Gaspard de coligny biography of alberta
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Saint Croix Island: First Step in the Colonization of New France
Steven R. Pendery
Acting Chief of Archaeology, Northeast Region, National Park Service
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French colonization in the New World began in the 16th century with a series of failed settlements in the Saint Laurence Valley of Canada, in Brazil, and La Florida. The 1604-1605 settlement of Saint Croix Island in Acadia under the authority of Pierre Dugua de Mons was also a failure but it marked an important turning point (fig. 1). The settlement was abandoned after a year, but the lessons learned were immediately put to use in the next Acadian “ habitation” built at Port-Royal and this led directly to the settlement of Quebec in 1608 by Champlain and others. So, it is to Saint Croix Island in the years 1604 and 1605 where we must turn to understand the initial French response to living in the New World and how survival strategies were developed.
Fig. 1. – Location of St. Croix Island in the State of Maine, USA (© S. R. Pendery).
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Migrations, transferts et échanges de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique 100 Fortunately, we have the writings of a participant (Samuel Champlain) and two later observers (Marc Lescarbot and Pierre Biard) along with Champlain’s cartographic documentation of the island. This paper argues that the island’s archeological resources are also vital to reconstructing the setting and key events. These include the pattern of settlement and defense, architecture, diet and daily life, and resource procurement and tribal relations. First, we must examine the context of the earlier failed colonies and the circumstances behind the 1604 Dugua de Mons expedition.
French colonization in the 16th century
The earliest French presence in the Americas included expeditions for fishing in the North Atlantic and trading in exotic wood in Brazil. No sooner had French merchants settled into regular trading with the New World that it was then demarcated by the Pope into
History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America (Latin American Literature and Culture, No. 6) [1 ed.] 9780520068490, 0520068491
Table of contents : Historian David Hackett Fischer writes that few accounts of the earliest “encounters between American Indians and Europeans… are about harmony and peace.”[1] Nonetheless, as Fischer points out, “scholars of many nations”[2] maintain that the French explorers and later settlers of New France related more peacefully with the Indians of that territory than the first European arrivals of the late fifteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries did with native inhabitants elsewhere in the Americas.[3] Greater accord existed between the French and North American Indians compared to that between Europeans and Indians elsewhere in the New World, with significant exceptions. For example, upon “hearing a Dominican sermon” that decried the cruel treatment of Indian slaves in the pearl fishery of Guadeloupe,[4] the Spanish “colonial official and plantation owner” Bartolomé de las Casas sought to become a priest and was ordained in 1514. He became a Dominican friar eight years later and devoted the rest of his life to the defence of the equal human dignity of the Indians and of the Spaniards.[5] More than a century thereafter, New England colonists Roger Williams and John Eliot, like the Catholic las Casas but “of the reformed Church of England,”[6] respected the Indian people as they worked to evangelize them. Eliot translated the Bible to an Algonquin tongue, “the first Bible… to be printed in America,” and also produced a catechism.[7] Opposite these examples of non-French esteem toward the Indians, on his voyages under the French Crown in 1534 and 1535, Jacques Cartier responded to Indian greetings in the St. Lawrence Valley by “seizing their children and carrying them to France against their will.”[8] Thus, the French were not invariably kind and explorers and colonists of other powers cruel toward the Indians and toward other persons of their own ethnicity. However, French-Indian mutuality in North America was stronger than that between Europeans and Indians elsew .
Frontmatter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page xiii)
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION (page xv)
LÉRY'S DEDICATION (page xli)
PREFACE (page xlv)
CHAPTER I Of the Motive and the Occasion That Made Us Undertake This Distant Voyage to the Land of Brazil (page 3)
CHAPTER II Of Our Embarkation at the Port of Honfleur in Normandy, Together with the Tempests, Encounters, Seizure of Ships, and the First Lands and Islands That We Discovered (page 7)
CHAPTER III Of the Bonitos, Albacore, Gilt-fish, Porpoises, Flying Fish, and Others of Various Kinds That We Saw and Took in the Torrid Zone (page 15)
CHAPTER IV Of the Equator, or Equinoctial Line: Together with the Tempests, the Fickleness of Winds, the Pestilent Rains, the Heat, the Thirst, and Other Inconveniences That We Endured in That Region (page 20)
CHAPTER V Of the Sighting and First View That We Had Both of West India or the Land of Brazil and of the Savages That Inhabit It Together with Everything That Happened to Us on the Sea up to the Tropic of Capricorn (page 25)
CHAPTER VI Of Our Landing at Fort Coligny in the Land of Brazil. Of the Reception That Villegagnon Gave Us, and of His Behavior, Regarding Both Religion and Other Aspects of His Government in That Country (page 33)
CHAPTER VII A Description of the Bay of Guanabara Otherwise Called Janeiro in America; of the Island and Fort of Coligny, Which Was Built on It; Together with the Other Islands in the Region (page 51)
CHAPTER VIII Of the Natural Qualities, Strength, Stature, Nudity, Disposition and Ornamentation of the Body of the Brazilian Savages, Both Men and Women, Who Live in America, and Whom I Frequented for about a Year (page 56)
CHAPTER IX Of the Big Roots and the Millet of Which the Savages Make Flour That They Eat Instead of Bread; and of Their Drink, Which They call Caouin (page pa