1706.

from the Indians, and treated him with kindness.1 After two years and a half more, his friends in Massachusetts having succeeded in obtaining an exchange of prisoners, he sailed from Quebec on his return, accompanied Oct. 25. by fifty-seven partners in captivity, two of whom were his children. Another child was earlier ransomed. A son, who was absent from home at the time of the inroad, he found pursuing his studies at college at the expense of some friends. A young daughter, who was still detained, eventually became a Roman Catholic, and gave herself to an Indian husband. She came to Deerfield several years after, but she had become wedded to the wild life of the woods, and could not be wooed back to the scenes and friends of her early years. Such was one of the distressful passages which the Jesuit Charlevoix despatches in the sentence: "De Rouville, in his turn, surprised the English, killed many of them, and took a hundred and fifty prisoners." 2

Aimless

Under French officers and French priests, the war continued to be conducted with cruelty as aimless as it was brutal. Expeditions like those from Massachubarbarities setts against Quebec had a substantial purpose. of the war. If successful, they would establish the empire of New England, and terminate the chronic strife on this continent. For the French in America, so much less numerous than their rivals, conquest was out of the question, unless with the aid of such large forces from the parent country as they were not in the least likely to obtain. The war they waged was simply a succession of isolated barbarities, accomplishing nothing whatever temporary memorandum of the names of the slain and captives, with the amount of their respective losses in property, is in Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1867, 481; comp. 478; Ibid. for 1870, 311; Hoyt, Indian Wars, 181-195; John Schuyler's letter in Mass. Arch. LXXII. 13-15.

Williams, Redeemed Captive, 27. Williams's house at Deerfield was standing till within twenty or thirty years, with the notches made by the Indian hatchets visible on the front door, and the beams perforated by their bullets.

2 Charlevoix, II. 290.- A con

towards a solution of the question of power.1 A band of sanguinary savages was led hundreds of miles over the snow to an assault upon some hamlet, where a few poor people had made an opening in the forest, and were beginning to get a hard living. Watching for a time when it reposed in unsuspecting helplessness, they fell upon it by night, burned the dwellings, tortured and massacred some of the inhabitants, and then fled, carrying with them the rest. Of the spoils, they consumed the food and drink, as long as their fear of pursuit allowed. But they found little or no money to carry away, and for more cumbrous booty they had no means of conveyance. They gained nothing except the gratification of their moustrous appetite for mischief, and what they might be paid by their French employers for the prisoners whom they brought in. Nor does this latter kind of profit seem to have entered much into their account, if one may judge by the lavish butchering of their captives on the way.

At sea, there was occasional good fortune for the English. A French privateer, fitted out to intercept 1704. the spring supplies shipped to New England from April 7. the West Indies, was wrecked in Massachusetts Bay. A frigate, conveying two thousand muskets to Quebec, was captured by an English squadron.2

As warm weather approached, the Indians showed themselves at Wells and at Dover, in quest, at the latter place, of Colonel Waldron, who was fortunately absent from home, and so escaped paying another penalty

"Their lying in wait to kill and scalp single persons on our frontiers, their surprising and cutting off families, their stealing of captives, torturing and making slaves of them, and such like murders and cruelties, is what they call carrying on the war. All which is frequently done by their skulking parties, in conjunction with the Indians in their interest,

April 25.

whose bloody and barbarous manners they have imbibed and long practised. And these are mischiefs which nothing can give us so good hope of security from as that removal of this enemy which your Majesty designs." (Conn. Col. Rec., V. 246.)

2 Penhallow, 13; Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 254.

June 1.

Aug. 11.

May 13.

of the hoarded vengeance against his race.1 Similar invasions of the same place were repeated during the year. Even Portsmouth, though less exposed, had to be fortified. In the west, a garrison-house on the edge of Northampton was attacked by such a surprise, and with such numbers, that a prompt surrender was the only resource. Of thirty-three persons who were led away, only three reached Canada; nineteen were put to death on the journey, eight were rescued by a pursuing party, and three contrived to effect their escape.2 There is no variety in these transactions, to constitute the material of a narrative. The whole exposed northern border of Massachusetts, from Casco Bay to Connecticut River, was watched from hiding-places affording every facility for sudden invasion and safe retreat. "Under all these sufferings from a cruel enemy, little or no impression could ever be made upon them, by reason of their retiring into inaccessible swamps and mountains." Terrible distress was the lot of numbers, and, for all the dwellers along the wide border, life was insecure and miserable.3

A succession of disconnected inroads on the frontier towns took place during the summer, -as at Amesbury, Haverhill, Exeter, Dover, and York. An abortive assault

on Lancaster was made disastrous by the fate Oct. 25. of Mr. Gardiner, minister of that place, who in

Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 254: Penhallow, 14, 15.-At this time, May 20, Robert Harley succeeded Lord Nottingham as Secretary of State.

2 Ibid., 15, 16; Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 255.

In July of this year, Dudley sent one Captain Cary to England, to represent to Lord Nottingham the state of things in Massachusetts, and procure arms and stores. 'Keep a good courage and temper,". -so Dudley instructed him (July 20), –

66

"and be loath to return without some favorable provision for us from her Majesty, and represent the government and its present state with the Indian enemy justly and honorably, as you ought." Cary obtained, Jan. 11, 1705, a grant of twenty cannon for Castle William. (British Colonial Papers; comp. Journal of the Board of Trade, for Jan. 26, 1705, Jan. 23, 1706.)

4 Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 259; Penhallow, 20.

In the

the dark was accidentally shot by a sentinel. winter, Captain Hilton, of Exeter, led a force of two hundred and seventy men against the Jesuit post at Norridgewock. They marched through snow three feet deep, carrying provisions for twenty days. They found the settlement deserted, and had no reward for February. their enterprise, except the burning of the chapel.3

1705.

A messenger, sent to Canada to negotiate for an exchange and ransom of prisoners, learned that there were May 4. a hundred and eighty-seven in the hands of the French and their allies. The French Governor was with difficulty prevailed upon to consent to the liberation of one-third of this number, to whom, in the following year, were added nearly as many more." A delusive period of comparative quiet had lasted through more than

66

1706.

a year, when at Oyster River a garrison-house April 27. was attacked. It happened at the moment to be occupied by none but women. They put on hats, with their hair hanging down, and fired so briskly that they struck a terror in the enemy, and they withdrew." Two days after, near Kittery, two men, a father and son, fell in the way of a party of savages. They killed the father,

1 Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 261; comp. Penhallow, 27.

2 Dexter's edition of Church's Entertaining Passages, 146, note. There is a biographical notice of Hilton in the Historical Collections of Farmer and Moore, I. 241.

3 Penhallow, 28; Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 260. A copy of a journal kept by Hilton on this expedition is in the collection of British Colonial Papers. On one day, January 17, his command marched thirty miles, and on some other days twenty-five miles. In a note at the end Dudley writes: "This march was made upon the snow a yard deep, every man on snow-shoes, with twenty days' provisions upon small hand-sleds carrying

6

each four men's provisions, and of three hundred men in the expedition no man returned sick." (Comp. N. H. Provincial Papers, II. 453.)

4 Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 262, 278; Penhallow, 29, 30.

"The English, by this time becoming skilful in wearing snow-shoes, terrified the Indians to such a degree that they came no more in the winter." (Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 275.) Since my coming hither, the people have got the skill of snowshoes, to the terror of Indians." (Dudley to the Lords of Trade, April 8, 1712, in British Colonial Papers.)

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Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXVI. 275; Penhallow, 32.

1

and took the son along with them. "In their march they were so inhumanly cruel that they bit off the tops of his fingers, and to stanch the blood seared them with hot tobacco-pipes." In the excitement that existed, the government offered a reward to regular soldiers of ten pounds for every Indian scalp they should bring in, of twenty pounds to volunteers in the service, and of fifty pounds to volunteers not under pay. Yet so difficult was the pursuit of these cunning enemies, that, according to the computation of the time, "every Indian we had killed or taken cost the country at least a thousand pounds. While they continued in great bodies, they did not commit the like spoil and rapine, in proportion as they did in smaller.'

"3

This desultory and harassing conflict had been going on but a little time before the people of Massachusetts came to understand at what a disadvantage they were conducting it. Their superiority to the French in numbers and strength gave very partial protection, while, standing on the defensive, they presented to their enemy an extended frontier, which he could choose his own time and place for assailing. The actual distress in Massachusetts and New Hampshire was grievous. By special commissioners Dudley applied to Rhode Island and Connecticut, November. for reinforcements of troops. It was still hoped that the Five Nations might be persuaded to undertake hostilities against the native adherents of the French, and a joint commission from Massachusetts and Connecticut was sent to endeavor to engage them in such a movement. They promised to take up the hatchet whenever the Governor of New York should desire it."4 Lord Cornbury could not be brought to interest himself in behalf of the suffering New-Englanders, being apprehensive, as was

66

1704.

1 Penhallow, 33.

2 March 7, 1707, a bounty of a

Penhallow, 39, 40.

N. H. Provincial Papers, II.

hundred pounds for each scalp was 260; Penhallow, 25. voted to volunteers without pay.

(General Court Record, sub die.)