Picture the continent at the opening of the culminating phases of the Old French War in 1740-1760. For nearly two centuries military and civil officials, missionaries and traders had been passing to and fro on the Ottawa, St. Lawrence, and Richelieu, through Canada, Illinois, and Louisiana, erecting forts and establishing chapels and trading stations. Little by little the English settlements had crept back into the interior. Ten score of portage paths had been traversed; forts and blockhouses had been built, captured, burned, and rebuilt. Flying parties of French had swooped down into New York, and English and Dutch had chased them back. Both sides had become more and more acquainted with the geography of the continent, and now, when war was about to begin in earnest, both antagonists leaped forward quickly to seize for once and all the vital spots in the “communications” in the neutral ground between them, where the vanguards had been bickering and fighting for at least a century.
The Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson had offered the founders of Quebec and Montreal the most direct course to the New England settlements. They had learned it well in their campaigns against the Iroquois. The keys of this route were the portage paths between the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu in the north; and the portages between Lakes Champlain and George, and Lake George and the Hudson River in the south. As early as 1664 Jacques de Chambly erected a fort at the foot of the rapids, at Chambly on the Richelieu, at the end of the thirteen-mile portage from La Prarie three miles above Montreal on the St. Lawrence. Two other forts, Fort St. Louis and Fort Sainte Terese, also guarded the Richelieu River; and at its head, at the foot of Lake Champlain, stood Fort Richelieu.
Later a portage path fifteen miles in length was built from La Prarie (Laprairie) to Fort John (St. Johns), below the “Island of St. Therese.” Ascending Lake Champlain the French quickly perceived the strategic positions of Crown Point and “Carillon”—at the end of the portage from Lake George—where they erected Fort Crown Point in 1727, and Fort Frederick (Ticonderoga) in 1731.
The English on the other hand ascended the Hudson from Albany, and built Fort Ingoldesby at Stillwater in 1709, and Fort Nicholson at Fort Edward in the same year. At the Wood Creek end of the portage another fort was built first named Fort Schuyler, later named Fort Anne. Fort Edward and Fort William Henry were built in 1755.
This chain of forts from Albany to Montreal, guarding the important passageways on land and water, marks the line of what was known as “the Grand Pass from New York to Montreal.” The last struggle for this line of communication, Johnson’s rebuke to the advancing Dieskau, Abercrombie’s stroke at Fort Ticonderoga, the brilliant Montcalm’s capture of Fort William Henry, and, finally, the wresting of the Champlain Valley from the French by the hitherto defeated English, forms a unique romance which finds its key of action at the portage paths which united the Hudson, Lake George, and Lake Champlain.
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[Showing important portages between the St. Lawrence and New England rivers]
(From the original in the British Museum)
There were other routes into New England, known of old, on which the French had spread terror throughout the North Atlantic slope. They came up the Chaudière and down the Kennebec into Massachusetts’ “Province of Main.” Early in the French and Indian wars Massachusetts began another series of campaigns, to secure again and once for all the Kennebec Valley, building Forts Halifax (1754) and Western (1752) at the head of navigation. At the northern end of the portage between the Kennebec and “Rivière Puante,” on the Morris map of 1749, here presented, we find the Indian village Wanaucok still described as a nest of “Indians in the French interest.” These allies of the French around the highland portages explain the need of English forts on the Kennebec. The forts of the Connecticut River were largely necessitated by the routes of travel between the heads of its tributaries and the “Rivière St. Francis” and “Otter River.” On the Morris map we read “Indians of St. Francis in league with the French.” The mouth of Otter Creek was near Fort Ticonderoga, and it offered, with a portage to the Connecticut, another route of French aggression. “From this Fort the French make their excursions,” reads the interesting Morris map, “and have this war [1745 seq.] burnt and destroy’d two Forts (Saratoga and Fort Massachusets) and broke up upwards of 30 Settlements.”