Abegweit

The Mi'kmaq, who lived on what is now called Prince Edward Island before Europeans arrived, called it Abegweit ("cradled on the waves"). According to legend, the god Glooscap finished painting the beauties of the world and then dipped his brush into a mixture of all the colors and created Abegweit, his favorite island.  http://www.abegweitfirstnations.com/

Abegweit was sighted by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and was probably visited frequently by French and Basque fishermen in the 17th century, but Europeans did not settle there permanently until the second decade of the 18th century.
http://www.gov.pe.ca/infopei/index.php3?number=19671&lang=E

The island appears under the name Île de Saint Jean in Champlain's narrative (1604) and on his map (1632), but that name is probably of earlier origin. After its acquisition by the British in 1759 the island was known as St. John's Island until the name was changed in 1798 to honour Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (1767-1820), father of Queen Victoria, then in command of the British forces at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The first Europeans to settle Prince Edward Island came from France in 1720 and were quickly joined by a small group of Acadians from Nova Scotia.  Just prior to the beginning of the Seven Years War with France in 1756, the expulsion of nearly 14,000 Acadians from Acadia (Nova Scotia) was begun at Grand Pré on September 10, 1755, and continued for the next deacdes.  Some fled to Prince Edward Island; many went south or were forced back to France.  Some managed to stick it out, and some returned.   By 1800, some 8,000 resilient Acadians were eking out a living in the Maritime provinces, 8,000 were surviving in Québec, and some 10,000 in Louisiana, the latter giving rise to “Cajun culture.”   http://collections.ic.gc.ca/heirloom_series/volume5/258-263.htm

 

Hmmmm...can you tell that I teach history?  I expect to return with a huge pile of materials for adding a week on the Canadian Maritimes to my 8th grade class.  And my daughter, who will travel from the northern land of the Acadians in mid-August to the land of the Cajuns at the end of August, will begin her college career with a real sense of the history of the people among whom she is going to spend four years.

I'm struck as I write this by how the coastal places I love have been home to so much tempestuous history as cultures have crashed against each other.  In St. Augustine, home to the Timucuan, the first Spanish settlement appeared in 1565 and became a battleground among Spain, France, and England. 

(Many Americans are unaware that the oldest continuous European city in the Americas is St. Augustine, not Jamestown or Pl ymouth, just as they are unaware that the oldest continuous city of all in what we now call The United States is Acoma Pueblo.  History is, indeed, written by the victors.)

And for me, personally?  Ahhhhh, a place called "cradled on the waves"  ~  how could I not feel the call?