An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Micmakis and Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent on the Government of Cape-Breton

by Antoine Simon Maillard

There are not wanting here, who defend this strange attachment of some of their countrymen to this savage life, on principles independent of the reason of state, for encouraging its subjects to spread and gain footing amongst the savage nations, by resorting to their country, of which they, at the same time, gain a knowledge useful to future enterprizes, by a winning conformity to their actions, and by intermarriages with them. They pretend, that even this savage life itself is not without its peculiar sweets and pleasures; that it is the most adapted, and the most natural to man. Liberty, they say, is no where more perfectly enjoyed, than where no subordination is known, but what is recommended by natural reason, the veneration of old age, or the respect of personal merit.

The chace is at once their chief employment and diversion; it furnishes them with means to procure those articles, which enter into the small number of natural wants. The demands of luxury, they think too dearly bought with the loss of that liberty and independence they find in the woods. They despise the magnificence of courts and palaces, in comparison with the free range and scope of the hills and vales, with the starry sky for their canopy: they say, we enjoy the Universe only in miniature, whilst the savage-rovers enjoy it in the great. Thus reason some of our admirers here of the savage-system of life, and yet I do not find that these refining advocates for it, are themselves tempted to embrace it. They are content to commend what themselves do not care to practise. Those who actually do embrace it, reason very little about it, though no doubt, the motives above assigned for their preference, are generally, one may say instinctively, at the bottom of it. Their greatest want is of wine, especially at first to those who are used to it; but they are soon weaned from it by the example of others, and content themselves with the substitution of rum, or brandy, of which they obtain supplies by their barter of skins and furs. In short, their hunting procures them all that they want or desire, and their liberty or independence supplies to them the place of those luxuries of life, that are not well to be had without the sacrifice in some sort of it.

It is more difficult to find an excuse for the shocking cruelties and barbarities, exercised by the savages on their unhappy captives in war. The instances, however, of their inhumanity, are certainly not exagerated, nor possible to be exagerated, but they are multiplied beyond the limits of truth. That they put then their prisoners to death by exquisite tortures, is strictly true; but it is as true too, that they do not serve so many in that manner as has been said. Numbers they save, and even incorporate with their own nation, who become as free as, and on a footing with, the conquerors themselves. And even in that cruelty of theirs, there is at the bottom a mixture of piety with their vindictiveness. They imagine themselves bound to revenge the deaths of their ancestors, their parents, or relations, fallen in war, upon their enemies, especially of that nation by whom they have fallen. It is in that apprehension too, they extend their barbarity to young children, and to women: to the first, because they fear they may grow up to an age, when they will be sure to pursue that revenge of which the spirit is early instilled into them; to the second, lest they should produce children, to whom they would, from the same spirit, be sure to inculcate it. Thus, in a round natural enough, their fear begets their cruelty, and their cruelty their fear, and so on, ad infinitum. They consider too these tortures as matter of glory to them in the constancy with which they are taught to suffer them; they familiarize to themselves the idea of them, in a manner that redoubles their natural courage and ferocity, and especially inspires them to fight desperately in battle, so as to prefer death to a captivity, of which the consequences are, and may be, so much more cruel to them. Another reason is also assignable for their carrying things to these extremities: War is considered by these people as something very sacred, and not lightly to be undertaken; but when once so, to be pushed with the utmost rigor by way of terror, joining its aid towards the putting the speediest end to it. The savage nations imagine such examples necessary for deterring one another from coming to ruptures, or invading one another upon slight motives, especially as their habitations or villages used to be so slightly fortified, that they might easily be surprised. They have lately indeed learned to make stronger inclosures, or pallisadoes, but still not sufficient entirely to invalidate this argument for their guarding against sudden hostilities, by the idea of the most cruel revenge they annex to the commission of them. It is not then, till after the maturest deliberation, and the deepest debates, that they commonly come to a resolution of taking up the hatchet, as they call declaring of war; after which, there are no excesses to which their rage and ferocity do not incite them. Even their feasting upon the dead bodies of their enemies, after putting them to death with the most excruciating tortures they can devise, is rather a point of revenge, than of relish for such a banquet.

That midst all their savageness they have, however, some glimmering perception of the laws of nations, is evident from the use to which they put the calumet, the rights of which are kept inviolate, thro' especially the whole northern continent of America. It answers nearest the idea of the olive-branch amongst the ancients.

As to your question, Sir, about the English being in the right or wrong, in their treatment of the Acadians, or descendants of the Europeans first settled in Acadia, and in their scheme of dispersing them, the point is so nice, that I own I dare not pronounce either way: but I will candidly state to you certain facts and circumstances, which may enable yourself to form a tolerably clear idea thereon.

But previously I shall give you a succinct description of these people: They were a mixed breed, that is to say, most of them proceeded from marriages, or concubinage of the savage women with the first settlers, who were of various nations, but chiefly French, the others were English, Scotch, Swiss, Dutch, &c. the Protestants amongst whom, and especially their children were, in process of time, brought over to a conformity of faith with ours. They found they could not easily keep their footing in the country, or live sociably with the great majority of the French, but by this means of coming over to our religion.

Certain Normans, of which number was Champlein, were the first French that discovered Port-Royal, now Annapolis, where they found some Scotch settled, who had built a fort of turf, and planted in the area before it some plumb-trees, and walnut-trees, which was all the works of agriculture, and fortification the British nation had made in this country before the year 1710. This is the chief reason [And a very good one surely.] too, why they so much insist on calling Acadia, Nova-Scotia, and pretend to be the first inhabitants and true proprietors. These Scotch were driven from Port-Royal by the Normans. It is true, they had discovered the river of Port-Royal before the Normans, and had built a turf-fort; but it is by no means true, that they were therefore the true settlers on this river, and less yet in the whole of Acadia. [Nothing can be more false and pitiful, than what follows of this Frenchman's reasoning. If a fort is not a settlement, what can be called one? Is it not one of the most valid, and generally received marks of taking possession? It supposes always a design to cultivate and improve; and no doubt but these first settlers would have done both, if they had not been untimely driven away.] The true inhabitants are those who cultivate a country, and thereby acquire a real permanent situation. The property of ground is to them who clear, plant, and improve it. The English had done nothing in this way to it till the year 1710. They never came there, but on schemes of incursion or trade; and in all the wars they had with the French, on being superior to them, they contented themselves with putting them to ransom; and though they sometimes took their fortified places, they did not settle in them. As all their pretension in Acadia was trade, they sometimes indeed detained such French as they could take prisoners; but that was only for the greater security of their traffic in the mean while with the savages. Traders, continually obliged to follow the savages in their vagabond journeys, could not be supposed to have time or inclination for agriculture. This title then the French settlers had; and in short, the whole body of the inhabitants of Acadia, from time immemorial, may be averred to have been French, since a few families of English, and other Europeans, cannot be said to form an exception, and those, as I have before observed, soon became frenchified. Except a few families from Boston or New-England I could never learn there were above three of purely British subjects, who also, ultimately conforming both in the religious and civil institutions to the French, became incorporated with them. These families were the Peterses, the Grangers, the Cartys. These last indeed descended from one Roger John-Baptist Carty, an Irish Roman-Catholic. He had been an indented servant in New-England, and had obtained at length his discharge from his master, with permission to remain with the French Acadians for the freer exercise of his religion. Peters was an iron-smith in England, and together with Granger, married in Acadia, and was there naturalized a Frenchman. Granger made his abjuration before M. Petit, secular-priest of the seminary of Paris, then missionary at Port-Royal (Annapolis). These and other European families then soon became united with the French Acadians, and were no longer distinguished from them. Most of these last were originally from Rochelle, Xaintonge, and Poitou; but all went under the common name of Acadians; and were once very numerous. The Parish of Annapolis-Royal alone in 1754, according to the account of father Daudin, contained three hundred habitations, or about two thousand communicants. The Mines, which are about five-and-thirty leagues from Port-Royal, and the best corn country in Acadia, were also very populous; nor were there wanting inhabitants in many commodious parts of this peninsula.

The character of the French Acadians was good at the bottom: their morals far from vitious; their constitution hardy, and yet strongly turned to indolence and inaction, not caring for work, unless a point of present necessity pressed them; much attached to the customs of the country, which have not a little of the savage in them, and to the opinions of their fore-fathers, which they cherished as a kind of patrimony; it was hard to inculcate any novelty to them. They had many parts of character in common with the Canada French. A little matter surprises, and sets them a staring, without stirring their curiosity to examine, or exciting their inclination to adopt or embrace it. They are remarkably fond of rosaries, crucifixes, agnus deis, and all the little trinkets consecrated by religion, with which they love to adorn their persons, and of which the priests make no little advantage in disposing of amongst them: and in truth, it is almost incredible what a power and influence these have over them, and with which they despotically govern them. One instance I am sure cannot but make you laugh. In September, 1754, the priest at Pigigeesh, had appointed his parishioners to perform the religious ceremony of a Recess, and to make them expiate some disgust they had given him, obliged them, men, women, and children, to attend the adoration of the holy-sacrament with a rope about their necks; and what is more, he not only made them all buy the rope of him, in which you may be sure he took care to find his account, but exacted their coming to fetch it bare-footed, from his parsonage house; and this they quietly submitted to. In short, considering the sweets of power on whomsoever exercised, our good fathers the missionaries are not so much to be pitied, as they would have us believe, for their great apostolical labors, and exposure to fatigue; since it is certain, they live like little kings in their respective parishes, and enjoy in all senses the best the land affords; and even our government itself, for its own ends, is obliged to pay a sort of court to them, and to keep them in good humour.

The Acadian men were commonly drest in a sort of coarse black stuff made in the country; and many of the poorer sort go bare-footed in all weathers. The women are covered with a cloak, and all their head-dress is generally a handkerchief, which would serve for a veil too, in the manner they tied it, if it descended low enough.

Their dwellings were almost all built in an uniform manner; the inhabitants themselves it was who built them, each for himself, there being but few or no mechanics in the country. The hatchet was their capital and universal instrument. They had saw-mills for their timber, and with a plane and a knife, an Acadian would build his house and his barn, and even make all his wooden domestic furniture. Happy nation! that could thus be sufficient to itself, which would always be the case, were the luxury and the vanity of other nations to remain unenvied.