Expulsion of the Acadians
The Expulsion of the Acadians occurred when Great Britain attempted an ethnic cleansing of French-speaking Catholic inhabitants of an area of the eastern seaboard historically known as Acadia between 1755 and 1764. Acadia included the modern Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, along with part of the US state of Maine. The expulsion occurred during the French and Indian War, the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War.
Of an estimated 14,100 Acadians, approximately 11,500 were deported, of whom 5,000 died of disease, starvation or shipwrecks. Their land was given to settlers loyal to Britain, mostly immigrants from New England and Scotland. The event is largely regarded as a crime against humanity, though the modern-day use of the term "genocide" is debated by scholars. According to a 1764 census, 2,600 Acadians remained in Nova Scotia at that time, having eluded capture.
In 1710, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the British captured Port Royal, the capital of Acadia. The 1713 Peace of Utrecht ceded the territory to Great Britain while allowing the Acadians to keep their lands. Reluctant to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain, over the following decades some participated in French military operations and helped maintain supply lines to the French fortresses of Louisbourg and Beauséjour. As a result, the British sought to eliminate any future military threat posed by the Acadians and to permanently cut the supply lines they provided to Louisbourg by removing them from the area.
Without differentiating between those who had remained neutral and those who took up arms, the British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council ordered all Acadians to be expelled. Prior to 1758, Acadians were deported to the Thirteen Colonies. Later they were transported to either Britain or France. Acadians fled initially to Francophone colonies such as the uncolonized northern part of Acadia, Île Saint-Jean, and Île Royale in Canada. A significant number of those who were deported to Britain and France would then migrate to Spanish Louisiana, where "Acadians" eventually became "Cajuns".
Along with the British achieving their military goals of destroying the fortress of Louisbourg and weakening the Mi'kmaq and Acadian militias, the result of the expulsion was the devastation of both a primarily civilian population and the economy of the region. Thousands of Acadians died in the expulsions, mainly from diseases and drowning when ships were lost. On July 11, 1764, the British government passed an order-in-council to permit Acadians to return to British territories in small isolated groups, provided that they take an unqualified oath of allegiance. Today Acadians live primarily in eastern New Brunswick and some regions of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Quebec and northern Maine. American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow memorialized the expulsion in the popular 1847 poem, Evangeline, about the plight of a fictional character, which spread awareness of the expulsion.
Historical context
After the British gained control of Acadia in 1713, the Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath of loyalty to become British subjects. Instead, they negotiated a conditional oath that promised neutrality. They also worried that signing the oath might commit male Acadians to fight against France during wartime and that it would be perceived by their Mi'kmaq neighbours and allies as an acknowledgement of the British claim to Acadia, putting villages at risk of attack from the Miꞌkmaq.Other Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath because they were anti-British. Various historians have observed that some Acadians were labelled "neutral" when they were not. By the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians, there was already a long history of political and military resistance by Acadians and the Wabanaki Confederacy to the British occupation of Acadia. The Miꞌkmaq and the Acadians were allies through numerous inter-marriages during the previous century. While the Acadians were the largest population, the Wabanaki Confederacy, particularly the Miꞌkmaq, held the military strength in Acadia even after the British conquest. They resisted the British occupation and were joined on numerous occasions by Acadians. These efforts were often supported and led by French priests in the region. The Wabanaki Confederacy and Acadians fought against the British in six wars, including the French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre's War, over a period of 75 years.
Seven Years' War
In 1753, French troops from Canada marched south and seized and fortified the Ohio Valley. Britain protested the invasion and claimed Ohio for itself. On May 28, 1754, the war began with the Battle of Jumonville Glen. French Officer Ensign de Jumonville and a third of his escort were killed by a British patrol led by George Washington. In retaliation the French and the Native Americans defeated the British at Fort Necessity. Washington lost a third of his force and surrendered. Major General Edward Braddock's troops were defeated in the Battle of the Monongahela, and Major General William Johnson's troops stopped the French advance at Lake George.In Acadia, the primary British objective was to defeat the French fortifications at Beauséjour and Louisborg and to prevent future attacks from the Wabanaki Confederacy, French, and Acadians on the northern New England border. The British saw the Acadians' allegiance to the French and the Wabanaki Confederacy as a military threat. Father Le Loutre's War had created the conditions for total war; British civilians had not been spared and, as Governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council saw it, Acadian civilians had provided intelligence, sanctuary, and logistical support while others had fought against the British. During Le Loutre's war, to protect the British settlers from attacks along the former border of New England and Acadia, the Kennebec River, the British built Fort Halifax, Fort Shirley and Fort Western.
After the British capture of Beauséjour, the plan to capture Louisbourg included cutting trade to the Fortress in order to weaken the Fortress and, in turn, weaken the French ability to supply the Miꞌkmaq in their warfare against the British. According to historian Stephen Patterson, more than any other single factor – including the massive assault that eventually forced the surrender of Louisbourg – the supply problem brought an end to French power in the region. Lawrence realized he could reduce the military threat and weaken the fortress of Louisbourg by deporting the Acadians, thus cutting off supplies to the fort. During the expulsion, French Officer Charles Deschamps de Boishébert led the Miꞌkmaq and the Acadians in a guerrilla war against the British. According to Louisbourg's account books, by late 1756 the French had regularly dispensed supplies to 700 natives. From 1756 to the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, the French made regular payments to Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope and other natives for British scalps.
British deportation campaigns
Once the Acadians refused to sign an oath of allegiance to Britain, which would make them loyal to the crown, the British Lieutenant Governor, Charles Lawrence, as well as the Nova Scotia Council on July 28, 1755, made the decision to deport the Acadians. The British deportation campaigns began on August 11, 1755. Throughout the expulsion, Acadians and the Wabanaki Confederacy continued a guerrilla war against the British in response to British aggression which had been continuous since 1744.Bay of Fundy (1755)
The first wave of the expulsion began on August 10, 1755, with the Bay of Fundy Campaign during the French and Indian War. The British ordered the expulsion of the Acadians after the Battle of Beauséjour. The campaign started at Chignecto and then quickly moved to Grand-Pré, Piziquid and finally Annapolis Royal.On November 17, 1755, George Scott took 700 troops, attacked twenty houses at Memramcook, arrested the remaining Acadians and killed two hundred head of livestock to deprive the French of supplies. Acadians tried to escape the expulsion by retreating to the St. John and Petitcodiac rivers, and the Miramichi in New Brunswick. The British cleared the Acadians from these areas in the later campaigns of Petitcodiac River, Saint John River, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1758.
The Acadians and Miꞌkmaq resisted in the Chignecto region and were victorious in the Battle of Petitcodiac. In the spring of 1756, a wood-gathering party from Fort Monckton was ambushed and nine were scalped. In April 1757, the same band of Acadian and Miꞌkmaw partisans raided Fort Edward and Fort Cumberland near present-day Jolicure, New Brunswick, killing and scalping two men and taking two prisoners. July 20, 1757, some Miꞌkmaq killed 23 and captured two of Gorham's rangers outside Fort Cumberland. In March 1758, forty Acadians and Miꞌkmaq attacked a schooner at Fort Cumberland and killed its master and two sailors. In the winter of 1759, the Miꞌkmaq ambushed five British soldiers on patrol while they were crossing a bridge near Fort Cumberland. They were ritually scalped and their bodies mutilated as was common in frontier warfare. During the night of April 4, 1759, a force of Acadians and French in canoes captured the transport. At dawn they attacked the ship Moncton and chased it for five hours down the Bay of Fundy. Although Moncton escaped, one of its crew was killed and two were wounded.
In September 1756, a group of 100 Acadians ambushed a party of thirteen soldiers who were working outside Fort Edward at Piziquid. Seven were taken prisoner and six escaped back to the fort. In April 1757, a band of Acadian and Miꞌkmaw partisans raided a warehouse near Fort Edward, killed thirteen British soldiers, took what provisions they could carry and set fire to the building. Days later, the same partisans raided Fort Cumberland. By November 1756, French Officer Lotbinière wrote about the difficulty of recapturing Fort Beausejour: "The English have deprived us of a great advantage by removing the French families that were settled there on their different plantations; thus we would have to make new settlements."
The Acadians and Mi'kmaq fought in the Annapolis region. They were victorious in the Battle of Bloody Creek. Acadians being deported from Annapolis Royal on the ship Pembroke rebelled against the British crew, took over the ship and sailed to land. In December 1757, while cutting firewood near Fort Anne, John Weatherspoon was captured by Natives—presumably Miꞌkmaq— and was carried away to the mouth of the Miramichi River, from where he was sold or traded to the French, taken to Quebec and was held until late in 1759 and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, when General Wolfe's forces prevailed.
Approximately 55 Acadians, who escaped the initial deportation at Annapolis Royal, are reported to have made their way to the Cape Sable region—which included south western Nova Scotia—from where they participated in numerous raids on Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The Acadians and Miꞌkmaq raided the Lunenburg settlement nine times over a three-year period during the war. Boishebert ordered the first Raid on Lunenburg. In 1757, the second raid on Lunenburg occurred, in which six people from the Brisson family were killed. The following year, March 1758, there was a raid on the Lunenburg Peninsula at the Northwest Range when five people from the Ochs and Roder families were killed. By the end of May 1758, most of those on the Lunenburg Peninsula had abandoned their farms and retreated to the protection of the fortifications around the town of Lunenburg, losing the season for sowing their grain.
For those who did not leave their farms, the number of raids intensified. During the summer of 1758, there were four raids on the Lunenburg Peninsula. On July 13, 1758, one person on the LaHave River at Dayspring was killed and another seriously wounded by a member of the Labrador family. The next raid happened at Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia on August 24, 1758, when eight Miꞌkmaq attacked the family homes of Lay and Brant. They killed three people in the raid, but were unsuccessful in taking their scalps, a common practice for payment from the French. Two days later, two soldiers were killed in a raid on the blockhouse at LaHave, Nova Scotia. On September 11, a child was killed in a raid on the Northwest Range. Another raid happened on March 27, 1759, in which three members of the Oxner family were killed. The last raid happened on April 20, 1759, at Lunenburg, when the Miꞌkmaq killed four settlers who were members of the Trippeau and Crighton families.