Saint Croix Island International Historic Site
Aerial view of Saint Croix Island. Photo: Quintin Soloviev.
In June 2003, a small group of officials representing the United States and Canada stood quietly on the southern end of St. Croix Island, listening to prayers spoken in Latin and French. At their feet were the newly reburied bones of Frenchmen who settled on the island in 1604 and died there through the winter of 1605.
The French, including cartographer Samuel de Champlain, had arrived along the North American coast in May of 1604, reconnoitering the Bay of Fundy area and interacting with the Passamaquoddy people, whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years. The 6.5 acre island in what they named the St. Croix River seemed like an ideal location: It would be easy to defend against European rivals and had a deep channel that would accommodate large ships.
Before the first snow arrived in October, the French settlers accomplished a lot on the island the Passamaquoddy people had used as a food storage location: They built fortifications, a storehouse, a public building, multiple dwellings, an oven, a hand mill, a blacksmith shop, a well, a kitchen, and gardens on both the island and along the shore of the mainland in view of the island.
The French ships returned to France for the winter, planning to be back in the spring with more settlers and supplies. Seventy-nine men remained, determined to make St. Croix Island the first permanent French colony of northeastern North America.
But they were not prepared for the conditions of living on the island in the winter. The tidal river that surrounded them didn’t freeze over; instead huge chunks of ice blocked their way to the shore, which was only about the distance of a football field away. They were cut off from fresh water, wood for their fires, and from being able to hunt game for fresh food.
Salted meat and vegetables, wine and cider were carefully portioned out. By March of 1605, when Passamaquoddy people could finally get across the river to the island with supplies, they found 35 of the Frenchmen had died and 20 were near death.
By May, the remaining French settlers had recovered, but when the ships from France returned in June, the island settlement was abandoned, its buildings dismantled and rebuilt at a new location: today’s Port Royal, Nova Scotia, where the French established a colony.
St. Croix Island served a variety of purposes in the centuries after that first French settlement failed, including as host to a U.S. Coast Guard station. It was protected as a national monument in 1949 and redesignated an international historic site in 1984. Today, the island itself is not publicly accessible, but interpretive sites in both the United States and Canada offer views of the place where the French presence in the region began.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
