Vermont Part 1

Vermont.

by Rowland E. Robinson.

CHAPTER I.

THE HIGHWAY OF WAR.

Champlain, in the account of his voyage made in July, 1609, up the lake to which he gave his name, mentions almost incidentally that, "continuing our route along the west side of the lake, contemplating the country, I saw on the east side very high mountains capped with snow. I asked the Indians if those parts were inhabited. They answered me yes, and that they were Iroquois, and there were in those parts beautiful valleys, and fields fertile in corn as good as any I had ever eaten in the country, with an infinitude of other fruits, and that the lake extended close to the mountains, which were, according to my judgment, fifteen leagues from us."

It was doubtless then that the eyes of white men first beheld the lofty landmarks and western bounds of what is now Vermont. If the wise and brave explorer gave more thought to the region than is indicated in this brief mention of it, perhaps it was to forecast a future wherein those fertile valleys, wrested by his people from the savagery of the wilderness and the heathen, should be made to blossom like the rose, while the church, of which he was so devout a son that he had said "the salvation of one soul was of more value than the conquest of an empire,"

should here build its altars, and gather to itself a harvest richer by far than any earthly garner. But this was not to be. His people were never to gain more than a brief and unsubstantial foothold in this land of promise. The hereditary enemies of his nation were to sow and reap where France had only struck a furrow, and were to implant a religion as abhorrent to him as paganism, and a form of government that would have seemed to him as evil as impracticable, and he was only a pioneer on the warpath of the nations.

Although the Indians who accompanied Champlain on his inland voyage of discovery told him that the country on the east side of the lake was inhabited by the Iroquois, there is no evidence that it was permanently occupied by them, even then, if it ever had been. There are traces of a more than transient residence of some tribe here at some time, but their ident.i.ty and the date of their occupancy can only be conjectured. The relics found give no clew by which to determine whether they who fashioned here their rude pottery and implements and weapons of stone were Iroquois or Waubanakee,[1] nor when these beautiful valleys were their home.

A fact affording some proof that the Iroquois abandoned it very long ago is, that not one stream, lake, mountain, or other landmark within the limits of Vermont now bears an Iroquois name. Of all the Indian names that have been preserved, every one is Waubanakee; and though many of them are euphonious, and those least so far better than our commonplace and vulgar nomenclature, none of them have the poetic significance of those so frequently bestowed by the Iroquois on mountain, lake, rock, and river.

It does not seem probable that the warlike nation that conquered all tribes with which it came in contact, having once gained complete possession, should relinquish it. A more reasonable conclusion is, that the country lying east of Lake Champlain was a debatable ground of these aboriginal tribes in the remote past, as it was more recently of civilized nations and states.

Quebec, the town which Champlain had founded in 1608, did not begin to a.s.sume much importance till eighteen years afterward, when its wooden fortifications were rebuilt of stone. Nor was the place strong enough three years later to offer any resistance to the English fleet which, under the command of Sir David Kirk, then appeared before the city and presently took possession of it. The conquest was as lightly valued by King Charles I. of England as it had been easily made; and in 1634, by the treaty of St. Germain, Canada, Acadia, and Cape Breton were restored to France. Thenceforward, for more than a hundred years, these regained possessions of the French were a constant menace and danger to the English colonies in America.

Advances toward the occupation of the country lying between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River were made slowly by both French and English, though the tide of predatory warfare often ebbed and flowed along the borders of the region and sometimes across it, along the courses of the larger tributary waterways, navigable almost to their narrow and shallow sources by the light birch of the Indian while there was open water, and an easy if crooked path for the snowshoe and toboggan when winter had paved the streams with ice.

One of the earliest of such French incursions into New England was made after the failure of the attempt of De Callieres, the governor of Montreal, to capture New York, and all the English colonies in that province, when less important expeditions were organized against the New York and New England frontiers and the Sieur Hertel went from Trois Rivieres against the English fort at Salmon Falls in New Hampshire. At about the same time, in February, 1690, the expedition under Sieurs Helene and Mantet set forth by the way of Lake Champlain to destroy Schenectady. Both expeditions were organized by Count Frontenac for the purpose of inspiriting the Canadians and their Indian allies, who were sadly disheartened by the recent descent of the Iroquois upon Canada when Montreal had been sacked and destroyed, and most of the frontier settlements broken up.

The wide expanse of pathless woods that lay between the outposts of the hostile colonies gave a false a.s.surance of security to the English settlers, while to their enemies these same solitudes gave almost certain immunity from the chance of a forewarned prey. In the wintry wastes of forest, through which these marauding bands took their way, there ranged no unfriendly scout to spy their stealthy approach, and bear tidings of it to the doomed settlements.

Unburdened by much weight of provision, or more camp equipage than their blankets and axes, these wolfish packs of Canadians and Indians (the whites scarcely less hardy than their wild allies nor much less savage, albeit devout Christians) marched swiftly along frozen lake and ice-bound stream, through mountain pa.s.s and pathless woods, subsisting for the most part on the lean-yarded deer which were easily killed by their hunters. At night they bivouacked, with no shelter but the sky and the lofty arches of the forest, beside immense fires, whose glow, though lighting tree-tops and sky, would not be seen by any foe more dangerous than the wolf and panther. Here each ate his scant ration; the Frenchman smoked his pipe of rank home-grown tobacco, the Waubanakee his milder senhalenac, or dried sumac leaves; the Christian commended his devilish enterprise to G.o.d; the pagan sought by his rites to bring the aid of a superhuman power to their common purpose. The pious Frenchman may have seen in the starlit sky some omen of success; the Waubanakee were a.s.sured of it when dread Wohjahose[2] was pa.s.sed, and each had tossed toward it his offering of pounded corn or senhalenac, and the awful guardian of Petowbowk[3] had sent no voice of displeasure, yelling and groaning after them beneath his icy roof; and each lay down to sleep on his bed of evergreen boughs in an unguarded camp. Not till, like panthers crouching for the deadly spring, they drew near the devoted frontier settlement or fort, did they begin to exercise soldierly vigilance, to send out spies, and set guards about their camps.

a.s.sured of the defenseless condition of the settlers or the carelessness of the garrison, they swooped upon their prey. Out of the treacherous stillness of the woods a brief horror of carnage, rapine, and fire burst upon the sleeping hamlet. Old men and helpless infants, stalwart men, taken unawares, fighting bravely with any means at hand, women in whatever condition, though it appealed most to humanity, were slaughtered alike. The booty was hastily gathered, and the torch applied by blood-stained hands, and out of the light of the conflagration of newly built homes the spoilers vanished with their miserable captives in the mysterious depths of the forest as suddenly as they had come forth from them.

So were conducted the expeditions against Salmon Falls and Schenectady.

By the first, thirty of the English were killed, and fifty-four, mostly women and children, taken prisoners and carried to Canada. The success of the other expedition spread consternation throughout the province of New York. Sixty persons were killed, and nearly half as many made captive.

In the same year, 1690, the colonies of New York, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Connecticut organized a formidable expedition by land and sea against Canada, in which they hoped to be aided by the mother country. Having waited till August for the hoped-for arms and ammunition from England which were not sent, the colonies determined to undertake it with such means as they had, Ma.s.sachusetts to furnish the naval force against Quebec, New York and Connecticut the army to march against Montreal.

The New York and Connecticut troops, commanded by John Winthrop of the last named colony, marched early in August to the head of Wood Creek, with the expectation of being joined there by a large number of the warriors of the Five Nations, but less than a hundred of them came to the rendezvous. Arrived at the place of embarkation on the lake, not half boats enough had been provided for the transportation of the army, nor sufficient provisions for its sustenance. Encountered by such discouragements, the army returned to Albany.

Captain John Schuyler, however, went forward with twenty-nine Christians and one hundred and twenty savages whom he recruited at Wood Creek as volunteers. In his journal[4] he gives an account of his daily progress and operations; mentions, by names now lost, various points on the lake, such as Tsinondrosie, Canaghsionie and Ogharonde. "The 15th day of August we came one Dutch mile above Crown Point. The 16th ditto we advanced as far as Kanondoro and resolved at that place to travel by night, and have that night, had gone onward to near the spot where Ambrosio Corlear is drowned, and there one of our savages fell in convulsions, charmed and conjured by the devil, and said that a great battle had taken place at Quebeck, and that much heavy cannon must have been fired there." About midnight of the 18th, "saw a light fall down from out the sky to the South, of which we were all perplexed what token this might be." On the 23d, having drawn near to La Prairie, he attacked the people of the fort, who had gone forth to cut corn. "Christians as well as savages fell on with a war-cry, without orders having been given, but they made nineteen prisoners and six scalps, among which were four womenfolk," and "pierced and shot nearly one hundred and fifty head of oxen and cows, and then we set fire to all their houses and barns which we found in the fields, their hay and everything else which would take fire." Setting out on their return, "the savages killed two French prisoners because they could not travel on account of their wounds," and on the 30th arrived at Albany.

At nearly the same time the fleet sailed from Boston under command of Sir William Phipps, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. It consisted of nearly forty vessels, carrying a force of two thousand men. It was not till the 5th of October that it reached Quebec. Precious time was lost in deliberation while the place was defenseless, and then Frontenac, released by the retrograde movement of Winthrop's army from the necessity of defending Montreal, marched to the relief of Quebec with all his forces. After an unsuccessful attack by land and water on the 9th of October, the troops were reembarked on the 11th and the storm-scattered fleet straggled back to Boston. Such were the poor results of an enterprise from which so much had been expected.

To remove the unfavorable impression of the English which these failures had made on the Indians of the Five Nations, Major Schuyler of Albany, in the summer of 1691, went through Lake Champlain with a war party of Mohawks, and attacked the French settlements on the Richelieu. De Callieres opposed him with an army of eight hundred men, and, in the numerous encounters which ensued, Schuyler's party killed about three hundred of the enemy, a number exceeding that of their own.

In January, 1695, winter being the chosen time for the French invasions, Frontenac dispatched an army of six hundred or more French and Indians by the way of Lake Champlain into the country of the Mohawks, and inflicted serious injury upon those allies of the English. Retreating with nearly three hundred prisoners, they were pursued by Schuyler with two hundred volunteers and three hundred Indians, and were so hara.s.sed by this intrepid partisan leader that most of the prisoners escaped, and they lost more than one hundred of their soldiers in killed and wounded, while Schuyler had but eight killed and fourteen wounded.

Thus, across and along the border of this yet unbroken wilderness, the hostile bands of English and French and their Indian allies carried their murderous warfare to many an exposed settlement, and kept all in constant dread of attack.

Different routes were taken by the predatory bands in their descents upon the frontiers of New England. One was by the St. Francis River and Lake Memphremagog, thence to the Pa.s.sumpsic, and down that river to the Connecticut, that gave an easy route to the settlements. Another was up the Winooski and down White River to the Connecticut. Another left Lake Champlain at the mouth of Great Otter Creek; then up its slow lower reaches to where it becomes a swift mountain stream, when the trail led to West River, or Wantasticook, emptying into the Connecticut. And still another way to West River and the Connecticut was from the head of the lake up the Pawlet River. Of these routes, that by the Winooski was so frequently taken that the English named the stream the French River; while that of which Otter Creek was a part, being the easiest and the nearest to Crown Point, was perhaps the oftenest used, and was commonly known as the "Indian Road."

All these familiar warpaths to every Waubanakee warrior, with every stream and landmark bearing names his fathers had given them, led through Vermont, then only known to English-speaking men as "The Wilderness."

The treaty of peace between England and France in 1697 gave the colonists a brief respite, till in 1702 war was again declared, and in the summer of the next year five hundred French and Indians a.s.saulted in detachments the settlers on Cas...o...b..y, and that part of the New England coast. In the following winter a force of three hundred French and Indians commanded by Hertel De Rouville, a skilled partisan leader, as had been his father, was dispatched by Vaudreuil, the governor of Canada, against Deerfield, then the northernmost settlement on the Connecticut. It was February, and Champlain was frozen throughout its length. Along it they marched as far as the mouth of the Winooski, and took this their accustomed path through the heart of the wilderness toward the Connecticut. Marching above the unseen and unheard flow of the river, over whose wintry silence bent the snow-laden branches of the graceful birch, the dark hemlock, and the fir, or along the hidden trail, an even whiteness except to the trained instinct of the Indian, seldom a sound came to them out of the forest save the echo of their own footsteps and voices. Sometimes they heard the resonant crack of trees under stress of frost, or the breaking of an over-laden bough, the whir of startled grouse, the sudden retreat of a deer or a giant moose tearing through the undergrowth; and sometimes they heard the stealthy tread of their brothers, the wolves, sneaking from some point of observation near their path, but in this remoteness from human haunts, and this deadness of winter, never a sound to alarm men so accustomed to all strange woodland noises. Then they came to the broad Connecticut, an open road to lead them to their victims, upon whom they fell in the early morning when the guards were asleep. Winter, the frequent ally of the Canadian bands, aided them now with snowdrifts heaped to the top of the low ramparts about the garrison houses, and upon them the a.s.sailants made entrance. All the inhabitants were slain or captured, the village plundered and set on fire, and an hour after sunrise the victorious party was on its way to Canada with its booty and wretched captives.[5]

Such warfare was waged for years, the French and Indians making frequent attacks on the most exposed settlements of the English, and they, at times, retaliating by invasions of the Canadian frontier. In 1709 another grand expedition was planned to operate against Canada in the same manner as that undertaken in 1690. But the troops, which under Nicholson were to advance by the way of Lake Champlain, got no farther than Wood Creek, where Winthrop's advance had ended nineteen years before, for while they were there awaiting the arrival at Boston of the English fleet, with which they were to cooperate, a terrible mortality[6] broke out among them, the fleet never came, and the undertaking was abandoned. In 1711 a still more formidable attempt was made to conquer Canada. But the fleet, commanded by Sir Hovenden Walker, with nine thousand troops on board, met with disaster in the St.

Lawrence, and the land force, which again under Nicholson was to invade the French province by Lake Champlain, was not far beyond Albany when news of the fleet's disaster reached it and it was disbanded. Thus, as miserably as had the two preceding ones, this third attempt to conquer Canada failed, and a heavier cloud of humiliation and discouragement overcast the English colonies. But after the treaty of Utrecht the eastern Indians made a treaty of peace with the governors of Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hampshire which gave some a.s.surance of tranquillity to the long-suffering people of those provinces.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Indians themselves p.r.o.nounce the word as here given. It signifies The White Land. It has been thought better to follow this, than the more common spelling, Abenaki, which has come to us from the French.

[2] Wohjahose, signifying The Forbidder, is the Waubanakee name of Rock Dunder, which was supposed to be the guardian spirit of Petowbowk. Some dire calamity was certain to befall those who pa.s.sed his abode without making some propitiatory offering.

[3] Petowbowk, interpreted by some "Alternate Land and Water," by others, "The Water that Lies Between," is the Waubanakee name of Lake Champlain.

[4] _Doc. Hist. N. Y._ vol. ii. p. 160.

[5] White's _Incidents in the Early History of New England_. See _The Redeemed Captive returning to Zion_, by Rev. John Williams, who was one of the Deerfield captives.

[6] In _Summary, Historical and Political_, by William Dougla.s.s, M. D., this is said to have been yellow fever.

CHAPTER II.

THE WILDERNESS DURING THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

By the easiest path, in summer and winter, of the larger streams, the English settlements were pushed into the wilderness, and where the alluvial land gave most promise of fertility the sunlight fell upon the virgin soil of new clearings, the log-houses of the pioneers arose, and families were gathered about new hearthstones. They were soon confronted by the old danger, for the Indians, jealous of their encroachments and covertly incited by the governor of Canada, presently began hostilities, and the gun again was as necessary an equipment of the husbandman afield as his axe or hoe or scythe, and his wife and children lived in a besetting fear of death, or a captivity almost as dreadful. Though England and France were at peace during the time for the five years beginning with 1720, a savage war was waged between the eastern Canadian Indians and the provinces of Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hampshire.

It was in these troublous times that the first permanent occupation was made in the unnamed region which is now Vermont. In 1723 it was voted by the General Court of the Province of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, that "it will be of great service to all the western frontiers, both in this and in the neighboring governments of Connecticut, to build a block-house above Northfield, in the most convenient place on the lands called the 'equivalent lands,'[7] and to post in it forty able men, English and western Indians, to be employed in scouting at a good distance up the Connecticut River, West River, Otter Creek, and sometime eastwardly above great Monadnock, for the discovery of the enemy coming toward any of the frontier towns, and so much of the said equivalent lands as shall be necessary for a block-house be taken up with the consent of the owners of the said land, together with five or six acres of their interval land to be broken up or ploughed for the present use of the western Indians, in case any of them shall think fit to bring their families. .h.i.ther."

Accordingly a site was chosen in the southeastern part of the present town of Brattleboro, and in February, 1724, the work was begun under the superintendence of Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton, by Lieutenant Timothy Dwight, with a force of "four carpenters, twelve soldiers with narrow axes, and two teams." At the beginning of summer the fort was ready for occupancy, and was named Fort Dummer, in honor of the lieutenant-governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. The fort was built of hewn logs laid horizontally in a square, whose sides were one hundred and eighty feet in length, and outside this was a stockade of square timbers twelve feet in length set upright in the ground. Within the inner inclosure, built against the walls, were the "province houses," the habitation of the garrison and other inmates, and themselves capable of stout defense, should its a.s.sailants gain entrance to the interior of the fort. In addition to the small-arms of the garrison, Fort Dummer was furnished with four patereros.[8] There was also a "Great Gun," used only as a signal, when its sudden thunder rolled through leagues of forest to summon aid or announce good tidings. On the 11th of October following its completion, the fort was attacked by seventy hostile Indians, and four or five of its occupants were killed or wounded.

Scouting parties frequently went out to watch for the enemy, sometimes up the Connecticut to the Great Falls, sometimes up West River, and thence across the Wilderness to the same point. Sometimes they were sent to the mountains at West River and the Great Falls, "to lodge on ye top," and from these lofty watch-towers the keen eyes of the rangers scanned the mapped expanse of forest, when it was green with summer leaf.a.ge, or gorgeous as a parterre with innumerable autumnal hues, or veiled in the soft haze of Indian summer, or gray with the snows of winter and the ramage of naked branches, "viewing for smoaks" of hostile camp-fires. In July, 1725, Captain Wright, with a volunteer force of sixty men, scouted up the Connecticut to Wells River, and some distance up that stream, thence to the Winooski, which they followed till they came within sight of Lake Champlain, when, having penetrated the heart of the Wilderness farther than any English force had previously done, the scantiness of their provisions compelled a return.

By the authority of the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, a "truck house,"

or trading house, was established at Fort Dummer in 1728, and the Indians finding that they could make better bargains here than at the French trading-posts, flocked hither with their peltry, moose-skins, and tallow.

When, seventeen years after the erection of Fort Dummer, the boundary line was run between Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hampshire, the fort fell within the limits of the latter State, whose government was appealed to by Ma.s.sachusetts to maintain it, but declined to do so, on the ground that its own frontier was better protected by a stronger fort at Number Four; also that it was more to the interest of Ma.s.sachusetts than of New Hampshire to continue its support. Governor Wentworth urged upon a new a.s.sembly the safer and more generous policy, but to no purpose, and such a maintenance as Fort Dummer continued to receive was given by Ma.s.sachusetts.

After pushing their fortified posts up the Richelieu and to Isle la Motte, where they built Fort St. Anne in 1665, the French made a long stride toward the head of the lake, where in 1730 they built a small fort and began a settlement on Chimney Point, called by them Point a la Chevalure, and the next year began the erection of a more considerable work on the opposite headland of Crown Point, a position of much greater natural strength. In the building of this fortress of St. Frederic, which was for many years to remain a close and constant menace to the English colonies, they were opposed only by feeble protest of the government of New York, though that of Ma.s.sachusetts urged more active opposition. The fort was completed, and the French held the key to the "Gate of the Country," as the Iroquois had so fitly named Lake Champlain. Seigniories were granted on both sides of the lake, and in that of Sieur Hocquart, which extended three leagues along the lake and five leagues back therefrom, was this settlement on Point a la Chevalure. Northward from the fort the habitants built their cabins of logs in close neighborhood along the street, and sowed wheat, planted corn and fruit-trees on their narrow holdings. Flowers new to the wilderness bloomed beside doorways, and the fragrance of foreign herbs was mingled with the balsamic odors of the woods. Where only the glare of camp-fires had briefly illumined the bivouac of armed men, the blaze of the hearth was kindled to shine on happy households; where had been heard no sound of human voice but the sentinel's challenge, the stern, sharp call of military command, or the devilish yell of the savage, now arose the voice of the mother crooning to her babe, the prattle of children at play, the gabble of gossiping dames, and the laughter of the gay habitant; while from the protecting fort flaunted the lilies of France, an a.s.surance to these simple people of the permanency of their newly founded homes. Here the Canadians tilled their little fields, and shared of the lake's abundance with the fish-hawks and the otter, hunted the deer and moose, and trapped the fur-bearing animals in the broad forest, and at the bidding of their masters went forth with their painted allies, the Waubanakees, on b.l.o.o.d.y forays against the English.

When in 1744 war was again declared between England and France, the English frontier settlements soon began to suffer from the advantage their enemies possessed in a stronghold from which they were so easily reached. During the next year they were frequently hara.s.sed by small parties, and in August, 1746, Vaudreuil set forth from Fort St. Frederic with an army of seven hundred French and Indians to attack Fort Ma.s.sachusetts, then the most advanced post in the province, whose name had been given it.[9] There were but thirty-three persons in the garrison, including women and children, but Colonel Hawkes bravely defended the place with his insignificant force for twenty-eight hours, when the supply of ammunition was exhausted and he surrendered, with the stipulation that none of his people should be delivered to the Indians.