History
The lake was named for the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who encountered it in 1609. While the ports of Burlington, Vermont; Port Henry, New York; and Plattsburgh, New York are little used nowadays except by small craft, ferries and lake cruise ships, they had substantial commercial and military importance in the 18th and 19th centuries.
There is conflicting information on Native American names for the lake. Many historical works give Caniaderi Guarunte as the Iroquois name for the lake (meaning: mouth or door of the country), because the waterway was an important northern gateway to their lands. A number of other sources give Petonbowk (meaning the lake in between) as the Algonquian Abenaki name for the lake. The St. Francis/Sokoki Abenaki Band, who make their home along the Masipskiwibi (Missisquoi, "Crooked River") River in northwestern Vermont call the lake Bitawbagok, the same meaning as Petonbowk. Some recent articles appeared during the Champlain Quadricentennial (2009) claiming Ondakina as the “local” native name for the lake, but none cites a verifiable source.
Read more about this topic: Lake Champlain
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—Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)