Hugh Akagi Interview Excerpts
Q: How did the Castine Loyalists end up in St. Andrews?
Akagi: When the Loyalists were driven out of the states and
being shipped back to Britain one of the captains decided he
wasn’t going to make it through the rough seas so he decided
to ask the Passamaquoddy who were living here at the time in
St. Andrews, New Brunswick, if they could lease some land
where they could build some huts and put in the winter. So the
Passamaquoddy agreed to this for the price of 25 pounds. And
the story is that the 25 pounds was never received and the
Loyalists never left. And that’s why St. Andrews is a
Loyalist town to this day.
With the arrival of the Loyalists they needed land. And one
of the ways to acquire land of course—well the only way to
require land—was to dispossess the people who were here and
the people who were here were the Passamaquoddys. So a lot of
things started to happen. Basically a lot of it was
encroachment. But grants started appearing all over the place
where Loyalists were given chunks of land including chunks of
land that Passamaquoddy were living on. It’s pretty well
documented in the Indian Affair archives that the Loyalists
sort of had a field day in the area.
And I have a bit of a theory of my own because at the time
there was quite a debate as to where the border was going to
be between the United States and Canada because as you know
part of the battle between Britain and the U.S. was to settle
the border. The border commission sort of bounced back and
forth between what is now known as the St. Croix River. At the
time, it was at Schoodic, a river to the east, which is in
what is now St. George, New Brunswick and Macadavic. And to
settle this, one of the things that was done was bringing the
Loyalists into Canada and putting them along the edge of the
St. Croix River, thus the British secured the boundary for
Canada in a more westerly direction. In other words, they
gained a large chunk of land, Passamaquoddy territory by the
way, by bringing Loyalists and settling in that area.
The other thing they did was they solved a lot of the
Indian problem because they were displacing more people at the
time and the records show quite clearly that when you have
that influx of people then all of a sudden the people who were
supported by the streams, by the salmon, by the source all of
a sudden these resources are supporting basically another
people.
So when the Loyalists took over the territory they also
took over the resources. And this is something that really
impacted the Passamaquoddy because they are now displaced from
a main food source, rivers. The area here is right on the
ocean. So traditionally the Passamaquoddy were known for
living off fish and seafood and now are being driven perhaps
in land or definitely beyond the resources that they lived off
for centuries. That’s a pretty heavy impact when you
consider these people not only came, but they never left. So
the Passamaquoddy have never really been able to regain that
access to their territory.
And then they ended up, the biggest part of the tribe ended
up with a reserve in Maine. So it was all happening within a
few years and the documentation is pretty clear again. That
there were specific incidents that caused these shifts in the
timeline, if you will, when the Loyalists became very
numerous, powerful, strong in this territory. They did things
such as destroy a cross on this very land, which is very
sacred to the Passamaquoddy. And that seemed to be a major
turning point in our occupation of our territory here. And at
that point the Passamaquoddy just seemed to have disappeared
in large numbers, again to Indian Island. But it was all
happening within a matter of years.
Q: What was the impact on the Passamaquoddy?
Akagi: The impact of what happened back then is still here
today. A lot of it is because over the years the Loyalists
have pretty well written their history over ours and there
doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of room here for us at times.
I like to think that somehow we can change this. I’d like to
think that we can look back and say, well first of all these
people have been here for thousands of years. Our history here
is recorded pretty well through the archeologists as being
thousands of years old. I’d like to think that the
400-year-old history since contact if you will, is actually a
small part of what’s going on in our territory.
And the Loyalists you know they’ve been around for a
couple hundred years. I know also they have a very rich
history of their own and they’re very proud of it. I would
like to think that they would be understanding of why the
Passamaquoddy would be very proud of their history too. I’d
also like them to understand that they were displaced in their
territory. They were driven out and why would they come here
and drive us out? That’s not a nice thing to do. So is there
some way they can find room for us to live and exist because
we’re here. We’ve never gone away. So if they could find
some way to understand that we suffered the same fate. Our
impact perhaps is more devastating then theirs. We’re being
told we can’t exist in our own territory. We’re being told
we have no right to our resources. We’re being told a lot of
things and meanwhile they have become stronger. They have
access to all these things. They’ve done quite well from our
resources and our territory. And I believe they probably did
get help when they first came. And I’d like to think that
maybe someone would like to help us.
Q: Why did the Loyalists settle here?
Akagi: If you look out the windows when it’s nice and
bright and sunny, when the sun comes up over the islands it’s
a beautiful spot. It’s not just a beautiful spot, but the
resources here are awesome. We have some of the richest
fishing territory you can find.
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THE DEFENCE | THE EASTERN FRONTIER |
THE CASTINE LOYALISTS
| FEATURED
INTERVIEWS | TRANSCRIPT |
