Pecunktuk

Pecunktuk, or Otter Creek, winds northward through western Vermont to Lake Champlain. Its Indigenous name has been explained as “crooked river,” while another Abenaki name referred to the otter. The river served as a route between communities in the valley and the lake country, and early English settlers called it the Indian Road. In 1690 Albany commissioned Abraham Schuyler to take a party up the lower river to watch for and engage Indigenous people; European settlement expanded along the valley in the eighteenth century.