November 1 January 9. on Ossipee River, determined to attack it, and marched for that purpose with all his force. The expedition occupied two months. Part of the 1677. time the troops had to make their way through deep snows, and rivers half frozen over. And, after all, their fatigues were fruitless. The fort was found; but there was not an Indian in or near it.1 1676. Meanwhile, there had been another formal pacification. An Etetchemin chief, named Mugg, presented himself at Portsmouth to Major-General Denison with credentials which were satisfactory to that officer. Mugg accordingly was sent to Boston, where he concluded with the Magistrates a treaty, of which November 6. the principal articles stipulated the cessation of hostilities; the restoration of prisoners and stolen property to the English; satisfaction for damages sustained by them; and a prohibition to the natives to purchase ammunition except of a person to be appointed by the Governor to sell it.3 1677. But so tardily and imperfectly were these engagements observed, as to create a persuasion that the Indians had intended only to secure a quiet winter, and would resume hostilities as soon as the spring should open. It was thought prudent to be in readiness to anticipate them; and a force of ninety Englishmen and sixty friendly Indians, under the com- February 7. mand of Major Waldron, sailed from Boston for the Kennebec. Leaving half of his party at the mouth of that river to build a fort, Waldron proceeded with the rest to Pemaquid, where he appointed a meeting with some sachems. It was agreed that both parties should come to the interview unarmed. But, when they met, a quantity of lances was discov ered lying in the Indian canoes. An altercation en 1 Ibid., 49-54. February 26. Q sued, which was observed from the vessel from which Waldron had landed, and an armed party was despatched to his assistance. They killed ten of the Indians, and took four prisoners. Hopeless of an accommodation, the commander left forty men at the fort near March 11. the mouth of the Kennebec, and returned with the rest of his force to Boston.1 March 30. April 7. April 13. His apprehensions were not unfounded. As soon as the weather permitted, the crazy marauders were abroad again. They intercepted a party belonging to the fort lately constructed by Major Waldron, and killed nine men. They shot seven men, whom they found at work in a field, two miles from York.3 At Wells they murdered six or eight persons. At Black Point they were less successful; they killed three Englishmen, and carried off another to be tortured; but here they were repulsed with considerable loss, the distinguished Sachem, Mugg, being one of those who fell. Returning to Wells and York, they renewed at those places their work of havoc. In a second affair near Black Point the enemy obtained a signal sucA party of ninety men, mostly from the May 16. May 23. June 29. cess. 1 Hubbard, Narrative, &c., Part II., 64-72. Here this treatise of Hubbard comes to a close. Williamson's references (History of Maine, I. 548, 549) to "Hubbard's Indian Wars" for transactions of a later date than March 11, 1677, are erroneous. The book used by Williamson was an anonymous work, entitled "History of Indian Wars in New England," published at Montpelier, Vermont, in 1812. 2 Hubbard, History of New Englard, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XVI. 630. 3 Belknap, History, &c., I. 153; Hubbard, ubi supra, 631. 4 April 24 of this year, Major Simon Willard died at Charlestown, in the seventy-second year of his age, His house at Groton being 5 Belknap, History, &c., L. 156, 157 Bay, fell into one of their ambuscades, and, after a vigorous resistance, was utterly defeated, with the loss of sixty of its number. Taking to their boats, the natives surprised twenty fishing-vessels, mostly from Salem, which lay at anchor, feebly manned; they killed and wounded a number of the seamen, stripped the vessels, and then disappeared.3 4 July. In Yorkshire, some white inhabitants still held their ground, but the county of Devonshire was entirely deserted. Sir Edmund Andros, at New York, became apprehensive for the safety of his master's province of Cornwall.+ He sent a force to Pemaquid, to build and occupy a fort; and the officer in command entered into communication with the neighboring Indians, August. and procured the release of fifteen English captives.5 Peace with If the natives had obtained great successes in the Eastern country, it had been at no little cost to themselves; and, unreflecting though they were, they could not fail, by this time, to be impressed with the resources and the perseverance of their enemy. In the spring, Squanto, Madockawando, and termination other chiefs of the tribes on the Androscoggin and the Kennebec, met at Casco three com 1 The General Court of Massachusetts, June 1, had resolved to have a force of one hundred English and two hundred Indian allies at Black Point, on the 26th of that month, and they sent requests to Connecticut and Plymouth to make up the number. (Mass. Rec., V. 140, 141.) I do not know that the former of these requests was successful. The application to Plymouth was fruitless, and the neglect of it occasioned an animated remonstrance, being interpreted as not only unneighborly and ungrateful, but as a breach of the articles of confedera the Eastern tribes, and of the war. 1678. April 12. tion. (See letter of August 23, 1677, 2 Hubbard, ubi supra, 634. 4 See above, pp. 96, 97. Hubbard, ubi supra, 636; Belknap, History, &c., I. 158. missioners appointed by the government of Massachu setts, and entered into a treaty which may be regarded as the termination of this distressing war. They promised to surrender all their prisoners without ransom, and to refrain from further molestation of the settlers. On the other hand, it was stipulated that, for every English family established in their country, they should receive annually a peck of corn.1 Almost every settlement beyond the Piscataqua had been laid in ashes. Between two hundred and fifty and three hundred Englishmen had been either killed, or carried away captive, never to be heard of more. For the present, hostilities were at an end.2 But the Indians were by no means so effectually disabled in that region as in other parts of New England. A recital of battles does not go far towards telling the history of this terrible war. It was a succession of ruthless ravages on a larger or a smaller scale. Outlying houses were fired by night, while their inmates slept. Husbandmen at their work, and women at the well, and travellers on the road, were shot down. Only in the large towns could an Englishman leave his door with safety. a watchful marksman. endured cannot be set Every bush near it might hide The amount of distress that was forth by a mere inventory of murders and pillages, of massacres and conflagrations, even could such a list be made complete. statement of that kind affords some basis 1 Belknap, History, &c., I. 158. 2 Hubbard had not a high opinion of Maine, and thought that the benefit of keeping a foothold there did not countervail the damage. "That whole tract of land, being of little worth, unless it were for the borders thereof upon the sea-coast, and some spots and skirts of more desirable land upon the banks of some rivers, how much But a partial for a concep so ever it be valued by them that know nothing thereof, but by the uncertain and fallible reports of such as have only sailed by the country, or viewed some of the rivers and havens, but never passed through the heart of the continent; the whole being scarce worth half those men's lives that have been lost these two last years in hope to save it." (Narrative, &c., Part II., 1, 2.) tion of the awful reality. In Plymouth and Massachu setts there were eighty or ninety towns. Of Distresses of these, ten or twelve were wholly destroyed, and the war. forty others were more or less damaged by fire, making together nearly two thirds of the whole number. Five or six hundred of the men of military age, one in every ten or twelve of the whole, were stealthily murdered, or fell in battle, or, becoming prisoners, were lost sight of for ever, an unknown number of them being put to death with horrible tortures. There was scarcely an English family in those two Colonies that was not in mourning. Impoverishment was added to bereavement. In the first year of the war the sum of three thousand six hundred and ninety-two pounds had been contributed to it by twelve towns of Plymouth Colony, the inhabitants of Dartmouth and Middleborough being excused from the assessment on account of their being reduced to destitution.1 At the termination of hostilities the debt which had been incurred by that Colony is believed to have exceeded the value of the whole personal property of its people." 1 The Plymouth towns along Cape Cod were not assailed. Besides bringing their contribution of money and stores to the common fund, they showed their public spirit by offers of hospitality to their more exposed friends. They sent an invitation to the inhabitants of Rehoboth, Taunton, and Bridgewater to come to them with their movables, and be taken care of till affairs should mend. The persons addressed did not accept it; but this was not for want of feeling the exigency to be real and extreme, but "because they feared they should in so doing be wanting to the name of God and the interest of Christ, and bewray much diffidence and cowardice, and give the adversary occasion to tri umph over them, to the reproach of that great and fearful name of God that was called upon them." (Davis's Morton, 442; comp. Hubbard, Narrative, &c., 70.) The letters from the three towns are in the collection of Governor Hinckley's papers, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXXV. 2–8. 2 The Commissioners of the United Colonies, in a letter to Lord Sunderland, August 25, 1679, stated the disbursements for the war at "more than one hundred thousand pounds." (Rec ords of the Commissioners, in Conn Rec., III. 508.) In a partial settlement between the Colonies in the autumn of 1677, Massachusetts showed an outlay of forty-six thousand two hundred and ninety-two pounds; Connecticut, |