As near as can
be ascertained, the very first white men who ever
entered the territory of the State of New York found
their way into the present county of Washington and
within the limits of that county was fought the first
combat on New York soil in which men of Caucasian blood
took part.
On the fourth day of July, 1609, Samuel Champlain,
the adventurous Frenchman who had founded the colony of
Canada, discovered and entered the lake which still
bears his name. He was accompanied by two
Frenchmen and by sixty Huron Indians, whose cause
he had espoused, and with whom he was on his way to
attack their ancient enemies, the Iroquois.
The little army occupied twenty-four canoes, and with
these they pushed on swiftly up the lake during the
fourth and fifth days of July. Being now arrived
in the vicinity of the locality where the Hurons
expected to find their foes, the former adopted especial
precautions, apparently with a view to surprise the
enemy. They paddled on during the whole night of
the fifth, but lay concealed on the shore all day of the
sixty. At dusk they again set forth, and at ten
o'clock at night discovered a war-party of Iroquois,
also in canoes, near the western shore of the lake.
The latter immediately went on shore, and with their
stone axes began to hew down trees for a fortification,
while Champlain and his Hurons remained on
the lake.
The location of the point of meeting is somewhat
doubtful but the weight of evidence is that it was in
what is now the town of Putnam, in the county of
Washington. It is true a map made to illustrate
Champlain's travels, but not drawn by him,
represents the meeting and subsequent conflict to have
taken place just north of Ticonderoga, but this is
contradicted by Champlain's own account, which
says that he saw the waterfall of Ticonderoga and the
outlet of Lake George. The time, too, that the
Indians spent on Lake Champlain, and the great length
which the narra[Page 11]
tor assigns it (one hundred and twenty-five to one
hundred and fifty miles), both go to show that the
invaders were brought to a halt considerably south,
rather than north, of Ticonderoga. At all events
it would not do to ignore so important an event, which
might have taken place in Washington county.
The Hurons remained on the lake, according to
Champlain's narrative, while the Iroquois
built their rude barricade of trees, the former keeping
their canoes alongside each other, and fastened to
poles, so that they could all fight together if they
should be attacked. When all was ready they sent
two canoes towards the shore, whose occupants hailed the
enemy and asked them if they wished to fight. The
latter promptly replied in the affirmative, but advised
a postponement of the conflict until daylight. The
Hurons agreed, and the remainder of the night was
spent by both parties in singing, dancing, and abusing
each other. In the latter amusement both parties
were great proficients.
“You Huron dogs are cowards,” the Iroquois
would shout from their barricade of logs; “how dare you
come against the Hedonosaunee? Have we not
whipped you often before?”
“We will show you Mingo squaws what we are,” the
Hurons would reply. “You have beaten us
sometimes when you had two to one, but you dare not
fight us man to man; and now we will whip you, even if
you have the most."
“The scalps of the Hurons hang thick in our
lodges; our squaws and children play with them every
day. Soon they will play with yours; you cannot
stand before our arms.”
“Oh, ho!” would scream an indiscreet Huron,
“your arms will be worthless before those which we have.
We have weapons you have never seen before. You
will fall before them as if the Great Spirit had
stricken you with his lightning.”
And thus with boasts and taunts, with shouts and
screams, with plentiful repetitions of the epithets
“dog,” “coward,” “slave,” and “squaw,” the summer night
passed swiftly away. At daylight on the seventh
Champlain's party went ashore, the French being clad in
light coats of mail and armed with arquebuses, while
their Huron allies were resplendent in war-paint
and feathers, and were equipped with bows, arrows, and
tomahawks; some of the latter being of stone and some of
iron, fashioned in the forges of France.
Seeing the apparent weakness of the invaders, the
Iroquois left their barricade, two hundred strong,
and advanced slowly in line toward the foe, their bows
and arrows in their hands, their faces hideously
painted, their heads adorned with crests of gaudy
feathers, and the bodies of at least a portion of them
protected with arrow-proof armor, made of strips of wood
fastened together with cotton thread. In front of
them marched three chiefs, whose rank was denoted by the
exceeding loftiness of their plumes, and the greater
hideousness (if that were possible) of their war-paint,
but who were in other respects attired and armed like
their followers. Champlain's French companions
and a few of the Hurons went into the bushes,
while the main body marched rapidly in line toward the
Iroquois, with their white leader. The
latter had loaded his arquebuse with four balls; the
chiefs of the enemy had been pointed out to him, and he
was expected to take the brunt of the fighting.
Suddenly the line of Hurons divided in the
middle, and the bold Frenchman, arquebuse in hand,
advanced into the view of the astonished Iroquois.
The latter halted, the chiefs clustered together, and
all gazed in wonder at the white face, dark beard,
flashing armor and curious weapons of their new foe.
The Huron line closed up in the rear, and
Champlain continued his onward course until he
stopped within thirty paces of the Iroquois
chiefs. Then, at length, the latter started from
their stupor and fitted their arrows to their bows,
determined to test the prowess of the strange intruders.
Seeing this movement, Champlain at once lifted
his arquebuse, aimed at one of the chiefs, and fired.
Not only the warrior at whom he aimed but one of the
other chiefs fell dead before the shot, and one of the
Iroquois in the rear was mortally wounded.
This was, so far as known, the first time that the
sound of firearms was heard within the present limits of
the State of New York; the first time that blood was
shed by a white man within those boundaries. Nay,
if we except the doubtful account of the entry of
Jean Verrazzani into the harbor of New York
city in 1523, Champlain and his companions were
the very first Europeans to set foot within the Empire
State. They were the pioneers of civilization,
though probably the Iroquois did not look on them in
that light.
The Hurons, when they saw the execution done by
their foreign champion, rent the skies with their
exultant yells, and sent volley after volley of arrows
among their foes. The latter were appalled by the
apparently supernatural flash and report, and the
fearful death of their leaders; but for a few moments
they kept their places and responded vigorously to the
arrows of the Hurons. Many were wounded on
both sides by these feeble weapons, but none were
killed. Ere Champlain could reload his arquebuse
one of his companions, who had crept up in the bushes,
fired another shot, and another of the Iroquois
warriors fell dead in his tracks. Then the braves
of the Hedonosaunee, who had triumphed over half
the native tribes of America, lost their courage in
presence of these incomprehensible disasters and fled
into the forest, the French and Hurons pursuing
them with shouts and yells, inflicting death upon
several of the fugitives and capturing ten or twelve
prisoners.
The wounded Iroquois were carried off by their
companions. Fifteen or sixteen of the Hurons
were also wounded by the arrows of their enemies; but
their injuries appear to have been very slight, for
Champlain says they were “promptly cured.”
After the victory the Hurons seized on the
abandoned provisions and arms of the Iroquois,
devoted three hours to singing, dancing, and feasting in
honor of their triumph, and then, in company with their
French friends, turned the prows of their canoes toward
their northern homes.
Such was the first meeting of the French and the
Iroquois. It reads more like murder than does
ordinary war. The taking part by the French in an
aggressive movement in which they had no concern, the
slaughter of the unsuspecting Iroquois with weapons to
them unknown and invincible, the needless destruction of
the frightened fugitives,
[Page 12]
all give to this exploit a character of peculiar and
revolting ruthlessness.
And most disastrous was it to the French. They
had made enemies of the most powerful native
confederation this side of Mexico. Attacks on both
sides soon deepened and fixed their hatred, and for a
hundred and fifty years the people of Canada, by the
sight of their blazing dwellings, by the shrieks of
their slaughtered women, by the sound of the savage
war-whoop, by the death-shots falling thick and fast
among their devoted soldiery, were taught to rue the
cruel rashness of the brilliant adventurer who devoted
the colony he had founded to the vengeance of the
Hedonosaunee. Nay, it is not improbable that
the power of the Iroquois, by retarding the
settlement of Canada, turned the scale between the
French and the English, and that the final expulsion of
the former power from this part of America was
indirectly due to the raid of Champlain into
Washington county in July, 1609.
- END OF CHAPTER II -
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