1909 Champlain Tercentenary
Report of the NY Lake Champlain Tercentenary Commission
to the Legislature of the State of New York, Sept. 19, 1911

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

In a survey of the discovery and settlement of the territory comprising Eastern Canada and the northeastern part of the United States, attention is drawn to the skillful navigator, intrepid explorer and discoverer of Lake Champlain, who brought the light of civilization into that valley, and was the first white man to set foot upon the soil now embraced in the confines of the State of New York.

Had Samuel Champlain taken possession of the territory of New York in the name of the King, Henry IV [of France], whom he represented, under the claim of right thereto on the ground of discovery, and had that possession ripened into French occupancy, such territory might even now be dominated by other language, laws and institutions than those that did prevail. The results of the French settlement in and occupancy of the northeastern provinces of the Dominion of Canada seem to warrant such a conclusion.

French Settlement

Its confirmation was opposed by Edmund Burke before his Majesty’s Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on November 12, 1772, he having requested that “he might be heard by his counsel as well in behalf of the Province of New York, as of sundry persons, proprietors of lands within the said Province under grants from the Governor and Council thereof against the confirmation by the Crown of any grant made by the French King or the Governor of Canada within the limits of the said Province of New York.” These grants were not upheld for reasons stated elsewhere.

These settlements were wholly ineffectual in making any permanent impression upon the language, laws and institutions of this Province.

In the evolution of National development, the extent and permanency of social forces largely condition their effectiveness, as seen in the impress made upon the early institutions of the Province of New York by the Dutch, who settled in the southeastern part of the Province and ruled it for half a century. Had the French followed up the discovery of Lake Champlain in 1609, and settled and permanently occupied the territory south of the 45th parallel of latitude, as effectively as did the Dutch the southeastern part of the State, the result, it is safe to say, would have been vastly different.

It is not unlikely that a part of New York under such conditions would have been included within the domain of the Dominion of Canada; for under the conditions as they existed, the Long House of the Iroquois Confederacy, which stretched from the Mohawk on the east to Lake Erie on the west, was the only barrier to the predatory incursions and warlike expeditions of the French and Indians from the Canadian territory on the north.

Anomalous as it may appear, that was made so largely by reason of the battle on Lake Champlain between the Algonquins and Hurons on the one side, and the Iroquois on the other, in which Champlain’s use of firearms, to the utter surprise and loss to the Iroquois of three of their chiefs, made them thereafter deadly enemies of the French.

This hostility of the Iroquois to the French was one of the principal causes which prevented the French from gaining or maintaining a permanent settlement within the confines of the Province of New York.

Among other causes, however, were the abandonment or loss of Ticonderoga and Crown Point in 1759, the year following the defeat of the British under General Abercromby at Ticonderoga by the French under the command of Montcalm. This gallant officer achieved with his small force of less than 4,000 men so signal a victory over the British, numbering about 15,000, as to prove very dispiriting to William Pitt, who in a communication to Grenville said: “I own the news [from the Champlain valley] has sunk my spirits and left very painful impressions on my mind.”

Notwithstanding the signal victory of the French under Montcalm at Ticonderoga in 1758, Governor Vaudreuil, said to be jealous of Montcalm, one of the ablest soldiers France had ever sent into the field, assigned de Bourlamaque to the command of the French posts in the Champlain valley in place of Montcalm, who was needed for the defense of Quebec; and shortly after ordered de Bourlamaque “not to think of defending Forts Carillon and Frédéric, but to abandon them as the British approached and fall back to Isle aux Noix.”

This was done, as General Amherst, who succeeded Abercromby in command of the British forces, advanced from Lake George with large reinforcements, comprising an army of 5,743 regulars, including Royal Americans and Colonial troops. As the British under General Amherst were about to assault the works at Ticonderoga, de Bourlamaque retired from Fort Carillon to Fort Frédéric; and thence, on July 31, 1759, after blowing up the latter fort, withdrew to Isle aux Noix with his artillery and such provisions as he could transport. This was approximately 150 years, to a month, of French occupancy since the discovery of the lake by Champlain.

British Possession and Occupation

The various military expeditions through the Champlain valley, and the two celebrated naval engagements on the lake, had an important bearing upon the sovereign control of that part of our National domain, and exerted a marked influence on American institutions in the formative period of their history. Three nations there contended for the possession of that “Gateway of the Nation.” The military ruins still to be seen attest its strategic importance in three wars for the sovereign control of that territory.

A History of Fierce and Bloody Encounters

It was a paradise for the aborigines, whose native costumes, and adventurous but precarious life were a startling revelation to such an explorer as Champlain, coming as he did from the refinements of the French courts of the 16th and 17th centuries. These warlike tribes continued to traverse the lake long after its discovery. Their canoes formed picturesque flotillas on its blue waters surrounded by densely shaded, lofty and alluring mountains, which ever since have been the admiration of tourists.

The first attempted settlement of the whites in the valley was at Isle La Motte, once the camping ground of the Algonquin and Iroquois Indians, where a Jesuit mission station was established in 1642. A fort was built there by Sieur de La Motte in 1665—6, which was dedicated to Ste. Anne on the 26th day of July, 1666, when high mass was celebrated for the first time, in the presence of the famous Carignan-Salières Regiment of 600 veterans and 150 Indians that had rendezvoused there at the command of M. de Tracy.

Thereafter Fort Ste. Anne was the stopping place for such expeditions as those under Captain John Schuyler in 1690, Major Peter Schuyler in 1691, Captain John Schuyler on September 2, 1698, and Richard Montgomery and General Philip Schuyler in 1775.

Parkman has said: “Through the midst of the great Canadian wilderness stretched Lake Champlain pointing straight to the heart of the British settlements — a watery thoroughfare of neutral attack, and the only approach by which without a long detour by wilderness or sea a hostile army could come within striking distance of the colony.”

In 1731 the settlement was begun at Windmill Point, where a stone windmill was built. In 1731 Fort St. Frédéric was built at Crown Point in honor of the French Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Frédéric Maurepas, by Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor-General of Canada; and in 1755 Fort Carillon was built at Ticonderoga, and attempted settlements were made at each of these places and at Chimney Point; the latter place was said to be abandoned when visited by Robert Rogers, the famous scout, in 1756.

French and Indian War

Captain Robert Rogers and Captain Israel Putnam, while the French were at Lake George, attempted to capture Fort St. Frédéric, but without avail. Of this entire period the historian, Peter S. Palmer, says: “The lake now presented a most lively appearance; canoes, bateaux and schooners were constantly passing and repassing between Canada and Crown Point and Ticonderoga, transporting troops from point to point, and were loaded with supplies and ammunition. It so continued during the Revolutionary period.”

Revolutionary War

On May 14th of that year Captain Benedict Arnold proceeded with a small force on a schooner down the lake toward St. John’s, where he seized a sloop, and immediately returned up the river and reached Crown Point in safety. These daring exploits won popular confidence in the ultimate success of the Colonies, and it was decided to assemble such troops as were available at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. In the meantime boats were built at Skenesborough, Ticonderoga and Crown Point for transportation down the lake to meet the forces assembling under Governor Sir Guy Carleton on the Richelieu river.

Brigadier-General Richard Montgomery embarked at Crown Point on September 4, 1775, with such troops as were there, and was followed by General Philip Schuyler with the remaining troops. General Schuyler overtook Montgomery at Isle La Motte, and they proceeded to Isle aux Noix, which they fortified to prevent the passage of any sloop up the river into the lake. General Montgomery afterwards captured St. John’s and Montreal, and proceeded to Quebec, where he afterwards lost his life in attempting to scale the Heights of Abraham, while General Schuyler, owing to ill health, returned to Albany.

In the spring of 1776 General Sullivan, finding the American forces reduced by sickness, desertion and death, decided to abandon the conquest of Canada, and to return to Ticonderoga. The sick were taken on board boats at St. John’s the last of June and transported to Isle aux Noix, Point au Fer, and Isle La Motte. Point au Fer was fortified, and the sick there cared for until they could be sent to Crown Point, which transfer was made under most unfavorable circumstances, in leaky boats, with more or less exposure to the inclemency of the weather. Benjamin Franklin, in returning from Montreal to Ticonderoga in June, 1776, was conveyed in a similar manner, in an open boat, although seventy years of age and not in the best of health.

The preparation for the naval engagements on Lake Champlain taxed the resources of the colonists about Lake Champlain in the building and equipping of a small fleet in command of Benedict Arnold, which engaged the enemy at Valcour Island on October 11, 1776. Captain Pringle was in charge of the British fleet, which was larger and better equipped and heavier gunned than the American fleet. The skill and bravery exhibited by Benedict Arnold on that occasion won for him the plaudits of General Washington and the Continental Congress, and his escape with such of his vessels as were not destroyed, is considered one of the remarkable achievements in the annals of American naval warfare. Several places in and about the lake were made memorable by that engagement, which consisted of two engagements, one on the 11th and one on the 13th of October, and extended through a large portion of the lake; and though he was unsuccessful in overcoming the stronger British fleet, he acquitted himself with such adroitness and valor as to satisfy the colonists that in such commanders as he there were not lacking naval and military qualities of a high order.

Captain A. T. Mahan, in an article in Scribner’s Magazine for February, 1898, says: “Considering its raw material and the recency of its organization, words can scarcely exaggerate the heroism of the resistance which undoubtedly depended chiefly upon the military qualities of its leader; the little American navy on Lake Champlain was wiped out, but never had any force, big or little, lived to better purpose or died more gloriously, for it saved the lake for that year.

Crown Point fell as a result of the defeat of the American navy, and was occupied by the British for two weeks, when General Carleton became satisfied that Ticonderoga was sufficiently manned by the force under General Gates to withstand an assault. On November 3rd General Carleton withdrew his troops to Canada, and the force under General Gates at Ticonderoga immediately took possession of it.

During the following year Lake Champlain was the scene of the most important military expedition, under the command of General John Burgoyne, who with his troops embarked at St. John’s on vessels, and proceeded through the lake, feasting 400 Indians, including the Iroquois, Algonquins, Abenakis and Ottawas, at a camp upon the River Boquet, at Willsborough, on June 21, 1777, on which occasion he appealed to them to unite with his Majesty’s forces in America in making war against the common enemy. Answer was made to this speech by the chief of the Iroquois, in which he said: “In proof of the sincerity of our professions, our whole villages able to go to war, are come forth.” Burgoyne was censured in Parliament by Fox. Burke and Chatham, for employing Indians as a part of his military forces. His defeat at Saratoga wrought his discomfiture and his condemnation by Parliament.

After the withdrawal of his forces from Lake Champlain, it continued to be the scene of military expeditions and “mysterious naval movements of the British,” whose vessels frequently entered the lake and “kept the northern frontier,” says Palmer, “in a state of ceaseless inquietude and alarm.”

The British did not give up possession of Point au F’er until 1788, five years after the treaty of peace. Thereafter Lake Champlain passed into the sovereign control of the United States and so remained until the second war with Great Britain.

War of 1812

The engagement lasted two hours and a half, and nearly every spar on both fleets was shot away. Macdonough’s victory was complete, and a gold medal was awarded to Macdonough by Congress, thanking him for his “decisive and splendid victory.” Theodore Roosevelt, in his “Naval War of 1812,” pays this tribute to him: “Macdonough, in this battle, won a higher fame than any other commander of the war . . . Down to the time of the Civil War he is the greatest figure in our naval history.” This victory cleared Lake Champlain of British war vessels, and made the lake famous the world over.

Since that time its sovereign control by the United States has been secure, and its waters became the highways of a peaceful and prosperous commerce, and its attractiveness and beauty have been such as to engage the attention of Americans and tourists from other lands, who are wont to compare it with the Lakes of Como, Lugano and Maggiore, the resorts for centuries of pleasure seekers of European nations.