Great Leader: Jean-Baptiste Cope of the Mi'kmaq, 1698-1760

Native leaders caught between competing Colonial powers faced a delicate balancing act if they wanted to maintain their people's livelihoods and way of life.  Often, the only path forward was to stay on the side of the dominant power.  Jean-Baptiste Cope, a Sackamaw or Chief of the Mi'kmaq of Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, 1698-1760, was one of those leaders who had to insure his people's survival.

Little is known of Cope's early life except that his last name, Anglicized as Cope, came from the Mi'kmaq word Kopit, for beaver, either a Native name or a clan affiliation.  How he became a Sackamaw is not known.  During his early years, he was closely allied with the French, earning the military designation of Major, which was the highest title the French would give to a Native auxiliary.  He also converted to Catholicism, which accounts for the name, Jean-Baptiste.  During Father Rale's War, 1722-1725, he allied with the resident French Acadian people in their efforts to resist English occupation.  He would do the same in Father Le Loutre's War, 1749-1755.  The issues in this war became more than just which Colonial power, England or France, got the lion's share of territory.  For local inhabitants, it was a matter of Protestant versus Catholic and Settler versus Native.

At first, English commanders took a hard line, seeking to punish the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and other tribes who had actively supported the French/Acadian cause.  Finally learning the error of this policy, the English relented and became more conciliatory, broaching the idea of peace with local Native leaders.  Cope helped negotiate a treaty of peace with the British in 1752.  However, relations quickly soured when the Natives realize that what the British really wanted were land concessions.  The Mi'kmaq and other tribes quickly returned to fighting alongside Acadien leader Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil,  a folk hero to Acadiens and Cajuns alike.  Eventually, Beausoleil was captured and the resistance faltered, just in time for the Seven Years War, 1755-1762.

British officials offered scalp bounties for any male Native killed in battle.  The one man they were most desirous to catch was Jean-Baptiste Cope, whom they felt had betrayed them.  Cope led his warriors on several skirmishes, not so much supporting the French as trying to keep intruders away from Mi'kmaq land.  During a skirmish at Aspinquid's Chapel, where the British and Mi'kmaq met to negotiate a treaty, a skirmish broke out instead during which Cope was killed.  Other Native leaders then signed a treaty of peace with the British, but again refusing to concede any land.