Acadia, a Lawless Land

The new governor was ordered to require him to abandon “his vagabond life among the Indians,” cease all trade with the English, and establish a permanent settlement.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. Continuing Chapter 16.

Some of the French were as lawless as their Indian friends. Nothing is more strange than the incongruous mixture of the forms of feudalism with the independence of the Acadian woods. Vast grants of land were made to various persons, some of whom are charged with using them for no other purpose than roaming over their domains with Indian women. The only settled agricultural population was at Port Royal, Beaubassin, and the Basin of Minas. The rest were fishermen, fur traders, or rovers of the forest. Repeated orders came from the court to open a communication with Quebec, and even to establish a line of military posts through the intervening wilderness, but the distance and the natural difficulties of the country proved insurmountable obstacles. If communication with Quebec was difficult, that with Boston was easy; and thus, Acadia became largely dependent on its New England neighbors, who, says an Acadian officer, “are mostly fugitives from England, guilty of the death of their late king, and accused of conspiracy against their present sovereign; others of them are pirates, and they are all united in a sort of independent republic.” [1] Their relations with the Acadians were of a mixed sort. They continually encroached on Acadian fishing grounds, and we hear at one time of a hundred of their vessels thus engaged. This was not all. The interlopers often landed and traded with the Indians along the coast. Meneval, the governor, complained bitterly of their arrogance. Sometimes, it is said, they pretended to be foreign pirates, and plundered vessels and settlements, while the aggrieved parties could get no redress at Boston. They also carried on a regular trade at Port Royal and Les Mines or Grand Pré, where many of the inhabitants regarded them with a degree of favor which gave great umbrage to the military authorities, who, nevertheless, are themselves accused of seeking their own profit by dealings with the heretics; and even French priests, including Petit, the curé of Port Royal, are charged with carrying on this illicit trade in their own behalf, and in that of the seminary of Quebec. The settlers caught from the “Bostonnais” what their governor stigmatizes as English and parliamentary ideas, the chief effect of which was to make them restive under his rule. The Church, moreover, was less successful in excluding heresy from Acadia than from Canada. A number of Huguenots established themselves at Port Royal, and formed sympathetic relations with the Boston Puritans. The bishop at Quebec was much alarmed. “This is dangerous,” he writes. “I pray your Majesty to put an end to these disorders.” [2]

[1: Mémoire du Sieur Bergier, 1685.]

[2: L’Évêque au Roy, 10 Nov., 1683. For the preceding pages, the authorities are chiefly the correspondence of Grandfontaine, Marson, La Vallière, Meneval, Bergier, Goutins, Perrot, Talon, Frontenac, and other officials. A large collection of Acadian documents, from the archives of Paris, is in my possession. I have also examined the Acadian collections made for the government of Canada and for that of Massachusetts.]

A sort of chronic warfare of aggression and reprisal, closely akin to piracy, was carried on at intervals in Acadian waters by French private armed vessels on one hand, and New England private armed vessels on the other. Genuine pirates also frequently appeared. They were of various nationality, though usually buccaneers from the West Indies. They preyed on New England trading and fishing craft, and sometimes attacked French settlements. One of their most notorious exploits was the capture of two French vessels and a French fort at Chedabucto by a pirate, manned in part, it is said, from Massachusetts. [3] A similar proceeding of earlier date was the act of Dutchmen from St. Domingo. They made a descent on the French fort of Pentegoet, on Penobscot Bay. Chambly, then commanding for the king in Acadia, was in the place. They assaulted his works, wounded him, took him prisoner, and carried him to Boston, where they held him at ransom. His young ensign escaped into the woods, and carried the news to Canada; but many months elapsed before Chambly was released. [4]

[3: Meneval, Mémoire, 1688; Denonville, Mémoire, 18 Oct., 1688; Procès-verbal du Pillage de Chedabucto; Relation de la Boullaye, 1688.]

[4: Frontenac au Ministre, 14 Nov., 1674; Frontenac à Leverett, gouverneur de Baston, 24 Sept., 1674; Frontenac to the Governor and Council of Massachusetts, 25 May, 1675 (see 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 64); Colbert à Frontenac, 15 May, 1675. Frontenac supposed the assailants to be buccaneers. They had, however, a commission from William of Orange. Hutchinson says that the Dutch again took Pentegoet in 1676, but were driven off by ships from Boston, as the English claimed the place for themselves.]

This young ensign was Jean Vincent de l’Abadie, Baron de Saint-Castin, a native of Béarn, on the slopes of the Pyrenees, the same rough, strong soil that gave to France her Henri IV. When fifteen years of age, he came to Canada with the regiment of Carignan-Salières, ensign in the company of Chambly; and, when the regiment was disbanded, he followed his natural bent, and betook himself to the Acadian woods. At this time there was a square bastioned fort at Pentegoet, mounted with twelve small cannon; but after the Dutch attack it fell into decay. [5] Saint-Castin, meanwhile, roamed the woods with the Indians, lived like them, formed connections more or less permanent with their women, became himself a chief, and gained such ascendency over his red associates that, according to La Hontan, they looked upon him as their tutelary god. He was bold, hardy, adroit, tenacious; and, in spite of his erratic habits, had such capacity for business, that, if we may believe the same somewhat doubtful authority, he made a fortune of three or four hundred thousand crowns. His gains came chiefly through his neighbors of New England, whom he hated, but to whom he sold his beaver skins at an ample profit. His trading house was at Pentegoet, now called Castine, in or near the old fort; a perilous spot, which he occupied or abandoned by turns, according to the needs of the time. Being a devout Catholic he wished to add a resident priest to his establishment for the conversion of his Indian friends; but, observes Father Petit of Port Royal, who knew him well, “he himself has need of spiritual aid to sustain him in the paths of virtue.” [6] He usually made two visits a year to Port Royal, where he gave liberal gifts to the church of which he was the chief patron, attended mass with exemplary devotion, and then, shriven of his sins, returned to his squaws at Pentegoet. Perrot, the governor, maligned him; the motive, as Saint-Castin says, being jealousy of his success in trade, for Perrot himself traded largely with the English and the Indians. This, indeed, seems to have been his chief occupation; and, as Saint-Castin was his principal rival, they were never on good terms. Saint-Castin complained to Denonville. “Monsieur Petit,” he writes,

will tell you everything. I will only say that he (Perrot) kept me under arrest from the twenty-first of April to the ninth of June, on pretense of a little weakness I had for some women, and even told me that he had your orders to do it: but that is not what troubles him; and as I do not believe there is another man under heaven who will do meaner things through love of gain, even to selling brandy by the pint and half-pint before strangers in his own house, because he does not trust a single one of his servants, — I see plainly what is the matter with him. He wants to be the only merchant in Acadia.” [7]

[5: On its condition in 1670, Estat du Fort et Place de Pentegoet fait en l’année 1670, lorsque les Anglois l’ont rendu. In 1671, fourteen soldiers and eight laborers were settled near the fort. Talon au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1671. In the next year, Talon recommends an envoi de filles for the benefit of Pentegoet. Mémoire sur le Canada, 1672. As late as 1698, we find Acadian officials advising the reconstruction of the fort.]

[6: Petit in Saint-Vallier, Estat de l’Église, 39 (1856).]

[7: Saint-Castin à Denonville, 2 Juiliet, 1687.]

Perrot was recalled this very year; and his successor, Meneval, received instructions in regard to Saint-Castin, which show that the king or his minister had a clear idea both of the baron’s merits and of his failings. The new governor was ordered to require him to abandon “his vagabond life among the Indians,” cease all trade with the English, and establish a permanent settlement. Meneval was farther directed to assure him that, if he conformed to the royal will, and led a life “more becoming a gentleman,” he might expect to receive proofs of his Majesty’s approval.

[Instruction du Roy au Sieur de Meneval, 5 Avril, 1687.]

In the next year, Meneval reported that he had represented to Saint-Castin the necessity of reform, and that in consequence he had abandoned his trade with the English, given up his squaws, married, and promised to try to make a solid settlement. [8] True he had reformed before and might need to reform again; but his faults were not of the baser sort: he held his honor high and was free-handed as he was bold. His wife was what the early chroniclers would call an Indian princess; for she was the daughter of Madockawando, chief of the Penobscots.

[8: Mémoire du Sieur de Meneval sur l’Acadie, 10 Sept., 1688.]

So critical was the position of his post at Pentegoet that a strong fort and a sufficient garrison could alone hope to maintain it against the pirates and the “Bostonnais.” Its vicissitudes had been many. Standing on ground claimed by the English, within territory which had been granted to the Duke of York, and which, on his accession to the throne, became a part of the royal domain, it was never safe from attack. In 1686, it was plundered by an agent of Dongan. In 1687, it was plundered again; and in the next year Andros, then royal governor, anchored before it in his frigate, the “Rose,” landed with his attendants, and stripped the building of all it contained, except a small altar with pictures and ornaments, which they found in the principal room. Saint-Castin escaped to the woods; and Andros sent him word by an Indian that his property would be carried to Pemaquid, and that he could have it again by becoming a British subject. He refused the offer.

[Mémoire présenté au Roy d’Angleterre, 1687; Saint-Castin à Denonville, 7 Juillet, 1687; Hutchinson Collection, 562, 563; Andros Tracts, I. 118. The rival English post of Pemaquid was destroyed, as we have seen, by the Abenakis in 1689; and, in the following year, they and their French allies had made such havoc among the border settlements that nothing was left east of the Piscataqua except the villages of Wells, York, and Kittery. But a change had taken place in the temper of the savages, mainly due to the easy conquest of Port Royal by Phips, and to an expedition of the noted partisan Church by which they had suffered considerable losses. Fear of the English on one hand, and the attraction of their trade on the other, disposed many of them to peace. Six chiefs signed a truce with the commissioners of Massachusetts, and promised to meet them in council to bury the hatchet for ever.]

The French were filled with alarm. Peace between the Abenakis and the “Bostonnais” would be disastrous both to Acadia and to Canada, because these tribes held the passes through the northern wilderness, and, so long as they were in the interest of France, covered the settlements on the St. Lawrence from attack. Moreover, the government relied on them to fight its battles. Therefore, no pains were spared to break off their incipient treaty with the English and spur them again to war. Villebon, a Canadian of good birth, one of the brothers of Portneuf, was sent by the king to govern Acadia. Presents for the Abenakis were given him in abundance; and he was ordered to assure them of support, so long as they fought for France. [8] He and his officers were told to join their war-parties; while the Canadians, who followed him to Acadia, were required to leave all other employments and wage incessant war against the English borders. “You yourself,” says the minister, “will herein set them so good an example, that they will be animated by no other desire than that of making profit out of the enemy: there is nothing which I more strongly urge upon you than to put forth all your ability and prudence to prevent the Abenakis from occupying themselves in anything but war, and by good management of the supplies which you have received for their use to enable them to live by it more to their advantage than by hunting.” [9]

[8: Mémoire pour servir d’Instruction au Sieur de Villebon, 1691.]

[9: “Comme vostre principal objet doit estre de faire la guerre sans relâche aux Anglois, il faut que vostre plus particulière application soit de detourner de tout autre employ les François qui sont avec vous, en leur donnant de vostre part un si bon exemple en cela qu’ils ne soient animez que du désir de chercher à faire du proffit sur les ennemis. Je n’ay aussy rien à vous recommander plus fortement que de mettre en usage tout ce que vous pouvez avoir de capacité et de prudence afin que les Canibas (Abenakis) ne s’employent qu’à la guerre, et que par l’économie de ce que vous avez à leur fournir ils y puissent trouver leur subsistance et plus d’avantage qu’à la chasse.” Le Ministre à Villebon, Avril, 1692. Two years before, the king had ordered that the Abenakis should be made to attack the English settlements.]

From Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, Chapter 16 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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