USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 7
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II.
French and Indian War.
The lake was now no longer the battle-ground for warring tribes of red men. The Iroquois and the Huron still threaded the forest or paddled over the water in pursuit of his enemy, with a ferocity unabated, but now he went always as the emissary of English or of French, sent out to further their schemes. Kings in Europe desired conquest,- terrified colonies desired of all things security from foes near at hand, and these two forces drove onward in their course until they brought about the French and Indian war, so named by the English from the two foes against whom they
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fought. Not that the French alone employed Indian allies, for the English used every means to bring into the field those Indians who remained faithful to their canse, notably the Mohawks under the influence of William Johnson,-afterward Sir William, made a baro- niet as a reward for service during this war.
In August of 1755 Baron Dieskau came from Canada with a large force of men in boats and canoes, rowing up the lake to Crown Point. They came through the Narrows, past the Painted Rocks, across the bay to Bluff point, past the light-house point, and so onward, land. ing their fleet of boats in Bulwagga bay. The villagers flocked to the landing to see, and the soldiers of the Harrison were drawn up and stood in military ar- ray to receive the army of Dieskau. There were a few hundred of the white uniforms of regulars from France, the ouly efficient part of the army, as events proved, with a large force of the Canadian soldiery, and the Indian allies. The latter were hideous in war- paint and feathers, and insolent in their demeanor, swarming over the fort and the village, and looking with especial awe at the cannon upon the ramparts, which they feared more than anything. Dieskan was uever able entirely to conceal his dislike of the savages, and they would never do his will as they did that of Johnson or of Frontenac.
Onward moved the motley army, and on the eighth of September the battle of Lake George was fought. Then began to come baek straggling bands of Canadi- aus, with some of the white coats, but not so many, as
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the regulars alone had faced the enemy with steadiness and they had paid dearly for their fidelity. All the fo- gitives told one tale : Dieskau wounded and taken pris- oner, the army routed, the English pursuing. It was all true except the last, but Crown Point and Ticonde- roga never doubted it. The swiftest rowers were hur- ried instantly into boats with messages for Vaudreuil, governor of Canada, and these messages in turn brought reinforcements to the fort at Crown Point, and to the entrenchments at Ticonderoga, now strengthened in hot haste.
That was a winter of terror and danger at Crown Point. The French held the fort in daily expectation of an attack from the English, who lay at the head of Lake George, continually sending out scouting parties down Lake George and through the hills and forests back of the forts, to lie in ambush and fall upon strag- glers from the garrison.
While the two armies lay facing each other, with the length of Lake George between them, the English at the head of the lake, at Fort William Heury, and the French at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, scouts were constantly sent out from both armies to annoy the enemy and to ravage all the frontier. On the part of the French these scouts were mostly Indians. Their mode of warfare was exactly suited to such a task, and it was the only way in which they were of any service to the French, as they almost invariably refused to stand upon the battle field. The English had no body of Indian scouts, but they had instead the corps of the
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New Hampshire Rangers. The leader of these was one Robert Rogers, a brav . and hardy man, who loved the woods and the woodsman's life. There were also, Jobn Stark, who came from Rogers' own town of London- derry, New Hampshire, and Capt. Israel Putnam, from Connecticut. All the rangers were picked men, perfect in wood-craft and in the arts of forest warfare. Rog- ers. it is said, had been a smuggler before the war, and had smuggled French goods into the British colonies through the Champlain valley. Thus he had learned every turn of the shores of the lakes, their islands, and the mountains, streams and valleys as perhaps no other man of his generation knew thew. He and his com- panions kuew the shores of Westport as well as they are known to-day. When the corps was formed, Rog- ers was twenty-eight years old, and Stark was twenty- seven. Putnam was older, being thirty-seven. Three years before this time Stark had been carried through the lake, a captive to the St. Francis Indians, and was afterwards ransomed.
After this war was over, Rogers went to London, and there printed his journal, containing an account of his military service around Lake George and Lake Cham- plain. His regular reports to his superiors, usually ad- dressed to Sir William Johnson, Commander in Chief of the Provincial Forces, have also been preserved, and agree in all main points with the printed diary. It is interesting to notice indications of the man's character in the minor differences. Thus in his report to his su- perior, made immediately after his return from a scout,
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and often signed by some of his officers as well as by himself, he gave due credit to each man for the part he had taken in the duties and dangers of the expedition. But in the printed journal he is very likely to omit all mention of the share taken by others in a daring deed. Thus in his story of a scout to Crown Point, sent out in October of 1755, when he and four of his men lay in ambush near the fort, he says : "About ten o'clock a single man marched out directly towards our ambush. When I perceived him within ten yards of me, I sprung over the log and met him, and offered him quarters, which he refused, and made a pass at me with a dirk, which I avoided, and presented my fusee to his breast ; but notwithstanding, he still pushed on 'with resolu- tion and obliged me to dispatch him."
In his report to Johnson there is no essential differ- ence to this, except that he says : "Then I with another man ran up to him to capture him, but he refused to take quarters, so we killed him and took his scalp. in plain sight of the fort, then ran, and in plain view, about twenty rods, and made our escape."
Telling his story to the London public, through his book, it did not seem quite necessary to mention the other man who helped him kill the Frenchman, much less to give his name, which was, as we know from other records, Capt. Israel Putnam. On the other hand, he felt it wise to leave out the little detail of the scalping. It was always difficult to induce the English people to look with any degree of favor npon the practice of sealping, whether doue by red man
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or white, as Burgoyne found out some years later. But in a report to Johnson, who seemed himself to have the very soul of an Indian, and who would most cer- taiuly have gloried in scalping the slain Frenchman exactly as did Rogers himself, it was quite a different matter. In another place in his journal Rogers tells of an English soldier killed and scalped by the Indians, remarking piously in a parenthesis, "such is their bar- barous custom." The truth is that all the Rangers made war as much like Indians as possible, and though it is all too dreadful for thought to dwell upon, it is only right to remember that this retaliation in kind was believed to serve a real purpose in the intimidation of the savages.
Rogers and his men traversed the territory of West- port, by land or water, six different times, as told dis- tiuetly in his diary, in three scouts which went out from the head of Lake George and returned. The first is recorded in his Journal as follows :
"February 29, 1756 .- Agreeable to orders from Col. (Hlasier," (then commanding at Fort William Henry,) "I this day marched with a party of fifty-six men down the west side of Lake George. We continued our route horthward till the fifth of March, and then steered east to Lake Champlain, about six miles north of Crown Point, where by the intelligence we had from the In- dians we expected to find some inhabited villages. We then attempted to cross the lake, but found the ice too weak. The 17th we returned and marched round by the bay to the west of Crown Point, and at night got
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into the cleared land among their houses and barus. Here we formed au ambush, expecting their labourers out to tend their cattle and clean their grain, of which there were several barns full. We continued there that night, and next day till dark; when discovering none of the enemy, we set fire to the houses and barns, and marched off."
The route of this expedition was not like that of any other scout sent out that year, as it went farther west than any of them. Perhaps the Rangers went by way of Schroon and the western parts of Crown Point and Moriah, following down the valley of the Boquet until Rogers' familiarity with the mountain passes showed him the best place to strike off to the shore of the lake. It seems more probable that the little party came along the highlands of Moriah to a place not far from the present Mineville, and there turned off over the north shoulder of Bald Peak, following down the course of Mullein brook as our "Bald Peak road" now follows it. This would bring them out at "Stevenson's." "About six miles north of Crown Point" would mean at the place where we now find the Presbrey camp, or Oak Point. Here Rogers expected to find villages which he might burn, but either the Indians had deceived him, or the inhabitants had fled to the fort or to Cau- ada. If the Indians had toll the truth, and the latter was the case, then Bessboro was inhabited before the Freuch aud Indian war.
For twelve days the Rangers remained north of the fort, presumably upon Westport territory. Why was
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not Rogers more descriptive in regard to the doings of those twelve days ? Did they discover Nichols Pond ? Did they stand by the falls of the Boquet? Did they camp in sight of the island of Father Jognes ? If they did, we may be sure they knew little enough about bim, for these men of Puritan blood were taught no sympathy with anything that savored of the Scarlet Woman. I have no doubt that they tried to cross the lake at Barber's Point, as that was the narrowest place, bat the spring of 1756 must have been an early one, since the ice was too weak to bear them in the middle of March. If they could have crossed the lake they would have saved themselves some hard mountain traveling back to Fort William Henry.
The second time that they came to Westport was the next July, and this was one of the most exciting scouts that the Rangers ever undertook.
"About this time," says the Journal, the "General angmented my company to seventy men, and sent me six light whale boats from Albany, with orders to proceed immediately to Lake Champlain, to cut off, if possible, the provisions and flying parties of the enemy. Ac- cordingly, June 28, 1756, I embarked with fifty men in five whale boats, and proceeded to an island in Lake George. The next day, at about five miles distance from this island, we landed our boats and carried them about six miles over a mountain to South Bay, where we arrived the third of July. The following evening we embarked again, and went down the bay to within six miles of the French fort, where we concealed
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our boats till the evening. We then embarked again, and passed by Ticonderoga undiscovered, though we were so near the enemy as to hear their centry's watch- word. About five miles further down we again con- cealed our boats and lay by all day. At night we put off again, with a design to pass by Crown Point, but afterward judged it imprudent by means of the clear- ness of the night, so lay concealed again the next day, when near a hundred boats passed by us, seven of which came very near the point where we were. About nine o'clock at night we reimbarked, and passed the fort at Crown Point, and again concealed our boats at about ten miles distance from it." That is, very prob- ably, upon the point south of the Baie des Roches Fen- dus, which we now call Bluff point. They drew up their boats just "at break of day," having gone as far as they dared in the short summer night.
The boats were concealed in the underbrush fring ing the shore, while the men slept under the trees all day. Sentinels were posted where they could command the lake, and never keener eyes peered out from the thick foliage, nor quicker ears list- ened for every sound. Watching was no dull business on that day, (the seventh of July,) for thirty boats from the French forts went by toward Canada, and a schooner of about thirty or forty tous. The Rangers were too near Crown Point to dare an attack, and besides, it was their especial purpose to intercept boats coming from Canada, laden with provisions. All day they slept and watched, and in the evening slid their boats
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into the water and rowed away to the north. "About fifteen miles further down," which was somewhere be- tween Split Rock and the mouth of the Boquet, they landed again. The next day they had their oppor- tunity. Two lighters, manned with twelve men and loaded with wheat, flour, rice, wine and brandy for the Freuch forts, were captured and sunk, and four of the men killed. One of these was dispatched after having been made prisoner, when it became plain that he was wounded so severely that he was unable to walk. This fact Rogers did not parade before his London audience, hor that they took back with them four scalps as well as eight prisoners to Fort William Henry, but it was all duly reported to his chief.
It was learned from the prisoners that they belonged to a force of five hundred men, which was making its way as rapidly as possible to Crown Point. Fifty men could not face five hundred, and if they launched their boats they were sure to be seen and pursued. Now ap- Frears the reason why they had always lauded for con- cealment upon the western shore, -- so that if they were obliged to abandon their boats they might return to the fort through mountain paths familiar to them but un- known to the enemy. So they hid their boats in the woods, with some kegs of brandy which they had saved from the captured lighters, and made their way back to the head of Lake George, being about a week on the Way.
It was now necessary that another expedition should le undertaken to recover the boats and the brandy, .
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if possible. Accordingly, on the sixteenth of August, the third and last scout of this year which traversed Westport land set out from Fort William Henry. It went in two departments, one commanded by Rogers and the other by Stark. They were also accompanied by thirty of the Stockbridge Indians, who had lately come into camp, and by eight Mohawks. "We then marched," says Rogers, "directly to the place where we left our whale boats the seventh of July, proceeding about twenty-five miles northward to Crown Point fort on the west side of Lake Champlain." They found the boats as they had left them, though no mention is made of the brandy. Perhaps even the civilized Stockbridge Indians could not be trusted within reach of liquor, and surely no Mohawk could be, even on the war-path. They embarked in the boats, which proves that the party could not have numbered more than fifty men, unless some of them were sent back by land. They re- turned safely up the lake, but this time no perilous pas- sage of the forts was attempted. The French had re- ceived reinforcements since the Rangers had passed them before, and perhaps a better watch was kept. At any rate, we may trust Rogers and Stark to have under- stood what were the chances of success, and they did not undertake it. Besides, they had as yet no prisoner, and this was one of the main objects of every seont, both as a means of obtaining information, and to render themselves constantly feared among the French settle- ments. So they landed on the east shore, bid their boats eight miles north of Crown Point, and succeeded
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in taking some prisoners in the village on Chimney Point, opposite the fort, with whom they returned.
The Rangers never recovered their boats. Ou Oc- tober twenty-seventh a sentinel was captured under the very walls of Fort Ticonderoga, who told them "that the French had taken four of Captain Rogers' whale boats in Lake Champlain," -- which does not account for the fifth boat. The discovery of these boats threw the French into a great state of dismay and consternation. They were no birch bark canoes, but large and well made craft, each one capable of carrying ten men, and the French reasoned that it was manifestly impossible that such a flotilla could have escaped the observation of the sentinels at the two forts. "Therefore," said they, "there must be some water passage, unknown to us, which leads from Lake George to Lake Champlain." And they sent out parties with the express purpose of discovering this passage.
After this, the power of France pushed more and more determinedly from the north, the forts were more strongly garrisoned, and the Rangers had more to do bear their own posts. Consequently, none of their scouts reached again as far north as the soil of West- port.
The winter of 1757 saw a force of Canadians and In- dians go by on the ice, dragging sledges, and well equipped for an attack on Fort William Henry-the af- fair of St. Patrick's Day. Then it came back, toiling through three feet of snow, a large number of the party struck snowblind and led by the hand, with no prisoners
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and no victory worth boasting. But the next summer came serious business indeed.
Up to this time, no such army had ever passed through Westport waters as that which Montcalm gathered at Ticonderoga during the month of July. Six thousand white men and two thousand red, moved on to the siege and massacre of Fort William Henry. Let us.be thankful that it is no part of our story to tell over again that tale. Only in one particular does it come within our circle of interest. It may be that William Gilliland was present at that massacre.
Says Watson, in "Pioneers of the Champlain Valley," "the 26th regiment of the line, to which Gilliland was attached, formed the ill-fated garrison of Fort William Henry in 1757, which suffered so fearfally in the mas- sacre by the Indians under Gen. Montcalm. Whether Gilliland was present at that calamitous event I have no means of ascertaining, but his silence on such a sub. ject warrants the presumption that he was not."
It is like Watson's grave punctiliousness that he re- fuses to state as a fact anything which cannot be abso- lutely proved, but surely the probabilities are great that Gilliland was there. His discharge, given at Philadel- phia in 1758, certities that "William Gillilan hath served honestly and faithfully for the space of four years." It is well known that Gilliland received a grant of land near Split Rock in return for his services in the "Old French War," and that his first acquaintance with the shores of Lake Champlain dates from the time when he was a soldier in the British army. But "may have" and
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"not impossible" are not very satisfactory substitutes for history. What we do know certainly is that after the surrender and the massacre, for many a sad day, these shores saw the lake full of boats laden with plun- der from the garrison and with hundreds of captives being hurried away to Canada. Ouly a week after the massacre Montcalm himself went by, carrying his bur- den of threatened disgrace, and leaving the frontier to a winter of little incident. The next June he came again, but the fleet that covered the water, rowing and sailing onward in martial array, carried an army not so large as that of the summer before. In July was fought the Battle of Ticonderoga, where four thousand men behind entrenehments said to sixteen thousand, "Thus far and no farther," and then Montcalm sailed past once more, and looked his last upon our mountains and our bay.
After the repulse of Abercrombie, Israel Putnam was captured by the Indians in a skirmish, and carried to Canada. Bound with cords he went, blackened with the smoke of the fire which the savages had built to burn him alive, only giving up their purpose upon the intervention of a French officer, with a fresh gash upon his cheek, but still looking with eager eyes and una- bated spirit upon the freedom of our hills. If his cap- tors camped for a night upon the island of Button Mould Bay, Putnam might have had a vision, as he lay sleeping beneath the stars, with the sound of the lap- ping water in his ears, of another century, and of a de- seendant of his own upon the same island, sleeping
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with the same sound woven into the fabric of his dreams. In the autumn the hardy Ranger was ex- changed, and lived to fight England as fiercely as ever he fought France.
Another year, and Amherst advanced upon Ticondle- roga from the south. On the evening of July 26, 1759, a terrific explosion resounded over lake and forest for many a league. Boulamarque had blown up the fort at Ti- conderoga and retreated to Crown Point. Here he did the same thing, and moved away to the north, and with him went the domination of France from our land and water. Never again floated the flag of the fleur de lis from the bastions of St. Frederic. The villagers, who had suffered so much from the bullet and torch of the Rangers, either loaded their household goods into bateaux and followed the army, or chose to remain and face the chances of life under the eross of St. George.
Amherst came deliberately on, aud stopped to build a new fort and a fleet at Crown Point. Then were raised the massive ramparts and the barracks whose ruins we now see. It is a fort which never saw a battle, and has never been of any military consequence since it was built. Had Amherst known that he was simply fashioning a background for Sunday School picnics! But it is not always given us to know to what uses our work shall be put, and Amherst was well satisfied with his. To no more purpose was his fleet of boats, for which he turned Bulwagga bay into a ship-yard, as did Arnold after him. Ou the eleventh of October Am- herst went on board his sloop of sixteen guns and, ao-
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companied by a brigantine, a radeau and his army iu large bateaux, set forth for the support of Wolfe at Quebec. Ten days after, and he is seen returning, hav- ing lost twelve boat-loads of soldiers in an inglorious battle with the elements. There had been one of our Autumn gales, and the boats, probably very badly managed, had foundered, while the rest of the fleet had sought shelter under the western shore. Perhaps some of the rear boats got no farther than Northwest Bay.
Amherst made uo further attempt to join Wolfe, and Quebec was taken without him September 18th, 1759. Montcalm and Wolfe were both killed, and the war was practically ended.
Fighting in the British army at this time was a man with a remarkable history, by name Philip Skene. He was a Scotchman, and a lineal descendant of William Wallace. He entered the army in 1739, and had a most active and honorable record. He was in many battles, the most famous of which was that of Culloden, 1745. when the hopes of the last Stuart pretender, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," were laid low. He was a captain in the army of Abercrombie in the attack upon Ticonderoga, July 8, 1756, and was there wounded. His regiment was the 27th, or the Inniskilling Foot. The next year he was with the army of Amherst when it marched into the dismantled and smoking fort at Ti- conderoga, and he accompanied it to Crown Point. When, in October, Amherst set out with the main body of his army to join Wolfe in Canada, Skene was left
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behind, detailed to serve as Major of Brigade at Crown Point under Brigadier Ruggles.
Thus Skene had every opportunity to become ac- quainted with the shores of the lake, especially at the southern end, and it was no doubt while he was sta- tioned at Crown Point that he learned the value of the iron mine on the lake shore which we now call "the Cheever," and which he took measures to secure to himself as soon as possible at the close of the war. We do not know that this bed was discovered at all during the French occupation. Skene was the first to own and to work it, and its name for a generation or more was "Skene's Ore Bed." He founded Skenesboro in 1761. In 1771 he was granted two thousand four hun- dred acres of some of the best land in Westport, which is known to this day as "Skene's Patent." We may be sure that he first saw it that summer of 1759 which he spent at Crown Point, and that he rowed along its shore in Northwest Bay, looking at it with calculating eves, and walked over it, too, thinking how he would ask for a grant of it as soon as ever it came into the gift of the King of England.
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