The next missionary on the River St. John was Jean Baptiste Loyard, who was born at Pau in France in 1678, and came out to Canada in 1706. He remained almost constantly at his post, except that in the year 1722 he went to France to obtain aid for his mission. His position was a difficult one, for the letters of the Marquis de Vaudreuil show that in addition to his spiritual functions he was regarded as the political agent of the French on the St. John.
By the treaty of Utrecht, in the days of Queen Anne (A. D. 1713), “all Nova Scotia, or Acadia, comprehended within its ancient boundaries,” was ceded to the Queen of Great Britain. But the question immediately arose, what were the ancient boundaries? The British were disposed to claim, as indeed the French had formerly done, that Acadia included the territory north of the Bay of Fundy as far west as the Kennebec river; but the French would not now admit that it included anything more than the peninsula of Nova Scotia.
In 1715, Governor Caulfield endeavored to have a good understanding with Loyard, assuring him that he would not be molested, and begging him to say to the Indians of his mission that they would receive good treatment at the hands of the English and that a vessel full of everything they needed would be sent up the river to them.
But other and more potent influences were at work. On June 15, 1716, the French minister wrote the Marquis de Vaudreuil that the King, in order to cement more firmly the alliance with the savages of Acadia, had granted the sum of 1,200 livres, agreeably to the proposal of the intendant Begon, to be expended in building a church for the Indians on the River St. John, and another for those on the Kennebec. The Indians were wonderfully pleased and offered to furnish a quantity of beaver as their contribution towards the erection of the churches. In the years that followed the king made two additional grants of 1,200 livres each, and in 1720 the Marquis de Vaudreuil had the satisfaction of reporting that the churches were finished; that they were well built and would prove a great inducement to the savages to be loyal to France.
The probable site of the Indian chapel on the banks of the St. John is shown in the plan of the Medoctec Fort and village near the north west corner of the burial ground. A small stone tablet was discovered here by Mr. A. R. Hay, of Lower Woodstock, in June, 1890. The tablet is of black slate, similar to that found in the vicinity, and is in length fourteen inches by seven in width and about an inch in thickness.
It was found quite near the surface, just as it might naturally have fallen amid the ruins of an old building, covered merely by the fallen leaves; the inscription is in an excellent state of preservation and, without abbreviation, reads as follows:
SLATE-STONE TABLET.
A relic of the Indian Chapel of Saint Jean Baptiste. Found at Medoctec, June, 1890.