In 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Pub- Lished

In 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow pub- 2 lished an epic poem titled, ‘Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie’. The poem follows a young Acadian woman named Evangeline and her fiancée Ga- briel. The story takes place during the time of the Acadians and the “Grand Dérangement” or great expulsion in 1755 from their homeland in present-day Nova Scotia. The poem was very popular in North America and as a result, many pictures of Evangeline hung predomi- nantly in American and Canadian homes. Here is the opening passage of Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline’. The epic poem is written in the language of 19th century America1. “This is the forest primeval. The mur- Slide 2. "Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie", engraving, muring pines and the hemlocks, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1847. Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, — Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflect an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré. Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.” 1 It is classified as an epic poem that is written in an unrhymed dactylic hexameter. 1 It took many years for the history behind this poem to be published. Details of the his- 3 tory of Acadia were kept from historians by the provincial government in Nova Scotia. It is unfortunate that this history still is not routinely taught today by our teachers. It is a story that is relevant to us in America because it includes so many important lessons. By 1900, only one American historian, Francis Parkman, had written about the Acadians or French Neutrals, as they were called then. A few other historians like our town historian, Henry Nourse covered some of the history in his ‘Military Annals of Lancaster’ in 1889 and in his ‘History of Harvard’ in 1894. But Longfellow was the first to bring this story to the attention of America with his poem, almost one hundred years after the expulsion. SETTLING THE FIRST COLONY IN NEW FRANCE. 4 So, where was Acadia? France referred to the set of their colonies in North America as ‘New France’, of which the first colony in 1604 was Acadia. As highlighted in Slide 4, the geography of Acadia included all the present-day Canadian Maritimes which in- clude the Gaspé peninsula, New Brunswick, Île St Jean / Prince Edward Island, Île Roy- ale/ Cape Breton , Nova Scotia and the eastern third of Maine. Mount Desert Island with Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park and that quaint down-east village of Castine and Fort Pentagoët formed the extreme southwestern corner of Acadia. Many visitors of Slide 4. Acadia in 1604, first colony in New France. 2 Acadia National Park climb the 1500-foot summit of Mount Ca- dillac to witness the first sunrise in the United States. From that summit on a clear day, you may see Passamaquoddy Bay and 5 the St Croix River where the Acadian settlers first landed in 1604. The other colony in New France was Québec which was settled four years later in 1608. As men- tioned earlier, Acadia was settled in 1604, 3 years before Jamestown, and 16 years before Plymouth. Acadia was actually the second colony in North Figure 3. St Croix Island, Calais, Maine America after Spain’s St. Au- gustine. 5 The Acadians first landed on St Croix Island (See Figure 3 N45.128923° W67.133787°) on Thursday, June 26, 1604. The leadership team of the expedition included Pierre du Gua (Sieur, or Lord du Mont), Samuel de Champlain, Jean de Biencourt (Lord de Poutrin- court), and Marc Lescarbot. On board with them were some 75 male settlers, a mix of hunters, trappers, fishermen and wood workers. Pierre du Gua led the expedition, while Samuel de Champlain was the navigator and cartographer and Lescarbot was the notary, historian and recorder. Jean de Biencourt stayed with the settlers as head of the colony. Their plan was to stay on St Croix Island as an in- terim base until they found a suitable permanent settlement. They quickly constructed their shelters and cleared some land for a few late crops. The settlers largely came from the La Rochelle area of western France (See Figure 4) as did many of the settlers that arrived later. It is noteworthy Figure 4. Home of the Acadian and Quebec Settlers. 3 that the other colony, Québec was later settled largely by people from the Normandy area of north- eastern France. The two regions are distinctly different in genetics and culture which explains some of the differences in the two colonies. As it turned out, the winter of 1604-1605 was an extremely rough winter and the settlers’ choice of location for their landing was not Figure 5. Port Royal Habitation. good. Fresh water was very diffi- cult to find, and the winter weather was extreme. As a result, the expedition lost 35 of their settlers. The remaining 40 settlers were saved largely due to the good deeds of the local Mi’kmaq’s. The follow- ing spring, they found a better location on the south side of the Bay of Fundy on the An- napolis Basin. See Figure 5. The new location was sheltered and easy to protect. The Port Royal Habitation was built in the next years. Over the next 25 years, the development of the colony was hampered by the constant back and forth fighting between the French and the English and also between the French explorers themselves. Much of the activity was on the exploration and discovery of the natural resources of the area and on developing a working relationship with the local Mi’kmaq Indians. The colonials soon learned about the area’s 50-foot tides and ex- pansive marshes all along the Bay of Fundy. These marshes were very similar to those of western France where dykes were used to turn those marshes into rich farmlands. THE GOLDEN YEARS. The leadership of the colony changed several times during this period until 1630 when Charles de Menou, Lord d’Aulnay de Charnisay was named Governor. D’Aulnay owned a large ‘seigneurie’ or fiefdom in Charnisay, France from which he recruited some 100 men for an expedition to Acadia in 1632. The expedition included the progeni- tors of many future Acadian families including Jean Terriot, a peasant farmer known for his skills in building the ‘aboiteau’, a wooden device that allowed the marshes to drain at low tide but kept the seawater out at high tide.2 As a matter of colonial policy, the 2 Researchers later found some inaccuracies in Longfellow’s beautiful poem which was published before most historians were able to fully research the details of Acadian history. In ‘Part The First’ of his poem, Longfellow writes: Longfellow in his poem, Evangeline says: 4 dykes were jointly owned as common prooperty by the settlers who were each required to work on the dykes a certain amount of time every year. Figure 6. Acadia's Founding Families. Many of the peasants were known for their skills in farming, milling, dyke building, wood working, orchards and others. Over time, the 100 settlers were encouraged to go home to France and return with their wives as did Jean Terriot around 1635. D’Aulnay and later governors adopted policies that allowed the settlers to own their properties and to trade with the local natives and later, with other colonies like Quebec and Massa- chusetts. As the colony population grew, the settlers spread out to settle new villages like Grand-Pré on the Minas Basin and Beaubassin at the eastern end of the Bay of Fundy. At the first census taken in 1671, there were some 40 family names in Port Royal. One of those families was the Forêt family whose descendants would emerge one hundred years later in the town of Harvard. See Figure 6. At some point, the colony established a system of representation to make collective de- cisions that affected the entire colony. Each village, parish or neighborhood chose a rep- resentative or ‘délégué’ (delegate) who would meet with the Governor periodically to “…Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant, Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o’er the meadows….” To the contrary, the ‘aboiteaux’ in the dykes opened at low tides to allow the marshes to drain and closed at high tides to present the seawater from flooding the marshes. 5 administer the colony. Clive Doucet, a Canadian writer and politician wrote in his book “Notes from Exile, On Being Acadian”: “The independent, democratic ethic of the Acadians presaged the modern era, which arrived powerfully almost a generation later (after the expulsion) with the American and French revolutions.” So, this egalitarian custom of the Acadians was foreign not only to the English and the French but also foreign to their cousins to the north in their sister colony of Québec which continued the feudal customs of France.

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