Places: Mohawk Lower Castle and Fort Hunter

During much of frontier history, land acquisitions between Natives and Settlers were often fraught with tension or outright conflict.  Occasionally, though, transfers of land were made in a spirit of mutual cooperation.  Such was the basis on which Fort Hunter was built in 1711. 

The Beaver Wars of the 17th Century were brutal on Natives serving as auxiliaries to both French and English.  The Mohawk took the precaution of constructing larger villages with strong palisaded fortifications which the English took to calling castles.  We've dealt with Canajoharie, the Upper Castle, in a previous post.  That was located further up the Mohawk River on the south side.  Because Tionanderoga was located further down river, it was referred to as the Lower Castle.  Inhabitants of the Lower Castle and their English neighbors managed to get along.  The Mohawk granted the town of Albany 1,000 acres in the environments of the lower castle.  A couple named Jan Peters Mabee and his wife Anna Boorsboom Mabee also received a seizable grant in 1697 from a Sachem of the Mohawk Wolf clan.  The link might have been Anna, who was mixed-race and may have been related to the Sachem.  The Mabees set up their farm and started their family.

In 1710, another Wolf Clan Sachem whose title was Teyoninhokarawa journeyed to England with three other Native leaders to the court of Queen Anne.  Teyoninhokarawa had serious concerns on his mind and made some requests plain to the English Queen.  He feared the encroachment of French Settlers and Catholicism on Mohawk land and among the people.  He asked the Queen to build a fort to help protect his people, to build a chapel and to send Anglican missionaries to teach the people.  Anne was happy to oblige but had a request of her own.  German refugees from the Palatine (Rhine) area of Germany were coming to England, fleeing persecution in their own land.  Concerned that England might take in too many, Anne requested land from the Mohawk to resettle these people in North America.  Teyoninhokarawa agreed.

Coming back to America, there were certain logistics that had to be worked out.  The future site of Fort Hunter, located near the junction of Schoharie Creek with the Mohawk River, was on the Mabee land grant.  The Mabees agreed to swap out land further upriver.  The Palatine refugees were settled, and construction began on Fort Hunter and an Anglican chapel in 1712.  In addition to missionaries, the Queen sent a silver communion set for the chapel.  Fort Hunter enclosed the chapel, and proved to be a defense for the Mohawk and surrounding area during the French and Indian War and later during the American Revolutionary War.  The Mohawk built prosperous farms, sent their children to school and lived lives not that much different from their White neighbors.  Then the spirit of cooperation and neighborliness broke down forever. 

As we've seen, the Mohawk took the side of the British during the American Revolution and paid dearly.  Raids by militias supporting both sides, along with Native auxiliaries, ravaged the Mohawk River Valley.  Mohawk leader John Deseronto gathered over 150 of his people resident near Fort Hunter and fled to Canada.  It was none too soon.  The Sullivan-Clinton expedition of 1779-1780 lay waste to the Mohawk Valley and broke the back of Iroquois power in their ancient homeland forever.  Fort Hunter and the chapel fell into ruin.  Finally, in 1820, the fort and chapel were torn down to make way for construction of the Erie Canal.  Only the parsonage, which stood outside the fort, exists today.