Battle of Bloody Creek (1711)

Coordinates: 44°49′21″N 65°18′34″W / 44.8224°N 65.3095°W / 44.8224; -65.3095
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Battle of Bloody Creek
Part of
Carleton Corner, Nova Scotia
Result Mi'kmaq victory
Belligerents Kingdom of Great Britain Great Britain
"The Pine Tree flag of New England" New England
Mi'kmaq people
Commanders and leaders David Pigeon L'Aymalle (first name and rank unknown)Strength 70 provincial militia[1] 50–150[2]Casualties and losses 16 killed, 9 wounded, rest captured[3] unknown
Designations
Official nameBloody Creek National Historic Site of Canada
Designated1930

The Battle of Bloody Creek was fought on 10/21 June 1711

Carleton Corner, Nova Scotia, and was also the location of a battle in 1757
.

The battle was part of an orchestrated attempt by the leaders of

Annapolis Royal. The British had only captured the fort the previous year and they only had a very tenuous control of the area. The battle, in which the entire British force was captured or killed, emboldened the French and their native allies to blockade Annapolis Royal.[4]
Without heavy weapons, the force was unable to effectively attack the fort, and abandoned the siege when British reinforcements arrived by sea.

Background

Treaty of Ryswick.[6]

In the 1710

Annapolis Royal, with Samuel Vetch as the British Governor of Nova Scotia, and the fort was renamed Fort Anne. This expedition left a garrison numbering about 450 men, that was composed of a combination of British marines and New England provincial militia.[7] The garrison was reinforced with regular troops in the following months, however the British only had effective control of the fort and the nearby town.[8] The terms of capitulation had included a provision in which the French residents within 3 miles (4.8 km) of the fort were to be protected, provided they took an appropriate oath to the British crown. A total of 481 Acadians were covered by this provision,[9] but by mid-January 1711 only 57 had actually taken an oath.[10]

When word of Port Royal's fall reached France, the marine minister

Penobscot mother), was given military command of Acadia, and received similar orders.[12][13]

Prelude

The first winter was a particularly difficult one for the British garrison, which was reduced by early 1711 to about 240 "effective men Officers included" due to death, disease, and desertion.

Mi'kmaq and Abenakis opposed to British rule.[1] In his reports he noted that the fort was "every day more and more Infested with skulking Indians", and that villagers within the banlieu (the three-mile protection area) were being harassed.[14] Desperate for timbers to repair the fort, Vetch organized a force of 70 New England militia under Captain David Pigeon to accompany the fort's engineer on an expedition up the river. Pigeon's instructions were to assure the loggers that they would be paid and protected if they brought the timber down to the fort, but that there would be "severity" if they did not.[2]

Battle of Bloody Creek (1711) is located in Nova Scotia
Battle site
Battle site
Annapolis Royal
Annapolis Royal
class=notpageimage|
A modern map of Nova Scotia, showing the battle location

Not long before Pigeon's party set out, a Native force organized by Gaulin and Saint-Castin arrived in the area north of Annapolis Royal, with instructions to harass and ambush the British when the opportunity presented itself. The exact size and composition of this force is not known with precision. Vetch reported it to be 150, but other sources reported it to be as low as 50 men. Many historians report that the force was composed of Abenakis,[2][3] although Geoffrey Plank and others claim that the force also included some Mi'kmaq.[15][16] British Lieutenant Paul Mascarene for a time thought that some local Acadians might have been involved, but thought this unlikely after learning of its recent arrival (literally the day before, according to one account) in the area.[2][16][17] The identity and ethnicity of its leader is also uncertain; Governor Vaudreuil reported that it was led by someone named l'Aymalle.[18]

Battle

The New Englanders departed Annapolis Royal In Georgia on 10/21 June in a whaleboat and two flatboats, Going up the Annapolis River.[2][16] Because they were delayed by the tide, word of the force's departure preceded them, giving the Natives time to set up an ambush near the mouth of what now is known as Bloody Creek. The whaleboat was faster on the water, and was about a mile (1.6 km) ahead of the flatboats when it reached the ambush site. The surprise was complete: all but one of the whaleboat's men were killed. Hearing the gunfire, the flatboats hurried to catch up, and carelessly made directly for the whaleboat. This exposed them to fire from Natives on the shore, and they suffered further significant casualties before they were surrounded and the survivors surrendered.[16] Sixteen were killed, nine Injured, and the rest were captured.[3]

Aftermath

Nova Scotia Governor Samuel Vetch

The victory at Bloody Creek rallied the local resistance, and prompted many of the Acadians who were nominally under British protection to withdraw to the north.

Saint Lawrence River; Governor Vetch, who had accompanied the expedition as a leader of the provincial militia, returned to Annapolis Royal with 200 provincial militia, after which the besiegers withdrew.[20]

Annapolis Royal remained in British hands for the remainder of the war, but Acadians and Natives continued to resist the British after peace was reached and Acadia was formally ceded to Britain with the

Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.[21] This resistance was motivated by a French desire to recover Acadia and by the concerns of the Abenaki and Mi'kmaq, who had not been parties to Utrecht, to British encroachment on their lands and liberties after the war ended. The Natives disputes led to Dummer's War in the 1720s; it was fought primarily in northern New England, but British settlements in Nova Scotia were also attacked.[22] The disputes between the French and British over Acadia/Nova Scotia were not resolved until the British conquests of the Seven Years' War and the expulsion of the Acadians in the 1750s.[23] The site was again the scene of battle during the Seven Years' War,[24] and has been designated by the Canadian government as a National Historic Site.[25]

See also

Endnotes

  1. ^ a b Faragher, p. 134
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Griffiths (2005), p. 246.
  3. ^ a b c d Faragher, p. 135
  4. ^ pp.91-92
  5. ^ MacVicar, pp. 13–29
  6. ^ MacVicar, pp. 41–44
  7. ^ MacVicar, p. 65
  8. ^ Faragher, pp. 119–122
  9. ^ Drake, p. 261
  10. ^ Griffiths (2005), p. 244.
  11. ^ Lee, David. "Biography of Antoine Gaulin". Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
  12. ^ Salagnac, Georges. "Biography of Saint-Castin". Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
  13. ^ Colonial Documents on the settlement of New York Vol. 9, p. 584
  14. ^ a b Griffiths (2005), p. 245.
  15. ^ Plank, p. 60
  16. ^ a b c d Nova Scotia Historical Society, p. 29
  17. ^ Note Thomas Peace. Two Conquests. PhD Thesis. 2011. York University, p. 163 indicates there is no evidence to support the Mi'kmaq participated in the battle.
  18. ^ Charlevoix, p. 238
  19. ^ a b Griffiths (2005), p. 247.
  20. ^ Griffiths (2005), p. 249.
  21. ^ Faragher, pp. 135–146
  22. ^ Murdoch, pp. 391–402
  23. ^ See e.g. Faragher, Griffiths (2005), or Plank for detailed treatments of Nova Scotia's history in this time.
  24. ^ Faragher, p. 400
  25. ^ Bloody Creek. Directory of Federal Heritage Designations. Parks Canada. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  1. ^ French records, using the modern Gregorian calendar, indicate the date of this action as 21 June; English records, which were still using the Julian calendar, list it as happening on 10 June. In this article both dates are used; the Julian dates are 11 days before the Gregorian dates.

References

External links

44°49′21″N 65°18′34″W / 44.8224°N 65.3095°W / 44.8224; -65.3095

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