De Mons wanted to examine the coast of Acadia himself, on both sides of the Baie Françoise, now the Bay of Fundy. He put the gentleman-adventurers aboard the Don de Dieu, while he and Champlain took a small shallop and worked closely together, exploring promising parts of the coast.59 They moved quickly around the southern end of Acadia, following the route that Champlain had explored. De Mons wanted to have another look at the long stretch of water that is now called St. Mary Bay, probably because of the report from maître Simon about deposits of iron and silver there. They found little in the way of minerals, and “no place where we might fortify ourselves.”60
They sailed out of St. Mary Bay and headed northeast up the much larger Baie Française in search of good sites. Two leagues along the coast, they turned into a narrow opening between high headlands, and found themselves on a magnificent sheet of water, almost like an inland sea. Champlain wrote, “we entered one of the most beautiful harbors I have seen on all these coasts, which could safely hold 2,000 ships.” They named it Port-Royal—today’s Annapolis Basin.61 To enter it from the sea today is to share his sense of wonder and discovery.
The land attracted them as much as the harbor. Champlain added: “From the mouth of the river to the point we reached are many prairies or meadows but these are flooded at high tide, and numbers of small creeks that cross from one side and another…. The place was the most proper and pleasant for a settlement that we had seen.”62
They might have planted their settlement there, but de Mons wanted to explore the rest of the Baie Française before he made a decision. Thinking perhaps of the king’s interest in mines they sailed up the bay to another large basin where minerals were said to have been found. They went ashore, did some prospecting, and came upon some hopeful traces of copper, and they called the place Port-des-Mines, today’s Minas Basin.63
Champlain and de Mons continued around the head of the bay and were astonished by its prodigious tides, among the highest in the world. They began to explore its western shore, moving very quickly now. On June 24, they came to “one of the largest and deepest rivers we had yet seen,” and named it the rivière Saint-Jean “because that was the day when we arrived.” They entered the river and were startled to discover a reversing falls, which changed direction when the incoming tide submerged the rapids, as it does today. They waited for the tide to change, and sailed through the falls on the incoming tide. Upstream they found another broad bay, and they could go no farther. Indians told them that the St. John River offered an avenue to the St. Lawrence Valley with only a short portage. On the coast to the north, they also found a fine harbor, today’s handsome city of Saint John, New Brunswick.64
From the St. John River they headed south through so many islands that they were unable to count them. They were traveling with Indian guides, and named a large island Grand Manan, after the Algonquian word for island.65 They came to Passamaquoddy Bay, entered a broad estuary and followed it upstream to a beautiful place where three rivers came together in the shape of a crucifix, and just below, a handsome wooded island of about five acres which they called “Isle Sainte-Croix,” Holy Cross Island.
It caught Champlain’s eye as “easy to fortify.” He was deeply mindful of defense, not primarily against Indians but Europeans. Champlain keenly remembered the fate of Laudonnière’s colony in Florida, destroyed by a Spanish commander who ordered his men to murder the French colonists in cold blood. In 1604, the French leaders in Acadia were determined that they would not be caught in the same way.
The St. John River, in what is now New Brunswick, was named by Champlain for Saint John’s Day, June 24, 1604, when he went there and made this map. He was interested in its reversing falls (C) and its river valley, which was joined by a portage to the St. Lawrence. The Indian fort (E) later became a French and English post.
Sainte-Croix was a natural fortress, “eight or nine hundred paces in circumference.” On three sides it had granite cliffs twenty to thirty feet high, so steep as to be virtually impassable. On the fourth side of the island, facing downstream, they found a small crescent beach of sand and clay, guarded by granite rocky outcrops called “nubbles,” which could bear the weight of ramparts and cannon.66
Sainte-Croix Island was occupied by the French in June 1604. It lay in a river of the same name that is now the boundary between the United States and Canada. Champlain’s shallop is anchored upstream of the island and a three-masted patache is moored below.
The island was attractive in other ways. In June it looked lush and very fertile. Champlain and the sieur de Mons explored the banks of both its rivers, and found good ground for farming, with flowing streams of fresh water, excellent sites for mills with a good head of water, and an abundance of timber. Upstream they found deposits of copper ore, sand, clay, and building-stone. The river teemed with alewives, bass, and shad. At low tide, Champlain found “plenty of shellfish such as clams, mussels, sea-urchins and sea-snails, which were of great benefit to everyone.”67
And so it was decided. This would be their first settlement. After a long search, de Mons and Champlain made a quick judgment. They must have been very tired, and they had an anxious eye on the calendar. It was the last week in June when they arrived at Sainte-Croix Island. Spring had gone, and something had to be done.68
The settlers swarmed ashore, and were immediately assaulted by an enemy they had not met before. Champlain described them as “mosquitoes which are little flies,” and “several of our men had their faces so swollen by their bites that they could scarcely see.” New Englanders and New Brunswickers will recognize them as the dreaded black flies, clouds of tiny carnivores that are often at their worst in late June.69
The other French ships soon came up the river— Don de Dieu with little Levrette, and several shallops. A few days later a small barque duport of about 8 tons arrived. She had been sent by Pont-Gravé from Canso on the Atlantic coast, where he was gathering a cargo of fish and furs. On board were the masters of Basque ships arrested by Pont-Gravé for illegal trading. The sieur de Mons “treated them humanely, les receut humainement,” in Champlain’s phrase, and he ordered their return to France.70
Champlain’s plan of settlement on Sainte-Croix Island. The elegant house of de Mons is to the right of the tree. To the north are the storehouse and barracks for the Swiss soldiers. To the south are houses for gentlemen and bunkhouses for artisans and laborers.
On Sainte-Croix their first task was to fortify the island. Champlain wrote, “We began to erect a barricade on a small islet, a little apart from it, and this served as a platform for mounting our cannon.” Today it is still called Cannon Nubble, and it appears very much as Champlain described it. The battery faced downriver toward the open sea, where they felt the greatest danger. Its guns controlled the entire width of the river, and a deep anchorage where Champlain found sixty feet of water, enough for large ocean-going ships to ride safely at their moorings. After the battery was in place, the barricade may have been extended along a beach on the south side of the island, and within a few days the settlement was declared to be in “a state of defense.”71
Then the sieur de Mons laid out the settlement. He ordered that the woods on the island should be cut down, “save the trees along the shore,” and one large tree was left standing in what appears to have been a small village square. A very handsome house was erected for the governor, made of “fair sawn timber, with the banner of France overhead.” It had an elegant hipped Mansard roof and “artistic and beautiful woodwork.” A fireplace was built with beautiful yellow bricks that had been brought from France, as were the timbers, heavy doors, and casement windows. The colonists also built a big storehouse, the largest and most important structure on the island, for its provisions were “the safety and life of each.” It had a stone foundation and was “built likewise of fair timber, covered with shingles.”72
A covered gallery went up, “wherein we spent our time when it rained,” and also a bakehouse, cookhouse, blacksmith’s s
hop, and carpenter’s house. The dwellings followed, “each working at his own.” The gentlemen and servants put up their own small tenements. Champlain wrote, “I worked at mine, which I built with the aid of some servants of the sieur d’Orville and myself.” Artisans and laborers constructed bunkhouses for themselves, and the Swiss soldiers had barracks. An oven was added, and a hand mill, and an attempt was made at digging a well, but it appears not to have been very successful. On the shore opposite the island, an Indian village sprang up and the French built them a chapel “in the Indian manner.”73
Fields were planted on the mainland and a large garden on the island. Champlain wrote that the seeds “came up very well” except on the island, where “the soil was dry and sandy, and everything was scorched when the sun shone.” They had trouble watering the seedlings, which required “great pains.”74
Much archaeology has been done on this island from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. In general these projects have confirmed the accuracy of Champlain’s written account. An engraving of the settlement in Champlain’s Voyages depicts a more idealized image, but it is also accurate in its main lines.75
In September, the sieur de Mons ordered the Don de Dieu and Levrette back to France, and seventy-nine men prepared to stay the winter, with de Mons in command and Champlain at his side. The latitude of Sainte-Croix Island was about the same as Saintonge, and the French expected that the winter would be similar as well. To their shock, the first snow fell in the first week of October. By January three feet of snow were on the ground, and a cruel wind howled down the river. Temperatures plummeted and the winter turned bitter cold for many months.76 The Sainte-Croix River froze during the first week of December. The movement of the tide broke the heavy ice into jagged pieces that froze again in an impenetrable tangle of slabs and blocks. The men on Sainte-Croix Island could not cross the river by foot or boat, and were isolated from the mainland. Their cider and wines froze solid, except for some fortified Spanish wine. They had no source of water except melted snow, and soon they were short of firewood as well. Their diet of dried provisions and salt meat was miserable. Men began to grow weak from malnutrition, and symptoms of scurvy began to appear among them.
In mid-winter the habitants started to die, many in severe pain. Of the seventy-nine French colonists who wintered on the island, Champlain tells us, thirty-five died and twenty more were “very near it.” Here again, the evidence of archaeology has confirmed Champlain’s account. The bodies were buried in graves so shallow that the skeletons began to emerge from the ground. For many years, the Indians called this haunted place Bone Island.77
The French surgeons were baffled by these deaths. They performed careful autopsies on the victims in hope of finding the cause. Champlain wrote, “We opened several of them to determine the cause of their illness.” In the twentieth century, archaeologists found the body of a settler on whom an autopsy was performed—the earliest evidence of a European autopsy in North America. Once more, the evidence of archaeology confirmed the accuracy of Cham plain’s account. Forensic pathologists examined the remains in 2003, and were impressed by the professional skill of the French surgeons. But the autopsies gave the colonists no way of understanding what was happening to them.78
This skull of a French settler was found on Sainte-Croix Island by archaeologists. He died of scurvy in 1604–05. This modern CT scan and analysis by multi-detector computed tomography found clear traces of scurvy and confirmed Champlain’s account. Archaeology also yielded evidence of the autopsy that he described.
Champlain believed that scurvy was a dietary disease and he attributed its cause to an excess of salt provisions and a shortage of fresh food. Not until the twentieth century would the absence of vitamin C be identified as the cause, but even before the settlement on Sainte-Croix Island, ships’ doctors on long voyages were beginning to find a cure. As early as 1602–03 a writer named François Pyrard reported outbreaks of scurvy on ships bound for the East Indies, and concluded that “there is no better or more certain remedy than oranges or citrons.” Champlain heard about this finding. He wrote that “the Flemish” had found “a very strange remedy, which might be of service to us, but we have never ascertained the character of it.”79
Champlain observed that Indians survived the winter without scurvy and concluded that another remedy was fresh-killed meat. A Jesuit priest who talked with the survivors reported: “Of all the men of sieur de Mons who wintered first at Sainte-Croix, only eleven remained in good health. These were the hunters who much preferred the chase to the air of the fireside, running actively to lying passively in bed, setting traps in the snow for wild game to sitting around the fire, talking of Paris and its great chefs.”80
In late March the river thawed. The sieur de Mons and Champlain obtained a supply of fresh meat from the Indians, and the French settlers began to recover, before the greening of the forest plants.81 But when spring finally came to Sainte-Croix Island, only eleven of seventy-nine settlers were in good health. Most were dead. They had made a calamitous choice of site, without studying the island carefully enough to realize that it had no reliable source of water and fuel. They did not think that communications with the mainland might be difficult in the winter, or that relations with the Indians would be vital to their survival. Both de Mons and Champlain had read about earlier colonies that had been planted on islands, and had been cut off from assistance, with disastrous results. In 1560, French Admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon had founded a French settlement on a small island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, and it had failed. Something similar had happened on Sable Island.82
The choice of Sainte-Croix appears to have been a decision that de Mons and Champlain made together. There were no recriminations. Both men learned from their terrible mistake, and moved on. They were determined to persevere—but in another place.
9.
NORUMBEGA
Three Captains, Three Results, 1604–06
This would be the last French exploration along that coast; the history of New France in this region reached its end; that of New England had its beginning.
—Marcel Trudel1
IN THE SUMMER OF 1604, while the settlement was rising on Sainte-Croix Island, Champlain received another assignment. The sieur de Mons asked him “to explore the length of the coast of Norumbega,” which we know as Maine. France and England both claimed that region, as far south as the Delaware Valley. Its destiny would be decided by three French voyages between 1604 and 1606. Champlain sailed on them all, but each had a different commander. He led the first, de Mons the second, and Poutrincourt the last. These leaders worked at the same task, with different results.2
On the first voyage, Champlain’s orders were to find sites for settlement in a warmer climate. He was given a highly specialized vessel called a patache, which a French text defined in 1628 as “a small warship designed for the surveillance of coasts.” Champlain wrote that she was a keel-built ship of “17 or 18 tons,” probably with a length of about forty feet and a draft of five feet. She was fully decked over and designed for voyages in dangerous seas, unlike the smaller open-hulled shallops that he used in more protected waters.3
Champlain’s chart of Sainte-Croix Island has drawings of both these types: a small bluff-bowed shallop above the settlement, and below, a trim little vessel that may have been his patache. She was built man-of-war fashion with a sharp prow, long lines that held the promise of speed, a high forecastle and a raised poop with a battery of small swivel-mounted falconets. Her mastheads were crowned by large crows’ nests. She flew a large French marine ensign, which represented another purpose: to show the flag on a contested coast.4
Champlain’s sketch shows three masts and a very interesting rig. The foremast carried a lugsail that he called a bourcet on a yard that crossed the foremast at an oblique angle. The mainmast was rigged with a large square-rigged sail, and possibly a topsail. A small mizzen added a triangular lateen. These sails could be used in differe
nt combinations that were vital to Champlain’s work. The lateen and lugsail could be close-hauled, allowing a vessel to sail very close to the wind. The mainsail and lugsail could be used to run before the wind. In light airs, all sails could be set to capture the slightest whisper of a variable breeze. It was a versatile rig, much favored by explorers.5
A patache was well suited to his method of close-in exploration in a vessel that “furette par tout; ferrets everywhere.” On his coastal voyages, Champlain wasted no time and passed rapidly over stretches of coast that offered nothing of interest. He sought out the promising places, explored them with close attention, and surveyed them in meticulous detail. It was dangerous work on a rockbound coast with strong currents and huge tides, but Champlain found it “very agreeable.”6
Champlain’s patache carried a crew of twelve seamen (matelots). On long exploring voyages he also took several servants, and a gunner, a carpenter, a locksmith, a master-miner for prospecting, and several arquebusiers. Also aboard for this cruise were two Etchemin Indians “as guides on a coast that they knew well.” Altogether, perhaps twenty men crowded aboard the patache. The hold was packed with a month’s supplies—biscuit, peas, flour, salt meat and fish, wine and water, weapons and ammunition, lumber and cordage, sails and spares.7 The Etchemin brought a birchbark canoe, and Champlain added skiffs for surveying.8 On September 2, 1604, Champlain departed from Sainte-Croix Island and dropped down the river. He was happy to be at sea in a good ship, indulging what he called his “passion for discovery.” To read his account is to feel that there was nothing in the world that he would rather be doing—another reason why he was so good at it.9
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