The history of settlement of Anticosti Island, located in the northern part of the Gulf of St.Lawrence, is still partly unknown. However, we have identified six periods in the development of the area. Permanent colonization arrived late due to physical factors (isolation, nordicity, reef), perceptual factors (terror to sailors, negative economic evaluation) and political factors (tenure, overcontrol, French/English opposition). On the whole, the total number of inhabitants has varied from a mere few hundreds to thousands. Three main settlement regions: series of isolated peripherical sites (as Fox Bay), the west Front (Strawberry Cove, English Bay) and the capital, Port-Menier (on Ellis Bay) which alone retain now 85% of the total population. Interior of the Island, except for the Jupiter Basin, was opened to large scale exploitation after the middle of this century.