Jean Baptiste Guedry

Jean Baptiste Guedry's son Paul had been taken prisoner by the English during Dummer's War, a 1722-1725 conflict between English colonists and the Indian nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy.[1] Guedry was an Acadian, but his relatives and his sons had been raised among the Mi’kmaq people. He decided to attack an English fishing vessel and hold its crew hostage as leverage for negotiating his son's release.[1]

On August 25, 1726 he and his younger son (also named Jean Baptiste) hailed a passing ship, the 25-ton sloop Tryal captained by Samuel Doty.[1] Doty took Guedry aboard where they drank and exchanged news. Doty and all but one of the crew went ashore to visit Guedry’s mother, while Guedry remained aboard. At a signal Guedry’s allies (the Mews brothers and others, relatives of Guedry, including “a squaw with two children”[lower-alpha 1]) boarded the ship from their canoes and seized it. They tore down the English flag; Guedry wrapped it around his waist as a belt and stuck his pistol in it. Doty and the crew were brought back aboard and kept under watch.[1]

Guedry ordered Doty to sail the ship eastward, and spotting a French ship, he and his Mi’kmaq allies planned to board it. Doty and the crew turned on their captors, throwing some in the ship’s hold and barricading others in the cabin.[1] Shots were fired but no one was hit; three of the Mi’kmaq leaped out the cabin’s windows rather than face capture. Guedry and his associates were subdued and Doty delivered them to the authorities.[1]

They were transported to Boston for trial on October 4, 1726.[1] Unusually, the court appointed not only a lawyer for Guedry’s defense but French and Mi’kmaq translators as well (Guedry spoke little English and his son spoke none).[2] His lawyer argued that Guedry’s attack was mere robbery because it happened so close to shore, and that at 14 his son was too young for a death sentence. The prosecutor countered that any attack at sea was piracy, and that 14 was the age of majority for criminal cases. The court agreed, and Guedry, his son, and their relatives were hanged.[2]

The prosecutor and others used the trial as a counter to local customs, which allowed the holding of a group - i.e., all Englishmen - responsible for an individual’s crimes.[2] They also used it as a test case for separating English law as applied to Acadia from law applied to First Nations groups like the Wabanaki Confederacy: Guedry and his son were tried as Acadians, while the Mews brothers and another man were classed as “Indians” and were tied separately.[2] Colonial officials had the trial transcripts read to Acadian and native villages to show them how English law worked.[2]

• Cornelius Andreson - A Dutchman who, like Guedry, sailed from Acadia and was subsequently tried for piracy against the English.
• Admiralty court, the venue in which Guedry and his associates were tried.
• King Philip’s War, a predecessor to Dummer’s War and another in a series of English/native conflicts in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.