A transcription of Archbishop Joseph-Octave Plessis’ journal 1811 - 1815

Here's an excellent one for you if you come from Caraquet and/or Paspébiac. Credit for this one goes to Victorin Mallet;

This is a copy of an excerpt from a transcription of Archbishop Joseph-Octave Plessis’ journal entries from the years of 1811, 1812, and 1815, which detail his time spent in Acadia and Québec, as Bishop Plessis toured Acadia and Québec during those years and recorded what he saw in his journal. Archbishop Plessis was born on March 03, 1763 in Montréal, Québec (see http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/plessis_joseph_octave_6E.html). This transcription is found in the “volume 11, number 1-2-3 (March-Septembre, 1980)” edition of the “Cahiers de la Société historique acadienne.” The transcription is from page 11 to 311 of this volume and is entitled, “Le journal des visites pastorales en Acadie de Mgr Joseph-Octave Plessis, 1811-1812-1815.”

Archbishop Plessis’ journal contains a great deal of important information pertaining to the Acadians in the areas that he toured however, one very important excerpt can be found on page 42 of the transcription of his journal and pertains to his time spent in Paspébiac, Québec. This excerpt is as follows:

“Les premiers habitans de Paspébiac s’étant allies à des sauvagesses, toute la colonie formée par leurs descendants a une portion de sang sauvage, ce qui met entr’eux et les autres habitans de la baie des chaleurs une différence capitale. Ceux du bas de la paroisse de Caraquet partagent cette ignominie. Les étrangers, les Acadiens surtout, se croiraient déshonorés en s’alliant à ces descendants de sauvages, et ne les regardent qu’avec un certain mépris.”

This excerpt loosely translates to the following:

“The first inhabitants of Paspébiac were allied with savage women, the entire colony formed by their descendants has a portion of savage blood, which puts a major difference between them and the other inhabitants of the Baie-des-Chaleurs. Those from below the parish of Caraquet share this ignominy. The strangers, the Acadians especially, would think themselves dishonored by allying themselves with these descendants of savages, and only look at them with a certain contempt.”

When taken in accordance with other documentation concerning Caraquet, New Brunswick and Paspébiac, Québec, we can clearly see that those regions were initially populated via intermarriage between the French settlers and the First Nations people of the area.

This excerpt also demonstrates that discrimination and hatred toward Mixed-Bloods based simply on the fact that they had First Nations ancestry (regardless of how far back it was in their family trees) was not localized to one specific location during the period when Archbishop Joseph-Octave Plessis wrote that entry. This same prejudice attitude toward Mixed-Blooded Acadians by “White” Acadians is demonstrated in other documentation from the early 1800s for other areas of the Maritimes and Québec found in this collection, such as the writings of Père Jean-Mandé Sigogne, Captain William Moorsom, etc.