Saint Croix Island
| Saint Croix Island International Historic Site | |||
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| Location: | Maine , United States | ||
| Specialty: | Early French settlement in North America | ||
| Next city: | Calais , Maine | ||
| Surface: | 0.2 km² | ||
| Founding: | June 8, 1949 | ||
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Saint Croix Island is a small uninhabited island in the St. Croix River in the US state of Maine . It is about 6 km above the confluence with the Atlantic Ocean. The river forms the border with the Canadian province of New Brunswick , the island is in American waters. From 1604 on, the first French fur traders settled in North America.
The 26,000 m² island has a length of 200 m and a width of 100 m. The next city is Calais on the American side. In 1949 the island was designated as a Saint Croix Island National Monument and in 1984 it was rededicated as the Saint Croix Island International Historic Site . It is administered by the National Park Service . The island itself is inaccessible to visitors, a small visitor center and museum is located on the shore on the US side. Information boards are on the opposite Canadian bank.
history
The Passamaquoddy people settled here a few centuries before it was discovered by the Europeans. In 1604 an expedition led by Pierre Dugua de Mons reached the island. The nobleman from Saint-Malo in Brittany had been granted the royal privilege to colonize North America between the 40th and 60th parallel and the monopoly for fishing and fur trade in all French possessions on the North American continent from Henry IV of France last year . He founded a trading company with merchants from Brittany and crossed the Atlantic.
The participants of the expedition spent the winter of 1604/05 on the island. About half of them died under the harsh living conditions. Scurvy was proven to be the cause of death based on bone fragments . The survivors moved to the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1605 , where they established the Port Royal settlement (now Annapolis Royal ). Among them was Samuel de Champlain , who founded Québec in 1608 and thus made the first step into the interior of the continent.
The settlement on the island continued to expand until 1613 when the English captain Samuel Argall from the Jamestown colony in Virginia drove the French settlers off the coast. In Saint Croix Island he forced the inhabitants to leave the island and tore down the buildings, in Port Royal he burned the settlement down while the inhabitants were working in the fields. The Jesuit mission on Mount Desert Island , which was only founded in the same year, was also destroyed by him. The disputed area between Great Britain and France was no man's land for around 150 years . The Indians of the Passamaquoddy , Maliseet , Penobscot , Mi'kmaq and Abenaki were the only inhabitants of the region.
In 1783, in the Peace of Paris, the "Saint Croix River" was designated as the border between the independent United States and British North America . But it was unsure which river the Saint Croix is. It was not until 1793 that the Canadian Robert Pagan found with the help of a copy of Champlain's map Saint Croix Island and there the ruins of the settlement, which he could identify through French porcelain. This settled the border dispute.
In the 19th century the island was settled, sand and gravel were mined and a lighthouse was built. The settlement was abandoned before 1900, the lighthouse burned down in 1950 and was not restored.
Previous names of the island were Muttoneguis (in the language of the Passamaquoddy), Bone Island in the 17th century, Neutral Island ( no state territory in the British-American War 1812-1814) and Dochet Island , a name that is still used by the locals.
Web links
- National Park Service: Saint Croix Island (official site; English)
- Parks Canada: Saint Croix Island International Historic Site
- Cynthia Wallace-Casey: Isle Sainte Croix , Province of New Brunswick, Heritage Branch, Culture and Sport Secretariat
References and comments
- ↑ Also called Sieur de Mons or Sieur de Monts .