|
We know that as late as 1759, there were a few Acadians at Tatamagouche living a pursued and nomadic life. Whether they were of those who had lived there before the Expulsion, or refugees who had escaped deportation in other parts of the Province we do not know. During the winter of 1756 sixty young Acadians from St. John’s Island staged an attack on Pisquid and killed thirteen Englishmen. Returning to Cobequid they aided Acadian refugees, who were in hiding between Tatamagouche and Cobequid, to escape to Cape Breton. Five hundred oxen were also rounded up and these were driven or shipped to Louisbourg. Possibly the same party, during the same winter, gathered four hundred wandering horned cattle at Tatamagouche and had them sent to St. John’s Island and to Louisbourg, which were both in a bad way for food.* Other references, too, in the contemporary military and official correspondence indicate that while as a settlement Tatamagouche was deserted still there were stray refugee Acadians, Indians and French sortie parties there from time to time until the Conquest of Canada in 1760. In the summer of 1756 and in the spring of 1757, * French detachments acting
under the orders of Vaudreuil, the then Governor of Canada, were at Tatamagouche
with boats and schooners recovering cattle and conducting search parties for the
French inhabitants who were in hiding from the British. After August 1755, the
British kept no post at Tatamagouche nor did they again send troops to capture
or harass the French refugees who from the various Acadian settlements, had
hidden themselves there in the hope of an eventual escape to St. John’s Island
or to Cape Breton. For some Acadians, then, it was their last place of refuge on
the Peninsula before they were finally to elude those who were pursuing them
from their native land forever. Back |
