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Chapter 7
We Were Not the Savages - More Bounties for Human Scalps and the Treaty of 1752
When Governor Edward Cornwallis and his entourage founded Halifax
in 1749, it was during a lull in the war with the Mi’kmaq. In fact, the
Mi’kmaq greeted them with hospitality. One settler wrote home: “When we first
came here, the Indians, in a friendly manner, brought us lobsters and other fish
in plenty, being satisfied for them by a bit of bread and some meat.”1
However, at British instigation, this would soon change. At an early September
1749 meeting with the Mi’kmaq Chiefs, a British emissary restated the dictum
given to their predecessors in 1715, submit to British rule unconditionally. He
also confirmed their fears about the Colonial Council’s new settlement plans
for the province. This gravely alarmed the Chiefs and they reacted as could
be expected. On September 23, 1749, the Mi’kmaq renewed their declaration
of war against the British and began attacking military, shipping and trade
targets.
Geoffrey Plank lays bare what Cornwallis had planned if such occurred:
If the Micmac chose to resist his expropriation of land, the governor intended
to conduct a war unlike any that had been fought in Nova Scotia
before. He outlined his thinking in an unambiguous letter to the Board
of Trade. If there was to be a war, he did not want the war to end with
a peace agreement. “It would be better to root the Micmac out of the
peninsula decisively and forever.” The war began soon after the governor
made this statement.2
Scalping Proclamation of 1749
After he had read the first edition of We Were Not the Savages, published in 1993,
Charles Saunders, a columnist with the Halifax Daily News, sent me a congratulatory
note dated February 2, 1994:
Several years ago, I watched a panel discussion that had several minority
members, including a Black and a Micmac. The Micmac representative
said that Blacks were slaves in the early days of European colonization,
but his people were lower than slaves. At that time, I didn’t understand
what he meant. What, I wondered, is lower than being a piece of property
to be bought and sold like a horse or cow? Then, in the chapter of your
book titled “The Edge of Extinction,” I read about how your people were
systematically starved to death. At least a slave gets fed, simply because
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