The commission appointed thereunder consisted of Governor George H. Prouty, chairman; Lynn M. Hays, of Burlington, secretary; Walter H. Crockett, of St. Albans; Rev. John M. Thomas, of Middlebury; Horace W. Bailey, of Rutland; W. J. Van Patten, of Burlington; Frank L. Fish, of Vergennes; Arthur L. Stone, of St. Johnsbury; and F. O. Beaupre, of Burlington.
The facts warranting federal appropriation are briefly set forth in the report of the New York and Vermont commissions, and in amplification thereof the following additional facts are respectfully submitted to the consideration of the President and the Congress of the United States:
Long before its discovery by Samuel Champlain, in July, 1609, Lake Champlain was the resort and battle ground of the savage Algonquin, Huron, and Iroquois nations who peopled its islands and circumjacent beautifully shaded and picturesque shores. It was a paradise for the aborigines, whose native customs and adventurous but precarious life were a startling revelation to such an explorer as Champlain, coming as he did from the refinements of French life of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Still he was hospitably received and escorted to and through the lake, then known as “Caniaderiguarunte,” which signifies the “gate of the country.” The lake was also known as “Mer des Iroquois,” and traversed by the warring Indian tribes, whose canoes formed picturesque flotillas in those early days on the blue waters of the lake.
Had Champlain been gifted with the poetic imagination of a Homer or a Virgil, he might have cast into an epic the story of his explorations and discoveries, which were quite as thrilling as those of the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid. Other poets have dwelt upon the beauties of this lake and have sung of the tragic events that have occurred on its waters.
The Champlain valley is one of the historic portions of the American Continent. Its Indian occupation was succeeded by that of the French, and in turn by the English. From its discovery in July, 1609, to the battle of Plattsburgh, in September, 1814, Lake Champlain was the thoroughfare of many expeditions and the scene of many sanguinary engagements. Noted French, British, and American officers visited it and stopped at its forts, from Ste. Anne on the north, founded at Isle La Motte in 1665, to St. Frédéric, founded in honor of the French secretary of foreign affairs, Frédéric Maurepas, by Marquis de Beauharnois, governor-general of Canada, at Crown Point in 1731, and Fort Carillon, founded at Ticonderoga in 1766, on the south.
The grants of some of its islands and adjacent shore lands under French seignories were the subject of a long controversy between the French and British Governments, challenging on the one side the consideration of such officials as Marquis de Beauharnois and others under Louis XV and Louis XVI, and on the other side such statesmen as Lord Dartmouth, Edmund Burke, and Sir Henry Moore under the British Crown. But few, if any, occupations were made under French seignorial grants, and the controversy finally ended after the Seven Years’ French and Indian war, which terminated with the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point by the British in 1759, and the later sovereign control by the Americans during the Revolution.
The Champlain valley was the scene of important military and one naval engagement during the Revolutionary war, and permission has been obtained from the War Department to raise from the waters of Lake Champlain the Royal Savage at Valcour Island, the flagship of Benedict Arnold during that engagement. The history of Ticonderoga and Macdonough’s victory at the battle of Plattsburgh, in September 1814, are of such national importance as to merit federal consideration during the forthcoming celebration of the discovery of the lake.
For two hundred years or longer the Champlain valley was the highway between Albany on the south and Quebec on the north, through which surged the tides of war and travel, until every prominent point and important island in the lake was marked by some notable event worthy of historic mention. The proposed celebration of the discovery of the lake will commemorate some of these important events. Sewall S. Cutting, D. D., in a poem read at the University of Vermont in 1877 thus describes some of these events. He says:
I shift my theme, nor yet shall wander far;
My song shall linger where my memories are.