Chapter 2 Lesson 9 Inquiry

After a 35-day ocean crossing from France to Nova Scotia, Samuel de Champlain settled Acadia in 1605. The centre of this colony was Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy. He and his settlers built houses, planted gardens, and began the Ordre de Bon Temps (Order of Good Cheer). The colony was abandoned, but eventually resettled because the French king wanted land as a buffer (shield) against the English in the New World.  Whoever controlled Acadia, would dominate the St. Lawrence river, the waterway into the fur trade, and control fishing off the East coast.

Acadia comes from either a Greek word meaning "rural contentment” or from Algonquian. The Acadians made friends with the First Nations because they did not clear hunting grounds to make way for farms like the British did. They made dikes and used reclaimed lowlands around the Bay of Fundy so they weren't competing for the same land and resources. Friends through family and Catholicism, the Acadians and First Nations people, the Mi’kmaqs, lived closely together.

The Mi'kmaq taught the Acadians how to hunt, trap, make winter clothing, build traps, and make canoes, snowshoes, and toboggans.  The Mi'kmaq received iron cooking pots, rifles, knives, and axes to make hunting easier.

Unfortunately, the colonies had very few peaceful years and many famines. For five years they had an Acadian civil war (1640-1645) because Acadia had two leaders or Lieutenant Governors. Then, for thirteen years (from 1654-1667), they were occupied by the British. But King Louis XIV through his lawmaker or Minister said the Acadians could not return to France. Seven years later, in 1674, the Dutch conquered Acadia and named it New Holland. Over the next ninety-one years, the Acadians allied with the Mi’kmaqs to war with the British.

The first war against the British lasted nine years and was fought by Acadian privateers on boats. In 1751, 250 Acadians were enrolled in the local army at Fort Beausejour to help the Mi’kmaqs raid British colonies to stop British settlement. Meanwhile, the British encouraged more British and German Protestants to settle and add weight against the larger numbers of Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq friends. Things could not continue in this long war without a breaking point.