Nova Scotia (18 page)

   
The Foreign Protestants organized their own religious
activity anyway and, by 1752, many had worked off their debts and
achieved the freedom to work for personal wages. Hopson decided to
extend the free food – these immigrants, after all, had
dramatically improved the colony with their labour.
u

An Uneasy Settlement

Hopson sent word off to London that
he needed money and supplies for the Foreign Protestants to get on
with establishing Lunenburg. Even before he received approval, he
decided to go forward with the plan. His cheap labour pool,
however, had grown exceedingly restless and he didn’t want an
uprising on his hands. Food and other provisions would be needed
for at least another year to keep these people alive until they
could fully providet for themselves – and, of course, for Halifax.
Hopson could only hope that the Board of Trade would see his
desperation and come through.

   
Mirliguegh
was
the Mi’kmaq name of the location and it would be renamed Lunenburg.
The soil was not as good as in the Fundy area but it was reported
to be fertile. The settlement would be on a defensible peninsula of
6,000 acres. Fishing, if considered at all, was of secondary
importance here. So on Monday, May 21, 1753, at 7 a.m., the Foreign
Protestants each drew a card from a pack – in St. Paul’s Church.
The card had a number representing the plot of land that the
settler could build on and farm. Charles Lawrence would be in
charge of things to begin with and Patrick Sutherland would take
over if Lawrence were needed elsewhere – and Hopson knew he would
be. Hopson also hired English and foreign overseers to make sure
that the immigrants would live up to their bargain and provide food
for Halifax. Lawrence and Sutherland mustered 500 men and boys for
a militia to ward off (or incite) hostilities, as was deemed
appropriate.

   
The Mi’kmaq had already had enough of the haughty English
coming in and running them off their own land. Word reached Hopson
that 300 Native people were ready to fight to save Mirliguegh
against an English invasion. The wily Hopson sent a courier to the
South Shore with a false message that the settlement would be
delayed. The Mi’kmaq either intercepted the messenger or changed
their minds about an immediate confrontation, because thein
expected battle never took place upon the arrival of the
settlers.

   
Colonel Lawrence thought he had a neat, organized plan as to
how things should proceed, but the Germans had had enough of being
pushed around by the English. They cut trees for shelter at their
own discretion and went walking in the woods without regard for the
dangers. Lawrence could not tolerate this lack of discipline, so he
issued orders to cut off provisions to anyone who didn’t follow his
instructions. Worse still, those who could not follow orders would
be sent back to Halifax. Point made.

   
The Germans didn’t exactly cower at his command. They
insisted on having Sunday off to rest. Many refused to cut trees
for the picket wall that would help defend the peninsula. Lawrence
was very paranoid that an Indian raid was imminent. He wanted more
control of what he called the “turbulent” Germans, insisting they
begin work at 4:30 in the morning. He delayed doling out the lots
of land until he realized their “turbulence” was reaching the
boiling point. Finally, Lawrence agreed to give out the land if the
settlers promised to act more orderly.

   
Blockhouses, palisades and a wharf were
successfully built. During that first short, wet summer, progress
was delayed time and again by chronic diarrhea. With everyone
building and clearing land, not enough effort was oput into
catching and preserving fish which could have helped sustain them
through the winter. Rations were low. Some people simply gave up
and left – or deserted, as the English would call it. If you were
caught, you’d be put in the brig aboard the
Albany
.

   
Lawrence offered up a shilling a day for work on the
necessary “public” projects. Nonetheless, the food rations were
really slim and people did not have time to do the necessary
clearing and gardening which would have helped them to be
self-sufficient. The Foreign Protestants really wished the English
could have just left them alone to fend for themselves and get on
with their lives. Lawrence viewed this independent spirit as
lawlessness. At one point, he genuinely wished for a Mi’kmaq attack
in order to reinstil a recognition of the need to be protected. Had
the English slipped back to Halifax and left the settlers alone,
it’s possible they would have made friends with the local Native
population, but this would be impossible with Lawrence and his
soldiers in control.

   
Eventually, Lawrence could report (without stretching the lie
too far) that the settlement was going well – at least the people
were too busy for open rebellion. When they asked for livestock to
further their self-sufficiaency, their request was granted by
Halifax. However, on December 17, 1753, a message arrived in
Halifax from Patrick Sutherland saying that the Foreign Protestants
were in armed rebellion against the British. Council sent 200
soldiers under Lieutenant Colonel Monckton to use any means
necessary to put down the uprising. d

   
The man who stirred things up has been described as a
“nervous illiterate” named John Petrequin, but he may only have
been illiterate in English and he may also have had good reason to
be agitated over the way the English were treating his friends and
neighbours. Petrequin had supposedly received a letter suggesting
that the settlers should be receiving a great bounty of food,
housing supplies and farming equipment. But this was, of course,
not the case. Word got out about this letter and people began to
get angry. Unfortunately, Petrequin could not produce the letter.
It was lost or destroyed. Everyone got mad at Petrequin and he was
locked up in the blockhouse. The English released him, but he was
seized again by the townspeople, who confined and tortured him to
try and make him produce the letter.

   
As this convoluted tale of a missing letter proceeded,
paranoia grew over the fact that the English must have destroyed
the letter to hide evidence of the supposed supplies for the
colonists. The eventual result was an outright riot which brought
to boil the hostility the settlers were feeling toward the English.
Word was sent to Halifax for troops, but Sutherland also tried to
convince the settlers that they were about to be attacked by the
Mi’kmaq and that he ought to mount big guns on the barricades. The
settlers didn’t buy this. New demands were being made of
Sutherland. Were the people of Lunenburg being cheated out of what
was rightfully theirs? After all, they had been promised so much
more than the English had provided.

   
Monckton and his men arrived and the settlers gave up the
blockhouse. Things began to quieten down and Petrequin admitted
that maybe there had never been a letter and he had lied about a
few other things as well. Various individuals on both sides were
charged with treason, conspiracy, high crimes and misdemeanours. It
all sounds a bit like a comedy of errors, except for the fact that
it illustrates how deeply angry these immigrants were about their
treatment by the English and the promises that had been
broken.

Farmers, Not Fighters

The settlers of Lunenburg came to
North America to be farmers – not fighters, not slaves for the
British or enemies of the Native North Americans. Now they finally
had some land and they would proceed to farm it. Unfortuntately,
since they had come from parts of Europe away from the coast, they
had little interest in fishing, despite the fact that they were now
living with this tremendous resource at their doorstep. Lawrence
thought it would be a good idea to stimulate something of a fishing
industry, so he encouraged a company from New York to set up
fishing stations in nearby Mahone Bay in 1754. However, it wasn’t
until the 1790s that fishing really began to develop in the
area.

   
Lunenburg became a major source of firewood for Halifax
probably because there was more hardwood available there. Small
boats would carry the wood along the coast to the city. In 1757,
French privateers started to interrupt these shipments and spirit
the cargo away to Louisbourg. A quick glimpse at the map of the
coast suggests that such pirating would require a lot of time and
effort for a very few logs. Certainly firewood would be more
readily available from Cape Breton. The firewood pirates themselves
probably quickly realized all the trouble they were going to for a
few sticks and soon learned it was better to capture the ships
headed the other way from Halifax to Lunenburg. This prompted
Lawrence to instruct his navy to chase them down and to provide
protection for Lunenburg cargoes as well.

   
By 1758, hostilities between the Mi’kmaq and the English in
Lunenburg had increased. The growing community seemed more of a
threat than it had first appeared and the Native people were loath
to lose more of their adopted homeland. Provoked and unprovoked
raids took place. Reports show that thirty-two people from the
settlement were killed and others were taken prisoner, but Mi’kmaq
losses remain undocumented.

   
While traditional history books have reported aggressive
actions by the Mi’kmaq, it is clear that they also made significant
efforts at establishing peace. In 1757, four Mi’kmaq men went to
Annapolis Royal on behalf of their father, the Chief of Panook. Two
stayed on as hostages (a kind of guarantee that the effort was a
serious one) while their two brothers, the father and two other
chiefs went to Lunenburg to speak with the English anÿd eventually
to Halifax for a peace summit. Word had not reached Lunenburg of
their plan, however, and the party was shot at by the Lunenburg
sentries. Despite their best efforts, the peace party was not
allowed past thce picket barricade at Lunenburg. Annapolis and
Lunenburg never did communicate clearly over what the intentions
were here, so the English in Annapolis decided the whole thing was
a trick. The two Mi’kmaq brothers left behind were sent to a prison
in Halifax and the Mi’kmaq interpreted the whole thing as
treacherous.

   
Mi’kmaq efforts at peace had been so badly misinterpreted
that by September an English detachment of a hundred men was sent
off to hunt down the Mi’kmaq around Lunenburg. Fortunately, they
couldn’t find any, only traces of those who had moved on to deeper,
safer forests. There were a few Mi’kmaq attacks on Lunenburg in
1759 but by 1760 things began to grow quiet again. Farmers were
getting on with their farming and the town was well-established if
not exactly thriving.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Shocked and Appalled

You might say peace existed between
the French and English between 1713 and 1744, although many wounds
were left unhealed. During this time, the French dramatically
increased trade by water routes – much of it with the Spanish
empire. France supplied coffee and sugar to continental Europe and
had a booming fish business going as they harvested on the Grand
Banks and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The story was not the same
for the English, who were hunkering down, just trying to get solid
military footing. Let’s face it, while France was getting on with
actually exploiting their position in this part of North America,
the English were obsessed with just hansging onto what they had and
the design was almost purely a military one.

   
There was some illegal trade (smuggling, that is) going on
between certain entrepreneurial Englishmen and the Spanish. Spain
tried to keep this activity to a minimum and that annoyed the
English. England knew that if things kept going so well for the
French, as well as the Spanish, the English stake in the new land
would be diminished. War ensued in 1739 with the Spanish and in
1744 (again) with the French. Louisbourg, as we’ve seen, had been
taken in 1745, and by 1747 France was pretty well cut off from the
colonies here. Then came the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and
Louisbourg went back to France but, naturally, the English
political and military engineers were not satisfied. In their view,
France had to be whipped and whipped good, sooner or
later.

   
The French wanted no more of war. For them, fish and trade
were the tickets to colonial success. By 1754 more than 400 French
ships were actively hauling up fish in these North Atlantic waters
and they employed a whoppisng 14,000 men along with a host of
families who worked ashore in the fishing ports and camps along
Cape Breton, cÎles de la Madeleine and the Gaspé. Clearly, the
French were firmly established here. Nonetheless, the French
decision-makers couldn’t entirely forget about the strategic
importance of Louisbourg and that passageway to the Gulf and the
St. Lawrence River. Louisbourg would once again be a base for a
naval fleet to protect those 400 fishing boats and keep a clear eye
on the British fleet in these waters.

   
This next war began far away but soon caught up with the
people of Nova Scotia. American speculators were moving on a scheme
to push into the Ohio River Valley. This threatened the French hold
on the centre of the continent and eventually led to a military
clash at Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and further violent escalation
from there.