Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, as a reward for his faithfulness, was
given, in 1602, by the French King Henry of Navarre, a grant of all
America from the 40th to the 46th parallels of latitude. He came out
and founded a colony on Passamaquoddy Bay, and finding that the
Indians called the region Acadie, or the "land of plenty," he named
his domain Acadia. The French afterwards extended their explorations
westward along the Maine coast, claiming under this grant, and this
was the source of the many subsequent conflicts. Coming into Penobscot
Bay, they made their outpost and stronghold upon the peninsula of
Pentagoet on its eastern shore, marking the western limit of Acadia.
Their famous old Fort Pentagoet, from which the French and Indian
raiders for more than a century swooped down upon the English border
settlements, is now the pleasant summer resort of Castine. Originally,
the English from Plymouth established a trading-post there, but the
French captured it, and then in the French religious conflicts it was
alternately held by the Catholic and Huguenot chieftains sent out to
rule Acadia. Sometimes pirates took it, and once some bold Dutchmen
came up from New York and were its captors. But the French held it for
a full century, though repeatedly attacked, until just before the
Revolution, when the English conquered and held it throughout that
war, again seizing it in the War of 1812. This noted old fort was
captured and scarred in wars resulting in no less than five different
national occupations. The present name is derived from Baron Castine,
who came with his French regiment to Acadia, and gave Pentagoet its
great romance. He was Vincent, Baron de St. Castine, lord of Oléron in
the French Pyrenees, who arrived in 1667, and inspired by a chivalrous
desire to extend the Catholic religion among the Indians, went into
the wilderness to live among the fierce Tarratines. As Longfellow
tells it in the Student's Tale at _The Wayside Inn_:
"Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his château in the Pyrenees
And sailed across the Western seas."
Pentagoet then was a populous town ruled by the Sachem Madockawando,
and the young Baron, tarrying there, soon found friends among the
Indians. The sachem had a susceptible daughter, and this dusky belle,
captivated by the courtly graces of the handsome Baron, fell in love:
"For man is fire, and woman is tow,
And the Somebody comes and begins to blow."