River of Three Peoples: an Environmental and Cultural History of the Wәlastәw / Riviѐre St
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RIVER OF THREE PEOPLES: AN ENVIRONMENTAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE WӘLASTӘW / RIVIЀRE ST. JEAN / ST. JOHN RIVER, C. 1550 – 1850 By Jason Hall Masters of Environmental Studies, York University, 2004 Bachelor of Arts, St. Thomas University, 2002 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in the Graduate Academic Unit of History Supervisors: Elizabeth Mancke, Ph.D., Dept. of History Bill Parenteau, Ph.D., Dept. of History Examining Board: Rusty Bittermann, Ph.D., Dept. of History, St. Thomas University Michael Dawson, Ph.D., Dept. of History, St. Thomas University Internal examiner Susan Blair, Ph.D., Dept. of Anthropology External Examiner: Matthew G. Hatvany, Ph.D., Dept. of Geography, Université Laval This dissertation is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK October, 2015 © Jason Hall, 2015 Abstract This study investigates how three distinct cultures – Maliseet, French, and British – engaged with and transformed the ecology of the Wəlastəkw/rivière St. Jean/St. John River, the largest river system in the Maritimes and New England. Ranging three centuries, ca. 1550‐1850, it examines cultural interactions relative to the river’s fish, banks, and flow to assess ecological changes. By developing comparisons among Maliseet, French, and British relationships to the river, it analyzes how cultural groups modified and expanded on the ecology of other peoples. Drawing upon a vast array of sources, including Maliseet oral traditions and language, archaeological surveys, scientific studies, historic maps and paintings, as well as diaries, letters, and reports of the waterway and its banks, this research makes significant contributions to a number of scholarly fields: river ecologies and human adaptations of them, Maliseet history, seigneurial settlement in colonial societies, Loyalist ecology, colonial and municipal legal history, historical cartography, and the role of ecological knowledge in governance and environmental activism. Moreover, it contributes to early modern North American environmental history, as well as global studies of rivers. This study brings a historical perspective to pressing economic and political issues facing the watershed today, including conflicts over natural resource use, the impacts of dam construction and removal, climate change adaptations, flood mitigation and prevention, fisheries conservation, and the effects of invasive species. ii While most historical scholarship on the region is focused on specific linguistic and ethnic groups, this study bridges these divides, bringing together Maliseet, Acadian, and British histories into a single study. The wider temporal and cultural scope and the centrality of the Wəlastəkw/rivière St. Jean/St. John River to the study’s analysis offers a poignant reminder that humanity’s intimate relationship to nature has points of commonality that are as important to understand as our points of difference. This study attempts to do both. iii Dedication To all the young Maritimers and people throughout the world, who choose to stay in and contribute to their home communities despite the hardships they face for doing so, as well as those who wish they could come home. iv Acknowledgments In the mid 1980s two fishermen called me and my friend, Craig Kilfoil, over to their dusty pickup outside of Marilyn’s Lunch Counter in Bath. They were eager to show us their catch ‐ an Atlantic salmon that was as long as we were tall! We were duly impressed, but they warned us that we would probably not see another fish like that in the St. John, and they were right. I owe these strangers my gratitude for teaching me at a young age that there are fewer fish in the river than before, and that locals have a keen awareness of the St. John River and ecological changes. When I was a hot‐blooded teenager, my grandfather, Ambrose Hall, warned me about a dangerous whirlpool below an old milldam as I set off to ride the Monquart River during the freshet in an inflatable fishing raft with a single plastic paddle that barely reached the water. The perilous voyage taught me that the freshet turns calm rivers into deadly torrents and that our elders’ knowledge of the past can be an invaluable guide to contending with present challenges. The St. John River itself was the main inspiration for this study. It was also the primary power source for my laptop and the heat that kept my fingers nimble on the keyboard as snow piled high across the waterway’s frozen surface outside my window. The St. John deserves respect for all that it offers, especially in an age when many people take it, and much of the world around them, for granted. v When I worked as an apprentice forester for the Carleton Victoria Wood Producers Association in the late 1990s, my supervisor and I spent a sweltering summer day helping an elderly French man, tricked by an English contractor into signing a contract he could not read, seek compensation for the destruction of his beloved forest. The old man’s pained expression and the haunting cries of a family of owls that had lost their home to the clear‐cutting, taught me that we cannot always put a price tag on the relationships that people and other living creatures have with land. I am grateful to the people I worked with in my apprenticeship for teaching me how to use maps, survey instruments, computer programs, oral descriptions, and my own senses, to read the land’s history and help steward its future. Traversing hundreds of kilometres of fields and forests to assess silviculture activities and develop management plans, introduced me to riparian buffer zones, habitat preservation, resource conflicts, the not‐so‐extinct eastern cougar, and local strategies for pulling the wool over the eyes of employers and government officials. Moreover, my experience coordinating activities with forest rangers, New Brunswick and Maine mills, woods workers, and landowners, helped me understand that people’s relationships to the St. John River Valley are complex and not easily reduced to stereotypes based on occupations or political affiliations. I owe a special thanks to Billy Crawford for showing me many of the rivers that flow through New Brunswick’s interior, and for sharing the plant knowledge that his grandfather passed on to him. My mother, Mary Hall, taught me to follow the sun’s path across the horizon throughout the changing seasons, and kindled my interest in history at an early age. vi She encouraged me to think beyond farm and factory work and attend university, as well as to maintain strong ties to my rural roots. And I am grateful to the good people of Johnville, and all of the residents of the St. John watershed in New Brunswick, Maine, and Quebec, who took time to talk with me, or waved as I walked, cycled, paddled, or drove by the landscape they have helped shape. Teresa Devor, my wonderful partner, shared many of my journeys throughout the watershed, and helped me appreciate the wider web of life that surrounds us. It has been over five years since we climbed the rugged slopes of Bald Peak near Riley Brook and gazed across a landscape of engineered storage ponds for hydro‐dams, temporary barriers for protecting Atlantic salmon from poachers, ancient Maliseet portage trails, rare plants, and huge clear cuts. During our stimulating conversation on that old volcano while deer hunters stalked their prey below, I decided that returning to university to study the watershed I call home would give me an opportunity to use my multidisciplinary background to write a book that might help others appreciate the landscapes and peoples that I cherish. With the tireless support of our friend and mentor, Rusty Bittermann, I applied to pursue doctoral research in history at the University of New Brunswick. The generous assistance of the faculty and staff of the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University were instrumental to this study. Most especially: Elizabeth Mancke, Bill Parenteau, Rusty Bittermann, Michael Dawson, Andrea Bear Nicholas, David Frank, Margaret McCallum, and Don Wright. My scholarship benefited from many other supportive agencies and organizations: the Social Sciences and vii Humanities Research Council of Canada; the O’Brien Foundation; The late Mary P. Folster, members of the Folster family, and the New Brunswick Universities Opportunities Fund; Mary P. MacNutt; the Network in Canadian History and the Environment; and the tax payers of Canada. Many archivists and librarians in Canada, the United States, France, and Great Britain assisted me, as did dozens of amateur and professional computer technicians, who are increasing the public’s access to historic documents. The oral history that I absorbed growing up in an Irish‐Catholic community held a different perspective on the past than the majority of my school textbooks that celebrated the heroic founding of New Brunswick by British Loyalists as the most important part of local cultural heritage, and cast the British Empire as a virtuous entity that brought civilization and justice to a chaotic wilderness. The stories I learned helping relatives with farm chores and visiting elderly neighbours taught me that history was often written by dominant peoples, and that my ancestors shared a history of dispossession with the peoples who had called the St. John River Valley home before it became part of a British colony. In the summer of 1999, I sat on Oliver Polchies’ porch and shared a pitcher of iced tea with his family. His daughters told me that when Oliver had been chief of the Woodstock Maliseet, he opened his cupboards to help feed his neighbours. Oliver had to walk his dog over sixty kilometres to give him to a friend because the federal Indian Agent said that if his family could afford to feed a pet, they would not receive the government support to which they were entitled.