of the fort at Québec during
Frontenac's second governorship, see Parkman, 1:1408-09. The dates
in these sources differ significantly. Drake, p. 59, says that
Phips arrived in site of Québec on Oct 5 & that he withdrew soon after
Oct 11. Leckie, p. 20, says Phips did not arrive until "well into
October" but cites no specific dates; he uses Parkman as his secondary
source. Parkman, 2:189ff, says that Frontenac was at Montréal on
October 10 when he received word of the approach of the English fleet,
that he reached Québec on October 14, 2 days before Phips arrived, that
the lights of the English fleet were finally seen from the heights of
Québec by sentinels before dawn of Oct 16, & that Phips sent his envoy
to Frontenac at 10 a.m. on Oct 16. Parkman's times & dates are
followed here. Amazingly, Phips remained 3 weeks at Tadoussac,
within 3 days sail of Québec! See Parkman, 2:192. Part of
the exchange of words between Phips's subaltern & Frontenac on the
morning of the16th concerned the official French position on the
overthrow of King James II of England by his son-in-law, William of
Orange, & his daughter Mary, a major cause of the present war, as well
as Phips's rough treatment of Meneval at Port-Royal. See Parkman,
2:195-96. In the fight at the St. Charles ford on Oct 20, the
elder Le Moyne brother, the sieur de Sainte-Hélène, fell mortally
wounded, & the other brother, the sieur de Longueuil, was wounded.
See Parkman, 2:202. One of the prisoners exchanged in late October
was Captain Davis, who had been captured the previous May at Casco Bay.
See Parkman, 2:203. Parkman, 2:204-05, gives a thorough evaluation
of Québec's condition after Frontenac's victory & makes the case that,
despite Phips's defeat, the campaign was a close thing, that Québec
could have fallen if Phips's timing had been better. On his way
down the St. Lawrence, Phips nearly captured the annual autumn supply
ships from France that Québec still relied so much on. See
Parkman, 2:206. Captain Mason's exploit is from Arsenault.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 336, is
no more impressed with Frontenac's conduct than with Phips's, &
concludes: "Neither side displayed much military talent. A
more enterprising general than Governor Frontenac, who enjoyed the
advantages of defence and superior numbers including trained, regular
infantry, might well have destroyed the 1,200-1,300-man English landing
force had he chosen to; while Sir William Phips, completely without
military experience and a protege of the Puritan divines who had
transformed the expedition into a religious crusade, displayed no
military talents at all."
160. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 38-42, 66-72. For an excellent description of
Church's role in King Phillip's War, see Leckie, Wars of America,
10-13. King Phillip's Indian name sometimes is given as Metacomet.
See Webster, Acadia, 169, for a brief sketch of Church's career.
Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 101,
says that Church was from RI. Parkman, France & England,
2:417, says that Church, "the noted Indian fighter of King Philip's War,
was at Tiverton in Rhode Island when he heard of Hertel de Rouville's
attack on Deerfield" in Feb 1704. Parkman also says that Church
was a native of Duxbury, which lies on the coast between Boston &
Plymouth, MA, so the old man got around.
161. See
Arsenault,
History, 63-64; Drake, Border Wars, 72. Drake says
that Villebon recaptured Port-Royal in November 1691; Arsenault, p. 63,
says that it happened in June. Port-Royal would not be restored as
the Acadian capital until 1700.
Meneval never returned to Acadia. After
being held in Boston on Phips's insistence, the erstwhile governor was
released by the Massachusetts authorities, & he was free to slip quietly
away to France. Phips refused to return the more valuable of
Meneval's private possessions, doubtlessly keeping them as a prize of
war. See Parkman, France & England, 2:175-77.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 339,
calls Meneval's successor a protégé of Frontenac & says that Villebon
served as "commandant of Acadia." Others sources call him
governor. I follow Pritchard here. Villebon's younger
brother, François-Alexandre Robinau de Bécancour, would serve in
Louisiana under Iberville & Bienville during the early 1700s. See
Higginbotham, Old Mobile, 148ff. The family's name also is
spelled Robineau.
Webster, Acadia, 11, says Villebon
named the new fort at Nashouat Fort St. Joseph (probably after his
patron saint, his first name being Joseph). Nashouat is also
spelled Nashwaak & Naxouat &, according to Pritchard, p. 344, was
located "about 90 miles upstream on the St. John River at the mouth of
the Nashwaak River," opposite today's Fredericton, the capital of New
Brunswick. The capital is on the west side of the river. The
town on the east side, opposite the capital, is called Nashwaaksis,
which is Malicite for "little Nashwaak," & is on the side of the river
where the fort was located. A depiction of Fort Nashouat can be
found in Chartand,
Forts of New France: Northeast America, 17. A description on
p. 16 reads: "Fort Saint-Joseph, also known as Fort Nashwaak,
1695. Built during March and April 1692 and abandoned in 1698,
this stockade fort built on a square plan of about 100 ft. plus its
bastions was located on the southwestern tip of the meeting of St John
and Nashwaak rivers. The buildings within were the commander's
quarters, the soldiers' barracks ... and the guard house. ... The
bastion on the left had a baking oven." Pritchard, p. 343, says
that after he went to Port-Royal in 1691 to drive out the English,
Villebon & his 45 soldiers "landed their munitions and stores upriver at
Jemseg," that two English privateers came up the river & seized his
ships, & so he retreated overland to Québec before returning to France
to get more aid. The attack at Jemseg may have motivated the new
commandant to move even farther up river after he returned from France.
Chartrand, Forts of New France: Northeast America, 19, says:
"In 1690[sic], Governor de Villbon had it [Fort Jemseg] repaired
but found it unsuitable and moved farther north two years later."
Pritchard adds that while Villebon was in
France, the King declared to him "that conditions in Europe did not
permit reestablishing Port Royal." Quote from p. 344.
The King was referring, of course, to the reestablishment of French
military presence at Port-Royal, not to the settlement there, which
would remain regardless of who controlled the place. This
pronouncement by from the royal authority precluded Villebon's returning
to Port-Royal & compelled him to look elsewhere for his headquarters.
On p. 343, Pritchard implies that Villebon went to Rivière St.-Jean to
protect the Acadian settlements on the Bay of Fundy from anymore English
attacks, but on p. 344 he goes on to say that the new Acadian commandant
was no favorite of the settlers, & for good reason: "During the
next three or four years Commandant de Villebon devoted himself to fur
trading, going so far as to appropriate supplies for his own use and
failing to furnish aid to regular troops and war parties from Naxouat.
If Villebon's reputation among Acadians that he was a thug who
terrorised the countryside with the aid of family members in pursuit of
his own interests, was accurate, it reinforced the Indian-centeredness
of French policy." This mitigates any notion that Villebon was
looking out for the interests of the Acadian settlers & makes a strong
case that he was more interested in exploiting than protecting them.
He went to Rivière St.-Jean because of its strategic position,
especially its defensibility, & because he could not return to
Port-Royal.
162.
Quotation from Webster, Acadia, 12. See also ibid., p. 11;
Drake,
Border Wars, 73-76; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 344.
163. See
Drake
Border Wars, 76-85, 92n; Arsenault,
History, 63-64; Webster, Acadia, 12-13; Crouse, LeMoyne
d'Iberville, 73-79; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 344-45.
Iberville, despite his youth (he was only 31 in 1692) was an old hand at
fighting the English, having several times attacked the English
fur-trading posts on Hudson Bay. He also had participated in the
bloody 1690 raid against Schenectady, which had been led by his older
brother, Jacques Le Moyne, sieur de Ste.-Hélène. See Crouse,
LeMoyne d'Iberville, chaps. 3 & 4. Pritchard, p. 339, asserts that
Frontenac "was no supporter of Iberville or his ambitions in the
Bay...."
The Fort William Henry at Pemaquid, Maine,
should not be confused with the more famous fort of the same name on the
southern end of Lake George in NY colony, which was built in a later
war.
It was in the spring and summer of 1692 that
the witchcraft hysteria hit Salem and other communities in
Massachusetts, a state of mind aided no doubt by the bloody warfare on
the New England frontier. Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 337,
concludes, sarcastically: "Capturing New France was more difficult
than the Protestant preachers had imagined, and they soon turned to
conducting witch trials back home in Salem." See also Taylor, A.,
American Colonies, 184-85.
164. See
Webster,
Acadia, 13. In light of Pritchard's picture of him, one
wonders why Villebon was so tolerant of this illicit trading. Was
it to confiscate the goods from the Chignecto Acadians after the New
Englanders went on their way?
165. See
ibid., 13-14; Crouse, LeMoyne d'Iberville, 88-89; Pritchard,
In Search of Empire, 344-45, a balanced view of the Abenaki
settlement. He says: "The combination of Villebon's trading,
including his inability to supply sufficient trade goods to meet Abenaki
demand, Iberville's failure to carry out an assault from the sea in
conjunction with the Abenaki, and renewed Massachusetts diplomacy
weakened French influence among the natives, who agreed to make peace
with Massachusetts in August of 1693."
Drake, Border Wars, 93-95, is a very
anti-French view of this phase of the war, so his assertions here should
be approached with caution.
King William III had granted Massachusetts a
new charter in 1691, which superseded the old corporate charter that
James II's Dominion of New England had essentially abolished, and
created a single royal colony under Phips that included Massachusetts,
Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia, which the English still claimed.
166. For
the 1686 & 1693 censuses, see <acadian-home.org>.
Clark, Acadia, 124, provides the figure
900 for 1686. Clark, pp. 124-25, details a census taken by ____
Gargas, the colony's secretary, or écrivain principal, at the
behest of Gov. Meneval, during the winter of 1687-88, which counts more
settlements than the 1686 census. On pp. 125-27, he also details a
census taken in 1689. Neither the 1687-88 or 1689 censuses are in
<acadian-home.org>
or <acadian-cajun.com>.
Clark's figures are, for 1687-88: Port-Royal, 450; Beaubassin,
122; Minas, "roughly doubled" that of 1786 (which has been 57);
Cap-Sable area, 24; Port Rochelois (not counted in 1686), 20; La Hève &
Mirliguèche, 22; Rivière St.-Jean & Maine coast, 86, including 24 women
& girls; Chebouctou, Chédabouctou (perhaps also including Canso
fishermen), 51; Cape Breton Island, 6. For 1689: Port-Royal,
461 individuals & 80 heads of household, plus 2 priest; Minas, 164
individuals & 1 priest; Beaubassin, 83 individuals & 1 priest;
Cap-Sable, 24; La Hève, 20; Chebouctou, 3; Passamaquoddy, 21; Rivière
St.-Jean, 17; Magais (probably Machias), 2; Pentagouët, 4; Lincour, 5;
Petit Plaisance, 3; Larigimagnan, 2. A separate count in 1689
found 103 at Nepisiguit, which probably included other communities along
the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore from Île Percé to Cape Breton Island &
perhaps even Chédabouctou & Canso. Clark's figures for the census
of 1692 are on p. 128, & his totals are different: Port-Royal, 80
families with 499 individuals; Minas, 55 families with 305 individuals;
Beaubassin, 20 families with 119 individuals; Cap-Sable, probably
including Pubnico, 6 families, 32 individuals; Port Rochelois, 2
families with 12 individuals; La Hève, 4 families with only 6
individuals; overall population on the peninsula, "approaching 1,200."
Figures for Canada and the English colonies
are from Brebner, Canada, 62.
167. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
94-109; Crouse, LeMoyne d'Iberville, chap. 5. Pritchard,
In Search of Empire, 345, calls the Jul 1674 raid on Oyster River
(today's Durham), New Hampshire, "the bloodiest raid of the war."
It was motivated by the efforts of Abbé Louis-Pierre Thury from his
mission among the Abenaki at Pentagouët. Thury's Abenaki were
accompanied by French Lieutenant Claude-Sébastien Villeu & his
troupes de la marine, or colonial regulars. The Saint-Castin's
no doubt had a hand in it, too. About 100 English settlers died, &
60 were captured, compared to about 60 killed at Schenectady, New York,
early in the war.
168. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
109-12; Crouse, LeMoyne d'Iberville, chap. 5; Pritchard, In
Search of Empire, 345-46. Arsenault, History, 64, says
that the fort fell on August 14, but Drake says the afternoon of the
15th.
169. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
112-13; Crouse, LeMoyne d'Iberville, 115-16; Webster, Acadia,
17; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 346. Church's numbers
come from Arsenault, History, 64.
170.
Quotations from Webster, Acadia, 17; Drake, Border Wars,
113. See Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 100-01, for
details of Bourgeois's encounter with Church and his men; also
pp. 133, 191. Clark,
Acadia, 112, says that "Church wreaked heavy damage in
Chignecto...."
Again, Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
cuts to the chase. On p. 343, he concludes about Church's attack
on Chignecto: "The French returned [to Port-Royal in 1691], and
little was heard from New England until 1696 when Benjamin Church led a
force of Christian Indians from southern Massachusetts and militiamen on
a revenge attack against the Acadian settlement of Chignecto.
Raised to scalp Abenaki for bounties of 100 pounds per adult male and 50
pounds for each woman and child, it had no strategic purpose.
Moreover, no Indians lived at Chignecto. Murder and plunder were
its
raison d'etre."
171. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 114; Webster, Acadia, 17-18, 169; Pritchard, In
Search of Empire, 346. Hathorne is sometimes spelled
Hawthorne.
172.
Quotation from Drake,
Border Wars,115. See also ibid., p. 114; Crouse, LeMoyne
d'Iberville, chap. 6. Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
346-51, is equally detailed & includes a summary of Newfoundland's &
Plaisance's part in the war up to & thru Iberville's 1696 expedition.
173. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
115-16.
174. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
117-21, 129-34. Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 351-55, has
much detail from the French perspective, including a summary of
Iberville's exploits in Hudson Bay, & calls Nesmond's fleet "the largest
[French] force yet destined for the Americas." Although Nesmond's
part of the 1797 grand offensive was an utter failure, Iberville
succeeded grandly in Hudson Bay. Two years later, he was in the
Gulf of Mexico founding the colony of Louisiana.
The raid on Haverhill is what led to the
remarkable savagery of an English captive, Mrs. Hannah Dunstan, who
proved more than a match for her Indian captors. See Drake,
121-28.
175.
Drake,
Border Wars,
134, 137, estimates that between 500 and 700 New Englanders died in the
war and that hundreds more were taken into captivity. The loss of
life in the Acadian settlements was negligible. The Acadians'
greatest loss was in property and peace of mind. The worst loss,
of course, was among the Indians, especially the "victorious" Abenaki of
Maine. See Drake, Border Wars,
137-38, for a poignant summation of their loss. Pritchard, In
Search of Empire, 346, offers this balanced conclusion: "Far
from seeing the capture of Port Royal in 1690 as one more conquest of
Acadia, it may be argued that during the Nine Years' War fewer than
1,000 Indians and a handful of Frenchmen strongly supported from seaward
defeated Massachusetts. Entering the war on a wave of
self-confident aggression, the commonwealth ended it with its economy in
disarray, with hundreds killed or taken captive, frontier settlements
pushed back, and pleading with King William for support from the
metropolis."
175a.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 342, notes: "Acadians, who
did not live along the disputed coast or fish along Nova Scotia's
southeast coast or at Chédabouctou, were largely isolated from the
growing conflict [of the Nine Years' War], becoming caught in its
entanglements only twice, in 1690 and again in 1696." He is
referring to the great majority of the Acadian families who lived in the
Port-Royal valley & in the Fundy communities at Minas & Chignecto.
But a few Acadian families lived at Cap-Sable, which faced the Atlantic,
at other Atlantic-side communities such as La Hève & Mirliguèche, & on
Rivière St.-Jean near Villebon's fort, all closer to the fighting.
Pentagouët also was a part of greater Acadia.
Another factor in the war's limited impact on
the Acadians was their relatively small population. There were not
much more than a thousand settlers in greater Acadia at war's end.
Compare this to the much larger numbers in Canada & the exponentially
larger numbers in the English Atlantic colonies, especially New England.
See note
166, above, which also references the
Acadian censuses of 1686, 1687-88, 1689, & 1693, & compares the results
with Canada & the English provinces. For the 1698 census, the
closest to war's end, see <acadian-home.org>;
it counts inhabitants only at Port-Royal (575 persons, 982 cattle, 1,136
sheep, 568 hogs, 1,275 arpents cultivated, 1,584 fruit trees, 82 guns, 8
servants), Beaubassin (178 persons, 352 cattle, 176 sheep, 160 hogs, 298
arpents cultivated, & on Rivière St.-Jean (10 families & 1 bachelor);
missing is Minas, where a substantial number were living. Clark,
Acadia, 128, says that "another limited count," in 1701, shows
456 at Port-Royal, 299 at Minas, 188 at Pisiguit, & 188 at Beaubassin.
On p. 129, Table 5.2, Clark, citing Rameau's 1889 study, includes the
following distribution of population on peninsula Acadia in 1701, on the
eve of Queen Anne's War: 1,153 at Port-Royal, Beaubassin, & Minas;
75 (including métis) at La Hève; 40, at Pubnico & the Cap-Sable
area; 182 scattered along the Atlantic coast; total 1,450. Clark
says, p. 129, that a census in 1703 counted 504 at Port-Royal; 440 at
Minas, including Pigiguit; & 87 at Cobeguit; total, 1,277 for these 3
settlement areas. Clark adds: "An estimate of 1,400 to 1,450
for the isthmus and the peninsula would seem reasonable for the turn of
the century." See also <acadian-home.org>.
Pritchard notes on p. 342 that "Acadian
settlements were indefensible ...." Sadly true, with only Nashouat
perhaps the exception.
Pritchard, p. 255, remind us: "Acadians
[during French control of the colony] learned to coexist with both
English and French so well that they referred to their New England
neighbours as 'our friends, the enemy.'" See also Faragher, A
Great & Noble Scheme, 112, who renders the phrase in French:
nos amis les ennemis.
176. For
continued Indian raids in New England, see Drake, Border Wars,
134-36. In January 1699, the Abenakis signed a peace treaty with
the New Englanders at Casco, and the raids in the region ended ... for
now.
177. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
153, note 2.
178. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
141-42.
179. See
ibid.,
142. Leckie, Wars of America, 24-25, adds: "... when Louis
followed up his justifiable claim [to the Spanish throne] by a series of
unwarranted aggressions, and then excluded English merchants from the
Spanish colonial trade, the war began. It was a commercial war to
the death." Mathé Allain, "In Search of a Policy, 1701-1731," in
Conrad, ed., The French Experience in Louisiana, 86-87,
emphasizes the role of the Caribbean slave trade, or asiento, as
a cause of the war. Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 358-59,
agrees that these were important causal factors & adds on p. 359 that
"The War of the Spanish Succession differed from all previous French
wars in the New World chiefly because Spain was an ally rather than an
enemy." Portugal started the war as a French ally but became an
enemy in 1703.
180. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 142, 149-50, 153-54. Frontenac had died in
1698, at the end of King William's War. Villebon died suddenly on
Rivière St.-Jean in 1700. He was replaced temporarily by
Claude-Sébastien de Villieu, who moved the colonial headquarters back to
Port-Royal. See Clark, Acadia, 113. Brouillan, who
remained at Port-Royal, was the contentious governor at Plaisance,
Newfoundland, who had given Iberville such grief in the final months of
King William's War. See Crouse, LeMoyne d'Iberville, chap.
6.
For the chronic failure of the French navy to
protest France's colonies, see Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
chaps. 6 & 7.
181.
Quotation from Drake,
Border Wars, 152, note 1. See also ibid., pp. 150-51;
Arsenault, History, 66.
182. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 154-70; Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 394.
After the especially bloody rain on Wells, Maine, the Englanders placed
a bounty on the head of Father Sébastien Râle, the Jesuit priest who ran
the Abenaki mission at Norridgewock on the Kennebec. See note
248, below.
183. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
172-86; Arsenault, History, 65; Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
394.
184.
Quotation from Drake, Border Wars, 193. See also Leckie,
Wars of America, 25. Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
112, says that Church was still a major in 1704. Parkman,
France & England, 2:417, followed here, says that Gov. Dudley
promoted him to colonel before the 1704 expedition.
185. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 194. Arsenault,
History, 65, claims that Church's force numbered 1,300.
186.
Quotations from Drake,
Border Wars, 195-96; Arsenault, History, 65. See
also Drake, Border Wars, 201, for a critique of Gov. Dudley's
orders to Church..
187. See
Arsenault, History, 65; Drake,
Border Wars, 196-200; Ganong, Champlain's Island, 24,
which says that Church burned the residence of the Sieur de Chartier
near the mouth of the Ste.-Croix, now the site of Calais, Maine/St.
Stephen, New Brunswick; Parkman, France & England, 2:418.
Arsenault says that "Church easily took
Pentagoët (Penobscot, Maine) while Vincent de Saint-Castain was in
France and Saint-Castain's son, Anselme, was away with the Abenakis.
Church took prisoner or killed everyone in the place." He probably
was following Parkman, who says that Church's men "killed or captured
everybody they found there," but says nothing of the whereabouts of the
Saint-Castins.
188. See
Arsenault, History, 65; Drake,
Border Wars, 201; Clark, Acadia, 112; Griffiths, From
Migrant to Acadian, 209; Parkman, France & England, 2:417-19.
Parkman, 2:419, a typical New Englishman, goes
out of his way to contrast Church's actions at Grand-Pré with the French
& Indians at Deerfield, but he does admit that the raid was "a miserable
retaliation for a barbarous outrage; as the guilty were out of reach,
the invaders turned their ire on the innocent."
Arsenault's and Drake's chronologies, as well
as some details, are different; for instance, Arsenault has Church
attacking Port-Royal before he descended on Minas, and he claims that
the Acadians themselves destroyed the dykes. Drake & Parkman are
followed here. Griffiths points out how quickly the Minas Acadians
repaired their broken dykes & restored the fertility of their reclaimed
fields & pastures.
189. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 201-02. Arsenault,
History, 65, using French accounts, insists that Church assaulted the
Acadian capital and that the Port-Royal defenders offered a fierce
resistance. Drake, who follows English accounts, says otherwise.
Arsenault also claims that Church burned and pillaged many houses along
the Port-Royal basin and took 30 prisoners from among the inhabitants,
which is probably true. Arsenault says that Gov. Brouillan, who
had succeeded Villabon three years before, commanded the Port-Royal
garrison during Church's operation, but Brouillan may have already left
for France, never to return to Acadia, leaving his lieutenant,
Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure, a grandnephew of Nicolas Denys, in
charge of the colony. See also Arsenault, p. 66. Pritchard,
In Search of Empire, 398, says that Church "destroyed the
settlements of Grand Pré, Pigiquit, and Cobequid in the Minas Basin but
failed to attack Port Royal though it was poorly fortified."
190. See
Arsenault, History, 65-66, which insists that the Chignecto
Acadians drove Church's force away; Clark, Acadia, 112; Drake,
Border Wars, 202-04; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
111-12.
Miller, "Chignecto," says that Church's raid
against the Acadian settlement was in retaliation for the atrocities
committed in New England the year before by Sébastien de La
Vallière de Beaubassin & his Indians. Beaubassin, as Miller calls
Sébastien, was a son of the original seigneur of Beaubassin, Michel de
La Vallière, whose home was on present-day Tonge's Island near
Beaubassin.
At Norridgewock, if he had gone there, Church
might have found the notorious Jesuit Father Sébastien Râle, who had
long encouraged his Abenaki there to raid New England settlements in the
region & on whose head New England authorities had laid a price the year
before, after the raid on Wells, Maine. See Drake, pp. 193, 203;
notes 182 &
248, below.
Drake, pp. 203-04, sums up Church's raid, with
a typical insult for the Acadians & Indians: "Thus ended Church's
fifth and last expedition. A wide extent of territory had been
traversed, a few insignificant villages destroyed, and a number
of prisoners, equal to those taken at Deerfield, brought way. The
expedition was looked upon in the main as a failure, and if the
adaptation of means to ends be looked to, it was one. So far from
suffering loss, the Indians had been merely frightened away from their
old haunts, like birds of prey before the fowler. When he had
passed on they came back again. Nothing was more true or certain
than that the geographical position of Port Royal was a constant menace
to the New England fisheries. And as its reduction had been the
professed object of the expedition, the failure to attack it easily
provoked suspicion all was not as it should be." Italics added.
I would dare say that my Acadian ancestors in the "insignificant
villages" at Minas & Chignecto would have expressed a different view of
Church's punitive expedition, not to mention the Native "birds of prey"
driven from "their old haunts."
Faragher, p. 112, offers a conclusion from the
Acadian perspective: "With much of the annual grain crop
destroyed, the inhabitants suffered famine the following winter.
Church's destruction of the Acadian settlements could not have been
better calculated to turn neutrals into implacable enemies. They
were 'a nest of hornests provoked to fly upon us,' wrote Cotton Mather,
and he worried that Church's expedition would be 'a shame cast upon us
that will never be forgotten.' It marked a significant turn in Acadian
history, for not only did Church destroy the settlements at Minas and
Chignecto but also much of the former friendly feeling for nos amis
les ennemis [our friends the enemy]. Indeed, Acadians would
long remember Major[sic] Benjamin Church's assault." He
gives an example from the late 1740s of Acadian anxiety about the
destruction of their dykes, as Church had done 4 decades before.
In retaliation for the raid at Deerfield,
Church took dozens of Acadian hostages to Boston, among them Noël
Doiron and his soon-to-be-wife Marie
Henry. Noël was the aged Acadian patriarch aboard the English
transport Duke William, which, while carrying Acadian exiles from
the Maritimes to St.-Malo, France, in late 1758, was crippled in a
mid-Atlantic storm. The ship's captain averred that the aged
patriarch was "a hundred and ten years old," but in truth Noël was
"only" 74. After all efforts had failed to save the vessel, and no
other ship would come to their rescue, Noël embraced the captain and
insisted that he and his crew take to the boats and save themselves,
knowing full well that the ship, with all its passengers, including
Noël's entire family, soon would plummet to the bottom of the sea.
See White, DGFA-1, 513, 519; White DGFA-1 English, 111.
191. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 205-08.
192. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
208-15. It was in 1705, perhaps during the hiatus in the fighting,
that the young naval officer, Louis Denys de La Ronde, raided New
England shipping from his base at Port-Royal. Governor Brouillan
had built an 18-20-gun frigate, the Biche, at Port-Royal for the
defense of the colony, but the frigate was unfinished when La Ronde
arrived at Port-Royal. He used, instead, a smaller ship, a brig,
to prey on the New Englanders--only strengthening their resolve to take
Port-Royal; the Biche was not ready to leave Port-Royal until the
spring of 1707. La Ronde, at the head of a company of Canadians,
helped successfully defend Port-Royal under Brouillan's successor,
Subercase. Interestingly, La Ronde also had been an associate of
Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville, in Louisiana a few years earlier.
See Bernard Pothier & Donald J. Horton, "Denys de La Ronde, Louis," in
DCB, 3:176-80, for La Ronde's career; also Pritchard, In Search
of Empire, 397.
193. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 216-23.
194. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
224-28. Arsenault, History, 66, calls him Colonel Marsh.
195. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 228. Arsenault,
History, 66, says the New Englanders arrived in front of Port-Royal on
June 6, which is the New Style date. One must remember that this
was the time of the transition between the Old Style and New Style
English calendars. Drake uses the Old Style for consistency, which
is used here. Drake claims, citing French sources, that the sudden
appearance of the New Englanders in such force unnerved the Port-Royal
garrison but that Subercase was able to restore morale before the New
Englanders attacked in earnest. Jean-Vincent de Saint-Castin died
sometime in 1707, and his son took over his fiefdom in Maine and became
the fourth Baron de Saint-Castin. See White, DGFA-1, 6.
196. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
228-29; Arsenault, History, 66.
197. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 229-33. Arsenault, History, 66, claims
that March left behind at Port-Royal "about 100 dead and as many
wounded." The number of dead seems high considering the limited
action during the siege. One assumes that March took his wounded
with him when he retreated to Casco.
A very detailed map of Annapolis Royal in
1710, found in
Historical Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 29, shows near the fort the
site of a "Church burned in 1707." Did Marsh & his men burn the
church--St.-Jean-Baptiste--during their aborted siege in May, or was it
burned a few months later, in August, during a second unsuccessful
attack on Port-Royal? In a confrontation between members of the
British garrison at Annapolis & haute rivière Acadians in Jan 1711,
British Gov. Samuel Vetch arrested Father Justinien Durand, pastor of
St.-Jean-Baptiste parish, at the St.-Laurent chapel, so the church in
Annapolis village may not have been rebuilt. See note
213a, below.
198.
Drake,
Border Wars,
233-34, says that March still commanded this second expedition.
Arsenault,
History, 66, claims that March was replaced by Colonel
Wainwright, one of his subordinates in the first venture, on the eve of
the second expedition and that Wainwright took 2,000 men and 20 ships to
Port-Royal in August. Arsenault also claims that a "coastal
buccaneer" warned Subercase of Wainwright's approach and that Subercase
had time to ask for help from Jemseg and other far-flung Acadian
settlements, including La Hève.
199. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
234-35. Arsenault, History, 66-67, says the siege was
lifted on September 4 (New Style calendar). Drake says that while
Wainwright's force fell back to their boats, Subercase sent out
reinforcements to help Saint-Castin, and that the Frenchmen were roughly
handled. Leckie,
Wars of America, 25, dismisses the 1707 ventures at Port-Royal as
"a brief exchange of shots that can best be described as a token fight."
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 397,
concludes that the "bravery and gallant service" of the garrison at
Port-Royal in the summer of 1707 "could not hide the fact that the
northern colonies had been abandoned [by France] in their hour of need.
Port Royal had been rescued in June by Canadians and in August by
buccaneers from Saint-Domingue." Pritchard offers no details on
how the Saint-Domingue buccaneers helped drive March & Wainwright away
other than, "One week before the second New England attack, Pierre
Morpain, captain of L'Intrépide, sailed into Port Royal with
several prizes and carrying more than 600 barrels of flour, which he
delivered to Governor Subercase." We must assume that Morpain's
crew helped man Port-Royal's guns, & that their flour helped sustain the
garrison.
199a.
Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 129, 130. For the censuses
of 1707 & 1708, see <acadian-home.org>
200. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 236-49.
201. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
251; Arsenault, History, 67-68. Pothier & Horton, "Denys de
La Ronde," 3:177, says that Denys de La Ronde, aboard the
Biche, took the news of Port-Royal's successful defense to the
French Court, exchanged the Biche for a larger ship, the Venus,
returned to Acadian waters, &, beginning in Aug 1707, engaged in
privateering, but was persuaded to participate in a campaign in
Newfoundland in late 1708, leaving "Port-Royal to its fate." There
probably were other French privateers using Port-Royal as a base during
that time. Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 112, says that
trade between the Fundy Acadians & the New Englanders continued after
Church's raid in 1704, "but there was less tolerance for it by both
sides."
202. See
Drake,
Border Wars,
250-51; Leckie, Wars of America, 25. Drake promotes Vetch
to the rank of colonel; Leckie calls him a captain. Griffiths, From
Migrant to Acadian, 230, says that Vetch received his promotion from
captain to colonel in London in Feb 1709, 2 months before he returned to
Boston. When the expedition against Port-Royal finally got
underway in the fall of 1710, Nicholson had been promoted from colonel
to "General and Commander-in-Chief." See Griffiths, p. 233.
203. See
Bruce T. McCully, "Nicholson, Francis," in DCB, 2:496-99; G. M.
Waller, "Vetch, Samuel," in DCB, 2:650-52; Drake,
Border Wars, 250-51. Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
112, says that Vetch, who not only was a trader but a smuggler, had
traded for "several hundred pounds in furs" in 1706 while on a diplomat
mission to Port-Royal, that Vetch's chief customer, in fact, was Acadian
Gov. Subercase.
204. See
Drake,
Border Wars, 251-52. Leckie, Wars of America, 25-26,
says that Vetch's plan also included an English offensive against
Spanish FL. Leckie's numbers are slightly different from Drake's:
200 from NJ instead of 300. Leckie provides the figures for the
regulars and includes NH militiamen in the seaborne operation.
Drake states that Vetch went to NY with Nicholson. Leckie's
version of events keeps Vetch in Boston, as does McCully, "Nicholson,"
2:497. Waller, "Vetch," 2:651, implies that Vetch remained in
Boston to await "the arrival of the promised British ships and sailors"
that did not come.
205.
See Drake, Border Wars, 252-53; Leckie, Wars of America,
26; McCully, "Nicholson," 2:497. NJ and PA provided money instead.
Anderson, Crucible of War, 20, says that the Iroquois "cooperated
minimally" with the venture "and delayed a planned invasion of Canada
until it had to be aborted."
206.
See Drake, Border Wars, 253; Leckie, Wars of America, 26.
207.
Quotation from Drake, Border Wars, 254. See also Leckie,
Wars of America, 26-27. The Moody whom Drake mentions probably
was William Moody, a New Englander from Exeter who later fell into the
hands of the Abenaki and was burnt alive at the stake. See Drake,
pp. 256-59.
208.
Quotation from Leckie, Wars of America, 26-27. Drake,
Border Wars, 254, says that after the debacle of 1709, Nicholson
went back to England to solicit help for the 1710 venture against
Port-Royal. Also going to England to elicit support for the
venture was Peter Schuyler, a prominent New Yorker, who took several
Mohawk chiefs along. The Indians proved to be a sensation in
London. They even received an audience with the queen. See
Drake, pp. 254-56. For the specifics of the New England force, see
Drake, p. 259. Leckie, Wars of America, 27, puts it at 400
British marines and 1,500 militia. Arsenault, History, 69,
70, insists that the English fleet arrived at the Port-Royal basin on
September 18 and did not land in front of the fort until October 6.
Drake and Leckie are followed here.
209.
Quotations from Drake, Border Wars, 260. See also Leckie,
Wars of America, 27. Arsenault, History, 67, dates
Subercase's letter to Count Pontchartrain, as October 1, 1709, a year
before Nicholson's attack.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 398,
offers the usual grand perspective for the plight of Subercase as well
as his Acadian charges: "Military defeats in Europe--Blenheim
(1704), Ramillies (1706), and Oudenarde (1708)--shattered the prestige
of French arms, and the collapse of the navy increasingly left the
northern colonies on their own. Pontchartrain [the minister of
marine and chief minister for colonial affairs] had never considered
them very valuable and had no resources to succor them even had he
thought otherwise. In 1708, the thoroughly beaten New Englanders,
on the other hand, appealed to England for aid. It finally arrived
off Port Royal two years later in the form of a fleet of 34 vessels
including seven warships and a landing force of 1,500 troops." In
other words, France was defeated, & French Acadia was doomed.
210.
Quotation from Leckie, Wars of America, 27, whose dates follow
Drake, Border Wars, 260-61. Arsenault, History,
69-71, says that the fort held out for 19 days and surrendered on
October 12.
211. See
Arsenault,
History, 71; Clark, Acadia, 113; Drake, Border Wars,
261; Leckie, Wars of America, 27.
The name "Nova Scotia" was used by the English
as far back as the 1620s, when King James I had awarded French Acadia to
his good Scots friend, Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling. See
note 19, above.
212.
Quotation from Drake, Border Wars, 261, 262. See also
Arsenault, History,
71, 73; Parkman, France & England, 2:463, who says Vetch's
title was "General and Commander-in-Chief of all his Majesty's troops in
these parts, and Governor of the fort of Annapolis Royal, country of
l'Accady and Nova Scotia." And he was only the second in command!
Vaudreuil's reply to Nicholson's threat was a
threat of his own, to retaliate in kind if the English mistreated the
Acadians.
Milling,
Exile Without End, 5, says that the agreement between the British
& the French after the fall of Port-Royal in 1710 gave the inhabitants
of the Port-Royal area 2 years to remove themselves beyond the 3-mile
limit of British control.
Placing Nicholson's 3-miles of protection in perspective, Clark,
Acadia, 130, says: "... we are safe in assuming at least 1,500
and perhaps as many as 2,000 Acadians ..." were living in Acadia "when
the British assumed permanent control of the peninsula in 1710.
And these, now almost all second-to-fourth generation settlers, were
thoroughly 'Acadian' in feeling, habit, and economy."
213.
Quotation from Arsenault,
History, 73.
213a.
Quotation from Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 133-34.
Faragher, p. 134, continues: "A few months later, Christophe
Cahouet, an Acadian merchant and officer in the Port Royal militia, told
French authorities that the group who seized Capon had been led by
Abraham Gaudet of Beaubassin, and included 'three mulattoes from
the coast' (métis living in Míkmaw communities), as well as two
Irish deserters from the British garrison." Broussard died
in Dec 1716, in his early 60s; his sons Alexandre & Joseph dit
Beausoleil, the future resistance fighters, were 12 & 10, respectively,
when their father was held hostage, the incident no doubt having a
profound affect on them. See White, DGFA-1, 284-85.
For a detailed map of the haute rivière, c1707, including the location
of Pierre LeBlanc's habitant, see Historical Atlas of Canada,
1: plate 29. See also Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 10-11;
Perrin, W. A., Acadian Redemption, 4, who incorrectly places the
incident in 1713.
214.
Arsenault,
History, 73-74, says there were 80 Brits at Bloody Creek.
Drake
Border Wars, 284-85, does not mention the fight at Bloody Creek,
only that the garrison at "Annapolis" was much reduced & that the
Acadians were ripe for open rebellion once reinforcements arrived from
Canada. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 246, argues
that it cannot be proved if there were any Acadians in the fight at
Bloody Creek because Saint-Castin had arrived in the area only days
before the skirmish & had no time to recruit any of the locals before he
fell upon the British force. She says that "at least" 15 Brits
were killed in the fight, including the detachment's commander, a
Captain Pidgeon, who commanded 70 men, not 80. Griffiths, p. 247,
says that immediately after the fight at Bloody Creek, the Abenaki &
Mi'kmaq with Saint-Castin as well as the Acadians in & around Annapolis
Royal imposed a "semi-siege" on the British garrison & even killed some
of the soldiers who went amongst them for supplies. Parkman,
France & England, 2:463, paints a darker picture, writing that,
after the fight at Bloody Creek, "This completely changed the attitude
of the Acadians [living in the banlieue]. They broke their oath,
rose against their new master, and with their Indian friends, invested
the fort to the number of five or six hundred." Parkman says that
by then the New English garrison had been reduced by disease or
desertion "to about two hundred effective men...." Parkman says
that the leaders of the besieging Acadians was the priest, Gaulin,
"missionary of the Micmacs and prime mover in the rising," that it was
Father Gaulin went to Placentia seek munitions but failed.
On the eve of the fight at Bloody Creek, Vetch
had been recalled to Boston to lead the New England troops in the
impending Walker expedition against Québec. Sir Charles Hobby was
left in charge of the fort, & it was he who was besieged by the Indians
& the local Acadians.
If anyone doubts that the Acadians of this
time were capable of an armed insurrection against the British ... or
against any abusive authority ... one has only to consult the Acadian
censuses of 1686, 1693, 1698, 1700, 1701, and 1703, which detail the
number of "guns" in each household and reveal that these peaceful
farmers were a well-armed population. The Census of 1703, taken by
the French at the beginning of Queen Anne's War, is especially revealing
as it details how many "arms bearers" each Acadian household could
provide. See <acadian-cajun.com/acadia4.htm>;
<acadian-home.org>;
Griffiths, p. 531, note 141.
215.
Quotation from Leckie, Wars of America, 28, who uses the phrase
"armchair admiral." Drake, Border Wars, 267-83, devotes an
entire chapter to the details of the 1711 (misad)venture. See also
Arsenault,
History, 72; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 248;
McCully, "Nicholson," 2:497; Waller, "Vetch," 2:651. Anderson,
Crucible of War,
20, assigns a prominent role to the Iroquois in aborting Nicholson's
expedition: "In 1711 they [the Iroquois] showed ostensible
enthusiasm for another expedition [against Canada], while quietly
sending word of what was afoot to the French; thus they thwarted the
second invasion [of Canada] as effectively as the first." In
English the Île-aux-Oeufs would be translated as Egg Island or the Isle
of Eggs. See the map in Drake, Border Wars, 278, for the
location of the disaster. See also Pritchard, In Search of
Empire, 399-400, offers the usual wide perspective.
Waller, "Vetch," 2:651, says that Vetch
reinforced the Annapolis Royal garrison on his way back from Walker's
failed expedition, leaving there George Vane, an military engineer, and
Thomas Caulfield as a replacement for Charles Hobby. Vetch then
continued on to Boston to spend the winter of 1711-12 there.
216.
Quotation from Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 400. See
Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, for the details of the Peace of
Utrecht, which actually was a series of treaties negotiated between the
war's many belligerents and signed from April 11, 1713, to November 5,
1715. See also Arsenault, History, 74-75.
One of the rewards Britain received from the
Peace of Utrecht was a monopoly on transporting slaves from West Africa
to the Spanish colonies in the New World--the
asiento de negros. See Pritchard, p. 400.
Pritchard, p. 400, makes the sobering
observation that, on the eve of the Peace of Utrecht, "Though Port Royal
was lost, Acadia was not...," implying that France was not compelled by
military circumstances to give up the Acadian peninsula. After
pointing out that the successful defense of the northern colonies was
due not to French arms but to the colonists themselves, Pritchard goes
on: "From a colonial viewpoint nothing accounted for the huge
surrenders of French territory in the Americas that arose from the
Treaty of Utrecht that France signed with her European enemies on 12
April 1713. French colonists would learn that the Americas were to
be won or lost on the battlefields of Europe rather than at sea or in
the New World." See p. 421 for a summation of France's obsession
with "continentalism" & its affect on its overseas empire, including the
observation: "Colonial possessions were not so tied to the Crown
as ever to place colonialism above continentalism." And, on p.
422: "Colonists and their leaders were shaped by circumstances far
more than might be expected in light of absolutism's image of itself and
attempts to regulate and control development. During the decades
between 1670 and 1730, France was always too preoccupied with dynastic
(i.e., continental) interests and conflict to expend time, manpower, and
wealth on colonies."
Mathé Allain, "In Search of a Policy,
1701-1731," in Conrad, ed.,
The French Experience in Louisiana, 88, notes ominously:
"The prize territorial plum England picked up at Utrecht was Acadia, the
cession of which began the encirclement of New France." She adds:
"The loss of Acadia made imperative French development of new lines of
defense. Their response, the erection of a chain of forts from
Louisbourg to Mobile, produced constant friction between the French and
English colonies for the next half century." And, on p. 89: "...
the changes wrought in the colonial map carried the seeds of future
conflict ..." a circumstance that would prove dire to the peace-loving
Acadians.
217.
Quotation from Parkman, France & England, 2:477.
Drake,
Border Wars, 285, in the conclusion of his study of King
William's and Queen Anne's wars, hints darkly at the fate of the
Acadians. See also Clark, Acadia, 186.
The transition here in terminology from
"English" to "British" is deliberate. From her accession to the
throne in 1702 until 1707, Queen Anne's official title was Queen of
England, Scotland, and Ireland. In 1707, upon the Act of Union
that joined Scotland to England and Wales, she was proclaimed Queen of
Great Britain and Ireland, so "Britain" and "British" will be the
descriptors I normally will use in subsequent chapters. For an excellent
summary of the circumstances that led Scotland to unite, finally, with
England, see Taylor, A., American Colonies, 293-94.
Even though after 1713 the name "Acadia" no
longer applied to the peninsula east of the Bay of Fundy, & "Nova
Scotia" now was its proper name, the French settlers living in
British Nova Scotia still called themselves, and were called by
others, Acadians.
For the boundary question, see Parkman,
France & England, 2:928-29, which reminds us that the question
plagued the British & the French for decades to come & that the question
was, in fact, a major cause of 2 more wars between Britain & France in
North America.
Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 401, is
especially good in pointing out the contrast between British & French
claims over Acadian boundaries: "Acadia's 'ancient boundaries'
were never agreed upon. British claims extended the new
territory to the St. Lawrence River, while French claims successfully
confined British sovereignty to peninsular Nova Scotia and conserved all
the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including Cape Breton Island,
and the mainland from the Chignecto isthmus as far south as the Kennebec
River." Italics added. Pritchard adds: "This territory
continued to be occupied by the people of the Abenaki Confederacy," a
fact that would plague New Englanders for more years to come.
Parkman, 2:477, says of the boundary
"discussions" after 1713: "This and other disputed questions of
boundary were to be settled by commissioners of the two powers; but
their meetings were put off for forty years, and then their discussions
ended in the Seven Years' War," which began in North American in 1754 &
in Europe 2 years later.
218.
Quotation from Parkman,
France & England, 2:906. See also Arsenault, History, 75,
who gives a
detailed analysis of the treaty and its provisions; Clark, Acadia,
196.
218a. Quotation from Clark, Acadia,
196. See also ibid., p. 186; note 242,
below.
219.
See Arsenault,
History, 75-76, 79; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
251, 269-74.
Parkman,
France & England, 2:473-75, 906-07, 928-29, typical of devout
Protestant scholars, emphasizes the role of the French priests in
stirring up the Acadians against the British. Milling, Exile
Without End, 5, says "The majority of the Acadians expressed a
desire to remove to Canada," but that the British authorities more or
less tricked them into staying.
The
only substantive agreement on Acadian boundaries after the War of the
Spanish Succession was reached in Sep 1720, when French diplomats, "with
the Regent's full support, insisted that Canso Island was a part of
[French-held] Île Royale [today's Cape Breton Island], and the British
accepted that any islands lying north of the mainland (i.e., peninsular
Nova Scotia) and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence were French possessions."
See Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 417. This opened
up the flood gates for peninsula Acadians to move to Île Royale &
especially to Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, which was
considered a part of the French Maritime colony headquartered at
Louisbourg on Île Royale.
220.
Quotation from
Arceneaux, No Spark of Malice, 47. Arsenault,
History, 77-78, points out that some of the younger families
without land left the Annapolis & Minas basins & moved to Chepoudy
& Petitcoudiac to escape British rule. An example of this migration
would be the Beausoleil Broussard brothers of the upper Annapolis
valley. The French also tried to lure Acadians to their Maritime
province, & many of them went, but most refused to budge. See also
Clark, Acadia, 195; Parkman, France & England, 2:462-63.
The oldest families in Acadia who produced successful lines were, in
alphabetical order,
Bourg, Brun, Comeau,
Doucet, Dugas, Gaudet, Gautrot, Girouard,
Hébert, Landry, Martin, Thériot, and
Trahan, whose patriarchs had settled in the colony by 1640.
See
Appendix.
221.
See Clark, Acadia, 196-97.
The term "French Neutrals" has a complex history. Its use dates
from 1730, when the Acadians took a conditional oath to the
British crown, administered by Gov. Phillips, & insisted that they would
remain "neutral" in any struggle between Britain and France.
In discussing the Acadian Grand Dérangement, Oubre,
Vacherie, 53, says: "These Acadians, called by the English
'French Neutrals," simply became 'prisoners of war' ..." during the
Exile. True enough; after a time, the British called them that,
but it was a term that the Acadians had first applied to themselves.
Despite British efforts to force the Acadians into taking an
unconditional oath to the British crown, which would have made them
anything but "neutral," the name stuck, & during the Exile, British
colonists referred to the Acadians as the "Neutral French," perhaps to
distinguish them from the French Canadians, who were anything but
"neutral" in the struggle between the imperial powers. Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, xvi, explains: "The Acadians have always had trouble convincing
people that they are a truly distinctive community, not merely a small
colony of expatriate Frenchmen or an appendage of Quebec. One of
the major determinants in the chain of events that resulted in the
deportation of 1755 was the refusal of both England and French to accept
the Acadians' definition of themselves as 'les français
neutres." Italics added.
222. Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 186-87. See
also ibid., p. 200.
Clark, p. 187, note 1, says:
"It was observed that Acadians, if only for their knowledge of snowshoes
and canoes, were worth five times the number of new men" for Île Royale.
222a. Quotation from ibid., p. 69, note 42.
222b. See note 157, above, for
Southack's actions during King William's War.
222c. Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 69, 187. See
also Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 315.
222d. Quotations from McCully, "Nicholson," 2:497; Waller,
"Vetch," 2:652; Clark, Acadia, 188. Clark, p. 188, adds
that Philips was in Nova Scotia, at either Canso or Annapolis Royal,
only from 1720-23 & 1729-31. See also Maxwell Sutherland, "Phillips,
Richard," in DCB, 3:514-18.
After Vetch fled from
Annapolis Royal to England in Apr 1714, he never returned to America.
In his final years, he spent time in an English debtors' prison.
See Waller, "Vetch," 2:652.
Clark; & Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, spell the major's
name Caulfeild, followed here.
222e. Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 188. Clark,
p. 188, says: "As late as 1740, [lieutenant governor Paul]
Mascarene pointed out that there was still only two or three English
families besides the garrison...." This would change dramatically
in 1749, 36 years after the British assumed official control of the
colony.
222f.
Quotation from ibid., pp.
188-89.
For details of the evolution
of French colonial government in Canada, see Parkman, France &
England, 1:1288ff. For Louisiana's Superior Council, formed in
1712 at the beginning of the Crozat regime, see Brasseaux, Foucault
and the Rebellion of 1768, 58.
Mascarene said of the use of
district deputies: "'... (the inhabitants) [at Minas, which he was
visiting on a "tribute-collecting mission" in 1714] desir'd of me to
have the Liberty to choose some particular number of men amongst them
who should represent the whole, by reason of the most of the people
living scattered far off & not able to attend a Considerable time, I
easily consented to it and they chose Mr. Peter Melancon [founder
of Grand-Pré in 1682 & in his early 80s at the time] & ye four formerly
Capts of their Militia with another man from Manis (Minas), one for
Chicconecto & one from Cobequid.'" Quotations from Clark, p. 189.
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 267, says that Mascarene
initiated the use of deputies representing Acadian communities in 1710
but that the practice was not formalized until 1714. Mascarene
would serve as lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia from 1740-49.
222g. Quotation from Clark,
Acadia, 189.
222h. Quotations from ibid., pp.
190-91;
Parkman, France & England,
2:906. See also Marshall, Acadian Resistance,
17. For a detailed discussion of Acadian anti-clericalism, see
note 48, above.
222i. Quotation from Clark,
Acadia, 191.
222j. See ibid. The failure
"to dilute their faith and allegiance" by importing Protestant settlers
into Nova Scotia would give Governor Shirley of Massachusetts &
Lieutenant-governor Lawrence of Nova Scotia an excuse for using an even
more drastic measure to neutralize the Acadian population (no pun
intended), but that will be detailed in Book Two of this work.
222k. Quotations from
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 267.
See also Clark, Acadia, 191.
222l. Quotations from
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 261-62, 267.
222m. Quotations from ibid., pp. 268-69, 279, 302-03.
See also Maxwell Sutherland, "Armstrong, Lawrence," in DCB,
2:23.
Griffith, p. 268, speculates
that the qualified oath taken at Port-Royal to George I in 1714 was
written by one of the Robichaud brothers, perhaps Prudent, who
served as judge and syndic at Port-Royal during the early years
of British rule.
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 24-26, perhaps following
Sutherland, "Armstrong," adds a violent spin to the confrontation
between the volatile Armstrong & the Annapolis Acadians in Sep 1726:
"In September, Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong's council ordered four
deputies--Abraham Bourg, William Bourgeois, François
Richard, and Charles Landry--to assemble Acadians at Fort
Anne where, after first taking the oath from the council themselves, the
deputies would then be required to administer it to each of the
Acadians. The deputies, however, had another plan. They
brought Acadians to the fort, but made it very clear that they had no
intention of taking the oath unless the council first agreed to a a
petition signed by all seventy-one of them. In it, they asked for
amendments to the oath that included, among other things, an exemption
from bearing arms and the provision of more priests. Armstrong
flew into a rage and had the deputies charged with 'assembling Acadians
in a riotous manner' and for 'framing a rebellious paper.' Three
of them were thrown into the dungeon. The fourth, Abraham Bourg,
in consideration of his advanced age [he would have been age 64], was
released on condition that he immediately leave the province. The
Acadians who refused to sign the oath lost all marine privileges--the
right to use their boats or ships for fishing or trading in the Bay of
Fundy--until such time as the absent Governor Phillips decided
otherwise. Since many of them made their living from the sea, the
order created severe hardship for their families." Marshall tells
a good story, but, sadly, she does not provide citations for any of
them, only a bibliography; Griffith's cited version is followed here.
222n. Quotation from Clark,
Acadia, 194. See also Marshall, Acadian Resistance,
chaps. 1 & 2; Perrin, W. A., Acadian Redemption, chaps 1 & 2;
White, DGFA-1, 284-85; note
213a, above.
Clark goes on to say of the Chignecto Acadians, which may have included
some of the author's Cormier ancestors: "This unfriendly
attitude of the settlers on the isthmus was suggested much earlier by
Mascarene. In June of 1741 he observed: 'The inhabitants of
Chignecto appear in all things of a refractory spirit; their paying the
king's dues unwillingly and in bad species (sic), doth not show
well in their favour....'"
The author is proud to say that, on his father's side, he is a direct
descendant of both Joseph and Alexandre Broussard dit
Beausoleil
223. Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 24, 27.
223a. Quotation from ibid., p. 162. See also ibid., p.
241.
224. Quotation from ibid., p. 30. See also ibid.,
p. 242.
The high tides
in the Fundy region may have led to another innovation among the
Acadians. Clark, p. 151, writes that in 1699 the French commander
of Acadia, Villebon, visited Minas. "He noted one sawmill in
existence with another planned, a windmill, and some seven or eight
water gristmills. There is no clue, however, as to whether any of
these really were 'tidal mills' for which such unusually good conditions
existed."
224a. Quotation from ibid., p. 50. See also pp. 51-55,
230.
Note 33, above, contains a speculation on
the origin of the dyking operation at Port-Royal & mentions another
important byproduct of the process: the creation of salt for the
cod fishery.
224b. Quotations from Clark,
Acadia, 161-62, 238, 240. See also ibid., p.
239 (Fig. 7, entitled "A
Typical Dyke in the Marshlands").
For Dièreville, see Jacques
Rousseau, "Dièreville (Dierville, Dière de Dièreville)," in DCB,
2:188-89. Dièreville used the word Aboteaux to describe the
dyke, not the sluice. Clark, p. 162, says: "The word
aboiteau is a curious one, used not for the dyke itself but for the
clapper valves (wooden gates on horizontal hinges [also called clapets]) which opened seaward
to let out the fresh water from the streams and drains behind the dykes
at low tide, and were forced closed by the incoming tide to keep out the
salt water." One wonders if the word "aboiteau" a local term.
One is hard put to find it in a French-English dictionary, nor does it
appear in Louisiana French & Cajun French dictionaries. See
Bruce & Gipson, Cajun-English Dictionary/Phrasebook;
Daigle, Dictionary of the Cajun Language; Valdman & Rottet, eds., Dictionary of LA French. The Acadians had no opportunity to build dykes & aboiteaux
in any of the areas where they settled in South LA, so the term would
have been forgotten there after a generation or two, lost in the mists of
memory.
For Deschamp, see Wikipedia, "Isaac Deschamps."
224c. Quotation from ibid., p.
240.
Clark, p. 240, note 121, tells us: "The ultimate in aboiteaux are
huge engineering structures built in the twentieth century in the Minas
and Chignecto area. They resemble hydro-electric power dams in
size and strength." One wonders if, ironically, any Acadian
descendants helped in designing & constructing these modern marvels.
225. Quotations from Clark, Acadia, 48-49, 237-38. See also ibid., pp. 51-52, 62, 166, 241-42;
Historical Atlas of Canada,
1: plate 29, which includes a colored cross section of a typical dyke &
aboiteau.
Clark, p. 161, note 125, after pointing out the remarkable amount of
upland cleared at Port-Royal in 1687 & 1689, reminds us: "Acadians
always seemed to prefer to use dyked land if it was available, even if
it required a great deal of work." He points out on p. 162 that
"Dièreville was overly optimistic about the period necessary to 'wash
out' the salt; two full years was a minimum and perhaps more usually
years was involved," but Cadillac, who lived at Port-Royal during the
early 1690s, also mentioned the 2-year period.
Clark, p. 236, asserts that "In 1701 the average worked (défrichée)
was one acre per capita (five to ten acres per farm family), and in 1707
it was no greater." Clark, pp. 236-37, adds: "It is clear
that the dyked land was a small part of each farm. From the late
1680's Rameau [who wrote in the 1880s] inferred 'holdings' of fifty to
one hundred hectares. Allowing that arpents was meant, and that he
exaggerated, even fifty acres was a lot of land in comparison with the
normal share of plowed dyked land. Armstrong categorically
asserted in 1734 that they had many times this amount (most of them, he
reported, had a mile in frontage and a league in depth--i.e., roughly
two thousand acres) without any conditions of enclosing or fencing.
We need not speculate on the credibility of such a claim, for, in fact,
little upland was used; claims to larger areas of upland were not likely
to cause dispute since they served largely as rough pasture and wood
lots. the small holdings of precious dyked marshland might be
sections of narrow strips along the shore of a bay or tidal stream or a
variably-shaped sector of a larger marshland area."
226. Quotations from Drake, Border Wars, 201,
note 1; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 49; Clark, Acadia,
24 (note 19), 231-32. Ibid., 24, note 19, cites studies of the New England-Nova Scotia
shoreline by W. F. Ganong (1903) & D. W. Johnson (1925), 161. See also
ibid., pp. 163-64, 241-42.
Clark, pp. 158-61, contains a number of French official complaints about
the "laziness" of the Acadians for "neglecting" the uplands, but also
cites some officials who agreed with the Acadians. Vincent
Saccardy, a French engineer sent to Port-Royal in 1689 to rebuild the
fortifications there, spent a month observing the Acadians and imagined
himself an expert on their way of life. In referring to the
Acadians' neglect of the uplands, the engineer not only condemned them
for their laziness but also for promoting idleness among their children
because the latter did not have to "manure" the dyked lands or plow the
uplands to keep busy! Evidently Saccardy believed that soil could
be too rich for the Acadians' own good--paternalism personified.
Saccardy went on to report about the Acadians & their children:
"...living this sort of life cramps their outlook and results in their
children leaving home for other low-lying lands, such as those at Grand
Pré." Saccardy did point out, however, with some justification,
that using the dyked fields to grow crops could lead to a shortage of
hay & pasturage for cattle. This would apply, however, only to an
area with a shortage of dykable marshes, such as the Port-Royal valley.
Chignecto & Minas, thoroughly settled at the time, had no such shortage,
at least not for the foreseeable future. See Clark, p. 159.
Governor Villebon, in the late 1690s, also hit upon a problem with
dyking the marshlands & neglecting the uplands. "The upland, he
felt, was much more reliable in view of the danger of dyke failure and
the need for a two-year lapse in use after dyke-repair to wash out the
salt." See Clark, p. 160. One governor from the late 1680s,
however, perceived a good reason for the Acadians' to live close
to the dykable marshes: "Meneval points out that the Acadians
would have had to clear a substantial area around their houses and
fields to keep the wild predators (bears and wolves?) away from
themselves and their livestock if they moved further inland (i.e, away
from the streams)." See Clark, p. 159, note 117. The Sieur
de Dièreville, "a man of some little scientific and literary education,
visited Port Royal in ... 1699, and provides us with a different view on
the marsh versus upland problem. 'It costs a great deal to prepare
the lands which they wish to cultivate; those called Uplands, which must
be cleared in the Forest, are not goo, & the seed does not come up well
in them; it makes no difference how much trouble is taken to bring them
in condition with Manure, which is very scarce: there is almost no
harvest, & sometimes they have to be abandoned." See Clark, p.
160.
Clark, p. 244, says of Acadian use of manure: "Little use was made
of any animal manure, although the winter was a light labor season that
would have allowed time for spreading it." If the Acadians had
needed manure for improving the fertility of their fields, they
certainly would have used it.
The map in Clark, p. 28, figure 2.4, entitled
"Bay of Fundy: Tidal Ranges and Tidal Marshes," highlighting
salt-marsh areas in black, could just as well be labeled "Sites of
Acadian Settlement, 1636-1700."
Clark, p. 237-38, estimates that by 1750, the
Acadians had cleared only about 500 acres of forested upland, as opposed
to "a putative 13,000 acres of dyked marshland." For an
Englishman who understood why Acadians made relatively little use of the
uplands, see George Morris's description of Acadian agriculture in
ibid., pp. 241-42.
226a.
Quotations from ibid., pp. 236-37; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian,
175.
226b.
Quotation from Clark, Acadia, 241.
226c.
Quotations from ibid., pp. 165-66, 230, 242; Historical Atlas of Canada,
1: plate 29.
Clark, p. 151, says that Villebon, on a visit to Minas in 1699, noted
"the industry of the women in spinning and weaving wool and linen."
Clark, p. 230, adds that in the 1700s "the potato had still not
arrived...."
227.
Quotations from ibid., pp. 165-66, 242.
See also ibid., pp. 144, 151, 154, 158-61, 164;
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 310-11.
Clark, p. 151, says that fruit orchards "were widespread in both Minas
and Beaubassin in 1698," having been planted since the beginning of
colonization in each of the settlements (1672 at Beaubassin, 1682 at
Minas). On p. 166, he says that the farms at Port-Royal in 1698
averaged 35 fruit trees per farm.
227a. Quotations from ibid., pp.
167, 169-70, 243. See also ibid., pp. 166, 168, 230, 233-35.
228. Quotations from ibid., pp.
167-69, 243-44; Webster, Acadia,
139. See also Clark, pp. 166, 233-35, 244; Historical Atlas of Canada,
1: plate 29.
Beauvais is in Picardy, north of Paris.
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 175, echoing Dièreville &
Clark, says:
"While the Acadians kept sheep and cattle, it was pigs that, along with
game and fish, most often provided the protein in their diet."
Clark, p. 243, notes: "Sheep and hogs received virtually no notice
from eighteenth century observers, except as reported in cargoes shipped
to Louisbourg for meat."
Clark, pp. 166-67, points out the inconsistencies in counting horses
among the various Acadian communities in the late 1600s. He also
notes inconsistencies in counting cattle & sheep during that period &
observes on p. 167: "it is questionable if any substantial part of
the swine population ever was counted." His Table 5.8 on p. 167,
entitled "Numbers of livestock reported for Port Royal in various
censuses, 1671-1707," reveals the amazing number of sheep among the
Acadians during those years.
228a. Quotations from ibid., pp. 173, 175. See also ibid., pp. 167, 169-71, especially
Table 5.8 & Figure 5.10, entitled "Degrees of Commercialism as Measured
by Holdings of Livestock Per Capita among Farm Families," & included the
communities of Port-Royal, Minas, Beaubassin, & Cobeguit.
Clark, pp. 175-76, reminds us that, as to
commerce with New England, "(usually clandestine, always officially
interdicted, but sometimes of substantial dimensions), ... because it
was more nearly and more regularly under an official eye, Port Royal
never could enjoy the benefits of this trade as freely as could the
outlying settlements up the bay."
Clark, p. 234, Fig. 6.9, is entitled "Acadian census of people, land, and
livestock, 1707," & is very detailed, as is ibid., p. 235, Fig. 6.10,
entitled "Population, livestock, and grain production figures for the
Bay area, 1714 and 1715." Again, on p. 235, Clark laments the
dearth of evidence on Acadian horses, concluding, tongue in cheek, that
"there seems to be almost a conspiracy to hide the presence of horses
from us."
229. Quotations from ibid., pp. 63
(note 23), 135, 247. See also ibid., pp. 185.
Clark, p. 247, details some of the vessels, including their respective
sizes, held by Fundy Acadians in 1720 & the late 1740s.
Clark, p. 184, says of the inland trails: "Transportation by land
was of minor importance. Almost certainly there were trails across
the peninsula used by the Indians to communicate with La Have and
Mirliguèche and other places on the southern coast but most of the land
trails were short portages around rapids, and between headwaters of
opposite-flowing streams. At the turn of the [eighteenth] century,
when the settlement at Minas was beginning to rival Port Royal in
importance, there was still no cart road between them; only a foot-and
bridle track was serviceable." This was especially amazing since
the headwaters of Rivière Dauphin, which flowed past Port-Royal, & River
St.-Antoine, which flowed into the Minas Basin, were fairly close
together. See Clark, p. 17, Fig. 2.2.
229a. Quotations from ibid., pp.
178, 243-44, 246-47. See also ibid., pp. 143, 150, 156, 231, 248; Historical Atlas
of Canada, 1: plate 20.
Mascarene, in 1720, was the first to speak of "'their young men who have
not much work at farming begett themselves to fishing in the summer.'"
One assumes he was referring to the Atlantic cod fishery as well as
fishing for other species in the Bay of Fundy.
230. Quotations from ibid., pp.
135, 138; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 177.
230a. Quotation from Clark,
Acadia, 177, 243 (including note 128). See also ibid., p. 178.
231. Quotation from ibid., pp.
176-77. See also ibid., pp. 122, 133, 135-38, 209;
Appendix for pre-dispersal Acadian church parishes.
232. Quotations from Clark,
Acadia, 139, 158.
See also ibid., p. 236.
Clark, p. 203, asserts: "... in fact no entirely new districts
were colonized. There were no substantial areas of tidally flooded land
that had not been tried before 1710, but there was plenty of opportunity
for expansion in most of them. Spotty although the settlement of
the outlying areas was in 1710, by mid-century almost every area where
marsh could be easily dyked, and many that involved much labor and
ingenuity to enclose, had some settlers." Note 39 on the same
page adds: "Movement from the Cumberland Basin or Shepody into the
tidal estuaries of the Petitcodiac and Memramcook rivers [the
trois-rivières] may have been the major expansion. New settlements
along the south shore of the Strait of Northumberland [what the French
called the Mere-Rouge], as at Tatamagouche and Remsheg (Wallace Bay),
were associated with emigration to Isle St-Jean and trade with Cape
Breton. There was little settlement at Baie Verte before the
establishment of Fort Gaspereau [1750]."
Clark, after studying Acadian population figures, asserts on p. 208:
"Substantial emigration from Port Royal [sic] throughout the
period [of British control] is indicated, especially of young couples in
their more fertile years."
See Clark, p. 251, Fig. 6.4, entitled "The
Acadian Lands: Routes of Communication, 1710-1748," for the many
coastal & internal routes connecting British Nova Scotia with parts of
greater Acadia, much of which is described in this geographical survey.
233. Quotations from ibid., pp.
141, 143, 177.
233a. Quotations from ibid., pp.
176, 180. See also ibid., pp. 179-81; Griffiths, From Migrant
to Acadian, 176.
Clark, pp. 182-83, says that the Sieur de Dièreville observed at
Port-Royal in late 1699: "'In such a vast Country, where Trade
should be open to all in order that it might be established, no one
dares to do any business; if a Settler attempts anything of the sort
even in the Neighborhood, from one House to another, trouble is made for
him on some fine but specious pretext suggested by base interests; his
buildings are taken from him, & in this way districts which might have
become productive, are rendered forever barren." Dièrville
observed this while Villebon was commander of Acadia with headquarters
not at Port-Royal but on Rivière St.-Jean, so one wonders who were the
officials who harassed the Acadians thusly. Was it colonial
Mathieu de Goutin, the King's lieutenant général civil
et criminel, or "general representative for justice,"
whose wife was a daughter of
Pierre Thibodeau?
234. Quotations from ibid., pp.
143, 149; Historical Atlas of Canada,
1: plate 29. See also Clark, pp. 169-73, 180-83, 230-33, 248-50; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 176.
Clark, p. 232, says of the Acadians' tools: "Possibly their
shortage of metal was matched by shortages in certain skills like that
of the blacksmith or wheelwright, but they seem to have been rather
competent carpenters and joiners. At any rate it is clear that
their desire to trade with the Yankees was based on real needs."
Clark, pp. 232-33, offers an overview of Acadian use
of plows, horses, & oxen.
Clark, p. 181, places Yankee trading into a larger perspective:
"The New Englanders conducted here the same irregular, hawking trade
that they carried on along the coasts from Newfoundland to the West
Indies. They picked up what they could find and dispose of--furs,
feathers, fish, grain, livestock, meat, or even wood products.
They gave in exchange iron products (utensils, implements, tools,
firearms, mill machinery, etc.), textiles, sugar, spices, and other
luxury foods and drink, and a wide variety of oddments to satisfy the
demands for which they were the only dependable outside providers.
The French at Port Royal or on the Saint John, with tiny garrisons and
no permanently stationed war vessels, had no way of halting these
peripatetic merchants and every spring they sailed into La Baye
Française (the Bay of Fundy) as if it were an English gulf."
Clark, pp. 183-84, says that "Probably much of the trade was by barter,
for a severe and perennial problem was the shortage of currency," though
he reminds us that Acadia was not "a moneyless economy." During
the early 1700s, beginning with Brouillon & continuing with Subercase,
Acadian governors issued card money in lieu of specie so that the French
soldiers and workers could be paid, but, hearing of it, Versailles
ordered that the card money be withdrawn. Versailles demanded that
Subercase find a way to encourage the circulation of specie being held
by Acadians, probably for trade with the New English.
One
of the "legitimate" merchants at Port-Royal during Villebon's command
was the author's ancestor, Abraham, third son of Michel Boudrot.
Abraham was so well known among New English merchants that he served
Villebon as a spy in Boston during King William's War. See Clark,
p. 182; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme,
95-96.
235. Quotation from
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 69. See also ibid., pp.
70-72.
A generation earlier, in the 1720s, the French in LA had
the same problem, finding enough Frenchmen to emigrate to their
Mississippi valley colony. Their solution? Recruit Germans,
including Protestants, & so the first large group of settlers in French
LA were, like the first non-Acadian settlers of British Nova Scotia,
farmers from the principalities of western Germany. Marshall, p.
71, implies that the first group of settlers at Halifax, numbering
2,500, were recruited in England.
235a. Quotation
from Dominick Graham, "Lawrence, Charles," in DCB, 3:361.
235b. According
to Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 44, 71, it was Gov. William
Shirley of MA who recommended the creation of a British military base at
Chebouctou even before the New English attack on Louisbourg in 1745. The
return of Louisbourg to France in 1748 made the creation of a base
at Chebouctou inevitable.
236. See Krugler,
"Gorham (Goreham, Gorum), John," 3:260-61.
236a. See
Clark, Acadia, 194-95; Fortier, "Des Herbiers," 3:183.
237. See Clark,
Acadia, 193; Griffiths,
From Migrant to Acadian, 331; Lavallée, "Pontbriand," 3:196; Book
Two.
Clark, pp. 194-95, insists that "the priests who
ministered to the Acadians were on the side of neutrality despite the
fact that they were appointed by and largely supported from Quebec (the
Acadians were scarcely more willing to pay tithes than quitrents) and
that they were often harried by the British authorities. Yet the British
attributed the refusal of the Acadians to take an unqualified oath
largely to the influence of the priests and held them responsible for
the sporadic killing, scalping, and burning by the Indians nominally
under their care." Clark mentions Abbé de Miniac, for a time vicar
general of the Bishop of Québec & pastor of St.-Joseph-des-Minas parish
at Rivière-aux-Canards as the most peace loving & accommodating of the
Acadian priests.
238. Quotations
from ibid., pp. 155-57. See also ibid., p. 225; ibid., p. 226,
Fig. 6.3, entitled "Canso: Peninsula and Islands"; note
222b, above.
239. Quotations
from ibid., p. 151.
240. Quotation from
ibid., p. 248.
241. Quotations
from ibid., pp. 177, 248-49. See also ibid., p. 250. Ibid.,
p. 251, Fig. 6.4, entitled "The Acadian Lands: Routes of
Communication, 1710-1748," which locates Pictou. The famous Pine
Tree Flag of the American Revolution is of course a depiction of a New
England white pine.
242. Quotation from
Clark, Acadia, 187. See also
ibid., p. 196; Griffiths, From
Migrant to Acadian,
269, who says that "From 1715
to 1716, only ten or eleven families went to Île Royale, mostly from
Annapolis Royal but one or two from Minas and Cobequid"; Bruce T.
McCully, "Nicholson, Francis," in DCB, 2:498.
For an example of an Aug 1714 resettlement, see Louis
Mazerolle's profile in White, DGFA-1, 1145, & White,
DGFA-1 English, 247. For the island's forests, see Clark, pp.
38, 41-45.
243. Quotation from
Jobb, The Cajuns, 162.
245. Quotation from Pritchard, In Search of Empire,
417. See also Parkman, France & England, 2:477.
Clark, Acadia, 157, says that until 1717 "Cape
Breton Island remained essentially empty."
Clark, p. 73, adds: "Moreover, despite the
concessions of 1713 and 1749, the latter [Britain] were unremitting in
their efforts to recover the two islands, as they ultimately did, for
good, in 1758." It should be noted that the 1720 concession
occurred during a time when France, under Louis XV's Regent, the duc
d'Orleans, was the erstwhile ally of former enemies Britain & Holland in
conflict with former ally Spain--but this aberrant European alliance
structure was of short duration. Clark, p. 118, notes that
"when the French established themselves there [on Île Royale] in the
eighteenth century the official policy was against seigneurial grants
(although essentially similar concessions were made, as in the case of
Isle Madame and the island between the Great and Little Bras d'Or
channels to the Sieur de La Boularderie)." See also Clark, p. 187.
246. See <acadian-home.org>
for the 1716 census & La Roque's Île Royale census of 1752.
The 1716 census did not provide ages, but the ages of
some of these settlers can be fleshed out from information in White,
DGFA-1, 413, 418, 983, 1299, 1321, 1399. If the 3 LeBlancs
were sons of Daniel, they did not remain at Port-Toulouse but returned
to the Minas, where they died in Jul 1730, May 1731, & Jan 1734,
respectively. See White, DGFA-1, 983.
Clark, Acadia, 73, insists that "only a few"
peninsula Acadians "moved to Cape Breton Island," but La Roque's 1752
census says otherwise.
247. Quotation from
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 393. See also Clark,
Acadia, 210.
Marshall, Acadian Resistance, 66, does not name
the "Acadian insurgents from Île St. Jean...." See Griffiths, p.
356, for details on the deportations of 1745.
248. See Brasseaux,
Founding of New Acadia, 179; Clark, Acadia, 192, 379;
Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 298-300; Marshall, Acadian
Resistance, 18-22, 38; Wikipedia, "Father Rale's War," "Canso, Nova
Scotia". For biological information on Fr. Râle, see White,
DGFA-1, 1364.
249. See the
biographical sketch of Douville by Georges Arsenault at <islandregister.com/1752.html>.
250. Quotation from
Clark, Acadia, 230-31. See also ibid., pp. 143, 183, 232.