Nova Scotia and Acadians
Rambler III
from France to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Treaty is
at:
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/3330/constitution/utrecht.htm
With Beausejour fallen, the British proceeded with the roundup and
expulsion of the Acadians from their centuries-old home. Militia visited
settlement after settlement to tear these sturdy though illiterate
peasants away from the harvest and march them to such assembly points as
the church at Grand Pre’, where agents of the Crown such as John Winslow
of Massachusetts read proclamations such as: ". . . His Majesty's
instructions and commands ... are that your lands and tenements and
cattle and livestock of all kinds are forfeited to the crown, with all
your other effects, except money and household goods, and that you
yourselves are to be removed from this, his province.'
About sixty-five hundred Acadians were thus deported or driven into the
wilderness. Their settlements were destroyed, their possessions were
seized, and they themselves were herded aboard ships and distributed
among the British colonies where, alien in race, language, and religion,
they passed a miserable existence. Others entered Canada, only to be
cruelly exploited by their fellow Frenchmen. Another group reached
Louisiana, where their descendants dwell to this day; and still more,
having endured an odyssey of indescribable travail, finally made their
way back to their homeland.
Thus the cruel mass deportation which, although defensible on the
grounds of military necessity, remains one more crime staining the
record of British colonialism in America. It is true that the Acadians
were always a Trojan horse inside Nova Scotia. In faith and race more
loyal to the French crown than to the British, and maintained in that
attitude by their priestly leaders, they were ever ready to rise for
France. To prevent this, they were deported. This is the reason, though
never the justification, for the heartless uprooting of an entire
people, nor does it ever explain why these simple peasants were
systematically robbed of all they possessed before being scattered like
barren seeds on unfriendly soil.
p 288
"A Few Acres of snow": The Saga of the French and Indian Wars
Robert Leckie
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
NY 1999
--
Rambler III
".In short, I guess what I think I think [I can't be sure that what I
think I think] is really what I think, and if you think that's
confusing, think what it must be like to be thinking it... Obviously,
I'm speculating,.."
Brian Hampton AWCUSA
Mister Wiggins
>from France to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Treaty is
>at:
>http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/3330/constitution/utrecht.htm
>
>
Great article, thanks for posting it.
Mister Wiggins.
"Well Govan, If we are to die, let us die like men."-
Last words of Pat Cleburne. 1864
"If this is as good as it gets, then I'm sorely disappointed."
Kate Morrow, 2001.