Three Rivers
Hudson~Mohawk~Schoharie
History From America's Most Famous Valleys

The Life and Adventures
of Nat Foster,
Trapper and Hunter of the Adirondacks
by A. L. Byron-Curtiss
Utica, N. Y.
Press of Thomas J. Griffiths,
131 Genesee Street, 1897

Chapter I

Nathaniel Foster, the hero of this book, was of New England stock. His father, whose name was Nathaniel, was born in Rhode Island, and some time after the close of the French and Indian war, married, and with his young wife, emigrated to Hinsdale, New Hampshire. At the time of his settlement at Hinsdale, it was in the strictest sense a pioneer town, situated near the mouth of the Ashuelat River, and hard by the Connecticut.

Its territory, except the few acres cleared by the settlers, was covered by virgin forests. Almost all the inhabitants lived in the most primitive manner possible to civilized people. Log houses on squatters' farms formed the bulk of the little hamlet. A few sheep and cows, a yoke of oxen, and possibly a horse, was owned by those settlers who had been a few years at the place. Upon a few acres of land cleared by earnest toil, was raised Indian corn and Irish potatoes. These formed the staple articles of their vegetable diet. The woods, abounding with game, supplied them with meat.

Mr. Foster, having selected a favorable site for his new house some two miles from the settlement proper, proceeded first to erect his log house, and then attacked the forest. In a couple of years he had a number of acres cleared, and under cultivation. The second year of his settlement, the birth of a son gladdened the hearts of the young couple. Elisha, the oldest of the family, and next to Nathaniel, being born in 1764.

Moose and deer were plentiful, while the gray wolf and the panther made the nights hideous by their howls and screams. Black bears were numerous. Mr. Foster, being a crack shot, kept his larder well supplied with wild meats, while the pelts of the fur-bearing animal took the place of ordinary bedding and blankets. For being tanned with the hair on they furnished warm robes for protection from the icy cold of the New England winters. The meat of the deer, moose and black bear was corned,smoked, and dried. A great deal of the wild game of the woods was of course a source of annoyance to the settlers, in their attempts to raise domestic animals. Often after a settler had, by several seasons' patient breeding, obtained quite a flock of sheep, or a number of cows; or from one sow had obtained a promising letter of shoats, his plans and calculations were upset by some nocturnal visitor from the woods gaining access to the sheep fold or pigsty; and slaughtering one or more of the animals, before the owner could become aware of what was going on, and rising from his bed, go forth, gun in hand, to drive the intruder away.

Even in the daytime some wild animals attacked the domestic ones, if they wandered far into the woods. The pigs were never permitted to go into the woods in the fall to root for acorns, without being accompanied by a man with a gun, to shoot any bear which might wish to change its diet from wild berries to fresh pork.

The New England Colonies early began offering bounties for the slaughter of these wild animals, and the pine-tree shilling was a welcome reward to the struggling frontiersmen, in their contest with the wild beasts of the wilderness they were trying to subdue.

The wild animals were not so great a source of danger to the settlers' flocks of domestic ones, however, as the Indians, the latter really being their greatest enemies in this respect. There were still roving bands of these aborigines, not yet inclined to succumb to the advancements of the pale face. These would approach the settlements to steal, sometimes even bold enough at that late day, to sack and burn the dwellings, and murder and scalp the inmates. Just before the outbreak of the war of the Revolution, a small hamlet a few miles from Hinsdale was destroyed in this way.

As the colonial spirit of independence increased, these depredations on the part of the Indians grew more frequent and bold. But one noticeable feature connected with all Indian raids was, that it was always the patriot families whose stock was stolen, while the Tories' property would remain undisturbed; so that they were soon suspect of exciting the Indians to their nefarious business by gifts of rum and tobacco.

Conspicuous among the Tory families at Hinsdale at this time was one by the name of Wilson. William Wilson was a prominent man in the village, which by this time had gotten to be quite a town. He held a lucrative position for those days, under the service of the Crown, and was the stamp agent under the famous Stamp Act. Hence he was a marked loyalist. He lived very comfortably in the only frame dwelling in the hamlet, kept a couple of servants, and sent his only child, a daughter, to school in Boston. He had a great many doings with the Indians under the guise of a trader, and was thoroughly suspected by the patriots of being one of the chief ones who encouraged the Indians in plundering and stealing from the patriotic settlers on the frontier. So numerous and bold had the Indians become, that Mr. Foster, in less than a year, had all of his cows stolen, and a flock of thirty sheep reduced to six. One day, during his absence from home, their only remaining pig, a sow, was stolen.

Upon his discovery and report of the loss, his Tory neighbors offered as an explanation that a wild animal had taken it; but he scouted this idea, and declared that it was mighty funny that a panther or would would steal a pig from its sty in broad daylight. "No," said he, "it was none of your four legged varmints that done it. I reckon it was them two legged ones you're a settin' on us."

The suffering patriots could not shoot their Tory neighbors, but it is needless to say that they dealt with the Indians in the same manner as they dealt with the wild animals that stole from their flocks. They shot them.

Under such circumstances, and at such times as these, was Nathaniel Foster, Jr., born, on the 30th day of June, 1766, nine years prior to the outbreak of the war for Independence. And as we read of the hardy days of his boyhood, and the struggle of his family for existence, intensified by the depredations of Indians, his own young life environed by influences of the woods, we do not wonder at his remarkable career as a hunter and trapper, and the hardiness he displayed in following that pursuit. Nor can we wonder at the indifference he sometimes displayed in making away with such Indians as were unfortunate enough to imagine that they could cross him in the following of his chosen calling in the Adirondack Mountains.

The elder Nathaniel, being an ardent patriot, was a leader in holding meetings in the township, in the interest of liberty. When Nathaniel, Jr., was scarcely seven years old, he and his brother Elisha asked their father to take them to one of these meetings. At first he demurred, but finally yielded to their importunities, and took them along with him; with considerable grumbling, however, saying they would only be "under foot and in his way." At this meeting, Mr. Foster made a rousing speech, following the popular and usual strain of the time of "give me liberty, or give me death." In closing he exclaimed impressively, "I am ready now to go and fight the crown." Young Nat, who with his brother occupied a back seat, had listened with open mouth (and ears) to his father's flow of patriotic and revolutionary expressions, and seemed to have caught the spirit of the occasion; for as his father uttered the above words, he piped up from his seat in the corner, in a shrill but defiant little voice, "Yes, dad, you go, and Lish and me'll stay home and shoot Injuns." This childish expression of patriotism and defiance of the crown was greeted with exclamations of delight from the hardy pioneers present. Nat was brought from his seat in the corner, greeted with three hearty cheers from their lusty lungs, and the meeting dispersed.

Less than two years passed ere his father did go to "fight the crown," and Elisha and Nat were left at home to "shoot Injuns." But not to shoot Indians only; but also to participate in, and share the hardships and privations which the patriotic families of those times were called upon to endure, while the heads of the families were away "fighting the crown," and gaining for us that priceless heritage of liberty, which we all enjoy, but do not appreciate one half or one quarter as much as we should.

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