Jean-Louis Le Loutre - Historical Context

Historical Context

He was born in 1709 to Jean-Maurice Le Loutre Després, a paper maker, and Catherine Huet, the daughter of a paper maker, in the parish of Saint-Matthieu in Morlaix, France in Brittany. In 1730, the young Le Loutre entered the Séminaire du Saint-Esprit in Paris; both his parents had already died. After completing his training, Le Loutre transferred to the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères (Seminary of Foreign Missions) in March 1737, as he intended to serve the church abroad. Most of the priests associated with the Paris Foreign Missions Society were assigned as missionaries to Asia, particularly during the nineteenth century, but Le Loutre was assigned to eastern Canada and the Mi'kmaq, an Algonquian-speaking people.

When Le Loutre arrived at mainland Nova Scotia in 1738, the area had been under the rule of the primarily Protestant British for almost thirty years. The British were settled mostly in the capital Annapolis Royal, while Catholic Acadians and the native Mi'kmaq occupied the rest of the region. The mainland portion of Acadia (present-day New Brunswick), and Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island) remained under French control. Prior to the conquest of 1710, the New England colonists had been raiding, pillaging, burning and taking prisoners from Acadian communities for the previous hundred years. The French Canadian colonists and their Indian allies similarly raided New England communities, and both sides made money from the ransom of captives. The Indians adopted some captives, especially younger children, some of whom stayed with the tribes for the rest of their lives.

In 1738 the French had no formal military presence at mainland Nova Scotia. The Acadians had refused for 30 years to sign a loyalty oath to the British Crown, but without French military support, the settlers were unable to give more support to French efforts to recapture Nova Scotia. Le Loutre became an informal military agent and joined with the local Mi'kmaq and Acadian militias to oppose the British Protestant domination of Acadia.