Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/332

312 vice. Their houses were as substantial and comfortable as those of European farmers. With their flocks and fields and cattle and fruits and laden barns they filled the round of a happy existence.

Those who had to deal with these Neutrals as neighbors, magistrates, military officers, report them to us very differently. We must let reason and candor mediate for us as we hesitate between romance and reality. The records of governors of Acadia, both French and English, with official and other papers, are preserved in abundance and of full authenticity. Alike these complain of the mischievous and malignant influence of the priests over the people as arbitrary and treacherous, and tending always to alienation and strife, and urging to a resistance of government. The people are described as idle, restless, roaming as bush-rangers, dissolute among the Indians, leading a squalid and shabby life. The council at Quebec and the English courts were worried with their petty and constant litigation. Their dwellings were “wretched wooden boxes,” dilapidated and filthy, and without cellars. Nor was this all that was alleged to their reproach and offence: they were called “neutrals;” but parties of them had been known to have prompted and engaged in the bloody raids of the Indians on the English settlements, to have done many acts of violence and treachery, to have acted as spies and informers, and to have supplied the French with cattle and grain while refusing such trade with the English garrison. The great Seven Years' War between France and England was then threatening across the water, the direst rage of which was to be felt by the colonies of England here, Braddock's defeat in 1755 opening the series of catastrophes. The French monarch was working his own Huguenot subjects in the galleys, while the English masters of Acadia covenanted to the Neutrals their own religion and priests. The English said that they would gladly have had the Acadians remain if they could have been relied