Vermont: A Study of Independence

Champlain, in the account of his voyage made in July, 1609, up the lake to which he gave his name, mentions almost incidentally that, continuing our route along the west side of the lake, contemplating the country, I saw on the east side very high mountains capped with snow. I asked the Indians if those parts were inhabited. They answered me yes, and that they were Iroquois, and there were in those parts beautiful valleys, and fields fertile in corn as good as any I had ever eaten in the country, with an infinitude of other fruits, and that the lake extended close to the mountains, which were, according to my judgment, fifteen leagues from us.
It was doubtless then that the eyes of white men first beheld the lofty landmarks and western bounds of what is now Vermont. If the wise and brave explorer gave more thought to the region than is indicated in this brief mention of it, perhaps it was to forecast a future wherein those fertile valleys, wrested by his people from the savagery of the wilderness and the heathen, should be made to blossom like the rose, while the church, of which he was so devout a son that he had said the salvation of one soul was of more value than the conquest of an empire, should here build its altars, and gather to itself a harvest richer by far than any earthly garner. But this was not to be. His people were never to gain more than a brief and unsubstantial foothold in this land of promise. The hereditary enemies of his nation were to sow and reap where France had only struck a furrow, and were to implant a religion as abhorrent to him as paganism, and a form of government that would have seemed to him as evil as impracticable, and he was only a pioneer on the warpath of the nations.
A fact affording some proof that the Iroquois abandoned it very long ago is, that not one stream, lake, mountain, or other landmark within the limits of Vermont now bears an Iroquois name. Of all the Indian names that have been preserved, every one is Waubanakee; and though many of them are euphonious, and those least so far better than our commonplace and vulgar nomenclature, none of them have the poetic significance of those so frequently bestowed by the Iroquois on mountain, lake, rock, and river.