A Native Crossing

For millennia, the Mohicans occupied this strategic crossing, using its intersecting waterways for trade and sustenance. The Hudson-Champlain corridor formed a near-continuous water passage from New York City to Quebec and to inland rivers and lakes, while tributary rivers flowing east and west provided access to New England and the Mohawk Valley of western New York. This waterway later became a major corridor for intertribal and European trade and warfare. Old Saratoga was originally occupied by the Mohicans, who took advantage of vast fisheries, abundant wildlife, and the transportation corridor. Archeological evidence indicates that local tribes had a strong trade economy extending back 1,500 years, with extensive trade routes that brought copper, tropical shells, exotic chert, and other materials from across North America. By the 1630s, the Mohicans had been driven from the Saratoga area by the Mohawks, their long-standing enemies. The Mohawks remained in their large defensive villages in the Mohawk Valley but used the Saratoga area to hunt and fish. Tensions among tribes escalated as the Mohawks and other members of the Iroquois Confederacy sought new hunting grounds to feed the European demand for beaver pelts. Iroquois expansion brought the tribes into direct conflict with the Wabanaki Confederacy in present-day Canada and northern New England. The Beaver Wars escalated further as war between Britain and France spilled into the New World, and by 1690 Saratoga was fortified by the British to guard this well-worn crossroads from French and Wabanaki raiders.

Northumberland, New York · United States