<\/p>\n
One of the more luxurious and expensive automobiles is named for the founder of Detroit, the French explorer and colonial officer, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. Before he explored and founded settlements in the Great Lakes Area, Cadillac had explored the coast of Maine and had written an account of what he saw. What he wrote in the middle of the 17th century about Maine is preserved in one of the volumes of the Collections of the Maine Historical Society. It was those explorations that gave Cadillac’s name to the highest mountain on Mount Desert Island.<\/p>\n
Cadillac’s account renewed interest in American lands that had been earlier started by the account of Weymouth’s voyages in 1605 and 1607, and by the formation of the Plymouth Company resulting in the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620. Cadillac’s account especially stimulated new activity by the French in Maine east of the Kennebec. Cadillac had come from France to the French fortress at Louisburg on Cape Breton Island and from there to Port Royal on the west coast of Nova Scotia. From Port Royal he sailed down the coast so that his first Maine reference was to the Passamaquoddy area. Of that he wrote: “From the mouth of the St. John River to Passamaquoddy is 14 leagues.” A league was about three miles, so he is giving that distance as about 42 miles, just about what it is today from Calais to St. John. Cadillac continued: “The bay at Passamaquoddy is good for ships, which can pass in and out at all seasons without being encumbered by ice. To enter the bay, one must sail NNW. There are two fathoms (12 feet) of water. Opposite this place and five leagues off shore is Grand Manan, an island 14 leagues in circumference.”<\/p>\n
Cadillac’s next entry was made at Machias. He said: “From Passamaquoddy to Machias is ten leagues. The entrance is difficult because of rocks which are concealed at high water; but if one carefully keeps a NW course, there are five fathoms.” His next description is of Mount Desert. “Mount Desert is twenty leagues from Machias. It is an island twelve leagues in circumference, and has high mountains. That feature makes it a landmark for ships from Europe, bound east either for Port Royal or for Boston. The harbor at Mount Desert is very good and beautiful. There is no sea inside, and vessels can lie calmly, as it were in a box. The harbor has four entrances, of which the NW one is the best, having nine fathoms of water. The SH one, while it is the nearest, has in its channel a huge rock, sometimes submerged at high tide. Good masts are available here, and English ships regularly come for them.”<\/p>\n
Cadillac then turned his attention to the importance of the Indians as French allies. He wrote: “The Indians are Abnakis, and they have encampments on both the St. George and the Kennebec rivers. It is important for us that this tribe should not remove to Canada. They now defend Acadia and protect it from inroads by the English, who are now trying to fortify themselves at Pentagoet (Castine), but are meeting with strong resistance from these Indians. By frequent raids the Iroquois, friends of the English, keep harrassing these Indians, and there is the possibility of their removing to Canada to escape this harrassment. The Iroquois have also used blandishments, offering many beads and other items to the Abnakis if they will support the English rather than the French, or at least remain neutral in the conflict between our two nations. So far the Iroquois have had no success with either gifts or raids in getting the Abnakis to change their allegiance from us to the English.<\/p>\n
“Another reason for keeping the Abnakis where they now are is that their departure would open a large region to settlement by the English. If it were not for the Abnakis the English would find no resistance to their seizure of a vast area of land. In fact, with their allies, the Iroquois and the Mohawks, they might easily attack the City of Quebec itself, devastating all the French settlements along the way. The St. George River has long been a boundary between French and English lands, but the English persistently try to seize lands east of that river.”<\/p>\n
What is today called the Bay of Fundy, Cadillac called Baie Francaise, the French Bay. He wrote: “All along the shore of the Baie Francaise and on down the coast to Pemaquid, fishing is profitable.” Of Permaquid itself he wrote: “From the St. George to Permaquid is seven leagues. Permaquid is now occupied by the English. It has a wide bay with good anchorage, but towards the end of the summer fishing season the passage is made dangerous by fierce SW winds that stir up high waves and angry seas. The bay has usually about five fathoms of water.”<\/p>\n
“To anchor opposite the English fort, a ship must sail dangerously close , to the rock. The anchorage ground is within musket shot of the fort, which makes it difficult for any but English ships to anchor. The fort was recently captured by the Indians, but has since been retaken and rebuilt by the English.”<\/p>\n
Then Cadillac mentions the big island that had long been a landmark for European ships. He said: “Three leagues to seaward is an island called Monhegan. A few years ago there were about twenty English families on it, but they were all driven off by the Indians, and resettlement has only recently begun.”<\/p>\n
“In the harbor near Pemaquid the Indians could easily put an end to the mast trade if it were made worth their while, and especially if they were led by a Frenchman of some experience, with a few white soldiers to help him.”<\/p>\n
Cadillac’s account continues: “The English policy in these parts is directed by the government of Mass Bay in Boston. That government has seen to it that the English language is taught to as many Indians as possible, especially to leaders. Many Indians therefore do now understand enough English to enable them to carryon trade intelligently and profitably, but their knowledge of the language falls far short of ability to understand the treaties that the English, by fraud and deceit, have persuaded them to sign.<\/p>\n
“On the other hand, we French have been grossly delinquent in teaching the Indians our language. The Jesuit missionaries, instead of teaching French to the Abnakis, took pains to learn the Abnaki tongue. Nor was the Indian’s conversion to the Catholic church any help, for the mass is conducted in Latin, which few Frenchmen understand any better than do the Indians. When any group of Indians seeks an audience with the governor at Quebec, there must be an interpreter.”<\/p>\n
Cadillac certainly exaggerated the Indians’ knowledge of English. All the contemporary records show that at any conference between English and Indians, an interpreter was just as necessary as he was when Indians met with the French. Cadillac was probably right when he wrote: “It is most unfortunate that the Indians, who are very useful to us in time of war, do not understand French, since no French officer can give military commands that they understand.”<\/p>\n
The same volume of the Collections of the Me. Hist. Soc. contain an interesting comment on what was called “French neutralism” in Maine. The people he mentioned were Acadians from Nova Scotia, who had been deported from their homes in the Midas Basin in 1755, a tragic occurrence made famous by Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline.” That account says: “More than a thousand of the unfortunate Acadians expelled from their homes on Nova Scotia became public charges of the province of Mass Bay. That account was written in 1760, only five years after the evacuation, when the tragedy was still fresh in peoples’ memory. The account continues: “The legislature took measures for their relief, and distributed them among towns in the province according to each town’s population. In the town to which a family was assigned, it was the duty of the selectmen in their capacity of overseers of the poor, to treat the family as paupers of the town. In Maine, to the town of York was assigned Francis Dumont, wife and nine children; to the town of Berwick, Peter LeBlanc, wife and five children; to Wells, Jean Michaud, wife and two children; to Biddeford, Claude Boudoin, wife and one child; to Arundel, Joseph Devau, wife and one child. Other families were assigned to Scarborough, Falmouth and Brunswick. ”<\/p>\n
So much for quotation from the old records. Many Maine people, even at that time, felt that expulsion of the Canadians from Nova Scotia had been grossly unfair and that their dispersal in single families to numerous towns was even worse. The feeling that they should be allowed to congregate in larger groups, led to their settlement along the upper St. John Valley, where they founded the towns of Van Buren, Fort Kent, and Madawaska, and established French-speaking communities. Appended to the account in the Maine Collections is a statement presenting further information on those evicted Canadians. It says: The whole number of French Acadians who were violently evicted from their quiet, humble homes was about 7000. Some 1300 of them arrived in Maine while others were sent as far south as Georgia and Louisiana. In the hurry and confusion of shipping them aboard vessels, families were often separated, husband being sent to one colony, wife to another, and children to a third. Much suffering resulted.<\/p>\n
They especially missed their priests and their methods of worship. Although they were permitted to worship in private houses in their Maine locations after dispersal, public worship conducted by a priest was forbidden. Some fled to Haiti and San Domingo, but there the malarial climate caused many deaths.<\/p>\n
Some did manage to flee as far away as France itself, but most were absorbed as paupers into the Maine population. The outstanding exceptions were those Acadians who were allowed to settle on the Upper St. John. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, some of the descendants of those evicted Acadians became prominent citizens of Waterville. Although most of Waterville’s Franco-Americans came from Quebec, a proud and influential minority came here from the St. John Valley, where their ancestors were among those unfortunate people driven from their homes in the Midas Basin in 1755. The poet Longfellow saw to it that his poem “Evangeline” so publicized the tragedy of that evacuation and dispersal that to this day the American people have not forgotten it, and their sympathies have always been with those French evacuees, not with their British conquerors.<\/p>\n
And with that we say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1275, Broadcast on May 10, 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35323,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}