Article content continued

The comic book version of Cornwallis paints him as a bloody-minded racist intent on killing every native in the most gruesome manner possible. The indisputable evidence of his scalping bounty certainly bolsters that argument. But a closer look reveals Cornwallis is not the villain of this piece. He’s more like the victim.

Photo by Wikipedia

When Cornwallis arrived in Halifax harbour in June 1749 with 2,500 settlers, his task was to establish the first permanent English colony in the area. And to do so as cheaply as possible. Lacking substantial military resources, he sought to maintain a pre-existing peace treaty with nearby Mi’kmaq tribes and asked the neutral French-Catholic Acadians to take a loyalty oath to the British crown. For New France, however, which considered the region to be within its sphere of influence, this new colony posed a significant threat. A response was necessary. Enter Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre.

Le Loutre was an intensely puritanical Catholic missionary operating throughout the Maritimes as an agent for the government of New France. One of early colonial Canada’s most fascinating figures, he considered the Acadians under his remit disappointingly lax in their religious and political outlook and found common cause instead with the Mi’kmaq, who shared his aggressive zeal and sense of opportunism.

Quebec City ordered Le Loutre to do whatever necessary to get rid of the English at Halifax. Since England and France were not currently at war, Le Loutre’s solution was to convince his Mi’kmaq flock to attack Cornwallis’ settlers. “We cannot do better than to incite the Indians to continue warring on the English,” he wrote to his political masters. “I shall do my best to make it look to the English as if this plan comes from the Indians and that I have no part in it.”