Siege of Port Royal (1710) in the context of Mi'kmaq people

Acadia (French: Acadie) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River. Settlers primarily came from the southwestern regions of France, including Poitou-Charentes and the Aquitaine region (now known as Nouvelle-Aquitaine), as well as Poitou and Anjou. The territory was originally inhabited by various First Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy who referred to the region as Dawnland.

The first capital of Acadia was established in 1605 as Port-Royal. Soon after, English forces of Captain Argall, an English ship's captain employed by the Virginia Company of London attacked and burned down the fortified habitation in 1613. A new centre for Port-Royal was established nearby, and it remained the longest-serving capital of French Acadia until the British siege of Port Royal in 1710. There were six colonial wars in a 74-year period in which British interests tried to capture Acadia, starting with King William's War in 1689.

Dummer's War (1722–1725) (also known as Father Rale's War, the Three Years War, the Wabanaki-New England War, or the Fourth Anglo-Abenaki War) was a series of battles between the New England Colonies and the Wabanaki Confederacy (specifically the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Penobscot, and Abenaki), who were allied with New France. The eastern theater of the war was located primarily along the border between New England and Acadia in Maine, as well as in Nova Scotia; the western theater was located in northern Massachusetts and Vermont in the frontier areas between Canada (New France) and New England.

The root cause of the conflict on the Maine frontier concerned the border between Acadia and New England, which New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. Mainland Nova Scotia came under British control after the Siege of Port Royal in 1710 and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (not including Cape Breton Island), but present-day New Brunswick and Maine remained contested between New England and New France. New France established Catholic missions among the four largest Native villages in the region: one on the Kennebec River (Norridgewock), one farther north on the Penobscot River (Penobscot Indian Island Reservation), one on the Saint John River (Meductic Indian Village / Fort Meductic), and one at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia (Saint Anne's Mission). Similarly, New France established three forts along the border of New Brunswick during Father Le Loutre's War to protect it from a British attack from Nova Scotia.

Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755), also known as the Indian War, the Mi'kmaq War and the Anglo-Mi'kmaq War, took place between King George's War and the French and Indian War in Acadia and Nova Scotia. On one side of the conflict, the British and New England colonists were led by British officer Charles Lawrence and New England Ranger John Gorham. On the other side, Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre led the Mi'kmaq and the Acadia militia in guerrilla warfare against Protestant settlers and British forces. At the outbreak of the war there were an estimated 2500 Mi'kmaq and 12,000 Acadians in the region.

While the British captured Port Royal in 1710 and were ceded peninsular Acadia in 1713, Mi'kmaq and Acadians continued to contain the British in settlements at Port Royal and Canso. The rest of the colony was in the control of the Catholic Mi'kmaq and Acadians. About forty years later, the British made a concerted effort to settle Protestants in the region and to establish military control over all of Nova Scotia and what became present-day New Brunswick, igniting armed response from Acadians in Father Le Loutre's War. The British settled 3,229 people in Halifax during the first years. This exceeded the number of Mi'kmaq in the entire region and was seen as a threat to the traditional occupiers of the land. The Mi'kmaq and some Acadians resisted the arrival of these Protestant settlers.