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Chapter 8
We Were Not the Savages - The Futile Search for a Just Peace, 1752-1761
The probability that the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1752 would entice
other Mi’kmaq Chiefs to seek similar accommodations with the British
was behind Louisbourg’s fierce opposition to it. The French knew that such an
eventuality would forever end their alliance with the Mi’kmaq, dry up a rich
source of military intelligence and assistance, and prove extremely detrimental
to their future political and military ambitions in the region.
Thus, Governor de Raymond searched for a way to stop the peace movement
before it spread. In this regard he had generous but unintentional help from the
British. The help resulted from the ungodly scalping proclamations they had
issued in the past and their steadfast refusal to prosecute any White person for
killing an unarmed, defenceless Mi’kmaq. This knowledge by Caucasians of
freedom from prosecution resulted in the commission of a horrendous crime
by two of his Majesty’s subjects that proved a Godsend for the French. The
preliminary details of the drama that was played out during the winter and
spring of 1753 are cited from the introduction to Anthony Casteel’s journal.
The surveyor Morris in a letter to Cornwallis in England, dated April 16,
1753, gives what details he had of the crime:
Yesterday [the 15th of April] arrived from the Eastward two men, in an
Indian Canoe, who have brought six scalps of Indians. The account they gave
of the affair, upon their examination, was that James Grace, John Conner
(a one eyed man, formerly one of your bargemen), with two others, sailed
from this port about the middle of February last in a small Schooner, and
on the 21st were attacked in a little harbour to the Westward of Torbay by
nine Indians, to whom they submitted, and that the same day on which they
landed the Indians killed their two companions in cold blood; that Grace
and Conner continued with them till the 8th of the month, when some of
the Indians separating, they remained with four Indian men, a squaw, and
a child: that the four Indians left them one day in their Wigwam with their
arms and ammunition, upon which hoping to recover their liberty, they
killed the woman and child, and at the return of the men killed them also
[the number of Mi’kmaq murdered was actually seven], and then taking
the Canoe made the best of their way to this place.
This is the substance of their story; but as the Indians complained,
a little after the sailing of this Schooner, that one exactly answering her
description put into Jedore where they had their stores, and robbed them
of forty barrels of provision given them by the Government, it is supposed
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