St Croix Island International Historic Site is not the least visited site in the National Park System. It isn’t even in the bottom ten. It ranks higher than Frederick Law Olmsted’s home, the Saugus Ironworks and Bill Clinton’s Birthplace. This little site is an island in a river that serves as the border between Maine and New Brunswick (Canada). While it is tiny, it is not insignificant. It marks the beginning of the French presence in North America.

The Park

The island is too sensitive to be visited, but can be viewed from the mainland. The park on the American side is a short walk with large bronze statues illustrating parts of the settlement’s story. In wintertime, the statues are covered to protect them from the cold rain, ice and snow. I kept imagining the statues wrapped up in big burlap bags. The ranger on-duty told us that the view of the island is better from the French side. The drive to see the other side of the island would take two hours, and I had already driven seven hours to get there. Anyway, we were headed south to Campobello Island.

The ranger at the visitor center seemed very happy to see us. She probably was because of the low visitation numbers. Despite being tiny, the visitor center was really cool. “Touch anything you want!” the ranger called as we walked around the small room. They had a beaver pelt on the display and I definitely touched that. The fur is so soft and thick, I could see why the Europeans desired the pelts. Unfortunately for the the beaver, beaver hats were a fashion craze that lasted a couple hundred years. The hats I associate with French Explorers, Pilgrims, Napoleon and Yankee Doodle were all beaver.

The was a hand-written sign in the Visitor Center than said, “10 Minute Talk.” My wife, who had offered no opinion about going here other than a slight chuckle, asked the ranger when the talk was happening. The ranger replied that it was by request, and so my wife requested the talk. The ranger walked over to a map of the Bay of Fundy, took a deep breath and launched into an excellent ten minute overview of the history of the settlement.

The History

In 1604, a French expedition settled on a small island in the St. Croix River. Their leader, Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons was granted a trading monopoly by King Henri IV, and was charged with converting the native people to Catholicism, claiming the land for the King, exploring and bringing back the precious metals that were rumored to be in the New World. They found the soil to be fertile, the fish to be abundant, and the black flies to be ferocious. The Passamaquoddy, the local people, readily traded highly coveted beaver pelts with the French. They visited the region during the fishing season, warned the French about settling on the island. The French dismissed the advice, focusing instead on building a settlement that could be easily defended. They put a big canon at the tip of the island so they could fire on enemies coming up the river.

The island was on the same latitude as France, so it was assumed that the weather would be roughly the same. In October, winter hit. The river froze. The extreme tides in the area caused the ice to break, pile up and made it impossible for the men to cross from the island to the main land. The fresh water was on the mainland, along with fresh game and the wood needed for fuel. Their wine and cider froze, and the rations were given out in blocks that had to be thawed. They had supplies, but not the right supplies. Scurvy set in (poor blood as they described it) and the men developed sores and bloody gums, and started losing teeth and began to die. Of the 79 men who arrived on the island, only 44 lived until spring when the Passamaquoddy returned and traded fresh game with them. Once they had access to fresh food, their health started to improve.

Finally, the relief ships came (only a couple months late) and Dugua packed up the entire settlement and went off to search for a better spot. They visited some of the places that his cartographer, Samuel Champlain had visited before the winter set in (Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island!) and went as far south as Cape Cod. They finally ended up establishing a permanent settlement in Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Champlain later went west and established Quebec City on the Saint Lawrence River.

The Walk

The ranger’s talk was excellent! I was really impressed with her breadth of knowledge, and ability to answer our questions about the differences between the French and English approaches to their settlements and the native people who already lived there. The Spanish enslaved, the English fought and the French traded. (Of course, I am over simplifying this.) I was a little unclear about the Acadians, and why they were forced to relocate (and why they went to Louisiana) but that was probably more due to my confusions about the skirmishes between the French and English and general history of the time. My wife filled me in on a few missing pieces, but I have more to learn here. I could have asked the ranger more questions, but I decided I needed something more in-depth than what the ranger could help me with. So, once my wife was done talking with the ranger, we went on the walk.

The walk is very short. There are a series of seven or eight bronze statues along the trail, ending at a covered pavilion with a bronze model of the settlement, created from Champlain’s drawings. (“These were going back to the king, so they were exaggerated,” the ranger told us. From here you could look out over the river and see the island. It is really very small. I could almost imagine the despair they felt, trapped on the island within sight of fresh water and fuel. Maybe they saw deer or moose on the unreachable banks. After gazing at the island for a few minutes, we headed back to the car. I filled up my water bottle at the visitor center and we headed toward Campobello Island. The settlement there had a completely different legacy.

To learn more about the European settlement of New England from a different perspective, read Carolyn Merchant’s excellent Ecological Revolutions. I was reminded of the book here, because she discusses the demise of the beaver and the aftermath of the European settlement through the industrial revolution. I have been digging through my bookshelves to find it, but think I need to request it from the library so I can read it again. This is an exceptional book from an ecofeminist perspective.