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The older Indian village of Medoctec was now deserted and the missionary ordered the chapel there to be destroyed, seeing that it served merely as a shelter for travellers and "was put to the most profane uses." The building had been standing for fifty years and was much out of repair. The ornaments and furnishings, together with the chapel bell, were brought to Aukpaque.
His book contains the first published description of this magnificent cataract . The rapidity of the journey is seen in the fact that the bishop and his party slept the next night at the Indian village of Medoctec, "the first fort of Acadia," eighty miles below the Grand Falls.
Two days after their arrival the Indians were received on board the man-of-war "Beaufort" by Cornwallis and his entire council. The delegates announced that they were from Aukpaque, Medoctec, Passamaquoddy and Chignecto, and that their respective chiefs were Francois de Salle of Octpagh, Noellobig of Medoctec, Neptune Abbadouallete of Passamaquoddy and Joannes Pedousaghtigh of Chignecto.
John Gyles, the English captive at Medoctec village in 1689, relates the following ridiculous incident, which sufficiently shows the unreasonable terror inspired in the mind of the natives of the river in his day by the very name of Mohawk: "One very hot season a great number of Indians gathered at the village, and being a very droughty people they kept James Alexander and myself night and day fetching water from a cold spring that ran out of a rocky hill about three-quarters of a mile from the fort.
Our knowledge of the village Medoctec, and the ways of its people two centuries ago, is derived mainly from the narrative of John Gyles, the English lad who was captured at Pemaquid in 1689 and brought by his Indian master to the River St. John. At the time of his capture Gyles was a boy of about twelve years of age.
The chapel stood for fifty years and its clear toned bell rang out the call to prayer in the depths of the forest; but by and by priest and people passed away till, in 1767, the missionary Bailly records in his register that the Indians having abandoned the Medoctec village he had caused the ornaments and furnishings of the chapel, together with the bell, to be transported to Aukpaque, and had caused the chapel itself to be demolished since it served merely as a refuge for travellers and was put to the most profane uses.
Boishebert, prevented from immediately establishing a fortified post, seems to have moved freely up and down the river. At one time he writes from "Menacouche" at the mouth of the river, at another from "Ecoubac" the Indian village of Aukpaque at another he is at "Medoctec," the upper Indian village.
On the second morning after they left Aukpaque, the party drew nigh Medoctec, passing as they proceeded, several small spots where the Indians had made improvements and planted corn, beans, etc. Pote says:
Some have supposed the old Medoctec fort to have been quite an elaborate structure, with bastions, etc., but it was more probably only a rude Indian fortification with ditch and parapet surmounted by a stockade, within which was a strongly built cabin, in size about thirty by forty feet.
John river, where the Indians from time immemorial had built their wigwams and tilled their cornfields and where their dead for many generations had been laid to rest in the little graveyard by the river side. The object of the commissioners was to arrange for the location of white settlers at Medoctec.
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