Native Americans as a source of high quality blue/black chert used for making tools and projectile points. Mount Independence chert was traded across the Northeast. East Creek and the wetlands of the East Creek valley were a rich source of fish, waterfowl, freshwater mussels, beaver, deer, and other animals. American Revolution Origins of the American fort The decision to fortify Mount Independence was made at Fort Crown Point on July 7, 1776, by a Council of War presided over by Northern Department Commander and Major General Philip Schuyler. Less than a week earlier, an American army had returned after a disastrous ten-month invasion of Canada. Morale was low, and the defeated army was ravaged by smallpox. In a letter, Schuyler told commander in chief George Washington, the peninsula opposite Ticonderoga was "so remarkably strong as to require little labour [sic] to make it tenable against a vast superiority of force, and fully to answer the purpose of preventing the enemy from penetrating into the country south of it." Twenty-one field officers objected to the move from Crown Point to Mount Independence, but on July 11 work began on the new site under the direction of military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin of Brookfield, Massachusetts. Within the week, much of the army relocated to Ticonderoga while men labored on Mount Independence to clear the forest and build huts and barracks. The peninsula gained its new name on Sunday, July 28, 1776, after Colonel Arthur St. Clair of Pennsylvania read the Declaration of Independence to assembled troops. Fortifications Mount Independence is a naturally strong defensive position. Unlike Fort Ticonderoga, which dominated the portage from Lake George to Lake Champlain but was open to attack from the north, Mount Independence presented a formidable obstacle to an invader from Canada. At the height of the American fortification of Mount Independence in the late fall of 1776, the site was occupied by three brigades of New England troops or more than six thousand men, which were reinforced by temporary militia from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire Grants (the territory that was to become Vermont). Numerous huts and barracks housed these troops. An extensive breastwork with a battery of 28 cannons was built at the northern point of the peninsula. Above that position was the Citadel or Horseshoe battery. A star-shaped picket fort was later constructed on the height of land. A floating bridge of logs