Native Origins of the Crown Point Road (Cavendish)

Drafted by Rich Holschuh, Elnu Abenaki Cultural Relations on June 2, 2021, by request of a conservation group in Cavendish (VT)

Abenaki people and their ancestors established and utilized a vast network of routes through Ndakinna, their homelands, connecting them with relatives, allies, subsistence sources, and trade partners. Many of these trails follow and connect waterways as the natural paths of travel, either on the water itself or paralleling it, with portages as practicable between watersheds, and crossings at passes over the heights of land. Two of the most often-traveled routes, between settlements in the Bitawbagok (Lake Champlain) basin and Kwenitegok (Connecticut River) valley, employed the Wnegigwtekw (Otter Creek) drainage on the west side of Askaskwiwajoak (Green Mountains) over passes to the Wantastekw (West River) or Mkazatekw (Black River), thence to Kwenitekw (Connecticut River).

Necessary for the regular conduct of subsistence, familial relations, trade, and diplomacy during times of peace, these trails were also used frequently during conflict, for resistance, raiding, reinforcement, and reconnaissance. Many settler captives followed these watery and mountainous paths with their Abenaki captors, on the return to more secure points north from Abenaki homelands, which run all the way down to encroachment by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One of the better known captivity narratives is that of Susannah Willard Johnson, with others, in 1754 – the early days of the last French & Indian (Seven Years) War - from the Fort at No. 4 (in present-day Charlestown, NH), directly opposite the mouth of the Black River. Her Abenaki captors marched their prisoners up the Mkazatekw route to Lake Champlain and their destination at Odanak in Quebec (the St. Francis mission), with Susannah giving birth to a daughter in Reading, just north of Cavendish, a little off the regular trail. There is a set of well-known, ancient stone markers at the location on Rt.106, near Knapp Brook.

The Crown Point Road was begun in 1759 under the orders of British Commander-in-Chief Lord Jeffrey Amherst, as a strategic cross-country route for supplies and troops in his campaign to defeat the French in Canada, connecting the forts at Crown Point on Lake Champlain and at No. 4 on the Connecticut River. The Black River-Otter Creek transit was chosen as a practical, established Native trail. The primary officer placed in charge of the task of marking and cutting the first rough version was Capt. John Stark, himself very familiar with Abenaki lifeways and knowledge systems, having been taken prisoner himself in 1752 while hunting and trapping on the Baker River in New Hampshire colony. He was conveyed to Odanak (St. Francis, QC), where he stayed until the following year, when he was ransomed back to New Hampshire. His familiarity with the landscape and the skills needed to traverse it successfully were put to good use in his troop’s accomplishments laying out the Road along the ancient path. Subsequent improvement work by Hawkes, Small, and Goffe, and, later, Revolutionary War amendments created various alternate side routes and branches.