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Acadia Survives As Fur Trading Outpost Despite
Neglect
The
Virginia "admiral" Samuel Argall sailed into the harbor of Port
Royal, Acadia, in October 1613. He got there at a lucky
time. Most of the settlers were five or six miles away
harvesting fields in the Annapolis Valley. Charles de Biencourt,
who was in charge at the settlement, was away on a trip to trade
for Micmac Indian furs.
Argall scattered or hauled off
the herds of cattle, stole whatever provisions he could, then
set the settlement afire.
The settlers rushed back when
they saw the smoke, but it was too late. The settlement was
destroyed. With winter approaching, the Acadians were left
without food or provisions.
By then, there were still
fewer than 50 men at Port Royal. They built temporary shelters
and began to dig and store artichokes and other native roots and
vegetables. Hunters were sent into the woods and sides of moose
and deer meat were put aside. There was still flour for bread,
since Argall had not found the mill and its storehouse farther
up the Annapolis Valley. Fortunately, too, the Acadians were
on good terms with the nearby Micmac Indians, who were willing
to share what they could.
Even though the Argall raids
were the first clash in what would become a long struggle
between France and England over who would control the Atlantic
seaboard, nothing much came of them at the time. France and
England were technically at peace, so they exchanged stern
diplomatic notes and clucked across the English Channel at each
other. The Virginians gave back the French ship they captured
at Penobscot, but refused to make restitution for loss of life
and property at either Penobscot or Port Royal.
Jean de
Poutrincourt sailed back to France for enough supplies to
rebuild the Acadian colony. Things were even worse in Europe.
France was divided even more than ever by religious strife.
Before he could get the finances and supplies that Port Royal
required, Poutrincourt and his son, Jacques de Salazar, were
killed in one of the religious-civil battles then ripping the
mother country. Poutrincourt's other son, Charles de Bienville,
took over the Acadian colony.
At the time of the Argall
raid, Port Royal was becoming an agricultural settlement. But
now, at least for a time, cut off from supplies from the mother
country and threatened by raiders from North America, it became
more of a trading post than a farming community.
Biencourt and the band of men with him in Acadia, decided
that it would be futile to try again for support from their
mother country. They set up a series of observation posts along
the coast and used them to signal ships when they had furs to
trade in exchange for ammunition and other provisions. In 1616,
Biencourt was able to ship some 25,000 pelts back to France from
trading posts at Port Royal, Cape Sable, Penobscot, and on the
St. John River.
In 1617, Claude de La Tour, who had come
to Acadia with Poutrincourt in 1607, sailed back to
France to try to recruit new colonists for the colony. He found
few takers. Meanwhile, things continued to deteriorate in the
colony.
In 1619, while La Tour was still in France, the
Virginians sent Argall on another raid against the French. This
time, he burned Saint-Sauveur then sailed for Saint Croix Island
and burned all of the buildings there.
He again found
Port Royal undefended because the settlers were working in
fields a few miles away. Once again, the smoke from their
burning houses gave the Acadians the first notice that Argall
had returned. The Acadians rebuilt once again.
Biencourt
died in 1624 at the age of 31, leaving no known disposition of
the colony that he had inherited from his father. Charles de La
Tour, Claude's 27-year-old son, was Beincourt's second in
command and took over when Biencourt died.
One of the
first things he did was to move the headquarters of the colony
from Port Royal to Cape Sable on the Atlantic coast. He thought
the place would be easier to defend and that it would be more
accessible to the fishing boats and trading ships that were now
his only link to a France that had apparently forgotten him. |
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