The Battlefields

The Adirondack Mountains, bounded by the valley of Lake Champlain to the east, the Mohawk River Valley to the south, the shores of Lake Ontario to the west, and the St. Lawrence to the north, were the theater of war for the Company of Select Marksmen and the Canada Indian Department from the spring of 1776 to the end of the war.

In early 1776, the St. Lawrence provided the American army with a highway to Quebec; and then a route along which to retreat, pursued by Carleton’s little army. Later the direction of the war would switch to the valley of Lake Champlain, where Lt. Alexander Fraser would seize an American batteau in August of 1776; in October of that year, Arnold would risk a naval engagement at Valcour Island to buy time. In the summer of 1777, General Burgoyne’s considerable army would sail uncontested down the lake, seize Ticonderoga, disperse a much larger American army in successive defeats at Hubbardton, Skenesborough and Ft. Ann by land and water—and then fail to win a conclusive victory. In the campaign on the upper Hudson River in September and October, Burgoyne would win another major victory and draw a second battle—and surrender at Saratoga.

Throughout the rest of the war, British, Loyalist, and First Nations parties serving the King would use the waterways of the Champlain Valley and the dense wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains to raid the rebel breadbasket in the Mohawk Valley—an area that had fallen into the clutches of “Committees of Safety” who burned and looted neighbors from greed, not patriotism; who convicted without trial, attacked without mercy, taxed without representation, and destroyed without remorse, in the name of the Congress of the United States. First Nations parties went to avenge a century of slights; Loyalists to rescue their kin from oppression and tyranny; Regulars because they were ordered. By the end of the campaign, the Mohawk Valley was depopulated, its forts burned, its towns ruined. Neither side could claim a victory there.

Continue here...