A Reluctant Engagement: Mi’kmaw-European Interaction along the Annapolis River at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

I am giving the following presentation at 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening January 3, 2012 in the Lower Hall of St. George & St. Andrew United Church in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

Pierre du Gua, the sieur de Mons, and Samuel de Champlain chose to build their small French outpost along the Annapolis River because of a nearby (and friendly) Mi’kmaw community.  But, aside from the first few years of settlement, Europeans did not record much about the specific group of people who lived along the river’s banks during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Although there is little source material remaining from this period, the British conquest of Port Royal provides an important opportunity to gain insight about this local Mi’kmaw population.  Developing from his PhD research on Aboriginal experiences of the conquest of New France, Thomas Peace will share his work on the Kespukwitk Mi’kmaq at the turn of the eighteenth century.  His presentation will use census data and local parish records to compare local Mi’kmaw experiences to those elsewhere in peninsular Mi’kma’ki (modern-day Nova Scotia), expanding our understanding of Mi’kmaw interaction with European officials and Acadian settlers.