New World Explorers Sought to Explain Death

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."