Attack at Mocodome

Attack at Mocodome
Part of Father Le Loutre’s War
Date February 21, 1753
Location Mocodome (present-day Country Harbour), Nova Scotia
Result Acadian and Mi’kmaq victory
Belligerents
Mi'kmaq
 British America
Strength
unknown
Casualties and losses
6 Mi'kmaq 2 killed, 2 prisoners

The Attack at Mocodome (present-day Country Harbour, Nova Scotia)[1] occurred during Father Le Loutre’s War on February 21, 1753 when allegedly, a Mi’kmaq "militia" attacked a British vessel with four crew members, two of whom were killed and two of whom were taken into captivity. The battle ended any hope for the survival of the 1752 Peace Treaty signed by the British and chief Jean-Baptiste Cope.

Contents

Historical context

Despite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily occupied by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq. To prevent the establishment of Protestant settlements in the region, Mi'kmaq raided the early British settlements of present-day Shelburne (1715) and Canso (1720). A generation later, Father Le Loutre's War began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports on June 21, 1749.[2] By unilaterally establishing Halifax the British were violating earlier treaties with the Mi'kmaq (1726), which were signed after Father Rale's War.[3] The British quickly began to build other settlements. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and French attacks on the new protestant settlements, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (1749), Dartmouth (1750), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1751), Lunenburg (1753) and Lawrencetown (1754).[4] There were numerous Mi'kmaq and Acadian raids on these villages such as the Raid on Dartmouth (1751).[5]

There was a raid on those in the Dartmouth area in 1749 (See History of Dartmouth). In response to the raids, Governor Edward Cornwallis offered a bounty on the head of every Mi'kmaq. The British military paid the Rangers the same rate per scalp as the French military paid the Mi'kmaq for British scalps.[6]

After eighteen months of inconclusive fighting, uncertainties and second thoughts began to disturb both the Mi’kmaq and the British communities. By the summer of 1751 Governor Cornwallis began a more conciliatory policy. For more than a year, Cornwallis sought out Mi’kmaq leaders willing to negotiate a peace. He eventually gave up, resigned his commission and left the colony.[7]

With a new Governor in place, Governor Peregrine Thomas Hopson, the first willing Mi’kmaq negotiator was Cope. On 22 November 1752, Cope finished negotiating a peace for the Mi’kmaq at Shubenacadie.[8] The basis of the treaty was the one signed in Boston which closed Dummer's War (1725).[9] Cope tried to get other Mi’kmaq chiefs in Nova Scotia to agree to the treaty but was unsuccessful. The Governor became suspicious of Cope’s actual leadership among the Mi’kmaq people.[10] Of course, Le Loutre and the French were outraged at Cope’s decision to negotiate at all with the British.

The Battle

According to British accounts, on February 21, 1753, nine Mi'kmaq from present-day Antigonish (Nartigouneche) in canoes attacked an English vessel from Canso, Nova Scotia which had a crew of four at Country Harbour, Nova Scotia. The Mi'kmaq fired on them and drove them toward the shore. Other natives joined in and boarded the schooner, forcing them to run their vessel into an inlet. The two English men witnessed the Mi'kmaq kill and scalp two of their crew. The Mi'kmaq killed two English men and took two others captive for seven weeks. After seven weeks in captivity, on April 8, the two English men killed six Mi'kmaq and managed to escape.

According to Mi’kmaq accounts, the English schooner accidentally was shipwrecked, some of the crew drowned. They also indicated that two men died of illness while the others killed the six Mi'kmaq despite their hospitality. The French officials -who were allied with the Mi'kmaq - did not believe the Mi'kmaq account of events.[11]

Original account

Original documentation regarding this account from the British and French points of view is found in "Documents Sur L'Acadie" and quoted by Daniel N. Paul in his history We Were Not the Savages. The documentation begins with a report by a British surveyor named Morris to Lord Cornwallis in England, dated April 16, 1753:

Yesterday arrived from the Eastward two men, in an Indian canoe, who have brought six scalps of Indians. The account they gave of the affair, upon their examination, was that James Grace, John Conner (a one eyed man, formerly one of your bargemen), with two others, sailed from this port about the middle of February last in a small Schooner, and on the 21st were attacked in a little harbour to the Westward of Torbay by nine Indians, to whom they submitted, and that the same day on which they landed the Indians killed their two companions in cold blood; that Grace and Conner continued with them till the 8th of the month, when some of them separating, they remained with four Indian men, a squaw, and a child: that the four Indians left them one day in their Wigwam with their arms and ammunition, upon which hoping to recover their liberty, they killed the woman and child, and at the return of the men killed them also, and then taking the Canoe made the best of their way to this place.
This is the substance of their story; but as the Indians complained, a little after the sailing of this Schooner, that one exactly answering her description put into Jedore where they had their stores, and robbed them of forty barrels of provision given them by the Government, it is supposed that these men might afterwards have been apprehended by some of this Tribe, whom they killed as they describe.
If this be the case, it is a very unhappy incident at this juncture, and time only can discover what the consequences will be. The Chiefs of every Tribe in the Peninsula has sent in messages of friendship, and I believe would have signed the Articles of Peace this Spring, if this incident does not prevent them.

This entry is followed in the Documents Sur L'Acadie by the following contemporary French observation:

Thus for Mr. Morris's account. But the fact was still blacker than he suspected. After having robbed the Indian store houses, the crew of this unfortunate Schooner was obliged to encounter the fury of the deep. They suffered the shipwreck; were found by the Indians drenched with water, and destitute of everything; were taken home, cherished, and kindly entertained. Yet they watched their opportunity, and to procure the price of scalps, murdered their benefactors, and came to Halifax to claim the Wages of their atrocious deed.
The Indians, as may well be supposed, were exasperated beyond measure at this act of ingratitude and murder. (Revenge boils keenly in their bosoms, and their teeth were set on edge.) To procure immediate retaliation, they sent some of their Warriors to Halifax, to complain of the difficulty they found to keep their provisions safe during the fishing season, and to request that the Government would send a small Vessel to bring their families and stores to Halifax.[12]

Aftermath

In response, on the night of April 21, Jean-Baptiste Cope and the Mi'kmaq attacked another 10 crew English schooner in a battle between Outique Island and Isle Madame in which the Mi'kmaq attacked an English schooner. There were nine English men and one Acadian who was the British interpreter. The Mi'kmaq killed the English and let the Acadian named Anthony Casteel off at Port Toulouse, where the Mi'kmaq sank the schooner after looting it.[13] Cope's peace treaty was ultimately rejected by most of the other Mi'kmaq leaders. Cope burned the treaty six months after he signed it.[14] Despite the collapse of peace on the eastern shore, the British did not formally renounce the Treat of 1752 until 1756.[15]

See also

References

Secondary Sources

Footnotes

  1. ^ Stephen Patterson reports the attack happened on the coast between Country Harbour and Tor Bay (1998. p. 97); Whitehead reports the location was a little harbour to the westward of Torbay, "Martingo", "port of Mocodome" (p. 137); Beamish Murdoch identifies Mocodome as present-day "Country Harbour" (A History of Nova-Scotia, or Acadie, Volume 1 p. 410).
  2. ^ Grenier, John. The Far Reaches of Empire. War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2008; Thomas Beamish Akins. History of Halifax, Brookhouse Press. 1895. (2002 edition). p 7
  3. ^ Wicken, p. 181; Griffith, p. 390; Also see http://www.northeastarch.com/vieux_logis.html
  4. ^ John Grenier. The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760. Oklahoma University Press.
  5. ^ Grenier pp. 154–155. For the Raids on Dartmouth see the Diary of John Salusbury (diarist): Expeditions of Honour: The Journal of John Salusbury in Halifax; also see A genuine narrative of the transactions in Nova Scotia since the settlement, June 1749, till August the 5th, 1751 [microform] : in which the nature, soil, and produce of the country are related, with the particular attempts of the Indians to disturb the colony / by John Wilson. Also see http://www.blupete.com/Hist/NovaScotiaBk1/Part5/Ch07.htm
  6. ^ Thomas Akins. History of Halifax, Brookhouse Press. 1895. (2002 edition). p 19; While the French military hired the Mi'kmaq to gather British scalps, the British military hired rangers to gather French and Mi'kmaq scalps. The regiments of both the French and British militaries were not skilled at frontier warfare, while the Mi'kmaq and Rangers were. British officers Cornwallis, Winslow, and Amherst both expressed dismay over the tactics of the rangers and the Mi'kmaq (See Grenier, p.152, Faragher, p. 405;, Hand, p.99).
  7. ^ Plank, 1996, p.34
  8. ^ Historian William Wicken notes that there is controversy about this assertion. While there are claims that Cope made the treaty on behalf of all the Mi'kmaq, there is no written documentation to support this assertion (See William Wicken. Mi'kmaq Treaties on Trial: History, Land, and Donald Marshall Jr. University of Toronto Press. 2002. p. 184).
  9. ^ For a detailed discussion of the treaty see William Wicken. Mi'kmaq Treaties on Trial: History, Land, and Donald Marshall Jr. University of Toronto Press. 2002. pp. 183-189.
  10. ^ Plank, 2001, p.135
  11. ^ Whitehead, p. 137; Patterson, 1998, p 99
  12. ^ Le Canada-Francaise - Documents Sur L'Acadie, Public Archives of Nova Scotia, F5400, C16, Vol.2, No.3, July 18, 1889, p.111-12; cited in We Were Not the Savages, 2000 ed., p.124-125.
  13. ^ Whitehead, p. 137; Patterson, 1994, p. 135
  14. ^ Plank, 1996, p.33-34
  15. ^ Patterson, 1994, p. 138