on which they and their ancestors
had toiled. The Acadians were in acute distress. If they yielded to the
English, not only would their bodies be destroyed by the savage Micmac
Indians, but their immortal souls, they feared, would be in danger.

The Abbe Le Loutre was the parish priest of the Acadian village of
Beaubassin on Chignecto Bay and also missionary to the Micmac Indians,
whose chief village lay in British territory not many miles from
Halifax. British officials of the time denounced him as a determined
fanatic who did not stop short of murder. As in most men, there was in
Le Loutre a mingling of qualities. He was arrogant, domineering, and
intent on his own plans. He hated the English and their heresy, and he
preached to his people against them with frantic invective. He incited
his Indians to bloodshed. But he also knew pity. The custom of the
Indians was to consider prisoners taken by them as their property,
and on one occasion Le Loutre himself paid ransom to the Indians for
thirty-seven English captives and returned them to Halifax. It is
certain that the French government counted upon the influence of French
priests to aid its political designs. "My masters, God and the King" was
a phrase of the Sulpician father Piquet working at this time on the
St. Lawrence. Le Loutre could have echoed the words. He was an ardent
politician and France supplied him with both money and arms to induce
the Indians to attack the English. The savages haunted the outskirts of
Halifax, waylaid and scalped unhappy settlers, and, in due course,
were paid from Louisbourg according to the number of scalps which they
produced. The deliberate intention was to make new English settlements
impossible in Nova Scotia and so to discourage the English that they
should abandon Halifax. All this intrigue occurred in 1749 and the
years following the treaty of peace. If the English suffered, so did the
Acadians. Le Loutre told them that if once they became British subjects
they would lose their priests and find their religion suppressed.
Acadians who took the oath would, he said, be denied the sacraments
of the Church. He would also turn loose on the offenders the murderous
savages whom he controlled. If pressed by the English, the Acadians,
rather than yield, must abandon their lands and remove into French
territory.

At this point arises the question as to what were the limits of this
French territory. In yielding Acadia in 1713, France had