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Cultures of
Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, March 30, 1999
Broussard Led Acadians to Attakapas area
By Jim Bradshaw
Joseph (Beausoleil) Broussard was one the guerrilla leaders who stayed behind in old Acadie to fight the British who had exiled his neighbor. He built an almost legendary reputation as a sharpshooter and guerrilla leader, fighting the British to a standstill along the Petitcodiac river until 1758.
According to one account, his resistance was so effective that British troops at nearby Fort Cumberland were afraid to leave his walls. Broussard matched his success on land with piratical raids on coastal shipping. In fact, he was the leader of the privateers referred to in the " Memoir on the Acadians" in the Archives Nationales in Paris.
But wits and gumption can carry you only so far. Despite the resistance, the British methodically cleared old Acadie, laying waste as they went, leaving the land bare. They raided guerrilla strongholds and lept the Acadians from planting crops the would feed the fighters. When French strongholds at Louisbourg and Quebec fell to the British, it became evident the there was no hope for the Acadian refugees. There was no place for them to go.
On Nov.16, 1759, faced with the prospect of starvation and a fast approaching Canadian winter, Beausoliel, his brother, Alexendre Broussard, Jean Basque, and Simon Martin delivered a petition to the British at Fort Cumberland, giving up the fight. Jean and Michel Bourg led another group of starving Acadians to the fort a few days later. All of the were sent to Halifax, where they were held until the end of hostilities between the French and British in 1763. They were not deported because there was no place to send them. Instead, Broussard and his followers were put in buildings and maintaining the dikes the Acadians had built to reclaim tidal lands.
When the Treaty of Paris was signed in1763, some 1,700 Acadian prisoners remained in Nova Scotia. There were rumors that they might be sent to France but those were only rumors. Then there was talk that they would be sent to Quebec, but the Acadians who had already gone had found that going rough. So Broussard and his cohorts formed their on plan. They would sail to Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, then to the mouth of the Mississippi River, then up the river to the Illinois country and settle there.
In late November or early December 1764, Broussard chartered a schooner and set sail with his family and 600 other Acadians for Saint-Domingue. Tropical heat and epidemic quickly took a heavy toll among them. Only 200 survivors made it to Louisiana in February 1765, and these were to sick and weary to go on to Illinois.
At first, authorities in Louisiana wanted to put Broussard and his band on the right bank of the Mississippi River near New Orleans. But the site selected flooded frequently and was covered with a dense hardwood forest. The Acadians would have to build levees and clear the land before the could even think about becoming self-sufficient. That would take to long and cost to much.
Some of Broussards fellow travelers went farther up the Mississippi, to settle with the Acadians Already at St. James. Most of them crossed the Atchafalaya Basin to the Attakapas country. Several French families had already migrated to the area from Fort Toulouse and Mobile, both in Alabama, after the Treaty of Parish of 1763 ceded French lands east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. But it was still a wilderness area. There wee only a few white men in the region.
The Poste des Attakapas, today know as St. Martinville, was opened some years before as part of a French plan to form a chain of forts to "protect the northern and eastern district bordered, neighbored, and enclosed by Louisiana." In addition to forts in the northern reaches of vast Louisiana territory, the French planned military stations at "Opelousas, Attakapas, and along the frontier of Old Mexico."
Which the Acadians got there, the post consisted of a small chapel, shabby barracks for the handful of soldiers garrisoned there, and a small store where the scattered settlers of the neighborhood traded.
The treeless Attakapas prairies could be settled quickly an their broad grassland already supported huge herds of wild cattle. The Spanish government needed beef to feed the growing population in New Orleans, and also needed a place to put the Acadians who had experienced raising cattle. it seemed to be a natural solution.
At this time, Jean Antoine Bernard Dauterive, a retired military officer, held extensive lands on the east side of Bayou Teche. Broussard and his band settled on lands nearby, making a living by "sharecropping" cattle for Dauterive.
In April 1765,Joseph and Alexandre Broussard were among the Acadian representatives who signed a contract with Dauterive, under which he provided each Acadian faimly with five cows with calves and one bull for each of six years consecutive years. at the end of the six years, the Acadians were suppose to return "the same number of cows with calves of the same age and kind, and they received initially; the remaining cattle and there increased surviving at the time (to) be divided equally between (the) Acadians and (Dauterive)."
At about the same time, Joseph Broussard was commissioned a captain in the Louisiana militia and were named "commandant of the Acadians." The Acadians were led to the Attakapas country by Louis Andry, the royal surveyor and a veteran military engineer, and were granted lands along Bayou Teche and the Vermilion River.
According to his instructions, Andry was to work with Broussard to lay out a village and establish a common area around it then to distribute land beyond this common area to the Acadians in parcels sized according to the size of their families.
The government wanted the Acadians to live in the village and cultivate the outlying lands. But the Acadians decided otherwise and settled themselves on widely separated lands. The oldest of the Acadian communities west of the Atchaflaya was probably at Fausse Pointe, established by June 1765. Later, ascending the Teche to the large westward bend above Parks, they found La Pointe settlers moved away when there was a yellow fever epidemic there early in the summer. Other Refugees settled at Cote Gelee, The areas between today's Pilette and Broussard, Others migrate to La Manque, near what is now Breaux Bridge. They would migrate towards the west from these places.
Beausoleil Broussard settles near the present town of Broussard (which is named for Valsin Broussard, a descendant, not for Beausoleil), but did not see his Acadian Followers firmly settled. He died on Sept. 5, 1765, during an epidemic that swept the countryside. His Brother, Alexandre, died 13 days later.