[Mb-civic] A dark chapter in Massachusetts history - William Fowler - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

  A dark chapter in Mass. history

By William Fowler  |  July 23, 2005

IT IS TIME for Massachusetts to recognize a great wrong. Two hundred and 
fifty years ago this summer, Massachusetts helped launch a brutal 
campaign of ''ethnic cleansing" against the Acadians of modern day New 
Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

In the early part of the 17th century hundreds of French peasant 
families migrated from France and settled in a region they called 
L'Acadie (modern day New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). These families 
diked and farmed the rich marshlands bordering the Bay of Fundy. 
Isolated from the principal French settlements in the Saint Lawrence 
River Valley, the Acadians evolved a distinct culture, one that drew 
heavily upon their native Micmac neighbors with whom they often 
intermarried.

Unfortunately for the Acadians, their homeland was contested ground as 
the world's two superpowers, France and England, struggled to dominate 
North America. In 1713, at the end of one of the many wars fought 
between these two nations, France ceded Acadia to England and with it 
sovereignty over the native Acadians. However, customs, language, and 
religion divided these people from their new English rulers. In 
neighboring Massachusetts, ministers and politicians railed against the 
Acadians. Venomous attacks on the ''perfidious" French filled newspapers 
while from their pulpits ministers damned the ''papists."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/23/a_dark_chapter_in_mass_history/
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