mission stmt 834 bring prbs/ ECHHS profess multimedic cfr. The History of Sutton (or Sutton's) Island Background History of Mt. Desert Island and the Cranberry Islands The Abenaki Indians inhabited Mt. Desert Island {they called it "Pemetic") and surrounding islands hundreds of years before European adventurers discovered the area. Indian shell heaps and other signs of early Indian presence have been discovered on Little Cranberry Island, and the Abenaki may have also been the first inhabitants (or summer visitors) on Sutton's Island. Samuel Champlain, the French explorer, made the first significant European contribution to the history of the Mt. Desert Island area. King Henry IV of France was interested in establishing a French colony in America. In 1603, he granted land within the present state of Maine to Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, who was commissioned to "possess and settle" that portion of North America between the 40th and 46th degrees of north latitude. The King granted de Monts a ten year fur trading monopoly there. De Monts chose Samuel Champlain as pilot and geographer of an expedition to explore "New France" and find a location for a permanent settlement there. The expedition founded a colony at St. Croix. In September 1604, Champlain took twelve of the colonists and two Indians to explore the coast to the west of St. Croix. He described in his diary an island that was "high and notched in places SO that from the sea it gives the appearance of a range of seven or eight mountains. The summits are all bare and rocky." He named it "Isle des Monts Desert. 'He made thorough maps and explanations of the coast. The winter of 1604-1605 was a cruel one for the colony of St. Croix, with only half of the Frenchmen surviving. The colony was moved to Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) in 1605. Champlain would later go on to found and be the first governor of Quebec. In 1606, three years after King Henry IV's grant to de Monts, King James I of England granted the entire Atlantic coast of North America to the Virginia Company. The area that includes Mt. Desert Island was near the center of territory that was simultaneously claimed to be part of New France and New England. The early French stronghold was at Port Royal, and the early English stronghold was at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Back in France, King Henry IV had been assassinated in 1610, and Louis XIII had become king. Sieur de Monts lost his position of favor; his land patent was bought by Antoinette de Pons, the Marquise de Guercheville, and was enlarged to include all of North America to the Gulf of Mexico. The marquise had a dream of establishing a Jesuit mission colony in "New France." In 1613, she sent the ship Jonas with two Jesuits and forty-five colonists from Port Royal with the intention of setting up a colony in Kedesquit (now Bangor.) The ship was engulfed in fog, and when the fog lifted, the crew found itself in what is now Frenchmen's Bay, near Bar Harbor. The Abenaki Indians came to greet them, and urged them to sail around to Somes Sound and make their settlement of St. Sauveur there, at what is now Fernald's Point.