From French Acadians to Louisiana Cajuns: Caught in the Middle
11,500 Catholic French Canadians were forcibly deported from their homes by the British Army in the nine-year period between August 10th, 1755, and July 11th, 1764; 5,000 died of starvation, illness, or shipwrecks, while over half of the survivors traveled 2,000 miles to become ancestors of the Louisiana Acadians, or “Cajuns.”
The eighteenth-century geographical term “Acadia” corresponds to the present Canadian Maritime Provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, as well as the portion of the U.S. State of Maine north of the Kennebec River.
The first European settlers in Acadia arrived with enterprises chartered by the Catholic Kingdom of France. On July 7th, 1534, the first Mass took place, offered by the chaplain to Jacques Cartier’s first expedition on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence River.
In 1605, the French established their first permanent settlement in Acadia, named Port-Royal, on the site of the current Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Close relations developed between these French Acadians and the local First Nations Mi’kmaq peoples. In 1626, for example, Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour, a French colonist who served as Governor of Acadia from 1631 to 1642, and again from 1653 to 1657, married a Mi’kmaq woman in a Catholic ceremony.
Descendants of these early French Catholic settlers in Acadia spent the following two centuries caught in the middle of an international power struggle between Catholic France and Protestant England. Catholicism was the established church of France, as Anglicanism was the established church in England. Established churches received financial support from the public treasury; in return, the church advanced the interest of the government, including wartime service. When France lost such conflicts, its subjects, like the Catholic Acadians, suffered.
The War of the Grand Alliance, or King William’s War (1688 to 1697), started as a succession dispute in Europe, but the Acadians were caught in the middle, as England and France were on opposite sides, and any time a European power went to war, all of its colonies were required to fight. At issue for the Acadians were present-day eastern Canada and the current U.S. State of Maine north of the Kennebec River.
The Kennebec River extends 170 miles, flowing from Moosehead Lake in what is now west-central Maine to the Atlantic Ocean. The French regarded this river as the southern border of Acadia. At the same time, eighty-eight years before the Declaration of Independence, the English colony of Massachusetts regarded the territory north of the Kennebec River as its property.
The French monarchy ordered the church to establish missions among the First Nations and recruit them to the anti-English cause. In this way, we meet Father Sebastian Râle, S.J., and Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, C.S.Sp.
The elder of the two, Father Sébastien Râle, S.J., was born in the Diocese of Besancon, France, on January 4th, 1657, and joined the Society of Jesus on September 24th, 1675. Arriving in Quebec on October 13th, 1689, he was assigned to Acadia, where he learned the Abenaki Language, and composed a French-Abenaki dictionary.
In 1694, he chose the first mission site at Norridgewock, the juncture of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers, the current Old Point in South Madison, Maine. Subsequently, he did the same at Penobscot, on the Penobscot River, and at Medoctec, on the Saint John River. Three years later, in 1697, France lost the War of the Grand Alliance, leaving those three missions in the middle of future conflicts. The next commenced only four years later, with another European power struggle in which colonies were required to fight, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 to 1715).
In August of 1703, Father Râle received orders to activate hunting bands of the Abenaki to attack English settlements on the Massachusetts side of the river. By 1705, these raids were so effective that the English put a bounty on Father Râle’s life. A company of 275 English troops attacked Norridgewock with orders to capture Râle and return him to Boston where Protestant authorities would make his execution a theatrical event. Râle was an experienced woodsman with many Abenaki friends, so he easily avoided the hit-team. The frustrated red coats burned the Norridgewock church anyway.
The war ended in 1713, with the Treaty of Utrecht. France lost Nova Scotia, but retained Île-Royale, present Cape Breton Island, north of the Nova Scotia peninsula. There, the French constructed Fortress Louisbourg, with every intention of retaking Nova Scotia, and driving the English back to the southern side of the Kennebec River in present-day Maine. The Acadians remained caught in the middle.
Seven years later, in 1720, Father Râle returned to the Kennebec River and rebuilt the missions among the Abenaki and Penobscot. At the same time, the English Protestant Massachusetts colony availed themselves of the identical strategy of using clergy of their church to further political objectives.
They dispatched a Protestant Minister, Reverend Joseph Baxter, to create a rival mission to the same tribes. He located it on Arrowsic Island, which became a base for pushing the English claim to both sides of the Kennebec River. In July of 1720, the governing council of the Massachusetts Colony renewed the 100-pound bounty for the kidnapping of Father Râle and transport to Boston for execution.
Perversely, France demanded that their Acadian colonists eject the English encroachment into Maine, while being unable to dispatch any troops to assist. Therefore, Râle worked through his supporters among the indigenous tribes to invite the English to a parlay aimed at making the Kennebec River a neutral zone. Despite the bounty on his head, Râle joined 250 Abenaki for the meeting with the English at Arrowsic Island on July 28th, 1721.
The Abenaki insisted on the Kennebec River as the boundary of their territory, explaining that they accepted French missions and settlers, but did not regard themselves as part of France. The English rejected this, declaring that Maine was part of Massachusetts, that Massachusetts was part of England, and that the presence of Râle, a Jesuit Priest, was in violation of English anti-papist laws.
While the negotiations continued, in January of 1722, many Abenaki went hunting. Perceiving an opportunity, the English sent a 100-man hit-team to capture Father Râle. Again, he eluded capture. Again, the English burned the Catholic mission church at Norridgewock. This time, flames spread and incinerated most of the Abenaki village around the church.
The Abenaki retaliated, in July of 1722, by attacking an English settlement at Merrymeeting Bay, on the Massachusetts side of the mouth of the Kennebec River. By August 19th, 1723, Râle and two-hundred Abenaki freed Norridgewock from English occupation; but the victory was a trap.
Waiting until the Abenaki dispersed, the English surrounded the village with 1,100 troops, against Father Râle, with only forty Abenaki. Knowing he was the target, Father Râle walked into the center of the village to surrender himself. The English opened fire, killing him and twenty-six fleeing Abenaki. In 1833, Bishop Benedict J. Fenwick of Boston dedicated a monument to the memory of Father Râle on the spot where he had died.
The fate of the next generation of Acadians can be understood through the experiences of another French priest: Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, C.S.Sp. (1709-1772), who arrived in Canada fourteen years after the assassination of Father Râle. Born in Brittany, France, on September 26th, 1709, he entered the Paris house of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit in 1730. Having volunteered for the foreign missions, after receiving priestly ordination in March of 1737, he sailed for Acadia in New France (Canada).
Le Loutre was assigned to work with the Mi’kmaq in Acadia, and to travel back and forth from Cape Breton Island, then controlled by France, to the Nova Scotia peninsula, then controlled by England, offering sacramental service to both the Mi’kmaq and the French Acadians. Yet again, he and the Acadians were caught in the middle.
Since France lost the last war in 1713, Nova Scotia was administered by the English from the former French city of Port Royal, renamed Queen Anne’s City (Annapolis Royal). Le Loutre did not visit the governor to obtain a passport when he first visited Nova Scotia in September of 1738. Under orders from the French government, Le Loutre established missions for the First Nations in territory that France ceded to England in the Treaty of Utrecht. The English regarded this as espionage but could not capture the priest while he had friends among indigenous hunting groups.
The next European power struggle requiring colonials to participate was the War of the Austrian Succession (1740 to 1748). The French authorities at Louisbourg ordered priests like Le Loutre, who ministered to both Acadians as well as Indians, to organize guerilla warfare to, from their perspective, free Acadia from English occupation. They fought well, but English naval superiority gave them the tactical luxury of choosing where to concentrate or relocate forces.
France lost again, and the Acadians once more suffered for their loyalty. The French Fortress Louisbourg on île Royale (Cape Breton Island) fell in June of 1745. Le Loutre escaped to Quebec with five Mi’kmaq warriors, arriving on September 14th, 1745.
By the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, England restored the île Royale (Cape Breton Island) to France, in exchange for French territory in India. Regaining Louisbourg, albeit by treaty rather than force of arms, fueled the French desire to evict the English from Acadia entirely. Le Loutre resumed his guerrilla activities, this time based in the area around Fort Beauséjour, on the Isthmus of Chignecto (eastern Canada) connecting the current province of New Brunswick with Nova Scotia.
England responded, on October 2nd, 1749, with a reward of ten guineas for each captured Mi’kmaq turned over the English, or a scalp proving that one had been killed; a guinea was a one-quarter-ounce gold coin equal in value to one pound and one shilling. In 1750, a fifty-pound bounty was announced for Father Le Loutre, dead or alive. Though Europe was between wars, the fighting in Acadia never ceased.
The next stage of the conflict featured England and France vying to control the Ohio River, by fortifying its origin in the present western Pennsylvania, instigating another war in which the Acadians, and Father Le Loutre, were caught in the middle: the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763).
That conflict ended French Catholic Acadia as part of France. Father Le Loutre spent eight years as a prisoner of war. Thousands of Acadians were forcibly expelled from their homes and set adrift as refugees. Many of them found a new home among other French-speaking Catholics in Louisiana. To get there, they had to take the long way around the English Protestant colonies.
This essay’s complement is featured in the Fall 2023 issue of the Joie de Vivre print journal. To order this issue and subscribe to future issues, click the “Subscribe” tab above.
Fr. Mark Raphael is Department Chair and Professor of Historical Theology at Notre Dame Seminary and Pastor of St. Louis King of France in Metairie.
“The Deportation of the Acadians” by Henri Beau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
