USA > Vermont > A history of Vermont : with geological and geographical notes, bibliography, chronology, maps, and illustrations > Part 3
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31
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
determined to outfoot his pursuers, destroy the village as he had planned, and escape by pushing on through the woods to the Connecticut River, instead of return- ing to Crown Point. He sent word to Crown Point to have provisions brought up the Connecticut River to the upper Ammonoosuc, to which it was hoped he might bring his party safely through.
Rogers's own account of this expedition was published over one hundred and thirty years ago, in London, and from the musty pages of the old book we can catch a glimpse or two of the story.
The 22d. day after my departure from Crown Point, I came in sight of the Indian town St. Francis, in the evening, which I discovered from a tree that I climbed, at about three miles dis- tance. . . . At half an hour before sunrise I surprised the town when they were all fast asleep, on the right, left and center, which was done with so much alacrity by both officers and men, that the enemy had not time to recover themselves or take arms for their own defence. . . . A little after sunrise I set fire to all their houses, except three, in which there was corn, that I reserved for the use of the party. About seven o'clock in the morning the affair was completely over, in which time we had killed at least 200 Indians and taken 20 of their women and children prisoners, 15 of whom I let go their own way, and five I brought with me, viz. two Indian boys and three Indian girls. I likewise retook five English captives which I also took under my care. When I had paraded my detachment I found I had Capt. Ogden badly wounded. . . . I also had six men slightly wounded and one Stockbridge Indian killed.
The hardest part of his task was yet before him. He was in the enemy's country, and all hope of return by the way he had come was cut off. Ilis one chance lay in getting through to the Connecticut, and pursuers were
32
HISTORY OF VERMONT
hot on his trail. After much hardship he reached Lake Memphremagog, but he dared not try to hold the party together any longer. The supply of corn had failed. In order to enable them more easily to sustain themselves on such rough fare as the forest offered, he divided the company there east of the lake and told the detachments to assemble at the Ammonoosuc, if they could reach it. Then they parted, taking different routes. Some were captured by the pursuing Indians ; some were killed ; some sick and starving staggered through to the Con- necticut River. His own party turned southward, on the east side of the lake, followed the Barton River to Crystal Lake, and went on over the summit into the Passumpsic Valley.
Meantime men with two canoes laden with provisions had made their way up the Connecticut River from Charlestown, New Hampshire, then known as Number Four, had come to Round Island near the mouth of the Passumpsic and camped there. On the second morning, fearing that an Indian party was in the neighborhood, they left the island and went back down the river, tak- ing the provisions with them. At that moment, but a few miles up the Passumpsic, Rogers and his few fam- ished stragglers were coming through the woods. They came to the Connecticut about noon of the same day and saw the smoke of the still smoldering fires of the relief party on the island. Signal guns were fired. The relief party heard them and hurried away down the river faster than ever. Making his way across to the island as best he could, Rogers found there only the smoking embers.
33
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
" It is hardly possible," wrote he, "to describe the grief and consternation of those of us who came to the Cohasse Intervals. Upon our arrival there after so many days' tedious march, over steep and rocky mountains, or through wet, dirty swamps, with the terrible attendants of fatigue and hunger, we found that here was no relief for us, where we had encouraged ourselves that we should find it." He continues : " At length I came to a resolution to push as fast as possible towards Number Four, leaving the remains of my party now unable to march further to get such wretched subsistence as the barren wilderness could afford." With Captain Ogden, a ranger, and an Indian boy, Rogers set out on a raft made of dry pines, and after being once wrecked and under- going further disasters, at length reached the settle- ments more dead than alive, and sent back help to those of his comrades who were still living.
A few years before this a young man by the name of John Stark, of whom we shall hear more later, was captured by Indians while out hunting in the woods on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut and was taken with his brother and two companions to Canada by much the same route that these half-starved wanderers of Rogers's party traversed. They went up the Connect- icut, across to Lake Memphremagog, and thence into Canada. Stark showed so much bravery and spirit that he became a favorite with his captors and was treated kindly.
Between the time of Stark's capture and the great blow which Rogers struck at Indian power the settlers of New England carried on a more or less persistent and
34
HISTORY OF VERMONT
systematic warfare against the Indians. The government of Massachusetts offered a reward for every Indian killed or captured ; and ranging parties scoured the woods between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, and as far north as Black River.
Companies of thirty or more men would take their course through the woods, marching either in divisions or by one common route through thickly wooded up- lands, over jagged hills and steep mountains, across foaming rivers or beside gravel-bedded brooks. They adopted the Indian mode of warfare and beat the Indi- ans at it. Nerve, capacity for endurance, courage, and unfailing marksmanship were trained in those days of forest ranging. What better stuff for peopling this state, for battling with the forests, and for building up the homes, could there be than the men who had thus wrenched it from the savagery of border wars and gained their schooling at the hands of Nature?
SPYING OUT THE LAND
From such accounts as Rogers left and from the pages of Colonel Kellogg's journal we can see one thing very clearly. If men were not settling in the wilderness, they were at least finding out a great deal about it, so that when days of peace and quiet should come men would know where it was good to go and settle. The work of the rangers was something like that of the spies whom Moses sent to search the land of Canaan before the children of Israel went into it.
Perhaps this is the best service of the scouting parties. They did not harm the French much; they did not harm
35
1770822
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
the Indians much; they alarmed them; and they helped a little in the work of carrying out the great English policy : but the great fact is, they made known the land. It would be a mistake to suppose that our colonists settled this affair between England and France. It was not fought out altogether in the New World; and what the rangers did toward it in the Green Mountains we can dismiss with few words. But we do need to think a great deal about this work of theirs in finding what the land truly was; for behind every homestead that was ever taken up and carved out of this wilderness there lay a good and sufficient reason, and we cannot understand the history of our state unless we think of these things.
Many of the names given in these records are the same that we use to-day for the same streams and places. You could follow many of the courses which the rangers took, as the historian Parkman when a college student tramped over the route of Rogers, from Lake Memphremagog to the Connecticut River.
Think how much could be learned on those swift, silent forest trips, - where the timber lay, and all the different kinds which grew, maple, birch, beech, oak, ash, cedar, spruce, hemlock, pines, and all the rest. Very many pines there were in those days, and noble ones too, so noble that the king of England said that they must be marked and saved for masts and spars to go in his royal navy. Then, too, from the tops of the mountains, where parties lay whiling away the hours watching for "smoaks" of Indian camp fires, many things besides smokes would be seen. You could not help seeing them, watching so sharply in all directions
36
HISTORY OF VERMONT
for smokes, - the contour of the land, for instance ; the courses of streams through the valleys ; and here and there a bit of interval or stretch of beaver meadow, where a settler could cut the first hay for his cattle to last through the winter before his own land was cleared.
On those long journeys what woodcraft secrets would the forest farer learn! What little joys of discovery would come to him every hour of the day! He would learn where the deer yarded on the mountain, or browsed in the timber, or came down to the water in favorite runways. He would find which slopes the moose loved best. He would note the track of the bear and the curious work of the beaver. He would learn how far up the streams the salmon ran to their spawning beds ; he would learn where the trout were always plentiful ; and he would never forget where the water, choking up in a narrow channel and leaping over the rocks, would let a settler build the first mill to saw logs or grind grain.
When the corn that was planted at the fort had ripened in the summer's sun, and the grass had turned sere and brown on the marshes, and crimson and gold leaves were carpeting the forest, then it was time to think of the fall hunt. Then deer were fat and sleek and venison was sweetest. Then the tongue and steak of Bruin replenished the larder. The crackling fires of winter must be provided for and many a sturdy oak, maple, and birch laid low for the blaze of the great fireplace. When of an evening the men recounted their tales around the hearth, what wonder that the passion of the wilderness grew upon them! What wonder that when peace came and they were free at
37
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
last from their enemy, the voices of the forest called them back to claim as their own the wilderness from which they had driven their foe! It was theirs now, this wilderness teeming with game, these lands where the Indian had hunted, these streams where he had fished. It was the white man's now, to enter in and possess.
CHAPTER III
THE WIDENING TRAIL
RYEGATE, Feb. 7, 1774.
We have now built a house and live very comfortably though we are not much troubled with our neighbors. . . . In the township above us (Barnet) there are about fifteen families, and in the township below (Newbury) about sixty. .. . There are some settlers sixty miles beyond us on the river. There are no settlers to the west of us till you come to Lake Champlain. There is a road now begun to be cut from Con- necticut River to the lake, which goes through the middle of our pur- chase, and is reasoned to be a considerable advantage to us, as it will be the chief post road to Canada. . . . We have a grist mill within six miles of us, and a saw mill within two and a half. We know nothing of the hardship of settling a new place, for the first settlers in the town below, only ten years ago, had not a neighbor nearer than sixty miles, and the nearest mill was one hundred and twenty miles down the river. The people here are hospitable, social, and decent. One thing I know, that here they are very strict in keeping the Sabbath. - Extracts from a letter of General Whitelaw to his father in Scotland.
ROADS IN THE WOODS
The military operations during the latter part of the French and Indian wars served another purpose than that of a training school for settlers. They opened up better roadways than the dim trails of the Indians or the blazed paths of white men. Rude roads they would seem to this age of graded highways, railroads, elec- tric trolleys, and pneumatic tires ; even in old stage- coach days, when wagon springs were rarer and leather thorough-braces were a luxury, they would have seemed poor ; but they were first steps, and we must not overlook them or deem them of slight importance.
38
39
THE WIDENING TRAIL
The course of the old Indian road was first made public by the diary of a traveler who passed over it from Fort Dummer to Lake Champlain in 1730. The government of Massachusetts wanted to ascertain the exact course of this Indian thoroughfare, and obtained from James Cross the diary of his journal for this pur- pose. It runs as follows :
Monday, ye 27th. April, 1730, at about twelve of ye clock we left Fort Dummer, and travailed that day three miles, and lay down that night by West River, which is three miles distant from Fort Dummer. Notabene. I travailed with twelve Canady Mohawks that drank to great excess at ye fort and killed a Scata- cook Indian in their drunken condition, that came to smoke with them.
Tuesday. We travailed upon the great River 1 about ten miles. Wednesday. We kept up ye same course upon ye great River, travailed about ten miles, and cat a drowned Buck that night.
Thursday. We travailed upon the great River within two miles of ye Great Falls 2 in said River, then we went upon Land to the Black River above ye Great Falls, went up in that River and lodged about a mile and a half from the mouth of Black River, which day's travail we judged was about ten miles.
Fryday. We cross Black River at ye Falls,3 afterwards trav- ail through ye woods N. N. W., then cross Black River again about 17 miles above our first crossing, afterwards travailed ye same course, and pitched our tent upon ye homeward side of Black River.
Saturday. We crossed Black River, left a great mountain on ye right hand and another on ye left.4 Keep a N.W. course till we pitch our tent after 1 1 miles travail by a Brook which we called a branch of Black River.
Sabbath Day. . . . We travail to Black River. At three islands, between which and a large pound we past ye River, enter
1 Connecticut River.
3 Center Village in town of Springfield.
2 Bellows Falls.
4 In the township of Ludlow.
40
HISTORY OF VERMONT
a mountain that afforded us a prospect of ye place of Fort Dum- mer. Soon after we enter a descending country, and travail till we arrive at Arthur Creek 1 in a descending land. In this day's trav- ail which is 21 miles, we came upon seven Brooks which run a S.W. course at ye north end of ye said Mountain. From Black River to Arthur Creek we judge is 25 miles.
Monday. Made Canoes.
Tuesday. Hindered travailing by rain.
Wednesday. We go in our Canoes upon Arthur Creek, till we meet two great falls in said River.2 Said River is very Black and deep and surrounded with good land to ye extremity of our prospect. This day's travail 35 miles.
Thursday. We sail 40 miles in Arthur Creek. We meet with great Falls,3 and a little below them we meet with two other great Falls, 4 and about 10 miles below ye said Falls we meet two other pretty large Falls.5 We carryd our Canoes by these Falls and come to ye Lake." 6
Eighteen years later Captain Eleazer Melvin with eighteen men in his command set out on a military expedition from Fort Dummer through the wilderness toward Crown Point. He followed much the same route that Cross had taken, and he too left a journal of the road. We can locate the places which he de- scribes, in the same way that we have located those of the earlier narrative.
They started from Fort Dummer May 13, 1748, went
1 Otter Creek. 2 Probably in the town of Rutland.
3 Middlebury Falls.
4 Weybridge. 5 Vergennes.
6 This is the diary of James Cross (or Coss) of his journey from Fort Dummer to Lake Champlain, made in April and May, 1730. 1 am indebted to B. II. Hall, History of Eastern Vermont, I, 21-23, for it, never having seen it elsewhere in print. It is probable that Hall took it from the original manuscript in the office of the Secretary of State, Massachusetts, A xxxviii, 126, 127. - E. D. C.
,
Some Hunters have travelled
thro this Wilderness, from
Welds River to Lake Memfrima- gog, & judged the shortest dis-
lance this way to be about 50
'N B. Connecticut River has been actually sur vey'd no further than to the Great Inter- vals, but the course of the River in gen- erul thro these Intervales has been
Mons"
Reimbaut
set by Compass & the length of Cohass is here drawn according
New H
KE
Leaperrier
Great-Intervals L
3 Miles wide
Lasomma Places
004 Brothers
French River
This way Captives
Hampshire to Canada
have fun med from New
Weldsy River
White Pines ) and good Land
WHITE
Otter Cr.
Mahounquamossee
R.
MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY
known to ye English.
These White Hills appear many Leagues off at Sea like great
These Branches are only Conjectural
Hastings @ Brook
bright Clouds above the Horizon, & are a noted Land Mark to Seamen.
Otter River
Waterqueechy White R.
White River Falls
LINE bounds MASONS Claim
Blood's River Sevarrance
Waterqueechy # Falls
Brook Choice White
Pines and
B
Good Land Sunnipee
R
Pond
Little
homlin son
Rocking
ham
Charles&
TOWTy
K.A West
West
Townsheng'minste
Puttney
Fulham
Benning
Imington
riborough ·Bratllel{ Ft. borough Dummer
Stamford
'Halifax ;Guilford,
(due West)
1:
This Line is the BOUNDARY between
Hudson's River to Connecticut River" I was Measured 56 Miles - 60 Poles.
INEW HAMPSHIRE and the MASSACHUSETSA From Connecticut River to a great Pine Tree Pine Tree, 531 Miles - 58 Poles.
Dracut.
Fort Massachusets Yor Hoosuck
PART
OF THE
PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETS BAY
North 2 Degrees East Boundary of
Ammonoosuck R.
HILLS.
Only the
Mouth of
Umpammo-
this River's
noosuck R.
that Country
This Road was cut by the New Hampshire Forces em- Ployed against Canada in 1759 in order to facili-
tate the communication with
Connecticut R.
Sugar River
been carried by. the Indians.
This way Captives have
'Hamstead
Sugar R.
No 4
Th Selton's
This CURVE
River
Yon
This Line is the Boundary be- tween N.y.
and Mass.
Mon's"
to the best judgment of several who have travelled thro it. -
Called Cohass or Cowas.
The Mouths of
Miles.
Connecticut R.
Choice
these Rivers are known, but their course and Branches uncertain
Mons' de Contracocuese
Little & Cohass Intervals
R
VERMONT AT THE CLOSE OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
THE WIDENING TRAIL
up the Connecticut to Number Four, then followed the Black River. On the 19th they crossed several large streams that were branches of the Otter Creek. They saw many signs of the enemy, both new and old, such as camps and girdled trees. On the 20th they marched over Otter Creek and around Sutherland Falls. Far- ther on they found several camps of the previous winter and beaten paths made by the enemy. On the 24th they came upon a camp fenced in with a very thick fence, and found there a keg of about four gallons' capacity which had been recently emptied of wine, as the smell indicated, and about twelve pounds of good French bread. They reached Champlain on the 28th, had a skirmish with a party of Indians, and began a retreat, pursued by about one hundred and fifty of the enemy. They came to Otter Creek in the town of Pittsford, about a mile below Sutherland Falls, marched to Center Rutland and camped. Before reaching Fort Dummer they had another skirmish and the party was scattered, four men killed, one wounded, and one taken prisoner.
The campaigns after 1755 confined active hostilities to Lake Champlain and Lake George, and in 1759 an especially good opportunity came to begin the work of widening out the paths to accommodate more than trav- elers by foot. General Amherst had with him at Crown Point before that year closed a large number of men from the New England provinces.
At the beginning of the year the New Hampshire and Massachusetts troops had gone to Ticonderoga by way of Albany and Lake George. You can see by
-
42
HISTORY OF VERMONT
looking on a map that this route might have been shortened if they had been sure of an easy road across the southern part of what is now Vermont. But they were not sure of it. Some Massachusetts soldiers who tried to take a short cut home, after their service was over, got lost and had to camp in territory that they had never seen before. We shall hear more about it later, but it is worthy of mention here because it shows what a fine thing a road would have been.
Early in 1756 the government of Massachusetts voted to survey a road from Number Four through the woods to Crown Point, on the New York side of Lake Cham- plain. This road was designed to follow the course of the Otter Creek, after it had crossed the mountains and reached a point on that stream. The instructions which were given for making the survey show that it would be a good thing for persons who intended to settle in its vicinity. Those who made the survey were to observe " the true course of said creek, its depth of water, what falls there are in it, and also the nature of the soil on each side thereof, and what growth of woods is near it." These are the very things which intending settlers would wish to know.
This road was surveyed and actually cut through in 1759 ; and our friend John Stark, whom we left in cap- tivity among the Indians in Canada, is again heard of, working on this road with two hundred rangers from New Hampshire. One could go on this road from the Connecticut River to the foot of the mountains with wagons and thence with pack horses to Rutland. Now we have seen that this road followed the course of
43
THE WIDENING TRAIL
a famous old Indian trail, and have taken some pains to trace the growing familiarity of white men with it because it illustrates the method of the carly settlers in coming into the state. Such routes were the most
THE OLD MILITARY ROAD NEAR CLARENDON
available and easiest of access, and their nearness to streams gave the settlers that direct assistance of nature which was a prime requisite for their progress, water power for the first mills.
As soon as enough settlements had been made to form town and county organizations, we find that acts were passed to provide for the opening up. of roads so that the different towns could communicate with each other more easily. In 1766 an act was passed "for laying out, regulating, and keeping in repair, common and public highways." This was in Cumberland County, which you will not find on the map, because it was long
:
44
HISTORY OF VERMONT
ago divided, most of it going to form Windham and Windsor counties. But such an act meant a good deal for the people of Cumberland County then. We find by this act that each town was to have three commissioners for laying out roads, and that the inhabitants of each town were to work on their roads six days in the year. The roads were to be not less than two and not over four rods wide. So we catch a glimpse of the way in which the first towns set about making their highways, and also learn how the old custom of "working out your highway tax" arose.
While on this subject of early road building we may as well take notice of another road which, although built some twenty years later, served exactly the same pur- pose in the northern part of the state as this road from Crown Point to Number Four did in the southern. That was the so-called Hazen road, built in the time of the American Revolution. It was not begun by Gen- eral Hazen at all, although it was afterward named for him, but by a General Bailey, who was at Newbury in the spring of 1776 and who was ordered to open a road from the mouth of the Wells River to St. John's, Canada. It was designed for military purposes ; but as the American troops found it necessary to leave Canada with all con- venient speed in that same year, the road was destined to serve the ends of peace, which after all are better than those of war.
So the road was stopped for the time being at Peacham. It was there that General Hazen took up the work three years later. He carried it on through Cabot, Walden, Hardwick, Greensboro, Craftsbury, and Albany, to Lowell, where he left it at a jagged cleft
45
THE WIDENING TRAIL
in the soapstone rocks which goes to this day by the name of Hazen's Notch. Blockhouses were built along the way and doubtless served many a traveler as shelter for the night. When settlers began to come in greater numbers, after the Revolution, branches from the main road were built to various towns, such as those to Dan- ville and St. Johnsbury. In 1794 and 1795 a road was built from the Hazen road in Greensboro through Glover, Barton, Brownington, and Salem to Derby. Sometimes it seems that people will do more for the sake of war than they will for the sake of peace; but in the matter of road building we cannot complain. There are few military measures which are productive of such direct and perma- nent benefits. This road, which did not amount to any- thing for the war, was worth a great deal to the incoming settlers and to the state in serving the ends of peace.
It was during the war, also, that the first road was opened from Mount Independence on Lake Champlain through Hubbardton to Center Rutland. A road was also made from Clarendon through Rutland to Pittsford ; and one of the most important highways in the state for years was the road built from Rutland through Castleton and Fairhaven to Whitehall.
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