Acadians

“ Frequently all the Acadians—of Chignecto, Annapolis, Piziquid, Minas—were harried in punishment for the acts of a few. Often they were called upon to renew their vows of allegiance. This they did by word and by deed. When the French were at war with the English in 1744 they called on their brothers for aid which was steadfastly denied, despite threats from their priests and the menace of Indians. ”

“ The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.’
“This season I’ve been studying these Acadian people. And I like them! They don’t like to be reminded that they’re Acadians. Well, that’s natural; the Creoles used to lord it over them so when the Creoles were slave-holding planters and they were small farmers. That’s about past now. The Acadians are descended from peasants, that’s true, while some Creoles are from the French nobility. But, hooh! wouldn’t any fair-minded person”—the horsemen [Pg 197] are within earshot; they are staring at the silk hat—“Adjieu.” ”

“ For miles their neat villages skirt the shores of the ocean and the banks of the streams. For a century and a half they have lived in peace, cultivating their salt-marsh lands and fresh-water meadows, preserving the simple manners, customs, and language of their ancestors. They form a community apart, a hermit community. But they are useful citizens, good farmers, hardy fishermen and sailors.
Both in Canada and in the United States are to be found many Acadians occupying exalted positions. ”

“ By Christmas sufficient vessels had arrived to carry away all the Acadians of the Minas district. In the haste and turmoil attendant oftentimes upon final departure, families were dispersed, some of them never to be reunited. Six thousand Acadians escaped banishment by fleeing to the woods or to distant French settlements. Of the twelve thousand transported to New England and the Southern colonies, many hundreds perished in the holds of ships, and in prisons, or died of exposure and exhausting fevers in unfriendly lands. ”

“ In fact, the simple confidence of the Acadians in the security of their guard seemed to be justified by circumstances. These six stout men wore armed; Zac and his followers were unarmed. All the floating craft in the Basin belonged to the Acadians, and all the settlements. For Zac to escape by water was scarcely possible, and to get off by land was not to be thought of. The nearest English settlement was many miles away, and to reach it he would have to run the gantlet of a population of French and Indians. ”

“ With the aid of the Indians they would serve the newcomers as their fool of a king had served the Acadians. He became greatly excited as he talked, dancing about, waving his arms, and shrieking forth words of defiance and revenge. He cursed King George and the English in general, and called upon all present to unite now in a great effort to free the land from the newcomers, and to hold it for the expelled Acadians and the Indians who were their brothers and comrades in distress. ”

“ That the Acadians should be in sympathy with France rather than with England was natural; their wrong-doing consisted not in that, but in their readiness to accept English protection while plotting steadily with the French against the flag to which they had sworn fealty rather than move to French soil. ”

“ The removal of the French Acadians from their homes was one of the saddest episodes in modern history, and no one now will attempt to justify it; but it should be added that the genius of our great poet has thrown a somewhat false and distorted light over the character of the victims. They were not the peaceful and simple-hearted people they are commonly supposed to have been ”

“ An oath of allegiance was formulated to which the Acadians as consistent Catholics could not subscribe, without doing violence to their consciences. They refused to take the oath, but declared their loyalty to the English government. This they were told was insufficient. At one fell stroke they were adjudged guilty of treason, and the surrender of their boats and firearms demanded. To these acts of tyranny the Acadians submitted. They even offered to take the oath first required of them, but the deputy governor said the day of grace was past ”

“ As time went on the Acadians became impatient at the delay in settling the limits of Acadia. In vain they were annually told the boundaries would soon be determined, all negotiation proved fruitless. Those who had crossed the isthmus into what is now the County of Westmorland found themselves undecided as to their future course. Their inclination—a very natural one—seems to have been to return to the fields they had abandoned, but the Abbe Le Loutre urged them to remain under French rule as the only way of enjoying unmolested the privileges of their religion. ”

“ In the silent village, where the doors swung idly in the wind, nothing was heard but the tramp of soldiery and the lowing of cattle, wandering anxiously around the stables as if looking for their masters....The total amount of live-stock owned by the Acadians at the time of the deportation has been variously estimated by different historians, or to speak more correctly, very few have paid any attention to this subject....Rameau, who has made a much deeper study than any other historian of the Acadians, sets the total at 130,000, comprising horned cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs. ”

“ Under these circumstances hundreds of Acadians joined the French armies during every war between the two powers, and proved dangerous foemen on account of their knowledge of the region. British settlers were unwilling to locate among these people on account of their racial hostility, and the fairest lands of the province were thus held by an alien and hostile population. ”

“ The French, having been there first, had taken possession of all the most eligible lands. The places to which emigrants would most wish to go were already filled up. Annapolis, and Grand Pré, and other places were occupied; and the English who wished to settle had to go to places which were far inferior. Besides this, the English wanted every man in the country to be an active assistant,—not a neutral. All these things combined to make the question of the Acadians a very troublesome one. ”

“ The guarantee to the Acadians of the freedom of their religion had entailed the presence in Acadia of French priests not British subjects, who were paid by the French government and were under the direction of the bishop of Quebec. These priests were, of course, loyal to France and inimical to Great Britain. Another source of influence possessed by the French lay in their alliance with the Indian tribes, an alliance which the missionary priests helped to hold firm. The fear of an Indian attack was destined on more than one occasion to keep the Acadians loyal to France. ”

“ It isn't a remarkable story in any way, only they say that when the Acadians saw that they were prisoners, some of them managed to take down the bell and wall it up in one of the vaults under the church, while the church treasure was put in the other. Years afterwards, in the days of the English settlers, a strange vessel was seen in the Basin one night. People who passed this way thought they heard queer noises during the night, and in the morning the ground near the site of the old church was disturbed. ”

“ They marched in good order, nevertheless, the captain and officers coming on in front, and the Acadians keeping on the flanks. The latter, however, edged gradually off towards the cotton-trees, and presently disappeared amongst them.
"Those are the first men to frick off," said Asa, when he saw this manœuvre of the Creoles. "They have steady hands and sharp eyes; but if we once get rid of them we need not mind the others."
The Spaniards were now within an hundred yards of us. ”

“ The half-breeds, who are descended from the Acadians, think they have a great grievance against England for expelling their forefathers from Grand Pré in 1755. During the war they made no end of trouble, and did their best to stir up the Indians to rebellion. ”

“ Accustomed to boating and lumbering in their old Acadian homes, they found profitable exercise in both pursuits in their new, and after making small clearances left their cultivation to the women, while they floated rafts to Montreal or manned the bateaux which carried on the traffic between that place and Upper Canada. The shanty of one of these Acadians, that of Joseph [Pg 206] Caza, occupied a point that ran into the great river near the mouth of the LaGuerre. ”

“ The French called them Souriquois, which Vetromile translates “good canoe men.” They were also called Acadians, from their habitat in Acadie, now Nova Scotia.
The first reference in literature with regard to the spontaneous use by Indians of the characters now called the “Micmac hieroglyphs” appears in the Jesuit Relations of the year 1652, p. 28. In the general report of that year the work of Father Gabriel Druillettes, who had been a missionary to the Abnaki (including under this term the Indians of Acadia, afterwards distinguished as Micmacs) , is dwelt upon in detail. ”

“ Like the Acadians at French Cross, they had no clergyman to pay the last rites. They had been used to comfortable and pleasant homes, and many of them had had wealth; so it was doubly hard to have to live in Indian fashion on fish, and moose, and berries. In the spring they made maple sugar, and killed pigeons. There was great rejoicing when the first vessels came with corn and rye. They were in constant fear of the Indians, and it was long before they could live even half decently."
"I have always sympathized with the Loyalists," said Amy, quietly. ”

“ John in July, 1783. [92] The committee reported sixty-one families of Acadians settled in the vicinity of Aukpaque. There were in these families 61 men, 57 women and 236 children. About twenty-five families lived on the east side of the river, most of them near the mouth of the Keswick; the others lived not far from the Indian village on the west side of the river, and there were in addition two or three families at St. Anne’s Point. In their report to Major Studholme the committee describe the Acadians as “an inoffensive people.” ”

“ Nor is this the only instance of the kind in history. Often, indeed, has war served, not only to cover the grossest inhumanities; it has even furnished an excuse for substantial reward.
CHAPTER X THE EXILES Thus the Acadians passed from the land of their birth and from the scenes of their youth. Some were to wander as exiles in many lands for many years, separated from their children and from their kind, while others, more fortunate, were soon to regain their native soil. ”

“ This family increased in numbers in Minas, and two villages bore the name, one in Minas and the other in Canard. There were fifty Heberts at the time of the dispersion.
We may now review the growth of the Acadian Minas from the coming of the first settlers in 1681 to the year 1755, when Colonel John Winslow, with the [Pg 5] New England volunteers, encamped upon the church ground of St. Charles at Grand-Pré. In December of that year the houses and barns, churches and mills of the Acadians were destroyed, and for five years the country was without an inhabitant. ”

“ By 1710 the population of Acadia had grown to about twenty-one hundred souls, distributed chiefly in the districts of Port Royal, Minas, and Chignecto. Most of these were descended from the settlers brought over by Razilly and Charnisay between 1633 and 1638. On the whole, they were a strong, healthy, virtuous people, sincerely attached to their religion and their traditions. The most notable singularity of their race was stubbornness, although they could be led by kindness where they could not be driven by force. ”

“ Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!
Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches
Dwells another race, with other customs and language.
Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. ”

“ And so the pony being strapped up and buckled to the wagon, we left the negro settlement for the French settlement. They are all in "settlements," here, the people of this Province. Centuries are mutable, but prejudices never alter in the Colonies.
But we are again in the Acadian forest—a truce to moralizing—let us enjoy the scenery. The road we are on is but a few miles from the sea-shore, but the ocean is hidden from view by the thick woods. As we ride along, however, we skirt the edges of coves and inlets that frequently break in upon the [Pg 46] landscape. ”

“ The part played by these Accadians in the intellectual history of mankind is highly important. They were the earliest civilizers of Western Asia, and it is to them that we have to trace the arts and sciences, the religious traditions and the philosophy not only of the Assyrians, but also of the Phœnicians, the Aramæans, and even the Hebrews themselves. It was, too, from Chaldea that the germs of Greek art and of much of the Greek pantheon and mythology originally came. Columnar architecture reached its first and highest development in Babylonia ”

“ The vitality of Port Royal, rising ever, phoenix-like, from its ashes; the solidarity of the little Acadian people, who after forty years of English rule had to be deported, only to make their way back to their old homes again; the creative power repeatedly shown in making something out of the least promising material — these things set Acadia apart as deserving a special place in the history of French colonisation. But here, as else- where, the main source of strength was the successful manipulation of the Indians. ”