Acadian Aboiteaux [Dike and Suice Gate System]
par LeBlanc, Ronnie-Gilles
The word aboiteau [dike and sluice system] has become a central part of theidentity of the Acadian people, the maritime technology being so closely linkedwith the rise and evolution of this group of people during the 17thand 18th centuries. Even after the Deportation of the Acadian peoplein 1750, this farming practice was preserved in some of the Acadian regions.The aboiteau-style dike and sluice hasnow become a symbolic part of the cultural heritage of the Acadian community, whichstill perpetuates the memory of the maritime technology's historic importance. Throughout the colonial period,Acadians were the only people in North America to cultivate below sea levelfarmlands to such a large extent. These exceptionally fertile lands were thekey to the community's prosperity up until the even of the Deportation in 1755.Moreover, these large-scale earthworks were community projects. This sets themapart from similar projects undertaken elsewhere in the world. The communaltasks necessary to building and maintaining the large network of dikes havehelped forge the Acadian identity into what it is today.
Article disponible en français : Aboiteaux acadiens
Contents
Preserving and Promoting the Aboiteaux Today
Duringthe last three decades, about half a dozen aboiteau-styledikes and sluices have been reclaimed from some of Nova Scotia and NewBrunswick's marshes and preserved for future exhibitions exhibits. Among them are the sluices presently onexhibit at l'Église Historique deBarachois, in New Brunswick. In Nova Scotia, there are also those ondisplay at the Musée Acadien de Pubnico andat the Grand Pré National Historic Site of Canada. There, the aboiteau-style dikes historical andcultural importance is explained to visitors. Furthermore, in 1997, theconstruction of the network of dikes was declared to be an event of nationalhistoric importance by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. InGrand Pré, one of the two sluices on display was built in the late 1680s, whichis when the work to drain the marsh is thought to have just begun. Another setof sluices comes from the former Acadian village known today as the MelansonSettlement National Historic Site of Canada. The Board will also erect a plaquein the Memramcook region to commemorate the dike building as an event ofnational importance.
Manyother Acadian museums, such as the Musée Acadien de l'Université de Moncton,offer information on the aboiteau-style dike and sluice systems or displayvarious elements from the dike and sluice mechanism. These institutions alsooffer virtual exhibits or virtual replicas of aboiteau-style dikes and sluices ontheir websites. In the Village Historique Acadien, near Caraquet in NewBrunswick, levees and aboiteaux have been built in the local marshlands.This goes to show just what an important part of the Acadian cultural heritagethe aboiteaux are.
The Natural Surroundings
Theaboiteaux-style dike and sluice system for controlling water levels inthe sub sea-level areas of the Maritimes was developed in a very uniqueenvironment, the alluvial lands being shaped by the turbulent waters of the Bayof Fundy (or Baie Française [French Bay], the bay's earliest officialname). There, the tides are among the strongest ones in the world, rising toheights of up to 15 metres [50 feet]. The marshes surrounding the Bay of Fundyare the result of the ebb and flow of the tides that have deposited sedimentsrich in organic matter and minerals. Once drained and desalinated, the landsare exceptionally fertile, so much so that no fertiliser needs to be added tothe soil even after many decades of farming.
Beforethe arrival of the first Acadian settlers, the Bay of Fundy's low-lying, muddy,tidal flats (the wadden) floodedtwice daily. The higher areas, the salt marshes (the schorre), were flooded only by the strongest tides. When the seawould recede, the mudflats and the salt marshes were scattered with muddystreams, alive with marine life. It was the Bay of Fundy's powerful tides thatmade the soil so rich. It promised the region considerable agriculturalpotential once the marshes were drained and the salt removed.
Tomake use of the rich soil, farmers first needed to deal with the daily movementof the strong tides (NOTE1).In fact, twice each day, 100 billion tons of seawater still rises and recedesfrom the bottom of the Bay of Fundy, which is more water than is contained in allrivers of the world combined. Along the Annapolis Basin, where the first aboiteaux-style dike and sluice systems werebuilt by Acadian settlers, the tidal heights can vary from 4 to 8.5 meters [13to 28 feet]. While in the Minas Basin, the average tidal range is 12 metres [40feet] and it can rise as high as 15 or 16 metres [50 or 53 feet] during thehighest tides (NOTE 2).
Whenbuilding the dikes, the Acadian settlers were able to put the region's naturalresources to good use. The main construction materials came from the marshesthemselves. They used sod to build and cover the levees as well as their aboiteaux-style dikes and sluices. The thick,tangled roots of halophytic plants (i.e. those that grow in saline environments)of the salt marshes grow deep, which not only helps them survive the effects ofsalt water, but also helps them, hold fast against the push and pull of thetides (NOTE 3).Sod was used to cover the sides of the levees, especially the side facing thesea. No other types of plantswould have survived in salt water. Thus, the levee would have been quicklyeroded by the powerful tides of the Bay of Fundy (NOTE 4).
TheAcadians also understood and were thus able to make good use of the hydrography(the natural watershed) of the marshes, which they drained to their advantage.They would place the aboiteaux, the levees and the drainage canals inharmony with the natural flow of the streams in the drainage basin created bythe marsh. In the Grand Pré marsh, at least three drainage basins wereidentified, one bringing the marsh's waters towards the Gaspereau River,another towards the Cornwallis River and a third directly to the Minas Basin.Thus, they had to tame at least three different zones of the marsh before beingable to farm the entire area. Furthermore, draining these zones was anoperation that took many steps, which spread over three generations ofAcadians, from the 1680s up until 1755 (NOTE 5).
The Design and Mechanics
TheFrench term aboiteau has two meanings; it refers not only the work associatedwith draining a marsh, but also to the drainage system itself, which iscomprised of two parts: the sluice and the levee thatprotects it. The sluice isequipped with a gate that opens and closes automatically with the ebb and flowof the tide. Sluices were originally made of hollowed out treetrunks placed at the bottom of a drainage ditch. Levees were then built on topof the sluices, but unlike the rest of the system, the sluices were reinforcedwith tree trunks mixed with mud from the marsh. It was important for the aboiteau-style sluices to be carefullysecured, in order to keep it from being dislodged by the force of the tides.The levees were built perpendicular to and wider than the drainage ditches,thereby keeping the seawater from flooding the marsh with each high tide. Undernormal operating conditions, the pressure of the rising tide causes the gate toclose, while the pressure of the runoff accumulated inthe marsh at low tide pushes it open. Thus, the constant motion of thetides causes the gate to open and close twice every twenty-four hours.
Thefirst objective being to drain and desalinate the marsh, a network of drainagecanals and ditches are dug all throughout the marsh. Because they would alsoserve as boundaries between parcels of land, these ditches were usually dug instraight lines. Deeper ditches were dug along the outer edge of the levee toprotect the entire marsh. All linked together, the ditches drain into the canalsthat flow into the natural waterways that lead to the aboiteaux (sluice gates), which have been specificallyplaced where the natural stream flowed. Thus, rain water and freshwater runningdown from higher elevations, which would usually accumulate in the marsh duringthe high tide, is then able to trickle into the drainage canals and passthrough the aboiteaux into the sea during the ebb (low) tide).Gradually, this surface runoff washes away the salt present in the upper layersof the soil, making agriculture possible. The process takes two to three yearsfor each parcel of land.
Toolsused by Acadians to convert the intertidal areas into agricultural lands werequite basic: a kind of shovel known as a ferrées,pitchforks, axes, barrows and hollowed-out tree trunks. The success of theproject mostly rests on the ingenuity and cleverness of Acadian settlers who wereable to understand and take advantage of the natural watershed of the marshes.
TheAboiteauxduring the French Regime in Acadia
Theword aboiteau originates from the Saintongeais and Aunisien dialects,where it is written aboteau. Dièreville uses this terminology whenwriting about the Acadian aboiteau system of Port-Royal in 1699. Theword designating the dam or dyke does not exactly correspond to the real aboiteausystem since it is missing one of the key elements, the valve. The French useda similar type of sluice gate in other applications for controlling the ebb andflow of the tide, such as floating gates and culverts. In addition, there arereferences to the technology more than half a century before Acadians starteddraining their marshes in the 1630s.
Thetradesmen (who weren't exactly engineers) that were hired in France to go tothe New World to drain the marshes of the Port-Royal River must certainly haveknown about the draining technique used with the aboiteau-style sluice and dike system, since they adapted it to thesalty marshes of French Bay (e.g. the Bay of Fundy). In 1636, five saunier [artisans who extracted the saltfrom the seawater or from salt marshes], including a master saunier, were hired by the governor ofAcadia, Isaac de Razilly. Not long after their arrival in Acadia, Razilly diedrather suddenly. It was Charles de Menou d'Aulnay who took command of thecolony and who, seemingly, moved the settlement to the Port-Royal region (NOTE 6).The artisans all came from the La Rochelle region of France where there weresalt marshes as well as Marais Poitevin, a former marsh that had already beendrained. The French sauniers wereprobably the first to build levees and to dig drainage canals in order to drainthe alluvial soils from the Port-Royal area (NOTE 7).
Afterbeing drained and desalinated the first parcels of land were planted andfarmed. French settlers and their descendants, the Acadian people, were soimpressed by how fertile and productive these lands were that they drained manyother salt marshes of varying sizes along the French Bay (or Bay of Fundy) up until 1755. It isfor this reason that the Acadians were nicknamed the défricheurs d'eau (clearers of water), because, contrary to mostother North American settlers who cleared forests, they drained marshes. Ofcourse, Acadians also cleared the woodlands along marshes' edge to build theirvillages, plant orchards and gardens and to raise livestock. But, the dominantmethod for creating arable land consisted of draining intertidal lands usingthe aboiteau system, which was anextremely rare technique in North America at the time. In fact, during theentire colonial period, Acadians were the only people in North America to farmlands below sea level on such a large scale.
Theexceptional productivity of these lands was the reason behind the Acadian community'sprosperity before 1755 and even more so in the Minas Basin, which is nearRivière-aux-Canards and Grand Pré. The area was once considered to be thegranary of Acadia. Even though the drainage technique was used and tested inmany different places, in Grand Pré, it was an entirely different matter, forno other part of Acadia had such high tides. Little by little, Grand Préfarmers converted almost all the area called La Grand' Pré intofertile agricultural lands. Only in the most western part of the marsh was not enclosedin dikes, when the Planters came from New England at the beginning of theDeportation (NOTE 8).
Itis important to point that the aboiteauxbuilt by the Acadians were community projects. This distinguishes them fromsimilar projects undertaken elsewhere in the world that were commissioned bythe ruling social class and carried out by serfs and tradesmen who had to workwithout pay or compensation. The transformation the large salt marsh in GrandPré was however a consensus decision made by local farming families who livedin the area. And it was the very same individuals who actually built the aboiteaux over a period of threegenerations. Most of the other aboiteau construction projects followedthe same process. It was only the initial project commissioned by Charles deMenou d'Aulnay in Port-Royal in the 1630s and Abbot Jean-Louis Le Loutre'sunfinished project started in the Beaubassion area during the 1750s that were commissionedand overseen by a leader or someone higher in the social hierarchy.
Andso, the communal tasks related to the building of the aboiteaux, became central to the development and evolution of theAcadian cultural identity. It strengthened the ties between the people of analready close-knit community. Since every member of the community had worked onthe project, they all shared equal ownership of the drained marshlands. Todivide the lots between themselves they used a lottery system, just as it hadbeen done at Marais Poitevin. Having all participated on the project, eachmembers of the community was considered an equal. Moreover, a communityownership of the marsh meant that each individual was responsible for themaintenance work related to the drainage system, such as dredging and cleaningthe drainage canals as well as building and repairing the levees and the aboiteaux mechanisms. Thus, the ownersof the marsh all relied on each other. This type of shared land ownership ofthe drained lots dominated Acadian culture and was later adopted by the NewEngland Planters that settled there in the 1760s, when they took over the landsof the Acadians who had been deported in 1755 (NOTE 9).
Post 1755 Aboiteau Construction
Startingin the mid 1760s, Brithish authorities allowed Acadians to return to Acadia,from which many of them had been exiled. By then, the marshes that they andtheir ancestors had drained with the use of aboiteauxwere now owned by Anglo-American or British settlers. Ironically, in 1760,Governor Charles Lawrence was obliged to put the Deportation on hold, for thehurricane of November 1759 had greatly damaged the aboiteaux and levees of the Acadian marshes and the governor had greatneed of the remaining Acadians and their knowledge of the aboiteau system. Hence, many Acadian families ended up inPort-Royal, Pigiguit and Beauséjour as prisoners of war. Many Acadians had towork on mending and building aboiteaux andlevees for the benefit of the new owners of their former lands. By showing themhow the aboiteau system worked, theyforfeited to the invaders what was left of their former life from before theDeportation. It is one of the greatest tragedies of the Deportation because,not only did they lose their property, the Acadians were forced to reveal totheir usurpers the secrets of a technology developed and perfected by theirforefathers.
Onlythe marshes along the Memramcook and Petcoudiac rivers were not occupied by theconquerors. That is why it is the only region of Acadia where the aboiteaux are still functional today (NOTE 10).It was their descendants who passed on to present generation the knowledge ofthis traditional Acadian technology. In other regions where Acadians arepresent today, notably in Pubnico and in Baie Sainte-Marie (Nova Scotia) aswell as in the Cap-Pelé and Barachois regions and the Caraquet region of NewBrunswick, aboiteaux were built andkept in working order upuntil the turn of the 20th century. It is also important to pointout that the technology was slightly modified to counter the effects of thestorms that gradually eroded the turf-covered sand dunes that were used as levees.
The Aboiteau-style Dike andSluice: a Piece of Acadian Cultural Heritage
Theaboiteau system used by Acadians wasingenious. It is an adaptation of ancient technologies used in Europe. Today's aboiteaux use the same principles, buton a larger scale, especially in the former regions of Acadia that are now predominantlyEnglish-speaking communities. Considering their major role in the region andthe people's history, it is no wonder that the memory of the aboiteaux is still very much alive inthe minds of the Acadian people (NOTE 11).
Ronnie-GillesLeBlanc
Historian
Parks Canada, Halifax
NOTES
Note 1.The Bay of Fundy's shape is largely responsible for the phenomenon because itacts as a kind of funnel for the incoming tides. The more the tide advancesalong the North-American coastline towards the back of the Bay of Fundy, thenarrower it becomes, creating a impressively high tides.
Note 2.These maximum high tides occur during the equinox tides, in the spring andfall, as well as during the summer and winter solstice, the winter tides beingthe highest of the two because strong winter winds, which make the waters riseeven more.
Note 3.The sod was composed of silt mixed with the roots of two species of grass: thesalt hay grass, (Spartina Patens) and the salt marsh rush, (Juncus Gerardii).The two plants were key to the development of the aboiteau system, since they were used to reinforce the walls of thelevees.
Note 4.The intertidal areas also provided Acadians with salt feed from the marshgrasses, which their livestock tended to prefer. The people of the region also harvestedand ate two edible plants: the Sandfire Greens (Salicornia Europaea) and the Passe-Pierre, the last still being considered a treat byAcadians from the Memramcook Valley and from Pré-d'en-Haut, along thePetitcodiac River.
Note 5.Thelevees and aboiteaux built during theearliest drainage projects in the central part of the marsh succeeded inprotecting the area from the tide when it breached the levee and badly damagedthe aboiteaux during the hurricane ofNovember 1759. It was this part of the marsh that was the first to be concededto the Planters when they arrived in the Grand Pré region in 1760.
Note 7.For D'Aulnay, the project of draining the region's marsh remained a passioneven until the very final days of his life. Just days before he died, he wentto "[...] plant pickets, trace lines and run string lines to plot out thedrainage of more land [...]" Taken from a letter written by Rev. Father Ignace,Senlis on August 6th, 1653, Collection de Manuscrits ContenantLettres, Mémoires et autres Documents Historiques Relatifs à laNouvelle-France, vol. I, Québec, Imprimerie A. Côté et Cie, 1883, p.138.
Note 8.Perrine Baudry, the widow of the master saunier,a man called Jean Cendre de Marennes, remarried in Quebec City in 1649. Was itpossible that she and her late husband had lived in Acadia for many years afterarriving in the New World? In that case, it could have been Jean Cendre whosupervised the first drainage works during the 1630s and 1640s.
Note 9.The Planters nonetheless continued to develop and cultivate these lands aftertheir arrival in the area in 1760. Farmers who now own the lands once farmed bythe Acadian people and then later by the Anglo-American and British settlers upuntil the end of the 17th century still use the same farmingpractices today.
Note 10.Acadian families imprisoned at Fort Edward, in Pigiguit and at Fort Beauséjourwere able to benefit from their proximity to these forts, because it was fromthere that they were given permission to settle on the remaining vacant landsaround Memramcook and Petcoudiac.
Note 11.For the last few summers now, people have been celebrating the Festival de laBarge at the Amirault's Hill. The event commemorates an important aspect of theAcadian marshes: the haying time that once was an annual ritual closely relatedto the agricultural calendar established by the aboiteaux system in former Acadia.
