William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[323] warlike tribes, neither of whom was strong enough to drive the other from these woods and streams. Each fall the battle was renewed. Many a scalp was taken on the site now occupied by an Academy, many a war-dance held on the sward now covered by an Athenaeum. A poor attempt was made to plant the place, and several thrifty Scots built cabins near the ridge; but Indian hatchets made it difficult for even these tenacious strangers to maintain a foothold in the land.

Vermont was still a wild country when the Thirteen Colonies declared themselves independent. She was admitted to the Union under French impulses and French sentiments. Monsieur St. Jean was good enough to offer his name to the Scotch settlers on Sleeper's Creek. Now St. Jean is in France a common, not to say a rustic name, like Hodge in England, and the colonists, though anxious to pay a compliment to Monsieur St. Jean, proposed to alter his name so far as to call their place St. Johns; a form which looks poetic in English eyes, and drops sonorously from English lips. Monsieur was hurt. He loved America so well that he named his daughter Amerique.