A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Vol. V: Canada—Part I, HistoricalLucas, Charles Prestwood, Sir
History
A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Vol. V: Canada—Part I, Historical
Lucas, Charles Prestwood, Sir
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France)
In 1676, the war between the New Englanders and the neighbouring
Indians, known as Philip's war, came to an end, leaving bitterness
between the conquered natives and victorious colonists. Hatred of the
English meant love of the French; and the Abenaki Indians of Acadia
and Maine, under the tutelage of fanatical and unscrupulous French
priests, became trained to enmity with the heretics; many of them
migrated to mission stations in Canada; while those who remained
behind were ever ready to obey the call to murder and pillage. In
Acadia, even more than in Canada proper, the Indian as a convert
became the tool of the Frenchman, and the Frenchman lent himself to
the barbarism of the Indian. The full effects of the unnatural blend
were seen and felt a little later on; but for twenty years after the
Treaty of Breda and the restoration of Acadia to France, there was
more often peace than war between the English and the French; and the
Boston fishermen were, about 1678, licensed for the time being by the
French Commandant, La Vallière, to ply their trade on the Acadian
coasts.
[Sidenote: _French Governors and colonists of Acadia._]
With some trading of this kind and with a good deal of privateering,
the years passed by. Perrot, who had been Governor of Montreal and
had distinguished himself even among French officials of the time for
corrupt practices, succeeded La Vallière in 1684, with a commission
as Governor of Acadia. Still intent on enriching himself by illicit
trade, he was recalled in 1687, and his place was taken by Meneval.
The latter, like Perrot, was subordinate to the {183}
Governor-General of Canada, and the number of colonists whom he ruled
was, according to a census held in 1686, 858, 600 of whom lived at or
near Port Royal, and the remainder chiefly at Beaubassin at the head
of Chignecto Bay, and on the Basin of Mines.
[Sidenote: _Acadia ceded to England by the Peace of Utrecht._]
In 1688, Andros, then Governor of the New England colonies, plundered
St. Castin's station at Pentegoet; the French and Indians retaliated,
taking the fort of Pemaquid in the following year; and there followed
a long series of butcheries and reprisals, of which an account has
already been given in a preceding chapter, the taking of Fort Royal
by Phipps in 1690, and, in 1710, its final surrender to Nicholson. In
the end, the Treaty of Utrecht provided in its twelfth article that
'all Nova Scotia or Accadie with its ancient boundaries' should be
'yielded and made over to the Queen of Great Britain and to her Crown
for ever.'
[Sidenote: _Henry Hudson sails to the Arctic regions and is lost._]
[Sidenote: _The search for the North-West Passage._]
[Sidenote: _Button._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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