courtesy photo
Some of these artifacts were recently discovered by a sugarmaker collecting sap is south Cabot.
CABOT – Artifacts taken from the 1759 raid on the Jesuit mission at the Indian settlement of St. Francis in Quebec, have been discovered in an undisclosed location in south Cabot. The location remains anonymous to prevent looting.
A human skeleton was also unearthed near the artifacts, with metal remnants indicating that the nearby plunder and human burial are related.
The sugarmaker who inadvertently discovered the plunder was collecting maple sap when he noticed the metal objects unearthed by the spring thaw.
Among the objects discovered in the soil was a broken, silver-lined heavy glass goblet. Other debris from the site include various metal pieces near the human remains, dating to slightly before the period of the raid.
All of the recovered articles are at the Vermont Division for Historical Preservation to be evaluated.
Investigation has revealed that, for many years there have been stories of missing treasure taken from the 1759 raid by Rogers’ Rangers.
After the raid during the French and Indian War, nine Rogers’ Rangers were lost, carrying silver religious objects from the mission church. Eight of the rangers died and the survivor did not bring any of the loot out with him. Historians have speculated it was presumably lost among the cliffs, ravines and timber along the rangers’ escape route. It is known that the rangers planned to escape down Lake Memphremagog and then use the Connecticut River to travel to Newbury, where supplies and rescue were available.
As they were hotly pursued by the St. Francis Indians after the raid, the rangers were unable to stop for food or rest, and they arrived at Newbury to find that the designated help was not there. They fashioned rafts, arriving at Fort No. 4 in Charlestown, N.H., starving and physically spent.
With the artifacts discovered in Cabot, the narrative of the rangers’ escape takes new form, as it seems that a part of the group separated at Lake Memphremagog and headed west, probably to more familiar territory around Lake Champlain. Perhaps they were seeking refuge at Port Henry, Ticonderoga or Port Kent in New York.
courtesy illustration
Rogers’ Rangers were a group of guerilla fighters who traveled the length of Vermont and New Hampshire during the French and Indian Wars.
The Rev. Jacques Monet, the director of the Jesuit archives in Toronto, said he could find no record of the missing artifacts, but it would have been common for them to be there. “They had benefactors in Europe who would send these things to the missions,” he said. He did find that 40 years of mission records were destroyed in the raid.
New York author Gary Zolby, who published a book, “A True Ranger: The Life and Many Wars of Major Robert Rogers,” said he found a letter in a New York newspaper that gives a rare firsthand account of the artifacts, particularly a small silver statue. “The people did bring away considerable plunder, but they drop’d them, or the greater Part before they arrived at Connecticut River,” said the letter in the New York Gazette in November 1759 by New Jersey Capt. Amos Ogden.
It was written from Fort No. 4 after the raid. “Tis also said, that one man brought off 1,700 guineas; and another a silver image of 10 lb. wt.”
In 1816 a farmer in Newport or nearby Quebec plowed up a pair of golden candlesticks, which were valued at the time at $1,000, histories say. In 1827 an incense vessel was found on the banks of the St. Francis River in Quebec. In the Vermont town of Lunenburg there’s a story that a 19th century resident with no apparent source of money built a house with treasure money. There’s a similar story about a barn in the town of Waterford. Rusted muskets, tomahawks, decaying uniforms and human remains, thought to be from the rangers, have been found throughout the region.
Rogers’ raid on St. Francis came during the French and Indian War of 1754-1763. A party of about 140 colonial soldiers and a handful of British regulars, under the command of Major Robert Rogers went up Lake Champlain and crossed the broad plains of the St. Lawrence Valley before attacking the Abenaki village of St. Francis near present day Pierreville, Quebec.
The raid was revenge for a series of Indian attacks into the colonies that first began in the late 1600s.
At dawn on Oct. 4, 1759, Rogers’ men attacked, catching by surprise the inhabitants of the village, many of whom had been celebrating late into the night.
Rogers initially ordered his men to spare the women and children, but when they saw more than 600 scalps of English settlers on poles throughout the village they were enraged and killed anyone they could find.
During the raid Rogers’ men stumbled across the Jesuit mission. They helped themselves to the gold and silver, including the replica of the seated Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus on her lap.
The legend of the attack goes that, as the rangers sacked the church a voice arose from the altar. Other reports say the words came from an old man. “The Great Spirit of the Abenakis will scatter darkness in the path of the accursed Pale-Faces,” the voice said, according to a 1952 Vermont Life magazine story, “Hunger walks before and death strikes their trail.”
Some histories say that rather than filling their knapsacks with food for the return journey, as Rogers had ordered, the rangers packed them with booty from the church.
Rogers’ initial plan had been to return to Lake Champlain and sail back south in boats that he had left in Missisquoi Bay. But the French discovered the boats and destroyed them.
His second option was to go up the St. Francis River to Lake Memphremagog and then cross what is now northeastern Vermont to the Connecticut River where it would be a relatively short distance to Fort No. 4. During the retreat, the rangers were pursued by the French and their Indian allies.
Near Lake Memphremagog Rogers broke up his group into smaller parties. This is where one group heading west to Lake Champlain parted from the other rangers.
The weight of the treasure slowed them and they began to go hungry.
Then, as winter approached, suffer from the cold. About 55 of the men who attacked St. Francis never returned. A few died in combat. Most died of exposure or hunger.
The first treasure reports started surfacing around the Quebec city of Sherbrooke, about 45 miles north of the border.
Some of the loot was in a knapsack carried by Sgt. Benjamin Bradley of Concord.
Bradley and eight other soldiers reached the Connecticut River but did not find the promised supplies. An Indian guide led them through what is now Lancaster and up the Israel River.
Bradley and his soldiers, now near starvation and desperate, found that the river offered a relatively easy route for the first 20 or so miles, but then it collided with the mountains.
The story goes that the Indian guide died. Bradley then died after being poisoned by a scratch from a rattlesnake fang.
A 1952 Vermont Life story says the surviving members of Bradley’s party then buried Bradley and the artifacts. One by one the remaining members of the party died. Only one ranger in Bradley’s party survived, Duke Jacob. He collapsed in the Jobildunk Ravine in what is now Benton where he was found by a hunter and nursed back to health.
Atkins is a staff member at The Hardwick Gazette
