|
an ACADIAN EXILE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (la) Daily Advertiser, March 30, 1999
"Exile brought trauma to Americans, Acadians"
by Jim Bradshaw
In the fall and winter of 1755, between 5,000 and 6,000 Acadians who lived at Annapolis-Royal, Mines, and Beau Bassin, the principal settlements of old Acadie, were forced from their ancestral lands and distribute among the British colonies on the Atlantic Seaboard or sent to England and then sent to France. About 1,000 of these exiles migrated from the Atlantic colonies to Louisiana between 1757 and 1770. Another 1,600 came here in 1785 from France.
The relocation of these Acadians ripped them from lands settlers by their forefathers generations before. In many instances, families were separated, never to be reunited. The Acadians did not receive a cordial welcome when they reached the British settlements, The Virginia colony refused to accept the Acadians sent there and shipped them to England. South Carolina and Georgia made an effort to stop the Acadians from trying to get back to Nova Scotia. Many of the exiles perished in the attempt. Other colonies treated the exiles as virtual prisoners, sometimes holding them almost as slaves.
Some American officials were almost as befuddled by the Acadian exile as the Acadians themselves. As Gregory Wood points out in "A Guide to the Acadians in Maryland in the Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," "Historians and the general public will have seek to grasp better the impact of the year 1755, for it is no small tale that before Louisiana s became a major sanctuary for displaced Acadians, nine regions of the eastern seaboard were forces to give asylum to the approximately seven thousand exiles politically evicted from Nova Scotia. Imagine the significance of numbers such as these upon area still seeking an English identity and ever fearful of the French in general: Massachusetts (700-900); Virginia (1,500); Maryland and South Carolina (900 each); Connecticut (700); Pennsylvania (450); Georgia (400); New York (350); and North Carolina (50).
"The trauma of exile and the demands of the private sector and provincial government stirred myriad emotions and raised new questions of justice and prejudice," Woods continues. "To often it is stated that the exiles were not welcome in the colonies; that their pain was seen as laziness and poor attitude; that they were left hungry and destitute as legislature, influential planters, the few establishes towns and their citizens, sheriffs, and... Protestant populations sought to accommodate or rid themselves legally of the unexpected flux of Catholics chased out of the Bay of Fundy. Yet it must be remembered that the common American Colonist, too, was confused by the experience; he too, suffered from war, disease, economic downturns, and fear of invasion and the dreaded effects of "Popery."
Between 7,00 and 10,000 Acadians escape the first wave wave of deportation, and many of them formed a guerrilla resistance movement centered in present-day New Brunswick, where at least 3,500 Acadians sought refuge before the deportations began. Thousands of Acadians sought refuge before the deportations began. Thousands of Acadians went to Ill-Saint-Jean (Prince Edwards Island) to flee the deportations in 1755. When the French bastion of Louisburg fell in 1758, many were shipped by the British to France. Seven hundred Acadians were killed when 1,500 fled to Quebec in 1755. Many of these were also sent to France after Quebec fell to the British in 1760. In all, more than 3,000 were eventually sent to France.
Te guerrillas who stayed on the old lands fought with determination but they did not have the arms or supplies they needed. British raids kept them from settling into farming communities in New Brunswick, so they should not grow the food they needed. By the winter of 1756-1757, hundreds of these Acadians were reduced to eating their leather moccasins to fend off starvation. They died by the hundreds of malnutrition and diseases brought on by lack of proper food and shelter.
Hundreds of starving Acadian refugees made their way to Quebec. which remained in French hands for a while. Some stubborn ones, such as Joseph (Beasoleil) Broussard, who eventually found his way to Louisiana, continued to fight several years. But eventually, most Acadians realized that further resistance was futile.
On Nov. 16, 1759, Joseph Broussard, his brother, Alexander Broussard, Simon Martin, and Jean Basque, leaders of the guerrilla movement, went to Fort Cumberland to give up the fight and to beg for supplies for some 200 starving Acadians who had fought with them. A few days later Pierre Suretz, Jean Bourque, and Michel Bourque came to the fort to surrender 700 more Acadians who were willing to give up and who were near starvation.
The British commander at Fort Cumberland sent supplies to those Acadians who could not travel and ordered all others to come to the fort. As a result, between 300 and 400 Acadians turned themselves over to British authorities at Fort Cumberland in the late spring and early summer of 1760. These men were marched to Halifax, where there was talk of deporting them. But by then, the other British colonies had their fill of Acadian refugees and refused to take more. Instead, the captives were put to work rebuilding and repairing the dikes they and their neighbors built to reclaim rich alluvial land that was once their own. The Anglo farmers who had taken over the Acadian lands did not know how to keep the dike system working.
In 1762, authorized talked again of deporting these Acadian. The dike work was finished, the Acadians in the various English colonies sent petitions and letters to the French ambassador in London, begging the French government to try to send them back to Canada. According to the census of 1763, there were 1,043 Acadians left in Massachusetts, 666 in Connecticut, 383 in Pennsylvania, 280 in South Carolina, 249 in New York, 185 in Georgia, 802 in Maryland. There were still 694 in Halifax in old Acadie and 87 on the St. John River.
They had the authority to leave Article IV of the Treaty of Paris granted the Acadians 18 months to leave the British colonies and travel to any French colony they could reach. The problem was getting there. They had no money to pay for passage. Neither France nor England offered them much help. Almost all of the Acadians had by then hears that their friends and families were being cared for in Louisiana, and many of those who could raise the money headed here. They thought Louisiana was still held by the French. Most of those who came to Louisiana had to sell virtually everything they owned to pay their way, and they arrived in Louisiana without much more than they had when they were shipped into exile.
Robert G. Leblanc reports in his essay. "The Acadian Migrations, " that Boston, New York, London, and Charleston served as gathering points for the exiles during that time. "Large groups left Boston overland for Acadia or the St. Lawrence Valley," he reports. "From the Middle and Southern Colonies the movement was to the Caribbean area, either directly to Louisiana or to that refugee haven via Saint-Domingue."
According to Leblanc's study, by 1800"the location of the Acadians had taken on some measure of permanency. With the exception of a few subsequent moves involving small numbers, the fifty-year migration had come to an end." He estimates that in 1800 there were 8,400 Acadians in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, some of them having made their way back after being expelled, some of them having found refuge particularly in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island at the time of the expulsions. He estimates that there were another 8,000 in Quebec, 4,000 in Louisiana, 1,000 still scattered throughout the American colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, 1,000 in France, and 1,000 scattered hither and yon.
"Of the new areas of Acadian settlement following the migrations, none, in the course of time, because as distinctive as southern Louisiana," he says. "The major areas of settlement were in the Attakpas, the Opelousas, along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge, and along Bayou Lafourche. The physical isolation of most of these settlements permitted a most of these settlements permitted a high degree of culture retention by the Acadians, ... The Acadians of Louisiana... achieved ... the peace an security which had longed eluded them."