Edward Cornwallis - Military Career - Father Le Loutre's War

Father Le Loutre's War

Cornwallis sought to project British military forces by establishing forts in the largest Acadian communities, which were located at Windsor (Fort Edward), Grand Pre (Fort Vieux Logis) and Chignecto (Fort Lawrence). As a result, during Cornwallis' three years in Nova Scotia, Acadians and Mi'kmaq people orchestrated attacks on the British at Chignecto, Grand Pre, Dartmouth, Canso, and Halifax. The French erected forts at present day Saint John, Chignecto and Port Elgin, New Brunswick. Cornwallis's forces responded by attacking the Mi'kmaq and Acadians at Mirligueche (later known as Lunenburg), Chignecto and St. Croix.

Frontier warfare against families was the Wabanaki Confederacy and New England approach to warfare with each other since King William's War began in 1688. 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).

As well, to prevent the French and Wabanaki Confederacy massacres of British families, prior to Cornwallis, there was a long history of Massachusetts Governors issuing bounties for the scalps of Indian men, women, and children. Cornwallis followed New England's example when, after the Raid on Dartmouth (1749), he protected the first British settlers in Nova Scotia from being scalped by putting a bounty on the Mi'kmaq (1749).

In Acadia and Nova Scotia, both the British and Wabanaki Confederacy engaged in frontier warfare or total war, that is, both sides of the conflict repeatedly killed combatants and non-combatants. While the British paid the New England Rangers for Mi'kmaq scalps, the French paid members of the Wabanaki Confederacy for British scalps. At the same time the British were adopting an uncomplicated, racially based view of local politics, several leaders of the Mi'kmaq community were developing a similar stance. According to historian Geoffery Plank, both combatants understood their conflict as a "race war", and both the Mi’kmaq and British were “singlemindedly” determined to drive each other from the peninsula of Nova Scotia.

After eighteen months of inconclusive fighting since the outbreak of the war, uncertainties and second thoughts began to disturb both the Mi’kmaq and the British communities. By the summer of 1751 Governor Cornwallis began a more conciliatory policy. For more than a year, Cornwallis sought out Mi’kmaq leaders willing to negotiate a peace. On 16 February 1752, hoping to lay the groundwork for a peace treaty, he repealed his 1749 proclamation against the Wabanaki Confederacy. He eventually gave up, resigned his commission and left the colony in October 1752. (Shortly after Cornwallis' departure, Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope signed the only peace treaty of the war, which was ultimately rejected by most of the other Mi'kmaq leaders. Cope burned the treaty six months after he signed it.)

Cornwallis left Nova Scotia in 1752, three years before Father Le Loutre's War ended in 1755.

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