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That summer there had been the usual comings and goings. Micmac Indians, in war paint and feathers with their canoes and captives; black robed French Priests and political agents, exhorting and coercing the Acadians to leave for lands beyond British rule; shallops and schooners sailing out of the Harbour’s mouth for the fortress of Louisbourg with contraband cargoes of provisions, produce and cattle brought over the trail from Cobequid; numerous wretched refugees from the Cobequid villages on their way on foot to embark by boat for St. John’s Island. And so as the Acadians at Tatamagouche entered into their last August at Tatamagouche, they did so without alarm and with slight apprehension of the tragedy just ahead of them. Early in the month a sloop of seventy tons and a schooner of thirty tons had come in from Louisbourg, under the charge of a French officer* to take on supplies for that place. Soon after, cattle, hogs and sheep driven through the woods from Cobequid were loaded on the sloop and the schooner. In or about the Harbour and the Rivers were other French vessels and the numerous birch bark canoes of the Indians. The Acadians knew, of course, that Beausejour had fallen to the New
Englanders in June and also that their deputies from Cobequid had been summoned
in July to confer with Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence** and his Council at
Halifax. But similar alarms had been part of their life and in spite of them and
of "fears within and wars without" no dire consequences had yet
befallen them. Had they had fear of expulsion or of violence, their course would
have been clear. Taking what few possessions they could, they would have
embarked for St. John’s Island or for Cape Breton or merely slipped quietly
away into the obscurity and the safety of the forest. Back |
