Abenaki Scouts and the Bayley-Hazen Military Road: The Revolutionary War Service of Indian Joe and Captain John Vincent

The Revolutionary War Frontier and the Forgotten Abenaki Scouts of Newbury

History rarely hands us a neat ledger, but the muster roll drawn up on April 30, 1781, comes remarkably close. Preserved in local archives, this document captures a fragile military alliance on the upper Connecticut River, listing thirteen Abenaki men from the St. Francis tribe enlisted in Captain John Vincent’s Company of Indian Rangers. Among them was a figure history knows simply as Indian Joe, a scout whose service helped anchor the American frontier in Vermont during some of the Revolutionary War’s years.

Long before that 1781 muster, Joseph and Molly fled south following a raid, carving out a nomadic existence across the northern wilderness. According to historical accounts, they drifted through Derby, Cabot, Morristown, and Peacham before finally settling along the Connecticut River in Newbury, Vermont, directly across from Haverhill, New Hampshire. They were not alone. As early as 1765, colonial reports noted growing indigenous populations around Guildhall, Vermont, establishing a resilient community of Abenaki families hunting and camping across the upper Coös territory.

Mapping the Wilderness and the Unfinished Bayley-Hazen Road

When the Continental Army looked north toward Canada, they needed guides who knew every fold of the terrain. Enter Joseph, hailed in period documents as a famous scout who served under General Jacob Bayley. Bayley was tasked with mapping and building the Bayley-Hazen Military Road, a supply artery designed to connect the Connecticut River Valley with St. John’s, Quebec. General George Washington intended to use the route for an invasion of Canada that ultimately never materialized.

Construction began in 1775 under Bayley, stalled, and resumed in 1779 under General Moses Hazen and Colonel Timothy Bedel. The road remained unfinished, serving the peculiar irony of being used more by British raiding parties than by Continental forces. Yet the indigenous scouts who knew the land between Coös and Canada remained invaluable. In December 1776, General Bayley urged the New Hampshire House of Representatives to supply trade goods to the Saint Francis Indians, noting that inviting them to trade their beaver pelts at Upper Cowas kept friendly bands active and provisioned just north of Newbury.

The documentary record of these scouts is remarkably granular. The 1781 muster roll for Captain John Vincent’s company lists thirteen enlisted men, eight of whom bore the name Joseph or Susap. Historians cross-reference these names—including Joseph Molly, Peal Susap Sr., and Joseph Squant, who deserted in March 1781—with local town histories like Frederic P. Wells’s History of Newbury, Vermont. The rolls tell a human story of the frontier, noting operational realities such as the deaths of Peal Susap Sr. and Tamenick on December 10, alongside the service of Ensign John Sabattist, who died on June 30, 1781.

Life Along the Riverbanks

Life for these Abenaki families in Newbury was a negotiation between military utility and colonial suspicion. General Schuyler ordered Colonel Bedel in September 1776 to gather roaming Indian families from the Coös territory and bring them down to the river settlements with necessary provisions. By 1788, Bedel reported housing about ten families who had been employed in American service. General Bayley observed in 1781 that while larger numbers drifted through the woods without staying steady, they never caused damage, remaining peaceful neighbors in a fractured landscape.

This Place in History: The Bayley-Hazen Military Road

Names like Sergeant Swasin bridge local Vermont history with the broader continental conflict. Swasin likely led warriors from southern Maine to join with the Continental Army at the onset of the revolution. These men offered their local expertise to guide proposed campaigns through the northern wilderness, anchoring a complex network of alliances that stretched from Maine to the St. Lawrence River.

Indian Joe lived out his years along the river, a fixture of Newbury’s early settlement. While grand military histories often focus on major generals and decisive European-style engagements, the survival of the northern frontier relied just as heavily on scouts whose names barely survived the ink of an 18th-century muster roll.