ACADIAN TATAMAGOUCHE

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As a counter-move the French built the great fortress of Louisbourg and its building incited the Acadians on the mainland to be more independent of, if not more hostile, to the British. The French garrison at Louisbourg, too provided the main market for the farm produce and the cattle of the Acadians. There were complaints that at times they refused to sell to the garrison at Annapolis Royal so intent were they that Louisbourg should be supplied. It was there that they obtained gold and silver, which money, according to tradition, they buried in fear always of the day of their removal. But the shipping of contraband cattle and produce to Louisbourg by an all water route from the main Acadian settlements was attended with the peril of its being intercepted by British men-of-war on the long voyage around Cape Sable. To overcome this danger an alternative and safer route via Cobequid and Tatamagouche was adopted.

Their produce and cattle the Acadians gathered at Cunard, and these they shipped by boat to Chiganois* or Isgonish, the largest Acadian settlement in Cobequid near the mouth of the Isgonish River. From there, a portage led up the river and over the summit of the Cobequid Range till the sources of the French and the Waugh’s Rivers were reached. Then, the portage followed either one or both of these rivers, down to the tidal waters at Tatamagouche. There, sloops, shallops and schooners were loaded with the cattle and produce and usually in safety made the voyage to Louisbourg. The portage from Isgonish to Tatamagouche had other uses as well. It formed a connecting link between these settlements, otherwise isolated, and was also a necessary part of the communications between the Acadian settlements on the mainland and those in St. John’s Island (now Prince Edward Island).

*In contemporaneous documents this river and settlement is called Chiganois or Isgonish. I have adopted the latter word, which seems to have been the one more commonly used. The settlement and river is now generally known by its modern name of Belmont.

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