Cornwallis, obedient to his orders to pacify the Indians, was to send, within a couple of weeks of his arrival at Chebucto, on July 9th, 1749, Edward How to the St. John River.5 How made two trips; the first with John Rous and the second with John Gorham. The efforts were aimed at winning over the Malecites. On his second trip he took presents to the Indians including 1,000 bushels of corn and 500 bushels of wheat. These efforts lead to a treaty being signed.6 On August 15th, the Indians, a delegation of them having come to Halifax, signed a confirmation and ratification of the previous treatises entered into both in the years 1725 (December) and 1727 (July). The ceremony was concluded upon the deck of the Beaufort while she rode at anchor in the harbour. The St John Indians and the population at Halifax entertained one another: the befeathered and red faced Indians signed, while in the back ground a 17 gun salute boomed out: it was a ceremony that impressed all and sundry.7

The First Attack At Dartmouth

All of this pomp and ceremony was for naught: On September 30th, a group of men were out cutting wood to supply a mill operated by a Major Gilman in Dartmouth, a place just over the harbour from Halifax.8 I quote Thomas Beamish Akins: "Six of his [Gilman's] men had been sent out to cut wood without arms. The Indians laid in ambush, killed four and carried off one, and the other escaped and gave the alarm, and a detachment of rangers was sent after the savages, who having overtaken them, cut off the heads of two Indians and scalped one."9 It is reported10 that an Acadian by the name of Joseph Broussard ("Beausoleil") led the natives in their attack at Dartmouth.11 Next day the council determined to let loose the brave-hearted men among them, of which there were only a few, in declaring a bounty ("as is the custom of America") of ten gold guineas for every Indian taken or destroyed.12 This decision came as a result of an emergency Sunday meeting held aboard the Beaufort the day after the butchery in Dartmouth. "Within three days Captain Clapman raised a company of seventy volunteers, though only fifty were needed. They scoured the forest, but apparently without result. It does not appear that any ranger ever claimed a scalp bounty at Halifax."13

Thereafter, and for a ten year period,

"Nova Scotia lay under the continual terror of Indian warfare. Fear brooded over the land. There was no calculating where or when the deadly blow would fall. The thick set spruces gave no sign of warning. Stealthy forms glided through the forest by secret trails, or passed along the net-work of waterways in noiseless canoes; savage eyes watched the ways of the careless white man. And then muskets spoke suddenly from green boughs, or war-whoops shattered the night; and there were piteous scalped corpses to bury, or friends to mourn, who had vanished with their captors. There are trackings of rangers and skirmishes with war parties, exchange of shots without result."14