Nova Scotia (14 page)

   
As trade grew, the French undertook repairs to the fortress.
Some walls were collapsing and there was still a problem with
crumbling mortar made with sea sand. The French were well aware of
what was going on and they were stocking up Louisbourg, readying
themselves as best they could for the blockade that would begin in
March of 1758.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The Strength of Acadian
Women

The story of the Acadian people is
inevitably linked to the events of Louisbourg, but their way of
life was fundamentally different from that of the French soldiers,
sailors, merchants and government men who lived in and around that
ill-fated fortress. At the time of their deportation, Acadians had
lived for several generations in Nova Scotia. Most of them had
little connection with France, French politics or contemporary
French culture. They had evolved a unique way of life that was
suited to the land they loved.

   
With limited numbers of immigrants coming to the New World
from France, there had been an intermarriage of families to such a
degree that, after three generations, most Acadians in any given
community were related in some way. These blood ties created a
positive system of mutual help and interdependence where those who
had were more than generous in sharing with those who had not.
Ultimately, an extended Acadian family would be formed that was
protective and resistant to outside hostilities.

   
Acadian men appear somewhat noble, family-centred and
hard-working in contrast to the English or French soldiers and the
adventurous but belligerent New Englanders of this era who arrived
in Nova Scotia.

   
To suggest that women are often overlooked in the records of
history is a mild understatement. Men fight wars and find a
multitude of other methods to colourfully act out their aggression
or greed, while women remain home to raise a family and help repair
the wounds. Acadian women, however, were vital to the success of
the early settlements and some records survive about the role of a
few prominent women of these times.

   
The first women to arrive in Acadia may have come with
Razilly in 1633 or later in 1636, when a woman is first recorded on
a passenger list of a ship sailing over from France. Early notables
like Jeanne Motin and Françoise Marie Jacquelin undoubtedly saw
themselves as French and not Acadian, but they clearly helped to
shape the identity of Acadia.

   
As time passed and reliance on France diminished, Acadian
communities relied for their survival on the hard work of both men
and women. Men would hunt, fish, prepare the land for agriculture
and build houses and barns. Women would take care of the house,
raise children and animals. Both would work in the
fields.

   
While Acadian women might have been characterized by their
steadfast family orientation, the adversity of attacks from the New
Englanders and the aftermath of deportation led to a unique
strength of character that comes from survival over such
hardship.

   
One such example of that spirit can be seen in the story of
Madeleine Le-blanc who returned to St. Mary’s Bay by boat after
being deported. Discouraged by the long journey home, the hardship
and the discovery that they would have to clear land and begin all
over again at this new site, many returning with Madeleine sat down
in despair and cried. Madeleine, only nineteen at the time, was
undaunted. She picked up an axe, cut down the first tree and
provided enough encouragement so that others took up the challenge.
A small settlement eventually developed around the site and
Madeleine lived there to the ripe old age of
ninety-eight.

   
It has been argued that Acadians managed to
retain their unique cultural identity because women valued the
importance of family kinship lines and because family had been so
central to Acadian culture. Clearly, Acadian women had more
responsibility than their English counterparts in Nova Scotia
during these times. Much of North America’s knowledge of Acadia is
probably based on the most famous of Acadian women, the central
character of rLongfellow’s epic poem
Evangeline
, published
in 1847. Here was the sad tale of a young woman of indomitable
spirit. Although Evangeline was a fictional character, Longfellow
used her to convey the love of the Acadians for their land and
community. During the deportation of nearly 3,000 Acadians by the
British, Evangeline, like a number of women from Grand Pré, was
separated from the man she loved. Taken far away in a British
warship,  she struggled to survive against the imposed
hardships of exile. Although the long poem is a sentimental tale,
it has captured the imagination of generations of readers with its
infusion of the Acadian spirit. k

A Community of Happily Married
People

Unlike the early English settlers,
Acadian men and women had readily developed an intimate kinship to
the land they lived on and they were willing to work in harmony
with the tides of the sea. At the heart of their farming strategy
was the cr*eation of dykes, which required co-operation and
countless hours of manual labour. Whereas a British farmer might
clear his own land and farm his own small patch, many Acadian
families would be reliant upon the communal dyke which allowed for
farming in the Annapolis Valley soil. The fertility of the soil was
the result of generous rich sediment left by the sweeping ebb and
flow of the tides of Fundy.

   
The seigneurial system intended by the French government
simply never worked very well. It was based on European notions of
dividing land and providing title to it according to the decisions
of a seigneur. Attempts at establishing this system in Port Royal
and Beaubassin only produced squabbles, indifference and so much
paperwork. While rejection of this system must have certainly
enraged authorities back in France, it set the pattern for a
spirited but gentle anarchy that suited the Acadians well in
adapting to Nova Scotia.

   
The French settlers sought out and settled meadow land that
could be farmed. Their settlements were scattered in accordance
with where they found the sort of land they desired. Unlike the
British, they did not feel the need to cluster together in garrison
towns, fearful of the wilderness. Instead, small villages and
pockets of a spread-out population were the norm. For the most
part, Acadians had little contact with British or French
authorities and happily so, as long as history would allow.
Priests, elder family figures and older women became counsellors
and decision makers as needed. *

   
Compared to the English in Nova Scotia who were so absorbed
in their mistrust of the land, fear of the French and Mi’kmaq, the
Acadians seemed to live an idyllic life. They farmed, fished,
traded, created sawmills and grist mills yet lacked what the
English would have called “ambition,” because they did not exploit
the land or waters for significant profit. Certainly, they were a
great disappointment to the French investors and colonizers. What
good were they if they could not produce wealth for investors back
in Paris?

   
Records indicate the Acadians were physically fit and prone
to fewer diseases than the English soldiers at Halifax or French
soldiers of Louisbourg. Without a doubt their diet was much
healthier. There was a low child mortality rate, women married
quite young and older women acted as midwives for the birth of the
children. Marriage was strongly encouraged and very few men or
women lived without a spouse. e

   
Priests, when available, performed official ceremonies like
marriages, baptisms and funerals. Often these clergy were the only
literate persons around as well, so they took on certain legal
duties. However, there were not enough priests to get around to the
scattered villages and many Acadians might encounter a priest only
once or twice a year. Hence, even the traditional European
domineering influence of the Church was of less signifaicance here
in the daily lives of the people. In fact, religious freedom did
not lawfully exist for the Acadians while under British rule. The
Treaty of Utrecht had guaranteed Catholics the right to worship
within the Bmritish domain, but English law had forbidden
Catholicism. Fortunately for the Acadians, this law was simply not
upheld in Nova Scotia. Acadians were left to worship as they
desired and French missionaries converted many Mi’kmaq as
well.

A Rich Harvest from Land and
Sea

The Acadians were not at all fond
of chopping down forests to create fields for grazing and farming.
Instead, they preferred a somewhat gentler technique of altering
the landscape for their purposes, something that had  been in
use in France and Holland for a very long time. A system of dykes
would keep back the high tides of coastal waters and free up rich
low-lying pasture lands for farming. Building up the long earth
walls of the dykes sounds like hard manual labour, but once
complete, and after the rains have had a chance to wash excess salt
out of the soil, the rewards can be significant in terms of food
and hay.

   
A very simple mechanism known as an “aboiteau” allows excess
water from the land to spill back into the sea. The aboiteau is
made up of a wooden conduit at the bottom of the dyke with a
swinging door or “clapet” that closes as the tides rise. The whole
system was so simple yet so effective that it created envy on the
part of the New England farmers who saw Acadians producing a rich
harvest from, ultimately, very little work. As a resul-t, New
England farmers were prone to call the Acadians lazy or
“slothful.”

   
Many Acadian settlers had chosen the fertile marshlands
around the Bay of Fundy for farming. Fundy has some of the highest
tide changes in the world –  seven to twelve metres, requiring
significant dyking. Yet around Fundy’s Minas, Cumberland and
Annapolis basins were wide meadows free of trees. These fertile
meadows looked almost too good to be true to the early Acadian
farmers. The first dykes were built around 1640 and by 1710, the
Acadians had dykes in almost all the marshlands bordering the Bay
of Fundy. The natural fertility of the lands resulted from rich
clay soil built up with sediments left by the tides over thousands
of years.

   
Not all Acadian farmers cultivated exclusively for their own
needs. The more entrepreneurial farmers were shipping the results
of their labour to Louisbourg and to New England. Of course, this
trade was illegal, so there were probably no records kept of these
activities.

   
Unlike the English who failed to respect or
trust the Mi’kmaq, the Acadians had, from the start, been ready to
learn every available trick of survival from the Native people.
Weirs or *
nijagan
made of brush and nets were used to
take advantage of the receding Fundy tides to catch fish. Built
near the mouth of rivers and streams, wooden poles are pounded into
place to form a corral of sorts and then saplings and smaller
branches or string nets are fashioned into a fence that allows
water to pass through but not the larger of the fish. When the tide
goes down, it is merely a matter of walking out into the shallows
and collecting the day’s catch. Once again, the Acadians had
succeeded in the lazy man’s approach to harvesting
food.

   
Friendly and mutually advantageous relations with the Mi’kmaq
alleviated the fears felt by many French settlers in the early
days. There are census records showing marriages between Mi’kmaq
women and Acadian men. One no*table marriage was that of the French
nobleman Baron de Saint-rCastin, who came over as a soldier in 1670
and married the daughter of an Abenaki chief. The baron himself
eventually became a chief who led raids against the British in
defence of the homelands.

   
Marriages and conversion of the Mi’kmaq to Catholicism helped
strengthen the bond between these two peoples. The Native people
did not feel threatened by loss of hunting grounds, as the Acadians
lived in small communities and settled mostly along the shores.
Illustrations dating back to the seventeenth century show Acadian
men wearing Mi’kmaq clothing. The French also learned from the
Mi’kmaq the craft of making birchbark canoes and the skills of
harvesting edible wild plants. In return, the French traded the
Native people iron pots, rifles and ammunition.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The Rasp of Cornwallis

By 1749, six years before the
expulsion of the Grand Pré Acadians, Nova Scotia had a population
of about 11,000 French and 2,000 English. Estimates as to the
Mi’kmaq population vary dramatically, but already European diseases
had taken their toll. In fact, disease – smallpox in particular –
played a significant role in the early history of this province.
d

   
After the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the British had made
very little effort to settle in Nova Scotia. Between 1745 and 1749,
however, New England soldiers and their British regular army
replacements occupied Louisbourg, boosting the population. No
serious attempt was made to develop farming villages or create
permanent fishing communities. They perceived their surroundings to
be inhospitable, if not hostile. So the British crowded togrether,
feeling safer in the cramped confines of a garrison
community.