Tag:

Abenaki Indians

Saint-Castin, the French Baron Who Drove the English From Maine

A 13-year-old son of a French baron named Jean-Vincent d’Abaddie de Saint-Castin arrives in Maine in 1665 to quell the Iroquois and conquer North America. Brutal colonial wars will soon pull Saint-Castin into the fighting among the Dutch, the French, the English and the Abenaki.

To outsiders, Saint-Castin’s allegiances may seem to veer between the French and the English, but he remains steadfast in his loyalty to the Abenaki people. He learns their ways and their language, and they adopt him as one of their own. He marries Molly Mathilde, the daughter of an Abenaki chief. And he commands military operations that drive the English from Maine in the latter half of the 17^th century.

Artist William Lowe’s conception of Saint-Castin

Those, at least, are the broad outlines of the life of Jean-Vincent d’Abaddie de Saint-Castin. A descendant of kings and cousin to a Three Musketeer. An Indian sachem. A skillful hunter, a rich fur trader. A bold, hardy, adroit and tenacious guerilla fighter.

To New Englanders, their most dangerous enemy.

Saint-Castin

He was born in France in 1652, the second son and third child of a French baron. His mother was a cousin of Henri d’Aramits, immortalized by Alexander Dumas as Aramis. She was also a direct descendant of Louis VIII.

His mother died of the plague when he was a baby, and his father before he reached his teens. At 13, Saint-Castin joined the French Army—not all that unusual for the younger son of a French nobleman.

Louis XIV

His king, Louis XIV, had dreams of kicking the English out of North America.

In 1665, he sent the 1200 men of Saint-Castin’s regiment, the Carignan Salieres, to eastern Canada. They sailed in seven ships to Quebec City, Saint Castin as an ensign in the company of Hector d’Andigne de Grandfontaine, later governor of New France.

By the time the young nobleman arrived, the French had been coming to Acadia to trade and fish for more than a century.

They got along well with the people who already lived in the land they called the Dawnland. Five peoples of the Dawnland — the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot – had banded together in the Wabanaki Confederacy.

“…[N]ever did the Abenakis consider the French as entertaining expansionistic designs that would have deprived them of their lands and rights, whereas they lived under constant threat of the same from their English neighbors,” wrote historian Paul Chasse.

Great Dying

The Indians exchanged beaver skins with the French for blankets, needles, knives and guns. Eventually they came to depend on those items, especially guns.

But the French and other Europeans also brought plague. Epidemics of smallpox, typhus and influenza hit Maine especially hard. The Great Dying of 1616-1619 killed three-quarters of Maine’s Indians.

The Wabanaki population, estimated at 20,000 (except for Mi’kmaq) before contact with Europeans, fell to about 5,000 around 1620.

As the Indian population declined, the French population increased. When Saint-Castin arrived, French speakers amounted to about 10,000 in New France. However, only about a thousand French people inhabited Acadia, which bordered New England and included Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

But the English population was growing faster than the French. With about 50,000 settlers in New England by the 1670s, they started pushing east. They would claim Maine—Acadia—all the way to the Penobscot River. The French claimed Acadia extended to the Kennebec River. That, of course, meant conflict.

Beaver Wars

But the beaver, not the English, first drew the French into war in North America. Their skins made fine felt hats, a hot fashion item in European capitals.

The thirst for beaver skins, though, had wiped out much of the beaver in North America. The Wabanaki’s enemies to the west, the Iroquois, started to cast covetous eyes on the Wabanaki beaver territory and on fur trading posts in New France. And so the Beaver Wars began.

Iroquois warrior with musket around 1730

The French king sent the Carignan Salieres to Canada to eliminate the Iroquois threat to New France. It is likely, writes Georges Cerbelaud Salagnac, that Saint-Castin took part in a 1666 campaign against the Iroquois.

The campaign succeeded, and in 1667, the French, the Wabanaki and the Iroquois made peace.

Fort Pentagoet

At 18, Ensign Saint-Castin sailed to a tiny coastal fort called Pentagoet with his captain Hector D’Andigne de Grandfontaine. The English had agreed to cede Acadia to the French. Grandfontaine had orders to oversee the transfer and develop the colony as its governor. He made Pentagoet, now Castine, Acadia’s capital.

Fort Pentagoet lay at the mouth of the Penobscot River near an Abenaki village. The great chief of the Abenaki, Madokawando, and his family spent summers there fishing and hunting. When winter arrived, they paddled upstream to their winter home on Indian Island. There a French missionary converted many of them to Catholicism.

Map of the original Fort Pentagoet

Be Fruitful and Multiply

To strengthen New France with more French settlers, Louis XIV made the Carignan Salieres soldiers an offer. He gave them rations, land and money (depending on their rank) if they stayed. He encouraged them to marry, even sending 800 women – ‘the king’s daughters’ – as marriage bait. It was even okay to marry Indian women.

In the end, about 450 French soldiers – including Saint-Castin – stayed.

Saint-Castin found the wilderness and the Abenaki to his liking, and he adopted many of their ways. He also formed a friendship with Madokawando.

But the 30 or so soldiers at Fort Pentagoet struggled. The government of New France paid little attention to its wilderness outpost, leaving it to fend for itself. To survive, Grandfontaine had to trade with the English who came by sea. But French officials forbade commercial ties with the English. Soon they replaced Grandfontaine with an army officer named Jacques de Chambly.

Anglo-Dutch War

In 1674, a raid on Fort Pentagoet became a turning point in Saint-Castin’s life. The French and the English allied against the Dutch and fought them largely at sea. But by 1674 the war drew to a close. The Dutch settled with the English, but not with the French.

Historical marker commemorating the Dutch attack.

And so Capt. Jurriaen Aernoutsz, commander of a Dutch privateer the Flying Horse, viewed Pentagoet as fair game. He sailed into Penobscot Bay in August with a fighting force of 110 men. They easily overtook the French soldiers at Fort Pentagoet and captured them – along with the commander, Chambly. Then they turned the fort’s own guns on its walls and leveled them.

Accounts differ as to what happened to Saint-Castin. Did the Dutch take him to Boston? Did he somehow escape? Or did the Dutch send him to Quebec City?

Whatever the case, Saint-Castin traveled to French headquarters in Quebec City with a ransom note for Chambly.

The obscure young Army officer gave the note to Louis de Frontenac, governor general of New France. De Frontenac apparently recognized Saint-Castin’s talents. He gave him a bill of exchange for the ransom, and the mission that would put him in the history books. Saint-Castin was to urge the Wabanaki to join the French.

Governor Frontenac performing a tribal dance with Indian allies

Return of Saint-Castin

Saint-Castin returned to the ruined fort at Pentagoet. But instead of rebuilding fortifications he built a house and a lead-shot workshop amidst some 30 Indian wigwams.

On the surface, he seemed to have shed his responsibilities as a French officer, according to Salagnac. He migrated with the Indians to their winter home upriver. He enjoyed the company of Indian women – perhaps too much, according to gossip that made its way to the Jesuit missionaries and the leaders of New France. But he remained a staunch Catholic.

Meanwhile, he proved an astute businessman and his trading started to make him rich. Then around 1675, Saint-Castin’s older brother died childless, making him Baron Saint-Castin at the age of 22.

Rather than returning to France, however, he stayed in Acadia with the Wabanaki.

And sometime before 1678 he married Madokawando’s daughter Pidianske. She had converted to Catholicism, and took the Christian name Marie-Mathilde, nicknamed Molly Mathilde.

According to historian Bunny McBride, Madokawando wanted his daughter to marry Saint-Castin because it assured at least some French support to the Wabanaki.

Molly Mathilde

McBride, in her book Women of the Dawnland, tells the story of Molly Mathilde. She didn’t want to marry Saint-Castin, though she’d known him for most of her life. But when she turned 15, her mother told her she had to marry him.

Molly Mathilde said no. The man had hair all over his face and arms, and sometimes he dressed in strange colored wigs and boots with spurs. He smelled funny, too.

Her mother had no sympathy for her. She had been told to marry Madokawando, and she did. For her people. Molly Mathilde would have to do the same.

Saint-Castin first married her in the Indian way, but in 1684 a French Jesuit priest married them in a Catholic ceremony at Pentagoet.

“Romance may not have been the inspiration behind Molly Mathilde’s marriage to St. Castin, but the mutual cares of a shared life gradually inspired love,” wrote McBride. “Among the French, people commented that the baron had surrendered his former habits and that he often spoke of his commitment to his wife.”

Together, they had five children who survived infancy.

King Philip’s War

In June 1675, King Philip’s War broke out in southern New England. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Indian refugees from the war came to Acadia to urge retribution.

King Philip’s War (illustration)

The Wabanaki didn’t need much persuading. English authorities tried to order them to give up their guns so they wouldn’t rise join King Philip’s uprising. But even before the English tried to take their guns, they had cheated them, sold them rum and let their livestock trample through their cornfields.

Then in the summer of 1675, three sailors killed the infant son of a chief named Squando by throwing him into the Saco River. The sailors wanted to see if Indians could dog paddle at birth.

That outrage caused Saco and Androscoggin Indians to begin guerilla warfare against English settlements in the Casco Bay region. They killed about 80 settlers and burned down their houses and mills.

Madokawando stayed out of it until August 1676 when Abenaki, Mi’kmaq and refugees from King Philip’s War laid waste to English settlements along the Kennebec. They defeated the English in hand-to-hand combat at the trading post at Arrowsic, then a few weeks later killed seven on Peak’s Island in Casco Bay.

Military Counselor

There is little mention of Saint-Castin’s role in all of the fighting. But historian Georges Cerbelaud Salagnac concludes he advised Madokawando.

“One may reasonably suppose that Saint-Castin began to exercise his talents as a military counselor on the occasion of this war,” wrote Salagnac.

“… Madokawando was the sole great chief of the Penobscots; he had his lieutenants who were in command of the warriors, led expeditions, and parleyed with the enemy when truces were made,” wrote Salagnac. “But it was known everywhere that nothing was done without his son-in-law’s advice, and that the latter had only to express a wish for it to be instantly complied with.”

Any hope of a truce ended with an act of shocking English treachery on Sept. 7, 1676. Four hundred Indians — including Abenaki and some of King Philip’s former warriors — paid a visit to a New Hampshire strongman, Richard Waldron, at his invitation. They would hold a mock battle with the local militia in Dover, N.H.

Instead, the militia captured those who had fought with Philip — half the Indians — and sent them to Boston. There, seven or eight were tried and hanged. The English sold the rest into slavery.

In retribution, the Wabanaki went on a rampage, terrorizing and destroying 60 miles of English settlements along the coast.

Finally in 1678 the two sides agreed to another truce in which the English would pay the Indians in corn for the use of their land.

The English in Boston couldn’t understand why the Abenaki in the north seemed more tenacious and defiant than King Philip’s warriors in the south, according to Salagnac. Eventually they learned of the French soldier who had masterminded the attacks on their settlements – Saint-Castin.

Uneasy Peace

Saint-Castin and his growing family prospered in the interregnum before the next war. An indication of his wealth was discovered in 1840, when a farmer named Stephen Grindle dug up treasure believed buried by Saint-Castin’s daughter. Found six miles north of Saint-Castin’s home, it included somewhere between 500 and 2,000 coins from France, Spain, England, Massachusetts, Portugal and Holland.

The Saint-Castin Hoard

A French priest named Louis-Pierre Thury persuaded Saint-Castin to send his sons to Catholic school in Quebec. Thury would figure prominently in the next war to break out, known as King William’s War, the Second Indian War, the First French and Indian War or even Castin’s War.

In May of 1687 or 1688, Sir Edmond Andros, governor of the Dominion of New England, made a big mistake. He personally led an expedition to Pentagoet to seize Saint-Castin. The baron happened to be away on a military expedition with the French, so Andros and his men ransacked his house and plundered his trading post

In the end, the English had to apologize for Andros’ illegal raid. It did no good, and instead touched off a decade of warfare. The English had continued to cheat the Indians and reneged on their agreement to pay Indians corn for the use of their land.

Saint-Castin’s War

So Saint-Castin and Thury orchestrated a series of raids on English settlements. When it all ended, the French and Indians wiped most of the English settlements off the map of Acadia. From 1689 to 1713, there wasn’t a single English home north of Wells.

On June 28, 1689, the Wabanaki and Pennacook wreaked revenge on Richard Waldron for his treachery during King Philip’s War. In a surprise attack known as the Cocheco Massacre, they killed 29 people in Dover, N.H., captured 28 and tortured Waldron to death. Then they left Dover in smoldering ruins.

Attack on Richard Waldron.

Saint-Castin that summer then launched half a dozen attacks on English settlements as far south as Andover, Mass. He led a Wabanaki attack on Fort Charles in Pemaquid, now Bristol, the northernmost English settlement in Acadia. They burned down the fort and killed 200 English soldiers and settlers.

In September, 200 Indians attacked the English on Peaks Island, but Capt. Benjamin Church drove them away after suffering heavy casualties.

The raids continued in 1690, starting with massacres in Schenectady, N.Y. and Salmon Falls, N.H. Saint-Castin led an assault on the fort at Falmouth in May, killing 30 and capturing 100.

Sporadic guerilla warfare continued, with one of the most dramatic attacks on York in February 1692. Called the Candlemas Massacre, it ended with 50 dead and 100 captured.

Gruesome Murders

Exhausted and starving, the Indians sued for peace in 1693, but the English wouldn’t negotiate. The war dragged on for another four years, though it may not have deserved the term, according to historian John Grenier.

“It had devolved into a string of gruesome murders that terrorized New England,” he wrote.

Pierre Lemoyne di’Iberville

In 1696, Saint-Castin and Thury led an Abenaki force with the French naval commander Pierre leMoyne d’Iberville against a newly rebuilt English fort at Pemaquid. After a short siege, the fort fell, and the English abandoned the Kennebec.

Finally, the Wabanaki made peace with the English in 1699. The Indians had driven nearly all of them out of Acadia.

Saint Castin had helped the Wabanaki survive, but at a cost. The bloody and gruesome war had intensified English hatred of Indians, and in 1703 another long war – Queen Anne’s war—broke out.

Return to France

But by then Saint-Castin had left for France, intending to return to Molly-Mathilde and their children. French officials had accused him of treason because he and the Wabanaki had traded with the English. He crossed the Atlantic in 1701 to defend himself against the charges, as well as to claim his inheritance.

In France Saint-Castin had a sister, Marie, and her rapacious lawyer husband, Jean de Labaig. Labaig wanted the baronetcy and the estate that went with it for himself. He had also gotten wind of the rumors about Saint-Castin’s libertine ways before – and even during – his marriage.

Labaig used those rumors to put legal obstacles in Saint-Castin’s way.

The church of Saint-Castin in Bearn, France.

Saint-Castin cleared himself of the charges of treason, but spent years fighting Labaig. Finally by 1707 he won his legal battle, gaining the family castle in Bearn and the title of baron.

Shortly thereafter, he died in France. Molly-Mathilde continued to live in Acadia until her death.

The Rest of the Saint-Castins

Saint-Castin’s oldest son, Bernard-Anselm, led the Wabanaki against the English during Queen Anne’s War. When that conflict ended, he sailed with his wife and three daughters to the Saint-Castin estate in France. Bernard-Anselm died in 1721.

Castine, Maine, was named after Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin. His descendants, who include Charles Shay, occasionally visit the Witherle Memorial Library in town.

With thanks to Abaddie de Saint-Castin, Jean-Vincent d’, Baron de Saint Castin by Georges Cerbelaud Salagnac in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Women of the Dawn by Bunny McBride, The d’Abbadies de Castins and the Abenakis of Maine in the Seventeenth Century by Paul Chasse, Steadfast in their ways: New England colonists, Indian wars, and the persistence of culture, 1675-1715, by David Michael Corlett, Saint-Castin: A Legend Revised by Gorham Munson, The Dalhousie Review.

Image: The church of Saint-Castin By France64160 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10769225. This story was updated in 2022.

2 comments 753 views

Six Places That Appear on the Back of a Quarter

From 1999 through 2008, the 50 State Quarter program released commemorative quarters with unique designs for each state. Half of all Americans collected them at least casually, making it the most successful commemorative coin program ever.

The U.S. mint released five each year, one quarter every 10 weeks. They came out in the same order that the states ratified the Constitution. In New England, that order meant Connecticut went first, then Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

Rules governed the choice of design. No live person, no state flag and no head-and-shoulder image of a dead person.

Each New England state responded with an image that you can visit today.

Here, then, are the six New England places that appear on the backs of quarters.

Charter Oak Tree

Connecticut State Quarter

King Charles II in 1662 granted Connecticut a charter that allowed it to elect some of its own officials and make some of its own rules.

Charles’ successor, James II tried to combine the New England colonies with New York under a single Crown-appointed official, Edmund Andros. It didn’t go well.

The Charter Oak by Charles DeWolf Brownell, 1857

In 1687, Andros and 60 soldiers met with the leaders of the Connecticut Colony in Hartford and heatedly insisted they turn over the charter. The colonists just as heatedly refused to give him the document, which lay on a table before them.

According to legend, something — a gust of wind, perhaps — blew out the candles that lit the meetinghouse. In the confusion, the charter disappeared. Someone hid it in the hollow of a large white oak tree, where the king’s men couldn’t find it.

The oak, of course, became the revered Charter Oak and a symbol of American independence. Already more than 300 years old in 1687, the Charter Oak fell to a violent storm on Aug. 21, 1856.

The Dominion of New England fell well before that. Andros dissolved the colonial governments, including Connecticut’s even without the charter. Two years later in 1689 Massachusetts colonists sent Andros packing. James II lost power, the charter came out of hiding and the colonies reverted to their previous form of government.

The Charter Oak still exists – as chairs in the Old Connecticut Statehouse and as artifacts currently on display at the Connecticut Historical Society.

On the corner of Charter Oak Avenue and Charter Oak Place stands a column with a globe and a descendant of the original tree. There may be as many as 100 such trees, as people had collected acorns before it fell. The Simsbury Historical Society, for example, planted a descendant of the Charter Oak in 1976 to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial.

A portrait of the Charter Oak, framed in wood from the tree itself, hangs in the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Maine State Quarter

Maine chose to honor its maritime heritage with an image of a windjammer sailing by Pemaquid Point Lighthouse on the back of its quarter.

President John Quincy Adams in 1827 commissioned Pemaquid Point Light in Bristol, Maine, about 60 miles north of Portland. The original lighthouse didn’t last long as builders mixed saltwater with the mortar mix. It had to be replaced in 1835, and the contract specified the use of fresh water in construction.

A storied lighthouse keeper, Marcus Hanna

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

, once staffed the lighthouse. He was the only person to ever receive a Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War and a Gold Lifesaving Medal for saving a life off Cape Elizabeth.

Today, the Bristol Parks and Recreation Department owns and operates the outbuildings surrounding the lighthouse as Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park.

The vessel on the quarter is the Victory Chimes, a rare three-masted schooner. Moored in Rockland, Maine, the Victory Chimes sails up and down the coast on windjammer excursions.

Minute Man National Park

Massachusetts State Quarter

Massachusetts honors its historic role in the American Revolution by putting a famous statue of the Minute Man. The monument depicts a farmer who dropped his plow to fight at North Bridge in Concord, Mass., on April 19, 1775.

Today the statue stands guard at The Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord, where 500 militiamen defeated three companies of British troops.

The Minute Man

In 1873 an unknown, 23-year-old college dropout was given the commission to create a monument to the Minute Man.

The 100^th anniversary of the shot heard ‘round the world was approaching, and the citizens of Concord wanted to honor the farmers and tradesmen who battled professional British soldiers.

They decided to award the commission to Daniel Chester French, who had never executed a full-size statue. They had their reasons: His father was well-connected in town, and he had taken art lessons from Louisa May Alcott’s little sister, who vouched for his talent. French, of course, went on to design many famous works, including the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Old Man of the Mountain

New Hampshire State Quarter

Alas, New Hampshire just can’t let go of the Old Man of the Mountain, though the mountain did. He tumbled to the ground on May 3, 2003, but his image still appears on license plates, state highway signs and the New Hampshire state quarter.

The Old Man of the Mountain, back in the day

Before the Old Man went to his forever home, he was a series of five granite ledges hanging 1,200 feet above the floor of Franconia Notch. He measured 40 feet high from forehead to chin, and over the years he was held together by chains and patched up with cement, plastic, steel rods and turnbuckles.

At least he was already on the quarter when the U.S. Mint released it on Aug. 7, 2000.

For nearly 200 years, the Old Man of the Mountain attracted tourists and served as a proud symbol of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire native Daniel Webster perhaps best expressed what the Old Man meant to the state:

[U]p in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge

Rhode Island State Quarter

Watery Rhode Island chose to put the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, New England’s longest suspension bridge, on the back of its quarter. Since 1969 it has connected Newport with Jamestown. Today it costs 16 quarters to cross.

The Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge

On a clear day, you can see the bridge from Gay Head Light in Martha’s Vineyard, the top floors of Providence’s tallest buildings and the parking lot of Stone Hill Marketplace in Johnston, R.I., 23 miles away.

Claiborne Pell served 36 years in the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island, and sponsored the bill to grant financial aid to college students in the form of Pell grants.

The quarter also depicts a vintage sailboat, as Rhode Island is nicknamed the sailing capital of the world. The nation’s smallest state, it has 400 miles of coastline and 100 beaches.

Camels Hump Mountain

Vermont State Quarter

Maple sugar is to Vermont as sailing is to Rhode Island. Well, maybe skiing is a more appropriate analogy, but Vermont went with maple sugaring on the back of its quarter.

The back of the quarter also features the Camels Hump Mountain in northern Vermont. It’s one of the tallest mountains in Vermont, and its distinctive profile makes it Vermont’s most recognized mountain.

Camels Hump, one of a dozen of Vermont’s National Natural Landmarks

The Camels Hump has had no less than a dozen names since Samuel de Champlain sailed down the lake that bears his name. De Champlain called it ‘Le Lion Couchant,’ meaning ‘the Resting Lion.’ Ira Allen called it the ‘Camel’s Rump.’ The Abenaki Indians called it ‘tahwahbodeay wadso.’

A forest preserve encloses the mountain, the summit of which philanthropist Joseph Battell donated to the state in 1905. By 1912, the Green Mountain Club built a trail between the mountain and Sterling Pond. Today the trail is a high point on the Long Trail system. The Green Mountain Club now pays a caretaker to make sure hikers respect the mountain’s fragile alpine tundra.

Images: Claiborne Pell Bridge By UpstateNYer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7548436; Pemaquid Point Lighthouse (featured image) By Tiger635 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31174599′ Pemaquid Point Lighthouse By WestportWiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21041474

0 comment 286 views

Six Breathtaking National Natural Landmarks

New England can claim 57 National Natural Landmarks of the 599 listed throughout the country. The six-state region has a wealth of beautiful conservation land that contains fossilized dinosaur tracks, quaking bogs, old growth forests, rhododendron stands and a spectacular rocky gorge.

The National Park Service administers the National Natural Landmarks Program to encourage conservation of sites with outstanding biological or geological features.

We selected the most breathtaking of the National Natural Landmarks in each of five New England states. Because tiny Rhode Island has only one, we didn’t have much choice.

If you know of any National Natural Landmarks worthy of note, please include them in the comments section.

Connecticut Dinosaur Trackway

national-natural-landmarks-dinosaur-trackway

The Dinosaur Trackway.

In 1802, a Massachusetts farm boy named Pliny Moody came across dinosaur tracks in Holyoke, Mass. He made the first of many such discoveries in the Connecticut River Valley’s sandstone.

On Aug. 23, 1966, Edward McCarthy was bulldozing a path for I-91 in Rocky Hill, Conn., when he overturned a block of sandstone imprinted with six three-toed footprints. It turned out he was disturbing a former lakebed riddled with dinosaur tracks, the largest in North America.

Scientists confirmed the importance of the Rocky Hill dinosaur tracks, each about a foot long.

Engineers rerouted the highway, and the state designated the lake bed a Connecticut state park. Scientists subsequently found about 2,000 of the three-toed tracks, linked to the Jurassic-era Dilophosauris.

The seven-acre Dinosaur State Park abuts an arboretum that has about two miles of hiking trails. The exhibit center opens Thursday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The park opens every day but Sunday and Monday.

Dinosaur State Park, 400 West St., Rocky Hill, Conn.

Gulf Hagas

Of Maine’s 12 National Natural Landmarks, Gulf Hagas is easily the wildest and most remote.

Gulf Hagas earned the name ‘Grand Canyon of the East’ for the three-mile slate gorge carved by the West Branch of the Pleasant River in Central Maine. The river drops 370 feet through the gorge, creating waterfalls that only the most experienced kayaker can manage. a gorge in central Maine. The West Branch of the Pleasant River creates a three-mile slate gorge with many waterfalls. Gulf Hagas belongs to the Appalachian Trail Corridor, following it through the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. Many view it as the most remote and difficult part of the Appalachian Trail.

Most people reach Gulf Hagas by driving through the Katahdin Iron Works, a historic site where iron ore was once smelted. Loggers used to drive logs for those smelting operations through the gorge, as narrow as eight feet wide in some places. .

Archaeologists have found gravesites belonging to the Red Paint People in the area.

The Gulf Hagas Rim Trail goes through The Hermitage, a rare stand of virgin old growth forest. Giant eastern white pine trees, once used for the British Royal Navy, grow as tall as 150 feet and as thick as 10 feet in diameter.

One eight-mile-long hike along the canyon rim takes as long as eight hours. An easier trail takes hikers four miles through The Hermitage and Gulf Hagas Brook.

Katahdin Iron Works Road, Bowdoin College Grant East Townswhip, Maine

Bartholomew’s Cobble

The John Ashley Hose sits near Bartholomew’s Cobble, one of Massachusetts’ 11 National Natural Landmarks.

Col. John Ashley, a Connecticut River God, settled the 329 acres of Bartholomew’s Cobble before the American Revolution. Ashley enslaved an African American woman named Elizabeth Mum Bett Freeman, who won a place in history by suing for her freedom and helping to end slavery in Massachusetts.

Bartholomew’s Cobble

The Trustees of Reservations took ownership of Bartholomew’s Cobble in 1946 and gradually added to it over the years. The trustees also manage the John Ashley home site.

Bartholomew’s Cobble sits right on the border of the northern and southern limits of a number of species, giving it tremendous diversity of plants, especially ferns. It also sits on the crossroads of the marble valley lowlands of the Berkshires and the Taconic uplands.

You can snowshoe, canoe, picnic, birdwatch, climb Hurlburt Hill to catch the sunset. The five miles of trails take you along the Housatonic River, up through the geological cobble formations, meadows and farmland full of wildflowers, ferns, mosses and ground-nesting bobolinks.

105 Weatogue Rd., Sheffield, Mass.

Rhododendron State Park

national-natural-landmarks-old-patch-placce

The Old Patch Place, one of New Hampshire’s National Natural Landmarks and part of Rhododendron State Park.

Rhododendron State Park in Fitzwilliam, N.H., has the largest of 19 native Rhododendron maximum stands in central and northern New England. The 15-acre park, near Little Monadnock Mountain, once had another name: Old Patch Place.

Samuel Patch built the Old Patch Place sometime between 1790 and 1816. The Patch family sold the house and land around 1841. Subsequent owners sold it several times before Stephen Follansbee bought it in 1885. Follansbee did a thriving business selling rhododendron blooms for 5 cents a bunch, 10 cents a tub or 25 cents a buggyful. Follansbee also sold the medicinal waters of Monadnock Mineral Spring.

Levi Fuller bought the Old Patch Place and planned to lumber it off in 1901. A philanthropist named Mary Lee Ware, however, bought the land from Fuller and gave it to the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1903. The gift came with several conditions: that it be open to the public forever, that no rhododendron would ever be picked and that no ax ever be used. The AMC breached the contract once, after the Great Hurricane of 1938 required downed trees to be clear.

Hikers used the Old Patch Place as a hostel until 1947, when the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation took over.

The National Register of Historic Places added the house to its list in 1980. Two years later the National Park Service named the rhododendron lot one of its national Natural Landmarks. According to the National Register of Historic Places, it represents ‘an early achievement of the conservation movement in New Hampshire to protect endangered natural resources.’

424 Rockwood Pond Rd, Fitzwilliam, N.H.

Ell Pond

The kettle hole known as Ell Pond in Hopkinton, R.I.

Ell Pond, Rhode Island’s only entry on the list of National Natural Landmarks, is a kettle hole surrounded by a quaking bog. The bog in turn is encircled by a cedar bog and rock formations. The surrounding woodlands are dense with rhododendron and mountain laurel, which bloom in mid-June.

The 50-acre preserve has trails that offer some of the most beautiful hikes in Rhode Island. Visitors say they go to the uncrowded preserve to find some peace.

The preserve abuts lands owned by The Audubon Society of Rhode Island and the state. In 1972, The Nature Conservancy bought Ell Pond to add a link to the web of contiguous protected lands in Rhode Island.

433-,445 Old Rockville Rd, Hopkinton, R.I.

Camels Hump

Camels Hump, one of a dozen of Vermont’s National Natural Landmarks

You’ve seen the Camels Hump of Vermont, if only on the back of the state quarter. Its distinctive profile makes it Vermont’s most recognized mountain.

A forest preserve encloses the mountain, the summit of which philanthropist Joseph Battell donated to the state in 1905. By 1912, the Green Mountain Club built a trail between the mountain and Sterling Pond. Today the trail is a high point on the Long Trail system. The Green Mountain Club now pays a caretaker to make sure hikers respect the mountain’s fragile alpine tundra.

The Camels Hump has a number of trails, popular with hikers. On a clear day the view from the summit takes in Mount Washington in New Hampshire, Mount Marcy in New York and Mount Mansfield in Vermont.

Camels Hump is one of 12 National Natural Landmarks in Vermont, which include pristine freswhater marshes, a biologically diverse fossil reef, virgin forests and alpine tundra.

Camels Hump Road, Huntington, Vt.

Images: Dinosaur Trackway By Daderot – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2105435; Col. John Ashley House, By I, Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2523950; Gulf Hagas By Tcpx36 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17590021; Old Patch Place Cottage By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22023191

1 comment 495 views

Susannah Johnson, Indian Captive, Gives Birth in the Wild and Commemorates the Spot 45 Years Later

In August 1754, Susannah Johnson gave birth to a daughter in the Vermont wilderness during a forced march by her Indian captors.

The French and Indian War had started, and childbirth in the woods was only the beginning of her ordeal. Hunger, fatigue, fear and pain accompanied her on her march to an Indian village. The Indians sold her into slavery to the French, who eventually put her and her family into a Montreal prison. To return to her home in Charlestown, N.H., Susannah Johnson had to sail to England first.

Forty-five years later, Susannah Johnson hired a stonecutter to create two stone markers. She had them placed on the exact spot where she bore her daughter Captive and where they spent the night.

The markers still stand, though only near their original location. People know them as the Vermont Indian stones.

Susannah Johnson

Susannah Johnson was born Feb. 20, 1729 or 1730, in Lunenberg, Mass., one of 12 children to Moses and Susanna Hastings Willard. She was descended from Maj. Simon Willard, who founded Concord, Mass., and Thomas Hastings, who immigrated to America in the Puritan Great Migration.

Old Fort No. 4

At the age of 14 she moved to Charlestown with her family. The New Hampshire settlement amounted to little more than a fort, a saw mill and a cluster of huts for about 10 families.

Susannah Johnson’s step-uncles settled Charlestown, but Indians killed one of them during King George’s War, the third of the four French and Indian Wars.

When still in her teens, she married James Johnson in Lunenberg, Mass.

James Johnson

Her new husband had already spent much of his life in captivity – but to the British. As a 10-year-old boy he went to sea with his uncle, a ship captain. His uncle died on the voyage, and the crew sold him to a ship taking Irish slaves to America.

When the ship landed in Boston, the boys were allowed to play on the wharf. Susannah Johnson’s great-uncle happened to walk by them, and he noticed young James Johnson, the only boy who spoke English. The great-uncle bought his indenture.

At the age of 20, James Johnson bought his freedom and obtained a lieutenant’s commission. He married Susannah Willard, and they moved to the northernmost British settlement on the Connecticut River. Known then as Fort at Number 4, it is now called Charlestown, N.H.

Charlestown

During the peaceful years between the third and fourth French and Indian wars, Charlestown doubled in size. James Johnson did some farming and traded with the Indians.

An Abenaki couple

By May of 1754, James and Susannah Johnson had three children. That spring, he decided to go to Connecticut on a trading trip. In Connecticut he learned about an imminent war with the French and Indians, but he didn’t think Charlestown was in any immediate danger.

When James Johnson returned home in late August, neighbors came over to celebrate his return. They ate watermelons, drank flip, made merry and stayed in the Johnsons’ log house until midnight. When the neighbors left, the Johnsons went to bed and slept soundly.

Susannah was in the last days of pregnancy, happy her husband had returned.

The Indian Attack

Just before sunrise on Aug. 30, 1754, the Johnsons’ neighbor Peter Labarree knocked at the door. James Johnson got out of bed and put on his clothes to let him in.

Susannah Johnson heard him open the door and then shout “Indians! Indians!” He went to grab his gun, but a crowd of Indians burst in. Some hauled her 14-year-old sister out of bed, another grabbed Susannah and four Indians tied up her husband.

The Indians led her to the door, fainting and trembling, then brought her three naked children to her. She realized she herself had no clothes on. An Indian gave her a gown. She asked for a petticoat, but he refused.

The Indians took some plunder, bundled it up quickly then ordered them to march. Two Indians grabbed her arms and hurried her through thorny thickets. She lost a shoe.

They walked for a little while until they heard alarm guns from the fort. That hurried the Indians. After walking a mile and a half, Susannah Johnson grew faint and sat down. An Indian drew his knife; she thought he meant to kill her, but he just loosened her dress.

Baby Captive

Image of Susannah Johnson giving birth

The marching party included 11 Abenaki Indians, who understood little English. Also included: James and Susannah Johnson, their son Sylvanus, 6, daughters Susanna, 4, and Polly 2, Susannah’s sister Miriam, 14, neighbor Peter Labbaree and Ebenezer Farnsworth, a hired hand.

Hours after they set out, Indians noticed the blood covering Susannah’s legs and feet, cut badly because she had lost her shoe. They gave her moccasins. Then they caught a stray horse, threw bags and blankets on top of him and put her on top.

They walked another eight miles or so before sleeping on the ground. On the next day’s march, Susannah Johnson sat on the horse, her husband walking next to her holding her on.

After about an hour, she went into labor. The Indians indicated they must go to a brook.

She later wrote of her distress. She was

…fifteen or twenty miles from the abode of any civilized being, in the open wilderness, rendered cold by a rainy day–in one of the most perilous hours, and unsupplied with the least necessary, that could yield convenience in the hazardous moment. My children were crying at a distance, where they were held by their masters, and only my husband and sister to attend me.

Though the Indians remained aloof during her delivery, ‘they shewed some humanity,”

They built a small hut to shelter her, and at 10 am, she gave birth to a daughter, named Captive. The Indians expressed pleasure that they had another prisoner to sell.

More Misery

Captivity narrative by Susannah Johnson

The Indians let her rest during the day and made her a hut to sleep in at night. For two more days they marched on in glum silence and unvarying fatigue. On Day 5 they reached the banks of Lake Champlain, where they shot the horse she rode and ate it.

She couldn’t walk. Her husband had to carry her, which nearly killed them both.

“Inevitable death, in the midst of woods, one hundred miles wide, appeared my only portion,” she wrote.

They marched for four more days. At every meal, the Indians shared with them equally, and more than once they gave her a blanket, to shelter her from a thunderstorm.

On day 9 they reached East Bay in Lake Champlain. There, two Indians met them in four canoes, and they paddled all night to reach the western shore. The Indians built a fire and made the prisoners dance.

Again they embarked in canoes, and arrived at the French fort Crown Point at noon. The Indians took the prisoners to the French commander’s home. He gave them brandy, a good dinner, a change of linen and he put them up for four days. Susannah Johnson had a nurse, who dressed her infant in a French outfit she described as fantastical. Captive kept the outfit her whole life.

The Rest of the Story

They traveled north by water from French garrison to French garrison. Finally they arrived in St. Francis near Montreal, a village of about 30 wigwams and a Catholic church where a French friar said daily Mass.

Sylvanus went hunting with the Indians. Susannah Johnson wouldn’t see him again for years. The Indians put her in a large wigwam with three Indian men and three women. They took James Johnson to Montreal to sell him. Her daughters, her sister Miriam and Peter Labarree soon followed. In November, so did she.

After 11 days of travel she found her husband, children and friends in Montreal. Respectable people had bought them all and treated them well, except for the mayor, who treated her small daughter Polly badly.

James Johnson got two months’ parole to go to New England to raise cash to redeem his family. Massachusetts gave him 10 pounds and New Hampshire 150, but then the Massachusetts governor told him he had to stay.

When he didn’t return after two months, Susannah’s masters started to treat her badly. Finally James Johnson did return, only to be incarcerated with his family in a criminal jail. They were prisoners of war.

Susannah Johnson described conditions in the jail as shocking. The family all got smallpox, but survived.

Freedom

The Indian Stones, near the spot where Susannah Johnson gave birth

After six months the Johnsons persuaded the French authorities to transfer them to a civil jail. There they had decent beds, candles, food and fuel.

In the spring of 1757 they petitioned for their freedom, and got it. She found passage to England and from there she hoped to return home. Her husband had to stay behind. She, her two little daughters and her sister sailed for Plymouth, then went to Portsmouth. They then sailed to Cork. Then to New York, three years, three months and 11 days after her capture.

On Jan. 1, 1758 she embraced James Johnson, her ‘dearest friend’ in Charlestown. Charlestown had suffered from the war, so the family went to Lancaster. Her husband won a captain’s commission.

Captivity, slavery and imprisonment hadn’t killed James Johnson. But shortly after he won his freedom, he died fighting the French and Indians at Ticonderoga.

In October 1758, Susannah Johnson tracked down her son, now 11, who didn’t know her and spoke only broken English. He knew perfect Abenaki, however, after living with the Indians for three years.

Susannah Johnson eventually remarried and had more children. She published a book about her captivity in 1796, when captivity narratives had become a popular literary genre. Hers was no exception.

Indian Stones

In 1799, Susannah Johnson hired a stonecutter to engrave two slate slabs. One said,

On the 31 st of August 1754, Capt James Johnson had / a Daughter born on this Spot of Ground, being / Captivated with his whole Family by the Indians.

The other said,

This is near the Spot that the Indians Encamp/ the Night after they took Mr Johnson’s Family, / Mr Labarree & Farnsworth, August 30th 1754, and / Mrs Johnson was Delivered of her Child Half a mile up this Brook; // When troubles near the Lord is- kind, / He hears the Captives crys. / He can subdue the Savage mind, / And learn it sympathy.

She had the stone slabs placed on the spot where she gave birth to Captive, and the other near the place where they slept that night. In 1918, the stone markers were mounted on a single slab. You can still visit them.

Susannah Johnson died November 27, 1810.

To read her entire story, click here.

Elizabeth George based her young adult novel Calico Captive on Susannah Johnson’s story. You can find the Indian Stones at a small roadside pullout in southern Reading, Vt., on the east side of Route 106 at its junction with Knapp Brook Road.

Images: Stone marker with steps, By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34713735; small stone Indian stone By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34713733

This story was updated in 2022.

5 comments 747 views

Six Indian Trails That Turned Into Scenic Highways and Byways

The Indian trails that crisscrossed New England go back to prehistoric times.

Native Americans migrated from summer to winter homes along the paths, often worn bare by centuries of travel. They used the trails for hunting, trading and making war.

When the English colonists arrived, they owed a debt of gratitude for the Indian trails, wrote Chester B. Price in his book, Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire.

“[T]hanks to the Indians, the early New Englanders inherited a vast network of trails which not only covered the New England states, but extended as far west as the Rocky Mountains,” Price wrote.

The Mohawk Trail and Kennebec Trail were two of the most famous Indian trails in New England. During the American Revolution, they were used for military maneuvers. Benedict Arnold followed both, the Kennebec Trail to his regret and the Mohawk Trail to his satisfaction – he captured Fort Ticonderoga at the end of it.

We identified six scenic driving routes that follow old Indian trails, at least one in each state. Some have been researched more thoroughly than others. If you know of scenic old Indian trails that can be driven today, please share them in the comments section.

The Old Connecticut Path

The Oliver Ellsworth House lies near one of Connecticut’s Indian trails.

The Old Connecticut Path was one of the most important Indian trails, stretching from Massachusetts Bay to the Connecticut River. In the early 1630s Nipmuck Indians loaded their surplus corn onto birch-bark backpacks and walked from the Connecticut River to Massachusetts Bay. There they traded their corn for copper and iron goods and woolen cloth.

John Oldham, whose death started the Pequot War, followed the Old Connecticut Path to explore the continent’s interior in 1633.

In 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker spent two weeks on the Old Connecticut Path with his followers to Hartford.

The Rev. John Wareham also led his congregation along the Old Connecticut Path to Windsor, Conn. John Adams followed that route from Tolland to Windsor in 1771. “Today I rode through paradise,” Adams wrote.

There is no consensus the exact location of the Old Connecticut Path from beginning to end, though genealogical researchers are working on it.

They concluded Adams took a part of the path that goes from the Tolland Green Historic District through the towns of Ellington, East Windsor and South Windsor. Then he went on to the Palisado Green in Windsor.

Generally, the Old Connecticut Path went through Massachusetts heading west along the Charles River in Cambridge, curved south in Wayland through Framingham, to Webster and to Lake Chaubunagungamaug. In Connecticut it continued to Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor.

Today you can download apps that guide driving tours along parts of the Old Connecticut Path in Northeast Connecticut. You can follow John Adams’ route, or you can take other routes that go from Webster, Mass., to Tolland or Woodstock in Connecticut. Another Connecticut route goes from Woodstock to the Willimantic River. (Click here for more information about driving tours.)

Waldoboro Mast Trail (Route 220)

Downtown Waldoboro, which hasn’t changed much since this postcard was published, lies at the end of one of Maine’s old Indian trails.

Maine’s Indians used a vast network of canoe trails to get around, and to reach them they used a series of Indian trails from the interior to the coast. Carrying places, or portages, gave Maine tribes mobility throughout the region. It also let them trade extensively with each other and later with Europeans.

Indian paths from inland Maine to the coast also gave the Native Americans access to fur, birch bark and moose hide. One such path is known as the Waldoboro Mast Trail, which now follows Route 220 from Montville to Waldoboro. It was the most direct route from Lake St. George to the shellfish beds of the seacoast.

Wawenoc Indian families migrated along the path from the seasonal hunting camp to the seasonal fishing camp. They hunted for moose and beaver in the winter and brought their fur as trade goods to the coast using snowshoes, sledges and toboggans.

English settlers found the trail a convenient route to carry masts and spars for hundreds of the King’s ships built in Waldoboro.

Today Route 220 winds through rural Maine from Montville, which has several historic properties and the Frye Mountain Wildlife Management Area. It passes through the scenic towns of Liberty, home of Lake George and the Davistown Museum, and Washington. Travelers know Waldoboro for its commercial clutter on Route 1, which includes the popular eatery Moody’s Diner. The town itself has five nature preserves, a traditional downtown and eight sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a map of Route 220, click here.

Mohawk Trail

The Mohawk Trail.

The Mohawk Trail, one of the most famous Indian trails, today is one of the most beautiful drives in Massachusetts. Originally a trade route, it connected the Atlantic Indian tribes with the Iroquois tribes in Upstate New York and Canada.

The trail became a warpath when Mohawk war parties traveled it to destroy Pocumtuck settlements. Metacomet, or King Philip, took the Mohawk trail in 1676 to try to enlist the Mohawks in his cause (he failed). Benedict Arnold then took the Mohawk Trail on his way to capture Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1914, the Massachusetts General Court declared the 63-mile Mohawk Trail a scenic tourist route – the first in the United States.

Today Routes 2 and 2A follow the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts from Athol to Williamstown. Boosters claim 100 scenic and culture attractions, including the Hail to the Sunrise statue, the Bridge of Flowers, a natural bridge, glacial potholes, pre-revolutionary homes in Old Deerfield, old growth forests and views of the Berkshire and Taconic Mountains.

Highway markers designate the trail. Click here for Mohawk Trail driving tours.

Winnicoek Trail

A seaside estate at Little Boar’s Head along one of New Hampshire’s many old Indian trails.

The Winnicoek Trail ran along the coast from the Merrimack River in Massachusetts through Winnicoek, now Hampton, and along the seashore to the Piscataqua River at Strawbery Banke, now Portsmouth.

The Pennacook and Abenaki Indians migrated along the path in the summer to what is now Odiorne Point. It’s a wooded park along the shoreline with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Town of New Castle.

When the English colonists arrived in 1635, they used the Winnicoek Trail as a bridle path. Today it’s scenic Route 1A, also known as Ocean Boulevard, running along New Hampshire’s 18-mile shoreline.

Ocean Boulevard passes the wide, sandy beaches in Salisbury, Mass., and Hampton, N.H., then climbs a rocky promontory. Seaside estates begin at the Little Boar’s Head historic district and continue through Rye. Take a detour along Route 1B to wind through the quaint town of New Castle and past the grand old Wentworth-By-The-Sea Hotel. Route 1A finally ends in Portsmouth, a historic seaside city with many fine restaurants and Federal style homes.

Click here for a map of Route 1A.

Pequot Path

Route 1A turns into Ocean Road and the Narragansett Pier.

For hundreds of years, Narragansett and Pequot Indians traveled along the Pequot Path. It ran about 69 miles near the mainland shore from Providence to New London, Conn.

In 1636, Roger Williams took the Pequot path through Apponaug (Warwick) on his journey from Providence to the trading post at Cocumscussoc (near Wickford). “It is admirable to see what paths their naked hardened feet have made in the wilderness in the most stony and rockie places,” he wrote. Williams probably saw a dozen Narragansett villages along 20 miles of the path.

English settlers began using the Pequot Path until it evolved into the lower part of the Boston Post Road. Today, parts of scenic Route 1A (not to be confused with US Route 1A) follow the old Pequot path along the South Coast.

Scenic Route 1A follows the shore from Wickford to Narragansett, past the John H. Chafee Nature Preserve, a good spot to get out and walk to Narragansett Bay. Or, take a detour to the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace. The road passes large, exclusive homes, with views of the bay and the historic Casey Farm. FInally it feeds into Ocean Road past Town Beach to Narragansett Pier.

Click here to see how the Lower Post Road follows existing roads in Rhode Island.

Route 22A

Vergennes, a city that grew up along one of Vermont’s Indian trails.

Route 22A through the Lake Champlain Valley in Vermont was once part of a network of well-worn Indian trails linking villages and other overland trail networks. The western Abenakis of Vermont also used waterways such as the Connecticut River and Lakes Champlain and Memphremagog.

The St. Francis Indians came down from Canada along the trail by Lake Champlain to find warmer fishing grounds. The trail finally stretched to the Bronx, N.Y., where it became known as ‘the road to Bedford and Vermont.’ Today Vermont Route 22A is a continuation of New York Route 22A and a scenic drive in foliage season.

Route 22A goes from Ferrisburgh to historic Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. It then runs through Addison, Bridport, Shoreham, Orwell and Fair Haven on the New York border. Along the way lie the Chimney Point State Historic Site, dairy farms, rolling hills, white church steeples, and country inns.

Images: Old County Jail and Museum, Tolland, Conn. By Photograph by Greg O’Beirne – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1391441; Hail to the Sunrise, By This mediaToddC4176 (talk)Original workJoseph Pollia, 1893-1954. – self-made, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36285807; Bridge of Flowers By FFM784 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61250392; https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594; Little Boar’s Head By Teemu08 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1798424; Narragansett Pier By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594.

This story about New England Indian trails was updated in 2022.

5 comments 1.4k views

Champ, the Lake Champlain Lake Monster

Champ, North America’s answer to the Loch Ness monster, has long been a legend around Lake Champlain. He (or she) has spawned Indian legends, a baseball team mascot, offers of reward money, paranormal investigations, keychains, mugs and T-shirts . Champ has even inspired seafood patties on sesame-seed buns called “Champburgers.”

Artistic representation of Sandra Mansi's 1977 photograph of "Champ" monster. Illustration by Benjamin Radford.

Artistic representation of Sandra Mansi’s 1977 photograph of “Champ.” Illustration by Benjamin Radford.

More than 300 sightings have been reported over the years, and they’ve attracted the attention of serious people. In 1827, the eminent Yale scientist Benjamin Silliman said he was open to the possibility that a lake monster existed.

P.T. Barnum recognized the commercial potential of Champ. In 1873 and 1887, he offered the enormous sum of $20,000 to anyone who could capture the monster dead or alive.

But Barnum never had to pay up, and Silliman never had to put his reputation on the line. Though many believe in Champ’s existence, it’s unlikely the lake monster exists outside of the collective imagination.

Notes on Champ

Before the Europeans arrived, the Iroquois and Abenaki Indians described a lake monster that lurked in lakes and eats humans. The Abenaki called it Tatoskok or Gitaskog.

Samuel de Champlain was said to have seen Champ in 1609, but that story came from a made-up quote in Vermont Life magazine in 1970.

Lake Champlain

There was an early sighting in 1819, when a captain aboard a scow near Port Henry, N.Y., saw a ‘black monster’ in the water. He thought it was more than 180 feet long and had eyes like peeled onions.

Then in 1870, steamboat passengers said they saw Champ. That led to more sightings by steamboat passengers. In 1871, they said they saw a head and long neck in Horseshoe Bay. Two years later, steamboat passengers spotted Champ in Dresden, N.Y.

Sightings then continued into the 20^th century. In 1945, passengers aboard the SS Ticonderoga saw Champ swimming in the middle of the lake.

What Could It Be?

Some think Champ, like the Loch Ness monster, is a relative of the plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile. It had a small head, long neck, turtle-like body, short tail and two pairs of paddles.

Others think it could be a zeuglodon (or Basilosaurus), an extinct prehistoric whale. Champ’s ancestors may have lurked in the Iapetus Ocean 500 million years before the Atlantic Ocean was formed.

In 1977, a woman named Sandra Mansi took a photo verified as authentic of something. It looked very much like Champ. A professional debunker named Joe Nickell pointed out the photo was taken of something in 14 feet of water, unlikely to contain a giant lake monster.

Champ mascot

In 2005, two upstate New York fishermen named Dick Affolter and his stepson Pete Bodette took a video of something strange in Lake Champlain. Bodette said, “What we saw always stayed right on the surface, and parts of it would come above the water, the back or the nose or the head.” The video only showed something under the surface, but it appeared on ABC News.

Joe Nickel had already investigated the monster’s existence in 2003. He concluded that Champ believers were arguing from ignorance. “We don’t know what these people saw; therefore, it must have been Champ,” he asid.

“One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge,” wrote Nickell. “And so, until an actual specimen presents itself, the possibility that any large, unknown animal inhabits Lake Champlain remains somewhere between extraordinarily slim and none.”

Images: Mansi image representation: By BRad06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43763274. Lake Champlain By Hbbrown18 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48446678. This story was updated in 2023.

10 comments 1.2k views

Newer Posts

Older Posts