The harbor overlooking Charlottetown has long been part of Mi’kma’ki, the homeland of the Mi’kmaq. The place now called Skmaqn was used for travel, fishing, diplomacy, and seasonal gathering before European settlement. Its name is commonly understood as relating to a waiting place and recalls meetings where Mi’kmaq and French leaders renewed alliances. The protected anchorage and commanding point later attracted colonial powers, but the site’s history begins with Indigenous relationships to land and water rather than with the arrival of a fort.

French settlers founded Port-la-Joye in 1720 as the principal entry point and administrative settlement for Île Saint-Jean, now Prince Edward Island. Farms and households spread around the harbor while a small garrison represented French authority. The colony struggled with supply, changing policy, and imperial war, yet developed close economic and diplomatic connections with Louisbourg and Acadian communities. Annual meetings with Mi’kmaq leaders combined exchange, ceremony, and strategic alliance. Archaeological remains document civilian life as well as the military post.

After the British capture of Louisbourg in 1758 during the Seven Years’ War, troops took Île Saint-Jean and built Fort Amherst on the former French position. British authorities deported most Acadian inhabitants. Families were confined and placed aboard transports bound for Europe; several ships sank, and many deportees died from disease, shipwreck, and displacement. The episode linked this harbor to the wider Acadian Deportation and to Britain’s effort to replace French settlement with a new colonial order. Mi’kmaq communities also faced increasing pressure on their territory and autonomy.

Fort Amherst guarded the entrance to the harbor for a time, but its strategic importance declined and the works were abandoned. Earth ramparts, ditches, cellar traces, and artifacts survived after wooden structures vanished. Agriculture and later commemoration altered the landscape without removing its broad views of the channel. Twentieth-century designation initially foregrounded the French and British forts. The official addition of Skmaqn to the name signaled a more inclusive interpretation developed with Mi’kmaq participation, though a name change alone cannot resolve the effects of colonization.

Today trails and earthworks connect three overlapping narratives: enduring Mi’kmaq presence, French and Acadian settlement, and British conquest and deportation. No large standing fortress remains, so archaeology, landscape, oral tradition, and documentary evidence carry the interpretation. Uncertainties about the precise meaning and historical use of Skmaqn should be acknowledged rather than converted into legend. The national historic site is most significant as a place of repeated encounter where alliance, migration, family life, warfare, dispossession, and memory converged at the entrance to one of Prince Edward Island’s principal harbors.