USA > Vermont > A history of Vermont : with geological and geographical notes, bibliography, chronology, maps, and illustrations > Part 2
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When two great nations hold such utterly contradic- tory notions about the same thing it does not require
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
a prophet to foresee trouble. Of course so long as the French remained quietly in Canada and the English remained quietly in New England, with a great stretch of uninhabited country between them, they could not enter on this great and necessary work of driving cach other out. So it came to pass that in their attempts to get rid of each other the colonists of the two nations and their allies crossed and recrossed this intervening territory in a long series of raids and forays which have gone down in history as the French and Indian wars.
This is the real meaning of those wars : the French and English were trying to oust each other from the land. What especially concerns us is the fact that a very important part of this country through which they made their bloody trails was the land which came in after years to be our state of Vermont.
THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, AND THE INDIANS
It would be well if we could remember how very differently the French and English colonists went about their work of gaining a foothold in the New World. It would help to explain many things. It would tell us why their interests clashed and why they hated cach other so ; why the French pushed so rapidly through leagues of forest and stream, while the English clung close to the coasts ; why the Indians hated the English and clove to the French and so helped them in these savage wars.
While the English cut away the forests to make clear- ings for their little homes and farms which they could till, the French went here and there through uncut
--
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
forests, trading with the Indians for furs. In conse- quence of this, while the English were confined to little settlements along the shores and near the mouths of the larger streams, the French had made their way along the St. Lawrence River, through the great lakes, northward, far, far up the rivers into the heart of the Hudson Bay country, and southward back of the line of English colonies which stretched like a narrow fringe along the Atlantic coast.
As for the Indians, they looked upon the English clearing away the forest and destroying the old hunt- ing grounds, and they knew that although the settle- ments at first were small and the settlers ready to be friendly, the time would surely come when the settlements would be large and the white men their enemies. The French, on the contrary, destroyed no hunting grounds. Their fur trade depended on the hunting grounds. They came, too, and dwelt like brothers among the Indians and ranged the forests with them, sharing their hardships. In fact, sometimes they were brothers, for they took dusky Indian maidens to wife. They built a fort here or established a trading post there; but these served the Indians as well as the French, and were primarily headquarters for trade, at which only a white man or two would be found in sole charge for weeks and months at a time.
There was another cause of friendship between the Indians and the French. Jesuit missionaries went in hardship and suffering establishing missions among the different tribes, converting them and winning them to the faith and the friendship of their countrymen. Many
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
records and letters were left by these Jesuits, which are now called the Jesuit Relations. These are to-day the most important and valuable sources of knowledge which we have of these Indian tribes at the time when the white men first came among them.
When we thoroughly understand the French method of occupying Canada, we have discovered something which has a direct bearing on the conduct of the French and Indian wars. For example, we see that in all the long line of their widely scattered trading posts, in all the broad expanse of territory which the French held in name, there were really in Canada but two towns of great importance, Quebec and Montreal. We see that the English colonists, if they wished to harm the French, must prepare expeditions large enough and strong enough to take these two fortresses, the bulwarks of the French occupation of Canada. To do this they must have ships and cannon as well as men. On the other hand it was quite an easy matter for a French commander at Mont- real to send out day after day little bands of Indians through that great forest which stretched toward the English settlements, to fall upon the scattered and almost defenseless cabins on the frontier. Those cabins were not mere trading posts ; they were homes in which were women and the precious children, treasures dearer than furs, more precious than life itself.
THE INDIAN TRAILS
These raids of marauding bands of Indians and French will have more than a passing interest for us when we recall that the main routes which were traversed lay
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
across our state, although it was long before that state was settled or bore a name. There were some four or five of these routes which we ought to remember, and to do so will not be difficult if we trace them on the map.
If we bear in mind the starting points, the destination, and the principal water courses which lay between, we shall be guided, as the Indians were, by the natural features of the country into the easiest and for that reason the most frequented routes. The French were at Montreal ; the English settlers were east of the Con- necticut River or along its lower waters. That river furnished war parties with a great highway in summer or winter into the heart of the enemy's country.
The first route to be named lay across the north- western corner of the state. A party would follow this route by coming up the St. Francis River to Lake Memphremagog and leaving the lake through the Clyde River. That would take them to Island Pond, from which they could make a short carry to the Nulhegan and be guided to the more northern stretches of the Connecticut.
If our war party wished to reach a point on the river a little farther south, it would leave Lake Mem- phremagog by way of the Barton River, following it to Crystal Lake, and thence going up over the height of land where the springs lie close together that empty north and south, and follow down the valley of the lit- tle brook that leads, ever widening, to the Passumpsic, which in turn would take them to the Connecticut near the Cohasse intervals.
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
But there were easier and quicker routes than these, especially for large parties coming from Montreal. Just as a great river stretched along the eastern border, so a great lake lay on the western border of the state and offered them miles of easy travel by canoe instead of tedious marches overland through the forest. So the Lake Champlain routes were more often used than those which led through Lake Memphremagog.
There were three of these Champlain . routes : one leading across the state by way of the Winooski River, one by the Otter Creek, and one by the Pawlet River. Coming to the lake by the ancient way which Champlain had followed, a party could turn in at the Winooski, follow the stream up through the mountains, cross from its upper waters to those of the White River, and follow that till it joined the Connecticut at the place where White River Junction now stands. It was along this route that Rouville led his band of French and Indians in their murderous raid on Deerfield in 1704; hither part of the company retraced their steps, leading along the icebound streams through the snows of February the half-clad and half-starved captives who had escaped massacre. We cannot wonder that the settlers long called the Winooski "the French River."
Still another route there was, by way of the Otter Creek. Where it becomes a swift mountain stream the Indians would leave it, cross by trail the height of land, and going down on the east side of the hills, follow either the Black River or West River, as they chose, to the Connecticut. This was an easy route and came to be much used, so that it was known as "the Indian road."
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
It was nearest to Crown Point on the Champlain side ; and when the French had been driven away, and the wars had ceased, the settlers took it up and made it the basis of one of their first roads through the woods, from Number Four to Crown Point.
The last of these routes, that one which followed the Pawlet River, was of less importance. It began at the head of the lake, and after reaching that point on the river where the crossing was easiest over the summit, led to West River on the eastern side of the mountains. In all these routes the eastern highway of the raiding parties was the Connecticut River. As Lake Champlain was the great water way on the west, so this long, quiet stream lay at their service east of the mountains, whether it were open for canoes in the pleasant warmth of sum- mer months or locked in ice in winter, secure and solid beneath the tread of moccasined feet.
INDIAN RAIDS
As a general statement one might say that from 1689 to 1763 the border settlements on the Connecticut and Merrimac rivers were never safe from the ravages of scouting parties harassing the frontier. If you should chance to run across the memoranda of a certain French officer at Montreal in 1746, you would read a record made day after day of parties of Indians sent out to "strike a blow " at the English, now in this direction, now in that, but especially "towards Boston." You would read also records of the scalps brought back, until you sickened at the thought of it, and wondered no longer that the very name of the French was hated in
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
New England, and that settlers lived in daily dread of the sound of the war whoop and the sight of a brandished tomahawk. You will recall, too, that when Rogers's rangers destroyed the village of St. Francis they found hundreds of English scalps hanging at the doors of the lodges.
In all the long series of conflicts which go to make up the French and Indian wars, probably no single attack came with so sudden a shock or has been retold more times than that famous raid on the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, made in the winter of 1704 by Hertel de Rouville and his band of two hundred French and one hundred and forty-two Indians. Coming by the Winooski trail, under the snow-laden branches of the forest, they passed down the Connecticut River on the ice and reached Deerfield on the evening of the 28th of Febru- ary. Recently fallen snows had drifted high against the palisade of the village at the northeast corner. When the watchman left his post in the carly hours of morning, little dreaming that an enemy lay shivering under the pines two miles north of the village, the settlement was helplessly at the mercy of the raiders. Climbing over the palisade on the crusted snow, they scattered through the town and were soon ready to begin their work of mur- der. It was quickly over. Forty-seven of the inhabitants were slain, the village was set on fire, and when the sun was an hour high the march to Canada had begun.
On the night of the fourth day of the march the party stopped near the site of Brattleboro and built light sledges on which to carry the children, the sick, and the wounded. The march was then renewed, and was rapid
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
over the ice of the river. At the mouth of the White River, Rouville divided his party. One division went by the White River, crossed the highlands, and took the Winooski trail. On coming to the lake they turned aside to rest a few days at the Indian village near Swanton ; then they went on to Montreal. The other division kept on up the Connecticut till they came to the great meadows at Newbury, -- the Cohasse intervals, - where, half-starved, they stopped till corn-planting time. They lived meantime on game, but they dared not stay for the harvest of corn, fearing the vengeance of the English.
THE FIRST WHITE OCCUPANCY
The success of the Deerfield raid encouraged many more, and for some years the frontiers of the New England provinces were one continuous scene of merci- less pillage. So it is no wonder that the General Court of Massachusetts passed the vote which stands at the beginning of the chapter. The torment of Indians on the frontier and the necessity of building such outposts for defense explain why the first inhabitants of the state were not settlers who had come to hew homes from the forest, but garrisons at these blockhouses or forts, guarding the frontier on the edge of the wilderness.
The blockhouse which was built above Northfield by the order of the General Court of Massachusetts was by no means the first of its kind within the state. Up in the northwest corner, on an island in Lake Champlain, the French had done the same thing years before. It happened in this way. Monsieur de Tracy, who was
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
then governor of New France, as the French possessions in Canada were called, began in 1664 a line of fortifica- tions from the mouth of the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain. During the first year he built three forts along the river, and in the next spring he ordered Captain de La Motte to proceed up the lake and build a fort on an island. He did so that same year and called the fort St. Anne ; but that name was later changed to La Motte after the builder's name. Long after the fort crumbled to decay the island bore the name of the French captain and bears it to this day. That is how the French first built in Vermont and why one of the islands in Grand Isle County is called Isle La Motte.
For a long time the French held this fort as a garrison ; the island they dwelt upon for nearly a hundred years. From this fort the French soldiers and their allies of Indians hunted deer and elk and sent out expeditions against the Mohawks. Many years after, at Colchester Point, which would be about a day's journey by canoe from St. Anne, our early settlers found the remains of an old chimney bottom and a wall. Near by there grew some very old red and white currant bushes; and on the beach by the lake they picked up a number of curious old things, - Indian arrows, leaden balls, scraps of iron, pieces of silver and copper coins, bones of animals, and the remains of two human skeletons which had washed out from the neighboring banks at high water. Such evidences make it appear very probable that there was once a French settlement at Colchester Point, made perhaps in connection with the garrisoned fortress of St. Anne.
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
The advancing operations of the French in that quarter did not come as welcome tidings to the English ; and New York authorities sent some officers and men with a few Mohawk Indians to look into affairs about the lake and see what it all meant. So we find that in early spring in 1690 a certain Captain de Warm was in the country on the west side of the lake with about seven- teen white men and twenty Indians, acting on orders from the New York authorities at Albany. We find, too, that another captain, Abraham Schuyler by name, was ordered to go to the mouth of the Otter Creek and there " to watch day and night for one month, and daily communicate with Captain de Warm."
De Warm meantime crossed to the castern side of the lake and built a little stone fort at Chimney Point in Addison. When in August of the same year Captain Schuyler led the first English war party that ever passed through the lake, they stopped at the little stone fort and near there killed two elk. But the English did not keep up the occupancy of it, and in 1731 the French came down and made a settlement there.
We now see that the first three places in Vermont to be occupied for any length of time by white people were military outposts built by the French and the English. With the possible exception of the French settlements, whose extent we do not know, there was no colonization attempted at these posts. They were establishments from which scouting parties might range the country, keep a watchful eye on the operations of the enemy, and in cases of emergency meet for defense. They were also what the English and French governments would
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
have called " marks of possession," had they been trying to agree on a boundary line instead of trying to drive each other out ; but such marks of possession, as you may have noticed, amount to but very little when two countries are fighting for the same thing, because the stronger can always take it and usually does.
There is, however, an observation about these posts which is of some significance. That is, that the English and the French were creeping nearer to each other in this country and getting ready to spring at each other's throat ; that both were very evidently possessed of a growing determination in their policy; that just as fast as they grew strong they would use their strength against each other. From what we have now learned it would not require much wisdom to conjecture that these two nations would never inhabit this country together in peace, but that sooner or later one of them would be whipped from its shores.
The old fortress of St. Anne crumbled to decay, and the walls of the little stone fort at Chimney Point fell into ruins, but the blockhouse at Fort Dummer lasted on. The English occupancy about it never ceased, so we will turn back once more to that.
The blockhouse was begun in February next after the vote of the General Court. Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton had the general supervision of the work, and he sent up "four carpenters, twelve soldiers with narrow axes, and two teams," under T. Dwight, to build it. It is said that " the soldiers slept in the woods and earned two shillings per diem besides their stated pay. The horses worked hard, eat oats and nothing else."
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
The carpenters from Northfield received five shillings a day, except John Crowfoot, - who was not a Northfield carpenter at all, but a Springfield Indian, -and he received six shillings.
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"THE PHISOGNOMY OF FORT DUMER"
They all must have worked pretty hard, for by the time the maples and birches were in full leaf and sum- mer showed her fresh green in the clearing the fort was ready to be occupied. It was named Fort Dummer, in
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
honor of the man who was lieutenant governor of Massa- chusetts. It was a right good fort, built for the busi- ness it would have to face, and was pitched on the west bank of the Con- necticut, in the southeast corner of the present town of Brattleboro, on the Dummer meadows. FORT DUMMEK
It was stoutly built of the yellow pines that grew close at hand and was made nearly one hundred and eighty feet square. Houses were built inside the inclo- sure with their backs to the wall of the fort and facing the hollow square or parade ground in the center. If the enemy broke through the gates or scaled the walls, as they had done at Deerfield, the garrison could barricade themselves in the houses and fire upon the foe in the hollow square.
SCOUTING PARTIES
During the unsafe and troubled times which followed for many years we could not expect to find settlers building homes in the wilderness. That was a task all too hard in the most favorable times ; it could not be thought of when the woods were full of scouting parties of New France ready to destroy the growing crops, to plunder and ruin the homes, burn the little cabins, take prisoners the inmates and carry them as captives to Canada, or strike the murderous blow if they were too
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
feeble to endure the terrible march of two hundred miles through the wilderness.
From these forts, therefore, or outposts like the blockhouse on the Dummer meadows, we may only expect to find that scouting parties go out and return, making the fort their headquarters at which to receive their orders, report their trips, and equip themselves for tiresome tramps through the forests and along the streams. The extracts from Captain Kellogg's journal show that such scouting parties began to range the country promptly in the fall of the same year that Fort Dummer was built.
I have sent out [the record runs] several scouts, an account of which I here present.
The first on November 30, we went on ye1 west side of Connecticut River and crossing ye West River went up to ye Great Falls and returned, making no discovery of any Enemy. [The great falls mentioned here are the Bellows Falls of to-day.]
The next scout went up ye West River 6 miles, and then crossed ye wood up to ye Great Falls, and returned making no discovery of any new signs of an enemy.
The next scout I sent out west from Northfield about 12 miles and from thence northward, crossing West River thro ye woods ; then steering east, they came to ye Canoo place about 16 or 17 miles above Northfield.
The next scout I sent out northwest about 6 miles, and then they steered north until they crossed West River, and so thro ye woods to ye Great Meadows below ye Great Falls, then they crossed Connecticut River and came down on ye East side untill they came to Northfield without any new discovery, this Meadow being about 32 miles from Northfield.
1 The old form ye is the same as the and so pronounced, the y in ye being the obsolete form of th.
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
The next scout I sent up ye West River Mountain, and there to Lodge on ye top and view Evening and Morning for smoaks, and from thence up to ye mountain at ye Great Falls and there also to Lodge on ye top and view morning and evening for smoaks ; but these making no discovery returned.
The next scout I sent up ye West River 5 miles and then north till they came upon Sexton's River, 6 miles from ye mouth of it, we empties itself at ye foot of ye Great Falls, and then they came down till they came to ye mouth of it, and so returned, but made no discovery of any enemy.
So the purpose of the fort was served, and the settle- ments rested a little more easily in the knowledge that if Indians did come there were now up at Fort Dummer stanch men keeping watch by night and day, scanning with keen eyes the pathless forest ; and they knew that it would be a small band indeed that could slip past undiscovered and not have the great gun of the fort send its warning echoes booming through the woods.
Of the tale of war and politics which kept both French and English in a turmoil until that memorable day upon the Plains of Abraham, we can tell but little here. But we may note that over in the Champlain Valley the border fights went on until boys grew to be men; and all along the shores of the lake, and among the streams, and through the neighboring hills, scouting parties toiled at the same tasks as those we have seen busying the men at Fort Dummer.
THE TIDE TURNS
The operations in the Champlain Valley finally resulted in the abandonment of Ticonderoga, Fort Frederick, and Chimney Point by the French and the withdrawal to
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
Canada of garrisons and settlers in 1759. This evacua- tion of the country west of the Green Mountains brought a sense of relief to the frontiers of New England as well as to those of New York, because if it did not remove the source of depredations entirely, it put into friendly hands possession of the channel through which some of them had come. Furthermore, it left the English rangers free to begin a more aggressive work in exter- minating their foe; and in the fall of 1759 an expedition was made for this purpose which certainly is entitled to a place in Vermont history.
The leaves were beginning to change color and the wild fowl to think of their southern homes, when Robert Rogers led a party of rangers through the woods and swamps of Canada to destroy the Indian village of St. Francis. This village lay about halfway between Montreal and Quebec, some three miles back from the St. Lawrence River. Here dwelt that tribe of Indians which for three quarters of a century had been the scourge of the New England border.
Setting out from Crown Point in whaleboats, the party managed to escape the French vessels which were still in armed activity on the lake, and coming to Missis- quoi Bay, at the north end of the lake, they hid their boats and some provisions there. Then they started on their long march across country, through tangled swamps and untrodden ways. Within two days friendly Indians overtook Rogers with the news that his boats had been discovered by the French. The party was said to num- ber four hundred men, and half of them were on his track. Rogers did not turn from his purpose. He
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