At the end of the
last glacial period, following the retreat of the
Laurentide Ice Sheet about 13,000 years ago, the area was stripped bare of vegetation and soil. By about 10,000 years ago,
Paleo-Indians probably occupied what is now New Brunswick. Major disturbances did not begin until the early 1800s The Passamaquoddy hunted sea mammals along the northwest shore of the Bay of Fundy while speaking a mutually intelligible dialect with the Wolastoqiyik who were inland hunters along the upper Saint John River and its tributaries. The Wolastoqiyik dealt with freshets by having their village above the
floodplain, for example
Meductic, The Wolastoqiyik identified themselves as inhabitants of the river their
canoes traveled for hunting, fishing, and trading. After spending the winter hunting and trapping in the interior, the villages of Ouigoudi at the mouth of the river and Aukpaque at the head of navigation were summer gathering places accessible to European fur traders. Rivalry between English and French fur traders pre-dated colonization of North America. Colonization pressure was less severe along the Saint John River where the cold water eddy of the
Gulf of Maine kept the growing season shorter than
Massachusetts and the
Nova Scotia peninsula nearer the warm
Gulf Stream. The earliest Acadians were descendants of the French sailors and shipwrights whose focus on fishing, trading, and boat repair rather than agriculture minimized land use conflicts. These Acadians maintained favorable relationships with the First Nations while
King Philip's War encouraged the Wolastoqiyik to join the
Wabanaki Confederacy in military action against
New England.
French colonists populated the lower river valley as part of
Acadia, with
Fort Nashwaak in present-day Fredericton,
Fort Boishebert at the confluence of the Saint John and Nerepsis rivers. In the French
seigneurial system lands were arranged in long, narrow strips, called seigneuries, along the banks of the river. However, this was not practical given the seasonal flooding, and the Acadians moved to higher ground. As the longest river between the
Chesapeake Bay and the
Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the Saint John offered one of the best transportation corridors for First Nations refugees to retreat from the English colonization of North America's Atlantic coast. About a thousand Wolastoqiyik sheltered a hundred Acadian families retreating up the Saint John to avoid the
Acadian Expulsion as the
St. John River Campaign killed livestock and burned Acadian settlements as far upstream as Sainte-Anne des Pays-Bas.
International boundary dispute While the upstream Wolastoqiyik and their Acadian allies rejected both
Canada and
United States sovereignty after English victories in the French and Indian War, many
Loyalist refugees from the
American Revolutionary War resettled in Saint John at the mouth of the river and in Sainte-Anne des Pays-Bas which was renamed Fredericton. Persistent hostilities with the Wolastoqiyik had prevented the English treaty signatories from mapping the river headwaters. Aside from ambiguity as to which tributary might be considered the source of the Saint Croix River, the Saint John River does not flow directly south as might have been assumed from knowledge of the better mapped
Hudson and
Connecticut Rivers. Of greater concern to Canada, however, was discovery of how close the drainage divide was to the south bank of the Saint Lawrence, leaving Canada with a narrow band of unfavorable terrain for construction of a road to connect Atlantic Canada to Quebec through the winter months when ice closed the Saint Lawrence. Canada chose to interpret the treaty's intention as keeping the entire Saint John drainage basin under Canadian control. Surviving Acadian and Wolastoqiyik refugees continued to resist British rule while moving upriver to the
Acadian Landing Site west of the Saint Croix treaty boundary where they were joined by other Acadian refugees who had fled to Quebec. Large numbers of people began settling the area in the early 1800s, mostly Scottish and Irish, and by the end of the 1850s much of the central Saint John valley had been cleared of
old-growth forest for farming. Before the advent of railways, the river was an important trade route, including
timber rafting. After the state of Maine obtained independence from Massachusetts in 1820, Maine lumbermen encouraged Acadian refugees to form the independent
Republic of Madawaska, and began diverting the Saint John headwaters into the Penobscot River so
log driving could float timber harvested in the upper Saint John watershed to
Bangor sawmills. These provocations encouraged clarification of the disputed
Canada–United States border boundary by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 which allocated the north bank of the Saint John west of the Saint Croix to Canada in exchange for some territory further west.
Contemporary era Today's
Trans-Canada Highway follows the route of the proposed English road along the north bank of the river through the disputed portion of the drainage. Most of the Saint John drainage on the disputed south bank became
Aroostook County, Maine, where the town of Madawaska still shares the
Acadian French dialect with Edmundston across the river. Historic isolation has helped preserve the dialect. The
Allagash River and
Baker Branch of the Saint John River upstream of Madawaska flow through the sparsely populated
Maine North Woods. These
black spruce forests were a primary source of
pulpwood for Maine
paper mills through the 20th century. Distance from Maine cities encouraged landowners to employ Quebec
lumberjacks.
Édouard Lacroix developed innovative transportation methods for the river headwaters including a road from
Lac-Frontière, Quebec to build the isolated
Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad in 1927 and the Nine Mile Bridge over the river in 1931. The lower river has been developed for agriculture and industry. Francophone
Quebecers moved into the northern river valley. In the
interwar period, many older farms were abandoned due to urbanization, and allowed to reforest. In 2011, the entire watershed was designated the Wolastoq National Historic Site, and is as the traditional territory of the Wolastoqiyik First Nation. ==Gallery==