In the early morning hours of May 10th, 1775, a guerilla force from the New Hampshire Grants area (present day Vermont) with a vainglorious co-leader crossed Lake Champlain into New York and took the British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga whilst they slept.

Three weeks after Lexington and Concord and on the very day that the Second Continental Congress was to meet in Philadelphia, Ethan Allen (with his brother, Ira, and his cousin, Seth Warner) led the "Green Mountain Boys" from Hands Cove on the eastern side of Lake Champlain to a landing point near Fort Ticonderoga. They had a fellow traveller who tried to assert his control over the party, but seeing him commanding only his own person at the time, the rough Green Mountain Boys decided to only allow the poppinjay to travel as co-leader. His name was Benedict Arnold.

At the time, Ethan Allen was wanted by the New York authorities for offenses committed in the New Hampshire Grants (Vermont) against New York settlers. The NH Grants area was claimed by three colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York) and would soon become an independent Republic in 1777 before joining the United States as the fourteenth. Allen and his Boys had responded to an approach from concerned citizens about the safety of the Lake Champlain corridor from British penetration. The fort at Ticonderoga, on the western shore of Lake Champlain, was the obvious place to secure against this type of incursion, so the band of mountaineers set sights on Hands Cove as a jumping off point. Benedict Arnold was from Rhode Island, late of Connecticut, but applied to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to secure the fort as well. Given permission, but no men, the ever confident Arnold set out for Hands Cove as well.

After meeting in Hands Cove, Arnold (Mass. Committee of Safety papers in hand) presented himself as the new leader of the New Hampshire grantsmen. One can imagine the chuckles the mountain men suppressed as they listened to the city boy make his claim. Whether Arnold convinced them to let him become co-leader or if they tolerated him like the village idiot who claims to be Napoleon, no one will know (yes, I know Napoleoon was 5 at the time, but the analogy still works). Either way, the future traitor was on the boat to Ticonderoga that morning.

After landing, the force quietly made their way up to the fort and overtook the only sentry. They then proceeded to enter the fort which was really nothing more than a fortified hamlet of 2 officers, 48 men and 24 women and children. Finding all of the fort asleep, Allen announced his presence and his authority and demanded surrender which was quickly forthcoming. Allen sent Warner further north up the lake to take the fort at Crown Point as well. Arnold, not to be outdone, went all the way to Canada to occupy Fort Saint Johns at the intersection of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. Perhaps, realising his invitation of a rout by British forces, Arnold thought twice and left the area. Allen took it anyway, but was run off soon thereafter.

As one can easily read, the action on 10 May 1775 was not really all that important tactically and its strategic importance geographically at the time was questionable. However, I have left out one important detail of strategic importance. Fort Ticonderoga, as frail as it was, housed a large cache of reasonably modern artillery consisting of 44 guns, 14 mortars and one howitzer. The infant Continental Army was woefully short of artillery and these pieces would begin to play a decisive role less than a year later at the Dorchester Heights above Boston when used to lay siege to the cooped up British Army and Navy.

As for the main players, Allen was later captured by the British in Quebec and sent to a Cornish prison. The British army were to run into Seth Warner and the Green Mountain Boys again near Bennington, Vermont in 1777 and lose again. Fort Ticonderoga was still to play a major role in the war as British General Burgoyne took it back in 1777 and used it as a base to attack further south in his disastrous New York campaign. As for Benedict Arnold... after a vain, but generally well-regarded stint as an American commander, he became the one name that all American school children learn when being taught about loyalty to the nation.

Motorcycle Ride Recommendation

Lake Champlain is really quite striking and it is easy to travel its length largely in eye-shot of it. Its importance to the founding wars of the USA cannot be understated.
Start at the Hands Cove Road in Vermont to see the launch area and go to the Larrabees Point ferry for a short ride across the lake with Fort Ticonderoga in view. Visit the Fort, then head north on NY Route 9N to Crown Point Historical Park and across the bridge into Vermont and the Chimney Point Historical Park. From there head north following Lake Champlain from the Vermont side and through the Grand Isle and Hero Islands, across the Canadian border into Quebec to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu (site of the former Fort St Johns). Google Map of the route.

Book Recommendation: The Glorious Cause from AbeBooks.com or Amazon.com

Map Recommendation: New York Atlas and Gazetteer 2006 from AbeBooks.com or Amazon.com

At the confluence of the Two Medicine and Cut Bank Rivers is where the Marias River begins and flows east for approximately 60 miles to Lake Elwell, then on for another 80 miles where it meets the Missouri River near Loma, Montana. Somewhere along this stretch of river (possibly here), there lies an ancient site where Major Eugene Baker of the U.S. Army took his mixed detachment from the 2nd US Cavalry and the 13th Infantry to surround an encampment of Piegan Indians on 22 January 1870. (See a picture of Baker and some of the 2d Cavalry officers in 1871, here) What happened next is clear, but why is not so clear.
The area had seen an altercation between two hotheads, one white, Malcolm Clarke, and one Indian, Owl Child. Clarke beat Owl Child, who he claimed had stole his horses. Owl Child retaliated by killing Clarke. As so happened in those days, this caused cries for the army to make sure another white was not killed by another Indian, so Baker was sent to teach the Indians a lesson. Baker's detachment left Fort Shaw on 15 January 1870 and rode north to find a group of Indians known as the Piegans. Baker found an encampment at a big bend on the Marias River and surrounded it in the winter's night of 22/23 January 1870. There is some debate as to whether Baker knew it was the camp he was looking for or another one.

On the morning of the massacre, Chief Heavy Runner tried to stop the attack by showing papers that he claimed gave him and his people clear passage in the area. Regardless, Baker issued the order to fire on the camp and many women, children and elderly were killed, the camp was burned and the survivors set afoot in the Montana winter without provisions.

Some said Baker knew that it as the wrong encampment, some said he didn't care, some said he was a drunken commander and didn't know what was happening. None of the PR options were good and the Army made it worse by ignoring, at the least, but probably covering up the massacre. As so often happens in these cases in the U.S. Army, a young soldier steps up where his superiors have fallen down and tells the truth. Lieutenant William Pease, acting as a Blackfoot agent, reported the massacre to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ely Samuel Parker. Parker, a Civil War veteran, confidante to U.S. Grant and an Iroquois Indian whose real name was Donehogawa, demanded a investigation, but the outcome was prevarication as the Army closed ranks with General Sherman saying he would prefer to believe his soldiers.

In the end, no official recognition of the massacre was forthcoming and only time has brought a gradual acceptance of the fact of this massacre. Author Dee Brown, in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, puts the casualties at 33 men, 90 women and 50 chldren. Best research on the topic seems to be by Stan Gibson. He and Jack Hayne are working on a book on the topic.

Books from Amazon.com

Motorcycle Ride

This is a long ride starting and ending at Browning, Montana at the Museum of the Plains Indians. The ride passes through the origin of the Marias and also runs about 5 miles north and parrallel to the Marias for a good while on the beautiful U.S. Highway 2.

Maps