Question: The Mersey River, is a river in Nova Scotia, Canada, formerly known as what, by the Acadians, descendants of French colonists who settled in Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries, some of whom are also descended from the Indigenous peoples of the region?

Context articles: Military history of Nova Scotia
Acadia
List of governors of Acadia
Mersey River (Nova Scotia)
Acadians
History of the Acadians
Expulsion of the Acadians
Indigenous peoples
Acadian Exodus
History of Halifax (former city)

Nova Scotia (also known as Mi'kma'ki and Acadia) is a Canadian province located in Canada's Maritimes.
 The region was initially occupied by Mi'kmaq.
 During the first 150 years of European settlement, the colony was primarily made up of Catholic Acadians, Maliseet and Mi'kmaq.
 During the latter seventy-five years of this time period, there were six colonial wars that took place in Nova Scotia (see the French and Indian Wars as well as Dummer's War and Father Le Loutre's War).
 After agreeing to several peace treaties, this long period of warfare ended with the Burial of the Hatchet Ceremony between the British and the Mi'kmaq (1761) and two years later when the British defeated the French in North America (1763).
 During these wars, Acadians, Mi'kmaq and Maliseet from the region fought to protect the border of Acadia from New England.
 They fought the war on two fronts: the southern border of Acadia, which New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine.
 The other front was in Nova Scotia and involved preventing New Englanders from taking the capital of Acadia, Port Royal (See Queen Anne's War), establishing themselves at Canso.
Acadia (French: "Acadie" ) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine to the Kennebec River.
 During much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Norridgewock on the Kennebec River and Castine at the end of the Penobscot River were the southernmost settlements of Acadia.
 The actual specification by the French government for the territory refers to lands bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and 46th parallels.
 Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies that became Canadian provinces and American states.
 The population of Acadia included members of the Wabanaki Confederacy and descendants of emigrants from France (i.e., Acadians).
 The two communities intermarried, which resulted in a significant portion of the population of Acadia being Métis.
The governance of the French colony of Acadia has a long and tangled history.
 Founded in 1603 by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts, the territory of Acadia (roughly, the present-day Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and portions of the U. S. state of Maine) was hotly contested in the 17th century.
 It was claimed by English and Scottish interests, fought over by competing French governors, and subjected to raids and attacks from English colonists that sometimes resulted in years of occupation of some of its communities.
 Most of the non-French claims were given up under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, but the territory did not come completely under French control until three years later.
 From 1670 until 1710 the province remained in French hands, except for a brief period in the 1670s when Dutch attackers occupied several Acadian communities.
 In 1710 a British expedition including Royal Navy warships and colonial forces from New England captured Acadia's capital for good, and France ceded an ill-defined territory to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.
 Although France continued to claim those portions of present-day Maine and New Brunswick that constituted part Acadia, it had no formal government prior to the British conquest of New France in 1760.
 The first British governor of Nova Scotia was Samuel Vetch; he took command immediately after the 1710 capture.
The Mersey River, formerly known as Rivière Rossignol by the Acadians, is a river in Nova Scotia, Canada.
 It is named after the River Mersey in Liverpool, England.
 The river proper flows from the eastern end of Eleven Mile Lake in Annapolis County southward to Kejimkujik Lake in Kejimkujik National Park, then through Lake Rossignol to empty into the Atlantic Ocean at the town of Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
 The true source of the river however is as far northwest as Sandy Bottom Lake (Annapolis County) or Tuskopeake Brook (Annapolis County) on the northern tributary.
The Acadians (French: "Acadiens" , ] ) are the descendants of French colonists who settled in Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries, some of whom are also descended from the Indigenous peoples of the region.
 The colony was located in what is now Eastern Canada's Maritime provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), as well as part of Quebec, and present-day Maine to the Kennebec River.
 Although today most of the Acadians and Québécois are French-speaking (francophone) Canadians, Acadia was a distinctly separate colony of New France.
 It was geographically and administratively separate from the French colony of Canada (modern-day Quebec).
 As a result, the Acadians and Québécois developed two distinct histories and cultures.
 They also developed a slightly different French language.
 France has one official language and to accomplish this they have an administration in charge of the language.
 Since the Acadians were separated from this council, their French language evolved independently, and Acadians retain several elements of 17th-century French that have been lost in France.
 The settlers whose descendants became Acadians came from many areas in France, but especially regions such as Île-de-France, Normandy, Brittany, Poitou and Aquitaine.
 Acadian family names have come from many areas in France.
 For example, the Maillets are from Paris; the LeBlancs of Normandy; the surname Melanson is from Brittany, and those with the surnames Bastarache and Basque came from Aquitaine.
The Acadians (French: "Acadiens" ) are the descendants of the French settlers, and sometimes the Indigenous peoples, of parts of Acadia (French: "Acadie") in the northeastern region of North America comprising what is now the Canadian Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, Gaspé, in Quebec, and to the Kennebec River in southern Maine.
The Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, the Great Deportation and Le Grand Dérangement, was the forced removal by the British of the Acadian people from the present day Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island—an area also known as "Acadia".
 The Expulsion (1755–1764) occurred during the French and Indian War (the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War) and was part of the British military campaign against New France.
 The British first deported Acadians to the Thirteen Colonies, and after 1758 transported additional Acadians to Britain and France.
 In all, of the 14,100 Acadians in the region, approximately 11,500 Acadians were deported.
 (A census of 1764 indicates that 2,600 Acadians remained in the colony, presumably having eluded capture.)
Indigenous peoples, also known as first peoples, aboriginal peoples, native peoples, or autochthonous peoples, are ethnic groups who are descended from and identify with the original inhabitants of a given region, in contrast to groups that have settled, occupied or colonized the area more recently.
 Groups are usually described as indigenous when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with a given region.
 Not all indigenous peoples share this characteristic, sometimes having adopted substantial elements of a colonising culture, such as dress, religion or language.
 Indigenous peoples may be settled in a given locale/region or exhibit a nomadic lifestyle across a large territory, but they are generally historically associated with a specific territory on which they depend.
 Indigenous societies are found in every inhabited climate zone and continent of the world.
The Acadian Exodus (also known as the Acadian migration) happened during Father Le Loutre’s War (1749–1755) and involved almost half of the total Acadian population of Nova Scotia deciding to relocate to French controlled territories.
 The three primary destinations were: the west side of the Mesagoueche River in the Chignecto region, Isle Saint-Jean and Île-Royale.
 The leader of the Exodus was Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, whom the British gave the code name “Moses”.
 Le Loutre acted in conjunction with Governor of New France Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière who encouraged the Acadian migration.
 A prominent Acadian who transported Acadians to Ile St. Jean and Ile Royal was Joseph-Nicolas Gautier.
 The overall upheaval of the early 1750s in Nova Scotia was unprecedented.
 Present-day Atlantic Canada witnessed more population movements, more fortification construction, and more troop allocations than ever before in the region.
 Along with Acadians, Mi’kmaq and Foreign Protestants joined in the Exodus from Nova Scotia.
 The greatest immigration of the Acadians between 1749 and 1755 took place in 1750.
 Primarily due to natural disasters and British raids, the Exodus proved to be unsustainable when Acadians tried to develop communities in the French territories.
Halifax, Nova Scotia was originally inhabited by the Mi'kmaq Peoples.
 The first European settlers to arrive in the future Halifax region were French, in the early 1600s, establishing the colony of Acadia.
 The British settled Halifax in 1749, which sparked Father Le Loutre's War.
 To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian, and French attacks on the new Protestant settlements, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (Citadel Hill) (1749), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1749), Dartmouth (1750), and Lawrencetown (1754).
 St. Margaret's Bay first got settled by French-speaking Foreign Protestants at French Village, Nova Scotia who migrated from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia during the American Revolution.
 All of these regions were amalgamated into the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in 1996.
 While all of the regions of HRM developed separately over the last 250 years, their histories have also been intertwined.