Katana VentraIP

Acadians

The Acadians (French: Acadiens [akadjɛ̃], Acadian French: [akad͡zjɛ̃]) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Not to be confused with Akkadian Empire.

Today most descendants of Acadians live in the Northern American region of Acadia, where descendants of Acadians who escaped the Expulsion of the Acadians (aka The Great Upheaval / Le Grand Dérangement) re-settled. Most Acadians in Canada continue to live in majority French-speaking communities, notably those in New Brunswick where Acadians and Francophones are granted autonomy in areas such as education and health. In some cases Acadians intermarried with Indigenous Peoples, in particular, the Mi'kmaq. [4][5]


Acadia was one of the five regions of New France. Acadia was located in what is now Eastern Canada's Maritime provinces, as well as parts of Quebec and present-day Maine to the Kennebec River. It was ethnically, geographically and administratively different from the other French colonies such as the French colony of Canada. As a result, the Acadians developed a distinct history and culture.[6] The settlers whose descendants became Acadians primarily came from the centerwestern region of France, such as the rural areas of Poitou-Charentes.[7]


During the French and Indian War, (known in Canada as The Seven Years' War[8]) British colonial officers suspected that Acadians were aligned with France, after finding some Acadians fighting alongside French troops at Fort Beauséjour. Though most Acadians remained neutral during the war, the British, together with New England legislators and militia, carried out the Great Expulsion (Le Grand Dérangement) of the Acadians between 1755 and 1764. They forcefully deported approximately 11,500 Acadians from the maritime region. Approximately one-third perished from disease and drowning.[9] In retrospect, the result has been described as an ethnic cleansing of the Acadians from Maritime Canada.[10][11]


Acadians speak a variety of French called Acadian French, which has a few regional accents (for example, Chiac in the southeast of New Brunswick, or Brayon in the northwest of New Brunswick). Most can also speak English. The Louisiana Cajun descendants tend to speak English, including Cajun English, and/or Louisiana French, a relative of Acadian French from Canada.


Estimates of contemporary Acadian populations vary widely. The Canadian census of 2006 reported only 96,145 Acadians in Canada, based on self-declared ethnic identity.[12] However the Canadian Encyclopedia estimates that there are at least 500,000 of Acadian ancestry in Canada, which would include many who declared their ethnic identity for the census as French or as Canadian.[2]

Acadians by Samuel Scott, Annapolis Royal, 1751

Acadians by Samuel Scott, Annapolis Royal, 1751

Homme Acadien (Acadian Man) by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur represents a Mi'kmaq man in the area of Acadia according to the Nova Scotia Museum.

Homme Acadien (Acadian Man) by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur represents a Mi'kmaq man in the area of Acadia according to the Nova Scotia Museum.

During the early 17th century,[13] about 60 French families were established in Acadia. They developed relations with the peoples of the Wabanaki Confederacy (particularly the regional Mi'kmaq). The Acadians lived mainly in the coastal regions of the Bay of Fundy; they reclaimed farming land from the sea by building dikes to control water and drain certain wetlands.


Living in a contested borderland region between French Canada and the British territories on New England and the coast, the Acadians often became entangled in the conflict between the powers. Their competition in Europe played out in North America as well. Over a period of 74 years, six wars (the four French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War, and Father Le Loutre's War) took place in Acadia and Nova Scotia, in which the Wabanaki Confederacy and some Acadians fought to keep the British from taking over the region. While France lost political control of Acadia in 1713, the Mí'kmaq did not concede land to the British. Along with Acadians, the Mi'kmaq used military force to resist the British. That was particularly evident in the early 1720s during Dummer's War.


The British had conquered Acadia in 1710. Over the next 45 years, the Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain. Many were influenced by Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, who from his arrival in 1738 until his capture in 1755, preached against the "English devils".[14] Father Le Loutre led the Acadian people during the Acadian Exodus, as an act of defiance towards British demands and oppression. Acadians took part in various militia operations against the British and maintained vital supply lines to the French Fortress of Louisbourg and Fort Beausejour.[15] During the French and Indian War, the British sought to neutralize any military threat posed by the Acadians and to interrupt the vital supply lines which they provided to Louisbourg by making them sign an oath of allegiance to the crown.[16] [17]


The British founded the town of Halifax and fortified it in 1749 in order to establish a base against the French. The Mi'kmaq resisted the increased number of British (Protestant) settlements by making numerous raids on Halifax, Dartmouth, Lawrencetown, and Lunenburg. During the French and Indian War, the Mi'kmaq assisted the Acadians in resisting the British during the Expulsion of the Acadians.[18]


Many Acadians might have signed an unconditional oath to the British monarchy had the circumstances been better, while other Acadians would not sign because it was religious oath which denied the Catholic faith because the British Monarch was head of the Church of England.[19] Acadians had numerous reasons against signing an oath of loyalty to the British Crown. Acadian men feared that signing the oath would commit them to fighting against France during wartime. They also worried about whether their Mi'kmaq neighbours might perceive an oath as acknowledging the British claim to Acadia rather than that of the indigenous Mi'kmaq. Acadians believed that if they signed the oath, they might put their villages at risk of attack by the Mi'kmaq.[20]

A picture of four Acadian women, 1895[27]

A picture of four Acadian women, 1895[27]

Acadian woman making a rug, 1938

Acadian woman making a rug, 1938

Acadians are a vibrant minority, particularly in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, and in Louisiana (Cajuns) and northern Maine, United States. Since 1994, Le Congrès Mondial Acadien has worked as an organization to unite these disparate communities and help preserve the culture.


In 1881, Acadians at the First Acadian National Convention, held in Memramcook, New Brunswick, designated 15 August, the Christian feast of the Assumption of Mary, as the national feast day of their community. On that day, the Acadians celebrate by having a tintamarre, a big parade and procession for which people dress up with the colors of Acadia and make a lot of noise and music.


The national anthem of the Acadians is "Ave Maris Stella", adopted in 1884 at Miscouche, Prince Edward Island. The anthem was revised at the 1992 meeting of the Société Nationale de l'Acadie. The second, third and fourth verses were translated into French, with the first and last kept in the original Latin.


The Federation des Associations de Familles Acadiennes of New Brunswick and the Société Saint-Thomas d'Aquin of Prince Edward Island have resolved to commemorate 13 December annually as "Acadian Remembrance Day," in memory of the sinking of the Duke William and of the nearly 2,000 Acadians deported from Ile-Saint Jean who died in 1758 while being deported across the North Atlantic: from hunger, disease and drowning.[26] The event has been commemorated annually since 2004; participants mark the day by wearing a black star.

(1684–1758). A regional leader, Noel was among the more than 350 Acadians who died during the deportation when the Duke William sank on 13 December 1758.[31] He was widely celebrated and places have been named for him in Nova Scotia.

Noël Doiron

(d. 1726). An example of an Acadian who resisted British rule. He took over a small ship off Acadia and was tried for piracy. The trial was publicized to the Mi'kmaq tribes as an example of English law. Guedry's trial was used as a counter to local customs, which allowed the holding of a group—i.e., all Englishmen—responsible for an individual's crimes. His prosecutors also used his trial as a test case for separating English law as applied to Acadia from law applied to First Nations groups like the Wabanaki Confederacy.

Jean Baptiste Guedry

an Acadian folk hero and militia leader who joined French priest Jean-Louis Le Loutre in resisting the British occupation of Acadia.

Joseph Broussard

Acadian cuisine

Aquitani

Chiac

History of Nova Scotia

Iberians

Paul Carmel Laporte

Louisiana Creoles

Military history of Nova Scotia

Occitania

Occitans

Dupont, Jean-Claude (1977). (in French). Montreal: Éditions Leméac.

Héritage d'Acadie

Faragher, John Mack (2005). . W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-24243-0.

A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland

Frink, Tim (1999). New Brunswick, A Short History (2nd ed.). Summerville, New Brunswick: Stonington Books.  978-0-9682-5001-3.

ISBN

Mosher, Howard Frank (1997). . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-544-39124-6.

North Country: A Personal Journey Through the Borderland

Scott, Michaud. . Retrieved 5 March 2008..

"History of the Madawaska Acadians"

Chetro-Szivos, J. Talking Acadian: Work, Communication, and Culture, YBK 2006, New York  0-9764359-6-9.

ISBN

Cordasco, Francesco. Dictionary of American Immigration History (Scarecrow, 1990), pp. 1–5, brief overview.

online

Deveaux Cohoon, Cassie (2013). Jeanne Dugas of Acadia. Cape Breton University Press.  978-1-897009-71-0.

ISBN

Griffiths, Naomi. From Migrant to Acadian: a North American border people, 1604–1755, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.

Hodson, Christopher. The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History (Oxford University Press; 2012) 260 pages

online review by Kenneth Banks

Jobb, Dean. The Acadians: A People's Story of Exile and Triumph, John Wiley & Sons, 2005 (published in the United States as The Cajuns: A People's Story of Exile and Triumph)

Kennedy, Gregory M.W. Something of a Peasant Paradise? Comparing Rural Societies in Acadie and the Loudunais, 1604-1755 (MQUP 2014)

Laxer, James. The Acadians: In Search of a Homeland, Doubleday Canada, October 2006  0-385-66108-8.

ISBN

Le Bouthillier, Claude, Phantom Ship, XYZ editors, 1994,  978-1-894852-09-8

ISBN

Magord, André, The Quest for Autonomy in Acadia (Bruxelles etc., Peter Lang, 2008) (Études Canadiennes - Canadian Studies 18).

Runte, Hans R. (1997). . Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-0237-1.

Writing Acadia: The Emergence of Acadian Literature 1970–1990

Thematic project on the Acadians at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography

1755: The History and the Stories

Musee acadien and Research Centre of West Pubnico

Jean Pitre circa 1635

New-Brunswick and Nova Scotial Acadian Portal

Acadians of Madawaska, Maine

Quit rents paid by Acadians (1743–53)