Samuel de Champlain Monument

Watching over the shore of Stage Harbor, this small stone monument is a testament to a dramatic early encounter between indigenous North Americans and non-Iberian Europeans. In early October 1606, an exploratory party from the French colony of Port Royal, a settlement on Nova Scotia, was forced to take refuge in what is today Stage Harbor, Chatham. Here the Frenchmen undertook repairs on their damaged ship, baked bread, and fraternized with the local Monomoyick people. Over the course of two weeks, however, interactions between the two sides escalated from friendly exchange and inquiry to violent confrontation. 

In 1605, the architects of New France searched for a hospitable site to replant their failed settlement off the coast of Maine. Though ultimately founding Port Royal along the coast of Nova Scotia, they searched as far south as Cape Cod. The following year, 1606, a French ship under the command of Baron de Poutrincourt, continued explorations to the south, but became trapped among the dangerous sandbars off the coast of Monomoy. In his journal, Samuel de Champlain, who was a cartographer onboard both southern expeditions, describes the terror that ensued. Though, “by the grace of God,” the Frenchmen found a passage through, survival came at the expense of the ship’s rudder. At the advice of a local man in a dug-out canoe, the Frenchmen anchored in Stage Harbor and sent men ashore to commence repairs and bake bread. While in the harbor, Champlain and others explored the surroundings and interacted with the local Monomoyick people. 

In their journals, Champlain and another crewmember, Marc Lescarbot, recorded some of their observations. Champlain noted the beauty of the landscape, but lamented that, though otherwise well suited, the harbor was too shallow and too difficult to enter for a successful French settlement. Both men also commented on the abundance of shellfish and fish, noting that these resources helped sustain the Monomoyick, who also grew corn, but, according to Champlain, were not good hunters. Despite initial peaceful interactions and exchange between the French and the Monomoyick, relations deteriorated.

The events that led up to the violent turn in relations are not entirely clear, but the records allude to certain Frenchmen firing upon Monomoyick as retribution for stolen hatchets. Some of these men, ignoring an order to return to the ship, were ambushed, resulting in four of their deaths. The French found their attempts to exact revenge frustrated by the Monomoyick’s abandonment of their village and flight into the woods. The French soon left the harbor, naming it Port Fortune after their misfortune there. Weather, however, forced them to make a return, upon which they feigned peace to kidnap and kill several Monoymoyick men before heading home to Port Royal.

Although, the French never returned to settle southern New England, the Wampanoag of Cape Cod, particularly the Monomoyick, fostered lasting mistrust towards the Englishmen who showed up after the French departure. 

This episode is reminiscent of similar early encounters between non-Iberian Europeans and indigenous North Americans. Such violent outbursts arising from small misunderstandings were typical. Similarly, the ability to quickly decamp, which the Monomoyick used to avoid French retribution, was a strategy also employed by Powhatan in his struggle against the Jamestown settlers. Finally, the Monoymoyick’s initial eagerness to trade with the French demonstrates that, contrary to popular conceptions of early 17th century North America, indigenous people were already involved in a broader world where Europeans, and the goods they had to offer, were familiar.

The stone monument first erected in the mid-20th century remembers only the ship's cartographer, Samuel de Champlain who, for later deeds, would be canonized as the Father of New France. Here, where dug-out canoes have long since disappeared, Champlain is revered as “the first white man on these shores.” Fortunately, a historical marker recently placed by the Chatham Historical Society compensates for the original monument’s insufficiency, granting visitors a window into these events and offering proper acknowledgement of the Monomoyick people, whose traditional homelands Chatham rests upon.

Champlain, Samuel de, and William Lawson Grant. Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604-1618. Original Narratives of Early American History. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1907. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001444694.

Champlain, Samuel de. The Voyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain, 1604-1616. Allerton Book Company, 1922. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Voyages_and_Explorations_of_Samuel_d/rvt5AAAAMAAJ?hl=en

Carpenter, Delores Bird. Early Encounters: Native Americans and Europeans in New England. From the Papers of W. Sears Nickerson. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994.

Historic Chatham. “Champlain’s Visit - Monument & Plaque.” Accessed October 14, 2022. //www.historic-chatham.org/champlain.html.

Lescarbot, Marc, Henry Percival Biggar, W. L. (William Lawson) Grant, William F. (William Francis) Ganong, and Champlain Society. The History of New France: In Three Volumes. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1907. http://archive.org/details/historyofnewfran07lesc_0.

Richter, Daniel K. Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

Townsend Camilla. 2004. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York: Hill and Wang.