USA > New York > Warren County > Queensbury > History and biography of Washington county and the town of Queensbury, New York > Part 2
USA > New York > Washington County > History and biography of Washington county and the town of Queensbury, New York > Part 2
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The first white discoverer of Lake George was Father Isaac Jogues, a French Jesuit missionary, who first beheld its waters on August 11, 1642, while being carried a captive by Iroquois Indians from Canada to the banks of the Mohawk river. He escaped the next year, and in 1646, when returning to the Iro- quois as a French ambassador, he reached Lake George "on the eve of Corpus Christi, which is the feast of the Blessed Body of Jesus, and in honor of the day named the lake ' the Lake of the Blessed Sacrament.'" This name was contracted to that of Lake Saint Sacrament, by which it was known until 1755. In August of that year General William Johnson encamped with his army on the head waters of the lake, and changed its name from Lake Saint Sacrament to Lake George, in honor of George II., of England.
DIONONDAHOWA FALLS.
On the Batten Kill are three falls - one at Greenwich ; the second at Galesville, forty feet high, and the third and most remark- able, half a mile below and west of Galesville, known by its Indian name of Dionondahowa. "For forty or fifty rods above the last falls the stream runs in a gently-descending rapid, curving to the right and descending more rapidly as it nears the fall. It then suddenly narrows its channel, inclines to the left be- tween rough walls of slate-rock, and falls over four successive terraces, each narrower and higher than the preceding, and having a total fall of seventy-five feet in three hundred feet of distance. The waters, now of creamy foam, here gather together, and entering a rocky gorge, hurl themselves madly over the brink into the 'Devil's Caldron.' Now lashed to fury, beaten to spray, dashed hither and thither with resistless force, they sullenly pour over another fall of twelve or fifteen feet, and turning to the right flow through a dark ravine between high rocky banks on their way to the Hudson. The scenery at this point is beauti- ful and picturesque, and may well repay the tourist for a trip to view this woderful mani- festation of the power and masterly skill of Nature's great Architect."
GEOLOGY.
We condense the following account of the geology of Washington county from the geo- logic description of the same by Asa Fitch, M. D., who adopted the Taconic theory that the rocks of the county were an independent series lying between the primary and transition strata, and rejected the Metaphoric theory that placed them as lower members of the primary strata, changed from their appearance by the agency of heat : Starting from Lake George on the stratified or granitic rocks and passing to the southeastern part of the county, the following different rocks occur : at Wood creek a hard white sandstone rests upon the granite, and is known as the Potsdam sand-
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
stone, whose eastern edge lies along a soft lime and sand rock, named the calciferous sandstone, which is succeeded by the pure blue Chazy limestone. Twelve miles from this, in the Bald mountain range of hills along the Hudson river is the Trenton lime- stone. Bordering on the two last named limestones is the Hudson river slate. Upon the east side of the Bald mountain range commences the Taconic slate that occupies the eastern part and underlies three-fifths of the county. Principally gray in color, yet it changes to green Magnesian slate, and to pale blue Sparry and snow-white Stockbridge lime- stones, the latter being the celebrated Rut- land marble.
Lying in a trough between the primitive rocks of New York and the Green mountains, the strata of the county are sedimentary and belong to the lowest known paleozoic rocks.
The granite rock is a granitic gneissoid, and underlies nearly all of Putnam, all of Dresden, and Fort Ann and Whitehall, north of Half- way brook and west of Wood creek. Two valuable minerals -iron ore and block lead - are found in the area named, but the last mineral is most abundant in north Putnam.
The Potsdam sandstone is well developed from Whitehall to Fort Ann, and thence west along Half-way brook to the Warren county line. It usually crops out in precipices facing westward, and furnishes the best of firestones for furnaces, although very inferior for smooth stones or pavements. Occurring in uniform layers, it looks in cliffs like solid courses of masonry laid up for a wall of some great fortification, tower or castle of olden times.
Succeeding the Potsdam is the calciferous sandstonc, intermediate in position and com- position between the sandstone below and the limestone above it. Soft enough to quarry in smooth faced blocks, it is in high repute for flagging. Several quarries are open in the towns of Kingsbury and Fort Ann, and north of Dewey's bridge this rock shows a thickness of two hundred feet.
Chazy limestone, pale blue or dove-colored, reaches from Fort Ann to the Mettowee river, and occupying northwest Hartford, and the east border of Kingsbury, reappears on the west side of Wood creek and passes to Glens Falls, where it has changed in color to a jet black. Its fossil shell, the Maclurea Magna, is abundant in the northwest part of Granville. This limestone is valuable for lime, and, tak- ing a high polish, becomes a good marble. In twelve miles distance, from Lake Cham- plain to the Hudson river, this limestone changes into a well-marked Trenton.
Trenton or Bald mountain limestone stands in the midst of slate rocks like an oasis in a desert. It constitutes Bald mountain, in the town of Greenwich. This mountain is a mile in length and seven hundred feet high, being made up principally of the blue Trenton limestone, and ranks as pure carbonate of lime, producing one of the finest of "rich limes." The Bald mountain lime has always ranked superior to any other lime offered for sale in the leading cities of the United States.
Hudson River slate is well exposed all along the Hudson, from Sandy Hill to Schuy- lerville. It extends three miles east from the Hudson to the base of Bald mountain, and is generally a shale rather than a slate. The Graptolithus pristis, the fossil of this slate, which occurs abundantly at Baker's Falls, re- sembles a narrow blade of grass, having teeth like a saw along both edges. The shale or slaty gravel of this slate makes a very fine top dressing for a sticky clay road.
Taconic slate is dark colored where in con- nection with Hudson River slate, and quite black when in contact with the limestone of the western part of the county. Silex is the largest ingredient of this rock that occupies the eastern part of Washington county, and whose characteristic fossil, Buthotrephis flex- uosa, which appears like curved and branching marks painted on the stone, has numberless shades of different colors and contains milky quartz and iron pyrites. This rock affords a
2a
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
splendid roofing slate that is in demand in Europe, South America and Australia.
Taconic sandstone is a harsh gray rock with seams of white quartz running through it, and widely scattered throughout our soils. It shows a thickness from a bed of a few inches up to a rock of two hundred feet, and is pre- ferred to any other stone for the walls of buildings, as it can be readily quarried into narrow blocks.
The sparry limestone extending through the Taconic district resembles a chain, the successive links of which connect the west Trenton limestone with the east side granular limestone. It is a blue or bluish-gray rock, veined and marked with white calcareous spar, and occurs all through the Taconic dis- trict, at numerous points, in insulated masses.
Magnesian slate has widely different shades of color and degrees of hardness, as occurring in a few places in the west and in the east, but the main mass of rock lies in the extreme southeastern part of the county, where it is more uniform in color.
Granular limestone or Rutland marble touches the southeast corner of Washington county for the short distance of one mile. It is a white crystalline rock, and has been favorably known in the marble markets of the world for the last fifty years, under different names, such as Dorset marble, Stockbridge limestone, Arlington stone and Sutherland marble.
Granular quartz, alhough not a formation in the county, yet is everywhere abundant in the form of pebbles and cobble-stones.
The geologic record of the county is one that goes back into the very dawn of the creation of the world, and its rock-written chapters, if ever deciphered, will constitute a history of startling past changes of wonderful interest.
MINERALS.
In 1880 there was nearly eight million tons of iron ore mined in the United States, and the center of total production of this iron ore
was twelve miles northwest of Meadville, in Crawford county, Pennsylvania. The meri- dian and paralleled center of production thien intersected in the eastern part of Center county, Pennsylvania.
The great coal field of the central United States is nearly enclosed by the older rocks of the Wisconsin, Michigan, the Appalachian and the Ozark regions. In this basin and its rock border lie the fuel and ore with which the United States must make its material pro- gress in the twentieth century. On the north- eastern border of this great coal basin, we find the Archæan rocks, a narrow belt of which is found in Washington county.
The geological column of iron ores in New York commences down in the Archæan rocks, and with a few breaks extends up through the Lower and Upper Silureans, the Devonian, Carboniferous and Triasic rocks, and missing the Jurassic, attains its height in the Creta- ceous rocks. The iron ores of New York, and the number of tons of each mined in 1880, were as follows :
ORES. TONS.
Magnetite 927,000
Limonite
155,000
Hematite 95,000
Fossil 85,000
Carbonate ores, which are alone in Colum- bia county, were not reported in 1880.
The Archæan rocks come to the surface only in the northwestern part of the county, east of Lake George. Magnetic ores occur in this narrow belt, and in 1880 were only mined at the Potter and Mount Hope mines. The Potter mine is nearly five miles from Fort Ann, and in 1880 produced twelve thousand one hundred and seventy-two tons of ore, which was disposed of to Fort Edward fur- nace, fourteen miles distant, except a part that was hauled to the canal and shipped to the Hudson river furnaces. The Potter is named for Joseph Potter, its owner, and was opened in 1879, being worked the next year by John T. Harris & Son. The mine is situ-
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
ated between the headwaters of two small runs, the ore being granular, and containing more or less pyrite, but in places grades into a magnetite hornblende gneiss. A sample taken in 1880 from a pile of fifteen hundred tons, contained 62.82 per cent of metallic iron with no phosphorous or titanic acid.
The Mount Hope mine is a half-mile north- west of the Potter, and in 1880 produced six thousand seven hundred and twenty tons of ore. The ore outcrops on the west, south and east side of Mount Hope ridge, and is finely granular in texture, being largely mixed with hornblende, and to a lesser extent with quartz, feldspar, mica, and occasionally with pyrite. A sample of the ore yielded 36.99 per cent of metallic iron, 0.055 per cent phosphorus, and no titanic acid, while the phosphorous in 100 parts iron was 0. 149 per cent.
The old Pedunk mine is two hundred and fifty feet northwest of the Potter, was worked for several years, but became idle about 1875.
Some five miles north of Fort Ann, and northeast from the Potter, are several small beds of limonite iron ore.
No statistics, at this writing, can be ob- tained of any of these mines or beds later than 1880. In that year the Potter and Mount Hope mines furnished employment for sixty miners, twenty-seven laborers, and five of a supervising force, all of whom received twenty-six thousand dollars wages. There was two hundred and fifteen thousand five hundred dollars of capital invested in them, and adjoining real estate, while the value of the yearly products was returned at forty-seven thousand seven hundred dollars. The iron made from the ore of these mines is used for the manufacture of Bessemer at Fort Edward and elsewhere in New York, and at several places in Ohio.
In 1880 there were four quartz and feldspar mines in operation in Washington county, in which fifty-two thousand two hundred dollars capital was invested, and where seventeen
hands were employed. Their yearly output was one thousand nine hundred and seven tons, valued at seven thousand eight hundred and twelve dollars.
Graphite is found in Putnam, brick clay exists in several towns, and lead containing silver is in White creek, but the latter so far has not been developed in paying quantities. Roofing slate is in the eastern part in consid- erable quantities, and the celebrated Rutland marble also lies in the southeastern part of the county.
CHAPTER II.
MOUND-BUILDERS-INDIANS-WAR-PATH OF AMERICA.
MOUND-BUILDERS.
The aboriginal history of the territory of Washington county would be extremely inter- esting, if it could be presented. But the mute ruins of mound and temple of the earliest inhabitants of America can tell noth- ing of their builders, while the traditions of the Indian are too dim as well as too fanciful to give anything of their own origin or the fate of their predecessor, the Mound-builder.
While there is abundant evidence of the Mound - builders residing in western New York, yet there is nothing known so far to warrant their permanent occupation of the territory of Washington ; no record of mound, temple, altar or fortification ruins having ever been discovered in the county.
Four principal theories exist for the emigra- tion of the Mound-builder from the old to the new world.
The existence, in past ages, of a narrow north Atlantic isthmus from England to Maine afforded them a route if they were of European origin ; and the rending of this narrow stretch of land by the great ice fields of the glacial age into mere island fragments, of which Greenland and Iceland alone remain, would
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
have cut them off from all communication with their native land, whose shores they may never have revisited, as in all probability it became the home of strangers after their westward emigration.
The study of the ocean currents, the winds and temperature of the South Pacific, with the record of drifting boats from the "Flowery Kingdom" and the East Indian isles being cast upon the western shore of South America, allow the possibility of a Mound-builder emi- gration from southeastern Asia to western South America.
The ice-bound floor of Behring's strait in winter and the chain of the Aleutian islands, stretching from Siberia and Japan to Alaska, is the third and most probable route of the Mound-builders from the shores of the old to the lands of the new world.
Some have thought that when fabled At- lantis was sinking in earthquake throes, they left its shores and their drifting boats floated into some south Atlantic harbor.
The seat of the Mound-builder's empire was in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, where his temple, altar, effigy and tomb mounds are abundant, and in which his num- erous forts and fortifications were erected, with skill, and in places upon quite a large scale.
Schoolcraft states that the Mound-builders existed in considerable numbers along Lake Ontario before the twelfth century, and were the ancient Alleghans, who left their name upon the Allegheny mountains.
Stretching over the western part of New York in towns protected by forts and sur- rounded by mounds and temples were the Mound-builders, and it is highly probable that hunting parties of this great lost race once followed the chase and sought for fish on the territory and in the streams of Washington county.
INDIANS.
When the "Great Admiral" placed the im- perial standard of Spain upon the shores of
the western world he gazed upon an empire more vast than any of the empires of the east. Yet that mighty Indian empire, stretch- ing nine thousand miles from pole to pole, and more extensive in territory, greater in popula- tion, and more abundant in rich mines, than imperial Rome during her golden age, has passed away, and all its greatness lies buried in the graves of Powhatan, King Philip, Pon- tiac, Tecumseh, and a score of other great chieftains.
Of the eight great Indian families occupy- ing the territory of the United States at the time of the discovery of America by Colum- bus, the Algonquin and the Huron-Iroquois were the two most prominent in warfare.
The Algonquins stretched along the Atlan- tic coast and extended back to the lakes and the Allegheny mountains.
Encircled by the Algonquins were their in- veterate enemies, the Huron-Iroquois of the present territory of western and central New York and western Canada.
The fiercest and bravest of all the Huron- Iroquois was the Five Nations, after 1715 the Six Nations, whose home was in central New York.
The Six Nations, stretching in a narrow belt from east to west, through central New York, were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Tuscaroras and Senecas. Sylvester says that they celebrated five great feasts every year : New Year's Festival or Sacrifice of the White Dog, Maple Feast, Planting Festival, Feast of the Strawberries, Feast of the Green Corn Moon, and Harvest Festival.
The confederacy of the Five Nations, after 1715 the Six Nations, was the result of the wonderful "Tribal League of the Hodeno- saunee, or People of the Long House." This league made them powerful and successful.
In each of the Five Nations there were eight tribes, arranged in two divisions and named as follows :
Wolf,
Bear,
Beaver, Turtle,
Deer,
Snipe, Heron, Hawk.
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Each tribe was divided in five parts, and one-fifth of it placed in each of the Five Na- tions. Thus the Mohawk of the Beaver tribe recognized the Seneca of the Beaver tribe as his brother, and they were bound together by the ties of consanguinity closer than could have been effected by any separate tribal relation which could have been devised. This league, the highest effort of Indian legislation, forms a splendid and enduring monument to the proud and successful confederacy that was reared under it, and that spread the terror of its name among every Indian tribe east of the Mississippi river and residing in Canada.
The Six Nations, "The Indians of Indi- ans," and "The Romans of the West," was the highest type of a thorough, finished, and developed savage.
John Bach McMaster, in his History of the People of the United States, speaks of the Indian as follows :
"The opinion which many careful and just minded persons of our time have formed touching the Indians, of whom the settlers in the border-land then stood in constant dread, is a singular mixture of truth and romance. Time and absence have softened all that is vile and repulsive in his character, and left in full relief all that is good and alluring. We
are in no danger of being tomahawked. But, one hundred years ago there were to be found, from Cape Ann to Georgia, few men who had not many times in their lives seen numbers of Indians, while thousands could be found scat- tered through every State whose cattle had been driven off, and whose homes had been laid in ashes by the braves of the Six Nations. In every city were to be seen women who had fled at the dead of night from their burning cabins ; who had, perhaps, witnessed the de- struction of Schenectady ; or whose children had, on that terrible day when Brant came into Orange county, stood in the door of the school house when the master was dragged out, when their playmates were scalped, when their aprons were marked with the black mark
which, like the blood upon the door-posts, a second time stayed the hand of the Angel of Death. The opinions which such men and women held of the noble red man were, we may be sure, very different from those current among the present generation, and formed on no better authority than the novels of Cooper, and the lives of such warriors as Red Jacket and Brant.
"Of the true character of the Indian it is difficult to give any notion to those who are acquainted with it only as it appears exalted or debased in the pages of fiction. In him were united, in a most singular manner, all the vices and all the arts which form the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the weak, with many of those high qualities which are always found associated with courage and strength. He was, essentially, a child of na- ture, and his character was precisely such as circumstances made it. His life was one long struggle for food. His daily food depended not on the fertility of the soil, or the abund- ance of the crops, but on the skill with which he used his bow; on the courage with which he fought, single-handed, the largest and fiercest of beasts; on the quickness with which he tracked, and the cunning with which he outwitted, the most timid and keen-scented of creatures. His knowledge of the habits of animals surpassed that of Audubon. The shrewd devices with which he snared them would have elicited the applause of Ulysses : the clearness of his vision excelled that of the oldest sailor ; the sharpness of his hearing was not equalled by that of the deer.
" Yet this man, whose courage was unques- tionable, was given to the dark and crooked ways which are the resort of the cowardly and the weak. Much as he loved war, the fair and open fight had no charms for him. To his mind it was madness to take the scalp of an enemy at the risk of his own, when he might waylay him in an ambuscade, or shoot him with a poisoned arrow from behind a tree. He was never so happy as when, at the dead
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
of night, he roused his sleeping enemies with an unearthly yell, and massacred them by the light of their burning homes."
In the foregoing description McMaster, while giving the Indian character, has failed to allow the Red Man credit for his honorable treatment of the Quaker, who bought his land in a satisfactory manner, and has not criticised the Puritan, Patroon and Cavalier for not adopting the policy of Penn, and averting nearly all of the Indian wars of the colonial period.
Washington Irving, in concluding his sketch of the "Traits of Indian Character," says : "Should he (the poet) venture upon the dark story of their (the Indians') wrongs and wretch- edness ; should he tell how they were invaded, corrupted, despoiled ; driven from their native abodes and the sepulchers of their fathers ; hunted like wild beasts about the earth ; and sent down with violence and butchery to the grave - posterity will either turn with horror and incredulity from the tale, or blush with indignation at the cruely of their forefathers."
Of the Indian occupation of Washington county but little can be learned at this late day, while it is a subject that the early his- torians of eastern New York were quite neg- lectful of, and so nearly all knowledge of camp and trail, of hunting ground and village, has passed away.
It seems that the Mohawks were the " over- lords" of the county, but had no permanent settlement within its boundaries when the white race made its appearance in the upper Hudson valley. Some years later they made no use of the county beyond occasionally hunting in its forests, and it became the resi- dence of their tributaries, the Mohicans, of western Massachusetts.
The Pompanuck tribe of Indians, and prob- ably a branch of the Mohicans, is said to have come to the vicinity of Pumpkin Hook, in the present town of White Creek. But nothing further of them is preserved in history or has been handed down in tradition.
As late as 1850 a company of Saint Francis Indians, from Canada, carrying bead-work, visited Granville, where they claimed the right by immemorial usage of camping at various places near the village. The leader of the party claimed that one of the traditions of his people was that their ancestors had camped and hunted for untold ages there, and there had made their hatchets and arrows, and found the best beavers in the. Pawlet river. In excavating for buildings defective arrow- heads and hatchets were found afterward, by a Mr. Thompson, which confirmed the Indian account.
The Mohicans had hunting camps on the territory of the county, in the vicinity of the sites of Fort Ann and Fort Edward, as latc, if not later, than 1755. But nothing can be found now to tell how soon thereafter they left, or where their camps were located, or the names and directions of the trails by which they had intercourse with the tribes of New England.
WAR-PATH OF AMERICA.
Situated on the great water-ways of the continent, the Five Nations had three great war-paths over which they passed to wage unceasing war with the rival Indian nations then inhabiting the United States and Can- ada.
From their great council fire in central New York the Cataba war-path led through Penn- sylvania and Virginia to the Carolinas; the Niagara trail passed into western Canada and westward along the great lakes to the head- waters of the Mississippi ; and the Canadian trail, or the War-path of America, ran through Washington county to Lake Champlain, which afforded a water route to the heart of Canada.
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