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Chapter 10
We Were Not the Savages - Dispossession and the Imposition of Poverty
The cruelty the British used to subjugate and then degrade the Mi’kmaq
vividly demonstrates that their policy of ridding the province of them never
deviated from 1713 to Canada’s founding in 1867. However, their genocidal
effort in Nova Scotia wasn’t unusual; they used the same barbarism subjugating
other First Nations in all of their North American colonies. The records
show that many high English officials were very imaginative in finding ways to
achieve their evil goals.
The following is an excellent example of their racist mentality in action. In
July 1763, General Jeffery Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces
in North America, sent a memo to Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Huguenot in the
service of England, asking:
“Could it not be contrived to send the Smallpox among the disaffected
Tribes of Indians?”
Bouquet replied: “I will try to inoculate the Indians with some blankets
that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease
myself.”
Amherst answered: “You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians
by means of blankets.”
Amherst’s contempt for the Indians is amply reflected in his journals
and correspondence, though it may perhaps be doubted whether he was
more bigoted than the average official of his Time!1
An “execrable race”2 was the General Amherst’s favourite description for the
Amerindians; Colonel Bouquet’s favourite was “the vilest of brutes.”3 This racist
language clearly reveals that White supremacist beliefs were prime factors in
their desire to commit genocide. Lawrence Shaw Mayo states in his biography
of Amherst:
As he sped on his way to the relief of Fort Pitt, the Colonel exchanged
interesting suggestions with the General as to the most efficient manner of
getting rid of the redskins. His first orders to Bouquet were that he wished
“to hear of no prisoners should any of the villains be met with arms.” Besides
using smallpox the two gentlemen contemplated another method: “As it is
a pity to expose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the
Spanish method, to hunt them with English dogs.” Amherst lamented that
“the remoteness of merry England made the canine aid impracticable.”4
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