Temple, who received a commission from Cromwell as Governor of Acadia, and went out there in 1657, laid out money in the country and carried on trade with energy and success. He maintained the existing stations, planted a new settlement at Jemseg on the St. John river, higher up than Fort Latour, and drove out a son of Le Borgne, who attempted to reoccupy La Héve; but, like Alexander before him, he suffered at the hands of the Stuarts, for Charles II, after renewing his commission as Governor and creating him a baronet of Nova Scotia, subsequently, in spite of remonstrances from Massachusetts, restored Acadia to France by the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, in return for French concessions in the West Indies. Temple attempted to dispute the extent covered by the treaty, but with no effect; and, in 1670, the whole area became again a French possession. Temple retired to Boston with a promise of £16,200 which he never received, and finally died in London in 1674.
The above is a bare recital of early days in Acadia, when it was, in effect, no man's land. The story might be made picturesque, with La Tour and his first wife for hero and heroine, with some embellishment of Alexander's scheme, and a little dressing of D'Aunay, Denys, and the other adventurers who come on the scene; but in truth it is a very slender record of two or three Frenchmen and Englishmen, who did a little trade or a little fishing on desolate shores, and who plundered each other in rather squalid fashion—left to themselves by their rulers, except when their acts or their claims had a bearing on international questions.
| Acadia under French rule. |
When Temple retired in 1670 in favour of a new French commander, De Grandfontaine, the total number of settlers in Acadia did not exceed 400. Some new French colonists now came in: the beginning of settlement was made at Chignecto and the Basin of Mines, and communication was for a time opened by land between Acadia and Quebec. The great majority of the French inhabitants were at Port Royal; but Pentegoet on the Penobscot was the seat of government, until, in 1674, it was taken and plundered by a Dutch privateering vessel, the same fate befalling the fort of Jemseg on the St. John river. Chambly, who had succeeded Grandfontaine as Commander in Acadia, was carried off a prisoner to Boston, and Pentegoet was for the time abandoned by the French. Two years later, in 1676, it was occupied by the Dutch; but the latter were in their turn driven out by the New Englanders,11 and the place passed into the hands of a Frenchman notable in Acadian border warfare, the Baron de St. Castin.
11 In the Government records at The Hague, under date Oct. 27, 1678, there is a claim of the Netherlands West India Company against Great Britain to the forts of Penobscot and St. John in Acadie and Nova Scotia, and a request that they may be allowed to remain in quiet and peaceable possession thereof.
| St. Castin at Pentegoet. |
He was a Béarnese, and had come out to Canada as an officer in the Carignan Regiment. Finding, like other Frenchmen, a charm in forest life, he drifted off to Acadia and lived as an Indian among Indians, a devout Roman Catholic, but in other respects a native chief, with his squaws and following of savage warriors. He established himself at Pentegoet, on or near the site of the old fort, where Castine now stands; he raided and was raided; in time of peace making money by trade, in time of war joining in the border forays. For Pentegoet was the southernmost station of the French, standing on soil claimed by the English, and granted by Charles II to the Duke of York. Similarly, Pemaquid, near the Kennebec, established in 1677, was the northernmost post of the English; and, if there was a line between the two nations, it was between Pentegoet and Pemaquid. But French influence extended to the Kennebec river, and Indian converts of French priests were to be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Pemaquid.
| French priests and the Abenaki Indians. |
In 1676, the war between the New Englanders and the neighbouring Indians, known as Philip's war, came to an end, leaving bitterness between the conquered natives and victorious colonists. Hatred of the English meant love of the French; and the Abenaki Indians of Acadia and Maine, under the tutelage of fanatical and unscrupulous French priests, became trained to enmity with the heretics; many of them migrated to mission stations in Canada; while those who remained behind were ever ready to obey the call to murder and pillage. In Acadia, even more than in Canada proper, the Indian as a convert became the tool of the Frenchman, and the Frenchman lent himself to the barbarism of the Indian. The full effects of the unnatural blend were seen and felt a little later on; but for twenty years after the Treaty of Breda and the restoration of Acadia to France, there was more often peace than war between the English and the French; and the Boston fishermen were, about 1678, licensed for the time being by the French Commandant, La Vallière, to ply their trade on the Acadian coasts.
| French Governors and colonists of Acadia. |