Baron de Saint-Castin by Will H. Lowe, 1881, Wilson Museum Archives (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie, baron de Saint-Castin
Régiment de Carignan-Salières
I am currently telling the story of Jean-Vincent, baron de Saint-Castin (1652 -1707), who came to New France as a member of the Régiment de Carignan-Salières under the command of Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy (c. 1596 or 1603 – 1670). Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie was 13 years old. At that time in history, Daniel de Rémy de Courcelle (1626 – 1698) was the governor-general of New-France.
The Régiment de Carignan de Carignan-Salières was sent to New France in 1665, by Louis XIV, king of France, to protect French settlers who were frequently attacked by Iroquois, who were allies of the British. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “[i]t is probable that in 1666 Jean-Vincent took part with his regiment in the campaign of the Marquis de Tracy against the Iroquois,” and returned to France in 1668.
Le Régiment by Francis Back (Military History)
Le Régiment by Francis Back (Military History)
Images by Francis Back: http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/drawing-french-america—the-historical-illustrations-of-francis-back-510215831.html
Hector d’Andigné de Grandfontaine, governor of Acadia (1670 – 1673)
However, in 1670, the Baron of Saint-Castin accompanied Captain Hector d’Andigné de Grandfontaine (1627 – 1696), formerly of the Régiment de Carignan-Salières. Grandfontaine had been appointed governor of Acadia, newly restored to France by virtue of the Treaty of Breda (1667). Both Grandfontaine and Saint-Castin took up residence at Pentagouet, le Maine, on the Penobscot River.
Le Maine is the current state of Maine, in the Northeast of the United States. However, until 1713, le Maine was part of Acadia, one of the two provinces of New France. It was contested territory as ownership of this land was claimed by France, England and Holland. As we know, it belonged to the aboriginals, but …
The town of Castine, Maine, is named after the Baron de Saint-Castin and, until 1674, it was the capital of Acadia. However, if Castine is the baron’s namesake, it is largely because he mingled with Amerindians which, of course, benefited New France, but also showed that Jean-Vincent did not look upon Amerindians as inferior human beings. In fact he married an Amerindian woman and, after her death, her sister.
Abenaki Couple, an 18th-century watercolor by an unknown artist. Courtesy of the City of Montreal Records Management & Archives, Montreal, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The alliance he created between the French and the Amerindians was more than friendship. If Jean-Vincent, baron de Saint-Castin, has gone down in the annals of history, the best explanation is that he married Pidianske the daughter of Penobscot chief Madockawando (born in Maine c. 1630; died 1698), renamed Marie-Mathilde. Marie-Mathilde bore the baron ten children. As for her husband, he became an Abenaki[1] chief after Madockawando‘s death in 1698. Grandfontaine, whom Jean-Vincent accompanied to Maine, served briefly, a mere three years, from 1670 until 1674. Je was replaced by Jacques de Chambly who was taken prisoner by Dutch pirates. Jean-Vincent was tortured, but escaped. The baron therefore lived with the tribe, using his Pentagouet’s quarters as a trading-post.
According to the video at the bottom of this post, after the death of Marie-Mathilde, Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie married Pidianske’s sister, Pidiwamiska, who bore him two children. Charles-Anselme d’Abbadie and Joseph, Jean-Vincent’s sons, were also militant Abenakis, but could not match their father’s exceptional leadership.
There is confusion regarding the baron’s marriages. He seems to have married twice, à la façon du pays, but one couple’s vows were blessed by the Catholic Church in the last quarter of 1684, at Pentagouet. As requested by Monseigneur François de Laval, the Bishop of Quebec, Father Jacques Bigot, the Jesuit missionary to the Abenakis, married the couple. However, the baron had become an Amerindian, spoke their language and lived with them. He was a successful fur trader.
François de Laval, Bishop of Quebec, Project Gutenberg [EBook #17174]
Born in Béarn, Pyrénées-Atlantiques (Gascony), in 1652, Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie returned to France in 1701 hoping to consolidate his title and inheritance as third baron de Saint-Castin, his effort in that regard were thwarted by family members. He had been absent a very long time. He died at Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in 1707, in his fifties. Opposition to his legitimate claim proved more deleterious than life in a wigwam.
Cover page of an 1864 edition of Longfellow’s “Tales of a Wayside Inn” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Longfellow’s “The Baron of St. Castine”
However, he is remembered not only as his namesake, Castine, but because Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), the author of Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie (1847), wrote a poem honouring the baron de Saint-Castin, “The Baron of St. Castine,” part of Tales of a Wayside Inn (1864). Évangéline is a fictional victim of the Expulsion of the Acadians, in 1755.
The poem refers to Saint-Castin’s father, but Castine’s father had probably died prior to his son departure for New France. But the image of an aging father awaiting the return of his son in a French castle was far too compelling for Longfellow not to depict. Facts being at times uncertain in the life of Jean Vincent d’Abbadie, fiction claimed a grieving father.
Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his château in the Pyrenees,
And sailed across the western seas.
When he went away from his fair demesne
The birds were building, the woods were green;
And now the winds of winter blow
Round the turrets of the old château,
The birds are silent and unseen,
The leaves lie dead in the ravine,
And the Pyrenees are white with snow.
His father, lonely, old, and gray,
Sits by the fireside day by day,
Thinking ever one thought of care;
Through the southern windows, narrow and tall,
The sun shines into the ancient hall,
And makes a glory round his hair.
The house-dog, stretched beneath his chair,
Groans in his sleep as if in pain,
Then wakes, and yawns, and sleeps again,
So silent is it everywhere,–
So silent you can hear the mouse
Run and rummage along the beams
Behind the wainscot of the wall;
And the old man rouses from his dreams,
And wanders restless through the house,
As if he heard strange voices call.
http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=2076
Acadia fell to Britain under the terms the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, peace treaties that ended the War of the Spanish Succession.
Founded in 1604, four years before Quebec, and was the first province of New France to be handed however to Britain. At the time Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie arrived in Maine, the total number of Acadians was 885. As for the inhabitants of Quebec or Canada, they numbered 3,200 people. (See Canadian Military History.)
The story of Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie provides insight into the relationship between the French and Amerindians. French voyageurs entered every nook and cranny of the North American continent and married Amerindians, but there were very few settlers, and most lived on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River.
My best regards to all of you. ♥
Adrian Leblond de Brumath FR (1854 – 1939), The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval, Gutenberg Project [EBook #17174] and Internet Archive
Alaric Faulkner, Pentagoet: A First Look at Seventeenth Century Acadian Maine
Canadian Military History: http://www.cmhg.gc.ca/cmh/page-50-eng.asp
Francis Back: http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/drawing-french-america—the-historical-illustrations-of-francis-back-510215831.html
“Abenaki”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 11 Sep. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/topic/Abenaki>.
© Micheline Walker
11 September 2015
WordPress
Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie, Baron de Saint-Castin Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie, baron de Saint-Castin Régiment de Carignan-Salières I am currently telling the story of Jean-Vincent, baron de Saint-Castin…
