Well, It All Worked, for a While, At Least

The Doom Blogger will now give a short history of a time when it all worked, for a little while. Try to pay attention. This doesn't count in your grade. Well, yes it does, so pay attention. Put the cell phones away. No IM; put those thumbs away.

Before being wiped out, a group of folks managed to ignore the forces swirling around them for almost 150 years -- and then ultimately lost their work, their friends, and their nation. The place was north of Maine: Arcadia. Now Nova Scotia. Even the name has been changed.

In 1620, the Pilgrims landed. In 1604, though, the French had settled on what they called Port Royal or Arcadia. Port Royal was finally "conquered" for good by the English in 1710, and gently occupied until 1740, when the whole place went to the dogs.

What happened in the first hundred years of Arcadia? Not much, and a lot. The people who already lived there, the Mi'kmaq, were neutral toward the French when the colony began. In the 14th century, fishing boats came to the George's Banks for the cod, and landed to salt and dry the fish at Arcadia. Most of those boats were Portuguese, some Norwegian, some French. The Mi'kmaq were already seasoned traders when the French colony began, and not threatened by the mere presence of a small number of Europeans.

In other places, the French focused on fur trade and saving souls, in that order. Arcadia, though, was a farming community; access to the St. Lawrence river, the path to Quebec and Montreal, was controlled by the forts around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Those forts were important to France, and needed food. Arcadia supplied grain and meat to the troops in the forts, and in return were supplied with tools, salt, and whatever else 17th century folks needed.

Who cares? Just another colony. Not at all. In that century, the French colonists and the Mi'kmaq managed to merge into one supercolony, with complex patterns of family relationships derived from both French and Mi'kmaq society. Intermarriage was more the rule than the exception; the usual pattern of European men having native wives was matched by Mi'kmaq men having French wives. After a century, the complexity of blood and custom must have confused the settlers themselves at times.

The colony was nominally Catholic, and was supplied with priests; no one seems to have cared much, and, when the British arrived for good, didn't fuss about the change over to Protestantism, and then back.

At the time, of course, French and English colonials faced off over religion at least as much as over land. Relatives thought that captives taken in raids were in the grips of heathens, doomed to burn in hell. Not in Arcadia. In the documents about the later history of Arcadia, there is a sense of frustration, on each side, about the nonchalant religious attitudes of the Arcadians.

And what of other parts of 17th century life? Productivity seems to have been good. The land was rocky, not really great for growing grain, but the Arcadians managed. The newcomers had been peasants in France, and knew the vagaries of small farm life. The Mi'kmaq could produce sea food and hunted meat and furs. Somebody always had food, important in times when famine and starvation were common.

Government was a strange institution. Between 1600 and 1710 (or so) the British from Maine and Massachusetts occasionally attacked, occasionally won, then lost interest and just meddled in the vagaries of colony politics. There was trade, some of it smuggling, with the New England colonies. Once, a merchant owned warehouses in Arcadia and Boston, and attacked his own buildings. Strange days. Ultimately, the French prevailed in the 17th century.

Much like other places at the time, and despite the success of the colony, starvation remained a great fear. Government faded into the background. Remember, these were French peasants, who were very familiar with not having enough food.

A side issue: Many academics have written about the French folktales of the time, which were largely about food. The academics use various theoretical approaches. For some reason, French folktales became a very fertile ground for dissertations. Finally, a sensible reader came along, and made the startling observation that French folk tales were largely about food because French folk were always worried about food. That was the end of the argument.

Back to Arcadia:

Everyone worked, danced, ate, talked, had babies, had arguments, all together. Housing was in small villages, with gathering places in larger towns. Not much city life; the size of the colony limited the number of folks not directly involved in food production. No bloggers in Arcadia. No mimes, either. Somehow the Arcadians managed their deprivation.

I don't mean to pass this all off as a 17th century paradise. I doubt anyplace in the 17th century (or now) is a paradise -- paradise wasn't even a paradise. But, there were very, very few problems generated by greed, rage, group loathing, religion, race hate -- the destructive social forces we seem to love so much. Whatever informal group values operated, everybody got along well enough to avoid prisons, lawsuits, blah, blah. Fill in your favorite social ill here. And, as I said before, the politics of colonial government intrigue just didn't matter very much to most people.

The 17th century in Europe was a tough time. Religious struggles were played out on large and small scales. Tens of thousands were murdered by different sects. The English Civil War began with the beheading of the king. Ireland fell completely to the English. Add the usual ration of disease, starvation, crime, what have you. A very tough time. But, sitting there, out of the way, Arcadia. Not quite bliss, but an awful lot better than most folks had.

Luck kicked Arcadia in the shins starting in 1704. English/French skirmishes in North America took on a more desperate tone, mirroring events in Europe. The French and their native allies -- from the interior of the continent -- began a long series of awful raids on English settlements. The Deerfield Raid is the most famous. Many were killed, many taken captive, and everybody terrified. King Philip's War, generated without French help, raised the terror level. Remember, at the time, the English might well have been pushed into the sea if the natives had gotten their act together. A few battles going a different way, I'd be blogging in French. Moi?

Then, the English exhibited a trait that has come all the way down to present day America: when agitated, go kill large numbers of brown people. The brown people in North America were difficult victims; they moved about, were good at fighting back, and necessary for the functions of the English colonies. Who to kill, then? Hmmm, French, Catholic, settled, and, above all, racially mixed. Arcadia!! The heathens!!!

Expeditions to conquer Arcadia in the 17th century came often; the English would then lose interest, the French would move back in, and the cycle would start over. Intrigue, intrigue. In 1704, the British came to stay, and ruled with a gentle and confused hand until the 1740s. Then the English decided, all over the continent, that enough was enough. In the general dismantling of the French presence, Arcadia was completely destroyed. Obliterated. Buildings burned, animals killed, people murdered. Scorched earth policy. No one was to be left.

Some Arcadians fled to other parts of Canada, many fled to Mi'kmaq villages on the mainland. The British sent a few to France, and some to the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean; most, though, were sent to Louisiana, and became the Cajuns -- you can hear the name changing. Ethnic cleansing carried through. The entire French political presence north of Maine was ended. And, eventually, ended everywhere on the continent.

Can you imagine? One day in your house, on a farm on an island in the North Atlantic, then, after months on a ship, dumped in the diseased swamps of the South. Can there be a more peculiar end to a peculiar social experiment? Worse has happened to populations, of course; look at the Aztecs and the Mayans and everybody else who lived in the Americas in 1500. Or in Asia during the Mongol expansion in the 12th century. Supply your own genocide here.

There are different ways to look at what went on. Some military, some political, some economic. But it did happen, and it was genocide.

And Arcadia is a special kind of genocide, if there can be such a thing. Damn. They had it right, and kept it going for a century; they evolved ways to get along, and to mix races, without warfare. The English, ultimately, couldn't live with race mixing, and put an end to it all.

We have inherited their ugliness, and based a nation on their fearfulness. Great.