Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
New World Explorers Sought to Explain Death
By David Chanatry
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 6, 2006; Page A12
In June 1604, fur traders led by Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Dugua found a site they thought would be ideal for the first settlement in New France. The tiny island in the middle of the St. Croix River, now part of Maine's Acadia National Park, had high bluffs and a clear view downriver to watch for their English rivals.
But winter that year came early and hard, and St. Croix Island proved to be a prison. The men were stuck, trapped by dangerous ice floes moving on the tremendous tides from the nearby Bay of Fundy. By February, they began to die of scurvy; in all, 35 of 79 colonists perished.
Early Autopsy
Forensic anthropologists have unearthed a skull that is the earliest known physical evidence of an autopsy in the New World, performed on a French settler who fell victim to scurvy in 1605.
The disease was known, but not its cause. In his desperation to find out what was happening to his men, Champlain took the unusual step of ordering autopsies.
"We could find no remedies to cure these maladies," Champlain wrote in his memoirs in 1613. "We opened several of them to determine the cause of their illness."
Now forensic anthropologists studying the St. Croix burial ground have found a cranium with the skullcap cleanly sawed off, along with shallow cut marks they say would have been made by the expedition's barber-surgeon while removing the scalp. Although there are written records of earlier autopsies by European settlers in the New World, the St. Croix find is the earliest skeletal evidence of one.
"It's the holy grail for a forensic physical anthropologist or historical archaeologist to find this kind of evidence" said Thomas Crist of Utica College, the lead anthropologist on the team that re-excavated the site in 2003. "It just doesn't happen every day."
The team used modern forensic techniques to confirm it was scurvy that doomed the men. Using an advanced form of CT scan called multidetector computed tomography, they studied bones of six of the settlers. The scans revealed evidence of skeletal lesions and bleeding into the joints and bones, telltale signs of the disease.
And in what potentially could be the most intriguing find of all, distinctive features in the skull and teeth of one skeleton indicate a non-European origin, possibly an African. If confirmed by DNA analysis, said Crist, these would be the earliest recovered remains of an African in North America.
Even with the written record of the autopsies provided by Champlain himself, the team was not expecting to find any physical evidence, said Steven R. Pendery of the National Park Service, the principal investigator.
Twenty-three grave sites had already been excavated in 1969 as part of a field school in archaeology on the island. If autopsied remains had been there, Pendery said, he and his colleagues thought they would have been discovered in the earlier dig, when the bones thought to yield the most information were removed for examination at Temple University in Philadelphia. The goal of the 2003 project was not further excavation but to rebury those remains.
"Our practices now are to preserve and protect sites in place," Pendery said. The Park Service "felt it's in the best interest of the resource to return [the bones] to the original location and maintain them as a protected archaeological site, as opposed to maintaining them in boxes."
Using maps, diagrams and photographs from the 1969 work, the team essentially re-excavated the site so they could put the right parts back with the right remains. They reconstructed the original dig and squared off the field in the same way, said Molly H. Crist, who is Thomas Crist's wife and also teaches at Utica College. "We would stand there at the trenches and would hold the photographs up and say 'Ah, there it is.' It was really kind of neat from that standpoint."
Then came the surprise. One of the 1969 photos -- of Burial No. 10 -- showed an area cleared out around the cranium, which had been left in place. Crist only needed to put the leg bones back, but she decided to dig around the skull to match the photograph. The autopsied skull was right in front of her: "It just jumped out at me. And sure enough, the more we brushed away, the more we worked it out from the soil, the clearer it became that's exactly what this was."
The parietal bone from the side of the head had an unnaturally straight edge and was found in the dirt inside the cranium. The skullcap that had been cut away had been carefully placed back on top of the lower part of the skull, perhaps, the anthropologists suggest, as a sign of dignity and respect for the colonists' fallen comrade.
Even in European cities at this time, autopsies were not routine.
"Usually if they did an autopsy for cause of death, it was because it was an interesting case. I can't think of a single instance back then that an autopsy led to a cure for anything," said Michael Sappol, a historian of medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
The first recorded autopsy in the New World was performed in Hispaniola in 1533 when a Spanish priest ordered conjoined twins dissected to find out how many souls they had. (The surgeon determined there were two.) Three years later, in circumstances similar to the St. Croix expedition, French explorer Jacques Cartier ordered an autopsy of Philippe Rougemont of Amboise, a 22-year-old seaman who it's believed also died of scurvy.
On St. Croix, Burial 10 and several others also showed evidence that the roofs of their mouths had been cut away, in what is believed to be the first oral surgery in the New World. Champlain wrote of this, too, in his memoirs, saying they removed "superfluous fungus flesh" that obscured the teeth, another classic sign of scurvy.
The disease was common in the Age of Discovery. It results from a lack of Vitamin C, the only vitamin humans cannot produce themselves. After several months without it, connective tissue breaks down. Blood vessels leak. Gums swell grotesquely and turn black.
In keeping with Park Service policy, the autopsied skull was reburied with the other remains. No further excavations are planned to locate other grave sites. The island has been damaged by severe erosion, and some remains may have washed away with the tides.
With nearly half the settlers dead, St. Croix Island was abandoned in 1605 for Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Three years later, Champlain tried a new approach, founding Quebec City and reaching for Canada's interior through the gateway of the St. Lawrence River. The St. Croix colony failed, but from that winter on, three years before the English settled Jamestown, Europeans were established in northern North America.
"Ask an American about St. Croix Island" said Crist, "and nobody knows about it. Ask a Canadian and they do. To stand on that island was to kind of hear the voice in the wind of these men who only spent a short time there, but who really changed history."
By David Chanatry
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 6, 2006; Page A12
In June 1604, fur traders led by Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Dugua found a site they thought would be ideal for the first settlement in New France. The tiny island in the middle of the St. Croix River, now part of Maine's Acadia National Park, had high bluffs and a clear view downriver to watch for their English rivals.
But winter that year came early and hard, and St. Croix Island proved to be a prison. The men were stuck, trapped by dangerous ice floes moving on the tremendous tides from the nearby Bay of Fundy. By February, they began to die of scurvy; in all, 35 of 79 colonists perished.
Early Autopsy
Forensic anthropologists have unearthed a skull that is the earliest known physical evidence of an autopsy in the New World, performed on a French settler who fell victim to scurvy in 1605.
The disease was known, but not its cause. In his desperation to find out what was happening to his men, Champlain took the unusual step of ordering autopsies.
"We could find no remedies to cure these maladies," Champlain wrote in his memoirs in 1613. "We opened several of them to determine the cause of their illness."
Now forensic anthropologists studying the St. Croix burial ground have found a cranium with the skullcap cleanly sawed off, along with shallow cut marks they say would have been made by the expedition's barber-surgeon while removing the scalp. Although there are written records of earlier autopsies by European settlers in the New World, the St. Croix find is the earliest skeletal evidence of one.
"It's the holy grail for a forensic physical anthropologist or historical archaeologist to find this kind of evidence" said Thomas Crist of Utica College, the lead anthropologist on the team that re-excavated the site in 2003. "It just doesn't happen every day."
The team used modern forensic techniques to confirm it was scurvy that doomed the men. Using an advanced form of CT scan called multidetector computed tomography, they studied bones of six of the settlers. The scans revealed evidence of skeletal lesions and bleeding into the joints and bones, telltale signs of the disease.
And in what potentially could be the most intriguing find of all, distinctive features in the skull and teeth of one skeleton indicate a non-European origin, possibly an African. If confirmed by DNA analysis, said Crist, these would be the earliest recovered remains of an African in North America.
Even with the written record of the autopsies provided by Champlain himself, the team was not expecting to find any physical evidence, said Steven R. Pendery of the National Park Service, the principal investigator.
Twenty-three grave sites had already been excavated in 1969 as part of a field school in archaeology on the island. If autopsied remains had been there, Pendery said, he and his colleagues thought they would have been discovered in the earlier dig, when the bones thought to yield the most information were removed for examination at Temple University in Philadelphia. The goal of the 2003 project was not further excavation but to rebury those remains.
"Our practices now are to preserve and protect sites in place," Pendery said. The Park Service "felt it's in the best interest of the resource to return [the bones] to the original location and maintain them as a protected archaeological site, as opposed to maintaining them in boxes."
Using maps, diagrams and photographs from the 1969 work, the team essentially re-excavated the site so they could put the right parts back with the right remains. They reconstructed the original dig and squared off the field in the same way, said Molly H. Crist, who is Thomas Crist's wife and also teaches at Utica College. "We would stand there at the trenches and would hold the photographs up and say 'Ah, there it is.' It was really kind of neat from that standpoint."
Then came the surprise. One of the 1969 photos -- of Burial No. 10 -- showed an area cleared out around the cranium, which had been left in place. Crist only needed to put the leg bones back, but she decided to dig around the skull to match the photograph. The autopsied skull was right in front of her: "It just jumped out at me. And sure enough, the more we brushed away, the more we worked it out from the soil, the clearer it became that's exactly what this was."
The parietal bone from the side of the head had an unnaturally straight edge and was found in the dirt inside the cranium. The skullcap that had been cut away had been carefully placed back on top of the lower part of the skull, perhaps, the anthropologists suggest, as a sign of dignity and respect for the colonists' fallen comrade.
Even in European cities at this time, autopsies were not routine.
"Usually if they did an autopsy for cause of death, it was because it was an interesting case. I can't think of a single instance back then that an autopsy led to a cure for anything," said Michael Sappol, a historian of medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
The first recorded autopsy in the New World was performed in Hispaniola in 1533 when a Spanish priest ordered conjoined twins dissected to find out how many souls they had. (The surgeon determined there were two.) Three years later, in circumstances similar to the St. Croix expedition, French explorer Jacques Cartier ordered an autopsy of Philippe Rougemont of Amboise, a 22-year-old seaman who it's believed also died of scurvy.
On St. Croix, Burial 10 and several others also showed evidence that the roofs of their mouths had been cut away, in what is believed to be the first oral surgery in the New World. Champlain wrote of this, too, in his memoirs, saying they removed "superfluous fungus flesh" that obscured the teeth, another classic sign of scurvy.
The disease was common in the Age of Discovery. It results from a lack of Vitamin C, the only vitamin humans cannot produce themselves. After several months without it, connective tissue breaks down. Blood vessels leak. Gums swell grotesquely and turn black.
In keeping with Park Service policy, the autopsied skull was reburied with the other remains. No further excavations are planned to locate other grave sites. The island has been damaged by severe erosion, and some remains may have washed away with the tides.
With nearly half the settlers dead, St. Croix Island was abandoned in 1605 for Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Three years later, Champlain tried a new approach, founding Quebec City and reaching for Canada's interior through the gateway of the St. Lawrence River. The St. Croix colony failed, but from that winter on, three years before the English settled Jamestown, Europeans were established in northern North America.
"Ask an American about St. Croix Island" said Crist, "and nobody knows about it. Ask a Canadian and they do. To stand on that island was to kind of hear the voice in the wind of these men who only spent a short time there, but who really changed history."
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