But it was now too late. The savage purpose had been formed. That the cruelty might have no excuse, it happened that while the scheme was under discussion letters arrived leaving no doubt that all the shores of the Bay of Fundy were in the possession of the British. It only remained to be fixed how the exportation should be effected:—
"To hunt them into the net was impracticable; artifice was therefore resorted to. By a general proclamation, on one and the same day, the scarcely conscious victims, 'both old men and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age,' were peremptorily ordered to assemble at their respective posts. On the appointed 5th of September, they obeyed. At Grand Pré, for example, 418 unarmed men came together. They were marched into the church, and its avenues were closed, when Winslow, the American commander, placed himself in their centre, and spoke:—'You are convened together to manifest to you His Majesty's final resolution to the French inhabitants of this his province. Your lands, and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be removed from this his province. I am, through his Majesty's goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and household goods, as many as you can, without discommoding the vessels you go in.' And he then declared them the King's prisoners. Their wives and families shared their lot; their sons, 527 in number, their daughters, 576; in the whole, women and babes and old men and children all included, 1,923 souls. The blow was sudden; they had left home but for the morning, and they never were to return. Their cattle were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires to die out on their hearths. They had for that first day even no food for themselves or their children, and were compelled to beg for bread. The 10th of September was the day for the embarkation of a part of the exiles. They were drawn up six deep, and the young men, 161 in number, were ordered to march first on board the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks on which they had reclined, their herds and their garners; but nature yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to the shore, between women and children, who kneeling, prayed for blessings on their heads, they themselves weeping, and praying, and singing hymns. The seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till other transport vessels arrived. The delay had its horrors. The wretched people left behind were kept together near the sea, without proper food or raiment, or shelter, till other ships came to take them away; and December with its appalling cold had struck the shivering, half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers before the last of them were removed. 'The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly,' wrote Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he had burned three hamlets, 'the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their husbands without them.' Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, a hundred heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the hunt to bring them in. 'Our soldiers hate them,' wrote an officer on this occasion, 'and if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will.' Did a prisoner seek to escape, he was shot down by the sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than 3,000 had withdrawn to Miramichi and the region south of the Ristigouche; some found rest on the banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from the English in the wigwams of the savages. But 7,000 of these banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the English colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia alone; 1,020 to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without resources; hating the poor-house as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their children. The wanderers sighed for their native country; but to prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for instance, 250 of their houses, and more than as many barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them, consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses, were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows."
Nor were the woes of this ill-treated people ended:
"Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles whereever they fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born as strong as that of the captive Jews, who wept by the side of the rivers of Babylon for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St. John's were torn once more from their new homes. When Canada surrendered, hatred with its worst venom pursued the 1,500 who remained south of the Ristigouche. Once more those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British Commander in-Chief in America; and the cold-hearted peer, offended that the prayer was made in French, seized their five principal men, who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and shipped them to England, with the request that they might be kept from ever again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as common sailors on board ships of war."
And so it was throughout:—"We have been true," said they in one of their petitions, "to our religion, and true to ourselves; yet nature appears to consider us only as the objects of public vengeance."—"I know not," writes Mr. Bancroft, "if the annals of the human race keep the records of wounds so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and so perennial as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia."
American history has at least one element of peculiar character. The voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers—the settlement of the Virginia cavaliers—the foundation of Pennsylvania,—though all events of profound moral interest, as well as productive of fine pictorial effects, are not without parallels more or less close in the varied tale of ancient and modern colonization. But that which is distinctive and peculiar in the story of American civilization is, its struggle against the Red Men. Settlers, it is true, have often found themselves in strange company. In Africa the Greek colonizer elbowed the swarthy Ethiop. In South America the Spaniard stood beside the Peruvian and the Carib. Dutchmen have encountered the Malay and the Dyak. For two centuries English settlers have had to deal with the uncivilized races of the East and West—from the Bushmen of the Cape to the savages of New Zealand. But none of these races present the same attractive features as the brethren of the Iroquois and the Mohicans. About these latter there are points of romantic and chivalric interest. Though not free from the vices of the savage, they often exhibit virtues which might shame the European. There is something of dignity in their aspect and bearing. They are seldom without a natural and original poetic sense,—and their language has a wild Ossianic music. They are bold in metaphor and apt in natural illustration. A group of actors on the scene having characteristics so peculiar and so attractive as the Red Skin is invaluable to a historian whose tendency is to see events and note character under their most pictorial aspects.
The part taken by the Indians in that war between the French and English in America which ended in the conquest of Quebec and the expulsion of the Lilies from Canada is narrated at great length by Mr. Bancroft,—and the atrocious nature of the conflict is well brought out. At the commencement of the war, we are allowed a glimpse at a curious war-council:
"'Brothers,' said the Delawares to the Miamis, 'we desire the English and the Six Nations to put their hands upon your heads, and keep the French from hurting you. Stand fast in the chain of friendship with the Government of Virginia.' 'Brothers,' said the Miamis to the English, 'your country is smooth; your hearts are good; the dwellings of your governors are like the spring in its bloom.' 'Brothers,' they added to the Six Nations, holding aloft a calumet ornamented with feathers, 'the French and their Indians have struck us, yet we kept this pipe unhurt;' and they gave it to the Six Nations, in token of friendship with them and with their allies. A shell and a string of black wampum were given to signify the unity of heart; and that, though it was darkness to the westward, yet towards the sun-rising it was bright and clear. Another string of black wampum announced that the war-chiefs and braves of the Miamis held the hatchet in their hand, ready to strike the French. The widowed Queen of the Piankeshaws sent a belt of black shells intermixed with white. 'Brothers,' such were her words, 'I am left a poor, lonely woman, with one son, whom I commend to the English, the Six Nations, the Shawnees, and the Delawares, and pray them to take care of him.' The Weas produced a calumet. 'We have had this feathered pipe,' said they, 'from the beginning of the world; so that when it becomes cloudy, we can sweep the clouds away. It is dark in the west, yet we sweep all clouds away towards the sun-rising, and leave a clear and serene sky.' Thus, on the alluvial lands of Western Ohio, began the contest that was to scatter death broadcast through the world. All the speeches were delivered again to the Deputies of the Nations, represented at Logstown, that they might be correctly repeated to the head Council at Onondaga. An express messenger from the Miamis hurried across the mountains, bearing to the shrewd and able Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, a belt of wampum, the scalp of a French Indian, and a feathered pipe, with letters from the dwellers on the Maumee and on the Wabash. 'Our good brothers of Virginia,' said the former, 'we must look upon ourselves as lost, if our brothers, the English, do not stand by us and give us arms.' 'Eldest brother,' pleaded the Picts and Windaws, 'this string of wampum assures you, that the French King's servants have spilled our blood, and eaten the flesh of three of our men. Look upon us and pity us, for we are in great distress. Our chiefs have taken up the hatchet of war. We have killed and eaten ten of the French and two of their negroes. We are your brothers; and do not think this is from our mouth only; it is from our very hearts.' Thus they solicited protection and revenge."
The Duke of Newcastle was unequal to the task of driving the soldiers of France from Canada or from the valley of the Mississippi. The North and South were both in the hands of France. The route of the Ohio and the Mississippi had been discovered by adventurers and missionaries of that nation; and a few years of quiet possession of the territory would have allowed French statesmen to consolidate their power in those regions, and to draw a strong cordon around the entire group of English colonies on the Atlantic sea-board. But Pitt's genius was brought to bear at a critical moment on the arrangement of this great question—and he conceived the project of breaking the Mississippi line and attacking the enemy in their strongholds on the St. Lawrence. Three expeditions were fitted out. Amherst and Wolfe were ordered to join the fleet under Boscawen, destined to act against Louisburgh—Forbes was sent to the Ohio Valley—Abercrombie was intrusted with the command against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, though Lord Howe was sent out with the last named as the real soul of the enterprise. Mr. Bancroft writes:
"None of the officers won favor like Lord Howe and Wolfe. Both were still young. To high rank and great connections Howe added manliness, humanity, capacity to discern merit, and judgment to employ it. As he reached America, he entered on the simple austerity of forest warfare. James Wolfe, but thirty-one years old, had already been eighteen years in the army; was at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and had won laurels at Laffeldt. Merit made him at two-and-twenty a lieutenant-colonel, and his active genius improved the discipline of his battalion. He was at once authoritative and humane, severe, yet indefatigably kind; modest, but aspiring and secretly conscious of ability. The brave soldier dutifully loved and obeyed his widowed mother, and his gentle nature saw visions of happiness in scenes of domestic love, even while he kindled at the prospect of glory, as 'gunpowder at fire.'"