In June 1604, a ship carrying 79 French sailors made its way up what is now called the St. Croix River in what is now Washington County, and landed at a small island in the river.
The island, called Metnegwis by the Passamaquoddy people, had been seasonally visited by them for many centuries, but was empty at the time. The sailors, led by French explorer Pierre Dugua de Mons, created a settlement on the 6.5-acre strip they named St. Croix Island, with plans to lay claim to the region for France and bring more people to the area.
European explorers had visited Maine several times already, including Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 and Estevan Gomez in 1525, but none had attempted to create a settlement. We know through the writings of famed explorer Samuel de Champlain, who was there, that it was abandoned in less than a year for a new site, Port Royal, in what is now Nova Scotia.
Had it lasted, St. Croix Island would have become the first permanent European settlement in what is now New England, preceding both the short-lived Popham Colony in what is now Phippsburg, and before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts. That settlement would have been French — not British.
Today, St. Croix Island International Historic Site is maintained by the National Park Service and Parks Canada as the only international historic site in the parks system. There is no public access to the island itself, though both systems maintain mainland facilities along the riverbank. It’s about eight miles south of Calais and across the river from Bayside, New Brunswick.
Dugua de Mons and Champlain were hoping St. Croix would be the first of many settlements in newly-named Acadia, the second French colony in North America. After exploring many sites throughout what is now Maine, including Mount Desert Island and Isle au Haut, which Champlain named, they chose St. Croix Island because it was easily defensible, thanks to the cliffs that surrounded three out of the four sides of the island.
That summer, the settlers began trading with the local Passamaquoddy, and fought off clouds of bloodthirsty black flies, with Champlain writing that several of the men “had their faces so swollen by their bites that they could hardly see.” They struggled to grow food due to a shortage of rain, a challenge that would prove deadly for the fledgling settlement.
By winter, the men hunkered down on the rocky island, exposed to the elements. Access to the mainland was difficult due to ice jams on the river, which left the settlers essentially stuck. Fresh food was quickly running out.
“It was difficult to know this country without having wintered there; for on arriving in summer everything is very pleasant on account of the woods, the beautiful landscapes, and the fine fishing for the many kinds of fish we found there,” Champlain wrote. “There are six months of winter in that country.”
As the winter dragged on, more than half of the men developed what Champlain called a “mal de la terre,” or “land sickness” — scurvy, a disease caused by Vitamin C deficiency. It was common among sailors stuck on ships for months at a time, and many captains knew to keep citrus fruits on board, or beverages made from evergreen tree needles. During the European Age of Sail between 1500 and 1800, it was assumed half of all crews would die of scurvy.
“Their teeth barely held in place, and could be removed with the fingers without causing pain,” Champlain wrote of the horrific suffering the settlers endured over the winter of 1604-1605. “This excess flesh was often cut away, which caused them to bleed extensively from the mouth.”
In all, 35 out of the 79 died from scurvy that winter, and 20 more were severely sickened. After forensic anthropologists examined a skull that had been found on the island in 2003, they determined that the settlers had performed the first known autopsy in North America to try to determine what was killing them.
In June 1605, a French relief ship came to St. Croix, and Dugua de Mons and Champlain quickly chose to pack up and leave for what is now Nova Scotia. Champlain would go on to found Quebec City in 1608.
In 1613, a British captain burned the newly-formed French mission on Mount Desert Island, and then burned down what remained of the St. Croix settlement, one of the first salvos in nearly 150 years of conflict between the French and British in North America.
St. Croix Island reverted back to its original state, to be used again by Passamaquoddy people as a site to store food away from other wildlife. It has remained uninhabited to this day. Those who did land on the island’s tiny beach could see trace amounts of buildings left behind by the settlers as well as their skeletal remains, poking up out of the sand, leading to its local nickname, “Bone Island.”
In 1797, the island was deemed to be under American control, as it lies on the western side of the river channel. In 1949, the U.S. designated it a National Historic Monument, which in 1984 was redesignated an international historic site. In 1969, anthropologists dug up the graves of some of the men who died on St. Croix and studied them to determine the cause of death.
As Champlain suspected, it was scurvy. The bones were reburied on the island in July 2003, and in 2004, a 400th anniversary celebration was held, commemorating the arrival of the first European settlers in New England — 16 years before the Pilgrims.
