Amherst says: “I arrived at Crown Point [August 4th] before the
evening, landed and posted all corps. * * * I ordered [August 5th]
Lt. Colonel Eyre to trace out the ground for a Fort, which I will set
about with all possible expedition.” Correspondence of William Pitt,
Vol. 2, pp. 147-148, published by the Macmillan Company.
General Amherst in his report under date of Crown Point October 22,
1759, to William Pitt, says “to make the fortress as formidable as
I can I ordered with the advise of the Engineer three Forts to be
erected, which I named the Grenadier Fort, the light Infantry Fort, &
Gages light Infantry Fort, ordering those Corps’s to build each their
own as fast as possible.” Correspondence of William Pitt, Vol. 2, p.
191.
In a later report under date of New York December 16, 1759, to
William Pitt, General Amherst (on November 10, 1759, that being the
birthday of George II), says: “The Troops worked till three o’clock,
excepting the Grenadiers, who were under Arms at one o’clock and
fired Volleys. * * * The three Forts firing 21 Cannon, and the
Battalions volleys. The Fortress 21 Cannon, the Army a running fire,
the Park of Artillery 21 Cannon, the Army a general volley * * *.”
Correspondence of William Pitt, Vol. 2, p. 222.
Again in a later report under date of New York, January 7, 1761, to
William Pitt, General Amherst says: “The works of the Fortress of
Crown Point, and of the Forts of Oswego, Pittsburg, and Fort Stanwix,
are not finished so much as I could wish, and I judge, it will be
proper to compleat them in the Spring, and that the Provincials
should furnish men for this Service.” Correspondence of William Pitt,
Vol. 2, p. 382.
It thus appears that the fortress at Crown Point was not completed in
1761, and in fact it was never fully completed.
It does not appear from the foregoing correspondence between General
Amherst and William Pitt or from any of the official reports of
General Amherst that the fortress at Crown Point was officially named
“Fort Amherst,” as it was occasionally denominated in common parlance.
* * * * *
Additional light is thrown on the early history of the region in the
papers of Victor Hugo Paltsits, State Historian, and W. Max Reid,
on the Rock Inscription at Crown Point, found in the New York State
Historical Association Publications [Vol. X, pp. 106-113]. In the
papers of Mr. Reid, he says that “The Earl of Waldegrave writes to
the Board of Trade, June 13th, 1732: ‘the French have caused a fort
to be built * * * at a place called _Pointe de la Couronne_, in
English, Crown Point.’” [N. Y. Hist. Assoc. Pub. X, p. 113.]
III. REPORT OF CAPTAIN EDWARD MOTT
In the Journal of Captain Edward Mott, of Preston, Connecticut,
published in the Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society,
Vol. I, pages 163-174, may be found the report of Captain Mott on
the expedition to Ticonderoga and the part taken by the troops under
his command. Therein will be found a discussion of the demand made
by Col. Benedict Arnold that he be placed in command of the men who
had assembled to attempt the capture of Ticonderoga and the reasons
assigned for refusing such demand. An order was finally issued by
Captain Mott as follows:
To Col. ETHAN ALLEN,
SIR: Whereas, agreeable to the Power and Authority to us
given by the Colony of Connecticut, we have appointed you to take
the command of a party of men and reduce and take possession of the
garrison of Ticonderoga and its dependencies, and as you are now in
possession of the same,—You are hereby directed to keep the command
of said garrison, for the use of the American Colonies, till you
have further orders from the Colony of Connecticut or from the
Continental Congress.
Signed per order of Committee,
EDWARD MOTT, _Chairman Committee_.
TICONDEROGA, _May 10th, 1775_.
The foregoing order appears to have been issued without direct
authorization, but it was acquiesced in by Col. Arnold, who submitted
to the command of Col. Allen and accompanied him in the attack.
They were guided by young Nathan Beman, who was familiar with every
passage of approach to the fort. After the capture of Ticonderoga,
Captain Mott returned to Hartford and was sent to Philadelphia to
inform Congress of the capture of Ticonderoga. And thereafter he
resumed command of his company in the northern army and was present
at the taking of Chambly and the surrender of St. John’s. His
elder brother, Samuel, was appointed engineer and was stationed at
Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and in August became Chief Engineer
under General Schuyler of the northern army. Captain Edward Mott
became major in the regiment under Col. Gay. The devotion and
distinguished services of Captain Mott and Samuel Mott, his brother,
during the Revolution were recognized in their rapid promotion in the
northern army.
IV. NOTES ON THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY
BY PROFESSOR GEORGE H. PERKINS, Ph.D.
State Geologist of Vermont
It is undoubted that the Champlain valley at the time when the
first Europeans entered the region was occupied by two great Indian
peoples, the Confederacy of the Six Nations and the Algonkins or
Abnaki. To the Six Nations the name Iroquois was generally given by
the French explorers. They held full sway over the New York side of
the Champlain valley, but the occupancy of the eastern, or Vermont,
side is less certain. There can be no question that this side of
the valley was possessed by the Algonkins for the greater part of
the time, but there are several centuries when it is not easy to
determine certainly the precise relations of these two peoples.
Most of what became New England and the Atlantic border and a vast
territory in Canada was always, so far as can be now discovered,
occupied by the Algonkins who also reached far westward and southward
through the Mississippi valley. The Iroquois occupied a comparatively
small area about lakes Erie and Ontario and eastward along the St.
Lawrence, including the whole of what is now New York, as well as
parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and a long, narrow strip of
Canada north of New York.
They also occupied territory in the south, west of the Carolinas.
How long or how completely the Iroquois possessed the Vermont side
of the Champlain valley we may never know, but it appears to be
pretty certain that they did for a time, and probably several times,
dispossess the usual owners and hold as their own the entire shore of
Champlain. It appears from various records that sometime about 1540
the Iroquois were in control of both sides of the lake and of the
Vermont as well as the New York shores. It also appears that these
people held the region for a century when they withdrew. Why they
retired to the western side is not plain. Considering their warlike
disposition and reputation and the very great fear in which they
were held by the Algonkins it is impossible to believe that these
latter drove them back across the lake, and yet why they should have
voluntarily left their eastern possessions one cannot readily explain.
In 1640 Father Ducreux made a map of the region and on this map Lake
Champlain is made the western boundary of the Algonkin territory, so
that by this time the ownership had again changed.
In 1690, as is well known, the Algonkins and French destroyed
Schenectady and, though their force was very small, they appear to
have passed without any difficulty through the Champlain valley, and
had it been occupied by Mohawks or any Iroquois tribe this could not
have been possible.
At different times for many years various Vermont legislatures were
beset by claims which the Caughnawaga Indians persistently entered.
These claims were for remuneration for land taken by the white men
from their ancestors and which they declared were formerly the
property of their tribe.
The territory which the Caughnawagas claimed was finally defined by
them as bounded by Lake Champlain on the west and on the east by the
mountain ranges which divide the waters running into Lake Champlain
from the Missisquoi, Lamoille and Winooski rivers from those which
run into the Connecticut, together with so much of the land drained
by Otter creek as would be embraced by a line drawn from Ticonderoga
to the sources of the Winooski.
So far as can be ascertained by examination of documents, the
validity or invalidity of this claim was neither denied nor allowed,
but the claim was never in any way granted. As intimated, it was
repeatedly advanced at different sessions of the General Assembly
until finally abandoned in 1874. From the persistency with which the
Indians brought forward their claim it seems probable that whether it
had any substantial basis or not, they really believed that it had.
In a very full and interesting discussion of this question, Mr. D.
P. Thompson in an Appendix to the History of Montpelier, Vt., writes
as follows: “In the published journal of the expedition of Champlain
when in the summer of 1609 he discovered the lake that bears his name
we have full and direct evidence that the Iroquois were in possession
of just about the same tract of territory in Vermont as that to which
their descendants have latterly been laying claim as a part of their
original domain.”
Champlain also found that the Algonkins were at war with the Iroquois
and, as this author suggests, this war may very likely have grown
out of the encroachment of the Iroquois upon this territory which
formerly had belonged to the Algonkins. Moreover, Champlain states
in his narrative that when he asked his companions who lived on the
east shores of the lake through which they were passing they told
him that they were Iroquois. It also appears to be true that the
early French explorers called Lake Champlain the Lake or Sea of
the Iroquois. However, while the Algonkins admitted at the time of
Champlain’s visit that the Iroquois held the Champlain valley on
both sides, they asserted that it originally belonged to them, as it
was occupied by their forefathers. The truth, so far as it can be
ascertained, appears to be that the first inhabitants of the western
side of the Champlain valley were Iroquois, and those of the eastern
side were Algonkins; that at some time before 1540 the Iroquois
crossed the lake and drove out the people then living on the eastern
side, and for many, perhaps a hundred, years, themselves occupied
that territory. In or about 1640, for reasons not discoverable,
they left the eastern shores and all the territory now included in
Vermont and no further trace of them appears in that region. How long
the Champlain valley was occupied by these two peoples can never be
known, or whether at any early time some other and different people
roamed over the region. All that we do know or can know is that at
the coming of the white men, and for at least several centuries
before, these and only these tribes were here.
Turning now to a consideration of some of the evidence of former
occupation which these peoples have left we find a great variety
of implements and weapons of stone and a smaller number of copper
and iron. Household utensils, simple and few as were the needs of
people, who were in the stone age of civilization, are also found
made of stone, earthenware and bone. A detailed enumeration of these,
though of great interest to the archæologist would be tedious to
the general reader. For this reason only a general account of these
objects will be given.
From what has been written above it will be obvious that practically
all of the objects found on the New York side of the valley are of
Iroquois origin, but of those found in Vermont we may be sure that
many are Algonkin. It is also sure that mingled with these there must
be many of Iroquoian origin. When, however, we attempt to decide
which of the implements or other objects are Algonkian and which
Iroquoian we undertake a very difficult task. Some of the pottery
and some of the stone objects are plainly of Iroquois manufacture
and others are Algonkian, but most of our specimens are not to be
classified. The Iroquois were superior in culture to other tribes and
their handiwork is finer as a whole, but after all the quality of the
work does not, as a rule, at all suffice to distinguish between their
implements and others. Quite extensive collections have been made
on both sides of the lake, and when these are compared very great
similarity is at once observed. And yet there are some differences
though, as has been indicated, not enough to differentiate one group
from the other. It is noticeable that in any considerable collection
of objects of Indian manufacture from the Champlain valley, there are
many of exceedingly fine workmanship. No better specimens of their
kind are to be found anywhere than the best of our Champlain valley
specimens. Probably because of the rocky and, at times inaccessible,
character of the western shore, and the more level and inhabitable
nature of the Vermont shores, Indian relics of all sorts have been
found in much greater abundance on the eastern than on the western
side of the lake.
Much of the New York shore is rugged and affords no good camping
ground or village sites, while the Vermont shores are mostly level,
or nearly so, and offer abundant invitation to wandering tribes to
remain. And yet, as Champlain informs the reader, there were in his
day no permanent villages because of hostilities. The whole Champlain
valley, or at any rate that part of it which adjoins the lake, was
unsafe territory to the long-staying camper, and still more to those
who would establish a village. War or hunting parties might traverse
its forests, but none might safely tarry long.
As every collector of Indian relics well knows, it is about the camp,
or better still, village sites that most abundant specimens occur,
and as these are very few in the immediate vicinity of the lake
so the number of objects found is comparatively small as compared
to such localities as the Ohio or Mississippi region. Still some
thousands of specimens have been collected along the shores of Lake
Champlain and in their immediate neighborhood. As everywhere, the
spear and arrow points, and similarly shaped knives, are by far the
most abundant of all objects that have been found. These chipped
points are almost always made from hard, often quartzose rock, and
are of many forms and various degrees of excellence. By far the
greater number are of a gray quartzite which is abundant in ledges
in the region. The most common form on both sides of the lake is the
simple triangle. This shape occurs of many sizes from little points a
half inch long to those that are four or five inches long. They may
be narrow or broad, usually without haft or barb, though these may be
present in some of the less common specimens. While none are as large
as the larger flaked implements of the west, some are several inches
long, a few of the very largest being seven or eight. Some few of the
points are as finely proportioned and elegantly made as can be found
anywhere, though as a rule the flaked objects are less attractive
than those from the west. This is partly due to the color and texture
of the material, for the quartzites, etc., of the east are much less
prettily colored than those which are found in the west or middle
west. Finely barbed and stemmed points and knives are less abundant
than the simpler forms, but many specimens occur and some are very
finely made.
Besides these points other chipped or flaked objects are found,
such as scrapers and drills. A form of point or, more probably,
knife is found more commonly, I think, in the Champlain valley than
elsewhere, though not peculiar to this region. These are of similar
form to the better hafted and stemmed, chipped points, but they
are of red or purple slate and were ground at least as they were
completed, though they may have been first shaped by chipping, as
some of them undoubtedly were. Some of these are strikingly like the
modern Eskimo knife. Dr. Beauchamp has figured some of these slate
knives in Bulletin 18, New York State Museum, and says as to their
distribution: “In some parts of Canada they are about as common as
in New York, being most abundant on both sides of Lake Ontario.
They have not been reported east of Lake Champlain, except in its
immediate vicinity, with the exception of one in Maine, nor do they
reach more than half way southward to the Pennsylvania line.”
Perhaps that class of implements known as gouges is more common in
the Champlain valley than elsewhere. These objects are of various
proportions, some being long and slender, others short and wide, but
whatever the shape, there is always the U-shaped groove which gives
the name. This groove may extend only a short distance from the
cutting edge as in the ordinary carpenter’s gouge, or it may go from
end to end. The gouges are usually fashioned from moderately soft
stone though some are of that which is very hard. They are generally
well finished and some are so regular in form and so beautifully
smoothed and polished that they are not surpassed by any specimens
that we have. As a rule they are of medium size, six or eight inches
long, but most elegantly finished specimens are in our museums that
are fourteen to twenty inches long.
What are called celts or hand axes are more numerous and, as a class,
somewhat ruder than the gouges, though some of them are as finely
made as possible.
Like the gouges the celts were rubbed and ground into shape, except
in very rare cases, when a very hard stone was shaped by flaking.
They are generally not more than four or five inches long, though
some have been found that are twice this size. The material is
usually some sort of very hard stone.
Of ruder sort than other implements are the numerous hammers. Often
these are merely water smoothed river or beach pebbles upon which
no work at all has been expended, and the only proof of human usage
is seen in the battered ends. More rarely the hammer has been worked
over its whole surface. Of course hammers or other implements used
for pounding would not ordinarily be carried on long journeys and
consequently would not be likely to be found far from a somewhat
permanent camp. Hence, although very abundant in a few localities,
these objects are not widely distributed. And the same is true of
the boiling stones, which are of the same sort as the hammer stones,
the difference being that the latter bear the bruises caused by
their use, while the pebbles which were heated and thrown into the
earthenware pots to heat the water show evidence of being heated, but
no abrasion.
The hammer stone when long and more or less slender becomes a pestle.
Pestles are not common though in all a considerable number have been
found in the Champlain valley. Some of these are only five or six
inches long, and from this size they may be found of various lengths
and weights to those over two feet long and weighing nearly thirty
pounds. Some of these large pestles are finely shaped and of hard
stone, so that great labor must have been expended in their making.
Several so-called pestles have been found in the region we are
considering which are especially interesting because they are not
only well shaped, but at one end they are carved to resemble the head
of some animal. These are long and slender and should probably be
regarded as clubs rather than pestles.
Without some sort of mortar the pestle would be of little use, and
where one is found the other may be expected. Yet it is noticeable
that mortars are very uncommon in this region. Some very excellent
examples have been found, but more often little labor was expended
upon the mortars beyond that necessary to hollow out the cavity.
This cavity was in some cases hollowed on one side only, but often
there was made a hollow on each side. These were usually circular and
several inches deep, but in some of the largest mortars the hollowed
portion is oval and more or less irregular. Naturally the mortars
would be of considerable weight, from ten to fifty pounds.
The most common axe or hatchet was undoubtedly the celt or hand axe,
already mentioned, but for heavier work larger axes were needed, and
these are found, though not in large numbers. These larger axes may
be six, eight or ten inches long and weigh several pounds, though
we have none as large as many which have been found in the west and
south. Some are very rude, others very carefully shaped and well
finished. All have a groove around them by which a handle could be
more firmly attached. These large grooved axes seem to us very clumsy
and inefficient tools, but Champlain in his account of making a camp
for the night on one of the large islands in the lake, says that
his Indian companions cut down large trees with these “meschantes
haches,” so that they were certainly much more useful than they
appear to us to be.
There is a class of objects which seem to be more or less
problematical. They are of very different shape, but always quite
unlike objects designed for use as implements; always well and
often very finely made and finished and of handsome material. These
occur on both sides of the lake and form the chief treasures of
collections. They are some of them suitable for ornament or for
ceremonial purposes, but some do not appear designed for any known
use. Nevertheless they are fashioned with such care and are so
attractive in themselves that it is not possible to regard them as
unimportant to those who made them. By different writers they have
been called as they are of one form or another—ceremonial stones,
banner stones, gorgets, etc. And it is more than probable that some
were used as indicated by these names, but some of them are quite
puzzling. The flat pieces of slate or other stone which are included
among the specimens mentioned are usually drilled once or twice and
were apparently attached to the clothing or hung about the neck as
ornaments. Others, the so-called banner stones, are thicker, of
harder material, semi-lunar or more or less crescent shape and have a
large hole bored through the middle. It is possible, but not certain,
that these were in some way badges of office. A very few of the
so-called birdshead stones have also been found.
The discoidal stones, found especially in the south, are very rare in
the Champlain valley. A few rather rough specimens have been found,
but I have seen only one really fine specimen and this is small,
about two and a half inches in diameter, of white quartz and very
finely made.
Stone and earthenware pipes, some of them of very interesting form
and finely polished are not numerous, but a goodly number have been
found. The earthenware pipes are of various shape, a few tubular,
more with bowl and stem, much like the modern pipe. The stone pipes
are very variable in form, no two being alike, but as elsewhere,
finely finished. Yet the pipes of the Champlain valley are much less
elaborate than those from the mounds or other localities, and none of
the earthenware specimens are effigies, or with head-shaped bowls,
such as are found in New York west of the Adirondacks.
A very interesting form of pipe has been found in Swanton, on
the Vermont side of the lake. A dozen or more of these have been
obtained. They are simply straight tubes of stone from seven to
twelve inches long and about an inch in diameter. They very closely
resemble the tubular pipes of the Pacific coast and South America.
It is noticeable that the pipes of the Champlain valley rarely
imitate any human or animal form. I know of only one which resembles
an animal and two or three which bear on the bowl the human face.