Explanatory maps of Saint Croix & Acadia/ Cartes explicatives de Ste-Croix & de l’Acadie A...

Explanatory maps of Saint Croix & Acadia/Cartes explicatives de Ste-Croix & de l’Acadie

A bilingual, 4-color educational map/poster detailing Acadian settlement in 1604, deportation, migration and resettlement with modern demographics from the 2001 Canadian census.

Produced by the Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, © 2004. Author: Stephen J. Hornsby; Cartographer: Michael J. Hermann

Canadian-American Center . www.umaine.edu/canam/publications/st-croix

The Settlement of Acadia1604-1607



This map commemorates the 400th anniversaries of the French settlements on Saint Croix Island (Maine) in 1604 and at Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) in 1605.

Although both settlements were short-lived, they mark the beginnings of a French presence in the area that the French called Acadie (Acadia) and that today comprises eastern Maine and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

In the early 1600s, the French and the English, taking advantage of weakening Spanish power in the western Atlantic, began to assert their claims to the eastern seaboard of North America. In the northeast, these claims overlapped; the Gulf of Maine was soon divided between English interests in and around Massachusetts Bay and French concerns around the Bay of Fundy.

In 1604, a French expedition led by merchant venturer Pierre Du Gua, Sieur de Monts, and including geographer and cartographer Samuel de Champlain, arrived off the coast of what is today southwestern Nova Scotia. After exploration of the Bay of Fundy, a settlement was established on Saint Croix Island. During the summer and early fall of 1604, Champlain ventured along the mid-Maine coast as far as Georges River. He named the islands of Mount Desert and Isle au Haut, both significant navigational landmarks, and explored up the Penobscot River in search of the mythical city of Norumbega.


The French selected Saint Croix Island because of its good location, safe anchorage, and apparently defensible site. During the summer, houses, stores, and a chapel were hastily erected, while gardens were planted on the island and on a neighboring river bank. However, a bitter winter led to the abandonment of the settlement. The freezing of the Saint Croix River left the site vulnerable to attack, while a shortage of fresh food led to an outbreak of scurvy and the death of thirty-five men, nearly half of De Monts’ company.



The French first settled on Saint Croix Island in the middle of the Saint Croix River. In his journal, Samuel de Champlain observed: “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. There are six months of winter in that country.”


The following summer, De Monts and Champlain took a small expedition southward along the coasts of present-day Maine and Massachusetts as far as Cape Cod. The party entered the Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers, sailed across Cape Cod Bay, and reached Nauset Harbor on the Cape. On their return, De Monts removed the settlement from St. Croix across the Bay of Fundy to a new location at Port-Royal overlooking Annapolis Basin. The habitation built at Port-Royal was a defensive structure that accommodated the colonists, their supplies, and workshops; it was the forerunner of similar trading posts built by the French elsewhere on the continent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the winter of 1605/6, a further twelve men died of scurvy.


In the summer of 1606, Champlain worked on his map of the region, as well as explored around the southern tip of Cape Cod. The winter of 1606/7 was much easier, but just as the small colony seemed to be establishing itself, the French crown revoked De Monts’ charter. In the summer of 1607, all the colonists, except a caretaker, left for France. During their four years of colonization, the French had acquired considerable geographical knowledge of the region, traded with native peoples, and shown that arable cultivation was viable.


Champlain’s Descr[i]psion des costes – (1607) is the first detailed European map of the Gulf of Maine. Drafted at Port-Royal, the map shows capes, bays, islands, shoals, and rivers along the coast; heights of land useful for navigation; and principal native settlements. Indian guides helped Champlain explore parts of the coast, and also provided information about the interior. Of the French names given to geographical features along the Maine coast, only Mount Desert and Isle au Haut have survived to the present.


www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nb/stcroix/index.aspx www.nps.gov/sacr/index.htm

In the early twentieth century, French exploration and settlement of Acadia was commemorated in Maine and Nova Scotia. In Maine, the federally-protected lands on Mount Desert Island were first named the Sieur De Monts National Monument, then Lafayette National Park (after the Revolutionary War hero), and finally Acadia National Park. A mountain in the park was named after Champlain and a spring after Sieur De Monts. In Nova Scotia, the habitation at Port-Royal was reconstructed in the 1930s and is now a National Historic Site. The names of the national park and the reconstructed habitation are significant monuments of the Colonial Revival movement.

Acadian Deportation, Migration & Resettlement


The year 2005 marked the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and adjacent areas to points around the Atlantic rim. A defining moment in the history of the Acadian people, the deportation also changed irrevocably the human geography of what is today Canada’s Maritime Provinces.


Although De Monts established a trading post at Port-Royal in 1605, the French hold over Acadia was fragile and intermittent until 1632 when the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye confirmed French possession of the region. During the early 1630s, almost three hundred French immigrants arrived in the Port-Royal area. With a high birth rate and low infant mortality, the population reached approximately 500 people in 1671, 1,400 in 1707, and about 13,000 people in the early 1750s.

From the initial core at Port-Royal, Acadian settlement spread around the Bay of Fundy as well as onto Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and to Pentagoet at the mouth of the Penobscot River. The population depended on mixed farming, raising livestock and crops from dyked marshes. At the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, much of the area settled by the Acadians was transferred to the British who called the territory Nova Scotia.


During the early eighteenth century, the French and the British consolidated their respective positions in Acadia and Nova Scotia. The French built a massive fortress town at Louisbourg on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), and placed forts to command the Chignecto Isthmus and the Saint John River. Meanwhile, the British strengthened Port-Royal, renaming it Annapolis Royal, and then, in 1749, constructed a fortified town at Halifax; they also built Fort Edward overlooking the Avon River and Fort Lawrence at Chignecto.

Increasing friction between the British and the French in the Ohio Country led to the outbreak of the French and Indian War (Seven Years War) in 1754. The following year, British and American colonial forces captured Fort Beauséjour, giving them control of the Chignecto area. Concerned at the large Acadian presence in the hinterland of Halifax and aware that many Acadians had refused to swear loyalty to the British crown, the military governor of Nova Scotia took the fateful decision to clear the Acadians from their settlements.


The deportation of the Acadians began in the fall of 1755 and lasted until 1778. The first removals, comprising approximately 7000 people, were from settlements around the Bay of Fundy. After the British captured Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean and raided the Gaspé and the Saint John River in 1758, further Acadians were captured and deported. Those who had sought refuge in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were also removed. Farms and businesses were destroyed. A British officer arriving at Annapolis Royal in October 1757 observed “ruined habitations, and extensive orchards well planted with apple and pear trees, bending under their weight of fruit.”


Acadians were shipped to many points around the Atlantic. Large numbers were deported to the continental colonies, others to France. Some managed to escape to New France (Quebec). A handful arrived in the Upper Saint John Valley. Many moved several times; a great number left the American colonies at the end of the war and returned to Nova Scotia; many of those in France moved to the French Caribbean or to Louisiana, where they formed the basis of the Cajun population.






Those Acadians who returned to Nova Scotia in the 1780s and 1790s found their former settlements occupied by American settlers and Loyalists. As a result, the Acadians occupied new areas in western Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island, the eastern shore of New Brunswick, and the Gaspé Peninsula. In these areas, they drew a living from farming, inshore fishing, lumbering, and shipbuilding.

Rural Acadian settlements typically comprise houses dispersed along a principal street, a large Roman Catholic church, and distinctive vernacular housing. Cultural centers proclaim the vitality of Acadian culture. Acadians also have moved into urban areas, particularly Halifax and Moncton.






www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nb/stcroix/index.aspx

www.nps.gov/sacr/index.htm

Find more information about Saint Croix Island International Historic Site from these websites.


CREDITS:Editor: Stephen J. Hornsby

Cartographers: Michael J. Hermann, Matthew CoteResearch Assistants: Hans Carlson, Elizabeth Hedler

Translator: Raymond J. PelletierOutreach Coordinator: Betsy Arntzen

Photographs: Stephen J. Hornsby, Claude DeGrâce

SOURCES:• Acadian population taken from the 2001 Canadian Census. Figures and distribution represent Statistics Canada’s

weighted aggregate of those people who entered Acadian as one of their ethnic identities on census form 2B.

• H.P. Biggar (ed.), The Works of Samuel de Champlain Volume I 1599-1607. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1922.

• Jean Daigle, Robert LeBlanc, “Acadian Deportation and Return” in Historical Atlas of Canada, Volume I, From the Beginning to 1800, edited by R. Cole Harris, plate 30. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.

• C.E. Heidenreich, Explorations and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain, 1601-1632. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976.

• Robert G. LeBlanc, “The Acadian Migration”, Canadian Geographic Journal; 81, no. 1 (1970): 10-19.

Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI National Resource Center program.Produced by the Canadian-American Center Cartography Studio, University of Maine.

All rights reserved ©2004

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Explanatory maps of Saint Croix & Acadia/ Cartes explicatives de Ste-Croix & de l’Acadie A...

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