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Neighborhood Fist Fights
Weren't Invented Recently
...For centuries, two
great Indian nations, calling
the lake their own, were mortal
enemies
A fashionable
Algonquin Indian couple, as
drawn by a member of Samuel de
Champlain's expedition in 1613.
Lake Champlain has been home
to humanity for 8000 years.
Archeologists keep digging up
the remains of a village here, a
jawbone there.
But in the centuries just
prior to its "discovery" by
Samuel de Champlain in 1609, the
lake had become a bitter
boundary line between two great
Indian nations. On the West
bank, were the Iroquois and on
the East, the Algonquins. Each
nation claimed the lake in the
name of their ancestors, and
anyone caught on those waters by
an opposing war canoe, was in
for some serious stress.
Naturally, the islands (that
is, our islands) in the
middle fell under the same
dispute. So fiercely were they
contested, that an early
Catholic priest referred to them
as a "highway of war parties".
There was one matter however,
that these warring tribes
readily agreed upon...neither
had any affection for early
white settlers. Recently, there
has been a tendency for
politically correct American
historians to re-write the
unpleasant portions of its
Indian history. We've been given
a new picture...of
noble, peace-loving forest
dwellers, sitting round the
campfires, sewing beads on their
moccasins and singing peace
songs.
Hardly! Noble they were.
Magnificent they were. Peace
loving, they were not. Not
amongst themselves, their Indian
enemies or their white enemies.
The first-person accounts of
savage attacks by the Indians
are chilling. Those settlers who
chose to leave the safer, but
more expensive regions of
Boston, Montreal and
Philadelphia to farm by the
lake's edge did so at
considerable peril. In the first
century of settlement, the
Indians dominated the area, and
most settlers felt lucky to
reach adulthood with their
scalps in place.
Although the balance of power
shifted towards the end of 18th
century, a small amount of that
tension still exists today. Lake
Champlain has always been big
enough, generous to provide for
many...yet it has been fought
over since its discovery by the
tribes of all colors!
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