PLAN OF AUKPAQUE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
Although the Indians were ostensibly at peace with the English they viewed them with suspicion, and were jealous of any infringement of their aboriginal rights. After the erection of Fort Frederick they seem, for the most part, to have abandoned the lower part of the river, and Charles Morris tells us that about the year 1760 they burned much of the timber along the Long Reach and on both sides of the Washademoak and probably at other places.
When the exploring party of the Maugerville colony arrived at St. Anne’s point in 1762 and were about to begin their survey, a large party of Indians came down from their priest’s residence, with his interpreter, their faces painted in divers colors and figures, and dressed in their war habits. The chiefs informed the adventurers that they were trespassers on their rights, that the country belonged to them, and unless they retired immediately they would compel them.
The chiefs claimed that they had some time before had a conference with Governor Lawrence and had consented that the English should settle the country up as far as Grimross. The surveyors promised to remove their camp towards Grimross. This answer did not appear to fully satisfy the Indians, but they made no reply. The settlement of the New England people, in consequence of the attitude of the Indians, did not embrace St. Anne’s Point as originally intended.
Plans of the River St. John were made by the Hon. Charles Morris, surveyor general of Nova Scotia, as early as the year 1761. A little later he wrote an interesting description of the river. He describes “Aughpack” as about seven miles from St. Anne’s, and says the Acadians had settlements upon the uplands between the two places but drew their subsistence from the cultivation of the intervals and islands. At Aukpaque was the Indian church and the residence of the French missionary. Their church and buildings adjoining had been demolished by the Indians themselves. The island opposite Aukpaque, called Indian Island, was the place where the Indians of the river made their annual rendezvous.
“On this island,” adds Mr. Morris, “is their town, consisting of forty mean houses, or wigwams, built with slender poles and covered with bark. In the centre of the town is the grand council chamber constructed after the same manner as the other houses.”
The reason for the destruction by the Indians of their church we need not go far to seek. In the summer of the year 1763 three chiefs came to Halifax to inquire why Father Germain had been removed from his post. They were told that he had gone of his own accord to Quebec and had been detained there by General Murray, and that the government of Nova Scotia were not responsible for it. They then desired Lieutenant Governor Belcher to provide them with another priest, which he promised to do. The Indians were satisfied and departed with their usual presents. The intention of the lieutenant governor was frustrated by an order from the Lords of Trade forbidding the employment of a French missionary. Governor Wilmot regretted this action as likely to confirm the Indians in their notion of the English as “a people of dissimulation and artifice who will deceive and deprive them of their salvation.” He thought it better to use the Indians generously and mentions the fact of their having lately burned their church, by direction of the priest detained at Quebec, as a proof of their devotion to their religious guides.
The site of the old church at Aukpaque was in all probability the old “chapel field” mentioned by Sir John C. Allen. Hard by, on the other side of a little ravine, is the old burial ground of the Acadians and Indians. One of the descendants of the Acadians, who visited the spot a few years ago, writes mournfully of this little cemetery: