Treaty of peace concluded between the English and the Indians of Acadia during the autumn of 1753—An infamous deed com mitted by Conner and Grace, two inhabitants of Halifax, puts an end to the treaty—Revenge of the Indians—Captivity of Anthony Casteel, messenger of the Council—His journal—Mistakes of historians with regard to these two incidents.

Whether it was that the French were ashamed of their own conduct, or that they began to see it was impolitic, or that they met with more apathy on the part of the Indians than they had expected, or, perhaps, for all these motives together; at all events, we have every reason to believe that they soon gave up the odious plans they had formed against the- English settlements; this, at least, is the inference to be drawn from the general trend of events.

In November, 1752, the preliminaries of a treaty of peace between the governor and the Micmac chiefs were arranged at Halifax. Three years before, a similar peace had been signed with the Indians of the St. John River, and until now this peace had not been broken. However, this peace was so short that Le Loutre and the French are almost invariably accused of having prevented the treaty from being concluded. This might be considered probable if we had not manifest evidence of the contrary.

The act which gave rise to this accusation was the following: In April, 1758, two inhabitants of Halifax, John Conner and James Grace, came before the council and presented seven Indian scalps for which they claimed the usual bounty. They related how’ that, with John Poor and Michael Hagarthy, they were wrecked on the coast; that their companions were killed and scalped : that, after several days of captivity, they took advantage of the absence of the Indians to butcher the woman and the child that had been left with them; and that, on the return of these Indians, they had fallen upon them, killing and scalping them.

The tale was improbable. It was hard to explain why they had been left alone with a woman and a child, and still more difficult to account for their not having run away instead of waiting for the return of the Indians. This was, doubtless, the impression produced on the council, which ordered: “that John Conner and James Grace do give .security for their appearance at the next general court, in case any complaint should be brought against them by the Indians.”

“This is the substance of their story,” said the surveyor Morris, afterward judge of the province, writing to Cornwallis, who was then in England; but, as the Indians complained, a little after the sailing of Conner’s schooner, that one exactly answering her description put into Jedore, where these Indians had their stores, and robbed them of forty barrels of provisions given them by the Government, ’tis supposed that these men might afterwards have been apprehended by some of this tribe whom they killed as they describe.

“If this be the case, its a very unhappy accident at this juncture, and time only can discover what its consequences will be. The chiefs of every tribe in the Peninsula had sent in messages of friendship, and, I believe, avoid have signed articles of peace this spring, if this accident does not prevent them.”

The Reverend Andrew Brown, who comments on what Morris called an unhappy accident. adds these remarks:

“Thus far Mr. Morris; but the facts were still blacker than he suspected. After having robbed the Indian store-houses, Conner and the crew of his unfortunate schooner were obliged to encounter the fury of the deep. They suffered shipwreck; the two survivors, Conner and Grace, were found by the Indians drenched with water and destitute of everything, were taken home, cherished, and kindly entertained, yet watched their opportunity, and to procure the price of scalps, murdered their benefactors, and came to Halifax to claim the wages of their atrocious deed.

“The Indians, as may well be supposed, were exasperated beyond measure at this act of ingratitude and murder. (Revenge boils keenly in their bosoms, and their teeth were set on edge.) To procure immediate retaliation they sent some of their warriors to Halifax, to complain of the difficulty they found to keep their provisions safe during the fishing season, and to request that the Governor would send a small vessel to bring their families and their stores to Halifax. In compliance with this desire, the vessel and crew mentioned in the Journal of Anthony Casteel were engaged, tho’ several suspected from the fli'st that it was an Indian feint to spill blood.”

The ruse the Indians had adopted for the sake of revenge met with complete success. A schooner was put at their disposal in order to bring back their families to Halifax. The crew consisted of Anthony Casteel, messenger of the council, of Captain Bannerman, of a Mr Cleveland, and of four sailors. All were butchered and scalped except Casteel. How he was saved is explained minutely in the journal he kept, which, an his return, was sworn to and transmitted by the Governor to the Secretary of State. It is a thrilling tale and shows the base treachery of which Conner and Grace had been guilty against the Indians.

Casteel, after the massacre of his companions, was dragged from Pedore, not far from Halifax, to Bay Verte. Near this place they reached a camp of almost five hundred Indians, who made a circle around him. After deliberating on his fate, an old man, the father-in-law of the chief whose prisoner Casteel Avas, declared to him that his life would be spared 011 payment of a ransom of three hundred livres. “We were on the point of signing a lasting peace,” said the old man; “we had for a long time abstained from any act of hostility against your countrymen; but now that the English have begun, we will not stop. We had sheltered two shipwrecked men. who, the day before, had stolen most of our provisions; they were almost lifeless; we had brought them into our camp, where we fed and took care of them; we were soon to take them to Halifax when, taking advantage of our absence, they massacred during the night two men, three women and two children, one an infant at the breast. In return for such a deed our vengeance would not be satisfied even if we had killed as many English as their victims had hairs on their heads. We have hitherto always spared women when we could; henceforth, we will not even spare the infant in its mother’s womb.” Then he tore up before Casteel the paper that bore the preliminaries of tlie treaty.

These facts, Casteel goes on to say, were continued by other persons. The culprits were Conner and Grace, who, some weeks before. had brought to Halifax seven scalps, for which they claimed the bounty.

The chief who held Casteel prisoner stopped at the house of an Acadian named Jacques Vigneau du Maurice. There he met some Indians and a French officer. One of them asked him what ransom he wanted for his prisoner. “Three hundred horse,” said Casteel’s master. “I will give them to you,'’ said another Indian, “my father was hanged at Boston.” He rushed at Casteel to stab him; but the French officer, who had been watching the Indian's movement, gave Casteel a great shove that stretched him 011 his back arid saved him from the blow. The sons of James Vigneau carried him into a little room, where he swooned away. When he came to himself, Vigneau’s wife offered him a glass of wine and asked him if he was wounded. He said no. She then went to a chest, opened it and took from it fifty pieces of six livret forming the three hundred Hr res of his ransom. Jacques Vigneau called Casteel's master and counted out the money to him saying: “This man belongs to me; let none of you come here to molest him, or I will break his bones. I then asked Vigneau,” says Casteel, “if he would take my note, he answered no; that he believed I was an honest man, but, if he was never to receive one farthing, that should not hinder him saving the English to the utmost of his power, even to the last shirt on his back. The next day Vigneau gave me a shirt, a few other articles, a six-livres piece, and we parted.”

I have dwelt at some length upon these two incidents, the Conner and Grace butchery and Casteel’s adventures, because all the historians that mention them point to the murder of Casteel’s companions as to an infamous crime traceable to French instigation. Some of them, literally believing the declaration of Conner and Grace, count this as another crime referable to the same source, although the companions of these two miscreants really perished within their vessel was wrecked.

Parkman, as usual, must needs fall into the worst possible view against the French. Il is amusing to see with what a sagacious air of superior penetration he strives to entangle the facts and circumstances so as to implicate the French. He harks hack live years in order to weave a chain of circumstantial evidence that justifies him in concluding, or in insinuating, that the preliminaries of the treaty in the previous autumn were only a stratagem invented by the French.

It is true that the Compiler has not summarized the contents of Casteel’s journal as satisfactorily as. could have been wished. However, there is enough in what he has given, provided the summary of Casteel’s journal be compared with Conner’s declaration, to show that the incidents of the one are connected with those of the other. There might still remain some uncertainty; but, if Parkman was in doubt, he ought either not to have touched the matter or to have pushed his researches farther. Instead of a cruel crime committed by Indians at the instigation of the French, we find an act of excusable hostility done by these Indians to avenge a shameful crime committed against their tribe by Conner and Grace.

Though the responsibility of this deed rests only on two unimportant individuals and not on the government, yet it is none the less certain that the peace, which was about to be definitively signed, was broken for a long time to come on account of this crime, and that deeds of blood were the outcome of it, deeds that exasperated the authorities and largely contributed to shape the unfortunate events that followed. It would seem that the Governor’s duty was, as soon as he had discovered the atrocious conduct of Conner and Grace, to confer with the Indians, repudiate this crime, and give them satisfaction in some way or other. Nothing of the sort appears. Those haughty soldiers had too much contempt for the savage to treat him as a human being. We do not even hear of any punishment inflicted on the monsters, Conner and Grace. One thing I cannot understand is the strange conduct of the Government signing the preliminaries of a treaty of peace with the Indians in the autumn, and yet keeping up, during the ensuing winter and spring, the bounty on Indian scalps.

In a letter of July 23rd, 1753, the Governor, communicating to the Lords of Trade the sworn deposition of Casteel, mentions the facts of the case. This letter is in the volume of the Archives; but the Compiler has thought proper to suppress all that it contains on this subject, just as he has completely omitted another letter of the 29tli relating to this affair. Whatever may have been the Compiler’s motives, his omissions have had the effect of leaving the question somewhat muddled ; hence it is that some historians have eluded it, and others have fallen into an erroneous interpretation of it.

Mistakes of this nature, shifting the crimes of one party on to the shoulders of another, are not calculated to inspire confidence in history. The events related above contain the key to an important situation. By throwing on the Indians or the French the odium that really belonged to English subjects, the entire sequence of facts in this obscure epoch becomes very seriously distorted. Had not-Casteel escaped the fate of his companions, or had he not kept a journal of his adventures, we should never have been able to get at the truth of this story; for, even with his sworn declaration before them, men have found means to palm off as the truth what is only a shameless counterfeit. All history, and particularly the history of Acadia, is perforce honeycombed with similar lies, which one writer passes on to another, and which ultimately crystallize into indisputable facts.

The most barbarous have not always been the Indians. It would be hard to find any Indian misdeeds that can be compared to the duplicity and atrocity of the crimes attributed to Stoughton, Church, Waldron, Chubb, Love-well and Harmon. And these were not irresponsible individuals like Grace and Conner; one of them was a governor, another a colonel, a third a major, and the three others captains. It may truly be said that the government of Massachusetts is responsible for these horrors, since it tolerated or encouraged them by tempting bounties for scalps of Indian men. squaws and children.

In striking contrast with these colonial cruelties is the bearing of the Home Government toward the Indians. Had its counsels been heeded many misfortunes might have been averted. Such acts as I have just related could only perpetuate hatred and revenge. Twice was Cornwallis lectured by the Lords of Trade because he wished to wage against the Indians a merciless war :

“As to your opinion of never hereafter making peace with the Indians and of totally extirpating them, we cannot but think that as the prosecution of such a design must be attended u itli acts of great severity, it may prove full of dangerous consequences to the safety of His Majesty’s other colonies upon the continent, by filling the minds of the bordering Indians with ideas of our cruelty and instigating them to a dangerous spirit of resentment.”

In a subsequent letter the Lords of Trade, apparently dreading Cornwallis’s impetuosity, renewed the same advice: “Gentler methods and offers of peace have more frequently prevailed with the Indians than the sword.”

These gentle methods do not seem to have been congenial to the English national character; and, though circumstances made it the evident interest of Englishmen to adopt these methods, they seldom have been able to count on the absolute fidelity of any Indian tribe. One would think there lies, deep down in the Anglo-Saxon, a rock-bed of roughness which the best instruments of civilization cannot smooth, just as in the Gaul there lurks a mercurial substratum of levity which uo disasters can solidify. In spite of his defects, the Frenchman was much the more successful with the Indians; he honestly strove to make the latter forget the difference between the pale-face and the red-man, whereas the Englishman ever sought to emphasize his own superiority. The former’s first thought was, “How shall I win the Indian’s heart?” The latter’s main question was, or seems to have been, “How shall I make that d-d redskin respect me?” and he proceeded to enforce this respect by a dignified demeanor, if he was well-bred, or by surliness, if he was a cad. This scornful bearing led to brutality, and brutality led to that curious historical fact which Sir Charles Duke chronicles when he says that the Anglo-Saxon is the only race that exterminates the savage.

Soon after tlie events recorded above it seemed likely that a treaty of peace would be made between the English and the Micmac Indians. Captain Hussey, commanding at Fort Lawrence, notified Le Loutre to bring with him, according to agreement, a delegation of Indians to confer about the preliminaries of a treaty. He received them, says Le Loutre, with such disdainful haughtiness that the Indians, who had taken the trouble to come from a long distance, went back greatly offended. The negotiations were broken off. History is full of similar incidents. What disasters might have been averted had. the advice of the Lords of Trade recommending gentle measures been followed ! Something of the same kind occurred about this time, when General Braddock undertook his disastrous expedition to the Monongahela River. He received the Indians with such contemptuous stiffness that they all abandoned him with the result we know.