Raid on Dartmouth (1749)

Not to be confused with Raid on Dartmouth (1751).

Raid on Dartmouth (1749)
Part of Father Le Loutre’s War
Plaque to Raid on Dartmouth (1749) and the blockhouse that was built in response (1750), Dartmouth Heritage Museum
Date September 30, 1749 Location Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Result Mi’kmaq victory
Belligerents
Mi'kmaq militia Acadian militia	British America
Commanders and leaders
	Major Ezekiel Gilman
Strength
40 Mi'kmaq	6 British
Casualties and losses
3 killed	4 killed, 2 wounded

The Raid on Dartmouth (1749) occurred during Father Le Loutre’s War on September 30, 1749 when a Mi’kmaq militia from Chignecto raided Major Ezekiel Gilman's sawmill at present-day Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, killing four workers and wounding two. This raid was one of seven the Wabanaki Confederacy and Acadians would conduct against the settlement during the war.

Historical context

Despite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily occupied by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq. Father Le Loutre's War began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports on June 21, 1749. By unilaterally establishing Halifax the British were violating earlier treaties with the Mi'kmaq (1726), which were signed after Father Rale's War. The British quickly began to build other settlements. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and French attacks on the new Protestant settlements, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (1749), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1749), Dartmouth (1750), Lunenburg (1753) and Lawrencetown (1754).

Despite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily occupied by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq. By the time Cornwallis had arrived in Halifax, there was a long history of the Wabanaki Confederacy (which included the Mi'kmaq) protecting their land by killing British civilians along the New England/ Acadia border in Maine (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724, 1745, 1746, 1747).

The Mi'kmaq saw the founding of Halifax without negotiation as a violation of earlier agreements with the British. On 24 September 1749 the Mi'kmaq formally declared their hostility to the British plans for settlement without more formal negotiations. Raids started at Canso, then Chignecto and then to present-day Dartmouth. During Father Le Loutre’s War, there were 8 raids on Dartmouth.

Raid

On September 30, 1749, about forty Mi'kmaq attacked six men who were in Dartmouth cutting trees. The Mi'kmaq killed four of them on the spot, took one prisoner and one escaped. Two of the men were scalped and the heads of the others were cut off. The attack was on the saw mill at Dartmouth Cove (Mill Location ), which was under the command of Major Ezekiel Gilman. A detachment of rangers was sent after the raiding party and cut off the heads of two Mi'kmaq and scalped one.

Consequence

Major Gilman's (Gilmot's) sawmill, Dartmouth Nova Scotia 1750

To prevent the French and Wabanaki Confederacy massacres of British families, on October 2, 1749, Governor Edward Cornwallis offered a bounty on the head of every Mi'kmaq. Prior to Cornwallis, there was a long history of Massachusetts Governors issuing bounties for the scalps of Indian men, women, and children in response to the Wabanaki raids on British settlers on the New England/ Acadia border. Cornwallis followed New England's example. He set the amount at the same rate that the Mi'kmaq received from the French for British scalps. The British military paid the Rangers the same rate per scalp as the French military paid the Mi'kmaq for British scalps. To carry out this task, Cornwallis raised two companies of rangers, one led by Major Gilman and the other by Captain William Clapham. These two companies served alongside that of John Gorham's company. The three companies scoured the land around Halifax looking for Mi'kmaq.

Cornwallis also stationed 30 men guarding the saw mill over the following winter with two armed vessels. Gilman left unannounced to New England by April 1750. By July, Cornwallis had given the saw mill to Clapham to manage. In September, he gave command of Gilman's rangers to Captain Francis Bartelo. )

Despite Cornwallis' efforts to defend the community, in July 1750, the Mi'kmaq killed and scalped 7 men who were at work in Dartmouth. In August 1750, 353 people arrived on the ship Alderney and began the town of Dartmouth. The town was laid out in the autumn of that year. The following month, on September 30, 1750, Dartmouth was attacked again by the Mi'kmaq and five more residents were killed. In October 1750 a group of about eight men went out "to take their diversion; and as they were fowling, they were attacked by the Indians, who took the whole prisoners; scalped ... [one] with a large knife, which they wear for that purpose, and threw him into the sea ..."

In March 1751, the Mi’kmaq attacked on two more occasions, bringing the total number of raids to six in the previous two years. Three months later, on May 13, 1751, Broussard led sixty Mi'kmaq and Acadians to attack Dartmouth again, in what would be known as the "Dartmouth Massacre".

Controversy

Mi'kmaq tribal historian Daniel N. Paul does not trust the British account of this raid. He dismisses the possibility that Mi'kmaq people would attack unarmed civilians and posits, instead, that the woodcutters were probably armed better than the Mi'kmaq. He also affirms the right of the Mi'kmaq to use military action to defend their land. In his book We Were Not the Savages Paul writes,

"The question this poses is, why was this group of 'defenseless' Englishmen sent out into the forest alone to cut wood during a time of war without troop protection and thus left vulnerable to attack? If this was the case then it smacks of gross incompetence on a British officer's part. If the story is true and not propaganda, a more credible reason for them being sent out without troop protection is that they were not defenseless but as well-armed as the Mi'kmaq and probably more so. This can be reasonably assumed because, as woodcutters, they had axes to cut wood with, which alone would have made them possessors of weapons as lethally effective, and probably more reliable, than most of the arms the Mi'kmaq had access to. In any event, because the English were assaulting the Mi'kmaq and stealing their territory, Cornwallis and his Council should not have been so affronted and reacted so barbarously when the Mi'kmaq fought back. In fighting back to preserve their freedom and country, the Mi'kmaq paid a heavy price."

Paul asserts that Cornwallis used "a few incidents such as these" to justify his bounty proclamation. Cornwallis' decision to put a bounty on the Mi'kmaq did not pivot simply on the Raid on Dartmouth in 1749. By the time Cornwallis had arrived in Halifax, there was a long history of the Wabanaki Confederacy (which included the Mi'kmaq) protecting their land by killing British civilians along the New England/ Acadia border in Maine (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724, 1745).

See also

• List of massacres in Canada

References

Primary Sources

• A genuine narrative of the transactions in Nova Scotia since the settlement, June 1749, till August the 5th, 1751 : in which the nature, soil, and produce of the country are related, with the particular attempts of the Indians to disturb the colony / by John Wilson
• Expeditions of Honour: The Journal of John Salusbury in Halifax edited by Ronald Rompkey - 1982
• London Magazine. v.18 1749. p. 574
• A summary, historical and political, of the first planting, progressive ...By William Douglass, 1755, p. 7

Secondary Sources

• Mrs. William Lawson. The History of The Townships of Dartmouth, Preston and Lawrencetown, Halifax County, Nova Scotia, pp. 4-5
• Landry, Peter. The Lion & The Lily. Vol. 1, Trafford Publishing, Victoria, B.C., 2007.
• Rompkey, Ronald. Editor. Expeditions of Honour: The Journal of John Salusbury in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1749-53. University of Delaware Press, Newark, 1982.
• Grenier, John. The Far Reaches of Empire. War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2008. pp. 154–155
• Murdoch, Beamish. A History of Nova Scotia, Or Acadia. Vol 2. p. 162
• Thomas Akins. History of Halifax, Brookhouse Press. 1895.p. 18 (2002 edition)
• Harry Chapman. In the Wake of the Alderney.
• John Faragher. Great and Nobel Scheme. Norton. 2005.

Footnotes