Before Europeans arrived in the Lake George area, bringing with them trade and war, Native Americans traversed the lake in dugout and bark canoes. The Iroquois named the lake Andiatorocté, “The place where the mountains close in.” To the Mohicans, it was “The Lake of the shining waters.”[i]
Samuel Champlain’s exploration of North America in the early 1600s brought him to the Lake George area, but he never cast his eyes on its waters. “…having heard from the Indians of a lake of great size and beauty, in which were many fair islands,” wrote Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, “he (Champlain) joined a war party of Canadian Indians bent on attacking the Mohawks in their home on the river of that name.” The war party never made it to the “lake of great size and beauty” as the enemy met them on Lake Champlain. The European discovery of Lake George would not happen for another three decades with the arrival of Father Isaac Jogues.
[i] Lake George Historical Association, “Native American Presence Lake George,” 2017.
In May 1646, Jogues left Montreal for Mohawk territory, a journey that would bring him up Lake George. He left New France as an ambassador seeking to solidify a peace made between the French and the Mohawk.
This was not the Father’s first tour of Lake George. Four years earlier, he had been brought up the lake as a prisoner of the Mohawks. He remained a captive for nearly a year, enduring torture that left him with mangled fingers. The good Father escaped and returned to France, but was back in Canada to resume his missionary work in 1645.
On the eve of Corpus Christi, Feast of the Holy Sacrament, Isaac Jogues arrived at the head of Lake George bearing gifts for the Mohawk. He named the lake Lac du Saint Sacrement and it would carry that French name until William Johnson came along.
The French and British were embroiled in a battle over control of North America, and Lac du Saint Sacrement was a frontier separating the warring empires. In 1755, British General William Johnson arrived on the Southern Shore of the lake with an army of 1,500. Their mission was to drive back the French who were advancing on nearby Fort Edward. Johnson’s first act, upon arriving at the lake, was to strip it of its French name, claim it for England and rename it for his King, George II. The French and Indian War ended with British victory, and Lake George retained her English name. Not everyone approved.
James Fenimore Cooper, in his introduction to “The Last of the Mohicans,” noted that in centuries past, a tribe of Indians called ‘Les Horicans” lived in the area. Cooper made a case for renaming Lake George “Horican,” writing “…the French name of this lake was too complicated, the American too commonplace, and the Indian too unpronounceable…” Throughout Cooper’s classic novel, “Last of the Mohicans” hero Natty Bumpo called the lake by the author’s preferred name.
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Wasn’t Lake George named after King George lll who was married to Queen Charlotte? The dates for George lll ‘s reign are
the same as those of the American Revolution when the Americans fought against the British, so it would seem he would be
one and the same. I believe George’s father was King Frederick.
William Johnson named the lake in 1755 when George II was the reigning British monarch. George II died in September 1760 and was succeeded by his grandson, George III. And yes, George III was the King that had to deal with the feisty American colonists and the American Revolution.