|
an ACADIAN EXILE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, March 30, 1999
Maryland contingent settled along the Mississippi
by Jim Bradshaw
Less than a month after the ship carrying Acadians from Maryland arrived in New Orleans, they were on their way to new homes at Saint Gabriel on the Mississippi River. They departed New Orleans on Aug. 8, 1767.
Joseph de Onieta, the commandant at Saint Gabriel, reported on conditions there earlier in the year. In a dispatch dated Jan. 24, he said, "The savages of different nations come here very frequently, and are very bothersome and importune; so much so, that every time they come for talk, and after having given them their present, they bother us for food and cloth. We try to dissuade them and tell them that we do not have all the necessities. ... Their reply is that they are hungry, they are naked, there is no harvest, and finally that this is their land, sprinkling in a few bad sounding phrases in French.
"These incidents happen when they have already been to the English (which they ordinarily do) and get here full of brandy," Onieta continued. "And as they are drunk on this liquor, they become agitated and ask for everything they can think of with their haughtiness and a tone of arrogance, as if we were their tributaries. But we try to migrate and calm (them) with polite and wise words, putting them off to another day and time when they be without privation. ... It is true, Sir, that one's patience is tried by these evil people. The entire Biloxi nation, which lives beside a lake at Tigya, came here yesterday, also begging like all the others. The assembly was composed of 18 men, 4 boys, 12 women, and 8 children. They were given their present right away, and on the same day they departed in 10 canoes."
The low-lying and uncleared land at Saint Gabriel was apparently not the healthiest spot, either. On July 10, before the Acadians arrived there, Onieta wrote. "There is so much sickness at this post I can tell you that all work has been virtually semisuspended. There are no more than ten workers, and these capable of only light tasks, such as cutting cane, dragging in planks, cleaning the place of sticks and trash, all very light jobs, and others of this sort. ... For some time the rains have been continuous and heavy, the sun very harsh and hot all of which contributes to the problem."
The problem persisted after the Acadians' arrival. Oneita wrote on Sept. 23, "The heavy rains, the harsh sun, and the great fickleness of the weather has been the cause of some sickness among the Acadians, but it is diminishing, thank God."
The Acadians were also apparently still their independent selves. On Oct. 11, Oneita wrote to Ulloa, "The Acadians are not all placed on their lands because they are very lazy and always in disagreement with each other. Among other frivolous reasons they give, the most important one is that they were not obligated to clear a road which would serve as a line and guide for the distribution. At the same time, many said that they were dying of hunger because they had to maintain their children with the ration that is given to them; but we have reconciled all difficulties to the best of our ability.
... They only lack knives with which to split planks to cover their huts and they have asked for them; but I cannot help them since I only have those that are necessary for the work of the fort and they are in very short number since one is needed for every two or three inhabitants."
Land at St. Gabriel was distributed to the Acadian arrivals by Oct. 15, when Onieta sent a list to New Orleans containing the names of 49 heads of families and their grants. On Oct. 20 he sent another message.
"On the fifteenth at two in the afternoon," Onieta wrote, "all of the Acadian Heads of Family were established on their respective lands, with a twelve yard space between each of them for the road. ... All of this has been carried out with much difficulty... for I confess to you that more than four times I emerged from the marsh looking like a clown... covered with mud from head to foot because of big mud puddles we found on shore. But thank God we have finally managed to put them all in place and they are now clearing land in order to establish themselves. ... Between lots 26 and 27 we have marked off one arpent so that they may build a chapel."
Despite his work among the mud puddles, Onieta was apparently not appreciated by the Acadians.
He wrote to Ulloa on Nov. 11, "Sir, these people show no sign whatsoever of gratitude for your kindness and acts of charity and equity which they are presently recieving. When I presented to them the proposition which you ordered in your instruction, which would allow them, if they wanted to, to send as many as 18 young men to work (for us) and that those who know the trade of carpenter or mason would be paid one peso a day and those who did not would be paid 4 reales, they replied that there were few of them who did not know how to handle the ax and other tools of the carpenter and had other skills.
... If these people were really diligent in the building of the fort, it would already be a state of defense, but there is no use talking to them about this matter."
More Acadians would follow these settlers from Maryland, though sometimes by circuitous routes.
A group of 100 left Maryland on Jan. 5, 1769, aboard the English schooner La Bretona. The passengers sighted the Louisiana coast on Feb. 21, but easterly winds drove them more than 240 miles across the northern Gulf of Mexico to a landing on the Texas coast.
According to one account of this voyage, "after having been reduced to the greatest distress for want of provisions, their whole stock being exhausted for some time, having subsided on the rats, cats, and even all the shoes and leather on the vessel, they ran into Bernard's Bay and landed at Rio de la Norte of Rio Grande, in the kingdom or providence of New Mexico. Happening to discover a horse immediately after their coming ashore, they killed him for food."
The schooner and its passengers were seized by Spanish officials in New Mexico in early April and the Acadians were held there until Sept. 11, when they were sent overland to Natchitoches. From there, they traveled by canoe down the Red and Mississippi rivers, arriving in New Orleans on Nov. 9.