Saint Croix Island, Maine
Saint Croix Iceland is a small uninhabited island in the St. Croix River in the U.S. state of Maine. It is located about 6 km upstream of the confluence with the Atlantic Ocean. The river forms the border with the Canadian province of New Brunswick, the island is in American waters. On it was from 1604, the first settlement of French fur traders in North America.
The 26,000 m² large island has a length of 200 m and a width of 100 m. The nearest city is Calais on the American side. In 1949 the island was designated as a National Monument Saint Croix Iceland and rededicated in 1984 in Saint Croix Iceland International Historic Site. It is managed by the National Park Service. The island itself is inaccessible to visitors, a small visitor center and museum located on the banks on the U.S. side. On the opposite, Canadian banks are information boards.
History
The people of the Passamaquoddy moved here a few centuries before the discovery by the Europeans. 1604 reached an expedition of Pierre Dugua de Monts, Sieur de Monts also called the island. The gentleman from Saint- Malo in Brittany had been awarded the royal privilege to the colonization of North America between the 40th and the 60th degree of latitude and the monopoly on fishing and fur trade in all French possessions on the North American continent in the last year of Henry IV of France. He founded with merchants of Brittany, a trading company and crossed the Atlantic.
The members of the expedition spent the winter 1604/ 05 on the island. About half of them died under the harsh living conditions. The cause of death scurvy has been demonstrated bone remains. The survivors moved in the spring of 1605 to the Bay of Fundy, where they (now Annapolis Royal) founded the settlement of Port Royal. Among them was Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City in 1608, and so the first step made into the interior of the continent.
The settlement on the island was further extended until 1613, when the English Captain Samuel Argall expelled the French settlers from the coast of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. In Saint Croix Iceland he forced the inhabitants to leave the island and tore down the buildings in Port Royal, he burned down the settlement as the residents working in the fields. The Jesuit mission was only founded in the same year on Mount Desert Iceland was destroyed by him. The disputed between Britain and France area was for 150 years for no man's land. The Indians of the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Penobscot, Mi'kmaq and Abenaki were the only inhabitants of the region.
1783 was determined by the Treaty of Paris, the " Saint Croix River" as the boundary between the independent United States and British North America. However, it was uncertain what the river Saint Croix. Only in 1793 was the Canadian Robert Pagan with a copy of Champlain's Map Saint Croix Iceland, where the ruins of the settlement, which he can identify by French porcelain. Thus, the boundary dispute was settled.
In the 19th century, the island was colonized, sand and gravel were mined and built a lighthouse. The settlement was abandoned before 1900, the lighthouse burned in 1950 and was not reinstated.
Previous names of the island were Muttoneguis (in the language of the Passamaquoddy ), Bone Iceland in the 17th century, neutral Iceland ( in the British -American War from 1812 to 1814, no state area ) and Dochet Iceland, a name which is still in use with the locals.