Mitchel Sabattis of Long Lake

Source: "The Adirondacks: Illustrated," by Seneca Ray Stoddard, Albany, 1874
Mitchel Sabattis is in a list of independent guides provided to the author of this source by the proprietor of Long Lake Hotel, C. H. Kellogg, Esq.
Mitchel Sabattis, who also keeps boarders, is a noted Indian guide, who has figured extensively in all histories of that region and deserves more than a passing notice. He was born at Parishville, St. Lawrence county, September 29, 1823, a pure blood of the tribe of St. Francis, he early took to the woods as naturally as a duck to water. On the death of his mother, which occurred when he was but seven years of age, his father, "Captain Peter," as he was universally called, used to take him along on his various hunting and trapping expeditions. The Captain, who earned his right to the title by his services in that capacity during the war of the Revolution, is said to have been a noble specimen of a man - mentally as well as physically, and died in 1859 at the advanced age of 108. As a proof of his physical powers a place is sitll pointed out a little below Raquette Pond, known as "Captain Peter's rock," from which he once leaped to the shore, fully sixteen feet distant. Mitchel is earnest, intelligent and thrifty, a member of the Methodist church, is authority for many things relating to Indian history, has probably seen more of wood life than any other man in the wilderness, a fearless and successful hunter and is generously admitted by other guides to have the best knowledge of the woods of any man in the country. He killed his first deer when 13 years of age, and since then the number that has fallen before his unerring rifle is legion; he has also taken several bears, nine panthers - actually drinving one, a huge fellow, along a narrow shelf on the face of a ledge into a crevice, from which he was dislodged by two or three virorous punches witha sharp stick in order that a companion might get a shot at him, but for some unaccountable reason he failed to do it, and Sabattis dispatched the beast himself; on measuring, the panther was found to be 9 feet from tip to tip. In his earlier days, moose were plenty in the woods and hi has killed twenty of these huge animals, the last being in 1854. The old hunter is still hale and hearty, bidding fair, with his iron constitution, to guide for many a year to come.