The military and civil history of the county of Essex, New York; and a general survey of its physical geography

Front matter

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AtjSABLE Chasm (jn n -h; Ausabll Rivlr

THE

Preface

In the year 1852, I received from the State Agricultural Society of New York, an appointment that required a complete and careful exploration of the county of Essex. In the discharge of that mission I visited nearly every school district in the county; made myself familiar with its natural history, its physical geography, and industrial pursuits, and collected the materials and traditions which form or illustrate its history. The result of these researches was published in the volume of the Transactions of 1852, as " The report on the survey of Essex county." That work suggested the present. The predominance, which the circumstances then required, of the agricultural aspect in the report, has been wholly abandoned in the following pages, while the historical sketch has been expanded into an elaborate and connected history of the region. In discussing a subject so affluent and interesting I have found it necessary to prescribe to myself a specific plan. I have attempted to present a minute and continuous account of events directly connected with the fortresses of Lake Champlain and of military operations more remote, of which they were the base ; but in referring to movements, in which they were only for the time or incidentally the scene, my pen has been arrested, when the current of events has passed beyond the locality.

The publication of the documents collected in Europe by Mr. Brodhead, under the munificent aus-

VI PREFACE.

pices of the state, has opened fresh and delightful fields to the researches of the student of our colonial history. These rich mines of historic wealth would have remained almost inaccessible to the ordinary explorer, had not the amazing labor and persevering industry of Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan furnished the key that unlocks these hidden treasures, by his exact and perfect index to the massive folios. This invaluable work I have freely used.

I have experienced great and unexpected embarrassments in procuring materials for the account of the services by the troops of Essex county. Stimulated by the conviction, that the progress of a few years must obliterate much of the evidences of their heroic devotion, their toils and triumphs, 1 have labored with the utmost assiduity and zeal to collect memorials that might form at least a humble initiation of a movement commemorative of their patriotic services. In attempting to place an occasional wreath upon the graves of the gallant dead and to add a few leaves to the chaplets of the living, I have indulged in a labor of love. That some companies and regiments have been more fully noticed than others, should not be ascribed to any unjust or partial preference, but be imputed to the simple fact, that Essex was more largely represented in the former organization, or that my efibrts to obtain information have been more successful in some cases than in others. I am conscious that the results of my labors are inadequate, and will prove, I fear, unsatisfactory to the gallant men, whose deeds and sufferings I have endeavored to describe. I have opened a path, which I trust will be pursued by more successful explorers.

PREFACE. Vii

In presenting, as far as my limited scope permits, a sketch of the physical geography and natural history of the county, I have not only noticed its native productions and animated nature, but have attempted to describe the remarkable topographical features and imposing scenery, that renders Essex one of the most attractive and interesting sections of the state.

To a notice of the ore beds and mineral wealth of the county, I have devoted a large portion of my volume. Many of the most important of these mines I have personally visited and explored.

I trust, that every reader will give to this portion of the work a careful consideration. The revelation to their minds of a mineral wealth, so vast but still in the infancy of its development, will excite astonishment and warrant a worthy exultation. The account of the industrial resources of the district will be read, I think, with interest and surprise.

I have reproduced in this volume extensively from my former works. Copious extracts from the latter have been recently appropriated by several authors without any acknowledgment. I advert to this fact that I may be screened from the possible imputation hereafter, of having pirated myself upon such authors.

I have cited with care, as they occur, the numerous authorities I have used in the progress of the work. I mention, in the same connection with grateful acknowledgments, individuals to whom I am indebted for many acts of courtesy and laborious services in supplying me with valuable original matter which I have largely incorporated in my work.

W. C. W.

Port Kent, June, 1869.

ERRATA.

Page 17, fourteenth line from top, plumage printed for plumes. Page 50, seventh line from bottom, Honiton printed for Horicon. Page 85, seventh line from top, hundred printed for thousand.

FART L MILITARY AND POLITICAL HISTORY.

CHAPTER I. The Discovery

The territory, now distinguished by the general designation of the valley of Lake Champlain was, for nearly a century, a debatable ground between the powers of France and England. Claimed by each under arbitrary charters or imaginary titles, overrun and subverted in turn by both, and permanently occupied by neither, it derived from the presence of their armies, little amelioration of its primitive savage aspect.

Earlier than this period, the same region seems to have been the frontier between tribes, or confederacies of tribes of aborigines, who waged a perpetual warfare of ferocious extermination. These circumstances, it is probable, had consigned it to desolation, and prevented the occupation of the country by a race which would have been allured to it by the strong attractions to the savage mind, created by the profusion of its game and fish. The possessions of the Indians were apparently most extended and permanent on the eastern shores of the lake. Few vestiges of their existence have been discovered upon its western borders. They appear, however, to have congregated in numerous villages along the lakes and rivers of the interior. The bold and lofty mountains which envelop that region, formed to them a bulwark against the assaults of their foes, while the forests and the streams yielded an abundant supply of their humble wants.

At an epoch nearly contemporaneous with the discovery of Canada by the French, the Roman energies and the extraordinary military prowess of the Mohawks appear to have borne their arms and established their dominion almost to the southern shores of the St. Lawrence. A tradition prevailed in this tribe, that the confederacy in which they always maintained a military supremacy, occupied at one period, the sites of both Montreal and Quebec. Subjugated nations acknowledged their domination from the Connecticut to the wildernesses of the Ohio, and the tribes bordering on the Gulf of Mexico trembled before the terrors of their arms.^

In the extraordinary native eloquence which is imputed to the aborigines, the Iroquois were preeminently conspicuous. They possessed an advanced intelligence, which conceived and formed wise and successful social institutions. Their progress in the simple arts that belonged to savage life was as distinguished as their martial science or political supremacy. This people asserted a sovereignty over northern New York, and to their persistent valor we are indebted for the boundary that now separates, in a long line, the domain of the state from the British provinces.^

The long and narrow tract of water, known to us as Lake Champlain, was doubtless the war path of the Huron and Iroquois, in their mutual hostile and sanguinary incursions. The mind may readily portray fleets of the Indian war canoes, caparisoned in the gorgeous trappings of barbaric pomp, bounding over the dark and still waters

* The French " taking advantage of the Indians being abroad as far as Cape Florida, at war, came down and burnt a castle of the Maquaes," etc. — Oovcrnor Dongaii's Itej^ort, 1687.

° Bancroft.

of the lake, while the paddles kept tune to the cadence of their war songs; or gliding stealthily along the silent shores, upon their mission of rapine and blood. The Indian in reference doubtless to the fact that it afforded an avenue and facility to their reciprocal attacks, gave to the lake the impressive and appropriate name of Caniadere guarante, i. e. The lake thai is the gate of the country} An ally of the Hurons, Champlain, accompanied them in one of these incursions, and revealed to the civilized world the beautiful lake which has immortalized his own name.

France entered with ardor and enthusiasm into the great struggle of the age, the field of exploration upon the new continent. The zeal and enterprise of the fishermen of Normandy has already discovered and penetrated the gulf of St. Lawrence. Cartier, a French adventurer, entered in 1534, the mighty river of that name. The succeeding year, he guided to his new discovery, under the auspices of the royal government, a fleet, freighted with many of the young nobility of France, and blessed by the prayers and sanctions of the church. They departed in high hopes and with brilliant auguries to colonize this new France. Ascending the majestic stream, which was called Hochelaga, by the natives, but named from its mighty estuary, by Cartier, the St. Lawrence, they moored at what is now known as the Isle of Orleans. Cartier, from this point penetrated to the Indian town of Hochelaga, and to this he gave the name of Mont-Royal, the beautiful and opulent Montreal of modern times. In his progress up the St. Lawrence, he was greeted by the simple-minded and confiding natives with all the demonstrations of joy and festivity known to savage homage. Hochelaga was the chief town of a populous nation which occupied both banks of the river, and extended their possessions far below Quebec. From their dialect and insti-

^ Documentary History. Petaonhough, signifying a double pond or lake hranching out into two, is another aboriginal appellation, probably referring to its connection with Lake George. — B. W. Livingston, Esq.

tutions it has been inferred, that they were a branch of the Iroquois. The arrival of Cartier was celebrated by a multitude of the people, who poured forth from the palisades of their capital to meet him on the shore of the island, bearing the oflerings of their joyousuess and hospitality. Large openings in the forest had been formed by their rude toils, and here luxuriant crops of maize attested their industry and the fertility of the earth.

At Hochelaga, Cartier listened to the Indians' vague and shadowy tales of an unexplored region of lakes, of mountains and delightful plains. He ascended an eminence that arose from the centre of the island and from its summit, the first of civilized men, gazed upon the majestic and beautiful scenery that enraptured his vision. The broad stream, the islands that gemmed it, the cultivated fields of the Indians were before him, and far to the south beyond the glittering river, and the sea of forests that spread on every side, his eye rested on the mountains of Vermont and New York. The ensuing winter was passed by the adventurers at the Isle of Orleans amid intense sufferings from the rigors of the climate and the presence of disease.

Having taken possession of the country, with all the prescribed pomp and formulas of chivalry and religion, the colonization was abandoned and the expedition returned early in the season, to the mother country. On the previous voyage, Cartier had kidnapped and carried to France, two Indian youths, who now served him as guides in the exploration of the unknown Hochelaga. Emulating the infamy of the Spanish conquerors, when returning from his last voyage, he inveigled into his vessel Donnegana, the chieftain, who had proved a generous host and firm friend, and bore him with several of his nobles, into a hopeless captivity, in a strange land, and to death. This exploration ended thus inauspiciously, and the climate and country presenting to the children of sunny France, so few allurements, all schemes of further colonization seem to have slumbered, for several years. The Lord of

Eoberval received in 1540 a commission from the French king, conferring on him an immense and almost illimitable territory, and which dignified him with the plenary powers of vice-royalty.

This parchment title and these titular functions overshadowed a vast region, and extended in every direction along the gulf and river St. Lawrence, comprehending in its wide domain the present limits of ISTew England and Northern New York. The efforts, emanating from this authority, appear to have terminated without accomplishing any progress either in colonization or discovery.

During the half century succeeding the failure of Eoberval, the subject of New France was unheeded amid the convulsions and conflicts of the religious wars by which the kingdom in that period was torn and agitated. In 1598, another abortive attempt, under governmental patronage, was made by De La Roche, to colonize the region of the St. Lawrence, by disgorging upon its shores the convicts from the dungeons and jails of France.

Private enterprise, unfolding the only just and secure basis of colonization of that region, by associating it with the fur trade, initiated the first successful effort. Li 1600, Chauvin had obtained a comprehensive patent, which formed a monopoly of that trade. Repeated and prosperous voyages had been made, and settlements were about being formed, wljen the death of Chauvin dissolved the organization.

The year 1603 was signalized by the enterprise of Aymer De Chastes and a body of merchants of Rouen, who animated by this success organized a new company with similar purposes, which was rendered memorable by the introduction into the field of his future labors and glory, the founder of the new empire, and the leader who was preeminently great in the long series of brilliant men, that guided and moulded the destinities of new France. Samuel De Champlain was one of those rare and exceptional men who seem to stamp an impress of their own characters upon the age they illustrate and adorn. Champlain was a native of France, and of noble lineage. Peculiarly imbued with the impulsive and impetuous spirit of his country, animated by a bold and reckless courage, rejoicing in dangers and toils, his intuitive sagacity enabled him to surmount those obstacles that his intelligence and prescience could not anticipate and avoid. Enthusiastic, persevering and indefatigable in his purposes, he devoted all the powers of his active mind and the energies of his nature to the achievement of the great object of his life, the exploration of the wildernesses of the new world, and the creation in their recesses of a new empire to his country. De Soto discovered the Mississippi, but while he found an appropriate mausoleum beneath its dark waters, left no memorial of his name. Champlain, more fortunate, made his discovery a monument, which has perpetuated alike his services and his memory.

A rapid glance at the history of a man so remarkable for his intellectual and moral greatness, for his chivalrous exploits and the vastness of his services, and whose name is imperishably associated with the lake, that is alike the ornament and the commercial power of the district, the annals of which we propose to discuss, is appropriate, and should possess deep interest. His own abundant writings, with the memorials of his cotemporaries and associates, have rendered posterity familiar with events which impart an enduring and brilliant lustre to his name. Champlain was born at Brouage, a seaport situated on the Bay of Biscay. Addicted to an intercourse with the sea by the associations of his boyhood, near the most tempestuous waters of western Europe, he gratified his instincts by a connection at an early age with the royal marine of his native country. Although a catholic by birth and sentiment, he followed in the civil wars of France, the " banner of Navarre." When that cause had triumphed, he received a pension from the gratitude of his liberal but impoverished leader. Too active and ardent to indulge in the relaxations of peace, he conceived the design of a personal exploration of the colonial possessions of Spain, and to thus obtain a knowledge of their condition and resources, which was studiously veiled from the world by the jealous policy of that government. His scheme was sanctioned by the wise and sagacious head of the French administration. Through the influence of a relative in that service, Champlain secured the command of a ship in the Spanish West India fleet. This singular position, not perhaps in perfect accordance with modern conceptions of professional honor, was occupied two years, and when he returned to France his mind was stored with the most valuable information, and his journal, laded with the results of keen observation of the regions he had visited, was strangely illustrated by his uncultivated pencil. Champlain was unusually impressible by the spirit of the times, which delighted in the marvelous, and his work is singularly disfigured by representations of strange beasts, and accounts of miraculous events, and yet it is marked by his great ability, and by his eminently clear and comprehensive perceptions. He landed at Vera Cruz, penetrated to the city of Mexico, and visited Panama. His journal reveals the bold conception of a ship canal across the isthmus, by which, he says, " the voyage to the South sea might be shortened by more than fifteen hundred leagues." In this grasp of his investigating mind, Champlain anticipated by more than two centuries, the slowly moving projects of the present age.

Returning to the court of Henry, Champlain met De Chartes, who had been a comrade in battling against the league, and who, although crowned by years and honors, had just obtained from the government a patent empowering him to bear the cross, and to extend the power of France into the unexplored wilds of the new continent. Champlain, from his professional ability and great experience would be an invaluable associate, and invited by De Chartes, he promptly and zealously embarked in an enterprise, so peculiarly in conformity with his spirit, and which was destined to attach to his name an immortality.

The intrepid adventurers, embarking in two small shallops of twelve and fifteen tons burden, plunged into the Northern sea. Their voyage was prosperous, and after a surprizingly short passage, they entered the St. Lawrence and at once advanced to Hochelaga. There all was changed. The palisaded city that Cartier sixty-eight years before had visited, was gone, and in place of the dense population he described, Champlain only met a few wandering savages of another race and language. These Indians aroused the deepest interest in his investigating mind, as they delineated in a coarse diagram upon the vessel's deck^ the regions along which the immense river flowed, and lakes from whence they traced its source. A new creation was unfolded to the vision of the explorer, and his fancy doubtless reveled in glowing anticipations of future discoveries and conquests, alike of the cross and the lilies of Prance. When Champlain returned to France, De Chastes, his protector, and the earnest patron of his enterprise, was dead ; but the Sieur De Monts, a protestant gentleman of character and high position, was already maintaining his privileges, and preparing to pursue his colonial schemes. Under the broad shield of government patronage, De Monts had obtained an ample patent, conferring plenary commercial rights, with vice-regal powers, over a vast territory stretching its nominal dominion from near Philadelphia on the south, to the forty-sixth degree parallel on the north, with an indefinite expansion, both east and west. Here within its ample border, there was to prevail perfect freedom in religious immunities. The colony which De Monts undertook to guide to New France, was singularly jarring and incoherent in its elements. The gentleman and noble associated with the sweepings of the prisons and convict ships of France, while the disciple of Rome mingled with the followers of Calvin. Such incongruities disclosed strange scenes.^

'Champlain quaintly remarks in his journal : " I have seen our cure and the minister fall to with their fistB on questions of faith. I cannot say

De Monts, in the assertion of his assumed sovereignty over this immense territory, made an effort to colonize Acadia, and occupied under this parchment title, a portion of Maine. Port Royal was founded by a companion of De Monts, and was the first European settlement permanently established north of St. Augustine. Champlain was associated with his accustomed prominence and efficiency, in all these enterprises, from 1604 to 1607. In that period he explored the shores of New England south to Cape Cod, which, from the white sand, he named Cape Blanc. ^ With an eye of science and observation, each of the harbors, streams, and estuaries of the coast was examined. He projected from this survey an accurate map and chart, " remaining," as he remarks, a second.winter, " in order, with the help of God, to finish the chart of the coast which I had begun." This chart was subsequently published with his works, and is remarkable among the innumerable trophies of skill and industry exhibited by the French in their explorations upon the western continent.

At length, amid the changes and vicissitudes which marked the age, the prerogatives of De Monts were abrogated with the same readiness and ease with which they had been created. Champlain and Pourtraincourt, upon whom De Monts, in his decaying fortunes, had conferred what remained of his franchises, and acting under them, in 1606, made another voyage to New France in search of further discoveries, and with the design of forming a colony, based upon the novel idea of an agricultural settlement. They explored the New England coast still more widely, fought a battle with the natives, on the eastern shore of Cape Cod, wintered in unwonted comfort and luxuriance in their new settlement, and the next year

which had the more pluck, or which hit the harder ; but I know the minister sometimes complained to the Sieur De Monts, that he had been beaten. I leave you to judge if it was a pleasant sight :

" And prove their doctrines orthodox, By apostolic blows and knocks." ■ Thoreau.

abandoning their project, returned to France. The tedium of the route was beguiled in the excitable and gayspirit of their country. They instituted the festive order of de bon temps, fraternized with their Indian neighbors, and rejoiced in general hilarity and abundance.

In the year 1608, five years after his advent upon the waters of St. Lawrence, Champlain embarked in a more energetic and systematic effort to form a permanent colony upon its banks. He embarked in a small vessel freighted with the elements of an earnest colonization, and bearing the germ of a new empire, accompanied by his tormer associate, Portgrave, in another vessel, laden with materials adapted to their projected fur trade. Advancing up the St. Lawrence, and examining its shores with a sagacious scrutiny, his judgment discerned, and his military science adopted a bold rocky promontory, at the confluence of the St. Charles with the St. Lawrence, as the site of the capital of that empire, which to his ardent and fertile imagination, was disclosed in the visions of the future, great, glorious, and prosperous. At once, laborers and artizans were actively employed in removing the forests, and preparing materials for the erection of dwellings and other structures. Soon the simple edifices arose, that asserted the presence of civilized man, and established his perpetual domination upon the mighty stream, whose fountains welled up more than eighteen hundred miles in the remote solitudes of the western wilds, and whose volume rolled to the ocean the tribute of more than a million of square miles.^ Here Champlain erected fortifications formed of timber, for the safety of his infant settlement. A garden sprang up within its protecting walls, under the refined and graceful tastes of the cultivated pioneer. He was not exempt, however, from the usual cares and trials that attend the birth of remote and secluded colonies. A contemplated treachery that compassed his own death, he avenged by a prompt and stern retribution. In the succeeding September,

' Guyot.

MILITARY AND POLITICAL HISTORY. H

Portgrave sailed for France, leaving Champlain to occupy Quebec with twenty-eight men, until his return in the spring with supplies and additional colonists. "What were the occupations of Champlain through the dark and gloomy weeks of autumn, and in the winter rigors of an almost arctic climate? We can only surmise from our own conjectures, and the faint glimmerings of light his journal affords. He tells us, that he trapped foxes, and was amused in watching the futile efforts of the martins to seize the carcass of a dead dog he had suspended from a tree beyond their reach. But in fancy, we may discern him, with active zeal, employed in tracing and illustrating his journals, and wrapt in profound reveries, pondering on the hopes and proj ects of the future. The Indians gathered about his wooden ramparts ; now, with a present supply, yielding to their insatiate habits of gluttony ; and now, in the wasting pangs of famine. He doubtless heard their wild legends, and was amused and aroused by their stories of savage warfare with the Iroquois, their hereditary foes, whose far distant country, they described as a fair land, and delineated in their simple art, the lakes and streams which must be traversed to reach it.

Before the dissolving ice and bursting vegetation mitigated their sufferings and presaged the approach of spring, the scurvy, the fell scourge of every northern colony, had desolated the little band ; and when Pontgrave's vessel appeared, only eight pale and emaciated survivors remained to rejoice in the relief it afforded. A consultation between the leaders decided, that Pontgrave should remain to guard the safety of Quebec, and that Champlain should pursue the project, which was the dream and purpose of every exploration of the age, and attempt the discovery of an avenue to the eastern world. This hope possibly inflamed the passions, which led him to accept the invitation of the Indians, to unite with them in a contemplated war party, which was intended to penetrate deeply into the regions, upon which his mind had expatiated during the weeks and months of his gloomy seclusion.

In May, 1609, he joined the camp of his savage allies, and while they looked in speechless wonder upon the strange apparition of a steel clad warrior, armed with weapons that discharged the lightning, he witnessed with scarcely less interest the war dances of the Indians, moving by the wild tones of their music, chanting their war songs and brandishing their stone-pointed tomahawks. He engaged at their council tire, attended their war feast, and mingled in all their barbaric rites. These mystic ceremonies performed, they proceeded upon their advance into a hostile and to him an unknown country. Champlain embarked in a small boat with eleven European companions and proceeded to the mouth of the modern Sorel, where the party was augmented by large numbers of savages from the upper lakes ; but here dissension arose, and a great part of the Indian warriors returned to their homes. Champlain dismissed to Quebec all but two of his. European followers. To these were added a force of sixty Indians, with a fleet of twenty-four canoes. A common or timid mind would have shrank from the appalling view of the future, abandoned by feeble allies, and left almost alone to the resources of his individual courage and unyielding energies, but he saw before him the beamings of glory and honor that awaited the revelation of a new region ; he contemplated the rich country, the lakes, the islands, the streams that had been portrayed to his imagination, and he fearlessly and joyously entered upon his dubious mission. Champlain, as he did in all his explorations, gave to the world a minute and graphic account of this expedition, and so exact is his accuracy that the traveler may still trace his route and the scenes he describes. These productions are not alone interesting, as they portray the incidents of a singularly wild and romantic career; but they are of iniinite value, as they illustrate savage life and exhibit their primitive habits and tactics when on the war path.

On the 2d of July, the party effected the transit of the Chambly rapids, and, having advanced some leagues up the river, prepared to encamp. A part of the savages, actively engaged in cutting down timber and peeling it to procure bark to cover their lodges, while others were felling large trees to form a temporary barricade. This, Champlain considered very formidable. The side of the encampment next to the river was not fortified, in order to facilitate retreat to the canoes, if necessary. The Indians dispatched three canoes in advance to reconnoitre, and, if nothing was discovered, to retire. Upon this exploration, they wholly dependedfor safety duringthe night." Against " this bad habit of theirs " Champlain expostulated, but with little efiect upon a confirmed custom. They represented to him, that in war they were accustomed to divide their forces into three parts : one of which hunted to supply provisions ; another always ready for battle marched in a compact body ; and the other formed the vanguard and advanced in front to scout, and to ascertain the trail of a foe or friends. This they readily determined by certain marks, which the chiefs of the difterent nations interchanged, and which upon reciprocal notices were occasionally altered. The hunters never advance before the main body, but pursue their duties in the rear and in a direction where they do not expect the presence of an enemy. In this manner they proceed until they approach the enemy's country, when they advance " stealthily by night, all in a body except the scouts, and retire by day into picket forts where they repose." They make no noise nor " build a fire, except to smoke, and eat dried meal which they steep in water."