Natives versus Settlers: the Dartmouth Raid, May 13, 1751

The Mi'kmaq and other Native tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy found an unlikely ally as English settlers moved into Nova Scotia, the Acadiens.  Nova Scotia had been part of New France since the landing of Samuel de Champlain in 1600.  Some of the earliest European settlements in North America were located there.  In time, portions of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and what is now Maine became a distinct district in New France known as Acadie or Acadia.  When the British took over Nova Scotia in 1710, they guaranteed the religious freedom of the local people.  What they did not guarantee or try to prevent was the influx of English settlers coming into the region.  These Settlers became increasingly hostile to the French-speaking, Catholic population, demanding that the mother country do something about them and about the local Mi'kmaq people. 

Following King George's War, 1744-1748, the English began building more fortifications in Nova Scotia and issuing harsher laws against the Catholic religion.  The Acadiens and the Mi'kmaq responded by a series of raids on British settlements, particularly Annapolis and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.  Fed up after a raid in 1749 on Dartmouth, commander Edward Cornwallis, brother of the Revolutionary War general, issued scalp bounties for every Mi'kmaq male killed in battle.  Unlike in the American Revolutionary War, where the Redcoats didn't offer scalp bounties, there were scalp bounties offered in this conflict.  Not to be outdone, French commanders offered bounties to their auxiliaries for any British scalps collected.  The fighting became more intense as Dartmouth and other towns in Nova Scotia were raided again and again.  The British were under the impression that they could simply fight the Natives off their land while cracking down on the Acadiens at the same time.  They would learn the error of their ways soon enough.

Several Mi'kmaq warriors joined themselves to a guerrilla force led by Joseph Brousard dit Beausoleil.  Beausoleil remains a hero to Acadiens and Cajuns alike for his resistance to the British during the windup to what Acadiens and Cajuns call the Great Upheaval, the Expulsions beginning in 1755 when Acadien families were forcibly removed from their land and sent to France, Haiti and eventually Louisiana.  Beausoleil had teamed up with a parish priest, Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, to organize an armed resistance to the British.  Thus, the Mi'kmaq and the Acadiens formed an alliance, both fighting for territory that they each considered theirs.  On May 13, 1751, Broussard led sixty Acadiens and Mi'kmaq down the Shubenacadie River from Chignecto in an early morning raid on Dartmouth.  They burned 36 homes, killed 20, and captured several Settlers.  They also captured a sergeant and three soldiers, who were tortured and put to death. 

British soldiers gave chase but could not find the raiders.  All they found were scalped bodies, which they took to Halifax for burial.  The British retaliated by raiding the town of Chignecto, destroying Acadien foodstores, something that proved a hardship for both the Acadiens and the Mi'kmaq.  However, the raid did accomplish one thing.  Cornwallis pulled all Settlers out of Dartmouth.  They wouldn't return for another 30 years.  Acadien and Mi'kmaq raids continued through Father Le Loutre's War, 1749-1755, and the French and Indian War, 1755-1763.  The cession of New France by France to Britain later did induce the Mi'kmaq to sign treaties of peace, but they steadfastly refuse to cede any land.