CHAPTER III 
AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 
“Where a few villagers on bended knees 
Find solace which a busy world disdains.” 
— Wordsworth. 
ie the year 1605 a small party of French- 
men with their wives and children came 
from the western part of France, from Rochelle, 
Santonge and Poiteau, to establish homes for 
themselves in the new world. They settled 
in what is now known as Nova Scotia, but 
which came to be known in those days as Aca- 
dia, and the French settlers, who thrived and 
spread to New Brunswick, Cape Breton, Prince 
Edward Island and the Magdalens, as Acadians. 
Because these people are generally pictured 
as a happy, pastoral race, one is apt to suppose 
that the name Acadza is a corruption of Ar- 
cadia, but this is not the case, for it is derived 
from a word-ending of the Micmac Indian lan- 
guage, meaning ‘‘ the place of ”’ or “ region of,” 
and was used as a suffix by these Indians in 
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