Acadia

The original designation for parts of the North American eastern seaboard that once stretched from colonial New Jersey to the present-day Canadian maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, today Acadia refers only to the lands of present-day Maine and the Canadian maritime provinces.

The origins of the name Acadia are unclear. Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian navigator who explored for France, was the first known European to use the term. Verrazano possibly derived it from words used to describe the landscape such as quoddy or cadie, or more likely modified the word Arcadia, the term for a pastoral paradise commonly used in Greek and Roman literature.

Human life in Acadia dates back at least 10,000 years, but knowledge of this history is poor because of meager archaeological records. The circumstances of the first meeting between Europeans and the peoples native to Acadia also remains a matter of conjecture. By July, 1534, when the French explorer Jacques Cartier provided the first written account of the inhabitants of Acadia after trading with a group of Micmac, many Europeans had interacted with Native peoples. Cartier described the Micmac and Maliseet peoples as enthusiastic traders; the Abenaki, living along the Kennebec River in present-day Maine, impressed other writers with their bark-covered conical shelters and brilliantly engineered bark canoes.

Often the early interchanges between European settlers and Micmac and other Native peoples were amiable, but eventually the relationships proved disastrous to the indigenous peoples. The Micmac taught settlers how to hunt the wildlife of Acadia and shared with them their knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs. In return, the French introduced alcohol and new diseases to the Native peoples and helped instill a dependence on European goods that hastened the ruin of traditional ways of life.

Early settlement also proved difficult for the French. Many settlers succumbed to scurvy during the long winters of the early 1600s, while the politics of gaining commercial rights to the new territory, rather than concern for the health of settlers, dominated the French mainland. The majority of settlers, known as Acadians, depended upon the land for their livelihood. They developed a system of dikes that prevented marshes from being flooded by high saltwater tides, yet allowed rainwater and melting snow to flow out. This ingenious alteration of the landscape converted vast salt marshes into arable land. The tremendous amount of labor required to build and maintain the dike system bound neighbors together while the reliability of crop yields spared established communities the miseries of famine. Later, from 1680 to 1740—an epoch known as the golden age of Acadian history—Acadian birth rates were high and child mortality relatively low. Large families of many generations often lived under the same roof, held together by kinship ties and Catholicism.

Though smaller communities were relatively stable, larger political struggles continually interfered in Acadian life. The English claimed the region by rights of the 1497 and 1498 explorations of navigator John Cabot, but

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Sovereignty of the area switched several times during the long struggle for regional supremacy between the English and the French, who first colonized the area at the Bay of Fundy in 1604. Moreover, English settlers from as far away as Virginia resented the French intrusion into Acadia and in 1613 destroyed the French settlement of Saint-Sauveur on the coast of present-day Maine before making their way north and looting and burning the French town of Port Royal. These actions initiated the 150-year struggle for control of the Acadian regions, though most Acadians remained politically neutral. King James I of England granted the land to the Scottish statesman and poet Sir William Alexander in 1621, but control of the region remained unsettled until the English gained permanent, though contested, control of mainland Acadie, or Nova Scotia, through the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Yet under the terms of the treaty Ile Royale (Cape Breton) and Ile Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) remained French, provided that those who remained swore an oath of allegiance to the monarch of Great Britain.

Further reading: Bona Arsenault, History of the Acadi-ans, trans. Brian M. Upton and John G. McLaughlin (Quebec, Canada: Le Conseil de la vie franyaise en Amerique, 1966); Sally Ross and Alphonse Deveau, The Acadians of Nova Scotia: Past and Present (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus, 1992).

—Kevin C. Armitage

1567 and spent the next four years preaching in small towns in Spain. In February 1571, after many requests to be appointed to missionary work, Acosta was assigned to preach and teach theology in Peru. The 14 years Acosta spent in Peru coincided with a period of major reorganization by the political representatives of the Spanish throne, under whose jurisdiction Peru lay. Don Francisco de Toledo, the viceroy to the Kingdom of Peru, made sweeping changes to the political and economic structure of the colony, publicly executing iNCAn leaders, confining indigenous peoples to segregated settlements, or REDUCCIONes, and establishing a tribute system, called the mita, requiring forced labor in mines. By the last decade of the 16th century, resistance to forced labor in the mines took many forms, including appeals to the justice system. Acosta was one of about 40 Jesuits in Peru and was active in ministering to the Spanish colonials as well as preaching and catechizing indigenous peoples and African slaves. From 1576 until 1581 Acosta served as the provincial (regional leader of the Society of Jesus) of Peru, during which time he actively opposed the severity of Toledo’s treatment of the indigenous peoples. Acosta spent his final five years in Peru acting as scribe for the Third Provincial Council of Lima, which consolidated secular power over the clergy and designed a standard catechism for use with the indigenous population (published in the Doctrina Cristiana). After one year in Mexico, Acosta returned home to Spain in 1588, where he became an adviser to King Philip II. Acosta died in Salamanca in 1600.

Acosta, Jose de (1540-1600) missionary A Spanish Jesuit missionary, Acosta is best known for his missionary work in Peru from 1572 to 1586 and his books De Procuranda Indorum Salute (1576), in which he avowed that the indigenous peoples of the Americas could be saved according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (1590), a natural history of Mexico and Peru and a general history of Aztecan and Incan cultures, and Doctrina Cristiana y Catecismo para Instruccion de los Indios (1585), the first book published in Peru, consisting of three catechisms printed in Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara.

Born to a wealthy merchant family in Castile, Spain, Jose de Acosta entered the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuit order, in 1552 and took his vows in 1554. As a Jesuit Acosta was trained according to the tenets of Renaissance humanism, an educational and cultural movement popular from the 14th to the 16th centuries in Europe, which focused on classical training in various fields such as philosophy, theology, medicine, and jurisprudence. Acosta taught at Jesuit schools in Spain and Portugal from 1557 to 1559, at which time he commenced university studies in theology at Alcala. Acosta was ordained a priest in

Further reading: Claudio M. Burgaleta, S. J., Jose de Acosta, S. J. (1540-1600): His Life and Thought (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1999); Jeffrey L. Klaiber, “The Posthumous Christianization of the Inca Empire in Colonial Peru,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976): 507-520; Sabine MacCormack, “Pachacuti: Miracles, Punishments, and Last Judgment: Visionary Past and Prophetic Future in Early Colonial Peru,” American Historical Review 93 (1988): 960-1,006.

—Lisa M. Brady