The early settlers of Vermont were a peculiar people; peculiar because the condition of things was so. For many years, the whole territory was the theater of wars, conducted with all those atrocities which have made the name of Indian a synonym for everything inhuman and cruel. When it ceased to be occupied by the aborigines, it became a thoroughfare, through which they passed, on their way to assail the settlements in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. At a still later period, it was the route by which the French and Indians went to commit their depredations on the frontiers. For these reasons, a residence in Vermont was long regarded as dangerous and.