Another Halloween has come and gone. We've had our dose of 'fun horror' for the year. Axe wielding, blood dripping fiends greet us on porches while ghosts, ghouls and skeletons haunt many lawns. All good for a brief "Yikes!" and then a good laugh. Not to spoil the party but I've put together a brief chronology of real horror that has occurred in and around Washington County. Read on, if you dare.
Let's start with a little bloodbath from up around Ticonderoga, just to the north. While the native Algonquin and Iroquois peoples had been fighting each other for years, it wasn't until Samuel de Champlain's Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain, published in 1613, that we have a written record. In it he describes a July 1609 battle where, armed with an arquebus, he and his native allies routed an Iroquois war party. Champlain legendarily dropped several of the enemy with a single shot.
Shaken by this novel display of firepower, the Iroquois fled the conflict but not before several unfortunate warriors were captured. Champlain describes in detail the horrors inflicted upon one poor individual: "...they tore out his nails and applied fire to the ends of his fingers and to his membrum virile." They scalped him and dripped hot gum on his head before piercing his arms and pulling out his sinews. After he was dead they dismembered and disemboweled him, finally cutting out his heart and making his fellow captives eat it. I trust nothing like that occurred in your neighborhood this past Halloween.
The next story isn't exactly a walk in the park even though it happened where Hudson Fall's lovely Juckett Park is today. In the time of the French and Indian Wars the trip from Fort Edward to William Henry at Lake George was a dangerous undertaking through dark pine woods. A young man named John Quackenboss had been recruited as a teamster to deliver a load of supplies to the northern outpost. Shortly after entering the dismal forest he and his guard of sixteen soldiers were ambushed and taken prisoner by a large band of hostile Indians. They were tightly bound, seated on a log and one by one dispatched with a tomahawk to the head. Quackenboss, who happened to be the last in line, closed his eyes waiting for the fatal blow when a squaw ran forward to stop the slaughter and claim him as her personal slave. He was then marched to Canada and forced to run the gauntlet, once again barely escaping with his life. After three years of captivity he was purchased from the Indians, eventually returning to this area to marry and live out his life in Cambridge. I guess you'd call his a horror story with a happy ending (at least for him, if not the others).
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As late as 1780 the Town of Kingsbury was hardly a safe place. That is when 'Carlton's Raiders', a large force of British, Indians and Tories, came down from Canada burning and pillaging every patriot home and business. A local boy named Oliver Graham was shot and wounded with the notorious Tory, Gil Harris shouting "Yes! Damn 'em! Kill them all!" Fortunately, little Oliver was able to run into the underbrush and make a miraculous escape.
Earlier, during the Colonial Wars, Schuylerville (then known as Saratoga) had seen its share of horrors. An historical marker just south of the village tells of several raids with grim outcomes. In November of 1745 the French commander Marin attacked the settlement burning the fort and all of the buildings while destroying cattle and provisions. Twelve villagers were killed and 109 taken prisoner. Among those killed was Philip Schuyler with reports that "barbarous savages...inhumanely rip(p)'d open his body and pul'd out his heart, and cut off his head."
Fort Saratoga was the scene of even more suffering than the sign alludes to. An outbreak of smallpox had left it undermanned and on February 22, 1747 12 soldiers were ambushed by 30 Indians killing four, capturing four and wounding several more. A short time later the French and Indians killed 8 English and wounded several more with a musket volley. Then in late June the French officer Luc de La Corne lead an ambush that left 15 killed and 48 captured. This is apparently the same raid the sign refers to with some discrepancy in the facts between various sources.
Israel Putnam is a name that appears often in tales of the French and English conflicts. He was a Ranger associated with Robert Rogers and often stationed at Fort Edward. In a 1758 battle with the French near Fort Ann Putnam was captured and tied to a tree while the fighting was going on all around him. Bullets tore into the tree and thru his clothing. An Indian threw a tomahawk at him and a Frenchman tried to shoot him point blank but his gun misfired. Eventually the French retreated with Putnam as prisoner. When they made camp near Crown Point the Indians tried to burn him alive but even that failed and he lived to fight another day. Talk about your horrible, no good days...
For some sense of the times consider this story regarding Robert Rogers: after raiding a native village he grabbed an Indian baby by the feet and swung his head against a tree trunk. When his own soldiers reacted in horror to the action he said, "I'm killing a nit so it won't become a louse. If I let him live, he may grow up to kill me."
Almost 20 years later, as Burgoyne's army advanced thru the the region during the Revolution, Fort Ann was once again the scene of bloodshed. On July 7, 1777 squatters living near present day South Bay Village rained bullets down upon the advancing British from the cliffs of Dog Heaven. As Red Coat reinforcements arrived on the Military Road most of the settlers were killed and their cabins burned.
The next day the Americans and Burgoyne's troops engaged in a fierce battle just north of the present day Village of Fort Ann. There were many casualties on both sides. American Colonel Van Rensselaer was wounded early and lay behind a log as the fighting raged around him, exhorting his men "Don't mind me , charge the enemy. Charge, I say Charge!" A Major Beach was shot at by an Indian with the bullet taking off one of his fingers and killing a man beside him. Beach then shot the Indian dead. Several weeks later, as the British marched south past the scene of the battle, Lieutenant William Digby wrote in his journal, "We saw many of their dead unburied since the action of the 9th, which caused a violent stench. One of (our) officers was then unburied and, from the smell, we could only cover him with leaves."
As Burgoyne's army advanced south towards Fort Edward two horrific events were unfolding. Near South Argyle a band of Indians lead by the fierce Le Loup massacred nine members of the Allen family including women and children as they gathered for their midday meal. The bloody scene of scalped bodies and bullet riddled cabin terrorized all in the sparsely settled area and the subsequent murder of Jane McCrea in Fort Edward only heightened fears. The fact that even noncombatants were at risk ignited a hatred of the British and their Indian allies that would lead to their undoing a few months later in the battles at Saratoga.
This grim litany of death and dismemberment could go on and on. I haven't even mentioned the many thousands who met violent ends at battles near Lake George, Ticonderoga, Hubbardton and Bennington. The suffering endured at these sites can become almost numbing when you consider that this was an era before anesthesia or antibiotics. Still, the personal Hell that some experienced in these places is what created the world we live in today. And we should never forget that there are fellow Americans enduring the horrors of war right now (while their Commander-in-Chief plays golf, builds ballrooms and naps).
To wrap things up let me tell you about an event that may seem insignificant compared to some of the previous tales but was the apocalypse for its victims. The year was 1801 and the location was the Kingsbury Swamp. This was roughly where Rt. 196 goes today, just east of Hudson Falls. Before the canal was built and surrounding land drained it was a much larger wet wilderness. It was also the home of a den of wolves whose depredations were a problem for area farmers. Their solution was a circle hunt where all the men of the community arranged themselves in a giant ring around the swamp and, heavily armed, began walking towards its center making a raucous din to drive all the animals ahead of them. As the circle closed tighter and tighter the wildlife had no place to go, no place to hide. Soon every rifle was firing in a thunderous cacophony until there was nothing left standing. After it was over they counted eleven dead wolves as well as hundreds of other animals. There is no record of how many hunters the mayhem claimed...
After all of that I'm wishing everyone a peaceful, serene Thanksgiving. At least everyone who isn't a turkey.
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