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DURING the invasion of Col. Church, the inhabitants of Grand-Pré were exposed to such treatment it may be conceived of. The smoke from the borders of the five rivers, overlooked by Blomidon, rose in the stilly air, and again the sea rolled past the broken dykes, which for nearly a century had kept out its desolating waters between the Cape and the Gasperau. Driven to despair, a few of the younger Acadians took up arms to defend their hearthstones, but the great body of the people submitted without resistance. A brief stand was made at Port Royal, but this last outpost finally capitulated. By the terms of the articles agreed upon, the inhabitants were to have the privilege of remaining upon their estates for two years, upon taking an oath of allegiance to remain faithful to her majesty, Queen Anne, during that period. Upon that consideration, those who lived within 270 cannon-shot of the fort, were to be protected in their rights and properties. This was but a piece of finesse on the part of invaders, an entering wedge, as it were, of a novel kind of tyranny, namely, that inasmuch as those within cannon-shot had taken the oath of allegiance, those without the reach of artillery, at Port Royal, also, were bound to do the same. And a strong detachment of New England troops, under Captain Pigeon, was sent upon an expedition to enforce the arbitrary oath. But Captain Pigeon, in the pursuit of his duty, fell in with an enemy of a less gentle nature than the Acadians. A body of Abenaqui came down upon him and his men, and smote them hip and thigh, even as the three hundred warriors of Israel smote the Midianites in the valley of Moreh. Then was there temporary relief in the land until the 1713, when by a treaty Acadia was formally surrendered to England. The weight of the oath of allegiance now fell heavily upon the innocent colonists. We can scarcely appreciate the abhorrence of a people, so conscientious as this, to take an oath of fidelity to a race that had only been known to them by its rapacity. But partly by persuasion, partly by menace, a majority of the Acadians took the oath, which was as follows:
“Je promets et jure sincèrement, en foi de Chrétien, 271 que je serai entièrement fidèle et obéirai vraiment sa Majesté le roi George, que je reconnais pour le Souverain seigneur de l’Acadie, ou Nouvelle Ecosse, ainsi Dieu me soit en aide.”
Under the shadow of the protection derived from their acceptance of this oath, the Acadians reposed a few years. It did not oblige them to bear arms against their countrymen, nor did it compromise their religious independence of faith. Again the dykes were built to resist the encroachments of the sea; again village after village arose — at the month of the Gasperau, on the shores of the Canard, beside the Strait of Frontenac, at Le Have, and the Rossignol, at Port Royal and Pisiquid. During all these years no attempt had been made by the captors of this province, to colonize the places baptized with the waters of Puritan progress. Lunenburgh was settled with King William’s Dutchmen; the walls of Louisburgh were rising in one of the harbors of a neighboring island; but in no instance had the filibusters projected a colony on the soil which had been wrested from its rightful owners. The only result of all their bloody visitations upon a non-resisting people, had been to make defenceless Acadia a neutral province. From this time until the close of the drama, in all the wars between the Georges and the Louises, in both hemispheres, 272 the people of Acadia went by the name of “The Neutral French.”
Meantime the walls of Louisburgh were rising on the island of Cape Breton, which, with Canada, still remained under the sovereign rule of the French. The Acadians were invited to remove within the protection of this formidable fortress, but they preferred remaining intrenched behind their dykes, firmly believing that the only invader they had now to dread was the sea, inasmuch as they had accepted the oath of fidelity, in which, and in their inoffensive pursuits, they imagined themselves secure from farther molestation. Some of their Indian neighbors, however, accepted the invitation of the Cape Breton French, and removed thither. These simple savages, notwithstanding the changes in the government, still regarded the Acadians as friends, and the English as enemies. They could not comprehend the nature of a treaty by which their own lands were ceded to a hostile force; a treaty in which they were neither consulted nor considered.* They had their own injuries to remember, which in no wise had been balanced in the compact of the strangers. The rulers in 273 New France (so says the chronicler) “affected to consider the Indians as an independent people.” At Canseau, at Cape Sable, at Annapolis, and Passamaquoddy, English forts, fishing stations, and vessels were attacked and destroyed by the savages with all the circumstances that make up the hideous features of barbaric reprisal. Unhappy Acadia came in for her share of condemnation. Although her innocent people had no part in these transactions, yet her missionaries had converted the Abenaqui to faith in the symbol of the crucifixion, and it was currently reported and credited in New England, that they had taught the savages to believe also the English were the people who had crucified our Saviour. To complicate matters again, the Chevalier de St. George (of whom there is no recollection except that he was anonymous, both as a prince, and as a man) sent his son, the fifth remove in stupidity, of the most stupid line of monarchs (not even excepting the Georges) that ever wore crowns, to stir up an insurrection among the most obtuse race of people that ever wore, or went without, breeches. A war between France and England followed the descent of the Pretender. A war naturally followed in the Colonies.
Again the ring of fire and slaughter met and ended in a treaty; the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, 274 by which Cape Breton was ceded to France, and Nova Scotia, or Acadia, to England. Up to this time no attempt at colonizing the fertile valleys of Acadia, by its captors, had been attempted. At last, under large and favorable grants from the Crown, a colony was established by the Hon. Edward Cornwallis, at a place now known as Halifax. No sooner was Halifax settled, than sundry tribes of red men made predatory visits to the borders of the new colony. Reprisals followed reprisals, and it is not easy to say on which side lay the largest amount of savage fury. At the same time, the Acadians remained true to the spirit and letter of the oath they had taken. “They had relapsed,” says the chronicler, “into a sort of sullen neutrality.” This was considered just cause of offence. The oath which had satisfied Governor Phipps, did not satisfy George II. A new oath of allegiance was tendered, by which the Acadians were required to become loyal subjects of the English Crown, to bear arms against their countrymen, and the Indians to whom the poor colonists were bound by so many ties of obligation and affection. The consciences of these simple people revolted at a requisition “so repugnant to the feelings of human nature.” Three hundred of the younger and braver Acadians took up arms against their oppressors. 275 This overt act was just what was desired by the wily Puritans. Acadia, with its twenty thousand inhabitants, was placed under the ban of having violated the oath of neutrality in the persons of the three hundred. In vain the great body of the people protested that this act was contrary to their wishes, their peaceful habits, and beyond their control. At the fort of Beau Séjour, the brave three hundred made a gallant stand, but were defeated. Would there had been a Leonidas among them! Would that the whole of their kinsmen had erected forts instead of dykes, and dropped the plough-handles to press the edge of the sabre against the grindstone! Sad indeed is the fate of that people who make any terms with such an enemy, except such as may be granted at the bayonet’s point. Sad indeed is the condition of that people who are wrapt in security when Persecution steals in upon them, hiding its bloody hands under the garments of sanctity.
Among the many incidents of these cruel wars, the fate of a Jesuit priest may stand as a type of the rest. Le Père Ralle had been a missionary for forty years among the various tribes of the Abenaqui. “His literary attainments were of a high order;” his knowledge of modern languages respectable; “his Latin,” according to Haliburton, 276 “was pure, classical and elegant;” and he was master of several of the Abenaqui dialects; indeed, a manuscript dictionary of the Abenaqui languages, in his hand-writing, is still preserved in the library of the Harvard Universtiy. Of one of these tribes — the Norridgewoacks — Father Ralle was the pastor. Its little village was on the banks of the Kennebeck; the roof of its tiny chapel rose above the pointed wigwams of the savages; and a huge cross, the emblem of peace, lifted itself above all, the conspicuous feature of the settlement in the distance. By the tribe over which he had exercised his gentle rule for so many years, Le Père Ralle was regarded with superstitious reverence and affection.
It does not appear that these people had been accused of any overt acts; but, nevertheless, the village was marked out for destruction. Two hundred and eight Massachusetts men were dispatched upon this errand. The settlement was surprised at night, and a terrible scene of slaughter ensued. Ralle came forth from his chapel to save, if possible, the lives of his miserable parishioners. “As soon as he was seen,” says the chronicler,** “he was saluted with a great shout and a shower of bullets, and fell, together with seven Indians, who had rushed out of their tents to defend him with their bodies; and 277 when the pursuit ceased, the Indians who had fled, returned to weep over their beloved missionary, and found him dead at the foot of the cross, his body perforated, with balls, his head scalped, his skull broken with blows of hatchets, his mouth and his eyes filled with mud, the bones of his legs broken, and his limbs dreadfully mangled. After having bathed his remains with their tears, they buried him on the site of the chapel, that had been hewn down with its crucifix, with whatever else remained of the emblems of idolatry.” Such was the merciless character of the invasion of Acadia; such the looming phantom of the greater crime which was so speedily to spread ruin over her fair valleys, and scatter forever her pastoral people.
The tranquillity of entire subjugation followed these events in the province. The New Englander built his menacing forts along the rivers and pressed into his service the labors of the neutral French. “The requistions which were made of them were not calculated to conciliate affection,” says the chronicler; the poor Acadian peasant was informed, if he did not supply the garrison fuel, his own house would be used for that purpose, and that neglect to furnish timber for the repairs of a fort, would be followed by drum-head courts martial, and “military execution.”
278To all these exactions, these unhappy people patiently submitted. But in vain. The very existence of the subjugated race had become irksome to their oppressors. A cruelty yet more intolerable to which the history of the world affords no parallel, remained to be perpetrated.
FOOTNOTES
* In the treaty of Utrecht, no mention was made either of the Indians or of their lands.
** Charlevoix.