The history of Acadia, from its first discovery to its surrender to England by the Treaty of Paris

Preface

. This Book is the result of a resolve formed some fifteen years ago to write a History of Acadia during the period of its occupation by the French, and up to the time when it was finally surrendered to England by the Treaty of Paris. No doubt I entered upon the undertaking with but a slight con ception of the labor it would involve ; but that, perhaps, was a fortunate circumstance, for otherwise I might have been deterred by the magnitude of the task. Owing to the lack of well equipped libraries in New Brunswick, I had to collect, at great labor and much expense, all the books and publica tions bearing on the early history of New England and Acadia ; and having collected them, I had the satisfaction of discovering that very few of them were of the slightest value as works of authority. The only use of most of them is to put the inquirer on his guard and to stimulate him to more exhaustive researches into the annals of the period of which he proposes to write.

After years spent in collecting books, in preliminary inquiries, in making myself familiar with minute matters of detail, which, perhaps, belong rather to the antiquarian than the historian, and after having to lay aside my work many times, often for months together, in consequence of the

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. IV demands of a most exacting and laborious profession, this history was to have been published in the Summer of 1877. I was at Oak Point, on the St. John River, whither I had gone to obtain quiet and complete the last chapters of this volume, when one pleasant morning in June a little boy came running across the fields with the tidings that the city of St. John had been burnt down the previous day. Before night I reached the city, and discovered the worst, that my book, then half printed, my library, and the whole of the manuscript in the printing office had been destroyed in the great conflagration, which carried ruin to so many homes. With the exception of about one hundred and eighty pages, of which I had a printed copy, the whole work of writing the history of Acadia had to be done over again.

This has been accomplished, and now the result is before the reader. In this volume I have not adopted the plan which is usual in historical works of original research, of placing the names of the authorities in notes on each page. In cases where it seemed necessary to do so, I have rather chosen to name the auth rity in the text, as the more simple and convenient method. For the discoveries of Champlain and the settlement at Port Royal, the authorities I have mainly relied on are, Champlain's work, Lescarbot, and the first volume of the Jesuit Relations. For the subsequent events, up to the capture of Port Royal by the English in 1654, the work of Denys, Governor Winthrop's Diary, and a vast number of public documents in the volume of the E. and F. Commissioners, Hazard's and Hutchinson's collections and similar works have been consulted. After the surrender of Acadia to France in 1670, the memoirs and despatches obtained by the

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. V several Provincial Governments from the archives of Paris, furnish abundance of historical material down to the taking of Port Royal in 1710. After that period, the public documents of Nova Scotia, some of which have been reprinted by the Government of that Province, serve as the basis of my story. My aim has been to trace every statement to its original source, and to accept no fact from a printed book at second hand where it was possible to avoid doing so. Champlain, Lescarbot, Denys, Winthrop, and one or two other books, I consider nearly of equal authority with documentary evidence, because these authors relate facts which happened in their own time, and which mainly came under their own personal observation. Winthrop, especially, is of great value, and without his aid it would have been impossible to give an accurate statement of the singular story of La Tour.

The first and principal object I have kept in view has been to tell the simple truth, and for the sake of this I have been willing to sacrifice mere picturesque effect and all attempts at fine writing. Indeed, the necessarily annalistic character of much of the narrative would prove an effectual barrier against anything more ambitious, and it would be ridiculous to clothe the petty struggles of Acadian history in grandiloquent lan guage. Up to the capture of Port Royal in 1710, 1 have been very full in my treatment of events in Acadia, but from that date to the end of the period of which the volume treats, I have disregarded everything relative to the mere English Colony of Nova Scotia, which did not properly fall within the scope of my narrative. I have given a good deal of space to the question of the expulsion of the Acadians, and I think VI

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. that very few people, who follow the story to the end, will be prepared to say that it was not a necessary measure of self preservation on the part of the English authorities in Nova Scotia. When I had made some progress in my researches, the manuscripts of the late Professor Robb, of the University of New Brunswick, who had devoted a good deal of attention to Acadian history, were placed in my hands. Dr. Robb had made copious extracts from the manuscripts in the library of Quebec, and I derived much assistance from the result of his labors. I am indebted to Mr. E. Jack of Fredericton for much valuable aid, and to Mr. I. Allen Jack of St. John for manuscripts and maps. Mr. Thomas B. Aikens of Halifax is also entitled to my thanks for assistance courteously and promptly rendered on one occasion.

But my thanks are especially due to Miss E. Wagstaff of St. John, whose aid in making translations of difficult French manuscripts has been invaluable. This lady during the great St. John fire let her own property burn while she saved two of the precious volumes of manuscripts copied from the archives of Paris. I cannot close this Preface without paying my tribute of respect to the labors of the late Beamish Murdoch, my prede cessor in this field, whose history of Nova Scotia is a wonderful monument of industry and research, which will serve as a guide to all future historians to the sources of the history of Acadia. Mr. Murdoch only essayed " the task of collecting and reducing into annals, facts of interest" with reference to the history of his native Province ; had he done more, this book would never have been written. But having paused, at that point, I felt that the field was free for me to attempt to

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. VII weave into a consistent narrative the facts which he had treated in a more fragmentary way. It will be for the reader to say with what measure of success this has been accom plished. St. John, N. B., March, 1879.

Chapter I. Early Voyages To The Northern Parts Of America

The 4th of March, 1493, was a day of glad tidings for Europe and for mankind. Yet it was not the witness of any great triumph on the field of arms ; nor the birth day of any man of illustrious name; nor the date of any royal pageant. But on that day a little bark, leaky, frail, and shattered by the tempest, sought shelter in the port of Lis bon ; no anxious merchant awaited her arrival ; no salute thundered her a welcome, but she brought to the shores of Europe " the richest freight that ever lay upon the bosom of the deep — the tidings of a new world." For ages before, commerce had languished within the narrow compass of the Mediterranean Sea, and the enterprise of man had been restrained by the stormy Atlantic, now the highway of nations, but which was believed by the men of those days to be a limitless ocean.

It took a succession of the boldest Portuguese navigators upwards of seventy years to reach that stormy Cape which marks the southern limit of the continent of Africa, and no man but Columbus had dreamed of passing over that vast waste of water which rolled in untamed majesty to the west. The discovery of America dispelled in a moment the superstitious fears which had enslaved the minds of men for so many centuries, and swept away, so far as geography was concerned, the much vaunted wisdom of antiquity. A Here was a field for the enterprise of man such as had never before been opened up, and which modern discovery has made it impossible to parallel in these days. Europe was in a great ferment over the event, which disclosed new visions of wealth and power to the enterprising and bold. Every needy adventurer saw in it a means of bettering his fortune, and every monarch recognized in it an easy mode of extending his dominions.

The golden lure stimulated national as well as individual cupidity, and thousands were ready to brave the dangers of that same stormy Atlantic which they had considered Columbus a madman for at tempting to pass. The thirst for gold was as keen in the fifteenth century as it is to-day. Amongst those who turned their eyes towards the new continent was Henry VII. of England, a monarch who combined in a surprising degree, caution, with a spirit of enterprise, and avarice with nmbi tion. He had only been prevented by a narrow chance from becoming the patron of Columbus in his great discov ery, and had this prudent English King been the first to obtain possession of the rich tropical portions of the western continent, the history of the British Colonies of America, and probably of the mother country also, would have been different.

More colonial gold might have flowed into the coffers of England, but a colony planted beneath the equa tor would have had little in common, either in mental or physical characteristics, with that hardy race of men which seized with iron hand the rugged shores of New England. At the close of the fifteenth century the position of Eng land as a maritime power was very different from that which she occupied a hundred years later. Her war ships were few ; the first of that long line of illustrious admirals, who have borne her flag in triumph on every sea, had not then been born ; and he would have been a bold man who would then have ventured to predict that England would become the first maritime nation in the world, without a rival in commercial enterprise or naval power, unless she found one among the vigorous colonies she planted with her own hand.

In consequence of the lack of experienced navigators of English birth, Henry VII. was obliged to accept the services of foreigners to carry out his plans of discovery. In 1495 there was residing in Bristol a native of Venice named John Cabot, who in his youth had been a pilot, but who subsequently had embarked in mercantile pursuits. No part of the world was at that period more famous for the skill of its navigators than the Italian Peninsula, and Venice, from its favorable situation in the Mediterranean, and its large commerce, was, above all others, the place from which a bold and skilful mariner might be expected to come. Cabot had caught the enthusiasm which the discovery of America had wrought upon the minds of men, and embraced the idea that by sailing to the north-west a passage to India might be found.

He found in the English monarch a willing and eager patron, and on the 5th March, 1495, received from the King a royal commission granting to him and his sons Sebastian, Louis and Santius, full authority to sail to all countries and seas of the east, west and north, under the flag of England, for the discovery of the " isles, regions and provinces of the heathen and infidels," with power to set up the banner of England in the newly discovered countries, and to subdue and possess them as lieutenants of the King. Cabot and his sons were to enjoy the privileges of the exclusive trade, but one-fifth of the profit was to go to the King. In the Spring of 1497 Cabot set sail in a ship named the Matthew, provided by the King, and essayed for the first time the passage of the North Atlantic. He was ac companied by his son Sebastian, and in company with their ship, sailed three or four small vessels fitted out by the merchants of Bristol, and laden with goods for the purpose of trading with the natives.

On the 24th of June they dis covered the main land of America, probably the coast of Labrador in the vicinity of the Straits of Belleisle, and on the same day they saw an island lying opposite to the main land. To the land first discovered Cabot gave the name of Prima Vista, while the island received the name of St. John, probably from the circumstance of the day of its dis covery being St. John's day. There are good grounds for believing that this island of Cabot's discovery was New foundland, although, unfortunately, the meagre record of the voyage which has survived, is insufficient to determine the matter with absolute certainty. The inhabitants of this new land were clad in the skins of wild animals, and armed with bows and arrows, spears, darts, slings and wooden clubs. The country was sterile and uncultivated, produc ing no fruit.

White bears, and stags of an unusual height and size, were numerous. The waters around it abounded in fish, especially a kind called by the natives baccalaos, which, during the centuries which have passed since then, has been the means of bringing vast fleets from Europe to gather the rich harvest of this now famous sea.* Salmon were also found in great plenty in the rivers of the new land, and seals were abundant along its shores. It had, likewise, so the chronicle informs us, hawks which were black like ravens, and partridges and eagles with dark plumage. Cabot, after skirting along the coast for some distance, took two of the natives and returned to England, which he * This fish has since then received the less musical name of the cod. reached in August. Thus was the continent of America discovered under the auspices of the crown of England, more than a year before Columbus reached the coast of South America.* In the following year the King granted a new patent to the Cabots, and gave them authority to engage in another voyage of discovery to the coast of North America.

John Cabot, who had been knighted for the discoveries made by him on the former voyage, was unable to accompany this second expedition, and the command of it was given to his son Sebastian. Two ships were provided and fitted out for the voyage, and on board of them embarked three hundred sailors, traders, and adventurers. Early in the summer of 1498 they set sail. The discovery of a north-west passage to India was one of the main objects of this, as it had been of the former voyage, and, accordingly, Cabot, after reach ing the coast of Newfoundland, turned the bows of his ships towards the north-west. He did not dream then that the solution of the curious geographical problem which he was the first to attempt, would not be attained until more than three centuries and a half had passed, and hundreds of human lives and an untold amount of treasure had been sacrificed in the endeavour, or he would scarcely have ven tured with his frail ships to brave the dangers of that unknown northern sea.

But men, happy in their ignorance of the future, press forward in search of an unattainable goal, and so Cabot, undismayed and without misgiving or doubt, swept on with free sail towards the ice-locked ocean of the North. Cabot as he sailed northward found the shores free from ice, for it was then the month of July, but he was alarmed ♦This discovery of Cabot was made the foundation of the English claims to North America. at the appearance of numerous icebergs seaward, and before many days the field ice became so abundant that he found it impossible to proceed, and was reluctantly obliged to return south. He followed the coast of America, looking for a passage to India, until he reached the coast of Florida ; then he gave up the attempt in despair and returned to England. Cabot subsequently received high honors from the English King, and, during the reign of Edward VI., was made grand pilot of England, and granted a large pension.

No nation during the fifteenth century exceeded the Por tuguese in maritime enterprise. Beginning in 1412, they, with equal perseverance and success, pushed forward the work of exploring the western coast of- Africa, which before that time had only been known to Europeans as far south as Cape Non. Six years later they succeeded in reaching Cape Bojador. In 1420 they discovered Madeira. In 1433 Cape Bojador, which had been so long the limit of their navigation, was doubled, and in 1449 the Cape de Verd Islands were discovered. In 1471 they ventured to cross the equinoctial line, which they — following the absurd teachings of the ancients — had believed to be impassable. Finally, Bartholomew Diaz, in 1486, attained that lofty promontory which he called the Cape of Storms, but which his King re-named the Cape of Good Hope.

Thus had the Portuguese, in the course of three quarters of a century, explored the whole west coast of Africa to its southern limit, and showed the way by which India might be reached. It is, therefore not surprising that a people so enterprising and sagacious should have looked with interest, not unmix ed with jealousy, on the discoveries which the English and Spaniards were making in the new world. Of the Portu guese adventurers who were thus animated by a desire to make discoveries in America, there was none more ardent and resolute than Gaspar de Cortereal. He resolved to pursue the track of Cabot to the north and gain imperish able renown by the discovery of that passage to India which Cabot had been unable to find. In 1500 he set sail from Lisbon with two ships and reached the coast of Labrador, which he named Terra Verde.

He entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it is by no means improbable that he landed on some portion of Acadia. He followed the coast to the north for several hundred miles until, like Cabot, ho was compelled by the ice to return. But the most notable circumstance in connection with the voyage of Cortereal was the fact of his capturing fifty-seven of the natives, and taking them to Europe, where they were sold as slaves. The country from which those unfortunates were taken, is described as abounding in immense pines, fit for masts, which shows that it could not have been very far to the north. It was thickly peopled, and the natives were attired in the skins of wild animals; they lived in huts, and used knives, hatchets, and arrow-heads made of stone. They were described as a well-made and robust race, well fitted for labor.

This description might very well apply to the Indians of Acadia. Encouraged by the success of his first venture in human blood, Cortereal set out in 1501 on another voyage for timber and slaves. But the fetters which he had forged for his fellow men were destined never to confine the free-born natives of America. That shore which he had polluted for the first time with the touch of slavery, he was fated never more to behold. Many months passed without any tidings of the lost adventurer, and his brother, Michael de Cortereal, fitted out two ships aud went in search of him. But the same avenging spirit which had overwhelmed the one, now pursued the other. He also passed away over the trackless ocean, and no friendly gale ever brought back to Europe an intimation of the fate of either. In 1504 the Basque and Breton fishermen first cast their lines on the Banks of Newfoundland, and to the latter the island of Cape Breton owes its name.

Then commenced the gathering of that bountiful ocean harvest which has since rewarded the toil of so many generations of fishermen. Never was so rich a mine of wealth opened by the most fortunate adventurer of the south as those ocean plains, and, although untold millions have been taken from the apparently inexhaustible store, the deep still yields as rich a return for the labor of man as in the days of those ancient toilers of the sea. The accounts which the fishermen brought back to Eu rope of the coasts which they had visited in the pursuit of their calling were not so favorable as to tempt many colonists to the new world. The pursuit of gold was then the object which mainly engrossed the minds of the adventurers of France and Spain, and, beyond the pursuit of the fish eries which were early recognized as a source of wealth, nothing was done to profit by the discoveries which had been made.

In 1524 a native of Florence, named John Verazzano, was sent by Francis I. of France on a voyage of discovery. That monarch had viewed with some degree of jealousy the progress which Spain and Portugal had made in the exploration and settlement of America, the more especially as Pope Alexander VI. had issued a bull bestowing the new world on the Kings of those two countries. The King of France was but little disposed, either to bow submissively to the decrees of Rome, or to acknowledge the right of Spain and Portugal to the whole of America. Charles V. of Spain remonstrated with Francis against his founding any colonies in America, an act which he considered an invasion of his rights, but the French King sarcastically replied that he would like to see the clause in father Adam's will which bequeathed to his royal brother alone, so vast a heritage.

Verazzano set sail from a rocky island near Ma deira on the 17th of January, in a ship named the Dolphin, with a crew of fifty men, and provisions for eight months. After a tempestuous passage to the west he came in sight of a country, up to that time unknown, which was thickly inhabited by a race of friendly savages, who beheld the white strangers with astonishment and delight. The difficulty of landing on account of the surf made trading impossible, but a bold young sailor who swam ashore was treated by those simple-minded natives with much kindness. This land, according to Verazzano's reckoning, was in thirty-four north latitude, and was doubtless part of North Carolina. Verazzano followed the coast to the northward, landing at many places to barter with the natives, whom he found more savage and less friendly the further north he went.

He sailed as far as fifty degrees of north latitude, having explored seven hundred leagues of the coast of America. An enterprise of such magnitude entitles Veraz zano to a high place among the navigators of the sixteenth century, and the record of his voyage, which has been pre served, shows him to have been a man of much judgment and ability. To the whole of the newly explored region he gave the name of New France, and, after his return to Europe, he propounded a scheme for the further exploration and colonization of the new land, which received the countenance of the King. But this plan was never carried to success, and the subsequent fate of the navigator is at this day a matter of doubt. It is related on the authority of Ramusio, that he made a subsequent voyage in which he was killed and devoured by the natives, but other authorities go to show that he was alive after the alleged date of this catas trophe.

Whatever his subsequent adventures or fate may have been, he added nothing more to the world's knowledge in regard to America. In 1527 Master Thomas Thome, a learned and wealthy resident of Bristol, addressed a letter to King Henry VIII., in which he argued that the discovery of the northern parts of America might be carried even as far as the North Pole, and urged the King to assist in the undertaking. Henry VIIL, stimulated no doubt by the example of some of the other European nations, accordingly fitted out two ships, one of them bearing the pious name of Dominus Vobiscum, and in May of the same year they set sail. A Canon of St. Paul's, a man of much wealth, and imbued with an ardent desire for scientific discovery, accompanied the expedition. But the voyage was not prosperous, and the adventurers do not appear to have reached farther north than the Straits of Belleisle, through which they passed ; but they had scarcely entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence when one of their ships was cast away.

The other then followed the coast south as far as Cape Breton and Arambec — which was the name then given by the English to Acadia — returning to Eno-land in October of the same Year. Francis I. still continued to cherish the desire to make further discoveries in the new world, and in 1534 two small vessels of sixty tons burthen were fitted out for a voyage to America by his directions. Each vessel carried a complement of sixty-one men, and the expedition was placed under the command of Jaques Cartier, a very bold and skilful pilot of St. Malo. He departed from that port on the 20th April, 1534, and holding a due west course, on the 10th May came in sight of Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland. He found this Cape so much beset with ice that he was unable to enter the Bay of Bonavista, and was constrained to take refuge in St. Catharine's Haven, five leagues to the south-east.

There he remained ten days. From thence, sailing to the northward, he skirted the eastern coast of the island, and passing through the Straits of Belleisle, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and followed the coast as far south as Cape St. George. He admired the fisheries and harbors of Newfoundland, but speaks very unfavorably of the soil.* He found the inhabitants to be men of good stature, but wild and unruly. Both sexes were clothed with the skins of wild animals. They painted their faces a roan color, and decorated their hair with feathers. They had canoes of birch bark in which they fished and captured seals. He understood from them that they did not reside permanently on the island, but came from hotter countries on the main land to catch seals. Leaving Newfoundland, Cartier sailed to the south-west and visited the Magdalene Islands ; from thence proceeding west, on the 30th June, he came in sight of the coast of Acadia.

The land first seen by Cartier appears to have been Cape Escuminac at the southern entrance of Mirami chi Bay.f The next day he landed and found the country to be fertile and well wooded. He there saw a large number of the inhabitants crossing a river in their canoes. Cartier entered this river, and speaks of it as " a very goodly river * He says, "If the soil were as good as the harbors are it were a great commodity, but it is not to be called New Land but rather stones and wild crags and a place lit for wild beasts, for in all the North Island I did not see a cart load of good earth. Yet went I on shore in njany places. * * To be short I believe that this was the land that God alloted to Cain."— Hakluyt, Vol. 3, p. 263. t Named by the French, Cape Orleans; it appears to have beeu known to the French fishermen by that name before Cartier's visit. but very shallow."

It is now difficult to determine which of the many rivers of that portion of the coast of New Brunswick is the one thus described. Cartier was charmed with the beauty and fertility of the country, and speaks of it in glowing terms.* The forest trees were principally pines, cedars, white elms, ash, willows and yew trees, and many other kinds with which the navigator was unac quainted. Where there were no trees the ground was cov ered with gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries, wild peas and a species of wild corn which resembled rye. The climate was as warm as that of Spain, and the birds were very numerous. The land was level, and the natives manifested a friendly disposition. Such is, in substance, the account which is given of this part of New Brunswick by its first recorded discoverer, who, fresh from the rugged coast and severe climate of Newfoundland, was the better able to ap preciate its beauties.

From Miramichi Bay, Cartier sailed towards the north, and, rounding Point Miscou, entered a fine bay to which, in consequence of the excessive warmth of the climate, he gave the name of Bay Chaleur or Bay of Heat. Crossing to the northern shore of this Bay he entered an open haven now known as Port Daniel, and from this point explored the whole of the Bay, going within it a distance of twenty five leagues, which must have brought him very near the mouth of the Restigouche River. Singularly enough, the *" Nevertheless we went that day ashore in four places to see the goodly and sweet smelling trees that were there. We found them to be cedars, ewe trees, pines, white elms, ashes, willows, with many other sorts of trees to us unknown, but without any fruit. The grounds where no wood is are very fair and all full of peason, white and red gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries and wild corn even like unto rye, which seemeth to have been sown and ploughed.