A HALF-CENTURY OF CONFLICT.
Vol. I.
FEANOIS PARKMAFS WKITINGS.
The Oregon Trail 1 vol.
The Conspiracy of Pontiac 2 vols.
JFrance anto lEnfllanti m Nortij America*
Pioneers of France in the New World . . 1 vol.
The Jesuits in North America 1 vol.
La Salle and the Discovery of the Great
West „ 1vol.
The Old Regime in Canada under Louis XIV. 1 vol.
Count Frontenac and New France under
Louis XIV 1 vol.
A Half-Century of Conflict 2 vols.
Montcalm and Wolfe 2 vols.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA.
PART 8IXTH.
A HALF-CENTURY OF
CONFLICT.
fr
BY
ANCIS PARKMAN,
AUTHOR OF "THE OREGON TRAIL," "THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC,"
" PIONEERS OF FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD," " THE JESUITS
IN NORTH AMERICA," "LA SALLE," "THE OLD
REGIME IN CANADA," AND
" COUNT FRONTENAC."
IN TWO VOLUMES.
.Vol. I.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1914.
Oopvriqht, 1899,
By Fbancib Fakkman.
flftlllM
J. I'arkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
PREFACE.
This book, forming Part VI. of the series
called France and England in North America,
fills the gap between Part V., " Count Frontenac,"
and Part VII., "Montcalm and Wolfe;" so that
the series now forms a continuous history of
the efforts of France to occupy and control
this continent.
In the present volumes the nature of the sub-
ject does not permit an unbroken thread of
narrative, and the unity of the book lies in its
being throughout, in one form or another, an
illustration of the singularly contrasted charac- %
ters and methods of the rival claimants to
North America.
Like the rest of the series, this work is 1
• founded on original documents. The statements
of secondary writers have been accepted only
when found to conform to the evidence of con-
temporaries, whose writings have been sifted
and collated with the greatest care. As extre-
mists on each side have charged me with favor-
ing the other, I hope I have been unfair to
neither.
336891
IV PREFACE.
The manuscript material collected for the prep-
aration of the series now complete forms about
seventy volumes, most of them folios. These
have been given by me from time to time to
the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose
library they now are, open to the examination
of those interested in the subjects of which they
treat. The collection was begun forty-five years
ago, and its formation has been exceedingly
slow, having been retarded by difficulties which
seemed insurmountable, and for years were so
in fact. Hence the completion of the series has
required twice the time that would have sufficed
under less unfavorable conditions.
Rostox, March 26. 1892.
CONTENTS,
CHAPTER I.
1700-1713.
EVE OF WAR.
Page
The Spanish Succession. — Influence of Louis XIV. on History. —
French Schemes of Conquest in America. — New York. — Unfit-
ness of the Colonies for War. — The Five Nations. — Doubt and
Vacillation. — The Western Indians. — Trade and Politics ... 1
CHAPTER II.
1694-1704.
DETROIT.
Michillimackinac. — La Mothe-Cadillac. — His Disputes with the
Jesuits. — Opposing Views. — Plans of Cadillac. — His Memorial
to the Court. — His Opponents. — Detroit founded. — The New
Company. — Detroit changes Hands. — Strange Act of the Five
Nations 15
CHAPTER III
1703-1713.
QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.
The Forest of Maine. — A Treacherous Peace. — A Frontier Village.
— Wells and its People. — Attack upon it. — Border Ravages. —
Beaubassin's War-Party. — The " Woful Decade." — A Wedding
Feast. — A Captive Bridegroom 32
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
1704-1740.
deerfield.
Page
Hertel de Rouville. — A Frontier Village. — Rev. John Williams. —
The Surprise. — Defence of the Stebbins House. — Attempted
Rescue. — The Meadow Fight. — The Captives. — The North-
ward March. — Mrs. Williams killed. — The Minister's Journey.
— Kindness of Canadians. — A Stubborn Heretic. — Eunice
Williams. — Converted Captives. — John Sheldon's Mission. —
Exchange of Prisoners. — An English Squaw. — The Gill
Family 52
CHAPTER V.
*wMA*i^eiibe 1704 " 1713 -
THE TORMENTED FRONTIER.
Border Raids. — Haverhill. — Attack and Defence. — War to the
Knife. — Motives of the French. — Proposed Neutrality. —
Joseph Dudley. — Town and Country 90
CHAPTER VI.
1700-1710.
THE OLD REGIME IN ACADIA.
The Fishery Question. — Privateers and Pirates. — Port Royal. —
Official Gossip. — Abuse of Brouillan. — Complaints of De
Goutin. — Subercase and his Officers. — Church and State. —
Paternal Government 106
CHAPTER VII.
1704-1710.
ACADIA CHANGES HANDS.
Reprisal for Deerfield. — Major Benjamin Church. — His Ravages
at Grand- Pre'. — Port Royal Expedition. — Futile Proceedings. —
A Discreditable Affair. — French Successes in Newfoundland. —
Schemes of Samuel Vetch. — A Grand Enterprise. — Nicholson's
Advance. — An Infected Camp. — Ministerial Promises broken.
— A New Scheme. — Port Royal attacked. — Acadia conquered . 116
CHAPTER VIII.
1710, 1711.
WALKER'S EXPEDITION.
Scheme of La Ronde Denys. — Boston warned against British De-
signs. — Boston to be ruined — Flans of the Ministry. — Canada
CONTENTS. Vll
Page
doomed. — British Troops at Boston. — The Colonists denounced.
— The Fleet sails for Quebec. — Forebodings of the Admiral. —
Storm and Wreck. — Timid Commanders. — Retreat. — Joyful
News for Canada. — Pious Exultation. — Fanciful Stories —
Walker disgraced 150
CHAPTER IX.
1712-1749.
LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA.
Peace of Utrecht. — Perilous Questions. — Louisbourg founded. —
Annapolis attacked. — Position of the Acadians. — Weakness of
the British Garrison. — Apathy of the Ministry. — French In-
trigue. — Clerical Politicians. — The Oath of Allegiance. — Aca-
dians refuse it. — Their Expulsion proposed. — They take the
Oath 176
CHAPTER X.
1713-1724.
SEBASTIEN KALE.
Boundary Disputes. — Outposts of Canada. — The Earlier and Later
Jesuits. — Religion and Politics. — The Norridgewocks and their
Missionary. — A Hollow Peace. — Disputed Land Claims. —
Council at Georgetown. — Attitude of Rale. — Minister and
Jesuit. — The Indiaus waver. — An Outbreak. — Covert War. —
Indignation against Rale. — War declared. — Governor and
Assembly. — Speech of Samuel Sewall. — Penobscots attack
Fort St. George. — Reprisal. — Attack on Norridgewock. —
Death of Rale 204
CHAPTER XL
1724, 1725.
LOVEWELl/s FIGHT.
Vaudreuil and Dummer. — Embassy to Canada. — Indians in-
tractable. — Treaty of Peace. — The Pequawkets. — John Love-
well. — A Hunting Party. — Another Expedition. — The Am-
buscade.— The Fight. — Chaplain Frye. — His Fate — The
Survivors. — Susanna Rogers 241
v iii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XH.
1712.
the outagamies at detroit.
Page
The West and the Fur-Trade. — New York and Canada. — Indian
Population. — The Firebrands of the West. — Detroit in 1712. —
Dangerous Visitors. — Suspense. — Timely Succors. — The Outa-
gamies attacked. — Their Desperate Position. — Overtures. —
Wavering Allies. — Conduct of Dubuisson. — Escape of the
Outagamies. — Pursuit and Attack. — Victory and Carnage . . 262
CHAPTER XIH.
1697-1750. /
LOUISIANA. m
The Mississippi to be occupied. — English Rivalry. — Iberville. —
Bienville. — Huguenots. — Views of Louis XIV. — Wives for
the Colony. — Slaves. — La Mothe-Cadillac. — Paternal Govern-
ment. — Crozat's Monopoly. — Factions. — The Mississippi
Company. — New Orleans. — The Bubble bursts. — Indian Wars.
— The Colony firmly established. — The two Heads of New
France 288
CHAPTER XIV.
1700-1732.
THE OUTAGAMIE WAR.
The Western Posts. — Detroit. — The Illinois. — Perils of the West.
— The Outagamies. — Their Turbulence. — English Instigation.
— Louvigny's Expedition. — Defeat of Outagamies. — Hostilities
renewed. — Lignery's Expedition. — Outagamies attacked by
Villiers. — By Hurons and Iroquois. — La Butte des Morts. —
The Sacs and Foxes 315
A HALF-CENTURY OF CONFLICT.
CHAPTER I.
1700-1713.
EVE OF WAR.
The Spanish Succession. — Influence op Louis XIV. on History.
— French Schemes of Conquest in America. — New York. —
Unfitness of the Colonies for War. — The Five Nations. —
Doubt and Vacillation. — The Western Indians. — Trade
and Politics.
The war which in the British colonies was called
Queen Anne's Wftr. and in England the War
of t he Spanish Succession was the s^cond_of_a
Series of fo ur Conflic t s which pnrlprl in giving to
Great Britain a jnaritime and colonial preponder-
ance over France and Spain. So far as concerns
the colonies and the sea, These several wars may I
be regarded as a single protracted one, broken by)
intervals of truces The three earlier of them, it is
true, were European contests, begun and waged
on European disputes. Their American part was
incidental and apparently subordinate, yet it in-
volved questions of prime importance in the history
of the world.
The War of the Spanish Succession sprang from -
the ambition of Louis XIV. We are apt to regard ^
y of that gorgeous monarch as a tale that
it his influence shapes the life of nations
% : • ' BVE OF WAR. [1702
I to this day. At the beginning of his reign two
j roads lay before him, and it was a momentnns
•1 question for posterity, as for his own age, which
one of them he would choose : whether he would
follow the wholesome policy of his great minister
Colbert, or obey his own vanity and arrogance,
and plunge France into exhausting wars ; whether
he would hold to the principle of tolerance em-
bodied in the Edict of Nantes, or do the work of
fanaticism and priestly ambition. The one course
meant prosperity, progress, and the rise of a mid-
dle class : the other meant bankruptcy and the
Dragonades ; and this was the King's choice.
Crushing taxation, misery, and ruin followed, till
France burst out at last in a frenzy, drunk with
the wild dreams of Rousseau. Then came the
Terror and the Napoleonic wars, and reaction on
reaction, revolution on revolution, down to our
own day.
Louis placed his grandson on the throne of
Spain, and insulted England by acknowledging as
her rightful king the son of James II., whom she
haddeposed. Then England declared war. Canada
and the northern British colonies had had but a
short breathing, time since the Peace of Ryswick ;
both were tired of slaughtering each other, and
both needed rest. Yet before the declaration of
war, the Canadian officers of the Crown prepared,
with their usual energy, to meet the expected crisis.
One of them wrote : " If war be declared, it is cer-
tain that the King can very easily conq *
ruin New England." The French of Canac
1701.] BOSTON TO BE DESTROYED. 3
use the name " New England " as applying to the
British colonies in general. They are twice as
populous as Canada, he goes on to say ; but the
people are great cowards, totally undisciplined,
and ignorant of war, while the Canadians are
brave, hardy, and well trained. We have, besides,
twenty-eight companies of regulars, and could
raise six thousand warriors from our Indian allies.
Four thousand men could easily lay waste all the
northern English colonies, to which end we must
have five ships of war, with one thousand troops
on board, who must land at Penobscot, where they
must be joined by two thousand regulars, militia,
and Indians, sent from Canada by way of the
Chaudiere and the Kennebec. Then the whole
force must go to Portsmouth, take it by assault,
leave a garrison there, and march to Boston, lay-
ing waste all the towns and villages by the way ;
after destroying Boston, the army must inarch for
New York, while the fleet follows along the coast.
" Nothing could be easier," says the writer, " for
the road is good, and there is plenty of horses and
carriages. The troops wpuJjL^xijdn_exejr^thinj2: as
they advanced, and New York would quickly be
destroyed and burned.' ' !
Another plan, scarcely less absurd, was proposed
about the same time by the celebrated Le Moyne
d'Iberville. The essential point, he says, is to get
possession of Boston ; but there are difficulties and
way. Nothing, he adds, referring to
WXjpur V Expedition contre la Nouvelle Angleterre, 1701.
fCompare N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 725.
4 EVE OF WAR. [1701.
the other plan, seems difficult to persons without
experience ; but unless we are prepared to raise a
great and costly armament, our only hope is in
sjirprise^ We should make it in winter, when the
seafaring population, which is the chief strength
of the place, is absent on long voyages. A thou-
sand Canadians, four hundred regulars, and as
many Indians should leave Quebec in November,
ascend the Chaudiere, then descend the Kennebec,
approach Boston under cover of the forest, and
carry it by a night attack. Apparently he did not
know that but for its lean neck — then but a few
yards wide — Boston was an island, and that all
around for many leagues the forest that was to
have covered his approach had already been de-
voured by numerous busy settlements. He offers
to lead the expedition, and declares that if he is
honored with the command, he will warrant that
the New England capital will be forced to submit
to King Louis, after which New York can be seized
in its turn. 1
In contrast to those incisive proposals, another
French officer breathed nothing but peace. Brou-
illan, governor of Acadia, wrote to the governor of
Massachusetts to suggest that, with the consent of
their masters, they should make a treaty of neu-
trality. The English governor being dead, the
letter came before the council, who received it
coldly. Canada, and not Acadia, was the enemy
1 Memoire du Sieur d* Iberville sur Boston et ses De'pendanees, 1700
(1701'*). Baron de Saint-Castin also drew up a plan for attacking Boston
in 1702, with lists of necessary munitions and other supplies.
1701.] ATTITUDE OF NEW YORK. 5
they had to fear. Moreover, Boston merchants
made good profit by supplying the Acadians with
necessaries which they could get in no other way ;
and in time of war these profits, though lawless,
were greater than in time of peace. But what
chiefly influenced the council against the overtures
of Brouillan was a passage in his letter reminding
them that, by the Treaty of Ryswick, the New
England people had no right to fish within sight
of the Acadian coast. This they flatly denied,
saying that the New England people had fished
there time out of mind, and that if Brouillan
should molest them, they would treat it as an act
of war. 1
While the New England colonies, and especially
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, had most
cause to deprecate a war, the prospect of one was
also e xtremely u^wfilflo™^ W thft pnrplp nf T^yr
York. The conflict lately closed had borne hard
upon them through the attacks of the enemy, and
still more through the derangement of their indus-
tries. The}' were distracted, too, with the factions
rising out of the recent revolution under Jacob
Leisler. New York had been the bulwark of the
colonies farther south, who, feeling themselves safe,
had given their protector little help, and that lit-
tle grudgingly, seeming to regard the war as no
1 Brouillan a Bellomont, 10 Aout, 1701. Conseil de Boston a Brouillan,
22 Aout, 1701. Brouillan acted under royal orders, having been told, in
of war being declared, to propose a treaty with New England, unless
that he can " se garantir des insultes des Anglais " and da
irm to their trade, in which case he is to make no treaty.
•y au Sieur de Brouillan, 23 Mars, 1700.
6 EVE OF WAR. / [1700-1703.
concern of theirs. Three thousand and fifty-one
pounds, provincial currency, was the joint contri-
bution of Virginia, Maryland, East Jersey, and
Connecticut to the aid of New York during five
years of the late war. 1 Massachusetts could give
nothing, even if she would, her hands being full
with the defence of her own borders. Colonel
Quary wrote to the Board of Trade that New York
could not bear alone the cost of defending herself ;
that the other colonies were " stuffed with com-
monwealth notions," and were " of a sour temper
in opposition to government," so that Parlia-
ment ought to take them in hand and compel
each to do its part in the common cause. 2 To this
Lord Cornbury adds that Rhode Island and Con-
necticut are even more stubborn than the rest,
hate all true subjects of the Queen, and will not
give a farthing to the war so long as they can
help it. 3 Each province lived in selfish isolation,
recking little of its neighbor's woes.
New York, left to fight her own battles, was
in a wretched condition for defence. It is true
that, unlike the other colonies, the King had sent
her a few soldiers, counting at this time about
one hundred and eighty, all told; 4 but they had
been left so long without pay that they were in a
state of scandalous destitution. They would have
been left without rations had not three private
1 Schuyler, Colonial New York, I. 431, 432.
2 Col. Quary to the Lords of Trade, 16 June, 1703.
8 Cornbury to the Lords of Trade, 9 Sept. 1703.
* Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, 28 Feb. 1700.
170O-1703.J THE FIVE NATIONS. 7
gentlemen — Schuyler, Livingston, and Cortlandt
— advanced money for their supplies, which seems
never to have been repaid. 1 They are reported to
have been "without shirts, breeches, shoes, or stock-
ings," and " in such a shameful condition that the
women when passing them are obliged to cover
their eyes." "The Indians ask," says the Gov-
ernor, " ' Do you think us such fools as to believe
that a King who cannot clothe his soldiers can
protect us from the French, with their fourteen
hundred men all well equipped? ' " 2
The forts were no better than their garrisons.
The Governor complains that those' of Albany and
Schenectady " are so weak and ridiculous that
they look more like pounds for cattle than forts."
At Albany the rotten stockades were falling from
their own weight.
If New York had cause to complain of those
whom she sheltered, she herself gave cause of com-
plaint to those who sheltered her. The Five Na- N^
tions of the Iroquois had always been her allies
against the French, had guarded her borders and \ vk
bought her battles. What they wanted in return (1
was gifts, attentions, just dealings, and active aid )
in war/; but they got them in scant measure.
Their treatment by the province was short-sighted,
if not ungrateful. New York was a mixture of
races and religions not yeTTused "into a harmoni- l*S
ous body politic, divided in interests and torn with
intestine disputes. Its Assembly^ vas made up in
» Belhmont to the Lords of Trade, 28 Feb. 1700.
* Schuyler, Colonial New York, I. 488.
8 EVE OF WAR. [1700-1703.
large part of men unfitted to pursue a consistent
scheme of policy, or spend the little money at their
disposal on any objects but those of present and
visible interest. \ The royal governors, even when
personally competent, were hampered by want of
means and by factious opposition. The Five Na-
tions were robbed by land-speculators, ^neated oy
traders, and feebly supported in their constant
wars with the Fxench. Spasmodically, as it were,
on occasions of crisis, they were summoned to Al-
bany, soothed with such presents as could be got
from unwilling legislators, or now and then from
the Crown, and exhorted to fight vigorously in the
common cause. JIhe case would have been far
worse but for a few patriotic men, with Peter
Schuyler at their head, who understood the char-
acter of these Indians, and labored strenuously to
keep them in what was called their allegiance.
The proud and fierce confederates had suffered
greatly in the late war. Their numbers had
been reduced about one half, and they now
counted little more than twelve hundred war-
riors. They had learned a bitter and humiliating
lesson, and their arrogance had changed to dis-
trust and alarm. Though hating the French,
they had learned to respect their military activity
and prowess, and to look askance on the Dutch
and English, who rarely struck a blow in their
defence, and suffered their hereditary enemy to
waste their fields and burn their towns. The
English called the Five Nations British subjects,
on which the French taunted them with being
1700-1703.] JESUITS AND MINISTERS. 9
British slaves, and told them that the King
of England had ordered the Governor of New
York to poison them. This invention had
great effect. The Iroquois capital, Onondaga,
was filled with wild rumors. The credulous
savages were tossed among doubts, suspicions,
and fears. Some were in terror of poison, and
some of witchcraft. They believed that the
rival European nations had leagued to destroy
them and divide their lands, and that they
were bewitched by sorcerers, both French and
English. 1
After the Peace of Ryswick, and even before
it, the French Governor kept agents among
them. Some of these were soldiers, like Jon-
caire, Maricourt, or Longueuil, and some were
Jesuits, like Bruyas, Lamberville, or Vaillant.
The Jesuits showed their usual ability and
skill in their difficult and perilous task. The
Indians derived various advantages from their
presence, which they regarded also as a flatter-
ing attention ; while the English, jealous of their
influence, made feeble attempts to counteract it
by sending Protestant clergymen to Onondaga.
" But," writes Lord Bellomont, " it is next to
impossible to prevail with the ministers to live
among the Indians. They (the Indians) are so
nasty as never to wash their hands, or the
utensils they dress their victuals with." 2 Even
had their zeal been proof to these afflictions, the
l N. Y. Col. Docs., IV. 658.
a Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, 17 Oct. 1700.
10' EVE OF WAR. [1700-1703.
ministers would have been no match for their
astute opponents. In vain Bellomont assured
the Indians that the Jesuits were " the greatest
lyars and impostors in the world." 1 In vain he
offered a hundred dollars for every one of
them whom they should deliver into his hands.
They would promise to expel them ; but their
minds were divided, and they stood in fear of
each other. While one party distrusted and
disliked the priests, another was begging the
Governor of Canada to send more. Others took
a practical view of the question. "If the Eng-
lish sell goods cheaper than the French, we will
have ministers; if the French sell them cheaper
than the English, we will have priests." Others,
again, wanted neither Jesuits nor ministers, " be-
cause both of you (English and French) have made
us drunk with the noise of your praying." 2
The aims of the propagandists on both sides
were secular. The French wished to keep the
Five Nations neutral in the event of another war:
the English wished to spur them to active hos-
tility ; but while the former pursued their purpose
with energy and skill, the efforts of the latter
were intermittent and generally feeble.
" The Nations," writes Schuyler, " are full of
factions." There was a French party and an
English party in every town, especially in Onon-
daga, the centre of intrigue. French influence
1 Conference of Bellomont with the Indians, 26 Aug. 1700.
2 Journal of Bleeker and Schuyler on their visit to Onondaga, Aug. t
Sept. 1701.
1700-1703.] THE CAUGHNAWAGAS. 11
was strongest at the western end of the con-
federacy, among the Senecas, where the French
officer, Joncaire, an Iroquois by adoption, had
won many to France ; and it was weakest at the
eastern end, among the Mohawks, who were near- fh^
est to the English settlements^ Here the Jesuits ov&l
had labored long and strenuously in the work of (j^^x
conversion, and from time to time they had led
their numerous proselytes to remove to Canada, ^. ^ oc
where they settled at St. Louis, or Caughnawaga, s&w&
on the right bank of the St. Lawrence, a little
above Montreal, where their descendants still
remain. It is said that at the beginning of tha^
eighteenth century two thirds of the Mojiawks
had thus been persuaded to cast their lot with
the French, and from enemies to become friends
and allies. Some of the Oneidas and a few of
the other Iroquois nations joined them and
strengthened the new mission settlement ; and
the Caughnawagas afterwards played an impor-
tant part between the rival European colonies.
The "Far Indians," or "Upper Nations," as
the French called them, consisted oT the tribes
of the Great Lakes and adjacent regions, Ottawas,
Pottawattamies, Sacs, Foxes, Sioux, and many
more. It was from these that Canada drew
the furs by which she J j™l. Mn*+. f them
were nominal friends and allies of the French,
who in the interest of trade strove to keep
these wild-cats from tearing each others' throats;'
and who were in constant alarm lest they should
again come to blows with their old enemies,
12 EVE OF WAR. [1700-1703.
the Five Nations, in which case they would
call on Canada for help, thus imperilling those
pacific relations with the Iroquois confederacy
which the French were laboring constantly to
secure.
In regard to the " Far Indians," the French,
the English, and the Five Iroquois Nations all
had distinct and opposing interests. The French
wished to engross their furs, either by inducing
the Indians To bring them down to Montreal, or
by sending traders into their country to buy them.
The English, with a similar object, wished to
divert the " Far Indians " from Montreal and
draw them to Albany ; but this did not suit the
purpose of the Five Nations, who, being sharp
politicians and keen traders, as well as bold and
enterprising warriors, wished to act as middle-
men between the beaver-hunting tribes and the
Albany merchants, well knowing that good profit
might thus accrue. In this state of affairs
the converted Iroquois settled at Caughnawaga
played a peculiar part. In the province of New
York, goods for the Indian trade were of excel-
lent quality and comparatively abundant and
cheap ; while among the French, especially in
time of war, they were often scarce and dear.
The Caughnawagas accordingly, whom neither the
English nor the French dared offend, used their
I position to carry on a contraband trade between
[jtfew York and Canada. By way of Lake Cham-
plain and the Hudson they brought to Albany
furs from the country of the " Far Indians," and
1700-1713.] ILLICIT TRADE. 13
exchanged them for guns, blankets, cloths, knives,
beads, and the like. These they carried to Can-
ada and sold to the French traders, who in this
way, and often in this alone, supplied them-
selves with the goods necessary for bartering furs
from the "Far Indians." This lawless trade of
the Caughnawagas went on even in time of war ;
and opposed as it was to every principle of
Canadian policy, it was generally connived at by
the French authorities as the only means of ob-
taining the goods necessary for keeping their
Indian allies in good humor.
It was injurious to English interests; but the
fur-traders of Albany and also the commissioners
chafgecl with Indian affairs, being Dutchmen con-
verted by force into British subjects, were, with
a few eminent exceptions, cool in their devotion
to the British Crown ; while the merchants of the
port of New York, from whom the fur-traders
drew their supplies, thought more of their own
profits than of the public good. The trade with
Canada through the Caughnawagas not only gave
aid and comfort to the enemy, but continually
admitted spies into the^colony, from whom the
Governor of Canada gained inform ation touching
Engjish movements ^jljjgsi^s.
The Dutch traders of Albany and the import-
ing merchants who supplied them with Indian
goods had a strong interest in preventing active
hostilities with Canada, which would have spoiled
their trade. So, too, and for similar reasons,
had influential persons in Canada. The French
14 EVE OF WAR. [1700-1707.
authorities, moreover, thought it impolitic to harass
the frontiers of New York by war parties, since
the Five Nations might come to the aid of their
Dutch and English allies, and so break the peace-
ful relations which the French were anxious to
maintain with them. Thus it happened that,
-during the first six or seven years of the eight-
eenth century, there was a vi rtual tr uce between
Canada and New York, and tlie whole burden of
the war fell upon New England, or rather upon
Massachusetts, with its outlying district of Maine
and its small and weak neighbor, New Hampshire. 1
1 The foregoing chapter rests on numerous documents in the Public
Record Office, Archives de la Marine, Archives Nationales, N. Y. Colonial
Documents, Vols. IV., V., IX., and the Second and Third Series of iht
Correspondance Officielle at Ottawa.
CHAPTER IL
1694-1704.
DETROIT.
MlOHILLIMACKINAC — La MoTHE-CaDILLAC. — HlS DISPUTES WITH
the Jesuits. — Opposing Views. — Plans of Cadillac. — His
Memorial to the Court. — His Opponents. — Detroit founded.
The New Company. — Detroit changes Hands. — Strange Act
of the Five Nations.
In the few years of doubtful peace that* pre-
ceded Queen Anne's War, an enterprise was be-
gun, which, nowise in accord with the wishes
and expectations of those engaged in it, was
destined to produce as its last result an Ameri-
can city.
Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac commanded at r-
Michil limackina c, whither Frontenac had sent
him in 1694- This old mission of the Jes-
uits, where they had gathered the remnants of
the lake tribes dispersed by the Iroquois at the
middle of the seventeenth century, now savored
little of its apostolic beginnings. It was the
centre of the Western fur-trade and the favorite
haunt of the coureurs de hois. Brandy and
squaws abounded, and according to the Jesuit
Carheil, the spot where Marquette had labored
was now a witness of scenes the most unedifying. 1
1 See Old Regime in Canada, p. 427.
16 DETROIT. [1694-1699.
At Michillimackinac was seen a curious survival
of Huron-Iroquois customs. The villages of the
Hurons and Ottawas, which were side by side,
separated only by a fence, were surrounded by a
common enclosure of triple palisades, which, with
the addition of loopholes for musketry, were pre-
cisely like those seen by Cartier at Hochelaga, and
by Champlain in the Onondaga country. The
dwellings which these defences enclosed were also
after the old Huron-Iroquois pattern, — those long
arched structures covered with bark which Brebeuf
found by the shores of Matchedash Bay, and Jogues
on the banks of the Mohawk. Besides the Indians,
there was a French colony at the place, chiefly of
fur-traders, lodged in log cabins, roofed with cedar
bark, and forming a street along the shore close to
the palisaded villages of the Hurons and Ottawas.
The fort, known as Fort Buade, stood at the head
of the little bay. 1
The Hurons and Ottawas were thorough sav-
ages, though the Hurons retained the forms of
Roman Catholic Christianity. This tribe, writes
Cadillac, "are reduced to a very small number;
and it is well for us that they are, for they are ill-
disposed and mischievous, with a turn for intrigue
and a capacity for large undertakings. Luckily,
their power is not great ; but as they cannot play
the lion, they play the fox, and do their best to
make trouble between us and our allies. ,,
* La Mothe-Cadillac 2 was a captain in the colony
1 Relation de La Mothe-Cadillac, in Margry, V. 75.
fi He wrote his name as above. It is often written La Motte, which
1694-1699.] LA MOTHE-CADILLAC. 17
troops, and an admirer of the late governor,
Frontenac, to whose policy he adhered, and whose
prejudices he shared. He was amply gifted with
the kind of intelligence that consists in quick ob-
servation, sharpened by an inveterate spirit of sar-
casm, was energetic, enterprising, well instructed,
and a bold and sometimes a visionary schemer,
with a restless spirit, a nimble and biting wit, a
Gascon impetuosity of temperament, and as much
devotion as an officer of the King was forced to
profess, coupled with small love of priests and
an aversion to Jesuits. 1 Carheil and Marest, mis-
sionaries of that order at Michillimackinac, were
objects of his especial antipathy, which they fully
returned. The two priests were impatient of a
military commandant to whose authority they were
in some small measure subjected ; and they imputed
to him the disorders which he did not, and perhaps
could not, prevent. They were opposed also to the
traffic in brandy, which was favored by Cadillac
on the usual ground that it attracted the Indians,
and so prevented the English from getting control of
has the advantage of conveying the pronunciation unequivocally to an
unaccustomed English ear. La Mothe-Cadillac came of a good family ""
of Languedoc. Ilis father, Jean de La Mothe, seigneur de Cadillac et*w
de Launay, or Laumet, was a counsellor in the Parliament of Toulouse.
The date of young Cadillac's birth is uncertain. The register of his mar-
riage places it in 1661, and that of his death in 1657. Another record,
cited by Farmer in his History of Detroit, makes it 1658. In 1703 he
himself declared that he was forty-seven years old. After serving as
lieutenant in the regiment of Clairembault, he went to Canada about the
year 1683. He became skilled in managing Indians, made himself well
acquainted with the coasts of New England, and strongly urged an at-
tack by sea on New York and Boston, as the only sure means of securing
French ascendency. He was always in opposition to the clerical party.
1 See La Mothc-Cudillac a , 3 Aout, 1695.
vujl. i. — . a
18 DETROIT. [1694-1699.
the fur-trade, — an argument which he reinforced
by sanitary considerations based on the supposed
unwholesomeness of the fish and smoked meat
which formed the chief diet of Michillimackinac.
" A little brandy after the meal/' he says, with the
solemnity of the learned Purgon, "seems necessary
to cook the bilious meats and the crudities they
leave in the stomach." 1
Cadillac calls Carheil, superior of the mission,
the most passionate and domineering man he ever
knew, and further declares that the Jesuit tried
to provoke him to acts of violence, in order to
make matter of accusation against him. If this
was Carheil's aim, he was near succeeding. Once,
in a dispute with the commandant on the brandy
trade, he upbraided him sharply for permitting it ;
to which Cadillac replied that he only obeyed the
orders of the court. The Jesuit rejoined that he
ought to obey God, and not man, — " on which,"
says the commandant, " I told him that his talk
smelt of sedition a hundred yards off, and begged
that he would amend it. He told me that I gave
myself airs that did not belong to me, holding hfc
fist before my nose at the same time. I confess I
almost forgot that he was a priest, and felt for a
moment like knocking his jaw out of joint ; but,
thank God, I contented myself with taking him by
the arm, pushing him out, and ordering him not
to come back." 2
1 La Mothe- Cadillac a , 3 Aout, 1695.
2 " II me dit que je me donnois des airs qui ne m'appartenoient pas,
en me portant le poing au nez. Je vous avoue, Monsieur, que je pensai
oublier qu'il etoit pretre, et que je yis le moment ou j'allois luy d'monter
1694-1699.] OPPOSING VIEWS. 19
Such being the relations of the commandant and
the Father Superior, it is not surprising to find the
one complaining that he cannot get absolved from
his sins, and the other painting the morals and
manners of Michillimackinac in the blackest colors.
I have spoken elsewhere of the two opposing
policies that divided Canada, — the policies of con-
centration_^nd-_ol._ejq)ansiati, on the one hand
leaving the West to the keeping of the Jesuits, and
confining the population to the borders of the St.
Lawrence; on the other, the occupation of the
interior of the continent by posts of war and trade. 1
Through the force of events the latter view had
prevailed ; yet while the military chiefs of Canada
could not but favor it, the Jesuits were unwilling
to accept it, and various interests in the colony
still opposed it openly or secretly. Frontenac had
been its strongest champion, and Cadillac followed
in his steps. It seemed to him that the time had
come for securing the West for France.
The strait — detroit — which connects Lake
Huron with Lake Erie was the most important of ^
all the Western passes. It was the key of the
three upper lakes, with the vast countries watered
by their tributaries, and it gave Canada her readi-
est access to the valley of the Mississippi. If the
French held it, the English would be shut out from
la machoire ; mais, Dieu merci, je me contentai de le prendre par le bras
et de le pousser dehors, avec ordre de n'y plus rentrer." Margry, V.
(author's edition), Introduction, CIV. This introduction, with other edi-
torial matter, is omitted in the edition of M. Margry's valuable collection,
printed under a vote of the American Congress.
1 See Count Frontenac, 418.
20 DETROIT. [1699-17001
the Northwest ; if, as seemed likely, the English
should seize it, the Canadian fur-trade would be
ruined. 1 The possession of it by the French
would be a constant curb and menace to the Five
Nations, as well as a barrier between those still
formidable tribes and the Western Indians, allies of
Canada ; and when the intended French establish-
ment at the mouth of the Mississippi should be
made, Detroit would be an indispensable link of
communication between Canada and Louisiana.
Denonville had recognized the importance of the
position, and it was by his orders that Greysolon
Dulhut, in 1686, had occupied it for a time, and
built a picket fort near the site of Fort Gratiot. 2
It would be idle to imagine that the motives of
Cadillac were wholly patriotic. Fur-trading in-
terests were deeply involved in his plans, and bitter
opposition was certain. The fur-trade, in its na- .
ture, was a constant breeder of discord. The peo-
ple of Montreal would have the tribes come down'
every summer from the West and Northwest and.
hold a fair under the palisades of their town. It is •
said that more than four hundred French families^
lived wholly or in part by this home trade, and
therefore regarded with deep jealousy the establish-
ment of interior posts, which would forestall it.
Again, every new Western post would draw away
trade from those already established, and every
trading license granted to a company or an indi-
1 Robert Livingston urged the occupation of Detroit as early as 1700.
N. Y. Col. Docs., IV. 650.
* Denonville a Dulhut 6 Juin, 1686. Count Frontenac, 128.
f 1699-1700.] PLANS OF CADILLAC. 21
fvidual would rouse the animosity of those who had
fceen licensed before. The prosperity of Detroit
Hvvould be the ruin of Michillimackinac, and those
t whose interests centred at the latter post angrily
1 opposed the scheme of Cadillac.
He laid his plans before Count de Maurepas
I by a characteristic memorial, apparently written
In 1699. In this he proposed to gather all the
! tribes of the lakes at Detroit, civilize them and
Lteach them French, " insomuch that from pagans
■they would become children of the Church, and
■therefore good subjects of the King " They will
porm, he continues, a considerable settlement,
I " strong enough to bring the English and the
Iroquois to reason, or, with help from Montreal,
to destroy both of them." Detroit, he adds,
should be the seat of trade, which should not
be permitted in the countries beyond it. By this
regulation the intolerable glut of beaver-skins,
which spoils the market, may be prevented. This
proposed restriction of the beaver trade to Detroit
was enough in itself to raise a tempest against the
whole scheme. " Cadillac well knows that he has
enemies," pursues the memorial, " but he keeps on
his way without turning or stopping for the noise
of the puppies who bark after him.'' '
Among the essential features of his plan was a
well-garrisoned fort, and a church, served not by
Jesuits alone, but also by Recoil et friars and priests
•ri
"
1 " Sans se destourner et, sans s'arrester au bruit des jappereaux qui
rient apres luy." Memoire de La Mothe- Cadillac adresse" au Comte de
aurepas.
22 DETROIT [1699.
of the Missions Etrangeres. The idea of this eccle-
siastical partnership was odious to the Jesuits, who
felt that the West was their proper field, and that
only they had a right there. Another part of
Cadillac's proposal pleased them no better. This
was his plan of civilizing the Indians and teach
ing them to speak French; for it was the reproach \
of the Jesuit missions that they left the savage afff
. savage still, and asked little of him but the prac-11
\ tice of certain rites and the passive acceptance of_j
I dogmas to him incomprehensible.
" It is essential," says the memorial, " that ii
this matter of teaching the Indians our language
the missionaries should act in good faith, and that
his Majesty should have the goodness to impose his
strictest orders upon them ; for which there are
several good reasons. The first and most strin-
gent is that when members of religious orders or
other ecclesiastics undertake anything, they never
let it go. The second is that by not teaching
French to the Indians they make themselves neces-
sary [as interpreters] to the King and the Governor.
The jthird_is that if all Indians spoke French, all
kinds of ecclesiastics would be able to instruct
them. This might cause them [the Jesuits] to l«se
some of the presents they get; for though these
Reverend Fathers come here only for the glory of
God, yet the one thing does not prevent the
other," — meaning that God and Mammon may be
served at once. " Nobody can deny that the priests
own three quarters of Canada. From St. Paul's
Bay to Quebec, there is nothing but the seigniory
I
1699.] CADILLAC AND THE PRIESTS. 23
of Beauport that belongs to a private person. All
the rest, which is the best part, belongs to the
Jesuits or other ecclesiastics. The Upper Town of
Quebec is composed of six or seven superb palaces
belonging to Hospital Nuns, Ursulines, Jesuits,
Recollets, Seminary priests, and the Bishop. There
may be some forty private houses, and even these
pay rent to the ecclesiastics, which shows that the
one thing does not prevent the other." From this it
will be seen that, in the words of one of his ene-
mies, Cadillac " was not quite in the odor of
sanctity.' '
" One may as well knock one's head against a
wall," concludes the memorial, "as hope to con-
vert the Indians in any other way [than that of
civilizing them] ; for thus far all the fruits of the
missions consist in the baptism of infants who die
before reaching the age of reason." 1 This was
not literally true, though the results of the Jesuit
missions in the West had been meagre and transient
to a surprising degree.
Cadillac jsjDlan of a settlement at Detroit was
not at first received with favor by Callieres, the
governor ; while the intendant, Champigny, a fast ,
friend of the Jesuits, strongly opposed it. By ,
their order the chief inhabitants of Quebec met at ¥
the Chateau St. Louis, Callieres, Champigny, and
Cadillac himself being present. There was a
heated debate on the beaver-trade, after which
the Intendant commanded silence, explained the
projects of Cadillac, and proceeded to oppose them.
1 Mtmoire adresst au Comte de Maurepas, in Margry, V. 138.
24 DETROIT. [1699
His first point was that the natives should not be
taught French, because the Indian girls brought
up at the Ursuline Convent led looser lives than
the young squaws who had received no instruction
while it was much the same with the boys brought
up at the Seminary.
"M. de Champigny," returned the sarcastic
Cadillac, " does great honor to the Ursulines and
the Seminary. It is true that some Indian
women who have learned our language have lived
viciously ; but that is because their teachers were
too stiff with them, and tried to make them nuns." 1
Champigny' s position, as stated by his adver-
sary, was that " all intimacy of the Indians with
the^ French is dangerous and corrupting to their
morals," and that their only~ safety lies in keeping
them at a distance from the settlements. This
was the view of the Jesuits, and there is much to
be said in its favor; but it remains not the less
true that conversion must go hand in hand with
civilization, or it is a failure and a fraud.
Cadillac was not satisfied with the results of the
meeting at the Chateau St. Louis, and he wrote
to the minister: "You can never hope that this
business will succeed if it is discussed here on the
spot. Canada is a country of cabals and intrigues,
and it is impossible to reconcile so many different
interests." 2 He sailed for France, apparently in
the autumn of 1699, to urge his scheme at court.
Here he had an interview with the colonial
* La Mothe-Cadillac, Rapport au Ministre, 1700, in Margry, V. 157.
2 Rapport au Ministre, 1700.
1701.] DETROIT FOUNDED. 25
minister, Ponchartrain, to whom he represented
the military and political expediency . of his pro-
posed establishment ; l and in a letter which seems
to be addressed to La Touche, chief clerk in the
Department of Marine and Colonies, he promised
that the execution of his plan would insure the
safety of Canada and the ruin of the British colo-
nies. 2 He asked for fifty soldiers and fifty Cana-
dians to begin the work, to be followed in the next
year by twenty or thirty families and by two hun-
dred picked men of various trades, sent out at the
King's charge, along with priests of several com-
munities, and nuns to attend the sick and teach
the Indian girls. " I cannot tell you," continues
Cadillac, "the efforts my enemies have made to
deprive me of the honor of executing my project ;
but so soon as M. de Ponchartrain decides in its
favor, the whole country will applaud it."
Ponchartrain accepted the plan, and Cadilla'c
returned to Canada commissioned to execute it.
Early in June, 1701, he left La Chine with a
hundred men in twenty-five canoes loaded with
provisions, goods, munitions, and tools. He was
.accompanied by Alphonse de Tonty, brother of
Henri de Tonty, the companion of La Salle, and by
two half-pay lieutenants, Dugue and Chacornacle,
together with a Jesuit and a Recollet. 3 Following
1 Cadillac's report of this interview is given in Sheldon, Early History
of Michigan, 85-91.
2 La Mothe- Cadillac a an premier commis, 18 Oct. 1700, in Margry,
V. 166.
8 Callieres au Ministre, 4 Oct. 1701. Autre lettre du meine, sans date,
in Margry, V. 187, 190.
26 DETROIT. [1701
the difficult route of the Ottawa and Lake Huron,
they reached their destination on the 24th of
July, and built a picket fort sixty yards square,
which by order of the Governor they named Fort
Ponchartrain. 1 It stood near the west bank of the
strait, about forty paces from the water. 2 Thus
4- was planted the germ of the city of Detroit.
Cadillac sent back Chacornacle with the report
of what he had done, and a description of the
country written in a strain of swelling and gushing
rhetoric in singular contrast with his usual sarcastic
utterances. " None but enemies of the truth," his
letter concludes, " are enemies of this establishment,
so necessary to the glory of the King, the progress
of religion, and the destruction pf the throne of
Baal." 3
What he had, perhaps, still more at heart was
making money out of it by the fur-trade. By
command of the King a radical change had lately
s been made in this chief commerce of Canada, and
the entire control of it had been placed in the
hands of a company in which all Canadians might
take shares. But as the risks were great and the
conditions ill-defined, the number of subscribers
was not much above one hundred and fifty ; and
the rest of the colony found themselves shut out
from the trade, — to the ruin of some, and the
injury of all. 4
1 Callieres et Champigny au Ministre, sans date.
8 Relation du Destroit (by the Jesuit who accompanied the expedition).
8 Description de la Riviere du Detroit, jointe- a la lettre de MM. de
Callieres et de Champigny, 8 Oct. 1701.
4 Callieres au Ministre 9 Nov. 1700.
1703. J A NEW COMPANY. 27
All trade in furs was restricted to Detroit and" 4
Fort Frontenac, both of which were granted to the
company, subject to be resumed by the King at his
pleasure. 1 The company was to repay the eighty
thousand francs which the expedition to .Detroit
had cost ; and to this was added various other
burdens. The King, however, was to maintain
the garrison.
All the affairs of the company were placed in
the hands of seven directors, who began immedi-
ately to complain that their burdens were too
heavy, and to beg for more privileges ; while an
outcry against the privileges already granted rose
from those who had not taken shares in the enter-
prise. Both in the company and out of it there was
nothing but discontent. None were worse pleased
than the two Jesuits, Carheil and Marest, who saw
their flocks at Michillimackinac, both Hurons and
Ottawas, lured away to a new home at Detroit.
Cadillac took a peculiar satisfaction in depriving
Carheil of his converts, and in 1703 we find him
writing to the minister, Ponchartrain, that only
twenty-five Hurons are left at Michillimackinac ;
and " I hope," he adds, " that in the autumn I
shall pluck this last feather from his wing ; and I
am convinced that this obstinate priest will die in
his parish without one parishioner to bury him. ,, 2
1 Traits fait avec la Compagnie de la Colonic, de Canada, 31 Oct. 1701.
2 Lamothe-Cadillac a Ponchartrain, 31 Aoust, 1703 (Margry, V. 301).
On Cadillac's relations with the Jesuits, see Conseils tenus par Lamothe-
Cadillac avec les Sauvages (Margry, V. 253-300) ; also a curious collection
of Jesuit letters sent by Cadillac to the minister, with copious annotations
of his own. He excepts from his strictures Father Engelran, who, he
28 DETROIT. [1703.
If the Indians came to Detroit, the French would
not come. Cadillac had asked for five or six fami-
lies as the modest beginning of a settlement ; but
not one had appeared. The Indians, too, were
angry because the company asked too much for its
goods; while the company complained that a for-
bidden trade, fatal to its interests, went on through
all the region of the Upper Lakes. It was easy
to ordain a monopoly, but impossible to enforce it.
The prospects of the new establishment were de-
plorable ; and Cadillac lost no time in presenting his
views of the situation to the court. " Detroit is
good, or it is bad," he writes to Ponchartrain. " If
it is good, it ought to be sustained, without allowing
the people of Canada to deliberate any more
about it. If it is bad, the court ought to make up
its mind concerning it as soon as may be. I have
said what I think. I have explained the situation.
You have felt the need of Detroit, and its utility
for the glory of God, the progress of religion, and
the good of the colony. Nothing is left me to do
but to imitate the governor of the Holy City, —
take water, and wash my hands of it." His aim
now appears. He says that if Detroit were made a
separate government, and he were put at the head
of it, its prospects would improve. " You may
well believe that the company cares for nothing
but to make a profit out of it. It only wants
to have a storehouse and clerks ; no officers, no
says, incurred the ill-will of the other Jesuits by favoring the establish-
ment of Detroit, and he also has a word of commendation for Father
Germain.
1703.] LETTERS OF CADILLAC. 29
troops, no inhabitants. Take this business in
hand, Monseigneur, and I promise that in two
years your Detroit shall be established of itself."
He then informs the minister that as the company
complain of losing money, he has told them that
if they will make over their rights to him, he will
pay them back all their past outlays. " I promise
you," he informs Ponchartrain, " that if they ac-
cept my proposal and you approve it, I will make
our Detroit flourish. Judge if it is agreeable to
me to have to answer for my actions to five or six
merchants [the directors of the company], who
not long ago were blacking their masters' boots."
He is scarcely more reserved as to the Jesuits.
"I do what I can to make them my friends, but,
impiety apart, one had better sin against God than
against them ; for in that case one gets one's pardon,
whereas in the other the offence is never forgiven
in this world, and perhaps never would be in the
other, if their credit were as great there as it is
here." "
The letters of Cadillac to the court are unique.
No governor of New France, not even the auda-
cious Frontenac, ever wrote to a minister of Louis
XIV. with such off-hand freedom of language as
this singular personage, — a mere captain in the
colony troops ; and to a more stable and balanced
character it would have been impossible.
1 La Mothe- Cadillac & Ponchartrain 31 AoAt, 1703. "Toute impie'te'
a part, il vaudroit mieux pescher contre Dieu que contre eux, parce que
d'uu coste on en recoit son pardon, et de l'autre, l'offense, mesme pr£ten-
due, n'est jamais remise dans ce monde, et ne le seroit peut-estre jamais
dans l'autre, si leur credit y estoit aussi grand qu'il est dans ce pays."
30 DETROIT. '1704.
Cadillac's proposal was accepted. The company
was required to abandon Detroit to him on his
paying them the expenses they had incurred.
Their monopoly was transferred to him ; but as far
as concerned beaver-skins, his trade was limited to
twenty thousand francs a year. oThe Governor
was ordered to give him as many soldiers as he
might want, permit as many persons to settle at
Detroit as might choose to do so, and provide mis-
sionaries. 1 The minister exhorted him to quarrel
no more with the Jesuits, or anybody else, to ban-
ish blasphemy and bad morals from the post, and
not to offend the Five Nations.
The promised era of prosperity did not come.
Detroit lingered on in a weak and troubled in-
fancy, disturbed, as we shall see, by startling inci-
dents. Its occupation by the French produced a
noteworthy result. The Five Nations, filled with
jealousy and alarm, appealed toThe King of Eng-
land for protection, and, the better to insure it,
conveyed the whole country from Lake Ontario
northward to Lake Superior, and westward as far
as Chicago, " unto^our souveraigne Lord King Wil-
liam the Third" and his heirs and successors for-
ever. This territory is described in the deed as
being about eight hundred miles long and four
hundred wide, and was claimed by the Five
Nations as theirs by right of conquest. 2 It of
1 Ponchartrain a La Mothe- Cadillac, 14 Juin, 1704.
* Deed from the Five Nations to the King of their Beaver Hunting
Ground, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IV. 908. It is signed by the totems of
Mchems of all the Nations.
1701.] DEED OF THE FIVE NATIONS. 31
course included Detroit itself. The conveyance
was drawn by the English authorities at Albany
in a form to suit their purposes, and included
terms of subjection and sovereignty which the
signers could understand but imperfectly, if at all.
The Five Nations gave ' away their land to no pur-
pose. The F rench remained in undistur bed pos-
session of Detroit. The English made no attempt
to enforce their title, but t hey put the deed on file :
and used it long after as the base of th eir cla im to
the region of the Lakes.
CHAPTER III. *
1703-1713.
QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.
The Forest of Maine. — A Treacherous Peace. — A Frontier
Village. — Wells and its People. — Attack upon it. — Border
Ravages. — Beaubassin's War Party. — The "Woful Decade."
A Wedding Feast. — A Captive Bridegroom.
For untold ages Maine had been one unbroken
forest, and it was so still. Only along the rocky
seaboard or on the lower waters of one or two
great rivers a few rough settlements had gnawed
slight indentations into this wilderness of woods,
and a little farther inland some dismal clearing
around a blockhouse or stockade let in the sun-
light to a soil that had lain in shadow time out of
mind. This waste of savage vegetation survives,
fin some part, to this day, with the same prodigal-
ity of vital force, the same struggle for existence
| and mutual havoc that mark all organized beings,
)l\from men to mushrooms. Young seedlings in
* \millions spring every summer from the black
mould, rich with the decay of those that had pre-
ceded them, crowding, choking, and killing each
other, perishing by their very abundance ; all but
a scattered few, stronger than the rest, or more
fortunate in position, which survive by blighting
those about them. They in turn, as they grow,
1703-1713.J THE FOREST OF MAINE. 33
interlock their boughs, and repeat in a season or
two the same process of mutual suffocation. The
forest is full of lean saplings dead or dying with
vainly stretching towards the light. Not one in-
fant tree in a thousand lives to maturity ; yet
these survivors form an innumerable host,
pressed together in struggling confusion, squeezed
out of symmetry and robbed of normal develop-
ment, as men are said to be in the level sameness
of democratic society. Seen from above, their
mingled tops spread in a sea of verdure basking in
light; seen from below, all is shadow, through
which spots of timid sunshine steal down among
legions of lank, mossy trunks, toadstools and rank
ferns, protruding roots, matted bushes, and rotting
carcases of fallen trees. A generation ago one
might find here and there the rugged trunk of
some great pine lifting its verdant spire above the
undistinguished myriads of the forest. The woods
of Maine had their aristocracy ; but the axe of the
woodman has laid them low, and these lords of
the wilderness are seen no more.
The life and light of this grim solitude were
in its countless streams and lakes, from little
brooks stealing clear and cold under the alders,
full of the small fry of trout, to the mighty
arteries of the Penobscot and the Kennebec ; from
the great reservoir of Moosehead to a thousand
nameless ponds shining in the hollow places of
the forest.
It had and still has its beast of prey, — wolves,
savage, cowardly, and mean ; bears, gentle and
VOL. I. — 3
34 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703-1713.
mild compared to their grisly relatives of the Far
West, vegetarians when they can do no better,
and not without something grotesque and quaint
in manners and behavior; sometimes, though
rarely, the strong and sullen wolverine ; fre-
quently the lynx; and now and then the fierce
and agile cougar.
The human denizens of this wilderness were
no 1ps« fjpvnp^ apfl fa r more dange rous . These
were the vari ous tribes an rTJinh-tribfin of the
Abenakisj whose villages were on the Saco, the
Kennebec, the Penobscot, and the other great
watercourses. Most of them had been converted
by the Jesuits, and, as we have seen already,
some had been persuaded to remove to Canada,
like the converted Iroquois of Caughnawaga. 1
The rest rejnainejd_jii -their ^jiaJiveJiaunts, ^where,
under the direction of their missionaries, they
could be ulsea^lro"^^
in check.
We knojw_hojvj3^^ plied their toma-
hawks in William and ..MaJ^T^Wa^ancTwhat
havoc they made among the scattered settlements
of the border. 2 Another war with France was
declared on the 4th of May, 1702, on which the
Abenakis again assumed a threatening attitude.
In June ofthe next year Dudley, Governor of Mas-
sachusetts, called the^chiets^of the various bands
to a council at Casco. "Here --presently "appeared
the NorridgewocksHrom the Kennebec, the Penob-
1 Count Frontenac, 220.
2 Ibid., Chaps. XL, XVI., XVH.
703-1713.] A TREACHEROUS PEACE. 35
3Cots and Androscoggins from the rivers that
bear their names, the Penacooks from the Merri-
mac, and the Pequawkets from the Saco, all well
Iglmned, and daubed with ceremonial paint. The
Principal among them, gathered under a large tent,
Kipvere addressed by Dudley in a conciliatory speech.
Their orator replied that they wanted nothing but
peace, and that their thoughts were as far from
war as the sun was from the earth, — words which
they duly confirmed by a belt of wampum. 1 Pres-
ents were distributed among them and received
with apparent satisfaction, while two of their
principal chiefs, known as Captain Samuel and
Captain Bomazeen, declared that several French
missionaries had lately come among them to excite
them against the English, but that they were
" firm as mountains," and would remain so " as
long as the sun and moon endured." They ended
the meeting with dancing, singing, and whoops
of joy, followed by a volley of musketry, answered
by another from the English. It was discovered,
however, that the Indians had loaded their guns
with ball, intending, as the English believed, to
murder Dudley and his attendants, if they could
1 Penhallow, History of the Wars of New England with the Eastern
Indians, 16 (ed. 1859). Penhallow was present at the council. In Judge
Sewall's clumsy abstract of the proceedings (Diary of Sewall, II. 85)
the Indians are represented as professing neutrality. The Governor and
Intendant of Canada write that the Abenakis had begun a treaty of
neutrality with the English, but that as " les Jesuites observoient les
jaauvages, le traite ne fut pas conclu." They add that Rale, Jesuit
•missionary at Norridgewock. informs them that his Indians were ready
to lift the hatchet against the English. Vaudreuil et Beauharnois an
Ministre, 1703.
36 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703-1713*
have done so without danger to their chiefs, whom
the Governor had prudently kept about him. It
was afterwards found, if we may believe a highly
respectable member of the party, that^ two hun-
dred French and Indians were on their way,!
" resolved to seize the Governor, Council, and gen-
tlemen, and then to sacrifice the inhabitants at
pleasure ; " but when they arrived, the English
officials had been gone three days. 1
The French Governor, Vaudreuil, says that
about this time some of the Abenakis were killed
or maltreated by Englishmen. It may have
been so; desperadoes, drunk or sober, were not
rare along the frontier : but Vaudreuil gives no
particulars, and the only English outrage that
appears on record at the time was the act of a gang
of vagabonds who plundered the house of the
younger Saint-Castin, where the town of Castine
now stands. He was Abenaki by his mother ; but
he was absent when the attack took place, and the
marauders seem to have shed no blood. Never-
theless, within six weeks after the Treaty of Casco,
every unprotectetffaTm-house in Maine was in a
blaze.
The settlements of Maine, confined to the south-
western corner of what is now the State of Maine,
1 Penhallow, 17, 18 (ed. 1859). There was a previous meeting of
conciliation between the English and the Abenakis in 1702. The Jesuit
Bigot says that the Indians assured him that they had scornfully repelled
the overtures of the English, and told them that they would always stand
fast by the French. Relation des Abenakis, 1702. This is not likely.
The Indians probably lied both to the Jesuit and to the English, telling
to each what they knew would be most acceptable.
1703-1713.] A FRONTIER VILLAGE. 37
extended along the coast in a feeble and broken
line from Kittery to Casco. Ten years of murder-
ous warfare had almost ruined them. East of the
village of Wells little was left except one or two
forts and the so-called " garrisons,' ' which were
private houses pierced with loopholes and having
an upper story projecting over the lower, so that
the defenders could fire down on assailants batter-
ing the door or piling fagots against the walls.
A few were fenced with palisades, as was the case
with the house of Joseph Storer, at the east end
of Wells, where an overwhelming force of French
and Indians had been gallantly repulsed in the
summer of 1692. 1 These fortified houses were,
however, very rarely attacked, except by surprise
and treachery. In case of alarm such of the inhabit-
ants as found time took refuge in them with their
families, and left their dwellings to the flames ; for
the first thought of the settler was to put his
women and children beyond reach of the scalping-
knife. There were several of these asylums in
different parts of Wells; and without them the
place must have been abandoned. In the little
settlement of York, farther westward, there were
five of them, which had saved a part of the
inhabitants when the rest were surprised and
massacred.
Wells was a long, straggling settlement, consist-
ing at the beginning of William and Mary's War
of about eighty houses and log-cabins, 2 strung at
1 See Count Frontenac, 353.
2 Bourne, History of Wells and Kennebunk.
38 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703-1713.
intervals along tlie north side of the rough track,
known as the King's Road, which ran parallel to
the sea. Behind the houses were rude, half-cleared
pastures, and behind these again, the primeval
forest. The cultivated land was on the south side
of the road, in front of the houses, and beyond it
spread great salt-marshes, bordering the sea and
haunted by innumerable game-birds.
The settlements of Maine were a dependency of
Massachusetts, — a position that did not please their
inhabitants, but which the} 7 accepted because they
needed the help of their Puritan neighbors, from I
whom they differed widely both in their qualities
and in their faults. The Indian wars that checked
their growth had kept them in a condition more 1
than half barbarous. \ They were a hard-working
and hard-drinking race ; for though tea and cof- ;
fee were scarcely known, the land flowed with
New England rum, which was ranked among the
necessaries of life. The better sort could read
and write in a bungling way; but many were
wholly illiterate, and it was not till long after
Queen Anne's War that the remoter settlements
established schools, taught by poor students from
Harvard or less competent instructors, and held
at first in private houses or under sheds. The
church at Wells had been burned by the Indians ;
and though the settlers were beggared by the
war, they voted in town meeting to build an-
other. The new temple, begun in 1699, was a
plain wooden structure thirty feet square. For
want of money the windows long remained un-
1703-1713.] A FRONTIER VILLAGE. 89
glazed, the walls without plaster, and the floor
^without seats ; yet services were duly held here
under direction of the minister, Samuel Emery,
to whom they paid £45 a year, half in pro-
vincial currency, and half in farm produce and
firewood. 4
In spite of these efforts to maintain public wor-
ship, they were far from being a religious com-
munity ; nor were they a peaceful one. Gossip
•and scandal ran riot; social jealousies abounded ;
and under what seemed entire democratic equal-
ity, the lazy, drunken, and shiftless envied the
industrious and thrifty. Wells was infested,
moreover, by several " frightfully turbulent
women," as the chronicle styles them, from
whose rabid tongues the minister himself did
not always escape; and once, in its earlier days,
the town had been indicted for not providing
a ducking-stool to correct these breeders of
discord.
Judicial officers were sometimes informally cho-
sen by popular vote, and sometimes appointed by
the Governor of Massachusetts from among the
inhabitants. As they knew no law, they gave
judgment according to their own ideas of justice,
and their sentences were oftener wanting in wis-
dom than in severity. Until after 1700 the county
courts met by beat of drum at some of the primi-
tive inns or taverns with which the frontier
abounded.
At Wells and other outlying and endangered
hamlets life was still exceedingly rude. The log-
40 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703.
cabins of the least thrifty were no better furnished
than Indian wigwams. The house of Edmond
Littlefield, reputed the richest man in Wells, con-
sisted of two bedrooms and a kitchen, which last
served a great variety of uses, and was supplied
with a table, a pewter pot, a frying-pan, and a skil-
let ; but no chairs, cups, saucers, knives, forks, or
spoons. In each of the two bedrooms there was a
bed, a blanket, and a chest. Another village nota-
ble — Ensign John Barrett — was better provided,
being the possessor of two beds, two chests and a
box, four pewter dishes, four earthen pots, two iron
pots, seven trays, two buckets, some pieces of
wooden- ware, a skillet, and a frying-pan. In the
inventory of the patriarchal Francis Littlefield,
who died in 1712, we find the exceptional items
of one looking-glass, two old chairs, and two old
books. Such of the family as had no bed slept on
hay or straw, and no provision for the toilet is
recorded. 1
On the 10th of August, 1703, these rugged bor-
derers were about their usual callings, unconscious
of danger, — the women at their household work,
the men in the fields or on the more distant salt-
marshes. The wife of Thomas Wells had reached
the time of her confinement, and her husband had
gone for a nurse. Some miles east of Wells's cabin
lived Stephen Harding, — hunter, blacksmith, and
tavern-keeper, a sturdy, good-natured man, who
1 The above particulars are drawn from the History of Wells and
Kennebunk, by the late Edward E. Bourne, of Wells, — a work of admir-
able thoroughness, fidelity, and candor.-
1703.] STEPHEN HARDING. 41
loved the woods, and whose frequent hunting trips
sometimes led him nearly to the White Mountains.
Distant gunshots were heard from the westward,
and his quick eye presently discovered Indians
approaching, on which he told his frightened wife
to go with their infant to a certain oak-tree beyond
the creek while he waited to learn whether the
strangers were friends or foes.
That morning several parties of Indians had
stolen out of the dismal woods behind the houses
and farms of Wells, and approached different dwell-
ings of the far-extended settlement at about the
same time. They entered the cabin of Thomas
Wells, where his wife lay in the pains of childbirth,
and murdered her and her two small children. At
the same time they killed Joseph Sayer, a neigh-
bor of Wells, with all his family.
Meanwhile Stephen Harding, having sent his
wife and child to a safe distance, returned to his
blacksmith's shop, and, seeing nobody, gave a de-
fiant whoop ; on which four Indians sprang at him
from the bushes. He escaped through a back-door
of the shop, eluded his pursuers, and found his
wife and child in a cornfield, where the woman
had fainted with fright. They spent the night
in the woods, and on the next day, after a circuit
of nine miles, reached the palisaded house of
Joseph Storer.
They found the inmates in distress and agita-
tion. Storer's daughter Mary, a girl of eighteen,
was missing. The Indians had caught her, and
afterwards carried her prisoner to Canada. Samuel
42 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703.
Hill and his family were captured, and the younger
children butchered. But it is useless to record the
names and fate of the sufferers. Thirty-nine in
all, chiefly women and children, were killed or
carried off, and then the Indians disappeared as
quickly and silently as they had come, leaving
many of the houses in flames.
This raid upon Wells was only part of a com-
bined attack on all the settlements from that place
to Casco. Those eastward of Wells had been,
as we have seen, abandoned in the last war, ex-
cepting the forts and fortified houses ; but the
inhabitants, reassured, no doubt, by the Treaty
of Casco, had begun to return. On this same day,
the 10th of August, they were startled from their
security. A band of Indians mixed with French-
men fell upon the settlements about the stone fort
near the Falls of the Saco, killed eleven persons,
captured twenty-four, and vainly attacked the fort
itself. Others surprised the settlers at a place called
Spurwink, and killed or captured twenty-two.
Others, again, destroyed the huts of the fishermen
at Cape Porpoise, and attacked the fortified house
at Winter Harbor, the inmates of which, after a
brave resistance, were forced to capitulate. The
settlers at Scarborough were also in a fortified
house, where they made a long and obstinate de-
fence till help at last arrived. Nine families were
settled at Purpooduck Point, near the present city
of Portland. They had no place of refuge, and
the men, being, no doubt, fishermen, were all ab-
sent, when the Indians burst into the hamlet.
1703.] ATTACK AT FALMOUTH. 43
butchered twenty-five women and children, and
carried off eight.
The fort at Casco, or Falmouth, was held by
Major March, with thirty-six men. He had no
thought of danger, when three well-known chiefs
from Norridgewock appeared with a white flag,
and asked for an interview. As they seemed to
be alone and unarmed, he went to meet them, fol-
lowed by two or three soldiers and accompanied by
two old men named Phippeny and Kent, inhab-
itants of the place. They had hardly reached the
spot when the three chiefs drew hatchets from
under a kind of mantle which they wore and
sprang upon them, while other Indians, ambushed
near by, leaped up and joined in the attack. The
two old men were killed at once ; but March, who
was noted for strength and agility, wrenched a
hatchet from one of his assailants, and kept them
all at bay till Sergeant Hook came to his aid with
a file of men and drove them off.
They soon reappeared, burned the deserted cab-
ins in the neighborhood, and beset the garrison
in numbers that continually increased, till in a
few days the entire force that had been busied
in ravaging the scattered settlements was gath-
ered around the place. It consisted of about
five hundred Indians of several tribes, and a few
Frenchmen under an officer named Beaubassin.
Being elated with past successes, they laid siege
to the fort, sheltering themselves under a steep
bank by the water-side and burrowing their way
towards the rampart. March could not dislodge
44 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703.
them, and they continued their approaches till the
third day, when Captain Southack, with the Mas-
sachusetts armed vessel known as the " Province
Galley/' sailed into the harbor, recaptured three
small vessels that the Indians had taken along the
coast, and destroyed a great number of their
canoes, on which they gave up their enterprise and
disappeared. 1
i Such was the beginning of Queen Anne's War.
These attacks were due less to the Abenakis than
to the French who set them on. " Monsieur de
Vaudreuil," writes the Jesuit historian Charlevoix,
"formed a party of these savages, to whom he
joined some Frenchmen under the direction of
the Sieur de Beaubassin, when they effected some
ravages of no great consequence ; they killed,
however, about three hundred men." This last
statement is doubly incorrect. The whole number
of persons killed and carried off during the August
attacks did not much exceed one hundred and
sixty ; 2 and these were of both sexes and all ages,
from octogenarians to new-born infants. The able-
bodied men among them were few, as most of the
attacks were made upon unprotected houses in the
1 On these attacks on the frontier of Maine, Penhallow, who well knew
the country and the people, is the best authority. Niles, in his Indian
and French Wars, copies him without acknowledgment, but not without
blunders. As regards the attack on Wells, what particulars we have
are mainly due to the research of the indefatigable Bourne. Compare
Belknap, I. 330; Eolsom, History of Saco and Biddeford, 198; Coll.
Maine Hist. Soc, III. 140, 348 ; Williamson, History of Maine, II. 42.
Beaubassin is called "Bobasser" in most of the English accounts.
2 The careful and well-informed Belknap puts it at only 130. History
of New Hampshire, I. 331
1703.] OBJECTS OF THE FRENCH. 45
absence of the head of the family ; and the only
fortified place captured was the garrison-house at
Winter Harbor, which surrendered on terms of
capitulation. The instruments of this ignoble
warfare and the revolting atrocities that accom-
panied it, were all, or nearly all, converted Indians
of the missions. Charlevoix has no word of dis-
approval for it, and seems to regard its partial
success as a gratifying one so far as it went.
One of the objects was, no doubt, to check the
progress of the English settlements ; but, pursues
Charlevoix, " the essential point was to commit
the Abenakis in such a manner that they could
not draw back." * This object was constantly kept
in view. The French claimed at this time that
the territory of Acadia reached as far westward as
the Kennebec, which therefore formed, in their
view, the boundary between the rival nations, and
they trusted in the Abenakis to defend this as-
sumed line of demarcation. But the Abenakis
sorely needed English guns, knives, hatchets, and
kettles, and nothing but the utmost vigilance
could prevent them from coming to terms with those
who could supply their necessities. Hence the
policy of the French authorities on the frontier ol
New England was the opposite of their policy on
the frontier of New York. They left the latter
undisturbed, lest by attacking the Dutch and Eng-
lish settlers they should stir up the Five Nations
to attack Canada ; while, on the other hand, they
constantly spurred the Abenakis against New Eng-
1 Charlevoix, II. 289 290 (quarto edition).
46 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1703.
land, in order to avert the dreaded event of their
making peace with her.,/
The attack on Wells, Casco, and the inter-
vening settlements was followed by murders and
depredations that lasted through the autumn
and extended along two hundred miles of fron-
tier. Thirty Indians attacked the village of
Hampton, killed the widow Mussey, a famous
Quakeress, and then fled to escape pursuit. At
Black Point nineteen men going to their work
in the meadows were ambushed by two hundred
Indians, and all but one were shot or captured.
The fort was next attacked. It was garrisoned
by eight men under Lieutenant Wyatt, who stood
their ground for some time, and then escaped by
means of a sloop in the harbor. At York the
wife and children of Arthur Brandon were killed,
and the Widow Parsons and her daughter carried
off. At Berwick the Indians attacked the fortified
house of Andrew Neal, but were repulsed with the
loss of nine killed and many wounded, for which
they revenged themselves by burning alive Joseph
King, a prisoner whom they had taken. Early in
February a small party of them hovered about the
fortified house of Joseph Bradley at Haverhill,
till, seeing the gate open and nobody on the watch,
they rushed in. The woman of the house was
boiling soap, and in her desperation she snatched
up the kettle and threw the contents over them
with such effect that one of them, it is said, was
scalded to death. The man who should have been
on the watch was killed, and several persons were
1703.J MEASURES OF DEFENCE. 47
captured, including the woman. It was the second
time that she had been a prisoner in Indian hands.
Half starved and bearing a heavy load, she followed
her captors in their hasty retreat towards Canada.
After a time she was safely delivered of an infant
in the midst of the winter forest ; but the child
pined for want of sustenance, and the Indians has-
tened its death by throwing hot coals into its mouth
when it cried. The astonishing vitality of the
woman carried her to the end of the frightful
journey. A Frenchman bought her from the
Indians, and she was finally ransomed by her
husband.
By far the most dangerous and harassing attacks
were those of small parties skulking under the
edge of the forest, or lying hidden for days together,
watching their opportunity to murder unawares,
and vanishing when they had done so. Against
such an enemy there was no defence. The Massa-
chusetts Government sent a troop of horse to Ports-
mouth, and another to Wells. These had the
advantage of rapid movement in case of alarm
along the roads and forest-paths from settlement
to settlement; but once in the woods, their
horses were worse than useless, and they could
only fight on foot. Fighting, however, was rarely
possible ; for on reaching the scene of action they
found nothing but mangled corpses and burning
houses.
The best defence was to take the offensive.
In September Governor Dudley sent three hundred
and sixty men to the upper Saco, the haunt of
48 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1704.
the Pequawket tribe ; but the place was deserted.
Major, now Colonel, March soon after repeated
the attempt, killing six Indians and capturing as
many more. The General Court offered £40 for
every Indian scalp, and one Captain Tyng, in con-
sequence, surprised an Indian village in midwinter
and brought back five of these disgusting trophies.
In the spring of 1704 word came from Albany
that a band of French Indians had built a fort and
planted corn at Co-os meadows, high up the river
Connecticut. On this, one Caleb Lyman with five
friendly Indians, probably Mohegans, set out from
Northampton, and after a long march through the
forest, surprised, under cover of a thunderstorm,
a wigwam containing nine warriors, — bound, no
doubt, against the frontier. They killed seven of
them ; and this was all that was done at present in
the way of reprisal or prevention. 1
The murders and burnings along the borders
were destined to continue with little variety and
little interruption during ten years. It was a
repetition of what the pedantic Cotton Mather
calls Decennium luctuosum, or the " woful decade "
of William and Mary's War. The wonder is that
the outlying settlements were not abandoned.
These ghastly, insidious, and ever-present dangers
demanded a more obstinate courage than the
hottest battle in the open field.
One curious frontier incident may be mentioned
here, though it did not happen till towards the
end of the war. In spite of poverty, danger, and
1 Penhallow, Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians,
1712.J A FRONTIER WEDDING. 49
tribulation, marrying and giving in marriage did
not cease among the sturdy borderers ; and on a day
in September there was a notable wedding feast
at the palisaded house of John Wheelwright, one
of the chief men of Wells. Elisha Plaisted was
to espouse Wheelwright's daughter Hannah, and
many guests were assembled, some from Ports-
mouth, and even beyond it. Probably most of
them came in sail-boats ; for the way by land was
full of peril, especially on the road from York,
which ran through dense woods, where Indians
often waylaid the traveller. The bridegroom's
father was present with the rest. It was a con-
course of men in homespun, and women and girls
in such improvised finery as their poor resources
could supply ; possibly, in default of better, some
wore nightgowns^ more or less disguised, over
their daily dress, as happened on similar occasions
half a century later among the frontiersmen of
west Virginia. 1 After an evening of rough merri-
ment and gymnastic dancing, the guests lay down
to sleep under the roof of their host or in adjacent
barns and sheds. When morning came, and they
were preparing to depart, it was found that two
horses were missing ; and not doubting that they
had strayed away, three young men, Sergeant
Tucker, Joshua Downing, and Isaac Cole, went to
find them. In a few minutes several gunshots
were heard. The three young men did not return.
Downing and Cole were killed, and Tucker was
wounded and made prisoner.
1 Doddridge, Notts on Western Virginia and Pennsylvania*
VOL. I. — 4
50 QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. [1712.
Believing that* as usual, the attack came from
some small scalping party, Elisha Plaisted and
eight or ten more threw themselves on the horses
that stood saddled before the house, and galloped
across the fields in the direction of the firing;
while others ran to cut off the enemy's retreat.
A volley was presently heard, and several of the
party were seen running back towards the house.
Elisha Plaisted and his companions had fallen into
an ambuscade of two hundred Indians. One or
more of them were shot, and the unfortunate
bridegroom was captured. The distress of his
young wife, who was but eighteen, may be
imagined.
Two companies of armed men in the pay of
Massachusetts were then in Wells, and some of
them had come to the wedding. Seventy marks-
men went to meet the Indians, who ensconced
themselves in the edge of the forest, whence they
could not be dislodged. There was some desultory
firing, and one of the combatants was killed on
each side, after which the whites gave up the at-
tack, and Lieutenant Banks went forward with a
flag of truce, in the hope of ransoming the prison-
ers. He was met by six chiefs, among whom were
two noted Indians of his acquaintance, Bomazeen
and Captain Nathaniel. They well knewHhat the
living Plaisted was worth more than his scarp; and
though they would not come to terms at once^ they
promised to meet the English at Richmond's island
in a few days and give up both him and Tucker on
payment of a sufficient ransom. The flag of truce
1712.] RANSOM OF PLAISTED. 51
was respected, and Banks came back safe, bringing
a hasty note to the elder Plaisted from his captive
son. This note now lies before me, and it runs
thus, in the dutiful formality of the olden time :
Sir, — I am in the hands of a great many Indians, with
which there is six captains. They say that what they will
have for me is 50 pounds, and thirty pounds for Tucker,
my fellow prisoner, in good goods, as broadcloth, some
provisions, some tobacco pipes, Pomisstone [pumice-stone],
stockings, and a little of all things. If you will, come to
Richmond's Island in 5 days at farthest, for here is 200
Indians, and they belong to Canada.
If you do not come in 5 days, you will not see me, for Cap-
tain Nathaniel the Indian will not stay no longer, for the
Canada Indians is not willing for to sell me. Pray, Sir, don't
fail, for they have given me one day, for the days were but
4 at first. Give my kind love to my dear wife. This from
your dutiful son till death,
Elisha Plaisted.
The alarm being spread and a sufficient number
of men mustered, they set out to attack the enemy
and recover the prisoners by force ; but not an
Indian could be found.
Bomazeen and Captain Nathaniel were true to
the rendezvous ; in due time Elisha Plaisted was
ransomed and restored to his bride. 1
1 On this affair, the note of Elisha Plaisted in Massachusetts Archives ;
Richard Waldron to Governor Dudley, Portsmouth, 19 Sept. 1712; Bourne,
Wells and Kennebunk, 278.
CHAPTER IV. +>
1704-1740.
DEERFIELD.
Hertel de Rouville. — A Frontier Village. — Rev. John Wil-
liams. — The Surprise. — Defence of the Stebbins House. —
Attempted Rescue. — The Meadow Fight. — The Captives.
— The Northward March. — Mrs. Williams killed. — The
Minister's Journey. — Kindness of Canadians. — A Stubborn
Heretic. — Eunice Williams. — Converted Captives. — John
Sheldon's Mission. — Exchange of Prisoners. — An English
Squaw. — The Gill Family.
About midwinter the Governor of Canada sent
another large war-party against the New England
border. The object of attack was an unoffending
hamlet, that from its position could never be a
menace to the French, and the destruction of
which could profit them nothing. The aim of the
enterprise was not military, but political. " I
have sent no war-party towards Albany," writes
Vaudreuil, " because we must do nothing that
might cause a rupture between us and the Iro-
quois ; but we must keep things astir in the direc-
tion of Boston, or else the Abenakis will declare
for the English. " In short, the object was fully
to commit these savages to hostility against New
JUngland, and convince, them at the same time that
w^the French would back their quarrel. 1
1 Vaudreuil au Ministre, 14 Nov. 1703; Ibid., 3 Avril, 1704; Vaudreuil
et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Nov. 1704. French writers say that the
English surprised and killed some of the Abenakis, who thereupon asked
1704] ROUVILLE'S WAR-PARTY. 53
The party consisted, according to French ac-
counts, of fifty Canadians and two hundred Abe-
nakis and Caughnawagas, — the latter of whom,
while trading constantly with Albany, were rarely
averse to a raid against Massachusetts or New
Hampshire. 1 The command was given to the
younger Hertel de Rouville, who was accompanied
by four of his brothers. They began their march
in the depth of winter, journeyed nearly three
hundred miles on snow-shoes through the forest,
and approached their destination on the afternoon
of the 28th of February, 1704. It was the village
of Deerfield, — which then formed the extreme
northwestern frontier of Massachusetts, its feeble
neighbor, the infant settlement of Northfield, a
little higher up the Connecticut, having been aban-
doned during the last war. Rouville halted his
followers at a place now called Petty's Plain, two
miles from the village ; and here, under the shel-
ter of a pine forest, they all lay hidden, shivering
with cold, — for they dared not make fires, — and
hungry as wolves, for their provisions were spent.
Though their numbers, by the lowest account,
were nearly equal to the whole population of Deer-
field, — men, women, and children, — they had no
thought of an open attack, but trusted to darkness
and surprise for an easy victory.
Deerfield stoo<^ on a plateau above the river
meadows, and the houses — forty-one in all —
help from Canada. This perhaps refers to the expeditions of Colonel
March and Captain Tyng, who, after the bloody attacks upou the settle,
ments of Maine, made reprisal upon Abenaki camps.
1 English accounts make the whole number 342.
54 DEERFIELD. [1704.
were chiefly along the road towards the villages
of Hadley and Hatfield, a few miles distant. In
the middle of the place, on a rising ground called
Meeting-honse Hill, was a small square wooden
meeting-house. This, with about fifteen private
houses, besides barns and sheds, was enclosed by a
fence of palisades eight feet high, flanked by
" mounts," or block-houses, at two or more of
the corners. The four sides of this palisaded en-
closure, which was called the fort, measured in
all no less than two hundred and two rods, and
within it lived some of the principal inhabitants
of the village, of which it formed the centre or
citadel. Chief among its inmates was John Wil-
liams, the minister, a man of character and educa-
tion, who, after graduating at Harvard, had come
to Deerfield when it was still suffering under the
ruinous effects of King Philip's War, and entered
on his ministry with a salary of sixty pounds in
depreciated New England currency, payable, not in
money, but in wheat, Indian-corn, and pork. 1 His
parishioners built him a house, he married, and
had now eight children, one of whom was absent
with friends at Hadley. 2 His next neighbor was
Benoni Stebbins, sergeant in the county militia,
who lived a few rods from the meeting-house.
About fifty yards distant, and near the northwest
angle of the enclosure, stood the house of Ensign
John Sheldon, a framed building, one of the largest
in the village, and, like that of Stebbins, made
1 Stephen W. Williams, Biographical Memoir of Rev. John Williams.
2 Account ofy e destruction at Deref< Feb. 29, 1703/4.
1704.] A FRONTIER VILLAGE. 55
bullet-proof by a layer of bricks between the outer
and inner sheathing, while its small windows and
its projecting upper story also helped to make it
defensible.
The space enclosed by the palisade, though
much too large for effective defence, served in
time of alarm as an asylum for the inhabitants
outside, whose houses were scattered, — some on
the north towards the hidden enemy, and some
on the south towards Hadley and Hatfield. Among
those on the south side was that of the militia
captain, Jonathan Wells, which had a palisade of
its own, and, like the so-called fort, served as an
asylum for the neighbors.
These private fortified houses were sometimes
built by the owners alone, though more often they
were the joint work of the owners and of the in-
habitants, to whose safety they contributed. The
palisade fence that enclosed the central part of
the village was made under a vote of the town,
each inhabitant being required to do his share ;
and as they were greatly impoverished by the last
war, the General Court of the province remitted
for a time a part of their taxes in consideration of
a work which aided the general defence. 1
Down to the Peace of Ryswick the neighborhood
had been constantly infested by scalping-parties,
and once the village had been attacked by a con-
siderable force of French and Indians, who were
beaten off. Of late there had been warnings of
1 Papers in the Archives of Massachusetts. Among these, a letter of
Rev. John Williams to the Governor, 21 Oct. 1703, states that the palisade
is rotten, and must be rebuilt.
56 DEERFIELD. [1704.
fresh disturbance. Lord Cornbury, Governor of
New York, wrote that he had heard through spies
that Deerfield was again to be attacked, and a
message to the same effect came from Peter Schuy-
ler, who had received intimations of the danger
from Mohawks lately on a visit to their Caughna-
waga relatives. During the autumn the alarm
was so great that the people took refuge within
the palisades, and the houses of the enclosure were
crowded with them ; but the panic had now sub-
sided, and many, though not all, had returned to
their homes. They were reassured by the pres-
ence of twenty volunteers from the villages below,
whom, on application from the minister, Williams,
the General Court had sent as a garrison to Deer-
field, where they were lodged in the houses of the
villagers. On the night when Hertel de Rouville
and his band lay hidden among the pines there
were in all the settlement a little less than three
hundred souls, of whom two hundred and sixty-
eight were inhabitants, twenty were yeomen soldiers
of the garrison, two were visitors from Hatfield,
and three were negro slaves. They were of all ages,
— from the Widow Allison, in her eighty-fifth year,
to the infant son of Deacon French, aged four
weeks. 1
Heavy snows had lately fallen and buried the
clearings, the meadow, and the frozen river to the
1 The names of nearly all the inhabitants are preserved, and even the
ages of most of them have been ascertained, through the indefatigable
research of Mr. George Sheldon, of Deerfield, among contemporary rec-
ords. The house of Thomas French, the town clerk, was not destroyed,
and his papers were saved.
1704]. A FRONTIER VILLAGE. 57
depth of full three feet. On the northwestern
side the drifts were piled nearly to the top of the
palisade fence, so that it was no longer an ob-
struction to an active enemy.
"" As the afternoon waned, the sights and sounds
of the little border hamlet were, no doubt, like
those of any other rustic New England village at
the end of a winter day, — an ox-sledge creaking
on the frosty snow as it brought in the last load
of firewood, boys in homespun snowballing each
other in the village street, farmers feeding their
horses and cattle in the barns, a matron drawing
a pail of water with the help of one of those long
well-sweeps still used in some remote districts,
or a girl bringing a pail of milk from the cow-shed.
In the houses, where one room served as kitchen,
dining-room, and parlor, the housewife cooked the
evening meal, children sat at their bowls of mush
and milk, and the men of the family, their day's
work over, gathered about the fire, while perhaps
some village coquette sat in the corner with fingers
busy at the spinning-wheel, and ears intent on the
stammered wooings of her rustic lover. Deerfield
kept early hours, and it is likely that by nine
o'clock all were in their beds. There was a patrol
inside the palisade, but there was little discipline
among these extemporized soldiers ; the watchers
grew careless as the frosty night went on ; and it
is said that towards morning they, like the vil-
lagers, betook themselves to their beds.
Rouville and his men, savage with hunger, lay
shivering under the pines till about two hours
58 DEERFIELD. [1704.
before dawn ; then, leaving their packs and their
snow-shoes behind, they moved cautiously towards
their prey. There was a crust on the snow strong
enough to bear their weight, though not to pre-
vent a rustling noise as it crunched under the
feet of so many men. It is said that from time
to time Rouville commanded a halt, in order that
the sentinels, if such there were, might mistake
the distant sound for rising and falling gusts of
wind. In any case, no alarm was given till they
had mounted the palisade and dropped silently
into the unconscious village. Then with one ac-
cord they screeched the war-whoop, and assailed
the doors of the houses with axes and hatchets.
The hideous din startled the minister, Williams,
from his sleep. Half-wakened, he sprang out of
bed, and saw dimly a crowd of savages bursting
through the shattered door. He shouted to two
soldiers who were lodged in the house ; and then,
with more valor than discretion, snatched a pistol
that hung at the head of the bed, cocked it, and
snapped it at the breast of the foremost Indian,
who proved to be a Caughnawaga chief. It missed
fire, or Williams would, no doubt, have been killed
on the spot. Amid the screams of his terrified chil-
dren, three of the party seized him and bound him
fast ; for they came well provided with cords,
since prisoners had a market value. Nevertheless
in the first fury of their attack they dragged to
the door and murdered two of the children and a
negro woman called Parthena, who was probably
their nurse. In an upper room lodged a young man
1704.] THE STEBBINS HOUSE. 59
named Stoddard, who h A time to snatch a cloak,
throw himself out of the window, climb the pali-
sade, and escape in the darkness. Half-naked as
he was, he made his way over the snow to Hat-
field, binding his bare feet with strips torn from
the cloak.
They kept Williams shivering in his shirt for
an hour while a frightful uproar of yells,
shrieks, and gunshots sounded from without.
At length they permitted him, his wife, and five
remaining children to dress themselves. Mean-
while the Indians and their allies burst into
most of the houses, killed such of the men as
resisted, butchered some of the women and chil-
dren, and seized and bound the rest. Some of
the villagers escaped in the confusion, like Stod-
dard, and either fled half .dead with cold towards
Hatfield, or sought refuge in the fortified house
of Jonathan Wells.
The house of Stebbins, the minister's next
neighbor, had not been attacked so soon as the
rest, and the inmates had a little time for pre-
paration. They consisted of Stebbins himself,
with his wife and five children, David Hoyt,
Joseph Catlin, Benjamin Church, a namesake of
the old Indian fighter of Philip's War, and three
other men, — probably refugees who had brought
their wives and families within the palisaded
enclosure for safety. Thus the house contained
seven men, four or five women, and a considerable
number of children. Though the walls were
bullet-proof, it was not built for defence. The
60 DEERFIELD. [1704.
men, however, were well supplied with guns,
powder, and lead, and they seem to have found
some means of barricading the windows. When
the enemy tried to break in, they drove them
back with loss. On this, the French and Indians
gathered in great numbers before the house,
showered bullets upon it, and tried to set it on
fire. They were again repulsed, with the loss of
several killed and wounded ; among the former
a Caughnawaga chief, and among the latter
a French officer. Still the firing continued.
If the assailants had made a resolute assault,
the defenders must have been overpowered ; but
to risk lives in open attack was contrary to
every maxim of forest warfare. The women in
the house behaved with great courage, and
moulded bullets, which the men shot at the
enemy. Stebbins was killed outright, and Church
was wounded, as was also the wife of David Hoyt.
At length most of the French and Indians,
disgusted with the obstinacy of the defence,
turned their attention to other quarters ; though
some kept up their fire under cover of the meeting-
house ailti^ another building within easy range
of gunshot*
This building was the house of Ensign John
Sheldon, already mentioned. The Indians had
had some difficulty in mastering it ; for the door
being of thick oak plank, studded with nails of
wrought iron and well barred, they could not
break it open. After a time, however, they
hacked a hole in it, through which they fired
1704. J THE SHELDON HOUSE. 61
and killed Mrs. Sheldon as she sat on the edge
of a bed in a lower room. Her husband, a
man of great resolution, seems to have been
absent. Their son John, with Hannah his wife,
jumped from an upper chamber window. The
young woman sprained her ankle in the fall,
and lay helpless, but begged her husband to run
to Hatfield for aid, which he did, while she
remained a prisoner. The Indians soon got in
at a back door, seized Mercy Sheldon, a little
girl of two years, and dashed out her brains
on the door-stone. Her two brothers and her
sister Mary, a girl of sixteen, were captured.
The house was used for a short time as a depot
for prisoners, and here also was brought the
French officer wounded in the attack on the
Stebbins house. A family tradition relates that
as he lay in great torment he begged for water,
and that it was brought him by one of the prison-
ers, Mrs. John Catlin, whose husband, son, and
infant grandson had been killed, and who, never-
theless, did all in her power to relieve the
sufferings of the wounded man. Probably it was
in recognition of this charity that when the other
prisoners were led away, Mrs. Catlin was left
behind. She died of grief a few weeks later.
The sun was scarcely an hour high when the
miserable drove of captives was conducted across
the river to the foot of a mountain or high hill.
Williams and his family were soon compelled
to follow, and his house was set on fire. As
they led him off he saw that other houses within
62 DEERFIELD. [1704.
the palisade were burning, and that all were
in the power of the enemy except that of his
neighbor Stebbins, where the gallant defenders
still kept their assailants at bay. Having col-
lected all their prisoners, the main body of the
French and Indians began to withdraw towards
the pine forest, where they had left their packs
and snow-shoes, and to prepare for a retreat before
the country should be roused, first murdering in
cold blood Marah Carter, a little girl of five
years, whom they probably thought unequal to
the march. Several parties, however, still lin-
gered in the village, firing on the Stebbins house,
killing cattle, hogs, and sheep, and gathering such
plunder as the place afforded.
Early in the attack, and while it was yet
dark, the light of burning houses, reflected from
the fields of snow, had been seen at Hatfield,
Hadley, and Northampton. The alarm was
sounded through the slumbering hamlets, and
parties of men mounted on farm-horses, with
saddles or without, hastened to the rescue, not
doubting that the fires were kindled by Indians.
When the sun was about two hours high, between
thirty and forty of them were gathered at the
fortified house of Jonathan Wells, at the southern
end of the village. The houses of this neighbor-
hood were still standing, and seem not to have
been attacked ; the stubborn defence of the Steb-
bins house having apparently prevented the
enemy from pushing much beyond the palisaded
enclosure. The house of Wells was full of refu-
1704.] ATTEMPTED RESCUE. 63
gee families. A few Deerfield men here joined
the horsemen from the lower towns, as also
did four or five of the yeoman soldiers who had
escaped the fate of most of their comrades.
The horsemen left their horses within Wells's
fence ; he himself took the lead, and the whole
party rushed in together at the southern gate
of the palisaded enclosure, drove out the plun-
derers, and retook a part of their plunder. The
assailants of the Stebbins house, after firing at
it for three hours, were put to flight, and those
of its male occupants who were still alive joined
their countrymen, while the women and children
ran back for harborage to the house of Wells.
Wells and his men, now upwards of fifty,
drove the flying enemy more than a mile across
the river meadows, and ran in headlong pursuit
over the crusted snow, killing a considerable
number. In the eagerness of the chase many
threw off their overcoats, and even their jackets.
Wells saw the danger, and vainly called on them
to stop. Their blood was up, and most of them
were young and inexperienced.
Meanwhile the firing at the village had been
heard by Rouville's main body, who had al-
ready begun their retreat northward. They
turned back to support their comrades, and hid
themselves under the bank of the river till the
pursuers drew near, when they gave them a close
volley and rushed upon them with the war-
whoop. Some of the English were shot down,
and the rest driven back. There was no panic.
64 DEERFIELD. [1704.
" We retreated/' says Wells, " facing about and
firing." When they reached the palisade they
made a final stand, covering by their fire such
of their comrades as had fallen within range
of musket-shot, and thus saving them from
the scalping-knife. The French did not try to
dislodge them. Nine of them had been killed,
several were wounded, and one was captured. 1
The number of English carried off prisoners
was one hundred and eleven, and the number
killed was according to one list forty-seven, and
according to another fifty-three, the latter in-
cluding some who were smothered in the cellars
of their burning houses. The names, and in
most cases the ages, of both captives and slain
are preserved. Those who escaped with life
and freedom were, by the best account, one
hundred and thirty-seven. An official tabular
statement, drawn up on the spot, sets the num-
ber of houses burned at seventeen. The house
of the town clerk, Thomas French, escaped, as
before mentioned, and the town records, with
1 On the 31st of May, 1704, Jonathan Wells and Ebenezer Wright
petitioned the General Court for compensation for the losses of those
who drove the enemy out of Deerfield and chased them into the meadow.
The petition, which was granted, gives an account of the affair, followed
by a list of all the men engaged. They number fifty-seven, including the
nine who were killed. A list of the plunder re-taken from the enemy,
consisting of guns, blankets, hatchets, etc., is also added. Several other
petitions for the relief of men wounded at the same time are preserved
in the archives of Massachusetts. In 1736 the survivors of the party,
with the representatives of those who had died, petitioned the General
Court for allotments of land, m recognition of their services. This peti-
tion also was granted. It is accompanied by a narrative written by Wells.
These and other papers on the same subject have been recently printed
by Mr. George Sheldon of Deerfield.
1704.] RETREAT OE THE INDIANS. 65
other papers in his charge, were saved. The
meeting-house also was left standing. The house
of Sheldon was hastily set on fire by the French
and Indians when their rear was driven out
of the village by Wells and his men ; but the
fire was extinguished, and " the Old Indian
House," as it was called, stood till the year
1849. Its door, deeply scarred with hatchets,
and with a hole cut near the middle, is still
preserved in the Memorial Hall at Deerfield. 1
Vaudreuil wrote to the minister, Ponchartrain,
that the French lost two or three killed,
and twenty or twenty-one wounded, Rouville
himself being among the latter. This cannot
include the Indians, since there is proof that
the enemy left behind a considerable number of
their dead. Wherever resistance was possible, it
had been of the most prompt and determined
character. 2
Long before noon the French and Indians were
on their northward march with their train of cap-
tives. More armed men came up from the settle-
ments below, and by midnight about eighty were
gathered at the ruined village. Couriers had been
1 After the old house was demolished, this door was purchased by my
friend Dr. Daniel Denison Slade, and given by him to the town of Deer-
field, on condition that it should be carefully preserved. For an engrav-
ing of "the Old Indian House," see Hoyt, Indian Wars (ed. 1824).
2 Governor Dudley, writing to Lord on 21 April, 1704, says
that thirty dead bodies of the enemy were found in the village and on
the meadow. Williams, the minister, says that they did not seem in-
clined to rejoice over their success, and continued for several days to
bury members of their party who died of wounds on the return march.
He adds that he learned in Canada that they lost more than forty,
though Vaudreuil assured him that they lost but eleven.
vol. I. — 5
66 DEERFIELD. [1704.
sent to rouse the country, and before evening of
the next day (the 1st of March) the force at Deer-
field was increased to two hundred and fifty ; but
a thaw and a warm rain had set in, and as few of
the men had snow-shoes, pursuit was out of the
question. Even could the agile savages and their
allies have been overtaken, the probable conse-
quence would have been the murdering of the
captives to prevent their escape.
In spite of the foul blow dealt upon it, Deerfield
was not abandoned. Such of its men as were left
were taken as soldiers into the pay of the province,
while the women and children were sent to the
villages below. A small garrison was also sta-
tioned at the spot, under command of Captain
Jonathan Wells, and thus the village held its
ground till- the storm of war should pass over. 1
1 On the attack of Deerfield, Williams, The Redeemed Captive Re-
turning to Zion. This is the narrative of the minister, John Williams.
Account of the Captivity of Stephen Williams, written by himself. This
is the narrative of one of the minister's sons, eleven years old when cap-
tured. It is printed in the Appendix to the Biographical Memoir of Rev.
John Williams (Hartford, 1837); An account of y* destruction at Derefd.
feb r . 29, 1703 4, in Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc, 1867, p. 478. This
valuable document was found among the papers of Fitz-John Winthrop,
Governor of Connecticut. The authorities of that province, on hearing
of the catastrophe at Deerfield, promptly sent an armed force to ite re-
lief, which, however, could not arrive till long after the enemy were gone.
The paper in question seems to be the official report of one of the Con-
necticut officers. After recounting what had taken place, he gives a
tabular list of the captives, the slain, and those who escaped, with the
estimated losses in property of each inhabitant. The list of captives is
not quite complete. Compare the lists given by Stephen Williams at
the end of his narrative. The town records of Hatfield give various
particulars concerning the attack on its unfortunate neighbor, as do the
letters of Col. Samuel Partridge, commanding the militia of the county.
Hoyt, Antiquarian Researches, gives a valuable account of it. The care-
ful and unwearied research of Mr. George Sheldon, the lineal descendant
1704.] THE CAPTIVES. 67
We have seen that the minister, Williams, with
his wife and family were led from their burning
house across the river to the foot of the mountain,
where the crowd of terrified and disconsolate cap-
tives — friends, neighbors, and relatives — were
already gathered. Here they presently saw the
fight in the meadow, and were told that if their
countrymen attempted a rescue, they should all be
put to death. " After this," writes Williams, " we
went up the mountain, and saw the smoke of the
fires in town, and beheld the awful desolation of
Deerfield ; and before we marched any farther
they killed a sucking child of the English. "
The French and Indians marched that afternoon
only four or five miles, — to Greenfield meadows,
— where they stopped to encamp, dug away the
snow, laid spruce-boughs on the ground for beds,
and bound fast such of the prisoners as seemed
able to escape. The Indians then held a carousal
on some liquor they had found in the village, and
of Ensign John Sheldon, among all sources, public or private, manuscript
or in print, that could throw light on the subject cannot be too strongly
commended, and I am indebted to him for much valued information.
Penhallow's short account is inexact, and many of the more recent
narratives are not only exaggerated, but sometimes absurdly incorrect.
The French notices of the affair are short, and give few particulars.
Vaudreuil in one letter sets the number of prisoners at one hundred and
fifty, and increases it in another to two hundred and fifty. Ramesay,
Governor of Montreal, who hated Hertel de Rouville, and bore no love to
Vaudreuil, says that fifty-six women and children were murdered on the
way to Canada, — which is a gross exaggeration. Ramesay au Ministre,
14 Nov. 1704. The account by Dr. Ethier in the Revue Canadienne of
1874 is drawn entirely from the Redeemed Captive of Williams, with
running comments by the Canadian writer, but no new information.
The comments chiefly consist in praise of Williams for truth when he
speaks favorably of the Canadians, and charges of lying when he speaks
otherwise.
68 DEEEFIELD. [1704.
in their drunken rage murdered a negro man be-
longing to Williams. In spite of their precau-
tions, Joseph Alexander, one of the prisoners,
escaped during the night, at which they were
greatly incensed ; and Rouville ordered Williams
to tell his companions in misfortune that if any
more of them ran off, the rest should be burned
alive. 1
The prisoners were the property of those who
had taken them. Williams had two masters ;
one of the three who had seized him having been
shot in the attack on the house of Stebbins. His
principal owner was a surly fellow who would not
let him speak to the other prisoners ; but as he was
presently chosen to guard the rear, the minister
was left in the hands of his other master, who
allowed him to walk beside his wife and help her
on the way. Having borne a child a few weeks
before, she was in no condition for such a march,
and felt that her hour was near. Williams speaks
of her in the strongest terms of affection. She
made no complaint, and accepted her fate with res-
ignation. " We discoursed," he says, " of the hap-
piness of those who had God for a father and
friend, as also that it was our reasonable duty
quietly to submit to his will." Her thoughts were
for her remaining children, whom she commended
to her husband's care, Their intercourse was
short. The Indian who had gone to the rear of
the train soon returned, separated them, ordered
1 John Williams, The Redeemed Captive. Compare Stephen Williams,
Account of the Captivity, etc.
1704.] FATE OF MRS. WILLIAMS. 69
Williams to the front, " and so made me take a
last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my
eyes and companion in many mercies and afflic-
tions." They came soon after to Green River, a
stream then about knee-deep, and so swift that the
water had not frozen. After wading it with diffi-
culty, they climbed a snow-covered hill beyond.
The minister, with strength almost spent, was per-
mitted to rest a few moments at the top ; and as
the other prisoners passed by in turn, he questioned
each for news of his wife. He was not left long
in suspense. She had fallen from weakness in
fording the stream, but gained her feet again, and,
drenched in the icy current, struggled to the far-
ther bank, when the savage who owned her, find-
ing that she could not climb the hill, killed her
with one stroke of his hatchet. Her body was
left on the snow till a few of her townsmen,
who had followed the trail, found it a day or two
after, carried it back to Deerfield, and buried it in
the churchyard.
On the next day the Indians killed an infant and
a little girl of eleven years; on the day follow-
ing, Friday, they tomahawked a woman, and on
Saturday four others. This apparent cruelty was )<
in fact a kind of mercy. The victims could not
keep up with the party, and the death-blow saved
them from a lonely and lingering death from cold
and starvation. Some of the children, when spent
with the inarch, were carried on the backs of their
owners, — partly, perhaps, through kindness, and
partly because every child had its price.
5
70 DEERFIELD. [1704.
On the fourth day of the march they came
to the mouth of West River, which enters the
Connecticut a little above the present town of
Brattleboro'. Some of the Indians were discon-
tented with the distribution of the captives,
alleging that others had got more than their
share ; on which the whole troop were mustered
together, and some changes of ownership were
agreed upon. At this place, dog-trains and sledges
had been left, and these served to carry their
wounded, as well as some of the captive children.
Williams was stripped of the better part of his
clothes, and others given him instead, so full of
vermin that they were a torment to him through
all the journey. The march now continued with
pitiless speed up the frozen Connecticut, where the
recent thaw had covered the ice with slush and
water ankle-deep.
On Sunday they made a halt, and the minister
was permitted to preach a sermon from the text,
" Hear, all people, and behold my sorrow : my vir-
gins and my young men are gone into captivity."
Then amid the ice, the snow, the forest, and the
savages, his forlorn flock joined their voices in a
psalm. 1 On Monday, guns were heard from the
rear, and the Indians and their allies, in great
alarm, bound their prisoners fast, and prepared for
battle. It proved, however, that the guns had been
fired at wild geese by some of their own number ;
on which they recovered their spirits, fired a volley
1 The small stream at the mouth of which Williams is supposed to have
preached is still called Williams River.
1704.] A WILDERNESS JOURNEY. 71
for joy, and boasted that the English could not
overtake them. 1 More women fainted by the way
and died under the hatchet, — some with pious
resignation, some with despairing apathy, some
with a desperate joy.
Two hundred miles of wilderness still lay be-
tween them and the Canadian settlements. It
was a waste without a house or even a wigwam ;
except here and there the bark shed of some savage
hunter. At the mouth of White River, the party
divided into small bands, — no doubt in-order to sub-
sist by hunting, for provisions were fast failing.
The Williams family were separated. Stephen was
carried up the Connecticut; Samuel and Eunice,
with two younger children, were carried off in
various directions ; while the wretched father, along
with two small children of one of his parishioners,
was compelled to follow his Indian masters up the
valley of White River. One of the children — a
little girl — was killed on the next morning by
her Caughnawaga owner, who was unable to carry
her. 2 On the next Sunday, the minister was left
in camp with one Indian and the surviving child, —
a boy of nine, — while the rest of the party were
hunting. " My spirit," he says, " was almost over-
whelmed within me." But he found comfort in
the text, " Leave thy fatherless children, I will
preserve them alive." Nor was his hope deceived.
His youngest surviving child, — a boy of four, —
1 Stephen Williams, Account of the Captivity, etc. His father also
notices the incident.
2 The name Macquas (Mohawks) is always given to the Caughnawagas
by the elder Williams.
72 DEERFIELD. [1704.
though harshly treated by his owners, was carried
on their shoulders or dragged on a sledge to the
end of the journey. His youngest daughter — seven
years old — was treated with great kindness
throughout. Samuel and Eunice suffered much
from hunger, but were dragged on sledges when
too faint to walk. Stephen nearly starved to
death ; but after eight months in the forest, he*
safely reached Chambly with his Indian mastersj
Of the whole band of captives, only about half
ever again saw friends and home. Seventeen
broke down on the way and were killed; while
David Hoyt and Jacob Hix died of starvation at
SCoos meadows, on the upper Connecticut. During
the entire march, no woman seems to have been
subjected to violence ; and this holds true, with
rare exceptions, in all the Indian wars of New
England. This remarkable forbearance towards
female prisoners, so different from the practice of
many Western tribes, was probably due to a form
of superstition, aided perhaps by the influence of
the missionaries. 1 It is to be observed, however,
that the heathen savages of King Philip's War, who
had never seen a Jesuit, were no less forbearing in
this respect.
The hunters of Williams's party killed five moose,
the flesh of which, smoked and dried, was carried
on their backs and that of the prisoner, whom
they had provided with snow-shoes. Thus burdened,
the minister toiled on, following his masters along
1 The Iroquois are well known to have had superstitions in connection
with sexual abstinence.
1704.] SUFFERINGS OF WILLIAMS. 73
the frozen current of White River till, crossing the
snowy backs of the Green Mountains, they struck
the headwaters of the stream then called French
River, now the Winooski, or Onion. Being in great
fear of a thaw, they pushed on with double speed.
Williams was not used to snow-shoes, and they
gave him those painful cramps of the legs and
ankles called in Canada mal a la raqueMe. One
morning at dawn, he was waked by his chief
master and ordered to get up, say his prayers, and
eat his breakfast, for they must make a long march
that day. The minister was in despair. " After
prayer," he says, " I arose from my knees ; but my
feet were so tender, swollen, bruised, and full of
pain that I could scarce stand upon them without
holding on the wigwam. And when the Indians
said, i You must run to-day,' I answered I could not
run. My master, pointing to his hatchet, said to
me, ' Then I must dash out your brains and take
your scalp.' " The Indian proved better than his
word, and Williams was suffered to struggle on as
he could. "God wonderfully supported me," he
writes, " and my strength was restored and renewed
to admiration." He thinks that he walked that
day forty miles on the snow. Following the
Winooski to its mouth, the party reached Lake
Champlain a little north of the present city of
Burlington. Here the swollen feet of the prisoner
were tortured by the rough ice, till snow began to
fall and cover it with a soft carpet. Bending under
his load, and powdered by the falling flakes, he
toiled on till, at noon of a Saturday, lean, tired,
74 DEERFIELD. [1704.
and ragged, he and his masters reached the French
outpost of Chambly, twelve or fifteen miles from
Montreal.
Here the unhappy wayfarer was treated with
great kindness both by the officers of the fort and
by the inhabitants, one of the chief among whom
lodged him in his house and welcomed him to his
table. After a short stay at Chambly, Williams
and his masters set out in a canoe for Sorel. On
the way a Frenchwoman came down to the bank
of the river and invited the party to her house,
telling the minister that she herself had once been
a prisoner among the Indians, and knew how to
feel for him. She seated him at a table, spread a
table-cloth, and placed food before him, while the
Indians, to their great indignation, were supplied
with a meal in the chimney-corner. Similar kind-
ness was shown by the inhabitants along the way
till the party reached their destination, the Abenaki
village of St. Francis, to which his masters be-
longed. Here there was a fort, in which, lived two
Jesuits, directors of the mission, and here Williams
found several English children, captured the
summer before during the raid on the settlements
of Maine, and already transformed into little
Indians both in dress and behavior. At the gate
of the fort one of the Jesuits met him, and asked
him to go into the church and give thanks to God
for sparing his life, to which he replied that he
would give thanks in some other place. The priest
then commanded him to go, which he refused to do.
When on the next day the bell rang for mass, one
1704.] A STUBBORN HERETIC. 75
of his Indian masters seized him and dragged him
into the church, where he got behind the door, and
watched the service from his retreat with extreme
disapprobation. One of the Jesuits telling him that
he would go to hell for not accepting the apostolic
traditions, and trusting only in the Bible, he re-
plied that he was glad to know that Christ was to
be his judge, and not they. His chief master, who
was a zealot in his way, and as much bound to the
rites and forms of the Church as he had been before
his conversion, to his " medicines," or practices of
heathen superstition, one day ordered him to
make the sign of the cross, and on his refusal,
tried to force him. But as the minister was tough
and muscular, the Indian could not guide his hand.
Then, pulling out a crucifix that hung at his neck,
he told Williams in broken English to kiss it ; and
being again refused, brandished his hatchet over
him and threatened to knock out his brains. This
failing of the desired effect, he threw down the
hatchet and said he would first bite out the min-
ister's finger-nails, — a form of torture then in
vogue among the northern Indians, both converts
and heathen. Williams offered him a hand and
invited him to begin ; on which he gave the thumb-
nail a gripe with his teeth, and then let it go, saying,
" No good minister, bad as the devil." The failure
seems to have discouraged him, for he made no
further attempt to convert the intractable heretic.
The direct and simple narrative of Williams
is plainly the work of an honest and courageous
man. He was the most important capture of the
76 DEERFIELD. [1704.
year ; and the Governor, hearing that he was at
St. Francis, despatched a canoe to request the
Jesuits of the mission to send him to Montreal.
Thither, therefore, his masters carried him, ex-
pecting, no doubt, a good price for their prisoner.
r Vaudreuil, in fact, bought him, exchanged his
tattered clothes for good ones, lodged him in
his house, and, in the words of Williams, " was
in all respects relating to my outward man
courteous and charitable to admiration.' ' He
sent for two of the minister's children who were
in the town, bought his eldest daughter from
the Indians, and promised to do what he could
to get the others out of their hands. His young-
est son was bought by a lady of the place, and
his eldest by a merchant. His youngest daughter,
Eunice, then seven or eight years old, was at
the mission of St. Louis, or Caughnawaga. Vau-
dreuil sent a priest to conduct Williams thither
and try to ransom the child. But the Jesuits
of the mission flatly refused to let him speak
to or see her. Williams says that Vaudreuil was
very angry at hearing of this ; and a few days
after, he went himself to Caughnawaga with
the minister. This time the Jesuits, whose au-
thority within their mission seemed almost to
override that of the Governor himself, yielded so
far as to permit the father to see his child, on
condition that he spoke to no other English
prisoner. He talked with her for an hour, ex-
horting her never to forget her catechism, which
she had learned by rote. Vaudreuil and his
1704] WILLIAMS AND THE PRIESTS. 77
wife afterwards did all in their power to pro-
cure her ransom ; but the Indians, or the mission-
aries in their name, would not let her go.
"She is there still," writes Williams two years
later, "and has forgotten to speak English."
What grieved him still more, Eunice had for-
gotten her catechism.
While he was at Montreal, his movements
were continually watched, lest he should speak
to other prisoners and prevent their conversion.
He thinks these precautions were due to the
priests, whose constant endeavor it was to turn
the captives, or at least the younger and more
manageable among them, into Catholics and
Canadians/ The Governor's kindness towards him
never failed, though he told him that he should
not be set free till the English gave up one
Captain Baptiste, a noted sea-rover whom they
had captured some time before.
He was soon after sent down the river to
Quebec along with the superior of the Jesuits.
Here he lodged seven weeks with a member of
the council, who treated him kindly, but told
him that if he did not avoid intercourse with
the other English prisoners he would be sent
farther away. He saw much of the Jesuits,
who courteously asked him to dine; though he
says that one of them afterwards made some
Latin verses about him, in which he was likened
to a captive wolf. Another Jesuit told him j
that when the mission Indians set out on their
raid against Deerfield, he charged them to bap-
78 DEERFIELD. [1704.
tize all children before killing them, — such, he
said, was his desire for the salvation even of his
enemies. ~>To murdering the children after they
j were baptized, he appears to have made no ob-
VJection. Williams says that in their dread lest he
should prevent the conversion of the other prison-
ers, the missionaries promised him a pension from
the King and free intercourse with his children
and neighbors if he would embrace the Catholic
faith and remain in Canada ; to which he an-
swered that he would do so without reward if
he thought their religion was true, but as he
believed the contrary, "the offer of the whole
world would tempt him no more than a black-
berry."
To prevent him more effectually from per-
verting the minds of his captive countrymen, and
fortifying them in their heresy, he was sent to
Chateau Richer, a little below Quebec, and lodged
with the parish priest, who was very kind to
him. " I am persuaded," he writes, " that he
abhorred their sending down the heathen to com-
mit outrages against the English, saying it is
more like committing murders than carrying on
war."
He was sorely tried by the incessant efforts
to convert the prisoners. " Sometimes they would
tell me my children, sometimes my neighbors,
were turned to be of their religion. Some made
it their work to allure poor souls by flatteries
and great promises ; some threatened, some offered
abuse to such as refused to go to church and be
1704.] AN UNEXPECTED BLOW. 79
present at mass ; and some they industriously
contrived to get married among them. I under-
stood they would tell the English that I was
turned, that they might gain them to change their
religion. These their endeavors to seduce to popery
were very exercising to me."
After a time he was permitted to return to
Quebec, where he met an English Franciscan,
who, he says, had been sent from France to
aid in converting the prisoners. Lest the minis-
ter should counteract the efforts of the friar, the
priests had him sent back to Chateau Richer;
" but," he observes, " God showed his dislike of
such a persecuting spirit ; for the very next day
the Seminary, a very famous building, was most
of it burnt down, by a joiner letting a coal of fire
drop among the shavings." *
The heaviest of all his tribulations now fell
upon him. His son Samuel, about sixteen
years old, had been kept at Montreal under
the tutelage of Father Meriel, a priest of St.-
Sulpice. The boy afterwards declared that he
was promised great rewards if he would make
the sign of the cross, and severe punishment
if he would not. Proving obstinate, he was
whipped till at last he made the sign ; after which
he was told to go to mass, and bn his refusal,
four stout boys of the school were ordered to drag
him in. Williams presently received a letter in
1 Williams remarks that the Seminary had also been burned three years
before. This was the fire of November, 1701. See Old Regime in Canada,
384.
80 DEERFIELD. [1704.
Samuel's handwriting, though dictated, as the
father believed, by his priestly tutors. In this
was recounted, with many edifying particulars,
the deathbed conversion of two New England
women; and to the minister's unspeakable grief
and horror, the messenger who brought the letter
told him that the boy himself had turned Catholic.
" I have heard the news," he wrote to his recreant
son, " with the most distressing, afflicting, sorrow-
ful spirit. Oh, I pity you, I mourn over you day
and night. Oh, I pity your weakness that,
through the craftiness of man, you are turned
from the simplicity of the gospel. " Though his
correspondence was strictly watched, he managed
to convey to the boy a long exposition, from his
own pen, of the infallible truth of Calvinistic
orthodoxy, and the damnable errors of Rome.
This, or something else, had its effect. Samuel
returned to the creed of his fathers ; and being
$t last exchanged, went home to Deerfield, where
he was chosen town-clerk in 1713, and where he
soon after died. 1
Williams gives many particulars of the efforts
of the priests to convert the prisoners, and his
account, like the rest of his story, bears the marks
of truth. There was a treble motive for conver-
sion : it recruited the Church, weakened the enemy,
and strengthened Canada, since few of the con-
verts would peril their souls by returning to their
heretic relatives. The means of conversion varied.
They were gentle when gentleness seemed likely to
1 N:>te of Mr George Sheldon.
1704.] CONVERSION OF PRISONERS. 81
answer the purpose. Little girls and young women
were placed in convents, where it is safe to assume
that they were treated with the most tender kind-
ness by the sisterhood, who fully believed that to
gain them to the faith was to snatch them from
perdition. But when they or their brothers proved
obdurate, different means were used. Threats of
hell were varied by threats of a whipping, which,
according to Williams, were often put into execu-
tion. Parents were rigorously severed from their
families ; though one Lalande, who had been set
to watch the elder prisoners, reported that they
would persist in trying to see their children, till
some of them were killed in the attempt. u Here,"
writes Williams, " might be a history in itself of
the trials and sufferings of many of our children,
who, after separation from grown persons, have
been made to do as they would have them. I
mourned when I thought with myself that I had
one child with the Maquas [Caughnawagas], a
second turned papist, and a little child of six years
of age in danger to be instructed in popery, and
knew full well that all endeavors would be used
to prevent my seeing or speaking with them."
He also says that he and others were told that
if they would turn Catholic their children should
be restored to them ; and among other devices,
some of his parishioners were assured that their
pastor himself had seen the error of his ways and
bowed in submission to Holy Church.
In midwinter, not quite a year after their cap-
ture, the prisoners were visited by a gleam of
VOL. I. — 6
82 DEERFIELD. [1705.
hope. John Sheldon, accompanied by young
John Wells, of Deerfield, and Captain Living-
ston, of Albany, came to Montreal with letters
from Governor Dudley, proposing an exchange.
Sheldon's wife and infant child, his brother-in-law,
and his son-in-law had been killed. Four of his
children, with his daughter-in-law, Hannah, — the
same who had sprained her ankle in leaping from
her chamber window, — besides others of his near
relatives and connections, were prisoners in Can-
ada ; and so also was the mother of young Wells,
In the last December, Sheldon and Wells had
gone to Boston and begged to be sent as envoys
to the French Governor. The petition was readily
granted, and Livingston, who chanced to be in the
town, was engaged to accompany them. After a
snow-shoe journey of extreme hardship they
reached their destination and were received with
courtesy by Vaudreuil. But difficulties arose.
The French, and above all the clergy, were un-
willing to part with captives, many of whom
they hoped to transform into Canadians by con-
version and adop N tign^ Many also were in the
hands of the Indians, who demanded payment
for them, — which Dudley had always refused,
declaring that he would not " set up an Algiers
trade" by buying them from their pretended
owners ; and he wrote to Vaudreuil that for his
own part he " would never permit a savage to
tell him that any Christian prisoner was at his
disposal. ,, Vaudreuil had insisted that his In-
dians could not be compelled to give up their
1705.] RESTORED PRISONERS. 83
captives, since they were not subjects of France, ^
but only allies, — which, so far as concerned the
mission Indians within the colony, was but a
pretext. It is true, however, that the French
authorities were in such fear of offending even
these that they rarely ventured to cross their
interests or their passions. Other difficulties were
raised, and though the envoys remained in Can-
ada till late in spring, they accomplished little-
At last, probably to get rid of their importu
nities, five prisoners were given up to them,
— Sheldon's daughter-in-law, Hannah ; Esther
Williams, eldest daughter of the minister ; a cer- J
tain Ebenezer Carter; and two others unknown. ;
With these, Sheldon and his companions set out in
May on their return; and soon after they were
gone, four young men, Baker, Nims, Kellogg, and
Petty, desperate at being left in captivity, made
their escape from Montreal, and reached Deerfield
before the end of June, half dead with hunger.
Sheldon and his party were escorted home-
ward by eight soldiers under Courtemanche, an
officer of distinction, whose orders were to " make
himself acquainted with the country." He fell
ill at Boston, where he was treated with much
kindness, and on his recovery was sent home by
sea, along with Captain Vetch and Samuel Hill,
charged to open a fresh negotiation. With these,
at the request of Courtemanche, went young
William Dudley, son of the Governor. 1
1 The elder Dudley speaks with great warmth of Courtemanche, who,
on his part, seems equally pleased with his entertainers. Young Dudley
84 DEERFIELD. [1706.
They were received at Quebec with a courtesy
qualified by extreme caution, lest they should
spy out the secrets of the land. The mission
was not very successful, though the elder Dudley
had now a good number of French prisoners
in his hands, captured in Acadia or on the ad-
jacent seas. A few only of the English were
released, including the boy, Stephen Williams,
whom Vaudreuil had bought for forty crowns
from his Indian master.
In the following winter John Sheldon made
another journey on foot to Canada, with larger
powers than before. He arrived in March, 1706,
and returned with forty-four of his released
countrymen, who, says Williams, were chiefly
adults permitted to go because there was no
hope of converting them. The English Governor
had by this time seen the necessity of greater
concessions, and had even consented to release
the noted Captain Baptiste, whom the Boston mer-
chants regarded as a pirate. In the same summer
Samuel Appleton and John Bonner, in the brig-
antine "Hope," brought a considerable number of
French prisoners to Quebec, and returned to Bos-
ton at the end of October with fifty-seven Eng-
lish, of all ages./ For three, at least, of this
number money was paid by the English, prob-
ably on account of prisoners bought by French-
men from the Indians. The minister, Williams,
was exchanged for Baptiste, the so-called pirate,
was a boy of eighteen. "II a du merite," says Vaudreuil. Dudley to
Vaudreuil, 4 July, 1705; Vaudreuil au Ministre, 19 Oct. 1705.
1706,1707.] CAPTIVES IN CANADA. 85
and two of his children were also redeemed, though
the Caughnawagas, or their missionaries, refused
to part with his daughter Eunice. Williams says
that the priests made great efforts to induce the
prisoners to remain in Canada, tempting some
with the prospect of pensions from the King,
and frightening others with promises of damna-
tion, joined with predictions of shipwreck on the
way home. He thinks that about one hundred
were left in Canada, many of whom were chil-
dren in the hands of the Indians, who could
easily hide them in the woods, and who were
known in some cases to have done so. Seven
more were redeemed in the following year by
the indefatigable Sheldon, on a third visit to
Canada. 1
The exchanged prisoners had been captured s
at various times and places. Those from Deer-
field amounted in all to about sixty, or a little
more than half the whole number carried off.
Most of the others were dead or converted.
Some married Canadians, and others their
fellow captives. The history of some of them
can be traced with certainty. Thus, Thomas
French, blacksmith and town clerk of Deerfield,
and deacon of the church, was captured, with his
wife and six children. His wife and infant child
1 In 1878 Miss C. Alice Baker, of Cambridge, Mass., a descendant of
Abigail Stebbins, read a paper on John Sheldon before the Memorial
Association at Deerfield. It is the result of great research, and contains
much original matter, including correspondence between Sheldon and
the captives when in Canada, as well as a full and authentic account of
his several missions. Mr. George Sheldon has also traced out with great
minuteness the history of his ancestor's negotiations.
86 DEERFIELD. j.1 704-1 740.
were killed on the way to Canada. He and
his two eldest children were exchanged and
brought home. His daughter Freedom was
converted, baptized under the name of Marie
Francoise, and married to Jean Daulnay, a
Canadian. His daughter Martha was baptized as
Marguerite and married to Jacques Roy, on whose
death she married Jean Louis Menard, by whom
she became ancestress of Joseph Plessis, eleventh
bishop of Quebec. Elizabeth Corse, eight years
old when captured, was baptized under her own
name, and married to Jean Dumontel. Abigail
Stebbins, baptized as Marguerite, lived many
years at Boucherville, wife of Jacques de Noyon,
a sergeant in the colony troops. The widow
Sarah Hurst, whose youngest child, Benjamin,
had been murdered on the Deerfield meadows,
was baptized as Marie Jeanne. 1 Joanna Kellogg,
eleven years old when taken, married a Caugh-
nawaga chief, and became, at all points, an In-
dian squaw.
She was not alone in this strange transfor-
mation. Eunice Williams, the namesake of her
slaughtered mother, remained in the wigwams
1 The above is drawn mainly from extracts made by Miss Baker from
the registers of the Church of Notre Dame at Montreal. Many of the
acts of baptism bear the signature of Father Meriel, so often mentioned
in the narrative of Williams. Apparently, Meriel spoke English. At
least there is a letter in English' from him, relating to Eunice Williams,
in the Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 51. Some of the correspondence
between Dudley and Vaudreuil concerning exchange of prisoners will
be found among the Paris documents in the State House at Boston.
Copies of these papers were printed at Quebec in 1883-1885, though
with many inaccuracies.
1704-1740.] EUNICE WILLIAMS. 87
of the Caughnawagas, forgot, as we have seen,
her English and her catechism, was baptized,
and in due time married to an Indian of the
tribe, who thenceforward called himself Williams.
Thus her hybrid children bore her family name.
Her father, who returned to his parish at Deer-
field, and her brother Stephen, who became a
minister like his parent, never ceased to pray
for her return to her country and her faith.
Many years after, in 1740, she came with her
husband to visit her relatives in Deerfield, dressed
as a squaw and wrapped in an Indian blanket.
Nothing would induce her to stay, though she
was persuaded on one occasion to put on a
civilized dress and go to church ; after which
she impatiently discarded her gown and resumed
her blanket. As she was kindly treated by her
relatives, and as no attempt was made to detain
her against her will, she came again in the
next year, bringing two of her half-breed chil-
dren ; and twice afterwards repeated the visit,
She and her husband were offered a tract of
land if they would settle in New England ;
but she positively refused, saying that it would
endanger her soul. She lived to a great age,
a squaw to the last. 1
One of her grandsons, Eleazer Williams, turned
Protestant, was educated at Dartmouth Col-
1 Stephen W. Williams, Memoir of the Rev. John Williams, 53. Sermon
preached at Mansfield, Aug. 4, 1741, on behalf of Mrs. Eunice, the daughter
of Rev. John Williams; by Solomon Williams, A.M. Letter of Mrs. Colton y
great granddaughter of John Williams (in appendix to the Memoir of Rev.
John Williams).
JL
\
88 DEERFIELD. [1704-1866.
lege at the charge of friends in New England,
and was for a time missionary to the Indians
of Green Bay, in Wisconsin.^ His character for
veracity was not of the best. He deceived the
excellent antiquarian, Hoyt, by various inven-
tions touching the attack on Deerfield, and in
the latter part of his life tried to pass himself
off as the lost Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. 1
Here it may be observed that !the descendants
of young captives brought into Canada by the
mission Indians during the various wars with
the English colonies became a considerable ele-
ment in the Canadian population. Perhaps the
most prominent example is that of the Gill
family. In June, 1697, a boy named Samuel Gill,
then in his tenth year, was captured by the
Abenakis at Salisbury in Massachusetts, carried
to St. Francis, and converted. Some years later
he married a young English girl, said to have
been named James, and to have been captured at
1 I remember to have seen Eleazer Williams at my father's house in
Boston, when a boy. My impression of him is that of a good -looking
and somewhat portly man, showing little trace of Indian blood, and whose
features, I was told, resembled those of the Bourbons. Probably this
likeness, real or imagined, suggested the imposition he was practising at
the time. The story of the " Bell of St. Regis " is probably another of
his inventions. It is to the effect that the bell of the church at Deerfield
was carried by the Indians to the mission of St. Regis, and that it is there
still. But there is reason to believe that there was no church bell at Deer-
field, and it is certain that St. Regis did not exist till more than a half
century after Deerfield was attacked. It has been said that the story is
true, except that the name of Caughnawaga should be substituted for that
of St. Regis ; but the evidence for this conjecture is weak. On the legend
of the bell, see Le Moine, Maple Leaves, New Series (1873) 29; Proceed-
ings of the Mass. Hist. Soc, 1869, 1870, 311 ; Hist. Mag. 2d Series, IX. 401.
Hough, Hist. St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, 116, gives the story
without criticism.
1704-1866.] THE GILL FAMILY. 89
Kennebunk. 1 In 1866 the late Abbe* Maurault,
missionary at St. Francis, computed their descend-
ants at nine hundred and fifty-two, in whose veins
French, English, and Abenaki blood were mixed
in every conceivable proportion. He gives the
tables of genealogy in full, and says that two
hundred and thirteen of this prolific race still bear
the surname of Gill. "If," concludes the worthy
priest, " one should trace out all the English
families brought into Canada by the Abenakis,
one would be astonished at the number of persons
who to-day are indebted to these savages for the
blessing of being Catholics and the advantage of
being Canadians," 2 — an advantage for whic
French-Canadians are so ungrateful that
migrate to the United States by myriads!
1 The earlier editions of this book follow, in regard to Samuel Gill, the
statements of Maurault, which are erroneous, as has been proved by the
careful and untiring research of Miss C. Alice Baker, to whose kindness
I owe the means of correcting them. Papers in the archives of Massa-
chusetts leave no doubt as to the time and place of Samuel Gill's capture.
2 Maurault, Hist, des Abenaki's, 377. I am indebted to R. A. Ramsay,
Esq., of Montreal, for a paper on the Gill family, by Mr. Charles Gill, who
confirms the statements of Maurault so far as relates to the genealogies.
John and Zechariah Tarbell, captured when boys at Groton, became
Caughnawaga chiefs ; and one of them, about 1760, founded the mission
of St. Regis. Green, Groton during the Indian Wars, 116, 117-120.
CHAPTER V.
1704-1713.
THE TORMENTED FRONTIER.
Border Raids. — Haverhill. — Attack and Defence. — War to
the Knife. — Motives of the French. — Proposed Neutrality.
— Joseph Dudley. — Town and Country.
h/ e told the fate of Deerfield in full, as an
•le of the desolating raids which for years
rept the borders of Massachusetts and New
Hampshire. The rest of the miserable story may
be passed more briefly. It is in the main a weary
detail of the murder of one, two, three, or more
men, women, or children waylaid in fields, woods,
and lonely roads, or surprised in solitary cabins.
Sometimes the attacks were on a larger scale.
Thus, not long after the capture of Deerfield, a band
of fifty or more Indians fell at dawn of day on a
hamlet of five houses near Northampton. The
alarm was sounded, and they were pursued. Eight
of the prisoners were rescued, and three escaped ;
most of the others being knocked in the head by
their captors. At Oyster River the Indians attacked
a loopholed house, in which the women of the neigh-
boring farms had taken refuge while the men were
at work in the fields. The women disguised them-
selves in hats and jackets, fired from the loopholes,
1704-1709.] AN UNSUCCESSFUL RAID. 91
and drove off the assailants. In 1709, a hundred
and eighty French and Indians again attacked
Deerfield, but failed to surprise it, and were put to
flight. At Dover, on a Sunday, while the people
were at church, a scalping party approached a
fortified house, the garrison of which consisted of
one woman, — Esther Jones, who, on seeing them,
called out to an imaginary force within, " Here
they are ! come on ! come on ! " — on which the
Indians disappeared.
Soon after the capture of Deerfield, the French
authorities, being, according to the prisoner
Williams, " wonderfully lifted up with pride,"
formed a grand war-party, and assured the minister
that they would catch so many prisoners that they
should not know what to do with them. Beaucour,
an officer of great repute, had chief command, and
his force consisted of between seven and eight
hundred men, of whom about a hundred and twenty
were French, and the rest mission Indians. 1 They
declared that they would lay waste all the settle-
ments on the Connecticut, — meaning, it seems, to
begin with Hatfield. " This army," says Williams,
" went away in such a boasting, triumphant man-
ner that I had great hopes God would discover
and disappoint their designs." In fact, their plans
came to nought, owing, according to French ac-
counts, to the fright of the Indians; for a sol-
dier having deserted within a day's march of the
English settlements, most of them turned back,
despairing of a surprise, and the rest broke up
1 Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Nov. 1704.
92 THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1708.
into small parties to gather scalps on the outlying
farms. 1
In the summer of 1708 there was a more
successful attempt. The converts of all the Cana-
dian missions were mustered at Montreal, where
Vaudreuil, by exercising, as he says, " the patience
of an angel," soothed their mutual jealousies and
persuaded them to go upon a war-party against
Newbury, Portsmouth, and other New England
villages. Fortunately for the English, the Caugh-
nawagas were only half-hearted towards the enter-
prise; and through them the watchful Peter
Schuyler got hints of it which enabled him, at the
eleventh hour, to set the intended victims on their
guard. The party consisted of about four hundred,
of whom one hundred were French, under twelve
young officers and cadets ; the whole commanded by
Saint-Ours des Chaillons and Hertel de Kouville.
For the sake of speed and secrecy, they set out in
three bodies, by different routes. The rendezvous
was at Lake Winnepesaukee, where they were to be
joined by the Norridgewocks, Penobscots, and other
eastern Abenakis. The Caughnawagas and Hurons
turned back by reason of evil omens and a disease
which broke out among them. The rest met on
the shores of the lake, — probably at Alton Bay, —
where, after waiting in vain for their Eastern allies,
they resolved to make no attempt on Portsmouth
or Newbury, but to turn all their strength upon
the smaller village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac.
1 Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Nov. 1704; Vaudreuil au
Ministre, 16 Nov. 1704; Ramesay au Ministre, 14 Nov. 1704. Compare
Penhallow.
1708.] HAVERHILL ATTACKED. 93
Advancing quickly under cover of night, they made
their onslaught at half an hour before dawn, on
Sunday, the 29th of August.
Haverhill consisted of between twenty and thirty
dwelling-houses, a meeting-house, and a small pick-
et fort. A body of militia from the lower Mas-
sachusetts towns had been hastily distributed along
the frontier, on the vague reports of danger sent by
Schuyler from Albany ; and as the intended point
of attack was unknown, the men were of necessity
widely scattered. French accounts say that there
were thirty of them in the fort at Haverhill, and
more in the houses of the villagers ; while others
still were posted among the distant farms and
hamlets.
In spite of darkness and surprise, the assailants
met a stiff resistance and a hot and persistent
fusillade. Vaudreuil says that they could dis-
lodge the defenders only by setting fire to both
houses and fort. In this they were not very
successful, as but few of the dwellings were
burned. A fire was kindled against the meeting-
house, which was saved by one Davis and a few
others, who made a dash from behind the adjacent
parsonage, drove the Indians off, and put out the
flames. Rolfe, the minister, had already been
killed while defending his house. His wife and
one of his children were butchered; but two
others — little girls of six and eight years — were
saved by the self-devotion of his maid-servant,
Hagar, apparently a negress, who dragged them
into the cellar and hid them under two inverted
94 THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1708.
tubs, where they crouched, dumb with terror,
while the Indians ransacked the place without
finding them. English accounts say that the
number of persons killed — men, women, and
children — was forty-eight; which the French
increase to a hundred.
The distant roll of drums was presently heard,
warning the people on the scattered farms ; on
which the assailants made a hasty retreat. Posted
near Haverhill were three militia officers, —
Turner, Price, and Gardner, — lately arrived from
Salem. With such men as they had with them,
or could hastily get together, they ambushed them-
selves at the edge of a piece of woods, in the path
of the retiring enemy, to the number, as the French
say, of sixty or seventy, which it is safe to diminish
by a half. The French and Indians, approaching
rapidly, were met by a volley which stopped them
for the moment ; then, throwing down their packs,
they rushed on, and after a sharp skirmish broke
through the ambuscade and continued their retreat.
Vaudreuil sets their total loss at eight killed and
eighteen wounded, — the former including two
officers, Vercheres and Chambly. He further
^In declares that in the skirmish all the English,
1^ except ten or twelve, were killed outright; while
the English accounts say that the French and
Indians took to the woods, leaving nine of their
number dead on the spot, along with their medi-
cine chest and all their packs. 1
1 Vaudreuil an Ministre, 5 Nov. 1708 ; Vaudreuil et Raudot au Ministre,
14 Nov. 1708; Hutchinson, II. 156; Mass. Hist. Coll., 2d Series, IV. 129;
Sewall, Diary, II. 234. Penhallow.
1708.] HARASSING WARFARE. 95
Scarcely a hamlet of the Massachusetts and New
Hampshire borders escaped a visit from the nimble
enemy. Groton, Lancaster, Exeter, Dover, Kittery,
Casco, Kingston, York, Berwick, Wells, Winter
Harbor, Brook field, Amesbury, Marlborough, were
all more or less infested, usually by small scalping
parties, hiding in the outskirts, waylaying strag-
glers, or shooting men at work in the fields, and
disappearing as soon as their blow was struck.
These swift and intangible persecutors were found
a far surer and more effectual means of annoyance
than larger bodies. As all the warriors were
-Converts of the Canadian missions, and as prisoners
were an article of value, cases of torture were not
very common ; though now and then, as at Exeter,
they would roast some poor wretch alive, or bite
off his fingers and sear the stumps with red-hot
tobacco pipes.
This system of petty, secret, and transient
attack put the impoverished colonies to an im-
mense charge in maintaining a cordon of militia
along their northern frontier, — a precaution
often as vain as it was costly; for the wily
savages, covered by the forest, found little diffi-
culty in dodging the scouting-parties, pouncing
on their victims, and escaping. Rewards were
offered for scalps ; but one writer calculates that,
all things considered, it cost Massachusetts a
thousand pounds of her currency to kill an
Indian. 1
1 The rewards for scalps were confined to male Indians thought old
enough to bear arms, — that is to say, above twelve years. Act of General
Court, 19 Aug. 1706.
96 THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1703-1704.
In 1703-1704, six hundred men were kept rang-
ing the woods all winter without finding a single
Indian, the enemy having deserted their usual
haunts and sought refuge with the French, to
emerge in February for the destruction of Deer-
field. In the next summer, nineteen hundred
men were posted along two hundred miles of
frontier. 1 This attitude of passive defence exas-
perated the young men of Massachusetts, and it is
said that five hundred of them begged Dudley
for leave to make a raid into Canada, on the
characteristic condition of choosing their own
officers. The Governor consented ; but on a
message from Peter Schuyler that he had at last
got a promise from the Caughnawagas and other
mission Indians to attack the New England bor-
ders no more, the raid was countermanded, lest it
should waken the tempest anew. 2
, What was the object of these murderous attacks,
which stung the enemy without disabling him, con-
firmed the Indians in their native savagery, and
taught the French to emulate it ? In the time of
Frontenac there was a palliating motive for such
barbarous warfare. Canada was then prostrate
and stunned under the blows of the Iroquois war.
1 Dudley to Lord , 21 April, 1704. Address of Council and As-
sembly to the Queen, 12 July, 1704. The burden on the people was so severe
that one writer — not remarkable,. however, for exactness of statement —
declares that he " is credibly informed that some have been forced to cut
open their beds and sell the feathers to pay their taxes." The general
poverty did not prevent a contribution in New England for the suffering
inhabitants of the island of St. Christopher.
2 Vaudreuil au Ministre, 12 Nov. 1708. Vaudreuil says that he got his
information from prisoners.
1703-1704] ALLIES OF FRANCE. 97
Successful war-parties were needed as a tonic and
a stimulant to rouse the dashed spirits of French
and Indians alike ; but the remedy was a danger-
ous one, and it drew upon the colony the attack
under Sir William Phips, which was near proving
its ruin. At present there was no such pressing
call for butchering women, children, and peaceful
farmers. I The motive,, such as it was, lay in the
fear that the Indian allies of France might pass
over to the English, or at least stand neutral.
These allies were the Christian savages of the mis-
sions, who, all told, from the Caughnawagas to the
Micmacs, could hardly have mustered a thousand
warriors. The danger was that the Caughnawa-
gas, always open to influence from Albany, might
be induced to lay down the hatchet and persuade
the rest to follow their example. Therefore, as
there was for the time a virtual truce with New
York, no pains were spared to commit them irrev-
ocably to war against New England. With the
Abenaki tribes of Maine and New Hampshire the
need was still more urgent, for they were continu-
ally drawn to New England by the cheapness and
excellence of English goods ; and the only sure
means to prevent their trading with the enemy
was to incite them to kill him. Some of these
savages had been settled in Canada, to keep them
under influence and out of temptation; but the
rest were still in their native haunts, where it
was thought best to keep them well watched by
their missionaries, as sentinels and outposts to
the colony.
VOL. I. — 7
98 THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1703-1708
There were those among the French to whom
this barbarous warfare was repugnant. The
minister, Ponchartrain, by no means a person
of tender scruples, also condemned it for a time.
After the attack on Wells and other places under
Beaubassin in 1703, he wrote: "It would have
been well if this expedition had not taken place.
I have certain knowledge that the English want
only peace, knowing that war is contrary to the
interests of all the colonies. Hostilities in Canada
have always been begun by the French." l After-
wards, when these bloody raids had produced their
natural effect and spurred the sufferers to attempt
the ending of their woes once for all by the con-
quest of Canada, Ponchartrain changed his mind
and encouraged the sending out of war-parties, to
keep the English busy at home.
, A, The schemes of a radical cure date from the at-
\f / ^ .tack on Deerfield and the murders of the following
i ^r s summer. In the autumn we find Governor Dud-
fy ley urging the capture of Quebec. " In the last two
years," he says, "the Assembly of Massachusetts has
\r spent about £50,000 in defending the Province,
whereas three or four of the Queen's ships and
1 Resume d'une Lettre de MM. de Vaudreuil et de Beauharnois du
15 Nov. 1703, avec les Observations du Ministre. Subercase, governor of
Acadia, writes on 25 Dec. 1 708, that he hears that a party of Canadians
and Indians have attacked a place on the Maramet (Merrimac), " et qu'ils
y ont egorge 4 a 500 personnes sans faire quartier aux femmes ni aux
enfans." This is an exaggerated report of the affair of Haverhill.
M. de Chevry writes in the margin of the letter : " Ces actions de cruaut&
devroient etre moderees ; " to which Ponchartrain adds : " Bon ; les defen-
dre." His attitude, however, was uncertain; for as early as 1707 we find
him approving Vaudreuil for directing the missionaries to prompt tho
Abenakis to war. N. Y. Col. Docs., IX 805.
1705.] NEGOTIATIONS. 99
fifteen hundred New England men would rid
us of the French and make further outlay need-
less," — a view, it must be admitted, sufficiently
sanguine. 1
But before seeking peace with the sword, Dud-
ley tried less strenuous methods. It may be re-
membered that in 1705 Captain Vetch and Samuel
Hill, together with the Governor's young son Wil-
liam, went to Quebec to procure an exchange of
prisoners. Their mission had also another object.
Vetch carried a letter from Dudley to Vaudreuil, //^Jx
proposing a treaty of neutrality between their re-'* /
spective colonies, and Vaudreuil seems to have y 6 ^
welcomed the proposal. Notwithstanding the
pacific relations between Canada and New York,
he was in constant fear that Dutch and English
influence might turn the Five Nations into open
enemies of the French ; and he therefore declared
himself ready to accept the proposals of Dudley,
on condition that New York and the other Eng-
lish colonies should be included in the treaty, and
that the English should be excluded from fishing
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Acadian seas.
The first condition was difficult, and the second im-
practicable ; for nothing could have induced the
people of New England to accept it. Vaudreuil,
moreover, would not promise to give up prisoners
in the hands of the Indians, but only to do what-
he could to persuade their owners to give them up.
The negotiations dragged on for several years.
For the first three or four months Vaudreuil
1 Dudley to , 26 Nov. 1704.
100 THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1702-1715.
stopped his war-parties; but he let them loose
again in the spring, and the New England borders
were tormented as before.
The French Governor thought that the New Eng;-
land country people, who had to bear the brunt of
the war, were ready to accept his terms. The
French court approved the plan, though not with-
out distrust ; for some enemy of the Governor told
Ponchartrain that under pretence of negotiations
he and Dudley were carrying on trading specula-
tions, — which is certainly a baseless slander. * Vau-
dreuil on his part had strongly suspected Dudley's
emissary, Vetch, of illicit trade during his visit to
Quebec ; and perhaps there was ground for the sus-
picion. It is certain that Vetch, who had visited
the St. Lawrence before, lost no opportunity of
studying the river, and looked forward to a time
when he could turn his knowledge to practical
account. 2
Joseph Dudley, governor of Massachusetts and
New Hampshire, was the son of a former Governor
of Massachusetts, that upright, sturdy, narrow, big-
oted old Puritan, Thomas Dudley, in whose pocket
was found after his death the notable couplet :
" Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch."
Such a son of such a father was the marvel of
New England. Those who clung to the old tradi-
1 Abrege" d'une lettre de M. de Vaudreuil, avec les notes du Ministre, 19
Oct. 1705.
2 On the negotiations for neutrality, see the correspondence and other
papers in the Paris Documents in the Boston State House; also N. Y.
Col. Docs., IX. 770, 776, 779, 809 ; Hutchinson, II. 141.
1702-1715.] JOSEPH UUpLF/f. 101
tions and mourned for the old theocracy under
the old charter, hated Joseph Dudley as a rene-
gade; and the worshippers of the Puritans have
not forgiven him to this day. He had been presi-
dent of the council under the detested Andros, and
when that representative of the Stuarts was over-
thrown by a popular revolution, both he and Dud-
ley were sent prisoners to England. Here they
found a reception different from the expectations
and wishes of those who sent them. Dudley be-
came a member of Parliament and lieutenant-
governor of the Isle of Wight, and was at length,
in the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne, sent
back to govern those who had cast him out. Any
governor imposed on them by England would have
been an offence ; but Joseph Dudley was more than
they could bear.
He found bitter opposition from the old Puritan
party. The two Mathers, father and son, who
through policy had at first favored him, soon de-
nounced him with insolent malignity, and the
honest and conscientious Samuel -Sewall regarded n
him with as much asperity as his^ kindl y nature
would permit. To the party of religious and po-
litical independency he was an abomination, and
great efforts were made to get him recalled. Two
pamphlets of the time, one printed in 1707 and
the other in the next year, reflect the bitter ani-
mosity he excited. 1 Both seem to be the work of
1 A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England, Boston,
1707. The Deplorable State of New England, by Reason of a Covetous and
Treacherous Governour and Pusillanimous Counsellors, London, 1708. The
10*2 THK TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1702-1715.
several persons, one of whom, there can be little
doubt, was Cotton Mather ; for it is not easy to
mistake the mingled flippancy and pedantry of his
style. He bore the Governor a grudge, for Dudley
had chafed him in his inordinate vanity and love
of power.
If Dudley loved himself first, he loved his native
New England next, and was glad to serve her if
he could do so in his own way and without too
much sacrifice of his own interests. He was
possessed by a restless ambition, apparently of the
ieap kinc^ that prefers the first place in a small
community to the second in a large one. He was
skilled in the arts of the politician, and knew how,
by attentions, dinners, or commissions in the mili-
tia, to influence his Council and Assembly to do his
■jjjr^will. His abilities were beyond question, and his
f^lLr> manners easy and graceful; but his instincts
i^\ . were arbitrary. He stood fast for prerogative, and
} w even his hereditary Calvinism had strong Episco-
pal leanings. He was a man of the world in the
better as well as the worse sense of the term ; was
loved and admired by some as much as he was
hated by others ; and in the words of one of his
successors, "had as many virtues as can consist
with so great a thirst for honor and power.' ' 1
His enemies, however, set no bounds to their
denunciation. "All the people here are bought
and sold betwixt the Governour and his son Paul,"
first of the above is answered by a pamphlet called a Modest Inquiry
All three are reprinted in Mass. Hist. Coll., 5th Series, VI.
1 Hutchinson, II. 194.
1704-1709.] ILLICIT TRADERS. 103
says one. " It is my belief," says another, prob-
ably Cotton Mather, " that he means to help the
French and Indians to destroy all they can/*
And again, " He is a criminal governour. . . . His
God is Mammon, his aim is the ruin of his coun-
try." The meagreness and uncertainty of his
salary, which was granted by yearly votes of the
Assembly, gave color to the charge that he abused
his official position to improve his income. The
worst accusation against him was that of conniv-
ing in trade with the French and Indians under
pretence of exchanging prisoners. Six prominent
men of the colony, Borland, Vetch, Lawson, Rous,
Phillips, and Coffin, only three of whom were of
New England origin, were brought to trial before
the Assembly for trading at Port Royal, and it
was said that Dudley, though he had no direct
share in the business, found means to make profit
from it. All the accused were convicted and
fined. The more strenuous of their judges were
for sending them to jail, and Rous was to have
been sentenced to " sit an hour upon the gallows
with a rope about his neck ; " but the Governor
and Council objected to these severities, and the
Assembly forbore to impose them. The popu-
lar indignation against the accused was extreme,
and probably not without cause. 1 There was no
doubt an illicit trade between Boston and the^
1 The agent of Massachusetts at London, speaking of the three chief
offenders, says that they were neither " of English extraction, nor natives
of the place, and two of them were very new comers." Jeremiah Dummer
Letter to a Noble Lord concerning the late Expedition to Canada.
104 THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. [1704-1709.
French of Acadia, who during the war often de-
pended on their enemies for the necessaries of life,
since supplies from France, precarious at the best,
were made doubly so by New England cruisers.
Thus the Acadians and their Indian allies were but
too happy to exchange their furs for very modest
supplies of tools, utensils, and perhaps, at times, of
arms, powder, and lead. 1 What with privateer-
ing and illicit trade, it was clear that the war was
a source of profit to some of the chief persons in
Boston. That place, moreover, felt itself tolerably
safe from attack, while the borders were stung
from end to end as by a swarm of wasps ; and thus
the country conceived the idea that the town was
fattening at its expense. Vaudreuil reports to
the minister that the people of New England
want to avenge themselves by an attack on
Canada, but that their chief men are for a
policy of defence. This was far from being
wholly true ; but the notion that the rural popu-
lation bore a grudge against Boston had taken
strong hold of the French, who even believed that
if the town were attacked, the country would not
move hand or foot to help it. Perhaps it was well
for them that they did not act on the belief, which,
as afterwards appeared, was one of their many mis-
1 The French naval captain Bonaventure says that the Acadians were
forced to depend on Boston traders, who sometimes plundered them, and
sometimes sold them supplies. Bonaventure au Ministre, 30 Nov. 1705.
Colonel Quary, Judge of Admiralty at New York, writes : " There hath
been and still is, as I am informed, a Trade carried on with Port Royal
by some of the topping men of that government [Boston], under colour
of sending and receiving Flaggs of truce." Quary to the Lords of Trade,
10 Jan. 1708.
1704-1709.) DUDLEY SUSTAINED. 105
takes touching the character and disposition of
their English neighbors.
The sentences on Borland and his five compan-
ions were annulled by the Queen and Council, on
the ground that the Assembly was not conipetent
to try the case. 1 The passionate charges against
Dudley and a petition to the Queen for his removal
were equally unavailing. The Assemblies of Mas-
sachusetts and New Hampshire, the chief mer-
chants, the officers of militia, and many of the
ministers sent addresses to the Queen in praise of
the Governor's administration ; 2 and though his
enemies declared that the votes and signatures
were obtained by the arts familiar to him, his re-
call was prevented, and he held his office seven
years longer.
1 Council Record, in Hutchinson, II. 144.
2 These addresses are appended to A Modest Inquiry into the Ground*
and Occasions of a late Pamphlet intituled a Memorial of the present Deplor-
able State of New England. London, 1707.
CHAPTER VI.
1700-1710.
THE OLD REGIME IN ACADIA.
The Fishery Question. — Privateers and Pirates. — Port Rotal.
— Official Gossip. — Abuse of Brouillan. — Complaints of
De Goutin. — Subercase and his Officers. — Church and
State. — Paternal Government.
The French province of Acadia, answering to the
present Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, was a
government separate from Canada and subordinate
to it. Jacques Francois de Brouillan, appointed
to command it, landed at Chibucto, the site of
Halifax, in 1702, and crossed by hills and forests
to the Basin of Mines, where he found a small but
prosperous settlement. " It seems to me," he
wrote to the minister, " that these people live like
true republicans, acknowledging neither royal au-
thority nor courts of law." 1 It was merely that
their remoteness and isolation made them inde-
pendent, of necessity, so far as concerned temporal
government. When Brouillan reached Port Royal
he found a different state of things. The fort and
garrison were in bad condition ; but the adjacent
settlement, primitive as it was, appeared on the
whole duly submissive
1 Brouillan au Ministre, 6 Oct. 1702.
1700-1710.1 THE FISHERY QUESTION, 107
Possibly it would have been less so if it had
been more prosperous ; but the inhabitants had
lately been deprived of fishing, their best resource,
by a New England privateer which had driven their
craft from the neighboring seas ; and when the
Governor sent Lieutenant Neuvillette in an armed
vessel to seize the interloping stranger, a fight
ensued, in which the lieutenant was killed, and his
vessel captured. New England is said to have had
no less than three hundred vessels every year in
these waters. 1 Before the war a French officer pro-
posed that New England sailors should be hired to
teach the Acadians how to fish, and the King
seems to have approved the plan. 2 Whether it
was adopted or not, I New England in peace or
war had a lion's share of the Acadian fisheries.
"It grieves me to the heart," writes Subercase,
Brouillan's successor, " to see Messieurs les Bas-
tonnais enrich themselves in our domain ; for the
base of their commerce is the fish which they
catch off our coasts, and send to all parts of the
world."
When the war broke out, Brouillan's fighting
resources were so small that he was forced to de-
pend largely for help on sea-rovers of more than
doubtful character. They came chiefly from the
West Indies, — the old haunt of buccaneers, —
and were sometimes mere pirates, and sometimes
semi-piratical privateers commissioned by French
1 Mtmoire de Subercase.
2 Memoire du Roy au Sieur de Brouillan, 23 Mars, 1700; Le Ministry
k Viilebon, 9 Avril, 1700.
108 THE OLD REGIME IN ACADIA. [1700-17ia
West Indian governors. Brouillan's successor
writes that their opportunities are good, since at
v least a thousand vessels enter Boston every year. 1
Besides these irregular allies, the Governor usually
had at his disposal two French frigates of thirty
and sixty guns, to which was opposed the Massa-
chusetts navy, consisting of a ship of fifty-six
guns, and the " province galley," of twenty-two.
In 1710 one of these Massachusetts vessels ap-
peared off the coast escorting a fishing fleet of no
less than two hundred and fifty sail, some of
which were afterwards captured by French cor-
sairs. A good number of these last, however,
were taken from time to time by Boston sea-
rovers, who, like their enemies, sometimes bore a
closed likeness to pirates. They seized French fish-
ing and trading vessels, attacked French corsairs,
sometimes traded with the Acadians, and some-
times plundered them. What with West India
rum brought by the French freebooters, and New
England rum brought by the English, it is reported
that one could get drunk in Acadia for two sous.
Port Royal, now Annapolis, was the seat of V-
government, and the only place of any strength in
the colony. The fort, a sodded earthwork, lately
put into tolerable repair by the joint labor of the
soldiers and inhabitants, stood on the point of land
between the mouth of the River Annapolis and
that of the small stream now called Allen's River,
whence it looked down the long basin, or land-
locked bay, which, framed in hills and forests, had
1 Subercase au Ministre, 3 Jan. 1710.
1700-1710.] PORT ROYAL. 109
so won the heart of the Baron de Poutrincourt a
century before. 1 The garrison was small, count-
ing in 1704 only a hundred and eighty-five sol-
diers and eight commissioned officers. At the
right of the fort, between it and the mouth of the
Annapolis, was the Acadian village, consisting of
seventy or eighty small houses of one story and an
attic, built of planks, boards, or logs, simple and
rude, but tolerably comfortable. It had also a
small, new wooden church, to the building of
which the inhabitants had contributed eight hun-
dred francs, while the King paid the rest. ^The
inhabitants had no voice whatever in public affairs,^
though the colonial minister had granted them the
privilege of travelling in time of peace without
passports.
do nothing. The expedition sailed on the 13th of
May, and included one thousand and seventy-six
soldiers, with about four hundred and fifty sailors.
The soldiers were nearly all volunteers from the
rural militia, and their training and discipline were
such as they had acquired in the uncouth frolics
and plentiful New England rum of the periodical
" muster days." There chanced to be one officer
who knew more or less of the work in hand.
This was the English engineer Rednap, sent out
to look after the fortifications of New York and
New England. The commander-in chief was Col-
onel John March, of Newbury, who had popular
qualities, had seen frontier service, and was per-
sonally brave, but totally unfit for his present
position. Most of the officers were civilians from
country towns, — Ipswich, Topsfield, Lynn, Salem,
Dorchester, Taunton, or Weymouth. 2 In the prov-
ince galley went, as secretary of the expedition,
that intelligent youth, William Dudley, son of the
Governor.
1 Report of a Committee to consider his Excellency's Speech, 12 March,
1707. Resolve for an Expedition against Port Royal (Massachusetts
Archives).
a Autobiography of Rev. John Barnard, one of the five chaplains of the
expedition.
122 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1707.
New England has been blamed for not employ-
ing trained officers to command her levies ; but
with the exception of Rednap, and possibly of
Captain Samuel Vetch, there were none in the
country, nor were they wanted. In their stubborn
i \t and jealous independence, the sons of the Puritans
vA would have resented their presence. The provin-
cial officers were, without exception, civilians.
' s British regular officers, good, bad, or indifferent,
were apt to put on airs of superiority which galled
the democratic susceptibilities of the natives, who,
rather than endure a standing military force im-
posed by the mother-country, preferred to suffer if
they must, and fight their own battles in their
own crude way. Even for irregular warfare they
were at a disadvantage ; Canadian feudalism de-
veloped good partisan leaders, which was rarely the
case with New England democracy. Colonel John
March was a tyro set over a crowd of ploughboys,
fishermen, and mechanics, officered by trades-
men, farmers, blacksmiths, village magnates, and
deacons of the church ; for the characters of dea-
con and militia officer w T ere often joined in one.
These improvised soldiers commonly did well in
small numbers, and very ill in large ones.
Early in June the expedition sailed into Port
Royal Basin, and Lieutenant-Colonel Appleton,
with three hundred and fifty men, landed on the
north shore, four or five miles below the fort,
marched up to the mouth of the Annapolis, and
was there met by an ambushed body of French,
who, being outnumbered, presently took to their
1707.] A DISORDERLY CAMP. 123
boats and retreated to the fort. Meanwhile, March,
with seven hundred and fifty men, landed on the
south shore and pushed on to the meadows of
Allen's River, which they were crossing in battle
array when a fire blazed out upon them from a
bushy hill on the farther bank, where about two
hundred French lay in ambush under Subercase,
the governor. Marcfr and his men crossed the
stream, and after a skirmish that did little harm
\ to either side, the French gave way. The English
then advanced to a hill known as the Lion Ram-
pant, within cannon-shot of the fort, and here
began to intrench themselves, stretching their
lines right and left towards the Annapolis on the
one hand, and Allen s River on the other, so as to
form a semicircle before the fort, where all the
inhabitants had by this time taken refuge.
Soon all was confusion in the New England
camp, — the consequence of March's incapacity for
a large command, and the greenness and ignorance
of both himself and his subordinates. There were
conflicting opinions, wranglings, and disputes. The
men, losing all confidence in their officers, became
unmanageable. " The devil was at work among
us," writes one of those present. The engineer,
Rednap, the only one of them who knew anything
of the work in hand, began to mark out the
batteries ; but soon lost temper, and declared that
" it was not for him to venture his reputation with
such ungovernable and undisciplined men and in-
constant officers." 1 He refused to bring up the
1 A Boston Gentleman to his Friend, 13 June, 1707 (Mass. Archives).
124 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1707.
cannon, saying that it could not be done under the
fire of the fort; and the naval captains were of
the same opinion.
One of the chaplains, Rev. John Barnard,
being of a martial turn and full of zeal, took it
upon him to make a plan of the fort ; and to that
end, after providing himself with pen, ink, paper,
and a horse-pistol, took his seat at a convenient
spot; but his task was scarcely begun when it
was ended by a cannon-ball that struck the
ground beside him, peppered him with gravel,
and caused his prompt retreat. 1
French deserters reported that there were five
hundred men in the fort, with forty-two heavy
cannon, and that four or five hundred more were
expected every day. This increased the general
bewilderment of the besiegers. There was a
council of war. Rednap declared that it would be
useless to persist ; and after hot debate and contra-
diction, it was resolved to decamp. Three days
after, there was another council, which voted to
bring up the cannon and open fire, in spite of Red-
nap and the naval captains; but in the next
evening a third council resolved again to raise the
siege as hopeless. This disgusted the rank and
file, who were a little soothed by an order to
destroy the storehouse and other buildings outside
the fort ; and, ill led as they were, they did the
work thoroughly. "Never did men act more
boldly," says the witness before quoted; "they
threatened the enemv to his nose, and would have
' Autobiography of Rev. John Barnard,
1707.] DISPUTES AND JEALOUSIES. 125
taken the fort if the officers had shown any spirit.
They found it hard to bring them off. At the end
we broke up with the confusion of Babel, and went
about our business like Tools." *
The baffled invaders sailed crestfallen to Casco
Bay, and a vessel was sent to carry news of the
miscarriage to Dudley, who, vexed and incensed,
ordered another attempt. March was in a state
of helpless indecision, increased by a bad cold;
but the Governor would not recall him, and chose
instead the lamentable expedient of sending three
members of the provincial council to advise and
direct him. Two of them had commissions in the
militia; the third, John Leverett, was a learned
bachelor of divinity, formerly a tutor in Harvard
College, and soon after its president, — capable, no
doubt, of preaching Calvinistic sermons to the stu-
dents, but totally unfit to command men or conduct
a siege.
Young William Dudley was writing meanwhile
to his father how jealousies and quarrels were
rife among the officers, how their conduct bred
disorder and desertion among the soldiers, and
how Colonel March and others behaved as if
they had nothing to do but make themselves
popular. 2 Many of the officers seem, in fact, to
have been small politicians in search of noto-
riety, with an eye to votes or appointments.
Captain Stuckley, of the British frigate, wrote
1 A Boston Gentleman to his Friend, 13 June (old style), 1707. The
final attack here alluded to took place on the night of the 16th of June
(new style).
2 William Dudley to Governor Dudley, 24 June, 1707.
126 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1707.
to the Governor in great discontent about the
" nonsensical malice " of Lieutenant-Colonel Ap-
pleton, and adds, " I don't see what good I can
do by lying here, where I am almost murdered
by mosquitoes." 1
The three commissioners came at last, with a
reinforcement of another frigate and a hundred
recruits, which did not supply losses, as the soldiers
had deserted by scores. In great ill-humor, the
expedition sailed back to Port Royal, where it was
found that reinforcements had also reached the
French, including a strongly manned privateer
from Martinique. The New England men landed,
and there was some sharp skirmishing in an or-
chard. Chaplain Barnard took part in the fray.
" A shot brushed my wig," he says, " but I was
mercifully preserved. We soon drove them out of
the orchard, killed a few of them, desperately
wounded the privateer captain, and after that we
all embarked and returned to Boston as fast as we
could." This summary statement is imperfect, for
there was a good deal of skirmishing from the 13th
August to the 20th, when the invaders sailed for
home. March was hooted as he walked Boston
streets, and children ran after him crying " Wooden
sword ! " There was an attempt at a court-martial ;
but so many officers were accused, on one ground
or another, that hardly enough were left to try
them, and the matter was dropped. With one re-
markable exception, the New England militia
reaped scant laurels on their various expeditions
1 StucW ey to Dudley, 28 June, 1707.
1705-1709.] NEWFOUNDLAND. 127
eastward ; but of all their shortcomings, this was
the most discreditable. 1
Meanwhile events worthy of note were passing
in Newfoundland.^ ^Jhat island was divided be-
tween the two conflicting powers ; the chief sta-
tion of the French being at Placentia, and that
of the English at St. John; In January, 1705,
Subercase, who soon after became governor of
Acadia, marched with four hundred and fifty
soldiers, Canadians, and buccaneers, aided by a
band of Indians, against St. John, a fishing- village
defended by two forts, the smaller, known as
the castle, held by twelve men, and the larger,
called Fort William, by forty men under Captain
Moody. The latter was attacked by the French,
who were beaten off; on which they burned the
unprotected houses and fishing-huts with a bru-
tality equal to that of Church in Acadia, and
followed up the exploit by destroying the ham-
let at Ferryland and all the defenceless hovels and
fish-stages along the shore towards Trinity Bay
and Bonavista. 2
1 A considerable number of letters and official papers on this expedition
will be found in the 51st and 71st volumes of the Massachusetts Archives.
See also Hutchinson, II. 151, and Belknap, I. 273. The curious narrative
of the chaplain, Barnard, is in Mass. Hist. Coll., 3d Series, V. 189-196. The
account in the Deplorable State of New England is meant solely to injure
Dudley. The chief French accounts are Entreprise des Anglois contre
VAcadie, 26 Juin, 1707 ; Subercase au Ministre, meme date; Labat au Mi-
nistre, 6 Juillet, 1707 ; Relation appended to Diereville, Voyage de VAcadie.
The last is extremely loose and fanciful. Subercase puts the English
force at three thousand men, whereas the official returns show it to have -
been, soldiers and sailors, about half this number.
2 Penhallow puts the French force at five hundred and fifty. Jeremiah
Dummer, Letter to a Noble Lord concerning the late Expedition to Canada,
says that the havoc committed occasioned a total loss of £80,000.
128 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1708-1709.
Four years later, the Sieur de Saint-Ovide, a
nephew of Brouillan, late governor at Port Koyal,
struck a more creditable blow. He set out from
Placentia on the 13th of December, 1708, with one
hundred and sixty-four men, and on the 1st of
January approached Fort William two hours before
day, found the gate leading to the covered way
open, entered with a band of volunteers, rapidly
crossed the ditch, planted ladders against the wall,
and leaped into the fort, then, as he declares,
garrisoned by a hundred men. His main body
followed close. The English were taken unawares ;
their commander, who showed great courage, was
struck down by three shots, and after some sharp
fighting the place was in the hands of the as-
sailants. The small fort at the mouth of the
harbor capitulated on the second day, and the
palisaded village of the inhabitants, which, if we
are to believe Saint-Ovide, contained nearly six
hundred men, made little resistance. St. John be-
came for the moment a French possession; but
Costebelle, governor at Placentia, despaired of
holding it, and it was abandoned in the following
summer. 1
About this time a scheme was formed for the
permanent riddance of New England from war-
parties by the conquest of Canada. 2 The prime
1 Saint-Ovide au Ministre, 20 Jan. 1709; Ibid., 6 Sept. 1709; Rapport
de Costebelle, 26 Fe'v. 1 709. Costebelle makes the French force one hundred
and seventy-five.
2 Some of the French officials in Acadia foresaw aggressive action on
the part of the English in consequence of the massacre at Haverhill. " Le
coup que les Canadiens viennent de faire, oil Mars, plus feroce qu'en
1708-1709.] SAMUEL VETCH. 129
mover in it was SajnujeJ w Vgtcb 3 whom we have
seen as an emissary to Quebec for the exchange of
prisoners, and also as one of the notables fined for
illicit trade with the French. He came of a re-
spectable Scotch family. His grandfather, his
father, three of his uncles, and one of his brothers
were Covenanting ministers, who had suffered some
persecution under Charles II. He himself was
destined for the ministry ; but his inclinations being
in no way clerical, he and his brother William got
commissions in the army and took an active part
in the war that ended with the Peace of Ryswick.
In the next year the two brothers sailed for the
Isthmus of Panama as captains in the band of
adventurers embarked in the disastrous enterprise
known as the Darien Scheme. William Vetch died
at sea, and Samuel repaired to New York, where
he married a daughter of Robert Livingston, one
of the chief men of the colony, and engaged largely
in the Canadian trade. From New York he went
to Boston, where we find him when the War of the
Spanish Succession began. During his several
visits to Canada he had carefully studied the St.
Lawrence and its shores, and boasted that he knew
them better than the Canadians themselves. 1 He
was impetuous, sanguine, energetic, and head-
strong, astute withal, and full of ambition. A
more vigorous agent for the execution of the pro-
Europe, a donne carriere a sa rage, me fait apprehender une represaille."
De Goutin au Ministre, 29 D€c. 1708.
1 Patterson, Memoir of Hon. Samuel Vetch, in Collections of the Nova
Scotia Historical Society, IV. Compare a paper by Gen. James Grant
Wilson in International Review, November, 1881.
tol. i. — 9
130 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1709.
posed plan of conquest could not have been desired.
The General Court of Massachusetts, contrary to
its instinct and its past practice, resolved, in view
of the greatness of the stake, to ask this time for
help from the mother-country, and Vetch sailed
for England, bearing an address to the Queen,
begging for an armament to aid in the reduction of
Canada and Acadia. The scheme waxed broader
yet in the ardent brain of the agent ; he proposed
to add Newfoundland to the other conquests, and
when all was done in the North, to sail to the Gulf
of Mexico and wrest Pensacola from the Spaniards ;
by which means, he writes, " Her Majesty shall be
sole empress of the vast North American con-
tinent." The idea was less visionary than it seems.
Energy, helped by reasonable good luck, might
easily have made it a reality, so far as concerned
the possessions of France.
The court granted all that Vetch asked. On
the 11th of March he sailed for America, fully em-
powered to carry his plans into execution, and with
the assurance that when Canada was conquered,
he should be its governor. A squadron bearing
five regiments of regular troops was promised.
The colonies were to muster their forces in all
haste. New York was directed to furnish eight
hundred men; New Jersey, two hundred; Penn-
sylvania, one hundred and fifty ; and Connecticut,
three hundred and fifty ; the whole to be at Albany
by the middle of May, and to advance on Montreal
by way of Wood Creek and Lake Champlain, as
soon as they should hear that the squadron had
1709.] VETCH AND NICHOLSON. 131
reached Boston. Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
and Rhode Island were to furnish twelve hun-
dred men, to join the regulars in attacking
Quebec by way of the St. Lawrence. 1
Vetch sailed from Portsmouth in the ship
"Dragon," accompanied by Colonel Francis Nich-
olson, late Lieutenant-Governor of New York, who
was to take an important part in the enterprise.
The squadron with the five regiments was to fol-
low without delay. The weather was bad, and the
" Dragon, " beating for five weeks against head-
winds, did not enter Boston harbor till the even-
ing of the 28th of April. Vetch, chafing with
impatience, for every moment was precious, sent
off expresses that same night to carry the Queen's
letters to the Governors of Rhode Island, Connec-
ticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Dudley and
his council met the next morning, and to them
Vetch delivered the royal message, which , was
received, he says, " with the dutiful obedience be-
coming good subjects, and all the marks of joy
and thankfulness." 2 Vetch, Nicholson, and the
Massachusetts authorities quickly arranged their
plans. An embargo was laid on the shipping;
provision was made for raising men and supplies
and providing transportation. When all was in
train, the two emissaries hired a sloop for New
York, and touching by the way at Rhode Island,
1 Instructions to Colonel Vetch, 1 March, 1 709 ; The Earl of Sunderland
to Dudley, 28 April, 1709 ; The Queen to Lord Lovelace, 1 March, 1709 ; The
Earl of Sunderland to Lord Lovelace, 28 April, 1 709.
2 Journal of Vetch and Nicholson (Public Record Office). This is in the
form of a letter, signed by both, and dated at New York, 29 June, 1709.
132 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1709.
found it in the throes of the annual election of
governor. Yet every warlike preparation was al-
ready made, and Vetch and his companion sailed
at once for New Haven to meet Saltonstall, the
newly elected governor of Connecticut. Here, too,
all was ready, and the envoys, well pleased, con-
tinued their voyage to New York, which they
reached on the 18th of May. The governor, Lord
Lovelace, had lately died, and Colonel Ingoldsby,
the lieutenant-governor, acted in his place. The
Assembly was in session, and being summoned to
the council chamber, the members were addressed
by Vetch and Nicholson with excellent effect.
In accepting the plan of conquest, New York
^^completely changed front. She had thus far stood
neutral, leaving her neighbors to defend themselves,
and carrying on an active trade with the French
and their red allies. Still, it was her interest that
Canada should become English ; thus throwing
open to her the trade of the Western tribes ; and
the promises of aid from England made the pros-
pects of the campaign so flattering that she
threw herself into the enterprise, though not with-
out voices of protest ; for while the frontier
farmers and some prominent citizens like Peter
Schuyler thought that the time for action had
, come, the Albany traders and their allies, who
fattened on Canadian beaver, were still for peace
at any price. 1
With Pennsylvania and New Jersey the case was
different. The one, controlled by non-combatant
1 Thomas Cockerill to Mr. Popple, 2 July, 1709.
I709J IROQUOIS ALLIES. 133
Quakers and safe from French war-parties, refused
all aid ; while the other, in less degree under the
same military blight, would give no men, though
granting a slow and reluctant contribution of
£3,000, taking care to suppress on the record every
indication that the money was meant for military
uses. New York, on the other hand, raised her
full contingent, and Massachusetts and New Hamp-
shire something more, being warm in the faith that
their borders would be plagued with war-parties no
longer.
It remained for New York to gain the help of
the Five Nations of the Iroquois, to which end
Abraham Schuyler went to Onondaga, well sup-
plied with presents. The Iroquois capital was
now, as it had been for years, divided between
France and England. French interests were rep-
resented by the two Jesuits, Mareuil and Jacques
Lamberville. The skilful management of Schuy-
ler, joined to his gifts and his rum, presently won
over so many to the English party, and raised such
excitement in the town, that Lamberville thought
it best to set out for Montreal with news of what
was going on. The intrepid Joncaire, agent of
France among the Senecas, was scandalized at what
he calls the Jesuit's flight, and wrote to the com-
mandant of Fort Frontenac that its effect on the
Indians was such that he, Joncaire, was in peril
of his life. 1 Yet he stood his ground, and man-
aged so well that he held the Senecas firm in
their neutrality. Lamberville's colleague, Mareuil,
i Joncaire in N, Y. Col. Docs., IX. 838.
134 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1709.
whose position was still more critical, was persuaded
by Schuyler that his only safety was in going with
him to Albany, which he did ; and on this the
Onondagas, excited by rum, plundered and burned
the Jesuit mission-house and chapel. 1 Clearly, the
two priests at Onondaga were less hungry for mar-
tyrdom than their murdered brethren, Jogues, Bre-
beuf , Lallemant, and Charles Garnier ; but it is
to be remembered that the Canadian Jesuit of the
first half of the seventeenth century was before all
things an apostle, and his successor of a century
later was before all things a political agent.
As for the Five Nations, that once haughty
confederacy, in spite of divisions and waverings,
had conceived the idea that its true policy lay, not
in siding with either of the European rivals, but in
\ making itself important to both, and courted and
caressed by both. While some of the warriors
sang the war-song at the prompting of Schuyler^
they had been but half-hearted in doing so ; and
even the Mohawks, nearest neighbors and best
friends of the English, sent word to their Canadian
kindred, the Caughnawagas, that they took up the
hatchet only because they could not help it.
The attack on Canada by way of the Hudson
r "and Lake Champlain was to have been commanded
by Lord Lovelace or some officer of his choice;
but as he was dead, Ingoldsby, his successor in
the government of the province, jointly with the
governors of several adjacent colonies who had
1 Mareuil in N. Y* Col. Docs., IX. 836, text and note. Vaudreuil an
Ministre, 14 Nov. 1709.
1709.] NICHOLSON'S ADVANCE. 135
met at New York, appointed Colonel Nicholson in
his stead. 1 Nicholson went to Albany, whence,
with about fifteen hundred men, he moved up
the Hudson, built a stockade fort opposite Sara-
toga, and another at the spot known as the Great
Carrying Place. This latter he called Fort Nichol-
son, — a name which it afterwards exchanged for
that of Fort Lydius, and later still for that of Fort
Edward, which the town that occupies the site
owns to this day. 2 Thence he cut a rough road-
way through the woods to where Wood Creek,
choked with beaver dams, writhed through flat
green meadows, walled in by rock and forest.
Here he built another fort, which was afterwards
rebuilt and named Fort Anne. Wood Creek led to
Lake Cham plain, and Lake Champlain to Chambly
and Montreal, — the objective points of the expedi-
tion. All was astir at the camp. Flat-boats and
canoes were made, and stores brought up from
Albany, till everything was ready for an advance
the moment word should come that the British
fleet had reached Boston. Vetch, all impatience,
went thither to meet it, as if his presence could
hasten its arrival.
Reports of Nicholson's march to Wood Creek
had reached Canada, and Vaudreuil sent Rame-
say, governor of Montreal, with fifteen hundred
troops, Canadians, and Indians, to surprise his
1 " If I had not accepted the command, there would have been insu-
perable difficulties" (arising from provincial jealousies). Nicholson to
Sunderland, 8 July, 1709.
2 Forts Nicholson, Lydius, and Edward were not the same, but succeeded
each other on the same ground.
136 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1709.
camp. Ramesay's fleet of canoes had reached
Lake Champlain, and was half way to the mouth
of Wood Creek, when his advance party was dis-
covered by English scouts, and the French com-
mander began to fear that he should be surprised
in his turn ; in fact, some of his Indians were fired
upon from an ambuscade. All was now doubt,
perplexity, and confusion. Ramesay landed at the
narrows of the lake, a little south of the place now
called Crown Point. Here, in the dense woods,
his Indians fired on some Canadians whom they
took for English. This was near producing a
panic. " Every tree seemed an enemy," writes an
officer present. Ramesay lost himself in the woods,
and could not find his army. One Deruisseau,
who had gone out as a scout, came back with the
report that nine hundred Englishmen were close at
hand. Seven English canoes did in fact appear,
supported, as the French in their excitement
imagined, by a numerous though invisible army
in the forest ; but being fired upon, and seeing
that they were entering a hornet's nest, the English
sheered off. Ramesay having at last found his
army, and order being gradually restored, a council
of war was held, after which the whole force fell
back to Chambly, having accomplished nothing. 1
1 Mtmoire sur le Canada, Annee 1709. This paper, which has been
ascribed to the engineer De Lery, is printed in Collection de Manuscrits
relatifs a la Nouvelle France, I. 615, (Quebec, 1883,) printed from the
MS. Paris Documents in the Boston State House. The writer of thfe
Memoire was with Ramesay's expedition. Also Ramesay a Vaudreuil, 19
Oct. 1709, and Vaudreuil au Ministre, 14 Nov. 1709. Charlevoix says that
Ramesay turned back because he believed that there were five thousand
English at Wood Creek ; but Ramesay himself makes their number only
1709.] ALARM IN CANADA. 137
Great was the alarm in Canada when it became
known that the enemy aimed at nothing less than
the conquest of the colony. One La Plaine spread
a panic at Quebec by reporting that, forty-five
leagues below, he had seen eight or ten ships under
sail and heard the sound of cannon. It was after-
wards surmised that the supposed ships were
points of rocks seen through the mist at low tide,
and the cannon the floundering of whales at play. 1
Quebec, however, was all excitement, in expectation
of attack. The people of the Lower Town took
refuge on the rock above ; the men of the neigh-
boring parishes were ordered within the walls ; and
the women and children, with the cattle and horses,
were sent to hiding-places in the forest. There
had been no less consternation at Montreal, caused
by exaggerated reports of Iroquois hostility and the
movements of Nicholson. It was even proposed
to abandon Chambly and Fort Frontenac, and con-
centrate all available force to defend the heart of
the colony. " A most bloody war is imminent,"
wrote Vaudreuil to the minister, Ponchartrain.
Meanwhile, for weeks and months Nicholson's ,
little army lay in the sultry valley of Wood
Creek, waiting those tidings of the arrival of
the British squadron at Boston which were to
be its signal of advance. At length a pestilence i
one thousand whites and two hundred Indians. He got his informatioE
from two Dutchmen caught just after the alarm near Pointe a la Cheve-
lure (Crown Point). He turned back because he had failed to surprise
the English, and also, it seems, because there were disagreements among
his officers.
1 Monseigneur de Saint- Vallier et VHopital General de Quebec, 203.
138 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1709
broke out. It is said to have been the work of
the Iroquois allies, who thought that the French
were menaced with ruin, and who, true to their
policy of balancing one European power against
the other, poisoned the waters of the Creek by
throwing into it, above the camp, the skins and
offal of the animals they had killed in their hunt-
ing. The story may have some foundation, though
it rests only on the authority of Charlevoix. No
contemporary writer mentions it; and Vaudreuil
says that the malady was caused by the long
confinement of the English in their fort. Indeed,
a crowd of men, penned up through the heats of
midsummer in a palisaded camp, ill-ordered and
unclean as the camps of the raw provincials
usually were, and infested with pestiferous swarms
of flies and mosquitoes, could hardly have remained
in health. Whatever its cause, the disease, which
seems to have been a malignant dysentery, made
more havoc than the musket and the sword. A
party of French who came to the spot late in the
autumn, found it filled with innumerable graves.
The British squadron, with the five regiments
on board, was to have reached Boston at the
middle of May. On the 20th of that month the
whole contingent of Massachusetts, New Hamp-
shire, and Rhode Island was encamped by Boston
harbor, with transports and stores, ready to em-
bark for Quebec at ten hours' notice. 1 When
Yetch, after seeing everything in readiness at New
York, returned to Boston on the 3d of July, he
1 Dudley to Sunderland, 14 Aug. 1709.
1709.] SUSPENSE. 139
found the New England levies encamped there
still, drilled diligently every day by officers whom
he had brought from England for the purpose.
"The bodies of the men," he writes to Lord
Sunderland, " are in general better than in Europe,
and I hope their courage will prove so too ; so that
nothing in human probability can prevent the suc-
cess of this glorious enterprise but the too late
arrival of the fleet.' ' * But of the fleet there was
no sign. "The government here is put to vast
expense/ ' pursues Vetch, " but they cheerfully pay
it, in hopes of being freed from it forever hereafter.
All that they can do now is to fast and pray for
the safe and speedy arrival of the fleet, for which
they have already had two public fast-days kept."
If it should not come in time, he continues, " it
would be the last disappointment to her Majesty's
colonies, who have so heartily complied with her
royal order, and would render them much more
miserable than if such a thing had never been
undertaken." Time passed, and no ships appeared.
Vetch wrote again : " I shall only presume to ac-
quaint your Lordship how vastly uneasy all her
Majesty's loyall subjects here on this continent are.
Pray God hasten the fleet." 2 Dudley, scarcely less
impatient, wrote to the same effect. It was all in
vain, and the soldiers remained in their camp,
monotonously drilling day after day through all
1 Vetch to Sunderland, 2 Aug. 1709. The pay of the men was nine
shillings a week, with eightpence a day for provisions ; and most of them
had received an enlistment bounty of £12.
2 Vetch to Sunderland, 12 Aug. 1709. Dudley writes with equal urgency
two days later.
140 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1709.
the summer and half the autumn. At length, on
the 11th of October, Dudley received a letter from
Lord Sunderland, informing him that the promised
\ forces had been sent to Portugal to meet an exi-
gency of the European war. They were to have
reached Boston, as we have seen, by the middle of
May. Sunderland's notice of the change of desti-
nation was not written till the 27th of July, and was
eleven weeks on its way, thus imposing on the
colonists a heavy and needless tax in time, money,
temper, and, in the case of the expedition against
Montreal, health and life. 1 What was left of
Nicholson's force had fallen back before Sunder-
land's letter came, making a scapegoat of the
innocent Vetch, cursing him, and wishing him
hanged.
In New England the disappointment and vexa-
tion were extreme ; but, not to lose all the fruits
of their efforts, the governors of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island
met and resolved to attack Port Royal if the
captains of several British frigates then at New
York and Boston would take part in the enter-
prise. To the disgust of the provincials, the
captains, with one exception, refused, on the score
of the late season and the want of orders.
A tenacious energy has always been a charac-
teristic of New England, and the hopes of the
colonists had been raised too high to be readily
abandoned. Port Royal was in their eyes a pesti- t
lent nest of privateers and pirates that preyed on
1 Letters of Nicholson, Dudley, and Vetch, 20 June to 24 Oct. 1709.
1709, 1710.] A NEW ENTERPRISE. 141
the New England fisheries ; and on the refusal of
the naval commanders to join in an immediate at-
tack, they offered to the court to besiege the place
themselves next year, if they could count on the
help of four frigates and five hundred soldiers, to
be at Boston by the end of March. 1 The Assembly
of Massachusetts requested Nicholson, who was on
the point of sailing for Europe, to beg her Majesty
to help them in an enterprise which would be so
advantageous to the Crown, " and which, by the
long and expensive war, we are so impoverished
and enfeebled as not to be in a capacity to effect." 2
Nicholson sailed in December, and Peter Schuyler
soon followed. New York, having once entered on
the path of war, saw that she must continue in it ;
and to impress the Five Nations with the might
and majesty of the Queen, and so dispose them to
hold fast to the British cause, Schuyler took five
Mohawk chiefs with him to England. One died
on the voyage; the rest arrived safe, and their
appearance was the sensation of the hour. They
were clad, at the Queen's expense, in strange and
gay attire, invented by the costumer of one of the
theatres ; were lodged and feasted as the guests of
1 Joint Letter of Nicholson, Dudley, Vetch, and Moody to Sunderland,
24 Oct. 1709; also Joint Letter of Dudley, Vetch, and Moody to Sunder-
land, 25 Oct. 1709 ; Abstracts of Letters and Papers relating to the Attack
of Port Royal, 1709 (Public Record Office) ; Address of ye Inhabitants of
Boston and Parts adjacent, 1709. Moody, named above, was the British
naval captain who had consented to attack Port Royal.
2 Order of Assembly, 27 Oct. 1709. Massachusetts had spent about
£22,000 on her futile expedition of 1707, and, with New Hampshire and
Rhode Island, a little more than £46,000 on that of 1709, besides con-
tinual outlay in guarding her two hundred miles of frontier, — a heavy
expense for the place and time.
142 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1710.
the nation, driven about London in coaches with
liveried servants, conducted to dockyards, arsenals,
and reviews, and saluted with cannon by ships of
war. The Duke of Shrewsbury presented them to
Queen Anne, — one as emperor of the Mohawks,
and the other three as kings, — and the Archbishop
of Canterbury solemnly gave each of them a Bible.
"►Steele and Addison wrote essays about them, and
the Dutch artist Yerelst painted their portraits,
which were engraved in mezzotint. 1 Their presence
and the speech made in their name before the
court seem to have had no small effect in drawing
attention to the war in America and inclining
the ministry towards the proposals of Nicholson.
These were accepted, and he sailed for America
commissioned to command the enterprise against
Port Royal, with Yetch as adjutant-general. 2
Colonel Francis Nicholson had held some mod-
est military positions, but never, it is said, seen
active service. In colonial affairs he had played
an important part, and in the course of his life
governed at different times, Virginia, New York,
Maryland, and Carolina. He had a robust, practical
brain, capable of broad views and large schemes.
One of his plans was a confederacy of the prov-
1 See J. R. Bartlett, in Magazine of American History, March, 1878, and
Schuyler, Colonial New York, II. 34-39. The chiefs returned to America
in May on board the " Dragon." An elaborate pamphlet appeared in
London, giving an account of them and their people. A set of the mezzo-
tint portraits, which are large and well executed, is in the John Carter
Brown collection at Providence. For photographic reproductions, see
Winsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist., V. 107. Compare Smith, Hist. N. Y., I.
204 (1830).
2 Commission of Colonel Francis Nicholson, 18 May, 1710. Instructions
to Colonel Nicholson, same date.
1710.] VISCOUNT SHANNON. 143
inces to resist the French, which, to his great in-
dignation, Virginia rejected. He had Jacobite
leanings, and had been an adherent of James II. ;
but being no idealist, and little apt to let his
political principles block the path of his interests,
he turned his back on the fallen cause and offered
his services to the Revolution. Though no pattern
of domestic morals, he seems to have been officially
upright, and he wished well to the colonies, saving
always the dominant interests of England. He
was bold, ambitious, vehement, and sometimes
headstrong and perverse.
Though the English ministry had promised aid,
it was long in coming. The Massachusetts Assem-
bly had asked that the ships should be at Boston
before the end of March ; but it was past the
middle of May before they sailed from Plymouth.
Then, towards midsummer, a strange spasm of
martial energy seems to have seized the ministry,
for Viscount Shannon was ordered to Boston with
an additional force, commissioned to take the
chief command and attack, not Port Royal, but
Quebec. 1 This ill-advised change of plan seems
to have been reconsidered; at least, it came to
nothing. 2
1 Instructions to Richard Viscount Shannon, July, 1710. A report of
the scheme reached Boston. Hutchinson, II. 164.
2 The troops, however, were actually embarked. True State of the
Forces commanded by the Right Hon 6 * The Lord Viscount Shannon, as
they were Embark'* the 14'* of October, 1710. The total was three thou-
sand two hundred and sixty-five officers and men. Also, Shannon to
Sunderland, 16 Oct. 1710. The absurdity of the attempt at so late a
season is obvious. Yet the fleet lay some weeks more at Portsmouth,
waiting for a fair wind.
X,
\
144 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1710.
Meanwhile, the New England people waited im-
patiently for the retarded ships. No order had
come from England for raising men, and the
colonists resolved this time to risk nothing till
assured that their labor and money would not be
wasted. At last, not in March, but in July, the
ships appeared. Then all was astir with prepara-
tion. First, the House of Representatives voted
thanks to the Queen for her " royal aid." Next, it
was proclaimed that no vessel should be permitted
to leave the harbor " till the service is provided ; "
and a committee of the House proceeded to impress
fourteen vessels to serve as transports. Then a
vote was passed that nine hundred men be raised
as the quota of Massachusetts, and a month's pay
in advance, together with a coat worth thirty
shillings, was promised to volunteers ; a committee
of three being at the same time appointed to
provide the coats. On the next day appeared
a proclamation from the Governor announcing
the aforesaid " encouragements," calling on last
year's soldiers to. enlist again, promising that all
should return home as soon as Port Royal
was taken, and that each might keep as his own
forever the Queen's musket that would be furnished
him. Now came an order to colonels of militia to
muster their regiments on a day named, read the
proclamation at the head of each company, and if
volunteers did not come forward in sufficient num-
ber, to draft as many men as might be wanted^
appointing, at the same time, officers to conduct
them to the rendezvous at Dorchester or Cambridge;
1710.] THE ENGLISH AT PORT ROYAL. 145
and, by a stringent and unusual enactment, the
House ordered that they should be quartered in -^
private houses, with or without the consent of the
owners, " any law or usage to the contrary not-
withstanding." Sailors were impressed without
ceremony to man the transports; and, finally, it
was voted that a pipe of wine, twenty sheep, five
pigs, and one hundred fowls be presented to the
Honorable General Nicholson for his table during
the expedition. 1 The above, with slight variation,\ sX-
may serve as an example of the manner in which, \
for several generations, men were raised in Massa- '"
chusetts to serve against the French.
Autumn had begun before all was ready. Con-
necticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island sent
their contingents ; there was a dinner at the Green
Dragon Tavern in honor of Nicholson, Vetch, and
Sir Charles Hobby, the chief officers of the expe-
dition ; and on the 18th of September the whole
put to sea.
On the 24th the squadron sailed into the *>
narrow entrance of Port Royal, where the tide
runs like a mill-stream. One vessel was driven
upon the rocks, and twenty-six men were drowned.
The others got in safely, and anchored above Goat
Island, in sight of the French fort. They con-
sisted of three fourth-rates, — the "Dragon," the
" Chester," and the " Falmouth ; " two fifth-rates,
— the " Lowestoffe " and the " Feversham ; " the
province galley, one bomb-ketch, twenty-four
1 Archives of Massachusetts, Vol. LXXI., where the original papers
are preserved.
vol. i. — 10
146 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1710.
small transports, two or three hospital ships, a
tender, and several sloops carrying timber to make
beds for cannon and mortars. The landing force
consisted of four hundred British marines, and
about fifteen hundred provincials, divided into
four battalions. 1 Its unnecessary numbers were
due to the belief of Nicholson that the fort had
been reinforced and strengthened.
In the afternoon of the 25th they were all on
shore ; Vetch with his two battalions on the north
side, and Nicholson with the other two on the
south. Vetch marched to his camping-ground, on
which, in the words of Nicholson's journal, " the
French began to fire pretty thick." On the next
morning Nicholson's men moved towards the fort,
hacking their way through the woods and crossing
the marshes of Allen's River, while the French
fired briskly with cannon from the ramparts, and
small-arms from the woods, houses, and fences.
They were driven back, and the English advance
guard intrenched itself within four hundred yards
of the works. Several days passed in landing
artillery and stores, cannonading from the fort and
shelling from the English bomb-ketch, when on the
29th, Ensign Perelle, with a drummer and a flag of
truce, came to Nicholson's tent, bringing a letter
from Subercase, who begged him to receive into his
camp and under his protection certain ladies of the
1 Nicholson and Vetch to the Secretary of State, 16 Sept. 1710; Hutch-
inson, II. 164; Penhallow. Massachusetts sent two battalions of four
hundred and fifty men each, and Connecticut one battalion of three
hundred men, while New Hampshire and Rhode Island united their
contingents to form a fourth battalion.
Hie] PORT ROYAL SUMMONED. 147
fort who were distressed by the bursting of the
English shells. The conduct of Perelle was irregu-
lar, as he had not given notice of his approach by
beat of drum and got himself and attendants blind-
folded before entering the camp. Therefore Nichol-
son detained him, sending back an officer of his
own with a letter to the effect that he would re-
ceive the ladies and lodge them in the same house
with the French ensign, " for the Queen, my royal
mistress, hath not sent me hither to make war
against women." Subercase on his part detained
the English officer, and wrote to Nicholson :
Sir, — You have one of my officers, and I have one of
yours ; so that now we are equal. However, that hinders me
not from believing that once you have given me your word,
you will keep it very exactly. On that ground I now write
to tell you, sir, that to prevent the spilling of both English
and French blood, I am ready to hold up both hands for a
capitulation that will be honorable to both of us. 1
In view of which agreement he adds that he defers
sending the ladies to the English camp.
Another day passed, during which the captive
officers on both sides were treated with much
courtesy. On the next morning, Sunday, October
1st, the siege-guns, mortars, and coehorns were in
position; and after some firing on both sides,
Nicholson sent Colonel Tailor and Captain Aber-
crombie with a summons to surrender the fort. -
Subercase replied that he was ready to listen to
1 The contemporary English translation of this letter is printed among
the papers appended to Nicholson's Journal in Collections of the Nova Scotia
Historical Society, I.
148 ACADIA CHANGES HANDS. [1710.
proposals ; the firing stopped, and within twenty-
four hours the terms were settled. The garrison
were to march out with the honors of war, and to
be carried in English ships to Rochelle or Roche-
fort. The inhabitants within three miles of the
fort were to be permitted to remain, if they chose
to do so, unmolested, in their homes during two
years, on taking an oath of allegiance and fidelity
to the Queen.
Two hundred provincials marched to the ■ fort
gate and formed in two lines on the right and left.
Nicholson advanced between the ranks, with Vetch
on one hand and Hobby on the other, followed by
all the field-officers. Subercase came to meet them,
and gave up the keys, with a few words of com-
pliment. The French officers and men marched
out with shouldered arms, drums beating, and
colors flying, saluting the English commander as
they passed ; then the English troops marched in,
raised the union flag, and drank the Queen's health
amid a general firing of cannon from the fort and
ships. Nicholson changed the name of Port Royal
to Annapolis Royal ; and Vetch, already com-
missioned as governor, took command of the new
garrison, which consisted of two hundred British
marines, and two hundred and fifty provincials
who had offered themselves for the service.
The English officers gave a breakfast to the
French ladies in the fort. Sir Charles Hobby took
in Madame de Bonaventure, and the rest followed
in due order of precedence ; but as few of the hosts
could speak French, and few of the guests could
710] CAPTURE OF PORT ROYAL. 149
ipeak English, the entertainment could hardly
lave been a lively pne.
The French officers and men in the fort when it
vas taken were but two hundred and fifty eight.
Some of the soldiers and many of the armed in-
labitants deserted during the siege, which, no doubt,
hastened the surrender ; for Subercase, a veteran
of more than thirty years' service, had borne fair
repute as a soldier.
Port Royal had twice before been taken by New \
England men, — once under Major Sedgwick in
1G54, and again under Sir William Phipps in the
last war ; and in each case it had been restored to
France by treaty. This time England kept what
she had got ; and as there was no other place of
strength in the province, the capture of Port Royal *L
meant the conquest of Acadia. 1
1 In a letter to Ponchartrain, 1 Oct. 1710 (new style), Subercase de-
clares that he has not a sou left, nor any credit. " I have managed to
borrow enough to maintain the garrison for the last two years, and have
paid what I could by selling all my furniture." Charlevoix's account of
the siege has been followed by most writers, both French and English ;
but it is extremely incorrect. It was answered by one De Gannes, appar-
ently an officer under Subercase, in a paper called Observations sur les
Erreura de la Relation du Siege du Port Royal . . . faittes sur de faux
memoires par le reverend Pere Charlevoix, whom De Gannes often con-
tradicts flatly. Thus Charlevoix puts the besieging force at thirty-four
hundred men, besides officers and sailors, while De Gannes puts it at four-
teen hundred ; and while Charlevoix says that the garrison were famish-
ing, his critic says that they were provisioned for three months. See the
valuable notes to Shea's Charlevoix, V. 227-232.
The journal of Nicholson was published " by authority " in the Boston
Neivs Letter, Nov. 1710, and has been reprinted, with numerous accom-
panying documents, including the French and English correspondence dur-
ing the siege, in the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, I.
Vaudreuil, before the siege, sent a reinforcement to Subercase, who,
by a strange infatuation, refused it. N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 853.
CHAPTER VIII.
1710-1711.
WALKER'S EXPEDITION.
Scheme op La Ronde Denys. — Boston warned against British
Designs. — Boston to be ruined. — Plans op the Ministry. —
Canada doomed. — British Troops at Boston. — The Colonists
denounced. — tlie fleet sails for quebec. — forebodings of
the Admiral. — Storm and Wreck. — Timid Commanders. —
Retreat. — Joyful News for Canada. — Pious Exultation. —
Fanciful Stories. — Walker disgraced.
Military aid from Old England to New, prom-
ised in one year and actually given in the next,
: was a fact too novel and surprising to escape the
j notice either of friends or of foes.
The latter drew strange conclusions from it.
Two Irish deserters from an English station in
Newfoundland appeared at the French post of
Placentia full of stories of British and provincial
armaments against Canada. On this, an idea
seized the French commandant, Costebelle, and he
hastened to make it known to the" colonial minister.
It was to the effect that the aim of England was
not so much to conquer the French colonies as to
-V reduce her own to submission, especially Massa-
chusetts, — a kind of republic which has never
willingly accepted a governor from its king. 1 In
sending ships and soldiers to the " Bastonnais "
1 Rapport de Costebelle, 14 Oct. 1709. Ibid., 3 D€c. 1709.
1710, 1711.] SCHEME OF COSTEBELLE. 151
under pretence of helping them to conquer their
French neighbors, Costebelle is sure that England
only means to bring them to a dutiful subjection.
" I do not think," he writes on another occasion,
" that they are so blind as not to see that they will
insensibly be brought under the yoke of the Parlia-
ment of Old England ; but by the cruelties that the
Canadians and Indians exercise in continual in-
cursions upon their lands, I judge that they would
rather be delivered from the inhumanity of such
neighbors than preserve all the former powers of
their little republic." l He thinks, however, that
the design of England ought to be strongly repre-
sented to the Council at Boston, and that M. de la
Ronde Denys will be a good man to do it, as he
speaks English, has lived in Boston, and has many
acquaintances there. 2
The minister, Ponchartrain, was struck by Coste-
belle's suggestion, and wrote both to him and to
Vaudreuil in high approval of it. To Vaudreuil he
says: "Monsieur de Costebelle has informed me
that the chief object of the armament made
by the English last year was to establish their
1 " Je ne les crois pas assez aveugles pour ne point s'apercevoir qu'in-
sensiblement ils vont subir le joug du parlement de la vieille Angle-
terre, mais par les cruautes que les Canadiens et sauvages exercent sur
leurs terres par des courses continuelles je juge qu'ils aiment encore
nrieux se delivrer de l'inhuinanite de semblables voisins que de conserver
toute l'ancienne autorite de leur petite republique." Costebelle au Ministre,
3 Dec. 1710. He clung tenaciously to tbis idea, and wrote again in 1712
that " les cruautes de nos sauvages, qui font horreur a rapporter," would
always incline the New England people to peace. They had, however,
an opposite effect.
2 It is more than probable that La Ronde Denys, who had studied the
" Bastonnais " with care, first gave the idea to Costebelle.
152 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1710
sovereignty at Boston and New York, the people
of these provinces having always maintained a sort
of republic, governed by their council, and having
been unwilling to receive absolute governors from
the kings of England. This destination of the
armament seems to me probable, and it is much to
be wished that the Council at Boston could be in-
formed of the designs of the English court, and
shown how important it is for that province to
remain in the state of a republic. The King would
even approve our helping it to do so. If you see
any prospect of success, no means should be spared
to secure it. The matter is of the greatest im-
portance, but care is essential to employ persons
who have the talents necessary for conducting it,
besides great secrecy and prudence, as well as tried
probity and fidelity. This affair demands your
best attention, and must be conducted with great
care and precaution, in order that no false step may
be taken." *
Ponchartrain could not be supposed to know
that while, under her old charter, Massachusetts,
called by him and other Frenchmen, the govern-
ment of Boston, had chosen her own governor,
New York had always received hers from the
court. What is most curious in this affair is the
attitude of Louis XIV., who abhorred republics,
and yet was prepared to bolster up one or more
of them beyond the Atlantic, — thinking, no
1 Ponchartrain a Vaudreuil, 10 Aout, 1710. Ponchartrain a Costebelle,
meme date. These letters are in answer to the reports of Costebelle,
before cited.
1710.] MISSION OF LA RONDE DENYS. 153
doubt, that they would be too small and remote
to be dangerous.
Costebelle, who had suggested the plan of warn-
ing the Council at Boston, proceeded to unfold his
scheme for executing it. This was to send La
Ronde Denys to Boston in the spring, under the
pretext of treating for an exchange of prisoners,
which would give him an opportunity of insinu-
ating to the colonists that the forces which the
Queen of England sends to join their own for the
conquest of Acadia and Canada have no object
whatever but that of ravishing from them the
liberties they have kept so firmly and so long,
but which would be near ruin if the Queen
should become mistress of New France by the
fortune of war; and that either they must have
sadly fallen from their ancient spirit, or their
chiefs have been corrupted by the Court of London,
if they do not see that they are using their own
weapons for the destruction of their republic." 1
La Ronde Denys accordingly received his in-
y structions, which authorized him to negotiate with
the " Bastonnais " as with an independent people,
and offer them complete exemption from French
hostility if they would promise to give no more aid
to Old England either in ships or men. He was
told at the same time to approach the subject with
great caution, and unless he found willing listeners,
to pass off the whole as a pleasantry. 2 He went
1 Costebelle a Ponchartrain, 3 D€c. 1710.
2 Instructions pour Monsieur de la Ronde, Capitaine d'Infanterie des
JMtachements de la Marine, 1711. "Le dit sieur de la Ronde pourroit
154 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1710,
to Boston, where he was detained in consequence of
p reparations then on foot for attacking Canada.
He tried to escape ; but his vessel was seized and
moored under the guns of the town, and it is need-
less to say that his mission was a failure.
The idea of Costebelle, or rather of La Ronde,
— for it probably originated with him, — was not
without foundation ; for though there is no reason
to believe that in sending ships and soldiers against
the French, England meant to use them against
the liberties of her own colonies, there can be no
doubt that she thought those liberties excessive
and troublesome ; and, on the other side, while the
people of Massachusetts were still fondly attached
to the land of their fathers, and still called it
" Home," they were at the same time enamoured
of their autonomy, and jealously watchful against
any abridgment of it.
While La Ronde Denys was warning Massa-
chusetts of the danger of helping England to
conquer Canada, another Frenchman, in a more
prophetic spirit, declared that England would
make a grave mistake if she helped her colonies to
the same end. " There is an antipathy," this writer
affirms, " between the English of Europe and those
of America, who will not endure troops from Eng-
land even to guard their forts ; " and he goes on
to say that if the French colonies should fall, those
entrer en negotiation et se promettre de faire cesser toutes sortes d'hosti-
lites du cote du Canada, suppose que les Bastonnais promissent d'en faire
de meme de leur cote, et qu'ils ne donassent aucun seconrs a l'avenir,
d'hommes ni de vaisseaux, aux puissances de la vieille Angleterre et
d'Ecosse."
1710.] BOSTON TO BE RUINED. 155
of England would control the continent from New-
foundland to Florida. " Old England " — such are
his words — " will not imagine that these various
provinces will then unite, shake off the yoke of
the English monarchy, and erect themselves into
a democracy. " l Forty or fifty years later, several
frenchmen made the same prediction; but at this
early day, when the British provinces were so feeble
and divided, it is truly a remarkable one.
The anonymous prophet regards the colonies of
England, Massachusetts above all, as a standing "
menace to those of France ; and he proposes a
drastic remedy against the danger. This is a
powerful attack on Boston by land and sea, for
which he hopes that God will prepare the way.
" When Boston is reduced, we would call together all
the chief men of the other towns of New England,
who would pay heavy sums to be spared from the
flames. As for Boston, it should be pillaged, its
workshops, manufactures, shipyards, all its fine
establishments ruined, and its ships sunk." If
these gentle means are used thoroughly, he thinks
that New England will cease to be a dangerous
rival for some time, especially if "Rhodelene"
(Rhode Island) is treated like Boston. 2
1 " La vieille Angleterre ne s'imaginera pas que ces diverses Provinces
se reuniront, et, secouant le joug de la monarchic Anglaise, s'erigeront en
democratic" Me'moire sur la Nouvelle Angleterre, 1710, 1711. (Archives
de la Marine.)
2 " Pour Baston, il faudrait la piller, ruiner ses ateliers, ses manufac-
tures, tous ses beaux etablissements, couler bas ses navires, . . . ruiner
les ateliers de construction de navires." Memoire sur la Nouvelle Angle-
terre, 1710, 1711. The writer was familiar with Boston and its neighbor-
hood, and had certainly spent some time there. Possibly he was no other
than La Ronde Denys himself, after the failure of bis mission to excite
156 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1710,1711.
While the correspondent of the French court
was thus consigning New England to destruction,
an attack was preparing against Canada less
truculent but quite as formidable as that which
he urged against Boston. The French colony was
threatened by an armament stronger in proportion
to her present means of defence than that which
brought her under British rule half a century
later. But here all comparison ceases; for there
was no Pitt to direct and inspire, and no Wolfe to
lead.
The letters of Dudley, the proposals of Vetch,
the representations of Nicholson, the promptings
of Jeremiah Dummer, agent of Massachusetts in
England, and the speech made to the Queen by the
four Indians who had been the London sensation of
the last year, had all helped to draw the attention
of the ministry to the New World, and the ex-
pediency of driving the French out of it. Other
influences conspired to the same end, or in all
likelihood little or nothing would have been done.
England was tiring of the Continental war, the
costs of which threatened ruin. Marlborough was
rancorously attacked, and his most stanch sup-
porters, the Whigs, had given place to the Tories, led
by the Lord Treasurer, Harley, and the Secretary
of State, St. John, soon afterwards Lord Boling-
broke. Never was party spirit more bitter ; and
the new ministry found a congenial ally in the
the " Bastonnais " to refuse co-operation with British armaments. He
enlarges with bitterness on the extent of the fisheries, foreign trade, and
ship-building of New England.
1710,1711.] PLAN OF THE MINISTRY. 157
coarse and savage but powerful genius of Swift,
who, incensed by real or imagined slights from the
late minister, Godolphin, gave all his strength to
the winning side.
The prestige of Marlborough's victories was still
immense, ^tlarley and St. John dreaded it as their
chief danger, and looked eagerly for some means of
counteracting it. Such means would be supplied
by the conquest of New France^ To make America
a British continent would be an achievement
almost worth Blenheim or Ramillies, and one,
too, in which Britain alone would be the gainer ;
^whereas the enemies of Marlborough, with Swift
at their head, contended that his greatest triumphs
turned more to the profit of Holland or Germany
than of England. 1 Moreover, to send a part of his
army across the Atlantic would tend to cripple his
movements and diminish his fame.
St. John entered with ardor into the scheme.
Seven veteran regiments, five of which were from
the army in Flanders, were ordered to embark.
But in the choice of commanders the judgment of
the ministers was not left free ; there were in-
fluences that they could not disregard. The
famous Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, lately
the favorite of the feeble but wilful Queen, had
lost her good graces and given place to Mrs.
Masham, one of the women of her bedchamber.
The new favorite had a brother, John Hill, known
about the court as Jack Hill, whom Marlborough
had pronounced good for nothing, but who had
1 See Swift, Conduct of the Allies.
\
158 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
been advanced to the rank of colonel, and then of
brigadier, through the influence of Mrs. Masham ;
and though his agreeable socia] qualities were his
best recommendation, he was now appointed to
command the troops on the Canada expedition. It
is not so clear why the naval command was given
to^\.dmiral Sir Hovenden Walker, a man whose in-
competence was soon to become notorious.)
Extreme care was taken to hide the destination
of the fleet. Even the Lords of the Admiralty
were kept ignorant of it. Some thought the ships
bound for the West Indies ; some for the South
Sea. Nicholson was sent to America with orders
to the several colonies to make ready men and
supplies. He landed at Boston on the 8th of June.
The people of the town, who were nearly all
Whigs, were taken by surprise, expecting no such
enterprise on the part of the Tory ministry ; and
their perplexity was not diminished when they
were told that the fleet was at hand, and that they
were to supply it forthwith with provisions for
ten weeks. 1 There was no time to lose. The
governors of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island were summoned to meet at New London,
and Dudley and Nicholson went thither to join
them. Here plans were made for the double at-
tack ; for while Walker and Hill sailed up the
1 Boston, devoted to fishing, shipbuilding, and foreign trade, drew most
of its provisions from neighboring colonies. Dummer, Letter to a Noble
Lord. The people only half believed that the Tory ministry were sincere
in attacking Canada, and suspected that the sudden demand for provi-
sions, so difficult to meet at once, was meant to furnish a pretext for
throwing the blame of failure upon Massachusetts. Hutchinson, II 173.
1711.] WALKER AT BOSTON. 159
St. Lawrence against Quebec, Nicholson, as in
the former attempt, was to move against Montreal
by wa y °f Lake Champlain. In a few days the
arrangements were made, and the governors hast-
ened back to their respective posts. 1
When Dudley reached Boston, he saw Nantas-
ket Roads crowded with transports and ships of
war, and the pastures of Noddle' s Island studded
with tents. The fleet had come on the 24th, having
had what the Admiral calls " by the blessing of
God a favorable and extraordinary passage, being
but seven weeks and two days between Plymouth
and Nantasket." 2
The Admiral and the General had been wel-
comed with all honor. The provincial Secretary,
with two members of the Council, conducted them
to town amid salutes from the batteries of Copp's
Hill and Fort Hill, and the Boston militia regi-
ment received them under arms ; after which
they were feasted at the principal tavern and ac-
companied in ceremony to the lodgings provided
for them. 3 When the troops were disembarked
and the tents pitched, curious townspeople and
staring rustics crossed to Noddle's Island, now
East Boston, to gaze with wonder on a military
pageant the like of which New England had never
seen before. Yet their joy at this unlooked-for
succor was dashed with deep distrust and jeal- v
ousy. They dreaded these new and formidable «
J Minutes of Proceedings of the Congress of Governors , June, 1711.
' 2 Walker to Burchett, Secretary of the Admiralty, 14 Aug. 1711.
3 Abstract of the Journal of the Governor, Council, and Assembly of the
Province of the Massachusetts Bay.
160 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
friends, with their imperious demeanor and exact-
ing demands. The British officers, on their part,
were no better pleased with the colonists, and one
of them, Colonel King, of the artillery, thus gives
vent to his feelings : " You '11 find in my Journal
what Difficultyes we mett with through the Mis-
fortune that the Coloneys were not inform'd of
our Coming two Months sooner, and through the
Interestedness, ill Nature, and Sowerness of these
People, whose Government, Doctrine, and Man-
ners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are insup-
portable; and no man living but one of Gen'l
Hill's good Sense and good Nature could have
managed them. But if such a Man mett with
nothing he could depend on, altho' vested with
the Queen's Royal Power and Authority, and
Supported by a Number of Troops sufficient to
reduce by force all the Coloneys, 'tis easy to
determine the Eespect and Obedience her Majesty
may reasonably expect from them." And he
gives it as his conviction that till all the colonies
are deprived of their charters and brought under
one government, " they will grow more stiff and
disobedient every Day." *
It will be seen that some coolness on the part
of the Bostonians was not unnatural. But what-
ever may have been the popular feeling, the pro-
vincial authorities did their full part towards
supplying the needs of the new-comers ; for
Dudley, with his strong Tory leanings, did not
share the prevailing jealousy, and the country
1 King to Secretary St. John, 25 July, 1711.
1711] PREPARATION. 161
members of the Assembly were anxious before all
things to be delivered from war-parties. The
problem was how to raise the men and furnish the
supplies in the least possible time. The action of
the Assembly, far from betraying any slackness,
was worthy of a military dictatorship. All ordi-
nary business was set aside. Bills of credit for
£40,000 were issued to meet the needs of the ex-
pedition. It was ordered that the prices of pro-
visions and other necessaries of the service should
stand fixed at the point where they stood before
the approach of the fleet w r as known. Sheriffs ./
and constables, jointly with the Queen's officers,
were ordered to search all the town for provisions
and liquors, and if the owners refused to part with
them at the prescribed prices, to break open doors
and seize them. Stringent and much-needed Acts
were passed against harboring deserters. Provin-
cial troops, in greater number than the ministry
had demanded, were ordered to be raised at once,
and quartered upon the citizens, with or with-
out their consent, at the rate of eightpence a
day for each man. 1 Warrants were issued for ^X*
impressing pilots, and also mechanics and laborers,
who, in spite of Puritan scruples, were required
to work on Sundays.
Such measures, if imposed by England, would
have roused the most bitter resentment. Even
when ordered by their own representatives, they
caused a sullen discontent among the colonists,
1 The number demanded from Massachusetts was oue thousand, and
that raised by her was eleven hundred and sixty. Dudley to Walker,
27 July, 1711.
VQfc. I. — 11
/
162 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
and greatly increased the popular dislike of their
military visitors. It was certain that when the
expedition sailed and the operation of the new en-
actments ceased, prices would rise ; and hence the
compulsion to part with goods at low fixed rates
was singularly trying to the commercial temper.
It was a busy season, too, with the farmers, and
they showed no haste to bring their produce to
the camp. Though many of the principal inhabi-
tants bound themselves by mutual agreement to
live on their family stores of salt provisions, in
order that the troops might be better supplied
with fresh, this failed to soothe the irritation of
the British officers, aggravated by frequent deser-
tions, which the colonists favored, and by the
impossibility of finding pilots familiar with the
St. Lawrence. Some when foroejl into the ser-
vice made their escape, to the great indignation of
Walker, who wrote to the Governor : " Her Maj-
esty will resent such actions in a very signal man-
ner ; and when it shall be represented that the
people live here as if there were no king in Israel,
but every one does what seems right in his own
eyes, measures will be taken to put things upon a
better foot for the future." l At length, however,
every preparation was made, the supplies were
all on board, and after a grand review of the
troops on the fields of Noddle's Island, the whole
1 Walker prints this letter in his Journal. Colonel King writes in his
own Journal : " The conquest of Canada will naturally lead the Queen
\^ into changing their present disorderly government ; " and he thinks that
the conviction of this made the New Englanders indifferent to the success
of the expedition.
1711.] DIFFICULTIES. 163
force set sail on the 30th of July, the provincials
wishing them success, and heartily rejoicing that
they were gone.
The fleet consisted of nine ships of war and two
bomb-ketches, with about sixty transports, store-
ships, hospital-ships, and other vessels, British
and provincial. They carried the seven British
regiments, numbering, with the artillery train,
about fifty-five hundred men, besides six hundred
marines and fifteen hundred provincials ; counting,
with the sailors, nearly twelve thousand in all. 1
Vetch commanded the provincials, having been
brought from Annapolis for that purpose. The
great need_ was of pilots. Every sailor in New
England who had seen the St. Lawrence had been
pressed into the service, though each and all declar-
ed themselves incapable of conducting the fleet to
Quebec. Several had no better knowledge of
the river than they had picked up when serving
as soldiers under Phips twenty-one years before.
The best among them was the veteran Captain
Bonner, who afterwards amused his old age by
making a plan of Boston, greatly prized by con-
noisseurs in such matters. Vetch had studied the
St. Lawrence in his several visits to Quebec, but,
like Bonner, he had gone up the river only in
sloops or other small craft, and was, moreover, no
sailor. One of Walkers ships, the " Chester,"
1 The above is drawn from the various lists and tables in Walker,
Journal of the Canada Expedition. The armed ships that entered Bos-
ton in June were fifteen in all ; but several had been detached for cruis-
ing. The number of British transports, store-ships, etc., was forty, the
rest being provincial.
164 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
sent in advance to cruise in the Gulf, had cap-
tured a French vessel commanded by one Paradis,
an experienced old voyager, who knew the river
well. He took a bribe of five hundred pistoles to
act as pilot ; but the fleet would perhaps have fared
better if he had refused the money. He gave
such dismal accounts of the Canadian winter that
the Admiral could see nothing but ruin ahead,
even if he should safely reach his destination.
His tribulation is recorded in his Journal. " That
which now chiefly took up my thoughts, was con-
triving how to secure the ships if we got up to
Quebec ; for the ice in the river freezing to the
bottom would have utterly destroyed and bilged
them as much as if they had been squeezed
between rocks." * These misgivings may serve
to give the measure of his professional judgment.
Afterwards, reflecting on the situation, he sees
cause for gratitude in his own mishaps ; "because,
had we arrived safe at Quebec, our provisions
would have been reduced to a very small propor-
tion, not exceeding eight or nine weeks at short
allowance, so that between ten and twelve thou-
sand men must have been left to perish with the
extremity of cold and hunger. I must confess the
melancholy contemplation of this (had it hap-
pened) strikes me with horror ; for how dismal
must it have been to. have beheld the seas and
earth locked up by adamantine frosts, and swoln
with high mountains of snow, in a barren and un-
cultivated region ; great numbers of brave men
1 Walker, Journal : Introduction.
1711.] ALARMS AND BLUNDERS. 165
famishing with hunger, and drawing lots who
should die first to feed the rest." 1
All went well till the 18th of August, when there
was a strong head-wind, and the ships ran into the
Bay of Gaspe. Two days after, the wind shifted to
the southeast, and they set sail again, Walker in
his flagship, the " Edgar," being at or near the
head of the fleet. On the evening of the 22d they
were at some distance above the great island of
Anticosti. The river is here about seventy miles
wide, and no land had been seen since noon of the
day before. There was a strong east wind, with
fog. Walker thought that he was not far from
the south shore, when in fact he was at least
fifty miles from it, and more than half that dis-
tance north of his true course. At eight in the
evening the Admiral signalled the fleet to bring to,
under mizzen and maintopsails, with heads turned
southward. At half-past ten, Paddon, the captain
of the " Edgar," came to tell him that he saw land
which he supposed must be the south shore ; on
which Walker, in a fatal moment, signalled for the
ships to wear and bring to, with heads northward.
He then turned into his berth, and w r as falling
asleep, when a military officer, Captain Goddard,
of Seymour's regiment, hastily entered, and begged
him to come on deck, saying that there were
breakers on all sides. Walker, scornful of a
landsman, and annoyed at being disturbed, an-
swered impatiently and would not stir. Soon
after, Goddard appeared again, and implored him
1 Walker, Journal : Introduction, 25.
L66 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
for Heaven's sake to come up and see for himself,
or all would be lost. At the same time the Ad-
miral heard a great noise and trampling, on which
he turned out of his berth, put on his dressing-
gown and slippers, and going in this attire on
deck, found a scene of fright and confusion. At
first he could see nothing, and shouted to the men
to reassure them ; but just then the fog opened,
the moon shone out, and the breaking surf was
plainly visible to leeward. The French pilot, who
at first could not be found, now appeared on deck,
and declared, to the astonishment of both the Ad-
miral and Captain Paddon, that they were off the
north shore. Paddon, in his perplexity, had ordered
an anchor to be let go ; Walker directed the cable
to be cut, and, making all sail, succeeded in beating
to windward and gaining an offing. 1
The ship that carried Colonel King, of the
artillery, had a narrow escape. King says that
she anchored in a driving rain, " with a shoal of
rocks on each quarter within a cable's length of us,
which we plainly perceived by the waves breaking
over them in a very violent manner." They were
saved by a lull in the gale ; for if it had continued
with the same violence, he pursues, " our anchors
could not have held, and the wind and the vast
seas which ran, would have broke our ship into
ten thousand pieces against the rocks. All night
we heard nothing but ships firing and showing
lights, as in the utmost distress." 2 )
1 Walker, Journal, 124, 125.
54 King, Journal,
1711.] THE WRECK. 167
Vetch, who was on board the little frigate
•''Despatch," says that he was extremely uneasy
at the course taken by Walker on the night of the
storm. "I told Colonel Dudley and Captain
Perkins, commander of the ' Despatch/ that I
wondered what the Flag meant by that course, and
why he did not steer west and west-by- south." 1
The " Despatch " kept well astern, and so escaped
the danger. Vetch heard through the. fog guns
firing signals of distress; but three days passed
before he knew how serious the disaster was. The
ships of war had all escaped; but eight British
transports, one storeship, and one sutler's sloop
were dashed to pieces. 2 "It was lamentable to
hear the shrieks of the sinking, drowning, departing
souls," writes the New England commissary, Sheaf,
who was very near sharing their fate.
The disaster took place at and near a rocky
island, with adjacent reefs, lying off the north
shore and called Isle aux (Eufs. On the second
day after it happened, Walker was told by the
master of one of the wrecked transports that 884
soldiers had been lost, and he gives this hasty
estimate in his published Journal ; though he says
in his Introduction to it that the! total loss of
officers, soldiers, and sailors was scarcely nine
hundred. 3 According to a later and more trust-
worthy statement, the loss of the troops was 29
officers, 676 sergeants, corporals, drummers, and
1 Vetch, Journal. 2 King, Journal.
8 Compare Walker, Journal, 45, and Ibid., 127, 128. He elsewhere
intimates that his first statement needed correction.
168 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
private soldiers, and 35 women attached to the
regiments ; that is, a total of 740 lives. 1 The loss
of the sailors is not given ; but it could scarcely
have exceeded two hundred.
The fleet spent the next two days in standing to
and fro between tha northern and southern shores,
with the exception of some of the smaller vessels
employed in bringing off the survivors from the
rocks of Isle aux CEufs. The number thus saved
was, according to Walker, 499. On the 25th he
went on board the General's ship, the " Windsor,"
and Hill and he resolved to call a council of war.
In fact, Hill had already got his colonels together.
Signals were made for the captains of the men-of-
war to join them, and the council began.
" Jack Hill,' ' the man about town, placed in high
command by the influence of his sister, the Queen's
tire-woman, had now an opportunity to justify his
appointment and prove his mettle. Many a man
of pleasure and fashion, when put to the proof, has
revealed the latent hero within him ; but Hill was
not one of them. Both he and Walker seemed to
look for nothing but a pretext for retreat ; and
when manhood is conspicuously wanting in the
leaders, a council of war is rarely disposed to
supply it. The pilots were called in and examined,
and they all declared themselves imperfectly
acquainted with the St. Lawrence, which, as some
1 Report of y e Soldiers, etc., Lost. (Public Record Office.) This is a
tabular statement, giving the names of the commissioned officers and the
positions of their subordinates, regiment by regiment. All the French
accounts of the losses are exaggerations.
1711.] RETREAT. 169
of the captains observed, they had done from the
first. Sir William Phips, with pilots still more
ignorant, had safely carried his fleet to Quebec in
1690, as Walker must have known, for he had
with him Phips's Journal of the voyage. The
expedition had lost about a twelfth part of its
soldiers and sailors, besides the transports that
carried them; with this exception there was no
reason for retreat which might not as well have
been put forward when the fleet left Boston. AD
the war-ships were safe, and the loss of men was
not greater than might have happened in a single
battle. Hill says that Vetch, when asked if he
would pilot the fleet to Quebec, refused to under-
take it; 1 but Vetch himself gives his answer as
follows : " I told him [the Admiral] I never was
bred to sea, nor was it any part of my province ;
but I would do my best by going ahead and
showing them where the difficulty of the river
was, which I knew pretty well." 2 The naval
captains, however, resolved that by reason of the
ignorance of the pilots and the dangerous currents
it was impossible to go up to Quebec. 3 So dis-
creditable a backing out from a great enterprise
will hardly be found elsewhere in English annals.
On the next day Vetch, disappointed and indignant,
gave his mind freely to the Admiral. " The late
1 Hill to Dudley, 25 Aug. 1711.
2 Vetch, Journal. His statement is confirmed by the report of the
council.
3 Report of a Consultation of Sea Officers belonging to the Squadron
under Command of Sir Hovenden Walker, Kt., 25 Aug. 1711 Signed by
Walker and eight others.
170 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711.
disaster cannot, in my humble opinion, be anyways
imputed to the difficulty of the navigation, but to
the wrong course we steered, which most unavoid-
ably carried us upon the north shore. Who
directed that course you best know; and as our
return without any further attempt would be a
vast reflection upon the conduct of this affair, so
it would be of very fatal consequence to the
interest of the Crown and all the British colonies
upon this continent." * His protest was fruitless.
The fleet retraced its course to the gulf, and then
steered for Spanish River, — now the harbor of
Sydney, — in the island of Cape Breton ; the Ad-
miral consoling himself with the reflection that the
wreck was a blessing in disguise and a merciful
intervention of Providence to save the expedition
from the freezing, starvation, and cannibalism
which his imagination had conjured up. 2
The frigate " Sapphire " was sent to Boston
with news of the wreck and the retreat, which
was at once despatched to Nicholson, who, if he
continued his movement on Montreal, would now be
left to conquer Canada alone. His force consisted
of about twenty-three hundred men, white and red,
and when the fatal news reached him he was
encamped on Wood Creek, ready to pass Lake
Champlain. Captain Butler, a New York officer
at the camp, afterwards told Kalm, the Swedish
naturalist, that when Nicholson heard what had
happened, he was beside himself with rage, tore off
1 Vetrh to Walker, 26 Aug. 1711.
2 Walker, Journal, Introduction, 25.
1711.] ALARM IN CANADA. 171
his wig, threw it on the ground and stamped upon
it, crying out " Roguery ! Treachery ! " 1 When
his fit was over, he did all that was now left for
him to do, — burned the wooden forts he had built,
marched back to Albany, and disbanded his army,
after leaving one hundred and fifty men to protect
the frontier against scalping-parties. 2
Canada had been warned of the storm gathering ^
against her. Early in August, Vaudreuil received
letters from Costebelle, at Placentia, telling him
that English prisoners had reported mighty pre-
parations at Boston against Quebec, and that^
Montreal was also to be attacked. 3 The colony
was ill prepared for the emergency, but no effort
was spared to give the enemy a warm reception. X
The militia were mustered, Indians called to- *,
gether, troops held in readiness, and defences
strengthened. The saints were invoked, and the
aid of Heaven was implored by masses, processions,
and penances, as in New England by a dismal
succession of fasts. Mother Juchereau de Saint- *-
Denis tells us how devout Canadians prayed for
help from God and the most holy Virgin ; " since
their glory was involved, seeing that the true
religion would quickly perish if the English should
prevail." The general alarm produced effects
which, though transient, were thought highly
commendable while they lasted. The ladies,
according to Mother Juchereau, gave up their orna-
1 Kalm, Travels, II. 135.
2 Schuyler, Colonial New York, II, 48.
3 Vaudreuil au Ministre, 25 Oct. 1711,
172 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711
ments, and became more modest and more pious.
"Those of Montreal," pursues the worthy nun,
"even outdid those of Quebec; for they bound
themselves by oath to wear neither ribbons nor
lace, to keep their throats covered, and to observe
various holy practices for the space of a year."
The recluse of Montreal, Mademoiselle Le Ber,
who, by reason of her morbid seclusion and ascetic
life, was accounted almost a saint, made a flag
embroidered with a prayer to the Virgin, to be
borne against the heretical bands of Nicholson.
When that commander withdrew, his retreat,
though not the cause of it, was quickly known at
Montreal, and the forces gathered there went down
to Quebec to aid in repelling the more formidable
attack by sea. Here all was suspense and ex-
pectancy till the middle of October, when the
report came that two large ships had been seen in
the river below. There was great excitement, for
they were supposed to be the van of the British
fleet; but alarm was soon turned to joy by the
arrival of the ships, which proved to be French.
On the 19th, the Sieur de la Valterie, who had
come from Labrador in September, and had been
sent down the river again by Vaudreuil to watch
for the English fleet, appeared at Quebec with
tidings of joy. He had descended the St. Lawrence
in a canoe, w;th two Frenchmen and an Indian, till,
landing at Isle aux (Eufs on the 1st of October,
they met two French sailors or fishermen loaded
with plunder, and presently discovered the wrecks
of seven English ships, with, as they declared,
1711] WILD REPORTS. 173
fifteen or sixteen hundred dead bodies on the
strand hard by, besides dead horses, sheep, dogs,
and hens, three or four hundred large iron-hooped
casks, a barrel of wine and a barrel and a keg
of brandy, cables, anchors, chains, planks, boards,
shovels, picks, mattocks, and piles of old iron
three feet high. 1
"The least devout," writes Mother Juchereau,
"were touched by the grandeur of the miracle
wrought in our behalf, — a marvellous effect of
God's love for Canada, which, of all these countries,
is the only one that professes the true religion. "
Quebec was not ungrateful. A solemn mass
was ordered every month during a year, to be
followed by the song of Moses after the destruction
of Pharaoh and his host. 2 Amazing reports were
spread concerning the losses of the English. About
three thousand of " these wretches " — so the story
ran — died after reaching land, without counting
the multitudes drowned in the attempt ; and even
this did not satisfy divine justice, for God blew up
one of the ships by lightning during the storm.
Vessels were sent to gather up the spoils of the
wreck, and they came back, it was reported, laden
with marvellous treasures, including rich clothing,
magnificent saddles, plate, silver-hilted swords, and
the like ; bringing also the gratifying announce-
ment that though the autumn tides had swept
away many corpses, more than two thousand still
1 Deposition de Francois de Marganne, Sieur de la Valterie ; par de'
vant Nous, Paul Dupuy, Ecuyer, Conseil/er du Roy, etc., 19 Oct. 1711.
2 Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier et VHistoir* de VHdpital Giniral cf«
Quebec, 209.
174 WALKER'S EXPEDITION. [1711
lay on the rocks, naked and in attitudes of de-
spair. 1 These stories, repeated by later writers,
find believers to this day. 2
When Walker and his ships reached Spanish
River, he called another council of war. The
question was whether, having failed to take
* Quebec, they should try to take Placentia ; and
it was resolved that the short supply of provisions,
the impossibility of getting more from Boston
before the 1st of November, and the risks of the
autumnal storms, made the attempt impracticable.
^Accordingly, the New England transports sailed
homeward, and the British fleet steered for the
Thames.
Swift writes on the 6th of October in his Journal
to Stella : " The news of Mr. Hill's miscarriage in
his expedition came to-day, and I went to visit
Mrs. Mash am and Mrs. Hill, his two sisters, to
condole with them.'' A week after, he mentions
the arrival of the General himself ; and again on
the 16th writes thus : " I was to see Jack Hill
this morning, who made that unfortunate expedi-
tion ; and there is still more misfortune, for that
ship which was admiral of his fleet [the " Edgar "]
is blown up in the Thames by an accident and
carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they
1 Juchereau, Histoire de l'H6tel-Dieu de Quebec, 473-491. La Ronde
Denys says that nearly one thousand men were drowned, and that about
two thousand died of injuries received. La Ronde au Ministre, 30 Dec.
1711.
2 Some exaggeration was natural enough. Colonel Lee, of the Rhode
Island contingent, says that a day or two after the wreck he saw " the
bodies of twelve or thirteen hundred brave men, with women and chil-
dren, lying in heaps." Lee to Governor Cranston, 12 Sept. 1711.
1711.) WALKER AND HILL. 175
think, to steal some gunpowder : five hundred men
are lost."
A report of this crowning disaster reached
Quebec, and Mother Juchereau does not fail to
improve it. According to her, the Admiral, stricken
with divine justice, and wrought to desperation,
blew up the ship himself, and perished with all on
board, except only two men.
There was talk of an examination into the
causes of the failure, but nothing was done. Hill,
strong in the influence of Mrs. Masham, reaped
new honors and offices. Walker, more answerable
for the result, and less fortunate in court influence,
was removed from command, and his name was
stricken from the half-pay list. He did not,
however, blow himself up, but left England and
emigrated to South Carolina, whence, thinking
himself ill-treated by the authorities, he removed
to Barbadoes, and died some years later. 1
1 Walker's Journal was published in 1720, with an Introduction of
forty-eight pages, written in bad temper and bad taste. The Journal
contains many documents, printed in full. In the Public Record Office
are preserved the Journals of Hill, Vetch, and King. Copies of these,
with many other papers on the same subject, from the same source, are
before me. Vetch's Journal and his letter to Walker after the wreck
are printed in the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society,
Vol. IV.
It appears by the muster-rolls of Massachusetts that what with man-
ning the coast-guard vessels, defending the frontier against Indians, and
furnishing her contingent to the Canada expedition, more than one in five
of her able-bodied men were in active service in the summer of 1711.
Years passed before she recovered from the effects of her financial
exhaustion.
CHAPTER IX.
1712-1749.
LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA.
Peace of Utrecht. — Perilous Questions. — Louisbourg founded.
— Annapolis attacked. — Position of the Acadians. — Weak-
ness of the British Garrison. — Apathy of the Ministry. —
French Intrigue. — Clerical Politicians. — The Oath of Alle-
giance. — Acadians refuse it. — Their Expulsion proposed.
— They take the Oath.
The great European war was drawing to an end,
and with it the American war, which was but
its echo. An avalanche of defeat and disaster
had fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV., and
France was burdened with an insupportable load
of debt. The political changes in England came
to her relief. Fifty years later, when the elder
Pitt went out of office and Bute came in, France
had cause to be grateful ; for the peace of 1763
was far more favorable to her than it would have
been under the imperious war minister. It was
the same in 1712. The Whigs who had fallen
from power would have wrung every advantage
from France ; the triumphant Tories were eager to
close with her on any terms not so easy as to
excite popular indignation. The result was the
^ Treaty of Utrecht, which satisfied none of the
allies of England, and gave to France conditions
1712.1 CRITICAL QUESTIONS. 177
more favorable than she had herself proposed two
/years before. The fall of Godolphin and the dis-
grace of Marlborough were a godsend to her.
Yet in America Louis X1Y. made important
concessions. The Five Nations of the Iroquois f
were acknowledged to be British subjects; and
this became in future the preposterous foundation
for vast territorial claims of England. Hudson ^/
Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia, " according to its
ancient limits/' were also given over by France to
her successful rival ; though the King parted from
Acadia with a reluctance shown by the great offers
he made for permission to retain it. 1
But while the Treaty of Utrecht seemed to yield \
so much, and yielded so much in fact, it staved off -^s\
the settlement of questions absolutely necessary
for future peace. The limits of Acadia, the "
boundary line between Canada and the British x
colonies, and the boundary between those colonies <
and the great western wilderness claimed by France, *-
were all left unsettled, since the attempt to settle
them would have rekindled the war. The peace
left the embers of war still smouldering, sure,
when the time should come, to burst into flame. .
The next thirty years were years of chronic, ^*y
smothered war, disguised, but never quite at rest.
The standing subjects of dispute were three, very .
different in importance. First, the question of
Acadia : whether the treaty gave England a vast
1 Offres de la France; Demandes de VAngleterre et Responses de la
France, in Memorials of the English and French Commissaries concerning
the Limits of Acadia.
rot. i. — 12
178 LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA. [1711, 1712.
v country, or only a strip of sea- coast. Next, that of
1 northern New England and the Abenaki Indians,
many of whom French policy still left within the
borders of Maine, and whom both powers claimed
as subjects or allies. Last and greatest was the
question whether France or England should hold
the valleys of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes,
and with them the virtual control of the continent.
This was the triple problem that tormented the
northern English colonies for more than a genera-
^ tion, till it found a solution at last in the Seven
Years' War.
Louis XIV. had deeply at heart the recovery of
Acadia. Yet the old and infirm King, whose sun
was setting in clouds after half a century of un-
rivalled splendor, felt that peace was a controlling
necessity, and he wrote as follows to his plenipo-
tentiaries at Utrecht : " It is so important to pre-
vent the breaking off of the negotiations that the
King will give up both Acadia and Cape Breton, if
necessary for peace ; but the plenipotentiaries will
yield this point only in the last extremity, for by
/ this double cession Canada will become useless, the
I access to it will be closed, the fisheries will come
to an end, and the French marine be utterly
destroyed." * And he adds that if the English will
restore Acadia, he, the King, will give them, not
only St. Christopher, but also the islands of St.
Martin and St. Bartholomew.
The plenipotentiaries replied that the offer was
refused, and that the best they could do without
1 Mimoire du Roy a ses PUnipotentiaires, 20 Mars, 1712.
1711,1712.] CAPE BRETON REMAINS FRENCH. 179
endangering the peace was to bargain that Cape
Breton should belong to France. 1 On this, the
King bid higher still for the coveted province, and
promised that if Acadia were returned to him, the
fortifications of Placentia should be given up un-
touched, the cannon in the forts of Hudson Bay
abandoned to the English, and the Newfoundland
fisheries debarred to Frenchmen, 2 — a remarkable
concession ; for France had fished on the banks of
Newfoundland for two centuries, and they were
invaluable to her as a nursery of sailors. Even
these offers were rejected, and England would not
resign Acadia.
CapeJBreton was left to the French. This large
island, henceforth called by its owners Isle Royale,
lies east of Acadia, and is separated from it only by
the narrow Strait of Canso. From its position, it
commands the chief entrance of the gulf and river
of St. Lawrence. Some years before, the Intendant
Raudot had sent to the court an able paper, in
which he urged its occupation and settlement,
chiefly on commercial and industrial grounds.
The war was then at its height ; the plan was not
carried into effect, and Isle Royale was still a
wilderness. It was now proposed to occupy it for
military and political reasons. One of its many
harbors, well fortified and garrisoned, would guard
the approaches of Canada, and in the next war
furnish a base for attacking New England and
recovering Acadia.
1 Precis de ce qui s'est passe" pendant la Negotiation de la Paix d' 'Utrecht
au Sujet de VAcadie; Juillet, \7ll-Mai, 1712.
3 Mtmoire du Roy, 20 Avril, 1712.
180 LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA. [1709-171&
After some hesitation the harbor called Port a,
TAnglois was chosen for the proposed establish-
ment, to which the name of ^j himself with great zeal and apparent confidence to
J g accomplishing the task in which his principal had
j^ failed. In fact, he succeeded in 1726 in persuad-
$ . ing the inhabitants about Annapolis to take the
> ^ ^ oath, with a proviso that they should not be called
^ ^h* 5 ^ upon for military service ; but the main body of
dm ihe ^A-cadians stiffly refiis ed. In the next year
^ he sent Ensign Wroth to Mines, Chignecto, and
* ^"5 neighboring settlements to renew the attempt on
J V i. occasion of the accession of George II. The en-
$ ^ 3 voy's instructions left much to his discretion or
his indiscretion, and he came back with the signa-
tures, or crosses, of the inhabitants attached to an
oath so clogged with conditions that it left them
free to return to their French allegiance whenever
they chose.
Philipps now came back to Acadia to resume
his difficult task. And here a surprise meets us.
He reported a complete success. The Acadians,
as he declared, swore allegiance without reserve
to King George ; but he does not tell us how they
1 The Board of Trade to Philipps, 28 Dec. 1720.
2 De'Iib&ations du Conseif de Marine, Aoust, 1720. The attempt against
the garrison was probably opposed by the priests, who must have seen
the danger that it would rouse the ministry into sending troops to the
province, which would have been disastrous to their plans.
rSii
O
1730.J THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 201
were brought to do so. Compulsion was out of
the question. They could have cut to pieces
any part of the paltry English garrison that
might venture outside the ditches of Annapolis,
or they might have left Acadia, with all their
goods and chattels, with no possibility of stop-
ping them. The taking of the oath was there-
fore a voluntary act.
But what was the oath ? The words reported
by Philipps were as follows : u I promise and
swear sincerely, on the faith of a Christian, that I
will be entirely faithful, and will truly obey his
Majesty King George the Second, whom I recog-
nize as sovereign lord of Acadia or Nova Scotia.
So help me God." To this the Acadians affixed
their crosses, or, in exceptional cases, their names.
Recently, however, evidence has appeared that, so
far at least as regards the Acadians on and near
Mines Basin, the effect of the oath was qualified
by a promise on the part of Philipps that they
should not be required to take up arms against
either French or Indians ; they on their part
promising never to take up arms against the Eng-
lish. This statement is made by Gaudalie, cure
of the parish of Mines, and Noiville, priest at
Pigiquid, or Pisiquid, now Windsor. 1 In fact, the
English never had the folly to call on the Acadi-
ans to fight for them ; and the greater part of this
peace-loving people were true to their promise not
1 Certificat de Charles de la Gaudalie, pretre, cure missionnaire de la
paroisse des Mines, et Noel-Alexandre Noiville, . . . cure de VAssomption
et de la Sainte Famille de Pigiguit ; printed in Rameau, Une Colonie
Feodale en Amtrique (ed. 1889) II. 53.
202 LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA. [1730.
to take arms against the English, though a consid-
erable number of them did so, especially at the
beginning of the Seven Years' War. It was to
this promise, whether kept or broken, that they
owed their name of Neutral French.
From first to last, the Acadians remained in a
^/diild-like dependence on their spiritual and tem-
poral guides. Not one of their number stands out
prominently from among the rest. They seem to
have been totally devoid of natural leaders, and,
unhappily for themselves, left their fate in the
hands of others. Yet they were fully aware
of their numerical strength, and had repeatedly
declared, in a manner that the English officers
called insolent, that they would neither leave the
country nor swear allegiance to King George.
The truth probably is that those who governed
them had become convinced that this simple popu-
lation, which increased rapidly, and could always
be kept French at heart, might be made more use-
ful to France in Acadia than out of it, and that
it was needless farther to oppose the taking of an
oath which would leave them in quiet possession
of their farms without making any change in
their feelings, and probably none in their actions.
By force of natural increase Acadia would in time
become the seat of a large population ardently
French and ardently Catholic ; and while officials
in France sometimes complained of the reluctance
of the Acadians to move to Isle Royale, those who
directed them in their own country seem to have
become willing that they should stay where they
1730.] THE OATH TAKEN. 203
were and place themselves in such relations with
the English as should leave them free to increase
and multiply undisturbed. Deceived by the long
apathy of the British government, French officials
did not foresee that a time would come when it
would bestir itself to make Acadia English in fact
as well as in name. 1
1 The preceding chapter is based largely on two collections of doc-
uments relating to Acadia, — the Nova Scotia Archives, or Selections from
the Public Documents of Nova Scotia, printed in 1869 by the government
of that province, and the mass of papers collected by Rev. H. R. Casgrain
and printed in the documentary department of Le Canada-Francais, a
review published under direction of Laval University at Quebec. Abbe
Casgrain, with passionate industry, has labored to gather everything in
Europe or America that could tell in favor of the French and against
the English. Mr. Akins, the editor of the Nova Scotia Archives, leans
to the other side, so that the two collections supplement each other.
Both are copious and valuable. Besides these, I have made use of various
documents from the archives of Paris not to be found in either of the
above-named collections.
''/:
*t+£j*
CHAPTER X. ^
1713-1724.
SEBASTIEN RALE.
Boundary Disputes. — Outposts of Canada. — The Earlier and
Later Jesuits. — Religion and Politics. — The Norridgewocks
and their Missionary. — A Hollow Peace. — Disputed Land
Claims. — Council at Georgetown. — Attitude of Rale. —
Minister and Jesuit. — The Indians waver. — An Outbreak.
— Covert War. — Indignation against Rale. — War declared.
— Governor and Assembly. — Speech of Samuel Sewall. —
Penobscots attack Fort St. George. — Reprisal. — Attack
on norridgewock. — death of rale.
Before the Treaty of Utrecht, the present Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and a part of Maine were
collectively called Acadia by the French ; but after
the treaty gave Acadia to England, they insisted
that the name meant only Nova Scotia. The
English on their part claimed that the cession of
Acadia made them owners, not only of the Nova
Scotian peninsula, but of all the country north of it
to the St. Lawrence, or at least to the dividing
ridge or height of land.
This and other disputed questions of boundary
were to be settled by commissioners of the two
j powers ; but their meeting was put off for forty
/years, and then their discussions ended in the
j Seven Years' War. The claims of the rival
nations were in fact so discordant that any
1713-1720.] THE KENNEBEC. 205
attempt to reconcile them must needs produce
a fresh quarrel. The treaty had left a choice
of evils. To discuss the boundary question meant
to renew the war; to leave it unsettled was a
source of constant irritation; and while delay
staved off a great war, it quickly produced a
small one.
The river Kennehec, which was generally ad-
mitted by the French to be the dividing line
between their possessions and New England, 1 was
regarded by them with the most watchful jealousy.
Its headwaters approached those of the Canadian
river Chaudiere, the mouth of which is near
Quebec ; and by ascending the former stream and
crossing to the headwaters of the latter, through
an intricacy of forests, hills, ponds, and marshes,
it was possible for a small band of hardy men,
unencumbered by cannon, to reach the Canadian
capital, as was done long after by the followers of
Benedict Arnold. Hence it was thought a matter
of the last importance to close the Kennebec
against such an attempt. The Norridgewock band
of the Abenakis, who lived on the banks of that
river, were used to serve this purpose and to form
a sort of advance-guard to the French colony, while
other kindred bands on the Penobscot, the St.
Croix, and the St. John, were expected to aid in
opposing a living barrier to English intrusion.
Missionaries were stationed among all these
1 In 1700, however, there was an agreement, nnder the Treaty of
Ryswick, which extended the English limits as far as the River St
George, a little west of the Penobscot.
A
206 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1630-1650.
Indians to keep them true to Church and King.
The most important station, that of the Norridge-
wocks, was in charge of Father Sebastien Kale, the
most conspicuous and interesting figure among the
later French- American Jesuits.
Since the middle of the seventeenth century a
change had come over the Jesuit missions of New
France. Nothing is more striking or more admi-
rable than the self-devoted apostleship of the earlier
period. 1 The movement in Western Europe known
as the Renaissance was far more than a revival
of arts and letters, — it was an awakening of in-
tellectual, moral, and religious life ; the offspring
of causes long in action, and the parent of other
movements in action to this day. The Protestant
Reformation was a part of it. That revolt against
Rome produced a counter Renaissance in the bosom
of the ancient Church herself. In presence of that
peril she woke from sloth and corruption, and
girded herself to beat back the invading heresies,
by force or by craft, by inquisitorial fires, by the
arms of princely and imperial allies, and by the
self-sacrificing enthusiasm of her saints and mar-
yrs. That time of danger produced the exalted
zeal of Xavier and the intense, thoughtful, or-
ganizing zeal of Loyola. After a century had
passed, the flame still burned, and it never shone
with a purer or brighter radiance than in the
early missions of New France.
Such ardors cannot be permanent ; they must
subside, from the law of their nature. If the great
1 See Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century.
1713-1720.] EARLIER AND LATER JESUITS. 207
Western mission had been a success, the enthusiasm
of its founders might have maintained itself for
some time longer; but that mission was extin-
guished in blood. Its martyrs died in vain, and
the burning faith that had created it was rudely
tried. Canada ceased to be a mission. The civil
and military powers grew strong, and the Church
no longer ruled with undivided sway. The times
changed, and the men changed with them. It is a
characteristic of the Jesuit Order, and one of the
sources of its strength, that it chooses the workman
for his work, studies the qualities of its members,
and gives to each the task for which he is fitted
best. When its aim was to convert savage hordes
and build up another Paraguay in the Northern
wilderness, it sent a Jogues, a Brebeuf, a Charles
Gamier, and a Gabriel Lalemant, like a forlorn
hope, to storm the stronghold of heathendom. In
later times it sent other men to meet other needs
and accomplish other purposes.
Before the end of the seventeenth century the
functions of the Canadian Jesuit had become as
much political as religious ; but if the fires of his
apostolic zeal burned less high, his devotion to the
Order in which he had merged his personality was
as intense as before. While in constant friction with
the civil and military powers, he tried to make
himself necessary to them, and in good measure he
succeeded. Nobody was so able. -to. man age the
Indian tribes and keep them in the interest of
France. "Religion," says Charlevoix, "is the
chief bond by which the savages are attached to
208 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1713-1724.
us ; " and it was the Jesuit above all others who
was charged to keep this bond firm.
The Christianity that was made to serve this
useful end did not strike a deep root. While
humanity is in the savage state, it can only be
Christianized on the surface; and the convert of
the Jesuits remained a savage still. They did not
even try to civilize him. They taught him to
repeat a catechism which he could not understand,
and practise rites of which the spiritual signifi-
cance was incomprehensible to him. He saw the
symbols of his new faith in much the same light
as the superstitions that had once enchained
him. To his eyes the crucifix was a fetich of sur-
passing power, and the Mass a beneficent " medi-
cine," or occult influence, of supreme efficacy. Yet
he would not forget his old rooted beliefs, and it
needed the constant presence of the missionary to
prevent him from returning to them.
Since the Iroquois had ceased to be a danger to
Canada, the active alliance of the Western Indians
had become less important to the colony. Hence
the missions among them had received less atten-
tion, and most of these tribes had relapsed into
heathenism. The chief danger had shifted east-
ward, and was, or was supposed to be, in the
direction of New England. Therefore the Eastern
missions were cultivated with diligence, whether
those within or adjoining the settled limits of
Canada, like the Iroquois mission of Caughnawaga,
the Abenaki missions of St. Francis and Becan-
cour, and the Huron mission of Lorette, or those
1713-1724.J NORRIDGEWOCK. 209
that served as outposts and advance-guards of
the colony, like the Norridgewock Abenakis of the
Kennebec, or the Penobscot Abenakis of the Penob-
scot. The priests at all these stations were in close
correspondence with the government, to which
their influence over their converts was invaluable.
In the wilderness dens of the Hurons or the Iro-
quois, the early Jesuit was a marvel of self-
sacrificing zeal ; his successor, half missionary and
half agent of the King, had thought for this world
as well as the next.
Sebastien Rale, 1 born in Franche-Comte in 1657,
was sent to the American missions in 1689 at the
age of thirty-two. After spending two years among
the Abenakis of Canada, then settled near the
mouth of the Chaudiere, he was sent for two years
more to the Illinois, and thence to the Abenakis of
the Kennebec, where he was to end his days.
Near where the town of Norridgewock now
stands, the Kennebec curved round a broad tongue
of meadow land, in the midst of a picturesque
wilderness of hills and forests. On this tongue of
land, on ground a few feet above the general level,
stood the village of the Norridgewocks, fenced with
a stockade of round logs nine feet high. The
enclosure was square ; each of its four sides
measured one hundred and sixty feet, and each
had its gate. From the four gates ran two streets,
or lanes, which crossed each other in the middle of
the village. There were twenty-six Indian houses,
1 So written by himself in an autograph letter of 18 Nov. 1712. It is
also spelled Rasle, Rasles, Ralle, and, very incorrectly, Ralle, or Rallee.
voi,, i. — 11
210 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1713-1720.
or cabins, within the stockade, described as " built
much after the English manner," though probably
of logs. The church was outside the enclosure,
about twenty paces from the east gate. 1 Such
was the mission village of Norridgewock in 1716.
It had risen from its ashes since Colonel Hilton
destroyed it in 1705, and the church had been
rebuilt by New England workmen hired for the
purpose. 2 A small bell, which is still preserved
at Brunswick, rang for Mass at early morning, aud
for vespers at sunset. Rale's leisure hours were
few. He preached, exhorted, catechised the young
converts, counselled their seniors for this world
and the next, nursed them in sickness, composed
their quarrels, tilled his own garden, cut his own
firewood, cooked his own food, which was of Indian
corn, or, at a pinch, of roots and acorns, worked
at his Abenaki vocabulary, and, being expert at
handicraft, made ornaments for the church, or
moulded candles from the fruit of the bayberry, or
wax-myrtle. 3 Twice a year, summer and winter,
he followed his flock to the sea-shore and the islands,
1 The above particulars are taken from an inscription on a manuscript
map in the library of the Maine Historical Society, made in 1716 by Joseph
Heath, one of the principal English settlers on the Kennebec, and for
a time commandant of the fort at Brunswick.
2 When Colonel Westbrook and his men came to Norridgewock in
1 722, they found a paper pinned to the church door, containing, among
others, the following words, in the handwriting of Rale, meant as a fling
at the English invaders : " It [the church] is ill built, because the English
don't work well. It is not finished, although five or six Englishmen have
wrought here during four years, and the Undertaker [contractor], who is
a great Cheat, hath been paid in advance for to finish it." The money
came from the Canadian government.
8 Myrica certfera.
1713-1720.] THE KENNEBEC MISSION. 211
where they lived at their ease on fish and seals,
clams, oysters, and seafowl.
This Kennebec mission had been begun more
than half a century before ; yet the conjurors, or
" medicine men," — natural enemies of the mission-
ary, — still remained obdurate and looked on the
father askance, though the body of the tribe were
constant at Mass and confession, and regarded him
with loving reverence. He always attended their
councils, and, as he tells us, his advice always
prevailed ; but he was less fortunate when he told
them to practise no needless cruelty in their
wars, on which point they were often disobedient
children. 1
Rale was of a strong, enduring frame, and a
keen, vehement, caustic spirit. He had the gift of
tongues, and was as familiar with the Abenaki
and several other Indian languages as he was with
Latin. 2 Of the genuineness of his zeal there is no
doubt, nor of his earnest and lively interest in the
fortunes of the wilderness flock of which he was
the shepherd for half his life. The situation was
critical for them and for him. The English-
settlements were but a short distance below, while
1 The site of the Indian village is still called Indian Old Point.
Norridgewock is the Naurautsouak, or Narantsouak, of the French.
For Rale's mission life, see two letters of his, 15 Oct. 1722, and 12 Oct.
1722, and a letter of Fere La Chasse, Superior of the Missions, 29 Oct.
1724. These are printed in the Lettres Edijiantes, XVII., XXIII.
2 Pere La Chasse, in his eulogy of Pale, says that there was not a
language on the continent with which he had not some acquaintance.
This is of course absurd. Besides a full knowledge of the Norridgewock
Abenaki, he had more or less acquaintance with two other Algonkin
languages, — the Ottawa and the Illinois, — and also with the Huron;
which is enough for one man.
212 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1713.
those of the French could be reached only by a
hard journey of twelve or fourteen days.
With two intervals of uneasy peace, the borders
of Maine had been harried by war-parties for
thirty-eight years ; and since 1689 these raids had
been prompted and aided by the French. Thus it
happened that extensive tracts, which before
Philip's War were dotted with farm-houses and
fishing hamlets, had been abandoned, and culti-
vated fields were turning again to forests. The
village of Wells had become the eastern frontier.
But now the Treaty of Utrecht gave promise of
lasting tranquillity. The Abenakis, hearing that
they were to be backed no longer by the French,
became alarmed, sent messengers to Casco, and
asked for peace. In July there was a convention
at Portsmouth, when delegates of the Norridge-
wocks, Penobscots, Malecites, and other Abenaki
bands met Governor Dudley and the councillors of
Massachusetts and New Hampshire. A paper was
read to them by sworn interpreters, in which they
confessed that they had broken former treaties,
begged pardon for u past rebellions, hostilities, and
violations of promises," declared themselves sub-
jects of Queen Anne, pledged firm friendship with
the English, and promised them that they might
re-enter without molestation on all their former
possessions. Eight of the principal Abenaki chiefs
signed this document with their totemic marks,
and the rest did so, after similar interpretation, at
another convention in the next year. 1 Indians
1 This treaty is given in full by Penhallow. It is also printed from
the original draft by Mr. Frederic Kidder, in his Abenaki Indians : their
1713-1720.] SETTLEMENTS OF MAINE. 213
when in trouble can waive their pride and lavish
professions and promises; but when they called
themselves subjects of Queen Anne, it is safe to
say that they did not know what the words
meant.
Peace with the Indians was no sooner concluded
than a stream of settlers began to move eastward
to reoccupy the lands that they owned or claimed
in the region of the lower Kennebec. Much of
this country was held in extensive tracts, under
old grants of the last century, and the proprietors
offered great inducements to attract emigrants.
The government of Massachusetts, though im-
poverished by three wars, of which it had borne
the chief burden, added what encouragements it
could. The hamlets of Saco, Scarborough, Fal-
mouth, and Georgetown rose from their ashes,
mills were built on the streams, old farms were
retilled, and new ones cleared. A certain Dr.
Noyes, who had established a sturgeon fishery on
the Kennebec, built at his own charge a stone fort
at Cushnoc, or Augusta ; and it is said that as
early as 1714 a blockhouse was built many miles
above, near the mouth of the Sebasticook. 1 In the
next year, Fort George was built at the lower falls
Treaties of\1\Z and 1717. The two impressions are substantially the same,
but with verbal variations. The version of Kidder is the more complete,
in giving not only the Indian totemic marks, but also the autographs iu
fac-simile of all the English officials. Rale gives a dramatic account of
the treaty, which he may have got from the Indians, and which omits
their submission and their promises.
1 It was standing in 1852, and a sketch of it is given by Winsor,
Narrative and Critical History, V. 185. I have some doubts as to the
date of erection.
214 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1713-1720
of the Androscoggin ; and, some years later, Fort
Richmond, on the Kennebec, at the site of the
present town of Richmond. 1
Some of the claims to these Kennebec lands
were based on old Crown patents, some on mere
prescription, some on Indian titles, good or bad.
Rale says that an Englishman would give an In-
dian a bottle of rum, and get from him in return
a large tract of land. 2 Something like this may
have happened; though in other cases the titles
were as good as Indian titles usually are, the deeds
being in regular form and signed by the principal
chiefs for a consideration which they thought
sufficient. The lands of Indians, however, are
owned, so far as owned at all, by the whole com-
munity ; and in the case of the Algonquin tribes
the chiefs had no real authority to alienate them
without the consent of the tribesmen. Even
supposing this consent to have been given, the
I Norridgewocks would not have been satisfied ; for
\ Rale taught them that they could not part with
■ their lands, because they held them in trust for
their children, to whom their country belonged as
much as to themselves.
Long years of war and mutual wrong had em-
bittered the Norridgewocks against their English
neighbors, with whom, nevertheless, they wished
to be at peace, because they feared them, and be-
cause their trade was necessary to them.
1 Williamson, History of Maine, II. 88, 97. Compare Penhallow.
2 Remarks out of the Fryar Sebastian Rale's Letter from Norridgewock %
Feb. 7, 1720, in the Common Place Book of Rev. Henry Flynt.
1713-1720.] THE INDIANS ALARMED. 215
The English borderers, on their part, regarded the
Indians less as men than as vicious and dangerous
wild animals. In fact, the benevolent and philan-
thropic view of the American savage is for those
who are beyond his reach. It has never yet been
held by any whose wives and children have lived in
danger of his scalping-knife. In Boston and other
of the older and safer settlements, the Indians had
found devoted friends before Philip's War ; and
even now they had apologists and defenders,
prominent among whom was that relic of antique
Puritanism, old Samuel Sewall, who was as con-
scientious and humane as he was prosy, narrow,
and sometimes absurd, and whose benevolence
towards the former owners of the soil was trebly
reinforced by his notion that they were descend-
ants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. 1
The intrusion of settlers, and the building of
forts and blockhouses on lands which they still
called their own, irritated and alarmed the Nor-
ridgewocks, and their growing resentment was
fomented by Rale, both because he shared it him-
self, and because he was prompted by Vaudreuil.
Yet, dreading another war with the English, the
Indians kept quiet for a year or two, till at length
the more reckless among them began to threaten
and pilfer the settlers.
In 1716, Colonel Samuel Shute came out to suc-
ceed Dudley as governor, and in the next summer
he called the Indians to a council at Georgetown,
1 Sewall's Memorial relating to the Kennebec Indians is an argument
against war with them.
216 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1717.
a settlement on Arrowsick Island, at the mouth of
the Kennebec. Thither he went in the frigate
" Squirrel/' with the councillors of Massachusetts
and New Hampshire ; while the deputies of the
Norridgewocks, Penobscots, Pequawkets, or Aben-
akis of the Saco, and Assagunticooks, or Abenakis
of the Androscoggin, came in canoes to meet him,
and set up their wigwams on a neighboring island.
The council opened on the 9th of August, under a
large tent, over which waved the British flag.
The oath was administered to the interpreters by
the aged Judge Sewall, and Shute then made the
Indians a speech in which he told them that the
English and they were subjects of the great, good,
and wise King George ; that as both peoples were
under the same king, he would gladly see them
also of the same religion, since it was the only
true one ; and to this end he gave them a Bible
and a minister to teach them, — pointing to Rev.
Joseph Baxter, who stood near by. And he further
assured them that if any wrong should be done
them, he would set it right. He then conde-
scended to give his hand to the chiefs, telling
them, through the interpreter, that it was to show
his affection.
The Indians, after their usual custom, deferred
their answer to the next day, when the council
again met, and the Norridgewock chief, Wiwurna,
addressed the Governor as spokesman for his peo-
ple. In defiance of every Indian idea of propriety,
Shute soon began to interrupt him with questions
and remarks. Wiwurna remonstrated civilly ; but
1717.] COUNCIL AT GEORGETOWN. 217
Shute continued his interruptions, and the speech
turned to a dialogue, which may be abridged thus,
Shute always addressing himself, not to the Indian
orator, but to the interpreter.
The orator expressed satisfaction at the arrival
of the Governor, and hoped that peace and friend-
ship would now prevail.
Governor (to the interpreter). Tell them that
if they behave themselves, I shall use them kindly.
Orator (as rendered by the interpreter). Your
Excellency was pleased to say that we must obey
King George. We will if we like his way of
treating us.
Governor. They must obey him.
Orator. We will if we are not disturbed on
our lands.
Governor. Nor must they disturb the English
on theirs.
Orator. We are pleased that your Excellency
is ready to hear our complaints when wrong is
done us.
Governor. They must not pretend to lands
that belong to the English.
Orator. We beg leave to go on in order with
our answer.
Governor. Tell him to go on.
Orator. If there should be any quarrel and
bloodshed, we will not avenge ourselves, but apply
to your Excellency. We will embrace in our
bosoms the English that have come to settle on
our land.
Governor. They must not call it their land,
218 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1717.
for the English have bought it of them and their
ancestors.
Orator. We pray leave to proceed with our
answer, and talk about the land afterwards.
Wiwurna, then, with much civility, begged to
be excused from receiving the Bible and the minis-
ter, and ended by wishing the Governor good
wind and weather for his homeward voyage.
There was another meeting in the afternoon, in
which the orator declared that his people were
willing that the English should settle on the west
side of the Kennebec as far up the river as a cer-
tain mill ; on which the Governor said to the
interpreter : " Tell them we want nothing but
our own, and that that we will have ; " and he
ordered an old deed of sale, signed by six of
their chiefs, to be shown and explained to them.
Wiwurna returned that though his tribe were un-
easy about their lands, they were willing that the
English should keep what they had got, excepting
the forts. On this point there was a sharp dia-
logue, and Shute said bluntly that if he saw fit, he
should build a fort at every new settlement. At
this all the Indians rose abruptly and went back
to their camp, leaving behind an English flag that
had been given them.
Rale was at the Indian camp, and some of them
came back in the evening with a letter from him,
in which he told Shute that the Governor of Can-
ada had asked the King of France whether he had
ever given the Indians' land to the English, to
which the King replied that he had not, and
1717.1 THE TREATY. *%&[
would help the Indians to repel any encroachment
upon them. This cool assumption on the part of
France of paramount right to the Abenaki coun-
try incensed Shute, who rejected the letter with
contempt.
As between the Governor and the Indian orator,
the savage had shown himself by far the more
mannerly; yet so unwilling were the Indians to
break with the English that on the next morning,
seeing Shute about to re-embark, they sent mes-
sengers to him to apologize for what they called
their rudeness, beg that the English flag might be
returned to them, and ask for another interview,
saying that they would appoint another spokes-
man instead of Wiwurna, who had given so much
offence. Shute consented, and the meeting was
held. The new orator pres ented a wampum belt,,
expressed a wish foTpeace^and said, that Ms_;peo-
ple wished the English to extend their settlements
as far as they had formerly_done. Shute, on his
part, promised that trading-houses should be estab-
lished for supplying their needs, and that they
should have a smith to mend their guns, and an
interpreter of their own choice. Twenty chiefs
and elders then affixed their totemic marks to a
paper, renewing the pledges made four years be-
fore at Portsmouth, and the meeting closed with a
dance in honor of the Governor. 1
1 A full report of this conference was printed at the time in Boston.
It is reprinted in N. H. Historical Collections, II. 242, and N. II. Pro-
vincial Papers, III. 693. Penhallow was present at the meeting, but his
account of it is short. The accounts of Williamson and Hutchinson ar$
drawn from the above-mentioned report.
226 SEBASTIEN RALE. (1717, 17ia
The Indians, as we have seen, had shown no eager-
ness to accept the ministrations of Rev. Joseph
Baxter. The Massachusetts Assembly had absurdly
tried to counteract the influence of Rale by offer-
ing £150 a year in their depreciated currency
to any one of their ministers who would teach
Calvinism to the Indians. Baxter, whom Rale,
with characteristic exaggeration, calls the ablest
of the Boston ministers, but who was far from
being so, as he was the pastor of the small coun-
try village of Medfield, took up the task, and, with
no experience of Indian life or knowledge of any
Indian language, entered the lists against an ad-
versary who had spent half his days among sav-
ages, had gained the love and admiration of the
Norridgewocks, and spoke their language fluently.
Baxter, with the confidence of a novice, got an
interpreter and began to preach, exhort, and launch
■sarcasms against the doctrines and practices of the
Roman Church. Rale excommunicated such of his
flock as listened to him ; * yet some persisted in
doing so, and three of these petitioned the English
Governor to order " a small praying-house " to be
built for their use. 2
Rale, greatly exasperated, opened a correspon-
dence with Baxter, and wrote a treatise for his
benefit, in which, through a hundred pages of
polemical Latin, he proved that the Church of
Rome was founded on a rock. This he sent to
i Shute to Rale, 21 Feb. 1718.
2 This petition is still in the Massachusetts Archives, and is printed
by Dr. Francis in Sparks's American Biography, New Series, XVII. 259.
1717-1720.] BAXTER AND RALE. 221
Baxter, and challenged him to overthrow his rea-
sons. Baxter sent an answer for which Rale ex-
presses great scorn as to both manner and matter.
He made a rejoinder, directed not only against his
opponent's arguments, but against his Latin, in
which he picked flaws with great apparent satis-
faction. He says that he heard no more from
Baxter for a long time, but at last got another
letter, in which there was nothing to the purpose,
the minister merely charging him with an irasci-
ble and censorious spirit. This letter is still pre-
served, and it does not answer to Rale's account
of it. Baxter replies to his correspondent vigor-
ously, defends his own Latin, attacks that of Rale,
and charges him with losing temper. 1
Rale's correspondence with the New England
ministers seems not to have been confined to Bax-
ter. A paper is preserved, translated apparently
from a Latin original, and entitled, " Remarks out
of the Fryar Sebastian Rale's Letter from Nor-
ridgewock, Feb. 7, 1720." This letter appears to
have been addressed to some Boston minister, and
is of a scornful and defiant character, using lan-
guage ill-fitted to conciliate, as thus : " You must
know that a missionary is not a cipher, like a min-
ister ; " or thus : " A Jesuit is not a Baxter or a
Boston minister." The tone is one of exaspera-
tion dashed with contempt, and the chief theme
1 This letter was given by Mr. Adams, of Medfield, a connection of the
Baxter family, to the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose possession
it now is, in a worn condition. It was either captured with the rest of
Rale's papers and returned to the writer, or else is a duplicate kept by
Baxter.
222 SEBASTIEN KALE. [1717-1720.
is English encroachment and the inalienability of
Indian lands. 1 Kale says that Baxter gave up
his mission after receiving the treatise on the in-
fallible supremacy of the true Church; but this is
a mistake, as the minister made three successive
visits to the Eastern country before he tired of his
hopeless mission.
In the letter just quoted, Rale seems to have
done his best to rasp the temper of his New Eng-
land correspondent. He boasts of his power over
the Indians, who, as he declares, always do as he
advises them. " Any treaty with the Governor,"
he goes on to say, " and especially that of Arrow-
sick, is null and void if I do not approve it, for I
give them so many reasons against it that they
absolutely condemn what they have done. ,, He
says further that if they do not drive the English
from the Kennebec, he will leave them, and that
they will then lose both their lands and their
souls; and he adds that, if necessary, he will
tell them that they may make war. 2 Rale wrote
also to Shute ; and though the letter is lost, the
Governor's answer shows that it was sufficiently
aggressive.
The wild Indian is unstable as water. At Ar-
rowsick, the Norridgewocks were all for peace ;
but when they returned to their village their mood
changed, and, on the representations of Rale, they
began to kill the cattle of the English settlers on
1 This curious paper is in the Common Place Book of Rev. Henry
Flynt, of which the original is in the library of the Massachusetts His-
torical Society.
2 See Francis, Life of Rale, where the entire passage is given.
1717-1720] ATTITUDE OF NORRIDGEWOCKS. 22?
the river below, burn their haystacks, and other-
wise annoy them. 1 The English suspected that
the Jesuit was the source of their trouble ; and as
they had always regarded the lands in question as
theirs, by virtue of the charter of the Plymouth
Company in 1620, and the various grants under
it, as well as by purchase from the Indians, their
ire against him burned high. Yet afraid as the
Indians were of another war, even Rale could
scarcely have stirred them to violence, but for the
indignities put upon them by Indian-hating ruf-
fians of the border, vicious rum-selling traders,
and hungry land-thieves. They had still another
cause of complaint. Shute had promised to build
trading-houses where their, wants should be sup-
plied without fraud and extortion ; but he had not
kept his word, and could not keep it, for reasons
that will soon appear.
In spite of such provocations, Norridgewock was
divided in opinion. Not only were the Indians in
great dread of war, but they had received English
presents to a considerable amount, chiefly from
private persons interested in keeping them quiet.
Hence, to Rale's great chagrin, there was an Eng-
lish party in the village so strong that when the
1 Rale wrote to the Governor of Canada that it was " sur Les Repre-
sentations qu'H Avoit fait aux Sauvages de Sa Mission " that they had
killed "un grand nombre de Bestiaux apartenant aux Anglois," and
threatened them with attack if they did not retire. Reponse fait par
MM. Vaudreuil et Begon au Me'moire du Roy du 8 Juin, 1721. Rale
told the Governor of Massachusetts, on another occasion, that his char-
acter as a priest permitted him to give the Indians nothing but counsels
of peace. Yet as early as 1703 he wrote to Vaudreuil that the Abenakis
were ready, at a word from him, to lift the hatchet against the English.
Beauharnois et Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Nov. 1703.
\
*J24 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1717-1720.
English authorities demanded reparation for the
mischief done to the settlers, the Norridgewocks
promised two hundred beaver-skins as damages,
and gave four hostages as security that they
would pay *or misdeeds in the past, and commit
no more in the future. 1
Rale now feared that his Indians would all go
over to the English and tamely do their bidding ;
for though most of them, when he was present,
would denounce the heretics and boast of the brave
deeds they would do against them, yet after a meet-
ing with English officials, they would change their
minds and accuse their spiritual father of lying.
It was clear that something must be done to. end
these waverings, lest the lands in dispute should
be lost to France forever.
The Norridgewocks had been invited to another
interview with the English at Georgetown; and
Rale resolved, in modern American phrase, to
" capture the meeting/ ' Vaudreuil and the Jesuit
La Chasse, superior of the mission, lent their aid.
Messengers were sent to the converted Indians
of Canada, whose attachment to France and the
Church was past all doubt, and who had been
taught to abhor the English as children of the
devil. The object of the message was to induce
1 Joseph Heath and John Minot to Shute, 1 May, 1719. Rale says that
these hostages were seized by surprise and violence ; but Vaudreuil com-
plains bitterly of the faintness of heart which caused the Indians to give
them (Vaudreuil a Rale, 15 Juin, 1721), and both he and the Intendant
lay the blame on the English party at Norridgewock, who, "with the
consent of all the Indians of that mission, had the weakness to give
four hostages." Re'ponse de Vaudreuil et Be'gon au Memoire du Roy du
8 Juin, 1721.
1721.] INDIAN HOSTILITY. 225
them to go to the meeting at Georgetown armed
and equipped for any contingency.
They went accordingly, — Abenakis from Becan-
cour and St. Francis, Hurons from Lorette, and
Iroquois from Caughnawaga, besides others, all
stanch foes of heresy and England. Rale and
La Chasse directed their movements and led them
first to Norridgewock, where their arrival made a
revolution. The peace party changed color like
a chameleon, and was all for war. The united
bands, two hundred and fifty warriors in all,
paddled down the Kennebec along with the two
Jesuits and two French officers, Saint-Castin and
Croisil. In a few days the English at George-
town saw them parading before the fort, well
armed, displaying French flags, — feathers dang-
ling from their scalp-locks, and faces fantastically
patterned in vermilion, ochre, white clay, soot,
and such other pigments as they could find or
buy.
They were met by Captain Penhallow and other
militia officers of the fort, to whom they gave the
promised two hundred beaver-skins, and demanded
the four hostages in return ; but the hostages had
been given as security, not only for the beaver-
skins, but also for the future good behavior of the
Indians, and Penhallow replied that he had no
authority to surrender them. On this they gave
him a letter to the Governor, written for them by
Pere de la Chasse, and signed by their totems.
It summoned the English to leave the country at
once, and threatened to rob and burn their houses
VOL. 1—15
226 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1721.
in case of refusal. 1 The threat was not executed,
and they presently disappeared, but returned in
September in increased numbers, burned twenty-
six houses and attacked the fort, in which the
inhabitants had sought refuge. The garrison con-
sisted of forty men, who, being reinforced by the
timely arrival of several whale-boats bringing
thirty more, made a sortie. A skirmish followed ;
but being outnumbered and outflanked, the Eng-
lish fell back behind their defences. 2
The French authorities were in a difficult posi-
tion. They thought it necessary to stop the pro-
gress of English settlement along the Kennebec ;
and yet, as there was peace between the two
Crowns, they could not use open force. There
was nothing for it but to set on the Abenakis
1 Eastern Indians' Letter to the Governour, 27 July, 1721, in Mass. Hist.
Coll., Second Series, VIII. 259. This is the original French. It is
signed with totems of all the Abenaki bands, and also of the Caugh-
nawagas, Iroquois of the Mountain, Hurons, Micmacs, Montagnais, and
several other tribes. On this interview, Penhallow; Belknap II. 51;
Shute to Vaudreuil, 21 July, 1721 (O. S.); Ibid., 23 April, 1722; Rale in
Lettres Edifiantes, XVII. 285. Rale blames Shute for not being present
at the meeting, but a letter of the Governor shows that he had never
undertaken to be there. He could not have come in any case, from the
effects of a fall, which disabled him for some months even from going
to Portsmouth to meet the Legislature. Provincial Papers of New
Hampshire, III. 822.
2 Williamson, Hist, of Maine, II. 119; Penhallow. Rale's account of
the affair, found among his papers at Norridgewock, is curiously exag-
gerated. He says that he himself was with the Indians, and " to pleas-
ure the English " showed himself to them several times, — a point which
the English writers do not mention, though it is one which they would
be most likely to seize upon. He says that fifty houses were burned, and
that there were five forts, two of which were of stone, and that in one of
these six hundred armed men, besides women and children, had sought
refuge, though there was not such a number of men in the whole region
of the Kennebec.
1721] FRENCH AND ABENAKIS. 227
to fight for them. " I am well pleased," wrote
Vaudreuil to Rale, "that you and Pere de la
Chasse have prompted the Indians to treat the
English as they have done. My orders are to let
them want for nothing, and I send them plenty of
ammunition." Rale says that the King allowed
him a pension of six thousand livres a year, and
that he spent it all "in good works." As his
statements are not remarkable for precision, this
may mean that he was charged with distributing
the six thousand livres which the King gave every
year in equal shares to the three Abenaki missions
of Medoctec, Norridgewock, and Panawamske\ or
Penobscot, and which generally took the form of
presents of arms, gunpowder, bullets, and other '
munitions of war, or of food and clothing to sup-
port the squaws and children while the warriors
were making raids on the English. 1
Vaudreuil had long felt the delicacy of his posi-
tion, and even before the crisis seemed near he
tried to provide against it, and wrote to the min-
ister that he had never called the Abenakis sub-
jects of France, but only allies, in order to avoid
responsibility for anything they might do. 2 " The
English," he says elsewhere, " must be prevented \
from settling on Abenaki lands ; and to this end
we must let the Indians act for us (laisser agir
les sauvages)" 3
1 Vaudreuil, Memoire adresstfau Roy, 5 Juin, 1723.
2 Vaudreuil au Ministre, 6 Sept. 1716.
* Extrait d'une Liasse de Papiers concernant le Canada, 1 720. ( Archive
du Miniatere des Affaires Etrangeres.)
228 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1721.
Yet while urging the need of precaution, he
was too zealous to be always prudent ; and once, at
least, he went so far as to suggest that French
soldiers should be sent to help the Abenakis,
— which, he thought, would frighten the English
into retreating from their settlements ; whereas if
such help were refused, the Indians would go over
to the enemy. 1 The court was too anxious to
avoid a rupture to permit the use of open force,
and would only promise plenty of ammunition to
Indians who would fight the English, directing at
the same time that neither favors nor attentions
should be given to those who would not. 2
The half-breed officer, Saint-Castin, son of Baron
Vincent de Saint-Castin by his wife, a Penobscot
squaw, bore the double character of a French
lieutenant and an Abenaki chief, and had joined
with the Indians in their hostile demonstration at
Arrowsick Island. Therefore, as chief of a tribe
styled subjects of King George, the English seized
him, charged him with rebellion, and brought him
to Boston, where he was examined by a legislative
committee. He showed both tact and temper,
parried the charges against him, and was at last
set at liberty. His arrest, however, exasperated
his tribesmen, who soon began to burn houses, kill
settlers, and commit various acts of violence, for
all of which Rale was believed to be mainly answer-
able. There was great indignation against him.
He himself says that a reward of a thousand
1 Response de Vaudreuil el Begon au Me'moire du Roy, 8 Juin, 1721.
2 Begon a Rale, 14 Juin, 1721.
1721.] WESTBROOK'S EXPEDITION. 229
pounds sterling was offered for his head, but that
the English should not get it for all their sterling
money. It does not appear that such a reward
was offered, though it is true that the Massachu-
setts House of Representatives once voted five
hundred pounds in their currency — then equal
to about a hundred and eighty pounds sterling —
for the same purpose ; but as the Governor and
Council refused their concurrence, the Act was of
no effect.
All the branches of the government, however,
presently joined in sending three hundred men to
Norridgewock, with a demand that the Indians
should give up Rale " and the other heads and
fomentors of their rebellion." In case of refusal
they were to seize the Jesuit and the principal
chiefs and bring them prisoners to Boston. Colonel
Westbrook was put in command of the party.
Rale, being warned of their approach by some of
his Indians, swallowed the consecrated wafers, hid
the sacred vessels, and made for the woods, where,
as he thinks, he was saved from discovery by a
special intervention of Providence. His papers
fell into the hands of Westbrook, including letters
that proved beyond all doubt that he had acted as
agent of the Canadian authorities in exciting his
flock against the English. 1
Incensed by Westbrook's invasion, the Indians
1 Some of the papers found in Rale's " strong box " are still preserved
in the Archives of Massachusetts, including a letter to him from Vaudreuil,
dated at Quebec, 25 Sept. 1721, in which the French Governor expresses
great satisfaction at the missionary's success in uniting the Indians against
the English, and promises military aid, if necessary.
230 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1721,1722
came down the Kennebec in large numbers, burned
the village of Brunswick, and captured nine fam-
ilies at Merry-meeting Bay ; though they soon set
them free, except five men whom they kept to
exchange for the four hostages still detained at
Boston. 1 At the same time they seized several small
ve'ssels in the harbors along the coast. On this
the Governor and Council declared war against the
Eastern Indians, meaning the Abenakis and their
allies, whom they styled traitors and robbers.
In Massachusetts many persons thought that
war could not be justified, and were little disposed
to pus h itj vith vigor. The direction of it belonged
to the Go vprn or ij iJvU c^sicnjy^ru^f^m^^er^l
of the Province. Shute was an old soldier who
had served with credit as lieutenant-colonel under
Marlborough; but he was hampered by one of
those disputes which in times of crisis were sure
to occur in every British province whose governor
was appointed by the Crown. The Assembly, jeal-
ous of the representative of royalty, and looking
back mournfully to their virtual independence under
the lamented old charter, had from the first let slip
no opportunity to increase its own powers and
I abridge those of the Governor, refused him the
\ means of establishing the promised trading-houses
• in the Indian country, and would grant no money
for presents to conciliate the Norridgewocks.
The House now wanted, not only to control
supplies for the war, but to direct the war it-
self and conduct operations by committees of its
1 Wheeler, History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, 54.
, 1723. J GOVERNOR AND ASSEMBLY. 2\33
q. Shute madejiia_4)lafts—^f--cajnpaign ; and
■ ruceedecT to ^agpoiBt-offiGers irom among tb e
itier inhabitants, who had at least the quali-
ication of being accustomed to the woods. One
f them, Colonel Walton, was obnoxious to seme
i the representatives, who brought charges against
him, and the House demanded that he should be
recalled from the field to answer to them for his
iduct. The Governor objected to this as an en-
achment on his province as commander-in-chief.
•' V'alton was now accused of obeying orders of the
Governor in contravention of those of the repre-
sentatives, who thereupon passed a vote requiring
a to lay his journal before them. This was
lore than Shute could bear. He had the char-
er of a good-natured man ; but the difficulties
1 mortifications of his position had long galled
\m, and he had got leave to return to England
>d lay his case before the King and Council.
Hie crisis had now come. The Assembly were
usurping all authority, civil and military,
cordingly, on the 1st* ofjkmuarj^ 1723, me
I >vernor sailed in a merchant si u j for" London .
thout giving n otice of faT iT in font ion, to anyb ody
3ept two or three servants. 1
The burden of his difficult and vexatious office
"1 upon the Lieutenant-Governor, William Dinn-
er. When he first met the CounciFTn His new
pacity, a whimsical scene took place. Here,
long the rest, was the aged, matronly counte-
1 Hutchinson, II. 261. On these dissensions compare Palfrey, Hist, of
v England, IV., 406-428.
(**
%M SEBASTIEN RALE. [1722, 1723.
nance of the worthy Samuel Sewall, deeply im-
pressed with the dignity and importance of his
position as senior member of the Board. At his
best he never had the faintest senst> of humor
or perception of the ludicrous, and being now
perhaps touched with dotage, he thought it in-
cumbent upon him to address a few words of
exhortation and encouragement to the incoming
chief magistrate. He rose from his seat with
long locks, limp and white, drooping from under
his black skull-cap, — for he abhorred a wig as
a sign of backsliding, — and in a voice of quaver-
ing solemnity spoke thus : —
" If your Honour and this Honourable Board please to
give me leave, I would speak a Word or two upon this sol-
emn Occasion. Altho the unerring Providence of God has
brought you to the Chair of Government in a cloudy and
tempestuous season, yet you have this for your Encour-
agement, that the people you Have to do with are a part
of the Israel of God, and you may expect to have of the
Prudence and Patience of Moses communicated to you for
your Conduct. It is evident that our Almighty Saviour coun-
selled the first planters to remove hither and Settle here,
and they dutifully followed his Advice, and therefore He will
never leave nor forsake them nor Theirs ; so that your Hon-
our must needs be happy in sincerely seeking their Interest
and Welfare, which your Birth and Education will incline
you to do. Difficilia qum pulchra. I promise myself that
they who sit at this Board will yield their Faithful Advice to
your Honour according to the Duty of their Place."
Having thus delivered himself to an audience
not much more susceptible of the ludicrous than he
was, the old man went home well pleased, and re-
corded in his diary that the Lieutenant-Governor
1722, 1723.] THE NEW GOVERNOR. 233
and Councillors rose and remained standing while
he was speaking, " and they expressed a handsora
Acceptance of what I had said ; Laus Deo" !
Dummer was born in New England, and might,
therefore, expect to find more favor than had fallen
to his predecessor ; but he was the representative
of royalty, and could not escape the consequences
of being so. In earnest of what was in store for
him, the Assembly would not pay his salary, be-
cause he had sided with the Governor in the late
quarrel. The House voted to dismiss Colonel
Walton and Major Moody, the chief officers ap-
pointed by Shute ; and when Dummer reminded
it that this was a matter belonging to him as
commander-in-chief, it withheld the pay of the
obnoxious officers and refused all supplies for the
war till they should be removed. Dummer was
forced to yield. 2 The House would probably
have pushed him still farther, if the members
had not dreaded the effect of Shute's represen-
tations at court, and feared lest persistent en-
croachment on the functions of the Governor
might cost them their charter, to which, insuffi-
cient as they thought it, and far inferior to the
one they had lost, they clung tenaciously as the
palladium of their liberties. Yet Dummer needed
the patience of Job ; for his Assembly seemed more
bent on victories over him than over the Indians.
There was another election, which did not im-
prove the situation. The new House was worse
than the old, being made up largely of narrow-
1 Sewall Papers, III. 317, 318. 2 Palfrey, IV. 432, 433.
234 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1723.
minded rustics, who tried to relieve the Governor
of all conduct of the war by assigning it to a com-
mittee chosen from among themselves; but the
Council would not concur with them.
Meanwhile the usual ravages went on. Farm-
houses were burned, and the inmates waylaid and
killed, while the Indians generally avoided en-
counters with armed bodies of whites. Near the
village of Oxford four of them climbed upon the
roof of a house, cut a hole in it with their hatchets,
and tried to enter. A woman who was alone in
the building, and who had two loaded guns and
two pistols, seeing the first savage struggling to
shove himself through the hole, ran to him in
desperation and shot him ; on which the others
dragged the body back and disappeared. 1
There were several attempts of a more serious
kind. The small wooden fort at the river St.
George, the most easterly English outpost, was
attacked, but the assailants were driven off . A
few weeks later it was attacked again by the Pe-
nobscots under their missionary, Father Lauverjat.
Other means failing, they tried to undermine the
stockade ; but their sap caved in from the effect of
rains, and they retreated, with severe loss. The
warlike contagion spread to the Indians of Nova
Scotia. In July the Micmacs seized sixteen or
seventeen fishing-smacks at Canso ; on which
John Eliot, of Boston, and John Robinson, of
Cape Ann, chased the marauders in two sloops,
retook most of the vessels, and killed a good nuin-
1 Penhallow. Hutchinson II. 279.
723, 1724.] PENOBSCOTS ATTACKED. 235
ber of the Indians. In the autumn a war-party,
under the noted chief Grey Lock, prowled about
the village of Kutland, met the minister, Joseph
Willard, and attacked him. He killed one savage
and wounded another, but was at last shot and
scalped. 1
The representatives had long been bent on de-
stroying the mission ^village of the Penobscots on
the river of that name ; and one cause of~their
grudge against Colonel Walton was that, by order
of the Governor, he had deferred a projected at-
tack upon it. His successor, Colonel Westbrook,
now took the work in hand, wentULUi-the^ Penob-
scot in JB^ruary_ J?ith_Jtwo. , hm^redjand thirty
men in sloops and w haleboats ^JelLthese^ at the
head of navigation, and pushed through the forest
to tEe Indian town called Panawamske by the
French. IT stood apfarenily above Bangor, at or
near Passadumkeag. Here the party found a
stockade enclosure fourteen feet high, seventy
yards long, and fifty yards wide, containing twen-
ty-three houses, which Westbrook, a better woods-
man than grammarian, reports to have been
j? built regular." Outside the stockade stood the
chapel, "well and handsomely furnished within
and without, and on the south side of that the
Fryers dwelling-house." 2 This " Fryer " was
Father Lauverjat, who had led his flock to the
attack of the fort at the St. George. Both
1 Penhallow. Temple and Sheldon, History of Northfield, 195.
2 Westbrook to Dummer, 23 March, 1723, in Collections Mass. Hist. Soc. t
2d Series, VIII. 264.
236 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1724.
Indians and missionary were gone. Westbrook's
men burned the villa^ eandjgh^pelj and sailgd
back to the_St._J3Eoxge*. A In the next year,
1724, there was a more noteworthy stroke; for
Dummer, more pliant than Shute, had so far
soothed his JLssembly that it no-longer refused
monexfox~tha-war. It was resolved to strike at
fthe root of the evil, seize Rale, and destroy Nor-
ridgewock. Two hundred and eight men in four
companies, under Captains Harmon, Moulton, and
Brown, and Lieutenant Bean, set out from Fort
Richmond in seventeen whaleboats on the 8th of
August. They left the boats at Taconic Falls in
charge of a lieutenant and forty men, and on the
morning of the 10th the main body, accompanied
by three Mohawk Indians, marched through the
forest for Norridgewock. Towards evening they
saw two squaws, one of whom thej^brutally shot,
and captured the other, who proved to be the wife
of the noted chief Bomazeen. She gave them a
full account of the state of the village, which they
approached early in the afternoon of the 12th.
In the belief that some of the Indians would be
in their cornfields on the river above, Harmon,
who was in command, divided the force, and
moved up the river with about eighty men, while
Moulton, with as many more, made for the vil-
lage, advancing through the forest with all possi-
ble silence. About three o'clock he and his men
emerged from a tangle of trees and bushes, and
saw the Norridgewock cabins before them, no
longer enclosed with a stockade, but open and
1724.] HIS DEATH. 237
unprotected. Not an Indian was stirring, till at
length a warrior came out from one of the huts,
saw the English, gave a startled war-whoop, and
ran back for his gun. Then all was dismay and
confusion. Squaws and children ran screaming
for the river, while the warriors, fifty or sixty in
number, came to meet the enemy. Moulton or-
dered his men to reserve their fire till the Indians
had emptied their guns. As he had foreseen, the
excited savages fired wildly, and did little or no
harm. The English, still keeping their ranks,
returned a volley with deadly effect. The Indians
gave one more fire, and then ran for the river.
Some tried to wade to the farther side, the wa-
ter being low; others swam across, while many
jumped into their canoes, but could not use them,
having left the paddles in their houses. Moulton's
men followed close, shooting the fugitives in the
water or as they climbed the farther bank.
When they returned to the village they found
Rale in one of the houses, firing upon some of
their comrades who had not joined in the pursuit.
He presently wounded one of them, on which a
lieutenant named Benjamin Jaques burst open
the door of the house, and, as he declared, found
the priest loading his gun for another shot. The
lieutenant said further that he called on him to
surrender, and that Rale replied that he would
neither give quarter nor take it ; on which Jaques ^
shot him through the head. 1 Moulton, who had
1 Hutchinson, II. 283 (ed. 1795). Hutchinson had the story from
Moulton. Compare the tradition in the family of Jaques, as told by
his great-grandson, in Historical Magazine, VIII. 177.
238 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1724.
given orders that Rale should not be killed,
doubted this report of his subordinate so far as
concerned the language used by Rale, though
believing that he had exasperated the lieutenant
by provoking expressions of some kind. The old
chief Mogg had shut himself up in another house
from which he fired and killed one of Moulton's
three Mohawks, whose brother then beat in the
door and shot the chief dead. Several of the Eng-
lish followed, and brutally murdered Mogg s squaw
and his two children. Such plunder as the village
afforded, consisting of three barrels of gunpowder,
with a few guns, blankets, and kettles, was then
seized ; and the Puritan militia thought it a meri-
torious act to break what they called the " idols "
in the church, and carry off the sacred vessels.
Harmon and his party returned towards night
from their useless excursion to the cornfields,
where they found nobody. In the morning a
search was made for the dead, and twenty-six
^Indians were found and scalped, including the
principal chiefs and warriors of the place. Then,
being anxious for the safety of their boats, the
party marched for Taconic Falls. They had
scarcely left the village when one of the two
surviving Mohawks, named Christian, secretly
turned back, set fire to the church and the
houses, and then rejoined the party. The boats
were found safe, and embarking, they rowed down
to Richmond with their trophies. 1
1 The above rests on the account of Hutchinson, which was taken
from the official Journal of Harmon, the commander of the expedition.
1724.] HIS CHARACTER. 239
The news of the fate of the Jesuit and his mis-
sion spread joy among the border settlers, who
saw in it the end of their troubles. In their eyes,
Rale was an incendiary, setting on a, horde of
bloody savages to pillage and murder. While -
they thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for
a martyred saint. He was neither the one nor
the other, but a man with the qualities and faults
of a man, — fearless, resolute, enduring ; boastful, J
sarcastic, often bitter and irritating ; a vehement ,
partisan ; apt to see things, not as they were, but
as he wished them to be ; given to inaccuracy and
exaggeration, yet no doubt sincere in opinions and
genuine in zeal ; hating the English more than he
loved the Indians ; calling himself- their friend,
yet using them as instruments of worldly policy,
to their danger and final ruin. In considering
the ascription of martyrdom, it is to be remembered
that he did not die because he was an apostle of
the faith, but because he was the active agent of
the Canadian government.
There is reason to believe that he sometimes
exercised a humanizing influence over his flock.
and from the oral statements of Moulton, whom Hutchinson examined
on the subject. Charlevoix, following a letter of La Chasse in the
Jesuit Lettres Edijiantes, gives a widely different story. According to
him, Norridgewock was surprised by eleven hundred men, who first an-
nounced their presence by a general volley, riddling all the houses with
bullets. Rale, says La Chasse, ran out to save his flock by drawing the \fW
rage of the enemy on himself ; on which they raised a great shout and y^
shot him dead at the foot of the cross in the middle of the village.
La Chasse does not tell us where he got the story ; but as there were no
French witnesses, the story must have come from the Indians, who are
notorious liars where their interest and self-love are concerned. Nobody
competent to judge of evidence can doubt which of the two statement*
is the more trustworthy.
240 SEBASTIEN RALE. [1724.
The war which he helped to kindle was marked
by fewer barbarities — fewer tortures, mutilations
of the dead, and butcheries of women and infants
— than either of the preceding wars. It is fair to
assume that this was due in part to him, though
it was chiefly the result of an order given, at the
outset, by Shute that non-combatants in exposed'
positions should be sent to places of safety in the
older settlements. 1
1 It is also said that Rale taught some of his Indians to read and write,
— which was unusual in the Jesuit missions. On his character, com-
pare the judicial and candid Life of Rale, by Dr. Convers Francis, in
Sparks's American Biography, New Series, VII.
CHAPTER XI.^
1724, 1725.
LOVE WELL'S FIGHT. /
Vaudreuil and Dummer. — Embassy to Canada. — Indians in-
tractable. — Treaty of Peace. — The Pequawkets. — John
Lovewell. — A Hunting Party. — Another Expedition. — The
Ambuscade.— The Fight. — Chaplain Frye. — His Fate. — The
Survivors. — Susanna Rogers.
The death of Rale and the destruction of Nor-
ridgewock did not at once end the war. Yaudreuil
turned all the savages of the Canadian missions
against the borders, not only of Maine, but of
western Massachusetts, whose peaceful settlers
had given no offence. Soon after the Norridge-
wock expedition, Dummer wrote to the French
Governor, who had lately proclaimed the Abena-
kis his allies : " As they are subjects of his
Britannic Majesty, they cannot be your allies, ex-
cept through me, his representative. You have
instigated them to fall on our people in the most
outrageous manner. I have seen your commission
to Sebastien Rale. But for your protection and
incitements they would have made peace long
ago." »
In reply, Vaudreuil admitted that he had given
a safe-conduct and a commission to Rale, which he
1 Dummer to Vaudreuil, 15 Sept, 1724.
vol. i.~- 10
242 LOVE WELL'S FIGHT. [1724, 172&
could not deny, as the Jesuit's papers were in the
hands of the English Governor. " You will have
to answer to your King for his murder/' he tells
Dummer. " It would have been strange if I had
abandoned our Indians to please you. I cannot
help taking the part of our allies. You have
brought your troubles upon yourself. I advise you
ito pull down all the forts you have built on the
Abenaki lands since the Peace of Utrecht. If you
do so, I will be your mediator with the Norridge-
wocks. As to the murder of Rale, I leave that to
be settled between the two Crowns." *
Apparently the French court thought it wise to
let the question rest, and make no complaint.
Dummer, however, gave his views on the subject
to Yaudreuil. " Instead of -preaching peace, love,
and friendship, agreeably to the Christian religion,
Rale was an incendiary, as appears. by many letters
I have by me. He has once and again appeared
at the head of a great many Indians, threatening
and insulting us. If such a disturber of the peace
has been killed in the heat of action, nobody is to
blame but himself. I have much more cause to
complain that Mr. Willard, minister of Rutland,
who is innocent of all that is charged against Rale,
and always confined himself to preaching the
Gospel, was slain and scalped by your Indians,
and his scalp carried in triumph to Quebec. "
Dummer then denies that France has any claim
to the Abenakis, and declares that the war between
them and the English is due to the instigations of
1 Vaudreuil a Dummer, 29 Oct. 1724.
1725.] EMBASSY TO CANADA. 243
Rale and the encouragements given them by Vau-
dreuil. But he adds that in his wish to promote
peace he sends two prominent gentlemen, Colonel
Samuel Thaxter and Colonel William Dudley, as
bearers of his letter. 1 '
Mr. Atkinson, envoy on the part of New Hamp-
shire, joined Thaxter and Dudley, and the three
set out for Montreal, over the ice of Lake Cham-
plain. Vaudreuil received them with courtesy. As
required by their instructions, they demanded the
release of the English prisoners in Canada, and
protested against the action of the French Governor
in setting on the Indians to attack English settle-
ments when there was peace between the two
Crowns. Vaudreuil denied that he had done so,
till they showed him his own letters to Rale, cap-
tured at Norridgewock. These were unanswerable ;
but Vaudreuil insisted that the supplies sent to the
Indians were only the presents which they received
every year from the King. As to the English
prisoners, he said that those in the hands of the
Indians were beyond his power; but that the
envoys could have those whom the French had
bought from their captors, on paying back the
price they had co«t. The demands were exorbi-
tant, but sixteen prisoners were ransomed, and
bargains were made for ten more. Vaudreuil
proposed to Thaxter and his colleagues to have an
interview with the Indians, which they at first de-
clined, saying that they had no powers to treat with
9 1 Dummer to Vaudreuil, 19 Jan. 1725. This, with many other papers
relating to these matters, is in the Massachusetts Archives.
t
244 LOVEWELL'S FIGHT. [1725.
them, though, if the Indians wished to ask for peace,
they were ready to hear them. At length a meet-
ing was arranged. The French Governor writes :
" Being satisfied that nothing was more opposed
to our interests than a peace between the Abenakis
and the English, I thought that I would sound the
chiefs before they spoke to the English envoys, and
insinuate to them everything that I had to say." 1
This he did with such success that, instead of
asking for peace, the Indians demanded the dem-
olition of the English forts, and heavy damages
for burning their church and killing their mission-
ary. In short, to Vaudreuil' s great satisfaction,
they talked nothing but war. The French de-
spatch reporting this interview has the following
marginal note : " Nothing better can be done than
to foment this war, which at least retards the
settlements of the English ; " and against this is
written, in the hand of the colonial minister, the
word " Approved.'' 2 This was, in fact, the policy
pursued from the first, and Rale had been an instru-
ment of it. The Jesuit La Chasse, who spoke both
English and Abenaki, had acted as interpreter, and
so had had the meeting in his power, as he could
make both parties say what he pleased. The
envoys thought him more anti-English than Vau-
dreuil himself, and ascribed the intractable mood
1 Depeche de Vaudreuil, 7 Aout, 1725. "Comme j'ai toujours ete per-
suade que rien n'est plus oppose a nos interets que la paix des Abenakis
avec les Anglais (la surete de cette colonie du cote de Test ayant' ete
l'unique objet de cette guerre), je songeai a pressentir ces sauvages avant
qu'ils parlassant aux Anglais et a leur insinuer tout ce que j'avais a leur
dire." Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Mai, 1725. f
2 N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 949.
1725] TREATY OF PEACE. 245
of the Indians to his devices. Under the circum-
stances, they made a mistake in consenting to the
interview at all. The Governor, who had treated
them with civility throughout, gave them an escort
of soldiers for the homeward journey, and they and
the redeemed prisoners returned safely to Albany.
The war went on as before, but the Indians were
fast growing tired of it. The Penobscots had made
themselves obnoxious by their attacks on Fort St.
George, and Captain Heath marched across country
from the Kennebec to punish them. He found
their village empty. It was built, since West-
brook's attack, at or near the site of Bangor, a
little below Indian Old Town, — the present abode
of the tribe, — and consisted of fifty wigwams,
which Heath's men burned to the ground.
One of the four hostages still detained at Boston,
together with another Indian captured in the war,
was allowed to visit his people, under a promise to
return. Strange to say, the promise was kept.
They came back bringing a request for peace from
their tribesmen. On this, commissioners were sent
to the St. George, where a conference was held
with some of the Penobscot chiefs, and it was
arranged that deputies of that people should be
sent to Boston to conclude a solid peace. After
long delay, four chiefs appeared, fully empowered,
as they said, to make peace, not for the Penobscots \
only, but for the other Abenaki tribes, their allies.
The speeches and ceremonies being at last ended,
the four deputies affixed their marks to a paper in
which, for themselves and those they represented,
24 6 LOVE WELL'S EIGHT. [1725.
they made submission "unto his most excellent
Majesty George, by the grace of God king of
Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the
Faith," etc., promising to "cease and forbear all
acts of hostility, injuries, and discord towards all
his subjects, and never confederate or combine with
any other nation to their prejudice." Here was a
curious anomaly. The English claimed the Abena-
kis as subjects of the British Crown, and at the
same time treated with them as a foreign power.
Each of the four deputies signed the above-men-
tioned paper, one with the likeness of a turtle, the
next with that of a bird, the third with the un-
tutored portrait of a beaver, and the fourth with
an extraordinary scrawl, meant, it seems, for a
lobster, — such being their respective totems. To
these the Lieutenant-Governor added the seal of the
province of Massachusetts, coupled with his own
autograph.
In the next summer, and again a year later,
other meetings were held at Casco Bay with the
chiefs of the various Abenaki tribes, in which,
after prodigious circumlocution, the Boston treaty
was ratified, and the war ended. 1 This time
the Massachusetts Assembly, taught wisdom by
experience, furnished a guarantee of peace by
providing for government trading houses in the In-
dian country, where goods were supplied, through
responsible hands, at honest prices.
The Norridgewocks, with whom the quarrel
1 Penhallow gives the Boston treaty. For the ratifications, see Col-^
lections of the Maine Hist. Soc, III. 377, 407.
1725-1728.] THE PEQUAWKETS. 247
began, were completely broken. Some of the
survivors joined their kindred in Canada, and
h others were merged in the Abenaki bands of the
h Penobscot, Saco, or Androscoggin. Peace reigned
ft at last along the borders of New England ; but it
i had cost her dear. In the year after the death of
Rale, there was an incident of the conflict too
N noted in its day, and too strongly rooted in popu-
lar tradition, to be passed unnoticed.
Out of the heart of the White Mountains springs
I the river Saco, fed by the bright cascades that leap
from the crags of Mount Webster, brawling among
rocks and bowlders down the great defile of the
Crawford Notch, winding through the forests and
intervales of Conway, then circling northward
by the village of Fryeburg in devious wanderings
by meadows, woods, and mountains, and at last
turning eastward and southward to join the
sea.
On the banks of this erratic stream lived an
Abenaki tribe called the Sokokis. When the first
white man visited the country, these Indians lived
at the Falls, a few miles from the mouth of the
river. They retired before the English settlers,
and either joined their kindred in Maine, or
migrated to St. Francis and other Abenaki settle-
ments in Canada ; but a Sokoki band called Pig-
wackets, or Pequaw kets, still kept its place far in
the interior, on the upper waters of the Saco, near
Pine Hill, in the present town of Fryeburg. Ex-
cept a small band of their near kindred on Lake
Ossipee, they were the only human tenants of a
248 LOVEWELL'S FIGHT. [1725.
wilderness many thousand square miles in extent.
In their wild and remote abode they were difficult
of access, and the forest and the river were well
stocked with moose, deer, bear, beaver, otter, lynx,
fisher, mink, and marten. In this, their happy
hunting-ground, the Pequawkets thought them-
selves safe, and they would have been so for some
time longer if they had not taken up the quarrel
of the Norridgewocks and made bloody raids
against the English border, under their war-chief,
Paugus.
Not far from where their wigwams stood clus-
tered in a bend of the Saco was the small lake
now called Love well's Pond, named for John Love-
well of Dunstable, a Massachusetts town on the
New Hampshire line. Lovewell's father, a person
of consideration in the village, where he owned a
"garrison house," had served in Philip's War, and
taken part in the famous Narragansett Swamp
Fight. The younger Lovewell, now about thirty-
three years of age, lived with his wife, Hannah, and
two or three children on a farm of two hundred
acres. The inventory of his effects, made after
his death, includes five or six cattle, one mare,
two steel traps with chains, a gun, two or three
books, a feather-bed and " under-bed," or mattress,
along with sundry tools, pots, barrels, chests, tubs,
and the like, — the equipment, in short, of a de-
cent frontier yeoman of the time. 1 But being, like
the tough veteran, his father, of a bold and adven-
1 See the inventory, in Kidder, The Expeditions of Captain John
Lovewell, 93, 94.
1725.] HUNTING INDIANS. 249
turous disposition, he seems to have been less given s/
to farming than to hunting and bush-fighting.
Dunstable was attacked by Indians in the au-
tumn of 1724, and two men were carried off.
Ten others went in pursuit, but fell into an ambush,
and nearly all were killed, Josiah Farwell, Love-
well's brother-in-law, being, by some accounts, the
only one who escaped. 1 Soon after this, a petition,
styled a " Humble Memorial," was laid before the
House of Representatives at Boston. It declares
that in order " to kill and destroy their enemy In-
dians," the petitioners and forty or fifty others
are ready to spend one whole year in hunting
them, " provided they can meet with Encourage-
ment suitable." The petition is signed by John
Lovewell, Josiah Farwell, and Jonathan Robbins,
all of Dunstable, Lovewell's name being well writ-
ten, and the others after a cramped and unaccus-
tomed fashion. The representatives accepted the
proposal and voted to give each adventurer two
shillings and sixpence a day, — then equal in Mas-
sachusetts currency to about one English shilling,
— out of which he was to maintain himself. The
men were, in addition, promised large rewards
for the scalps of male Indians old enough to
fight.
A company of thirty was soon raised. Love-
well was chosen captain, Farwell, lieutenant, and
Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end of
1 Other accounts say that eight of the ten were killed. The headstone
of one of the number, Thomas Lund, has these words: "This man, with
seven more that lies in this grave, was slew All in A day by the Indiens.'
#
250 LOVEWELL'S FIGHT. [1725.
November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in
January, bringing one prisoner and one scalp.
Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out
again, this time with eighty-seven men, gathered
from the villages of Dunstable, Groton, Lancaster,
Haverhill, and Billerica. They ascended the frozen
Merrimac, passed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed
nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on
a branch of the upper Saco. Here they killed a
moose, — a timely piece of luck, for they were in
danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been com-
pelled by want of food to send back a good num-
ber of his men. The rest held their way, filing on
snow-shoes through the deathlike solitude that
gave no sign of life except the light track of some
squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the
hardy little chickadee, or black-capped titmouse,
so familiar to the winter woods. Thus far the
scouts had seen no human footprint ; but on the
20th of February they found a lately abandoned
wigwam, and following the snow-shoe tracks that
led from it, at length saw smoke rising at a dis-
tance out of the gray forest. The party lay close
till two o'clock in the morning ; then cautiously
approached, found one or more wigwams, sur-
^ rounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in
number. They were warriors from Canada on a
winter raid against the borders. Lovewell and
his men, it will be seen, were much like hunters
of wolves, catamounts, or other dangerous beasts,
except that the chase of this fierce and wily hu-
man game demanded far more hardihood and skill.
1725.] ANOTHER EXPEDITION. 251
They brought home the scalps in triumph, to-
gether with the blankets and the new guns fur-
nished to the slain warriors by their Canadian
friends ; and Lovewell began at once to gather
men for another hunt. The busy season of the
farmers was at hand, and volunteers came in less
freely than before. At the middle of April, how-
ever, he had raised a band of forty-six, of whom he
was the captain, with Farwell and Bobbins as his
lieutenants. Though they were all regularly com-
missioned by the Governor, they were leaders
rather than commanders, for they and their men
were neighbors or acquaintances on terms of entire
social equality. Two of the number require men-
tion. One was Seth Wyman, of Woburn, an
ensign, and the other was Jonathan Frye, of An-
dover, the chaplain, a youth of twenty-one, grad-
uated at Harvard College in 1723, and now a
student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he
carried a gun, knife, and hatchet like the others, )
and not one of the party was more prompt to use
them.
They began their march on April 15th. A few
days afterwards, one William Cummings, of Dun-
stable, became so disabled by the effects of a
wound received from Indians some time before,
that he could not keep on with the rest, and Love-
well sent him back in charge of a kinsman, thus
reducing their number to forty-four. When they
reached the west shore of Lake Ossipee, Benjamin
Kidder, of Nutfield, fell seriously ill. To leave him
defenceless in a place so dangerous was not to be
252 LOVE WELL'S FIGHT. £1725.
thought of ; and his comrades built a small fort,
or palisaded log-cabin, near the water, where they
left the sick man in charge of the surgeon, to-
gether with Sergeant Woods and a guard of seven
men. The rest, now reduced to thirty-four, con-
tinued their march through the forest northeast-
ward towards Pequawket, while the savage heights
of the White Mountains, still covered with snow,
rose above the dismal, bare forests on their left.
They seem to have crossed the Saco just below the
site of Fryeburg, and in the night of May 7, as
they lay in the woods near the northeast end of
Lovewell's Pond, the men on guard heard sounds
like Indians prowling about them. At daybreak
the next morning, as they stood bareheaded, listen :
ing to a prayer from the young chaplain, they
heard the report of a gun, and soon after discov-
ered an Indian on the shore of the pond at a con-
siderable distance. Apparently he was shooting
ducks; but Lovewell, suspecting a device to lure
them into an ambuscade, asked the men whether
they were for pushing forward or falling back, and
with one voice they called upon him to lead them
on. They were then in a piece of open pine woods
traversed by a small brook. He ordered them to
lay down their packs and advance with extreme
caution. They had moved forward for some time
in this manner when they met an Indian coming
towards them through the dense trees and bushes.
He no sooner saw them than he fired at the lead-
ing men. His gun was charged with beaver-shot ;
but he was so near his mark that the effect was
1725] AMBUSCADE. 253
equal to that of a bullet, and he severely wounded
Love well and one Whiting ; on which Seth Wy-
man shot him dead, and the chaplain and another
v man scalped him. Love well, though believed to
be mortally hurt, was still able to walk, and the
party fell back to the place where they had left
their packs. The packs had disappeared, and sud-
denly, with frightful yells, the whole body of the
Pequawket warriors rushed from their hiding-
-places, firing as they came on. The survivors say
that they were more than twice the number of
the whites, — which is probably an exaggeration,
though their conduct, so unusual with Indians, in
rushing forward instead of firing from their ambush,
shows a remarkable confidence in their numerical
strength. 1 They no doubt expected to strike their
enemies with a panic. Lovewell received another
mortal wound ; but he fired more than once on the
Indians as he lay dying. His two lieutenants,
Farwell and Bobbins, were also badly hurt. Eight
others fell; but the rest stood their ground, and
pushed the Indians so hard that they drove them
back to cover with heavy loss. One man played
the coward, Benjamin Hassell, of Dunstable, who
ran off, escaped in the confusion, and made with
his best speed for the fort at Lake Ossipee.
The situation of the party was desperate, and
nothing saved them from destruction but the
prompt action of their surviving officers, only one
1 Penhallow puts their number at seventy, Hutchinson at eighty,
Williamson at sixty-three, and Belknap at forty-one. In such cases the
•mallest number is generally nearest the truth.
254 LOVE WELL'S FIGHT. [1725.
of whom, Ensign Wyman, had escaped unhurt.
It was probably under his direction that the men
fell back steadily to the shore of the pond, which
was only a few rods distant. Here the water
protected their rear, so that they could not be
surrounded ; and now followed one of the most
obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of
New England. It was about ten o'clock when the
fight began, and it lasted till night. The Indians
had the greater agility and skill in hiding and
sheltering themselves, and the whites the greater
steadiness and coolness in using their guns. They
fought in the shade ; for the forest was dense, and
all alike covered themselves as they best could be-
hind trees, bushes, or fallen trunks, where each
man crouched with eyes and mind intent, firing
whenever he saw, or thought he saw, the head,
limbs, or body of an enemy exposed to sight for
an instant. The Indians howled like wolves,
yelled like enraged cougars, and made the forest
ring with their whoops ; while the whites replied
with shouts and cheers. At one time the Indians
ceased firing and drew back among the trees and
undergrowth, where, by the noise they made, they
seemed to be holding a " pow-wow," or incanta-
tion to procure victory ; but the keen and fearless
^JSeth Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the
chief conjuror, and broke up the meeting. About
the middle of the afternoon young Frye received a
mortal wound. Unable to fight longer, he lay in
his blood, praying from time to time for his com-
rades in a faint but audible voice.
1725.] AFTER THE BATTLE. 255
Solomon Keyes, of Billerica, ' received two
wounds, but fought on till a third shot struck
him. He then crawled up to Wyman in the heat
of the fight, and told him that he, Keyes, was a
dead man, but that the Indians should not get his
scalp if he could help it. Creeping along the
sandy edge of the pond, he chanced to find a
stranded canoe, pushed it afloat, rolled himself
into it, and drifted away before the wind.
Soon after sunset the Indians drew oft and left
the field to their enemies, living and dead, not
even stopping to scalp the fallen, — a remarkable
proof of the completeness of their discomfiture.
Exhausted with fatigue and hunger, — for, having
lost their packs in the morning, they had no
food, — the surviving white men explored the
scene of the fight. Jacob Farrar lay gasping his
last by the edge of the water. Robert Usher and
Lieutenant Robbins were unable to move. Of the
thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious
injury, eleven were badly wounded, and the rest
were dead or dying, except the coward who had
run off.
About midnight, an hour or more before the
setting of the moon, such as had strength to walk
left the ground. Robbins, as he lay helpless,
asked one of them to load his gun, saying, " The
Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and
I'll kill another of 'em if I can." They loaded
the gun and left him.
To make one's way even by daylight through
the snares and pitfalls of a New England forest is
256 LOVE WELL'S FIGHT. [1725.
often a difficult task ; to do so in the darkness of
night and overshadowing boughs, among the fallen
trees and the snarl of underbrush, was wellnigh im-
possible. Any but the most skilful woodsmen would
have lost their way. The Indians, sick of fight-
ing, did not molest the party. After struggling on
for a mile or more, Farwell, Frye, and two other
wounded men, Josiah Jones and Eleazer Davis,
could go no farther, and, with their consent, the
others left them, with a promise to send them help
as soon as they should reach the fort. In the
morning the men divided into several small bands,
the better to elude pursuit. One of these par-
ties was tracked for some time by the Indians,
and Elias Barron, becoming separated from his
companions, was never again heard of, though the
case of his gun was afterwards found by the bank
of the river Ossipee.
Eleven of the number at length reached the
vfort, and to their amazement found nobody there.
The runaway, Hassell, had arrived many hours be-
fore them, and to excuse his flight told so fright-
ful a story of the fate of his comrades that his
hearers were seized with a panic, shamefully
abandoned their post, and set out for the settle-
ments, leaving a writing on a piece of birch bark
to the effect that all the rest were killed. They
had left a supply of bread and pork, and while
the famished eleven rested and refreshed them-
selves they were joined by Solomon Keyes, the
man who, after being thrice wounded, had floated
away in a canoe from the place of the fight
1725.] DEATH OF FRYE. 257
After drifting for a considerable distance, the wind
blew him ashore, when, spurred by necessity and
feeling himself "wonderfully strengthened/ ' he
succeeded in gaining the fort.
Meanwhile Frye, Farwell, and their two wounded
companions, Davis and Jones, after waiting vainly
for the expected help, found strength to struggle
forward again, till the chaplain stopped and lay
down, begging the others to keep on their way, and
saying to Davis, " Tell my father that I expect in
a few hours to be in eternity, and am not afraid
to die." They left him, and, says the old narra-
tive, " he has not been heard of since." He had
kept the journal of the expedition, which was lost
with him.
Farwell died of exhaustion. The remaining
two lost their way and became separated. After
wandering eleven days, Davis reached the fort at
Lake Ossipee, and finding food there, came into
Berwick on the 27th. Jones, after fourteen days
in the woods, arrived, half dead, at the village of
Biddeford.
Some of the eleven who had first made their way
to the fort, together with Keyes, who joined them
there, came into Dunstable during the night of the
13th, and the rest followed one or two days later.
Ensign Wyman, who was now the only commis-
sioned officer left alive, and who had borne himself
throughout with the utmost intrepidity, decision,
and good sense, reached the same place along with
three other men on the 15th.
The runaway, Hassell, and the guard at the
VOL. T. — 17
258 LOVE WELL'S FIGHT. [1725.
fort, whom he had infected with his terror, had
lost no time in making their way back to Dunsta-
ble, which they seem to have reached on the even-
ing of the 11th. Horsemen were sent in haste to
carry the doleful news to Boston, on which the
Governor gave orders to Colonel Tyng of the mili-
tia, who was then at Dunstable, to gather men in
the border towns, march with all speed to the
place of the fight, succor the wounded if any were
still alive, and attack the Indians, if he could find
them. Tyng called upon Hassell to go with him
as a guide ; but he was ill, or pretended to be so,
on which one of the men who had been in the
fight and had just returned offered to go in his
place.
When the party reached the scene of the battle,
they saw the trees plentifully scarred with bullets,
and presently found and buried the bodies of
Lovewell, Robbins, and ten others. The Indians,
after their usual custom, had carried off or hid-
den their own dead ; but Tyng's men discovered
three of them buried together, and one of these
was recognized as the war-chief Paugus, killed by
Wyman, or, according to a more than doubtful
tradition, by John Chamberlain. 1 Not a living
Indian was to be seen.
1 The tradition is that Chamberlain and Paugns went down to the
small brook, now called Fight Brook, to clean their guns, hot and foul
with frequent firing ; that they saw each other at the same instant, and
that the Indian said to the white man, in his broken English, " Me kill
you quick ! " at the same time hastily loading his piece ; to which
Chamberlain coolly replied, " May be not." His firelock had a large
touch-hole, so that the powder could be shaken out into the pan, and
the gun made to prime itself. Thus he was ready for action an instant
I725.J FRYE AND HIS BETROTHED. 259
/
The Pequawkets were cowed by the rough hand-
ling they had met when they plainly expected a
victory. Some of them joined their Abenaki kins-
men in Canada and remained there, while others
returned after the peace to their old haunts by the
Saco ; but they never again raised the hatchet
against the English.
Lovewell's Pond, with its sandy beach, its two
green islands, and its environment of lonely forests,
reverted for a while to its original owners, — the
wolf, bear, lynx, and moose. In our day all is
changed. Farms and dwellings possess those
peaceful shores, and hard by, where, at the bend
of the Saco, once stood, in picturesque squalor, the
wigwams of the vanished Pequawkets, the village
of Fryeburg preserves the name of the brave
young chaplain, whose memory is still cherished,
in spite of his uncanonical turn for scalping. 1
He had engaged himself to a young girl of a
neighboring village, Susanna Eogers, daughter of
John Rogers, minister of Boxford. It has been
said that Frye's parents thought her beneath him
in education and position ; but this is not likely,
for her father belonged to what has been called
the " Brahmin caste " of New England, and, like
sooner than his enemy, whom he shot dead just as Paugus pulled trig-
ger and sent a bullet whistling over his head. The story has no good
foundation, while the popular ballad, written at the time, and very
faithful to the facts, says that, the other officers being killed, the English
made Wyman their captain, —
M Who shot the old chief Paugus, which did the foe defeat,
Then set his men in order and brought off the retreat."
1 The town, however, was not named for the chaplain, but for his
father's cousin, General Joseph Frye, the original grantee of the land
260 LOVEWELL'S EIGHT. [1725.
others of his family, had had, at Harvard, the
best education that the country could supply.
The girl herself, though only fourteen years old,
could make verses, such as they were; and she
wrote an elegy on the death of her lover which,
bating some grammatical lapses, deserves the
modest praise of being no worse than many New
England rhymes of that day.
; The courage of Frye and his sturdy comrades
j contributed greatly to the pacification which in
jthe next year relieved the borders from the
I scourge of Indian war. 1
1 Rev. Thomas Symmes, minister of Bradford, preached a sermon
on the fate of Lovewell and his men immediately after the return of
the survivors, and printed it, with a much more valuable introduction,
giving a careful account of the affair, on the evidence of " the Valorous
Captain Wyman and some others of goodfCredit that were in the Engage-
ment." Wyman had just been made a captain, in recognition of his con-
duct. The narrative is followed by an attestation of its truth signed by
him and two others of Lovewell's band.
A considerable number of letters relating to the expedition are pre-
served in the Massachusetts Archives, from Benjamin Hassell, Colonel
Tyng, Governor Dummer of Massachusetts, and Governor Wentworth of
New Hampshire. They give the various reports received from those in
the fight, and show the action taken in consequence The Archives also
contain petitions from the survivors and the families of the slain ; and
the legislative Journals show that the petitioners received large grants
of land. Lovewell's debts contracted in raising men for his expeditions
were also paid.
The papers mentioned above, with other authentic records concerning
the affair, have been printed by Kidder in his Expeditions of Captain John
Lovewell, a monograph of thorough research. The names of all Lovewell's
party, and biographical notices of some of them, are also given by Mr.
Kidder. Compare Penhallow, Hutchinson, Fox, History of Dunstable,
and Boutou, Lovewell's Great Fight. For various suggestions touching
Lovewell's Expedition, I am indebted to Mr. C. W. Lewis, who has made
it the subject of minute and careful study.
A ballad which was written when the event was fresh, and was long
popular in New England, deserves mention, if only for its general fidelity
to the facts. The following is a sample of its eighteen stanzas : —
1725] VERSES UPON IT. 26]
n »Twas ten o'clock in the morning when first the fight begun,
And fiercely did continue till the setting of the sun,
Excepting that the Indians, some hours before 't was night,
Drew off into the bushes, and ceased awhile to fight;
11 But soon again returned in fierce and furious mood,
Shouting as in the morning, but yet not half so loud ;
For, as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell,
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well.
" Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die ;
They killed Lieutenant Robbius, and wounded good young Frye,
Who was our English chaplain ; he many Indians slew,
And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew."
Frye, as mentioned in the text, had engaged himself to Susanna Rogers,
a young girl of the village of Boxford, who, after his death, wrote some
untutored verses to commemorate his fate. They are entitled, A Mournful
Elegy on Air. Jonathan Frye, and begin thus : —
"Assist, ye muses, help my quill,
Whilst floods of tears does down distil ;
Not from mine eyes alone, but all
That hears the sad and doleful fall
Of that young student, Mr. Frye,
Who in his blooming youth did die.
Fighting for his dear country's good,
He lost his life and precious blood.
His father's ogly son was he ;
His mother loved him tenderly ;
And all that knew him loved him well;
For in bright parts he did excel
Most of his age ; for he was young, —
Just entering on twenty -one;
A comely youth, and pious too;
This I affirm, for him I knew."
She then describes her lover's brave deeds and sad but heroic death,
alone in a howling wilderness; condoles with the bereaved parents, ex-
horts them to resignation, and touches modestly on her own sorrow.
In more recent times the fate of Lovewell and his companions has
inspired several poetical attempts, which need not be dwelt upon.
Lovewell's Fight, as Dr. Palfrey observes, was long as famous in New
England as Chevy Chase on the Scottish Border.
CHAPTER XIX
1712.
THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT.
The West and the Fur Trade. — New York and Canada. —
Indian Population. — The Firebrands of the West. — Detroit
in 1712. — Dangerous Visitors. — Suspense. — Timely Succors.
— The Outagamies attacked. — Their desperate Position. —
Overtures. — Wavering Allies. — Conduct of Dubuisson. —
Escape of the Outagamies. — Pursuit and Attack. — Victory
and Carnage.
We have seen that the Peace of Utrecht was
followed by a threefold conflict for ascendency
in America, — the conflict for Acadia, the conflict
| for northern New England, and the conflict for
I the Great West; which last could not be said .to
take at once an international character, being
essentially a competition for the fur-trade. Only
one of the English colonies took an active part
in it, — the province of New York. Alone among
her sister communities she had a natural thorough-
fare to the West, not comparable, however, with
that of Canada, to whose people the St. Lawrence,
the Great Lakes, and their tributary waters were
a continual invitation to the vast interior.
Virginia and Pennsylvania were not yet serious
rivals in the fur-trade, and New England, the
most active of the British colonies, was barred
1712-1720] NEW YORK AND CANADA. 263
out from it by the interposition of New York,
which lay across her westward path, thus forcing
her to turn her energies to the sea, where half
a century later her achievements inspired the
glowing panegyrics of Burke before the House
of Commons.
New York, then, was for many years the only
rival of Canada for the control of the West. It
was a fatal error in the rulers of New France
that they did not, in the seventeenth century,
use more strenuous efforts to possess themselves,
by purchase, exchange, or conquest, of this trouble-
some and dangerous neighbor. There was a time,
under the reign of Charles II., when negotiation
for the purchase of New York might have been
successful ; and if this failed, the conquest of the
province, if attempted by forces equal to the im-
portance of the object, would have been far from
hopeless. With New York in French hands, the
fate of the continent would probably have been
changed. The British possessions would have been
cut in two. New England, isolated and placed in
constant jeopardy, would have vainly poured her
unmanageable herds of raw militia against the dis-
ciplined veterans of Old France intrenched at the
mouth of the Hudson. Canada would have gained
complete control of her old enemies, the Iroquois,
who would have been wholly dependent on her for
the arms and ammunition without which they
could do nothing.
The Iroquois, as the French had been accus-
tomed to call them, were known to the English
264 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712-1720
as the Five Nations, — a name which during the
eighteenth century the French also adopted. Soon
after the Peace of Utrecht, a kindred tribe, the Tus-
caroras, was joined to the original five members of
the confederacy, which thenceforward was some-
times called the Six Nations, though the Tuscaroras
were never very prominent in its history ; and to
avoid confusion, we will keep the more familiar
name of the Five Nations, which the French used
to the last.
For more than two generations this league of
tribes had held Canada in terror, and more than
once threatened it with destruction. But now a
change had come over the confederates. Count
Frontenac had humbled their pride. They were
crowded between the rival European nations,
both of whom they distrusted. Their tradi-
tional hatred of the French would have given
the English of New York a controlling influence
over them if the advantage had been used with
energy and tact. But a narrow and short-
sighted conduct threw it away. A governor of
New York, moreover, even were he as keen and
far-seeing as Frontenac himself, would often
have been helpless. When the Five Nations
were attacked by the French, he had no troops
to defend them, nor could he, like a Canadian
governor, call out the forces of his province by
a word, to meet the exigency. The small rev-
enues of New York were not at his disposal.
Without the votes of the frugal representatives
of an impoverished people, his hands were tied.
1712-1720.] INDIAN POPULATION. 26f
Hence the Five Nations, often left unaided when
they most needed help, looked upon their Dutch
and English neighbors as slothful and unwarlike.
Yet their friendship was of the greatest impor-
tance to the province, in peace as well as in war,
and was indispensable in the conflict that New
York was waging single-handed for the control of
the Western fur-trade. The Five Nations, as we
have seen, 1 acted as middlemen between the New
York merchants and the tribes of the far interior,
and through them English goods and English in-
fluence penetrated all the lake country, and reached
even to the Mississippi.
These vast WeaJ^m legions, now swarming with
laborious millions, were then scantily peopled by
savage hordes, whose increase was stopped by
incessant mutual slaughter. This wild popula-
tion had various centres or rallying points, usually
about the French forts, which protected them from .
enemies and supplied their wants. Thus the Pot-
tawattamies, Ottawas, and Hurons were gathered
about Detroit, and the Illinois about Fort St. Louis,
on the river Illinois, where Henri de Tonty and
his old comrade, La Forest, with fifteen or twenty
Frenchmen, held a nominal monopoly of the neigh-
boring fur-trade. Another focus of Indian popula-^
tion was near the Green Bay of Lake Michigan,
and on Fox River, which enters it. Here were
grouped the Sacs, Winnebagoes, and Menomonies,
with the Outagamies, or Foxes, a formidable tribe, .
the source of endless trouble to the French.
1 See Chapter L
266 THE OUTAG AMIES AT DETROIT. [1712-1720,
The constant aim of the Canadian authorities
was to keep these Western savages at peace among
themselves, while preventing their establishing
^relations of trade with the Five Nations, and
carrying their furs to them in exchange for Eng-
1 lish goods. The position was delicate, for while
a close understanding between the Western tribes
and the Five Nations would be injurious to French
interests, a quarrel would be still more so, since the
French would then be forced to side with their
il Western allies, and so be drawn into hostilities
^with the Iroquois confederacy, which of all things
I they most wished to avoid. Peace and friendship
\ among the Western tribes; ™**<£ without friend-
ship between these tribes and the Five Nations, —
I thus became maxims of French policy. The Ca-
nadian Governor called the Western Indians his
" children/* and a family quarrel among them
would have been unfortunate, since the loving
fathur must needs have become involved in it,
to the detriment of his trading interests.
Yot to prevent such quarrels was difficult,
partly because they had existed time out of
,. mind, and partly because it was the interest of
"the English to promote them. Dutch and Eng-
lish traders, it is true, took their lives in their
hands if they ventured among the Western In-
diana, who were encouraged by their French
father to plunder and kill them, and who on
occasion rarely hesitated to do so. Hence Eng-
lish communication with the West was largely
carried on through the Five Nations. Iroquoia
9gg
1712-1720.) INDIAN TRADE. 26l
messengers, hired for the purpose, carried wam-
pum belts "underground," — that is, secretly, —
to such of the interior tribes as were disposed to
listen with favor to the words of Corlaer, as they
called the Governor of New York.
In spite of their shortcomings, the English had
one powerful attraction for all the tribes alike.
This was the abundance and excellence of their
goods, which, with the exception of gunpowder,
were better as well as cheaper than those offered
by the French. The Indians, it is true, liked the
taste of French brandy more than that of Eng-
lish rum ; yet as their chief object in drinking
was to get drunk, and as rum would supply as
much intoxication as brandy at a lower price, it
always found favor in their eyes. In the one
case, to get thoroughly drunk often cost a beaver-
skin ; in the other, the same satisfaction could
generally be had for a mink-skin.
Thus the French found that some of their
Western children were disposed to listen to Eng-
lish seductions, look askance at their father
Onontio, and turn their canoes, not towards Mon-
treal, but towards Albany. Nor was this the
worst ; for there were some of Onontio's wild
and unruly Western family too ready to lift their
hatchets against their brethren and fill the wilder-
ness with discord. Consequences followed most
embarrassing to the French, and among them an
incident prominent in the early annals of Detroit,
that new establishment so obnoxious to the Eng-
lish, because it barred their way to the northern
^>8 THE OUT AG AMIES AT DETROIT. [1712-1720
lakes, so that they were extremely anxious to rid
themselves of it.
In the confused and tumultuous history of the
savages of this continent one now and then sees
some tribe or league of tribes possessed for a
time with a spirit of conquest and havoc that
made it the terror of its neighbors. Of this the
foremost example is that of the Five Nations
of the Iroquois, who, towards the middle of the
seventeenth century, swept all before them and
made vast regions a solitude. They were now
comparatively quiet; but far in the Northwest,
another people, inferior in number, organization,
and mental capacity, but not in ferocity or cour-
age, had begun on a smaller scale, and with
less conspicuous success, to play a similar part.
These were the Outagamies, or Foxes, with their
allies, the Kickapoos and the Mascoutins, all liv-
ing at the time within the limits of the present
States of Wisconsin and Illinois, — the Outagamies
near Fox Eiver, and the others on Rock River. 1
The Outagamies, in particular, seem to have been
seized w T ith an access of homicidal fury. Their
hand was against every man, and for twenty
years and more they were the firebrands of the
West, and a ceaseless peril to French interests in
that region. They were, however, on good terms
with the Five Nations, by means of whom, as
French writers say, the Dutch and English of
Albany sent them gifts and messages to incite
1 Memoir on the Indians between Lake Erie and the Mississippi, in N. Y>
Col. Docs., IX. 885.
1712] INFANCY OF DETROIT. 269
diem to kill French traders and destroy the French
fort at Detroit. This is not unlikely, though the
evidence on the point is far from conclusive.
Fort Ponchartrain, better known as Fort Detroit,
was an enclosure of palisades, flanked by block-
houses at the corners, with an open space within
to serve as a parade-ground, around which stood
small wooden houses thatched with straw or mea-
dow-grass. La Mothe-Cadillac, founder of the
post, had been made governor of the new colony
of Louisiana, and the Sieur Dubuisson now com-
manded at Detroit. There were about thirty
French traders, voyageurs, and coureurs de bois in
the place, but at this time no soldiers.
The village of the Pottawattamies was close to
the French fort ; that of the Hurons was not far
distant, by the edge of the river. Their houses
were those structures of bark, "very high, very
long, and arched like garden arbors," which were
common to all the tribes of Iroquois stock, and both
villages were enclosed by strong double or triple
stockades, such as Cartier had found at Hoche-
laga, and Champlain in the Onondaga country.
Their neighbors, the Ottawas, who were on the
east side of the river, had imitated, with imper-
fect success, their way of housing and fortifying
themselves. These tribes raised considerable crops
of peas, beans, and Indian corn ; and except
when engaged in their endless dances and games
of ball, dressed, like the converts of the mission
villages, in red or blue cloth. 1 The Hurons were
1 Memoir on the Indiana between Lake Brie and the Mississippi,
\
270 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
reputed the most intelligent as well as the bravest
of all the Western tribes, and being incensed by
various outrages, they bore against the Outagamies
a deadly grudge, which was shared by the other
tribes, their neighbors.
All these friendly Indians were still absent on
their winter hunt, when, at the opening of spring,
Dubuisson and his Frenchmen were startled by a
portentous visitation. Two bands of Outagamies
and Mascoutins, men, women, and children, count-
ing in all above a thousand, of whom about three
hundred were warriors, appeared on the meadows
behind the fort, approached to within pistol-shot
of the palisades, and encamped there. It is by no
means certain that they came with deliberate hos-
tile intent. Had this been the case, they would
not have brought their women and children. A
paper ascribed to the engineer Lery says, moreover,
that their visit was in consequence of an invitation
from the late commandant, La Mothe-Cadillac,
whose interest it was to attract to Detroit as many
Indians as possible, in order to trade for their furs. 1
Dubuisson, however, was satisfied that they meant
mischief, especially when, in spite of all his efforts
to prevent them, they fortified themselves by cut-
ting down young trees and surrounding their
wigwams with a rough fence of palisades. They
were rude and insolent, declared that all that
country was theirs, and killed fowls and pigeons
belonging to the French, who, in the absence of
1 This paper is printed, not very accurately, in the Collection de Docu-
ments relatifs a la Nouvelle France, I. 623 (Que'bec, 1883).
1712.] DANGEROUS VISITORS. 271
their friends, the Hurons and Ottawas, dared not
even remonstrate. Dubuisson himself was forced
to submit to their insults in silence, till a party of
them came one day into the fort bent on killing
two of the French, a man and a girl, against
whom they had taken some offence. The com-
mandant then ordered his men to drive them out ;
which was done, and henceforward he was con-
vinced that the Outagamies and Mascoutins were
only watching their opportunity to burn the fort
and butcher its inmates. Soon after, their excite-
ment redoubled. News came that a band of Mas-
coutins, who had wintered on the river St. Joseph,
had been cut off by the Ottawas and Pottawatta-
mies, led by an Ottawa chief named Saguina ;
on which the behavior of the dangerous visitors
became so threatening that Dubuisson hastily sent
a canoe to recall the Hurons and Ottawas from
their hunting-grounds, and a second to invite the
friendly Ojibwas and Mississagas to come to his
aid. No doubt there was good cause for alarm ;
yet if the dangerous strangers had resolved to
strike, they would have been apt to strike at once,
instead of waiting week after week, when they
knew that the friends and allies of the French
might arrive at any time. Dubuisson, however,
felt that the situation was extremely critical, and
he was confirmed in his anxiety by a friendly
Outagamie, who, after the news of the massacre
on the St. Joseph, told him that his tribesmen
meant to burn the fort.
The church was outside the palisade, as were
272 THE OUTAG AMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
also several houses, one of which was stored with
wheat. This the Outagamies tried to seize. The
French fired on them, drove them back, and
brought most of the wheat into the fort ; then
demolished the church and several of the houses
which would have given cover to the assailants
and enabled them to set fire to the palisade, close
to which the buildings stood. The French worked
at their task in the excitement of desperation, for
they thought that all was lost.
The irritation of their savage neighbors so in-
creased that an outbreak seemed imminent, when,
on the 13th of May, the Sieur de Vincennes arrived,
with seven or eight Frenchmen, from the Miami
country. The reinforcement was so small that
instead of proving a help it might have pro-
voked a crisis. Vincennes brought no news of
the Indian allies, who were now Dubuissons
only hope. " I did not know on what saint to
call, ,, he writes, almost in despair, when suddenly
\v.a Huron Indian came panting into the fort with
the joyful news that both his people and the Ot-
tawas were close at hand. Nor was this all. The
Huron messenger announced that Makisabie, war-
chief of the Pottawattamies, was then at the Hu-
ron fort, and that six hundred warriors of various
tribes, deadly enemies of the Outagamies and Mas-
coutins, would soon arrive and destroy them all.
Here was an unlooked-for deliverance. Yet
the danger was not over ; for there was fear lest
the Outagamies and their allies, hearing of the
approaching succor, might make a desperate
1712.] TIMELY SUCCORS. 273
onslaugnt, burn the French fort, and kill its
inmates before their friends could reach them.
An interval of suspense followed, relieved at last
by a French sentinel, who called to Dubuisson that
a crowd of Indians was in sight. The command-
ant mounted to the top of a blockhouse, and, look-
ing across the meadows behind the fort, saw a
throng of savages coming out of the woods, —
Pottawattamies, Sacs, Menomonies, Illinois, Mis-
souris, and other tribes yet more remote, each band
distinguished by a kind, of ensign. These were
the six hundred warriors promised by the Huron
messenger, and with them, as it proved, came the
Ottawa war-chief Saguina. Having heard during
the winter that the Outagamies and Mascoutins
would go to Detroit in the spring, these various
tribes had combined to attack the common enemy ;
and they now marched with great ostentation and
some show of order, not to the French fort, but to
the fortified village of the Hurons, who with their
neighbors, the Ottawas, had arrived just before
them.
The Hurons were reputed leaders among the
Western tribes, and they hated the Outagamies,
not only by reason of bitter wrongs, but also
through jealousy of the growing importance which
these fierce upstarts had won by their sanguinary
prowess. The Huron chiefs came to meet the
motley crew of warriors, and urged them to instant
action. "You must not stop to encamp/ ' said the
Huron spokesman ; " we must all go this moment
to the fort of our fathers, the French, and fight
TOL. I. — 18
274 THE OUTAG AMIES AT DETROIT. [H1&
for them." Then, turning to the Ottawa war-
chief : " Do you see that smoke, Saguina, rising
from the camp of our enemies ? They are burning
three women of your village, and your wife is one
of them." The Outagamies had, in fact, three
Ottawa squaws in their clutches ; but the burning
was an invention of the crafty Huron. It an-
swered its purpose, and wrought the hearers to
fury. They ran with yells and whoops towards the
French fort, the Hurons and Ottawas leading the
way. A burst of answering yells rose from the camp
of the enemy, and about forty of their warriors ran
out in bravado, stripped naked and brandishing
their weapons ; but they soon fell back within
their defences before the approaching multitude.
Just before the arrival of the six hundred allies,
Dubuisson, whose orders were to keep the peace,
if he could, among the Western tribes, had sent
Vincennes to the Huron village with a proposal
that they should spare the lives of the Outagamies
and Mascoutins, and rest content with driving
them away ; to which the Hurons returned a fierce
and haughty refusal. There was danger that if
vexed or thwarted, the rabble of excited savages
now gathered before the fort might turn from
friends into enemies, and in some burst of wild
caprice lift parricidal tomahawks against their
| French fathers. Dubuisson saw no choice but to
I humor them, put himself at their head, aid them
in their vengeance, and even set them on. There-
fore, when they called out for admittance, he did
not venture to refuse it, but threw open the gate.
1712] THEIR CAMP ATTACKED. 275
The savage crew poured in till the fort was full.
The chiefs gathered for council on the parade, and
the warriors crowded around, a living wall of
dusky forms, befeathered heads, savage faces, lank
snaky locks, and deep-set eyes that glittered with
a devilish light. Their orator spoke briefly, but to
the purpose. He declared that all present were
ready to die for their French father, who had
stood their friend against the bloody and perfidi-
ous Outagamies. Then he begged for food, to-
bacco, gunpowder, and bullets. Dubuisson replied
with equal conciseness, thanked them for their
willingness to die for him, said that he would do
his best to supply their wants, and promised an
immediate distribution of powder and bullets ; to
which the whole assembly answered with yells
of joy-
Then the council dissolved, and the elder war-
riors stalked about the fort, haranguing their fol-
lowers, exhorting them to fight like men and obey
the orders of their father. The powder and bul-
lets were served out, after which the whole body,
white men and red, yelled the war-whoop together,
— "a horrible cry, that made the earth tremble,"
writes Dubuisson. 1 An answering howl, furious
and defiant, rose close at hand from the palisaded
camp of the enemy, the firing began on both sides,
and bullets and arrows filled the air.
The French and their allies outnumbered their
enemies fourfold, while the Outagamie and Mascou-
1 " Cri horrible, dont la terre trembla." Dubuisson a Vaudreuil, 15 Juittf
1712. This is the official report of the affair.
276 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
tin warriors were encumbered with more than
seven hundred women and children. Their frail
defences might have been carried by assault ; but
the loss to the assailants must needs have been
great against so. brave and desperate a foe, and
such a mode of attack is repugnant to the Indian
genius. Instead, therefore, of storming the pali-
saded camp, the allies beleaguered it with vin-
dictive patience, and wore out its defenders by a
fire that ceased neither day nor night. The French
raised two tall scaffolds, from which they over-
looked the palisade, and sent their sbot into the
midst of those within, who were forced, for shelter,
to dig holes in the ground four or five feet deep,
and ensconce themselves there. The situation was
almost hopeless, but their courage did not fail.
They raised twelve red English blankets on poles
as battle-flags, to show that they would fight to
the death, and hung others over their palisades,
calling out that they wished to see the whole earth
red, like them, with blood, that they had no
fathers but the English, and that the other tribes
had better do as they did, and turn their backs to
Onontio.
The great war-chief of the Pottawattamies now
mounted to the top of one of the French scaf-
folds, and harangued the enemy to this effect:
" Do you think, you wretches, that you can
frighten us by hanging out those red blankets ?
If the earth is red with blood, it will be your own.
You talk about the English. Their bad advice will
be your ruin. They are enemies of religion, and
1712.] THEIR DESPERATE POSITION. 277
that is why the Master of Life punishes both them
and you. They are cowards, and can only defend
themselves by poisoning people with their fire-
water, which kills a man the instant he drinks it.
We shall soon see what you will get for listening
to them."
This Homeric dialogue between the chief com-
batants was stopped by Dubuisson, who saw that
it distracted the attention of the warriors, and so
enabled the besieged to run to the adjacent river
for water. The firing was resumed more fiercely
than ever. Before night twelve of the Indian
allies were killed in the French fort, though the
enemy suffered a much greater loss. One house
had been left standing outside the French pali-
sades, and the Outagamies raised a scaffold behind
its bullet-proof gable, under cover of which they
fired with great effect. The French at length
brought two swivels to bear upon the gable,
pierced it, knocked down the scaffold, killed
some of the marksmen, and scattered the rest
in consternation.
Famine and thirst were worse for the besieged
than the bullets and arrows of the allies. Parched,
starved, and fainting, they could no longer find
heart for bravado, and they called out one evening
from behind their defences to ask Dubuisson if
they might come to speak with him. He called
together the allied chiefs, and all agreed that here
was an opportunity to get out of the hands of the
Outagamies the three Ottawa women whom they
held prisoners. The commandant, therefore, told
278 THE OtJTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
them that if they had anything to say to their
father before dying, they might come and say
it in safety.
In the morning all the red blankets had disap-
peared, and a white flag was waving over the
hostile camp. The great Outagamie chief, Pe-
moussa, presently came out, carrying a smaller
white flag and followed by two Indian slaves.
Dubuisson sent his interpreter to protect him from
insult and conduct him to the parade, where all
the allied chiefs presently met to hear him.
" My Father," he began, " I am a dead man.
The sky is bright for you, and dark as night for
me." Then he held out a belt of wampum, and
continued : " By this belt I ask you, my Father,
to take pity on your children and grant us two
days in which our old men may counsel together
to find means of appeasing your wrath." Then,
offering another belt to the assembled chiefs,
" This belt is to pray you to remember that you
are of our kin. If you spill our blood, do not
forget that it is also your own. Try to soften
the heart of our father, whom we have offended
so often. These two slaves are to replace some
of the blood you have lost. Grant us the two
days we ask, for I cannot say more till our old
men have held counsel."
To which Dubuisson answered in the name of
all : " If your hearts were really changed, and you
honestly accepted Onontio as your father, you
would have brought back the three women who
are prisoners in your hands. As you have not
•
12.] OVERTURES 279
done so, I think that your hearts are still bad.
First bring them to me, if you expect me to hear
you. I have no more to say."
"I am but a child/' replied the envoy. "I
will go back to my village, and tell our old men
what you have said."
The council then broke up, and several French-
men conducted the chief back to his followers.
Three other chiefs soon after appeared, bearing
a flag and bringing the Ottawa squaws, one of
whom was the wife of the war-chief, Saguina.
Again the elders met in council on the parade,
and the orator of the deputation spoke thus : " My
Father, here are the three pieces of flesh that you
ask of us. We would not eat them, lest you
should be angry. Do with them what you please,
for you are the master. Now we ask that you
will send away the nations that are with you, so
that we may seek food for our women and chil-
dren, who die of hunger every day. If you are
as good a father as your other children say you
are, you will not refuse us this favor."
But Dubuisson, having gained his point and
recovered the squaws, spoke to them sternly, and
referred them to his Indian allies for their answer.
Whereupon the head chief of the Illinois, being
called upon by the rest to speak in their behalf,
addressed the envoys to this effect: "Listen to
me, you who have troubled all the earth. We see
plainly that you mean only to deceive our father.
If we should leave him, as you wish, you would
fall upon him and kill him. You are dogs who
280 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712
have always bitten him. You thought that we
did not know all the messages you have had from
the English, telling you to cut our father's throat,
and then bring them into this our country. We
will not leave him alone with you. We shall see
who will be the master. Go back to your fort.
We are going to fire at you again."
The envoys went back with a French escort to
prevent their being murdered on the way, and
then the firing began again. The Outagamies and
Mascoutins gathered strength from desperation,
and sent flights of fire-arrows into the fort to burn
the straw-thatched houses. The flames caught in
many places; but with the help of the Indians
they were extinguished, though several Frenchmen
were wounded, and there was great fright for a
time. But the thatch was soon stripped off and
the roofs covered with deer and bear skins, while
mops fastened to long poles, and two large wooden
canoes filled with water, were made ready for
future need.
A few days after, a greater peril threatened the
French. If the wild Indian has the passions of a
devil, he has also the instability of a child ; and
this is especially true when a number of incoherent
tribes or bands are joined in a common enterprise.
Dubuisson's Indians became discouraged, partly at
the stubborn resistance of the enemy, and partly
at the scarcity of food. Some of them declared
openly that they could never conquer those people,
that they knew them well, and that they were
braver than anybody else. In short, the French
1712] WAVERING ALLIES. 281
saw themselves on the point of being abandoned
by their allies to a fate the most ghastly and
appalling ; and they urged upon the commandant
the necessity of escaping to Michillimackinac be-
fore it was too late. Dubuisson appears to have
met the crisis with equal resolution and address.
He braced the shaken nerves of his white fol-
lowers by appeals to their sense of shame, threats
of the Governor's wrath, and assurances that all
would yet be well ; then set himself to the more
difficult task of holding the Indian allies to their
work. He says that he scarcely ate or slept for
four days and nights, during which time he was
busied without ceasing in private and separate
interviews with all the young war-chiefs, per*
suading them, flattering them, and stripping him-
self of all he had to make them presents. When
at last he had gained them over, he called the
tribes to a general council.
" What, Children ! " thus he addressed them,
" when you are on the very point of destroying
these wicked people, do you think of shamefully
running away ? How could you ever hold up your
heads again ? All the other nations would say :
\ Are these the brave warriors who deserted the
French and ran like cowards ? " " And he re-
minded them that their enemies were already half
dead with famine, and that they could easily make
an end of them, thereby gaining great honor
among the nations, besides the thanks and favors
of Onontio, the father of all.
282 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
At this the young war-chiefs whom he had
gained over interrupted him and cried out, " My
Father, somebody has been lying to you. We are
not cowards. We love you too much to abandon
you, and we will stand by you till the last of your
enemies is dead." The elder men caught the con-
tagion, and cried, " Come on, let us show our father
that those who have spoken ill of us are liars."
Then they all raised the war-whoop, sang the
war-song, danced the war-dance, and began to
fire again.
Among the enemy were some Sakis, or Sacs,
fighting for the Outagamies, while others of their
tribe were among the allies of the French. Seeing
the desperate turn of affairs, they escaped from
time to time and came over to the winning side,
bringing reports of the state of the beleaguered
camp. They declared that sixty or eighty women
and children were already dead from hunger and
thirst, besides those killed by bullets and arrows,
that the fire of the besiegers was so hot that the
bodies could not be buried, and that the camp
of the Outagamies and Mascoutins was a den of
infection.
The end was near. The besieged savages called
from their palisades to ask if they might send
another deputation, and were told that they were
free to do so. The chief, Pemoussa, soon appeared
at the gate of the fort, naked, painted from head
to foot with green earth, wearing belts of wampum
about his waist, and others hanging from his
H12.J THEY BEG FOR MERCY. 283
shoulders, besides a kind of crown of wampum
beads on his head. With him came seven women,
meant as a peace-offering, all painted and adorned
with wampum. Three other principal chiefs fol-
lowed, each with a gourd rattle in his hand, to the
cadence of which the whole party sang and shouted
at the full stretch of their lungs an invocation to
the spirits for help and pity. They were con-
ducted to the parade, where the French and the
allied chiefs were already assembled, and Pemoussa
thus addressed them: —
" My Father, and all the Nations here present,
I come to ask for life. It is no longer ours, but
yours. I bring you these seven women, who are
my flesh, and whom I put at your feet, to be your
slaves. But do not think that I am afraid to die ;
it is the life of our women and children that I
ask of you." He then offered six wampum belts,
in token that his followers owned themselves
beaten, and begged for mercy. " Tell us, I pray
you," — these were his last words, — " something
that will lighten the hearts of my people when I
go back to them."
Dubuisson left the answer to his allies. The
appeal of the suppliant fell on hearts of stone.
The whole concourse sat in fierce and sullen
silence, and the envoys read their doom in the
gloomy brows that surrounded them. Eight or
ten of the allied savages presently came to
Dubuisson, and one of them said in a low voice :
" My Father, we come to ask your leave to knock
284 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
these four great chiefs in the head. It is they
who prevent our enemies from surrendering with-
out conditions. When they are dead, the rest will
be at our mercy."
Dubuisson told them that they must be drunk
to propose such a thing. " Remember/' he said,
" that both you and I have given our word for
their safety. If I consented to what you ask,
your father at Montreal would never forgive me.
Besides, you can see plainly that they and their
people cannot escape you."
The would-be murderers consented to bide their
time, and the wretched envoys went back with
their tidings of despair.
"I confess," wrote Dubuisson to the Governor,
a few days later, " that I was touched with com-
1 passion ; but as war and pity do not agree well
\ together, and especially as I understood that they
J were hired by the English to destroy us, I aban-
doned them to their fate."
The firing began once more, and the allied
hordes howled round the camp of their victims
like troops of ravenous wolves. But a surprise
awaited them. Indians rarely set guards at night,
and they felt sure now of their prey. It was the
nineteenth day of the siege. 1 The night closed
dark and rainy, and when morning came, the
\ enemy were gone. All among them that had
strength to move had glided away through the
1 According to the paper ascribed to Le'ry it was only the eighth.
712.] THEY SURRENDER. 285
gloom with the silence of shadows, passed the
camps of their sleeping enemies, and reached a
point of land projecting into the river opposite
the end of Isle au Cochon, and a few miles
above the French fort. Here, knowing that they
would be pursued, they barricaded themselves
with trunks and branches of trees. When the
astonished allies discovered their escape, they
hastily followed their trail, accompanied by some
of the French, led by Vincennes. In their eager-
ness they ran upon the barricade before seeing it,
and were met by a fire that killed and wounded
twenty of them. There was no alternative but to
forego their revenge and abandon the field, or be-
gin another siege. Encouraged by Dubuisson, they
built their wigwams on the new scene of opera-
tions; and being supplied by the French with
axes, mattocks, and two swivels, they made a wall
of logs opposite the barricade, from which 'they
galled the defenders with a close and deadly fire.
The Mississagas and jib was, who had lately ar-
rived, fished and hunted for the allies, while the
French furnished them with powder, ball, tobacco,
Indian corn, and kettles. The enemy fought des- /
perately for four days, and then, in utter exhaus-
tion, surrendered at discretion. 1
The women and children were divided among
the victorious hordes, and adopted or enslaved.
1 The paper ascribed to Le'ry says that they surrendered on a promise
from Vincennes that their lives should be spared, but that the promise
availed nothing.
286 THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT. [1712.
To the men no quarter was given. " Our Indians
amused themselves/' writes Dubuisson, " with
shooting four or five of them every day." Here,
however, another surprise awaited the conquerors
and abridged their recreation, for about a hundred
of these intrepid warriors contrived to make their
escape, and among them was the great war-chief
Pemoitssa.
The Outagamies were crippled, but not dis-
abled, for but a part of the tribe was involved
in this bloody affair. The rest were wrought
to fury by the fate of their kinsmen, and for
many years they remained thorns in the sides
of the French.
There is a disposition to assume that events like
that just recounted were a consequence of the con-
tact of white men with red; but the primitive
Indian was quite able to enact such tragedies
without the help of Europeans. Before French or
English influence had been felt in the interior of the
continent, a great part of North America was the
frequent witness of scenes still more lurid in color-
ing, and on a larger scale of horror. In the first
half of the seventeenth century the whole country,
from Lake Superior to the Tennessee, and from
the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, was ravaged by
wars of extermination, in which tribes, large and
powerful, by Indian standards, perished, dwindled
into feeble remnants, or were absorbed by other
tribes and vanished from sight. French pioneers
were sometimes involved in the carnage, but
1712] INTESTINE WARS. 287
neither they nor other Europeans were answerable
for it. 1
1 Dubuisson a Vaudreuil, 15 Juin, 1712. This is Dubuisson 's report
to the Governor, which soon after the event he sent to Montreal by the
hands of Vincennes. Pie says that the great fatigue through which he
has just passed prevents him from giving every detail, and he refers
Vaudreuil to the bearer for further information. The report is, however,
long and circumstantial.
Etut de ce que M. Dubuisson a depense pour le service du Roy pour
s'attirer les Nations et les mettre dans ses interets afin de resister aux
Outagamis et aux Mascoutins qui etaient page's des Anglais pour d&ruire
le paste du Fort de Ponchartrain du Detroit, 14 Oct. 1712. Dubuisson
reckons his outlay at 2,901 livres.
These documents, with the narrative ascribed to the engineer Lery, are
the contemporary authorities on which the foregoing account is based.
it
\
my
J^F"' CHAPTER XIII.
\^
1697-1750.
LOUISIANA.
The Mississippi to be occupied. — English Rivalry. — Iberville.
— Bienville. — Huguenots. — Views of Louis XIV. — Wives
for the Colony. — Slaves. — La Mothe-Cadillac. — Paternal
Government. — Crozat's Monopoly. — Factions. — The Mis-
sissippi Company. — New Orleans. — The Bubble bursts. —
Indian Wars. — The Colony firmly established. — The two
Heads, of New France.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century an event
took place that was to have a great influence on
the future of French America. This was the oc-
cupation by France of the mouth of the Missis-
sippi, and the vindication of her claim to the vast
and undefined regions which La Salle had called
Louisiana. La Salle's schemes had come to nought,
but they were revived, seven years after his death,
by his lieutenant, the gallant and faithful Henri
de Tonty, who urged the seizure of Louisiana for
three reasons : first, as a base of attack upon
Mexico ; secondly, as a depot for the furs and lead
ore of the interior ; and thirdly, as the only means
of preventing the English from becoming masters
of the West. 1
Three years later, the Sieur de Remonville,
a friend of La Salle, proposed the formation of
1 Henri de Tonty a Cabart de Villermont, 11 Sept. 1694 (Margr# IV. 3).
1697-1699.] ENGLISH RIVALRY. 289
a company for the settlement of Louisiana, and
called for immediate action as indispensable to
anticipate the. English. 1 The English were, in
fact, on the point of taking possession of the
mouth of the Mississippi, and were prevented only
by the prompt intervention of the rival nation.
If they had succeeded, colonies would have
grown up on the Gulf of Mexico after the type of
those already planted along the Atlantic : volun-
tary immigrants would have brought to a new
home their old inheritance of English freedom ;
would have ruled themselves by laws of their own
making, through magistrates of their own choice ;
would have depended on their own efforts, and not
on government help, in the invigorating conscious-
ness that their destinies were in their own hands,
and that they themselves, and not others, were to
gather the fruits of their toils. Out of conditions
like these would have sprung communities, not
brilliant, but healthy, orderly, well rooted in the
soil, and of hardy and vigorous growth.
But the principles of absolutism, and not those
of a regulated liberty, were to rule in Louisiana.
The new French colony was to be the child of the
Crown. Cargoes of emigrants, willing or unwilling,
were to be shipped by authority to the fever-
stricken banks of the Mississippi, — cargoes made
up in part of those whom fortune and their own
defects had sunk to dependence ; to whom labor
was strange and odious, but who dreamed of gold
1 Mtrrioire sur le Projet d'establir une nouvelle Colonie au Mississippi,
1697 (Margry, IV. 21).
vol. i. — 19
290 LOUISIANA. [1698,1699.
mines and pearl fisheries, and wealth to be won in
the New World and spent in the Old ; who wore the
shackles of a paternal despotism which they were
told to regard as of divine institution ; who were
at the mercy of military rulers set over them by
the King, and agreeing in nothing except in en-
forcing the mandates of arbitrary power and the
withering maxim that the labor of the colonist was
due, not to himself, but to his masters. It remains
to trace briefly the results of such conditions.
The before-mentioned scheme of Remonville for
settling the Mississippi country had no result. In
the next year the gallant Le Moyne d'Iberville,
who has been called the Cid, or, more fitly, the
Jean Bart, of Canada, offered to carry out the
schemes of La Salle and plant a colony in
Louisiana. 1 One thing had become clear, — France
must act at once, or lose the Mississippi. Already
there was a movement in London to seize upon it,
under a grant to two noblemen. Iberville's offer
was accepted ; he was ordered to build a fort at the
mouth of the great river, and leave a garrison to
hold it. 2 He sailed with two frigates, the " Badine "
and the " Marin," and towards the end of January,
1699, reached Pensacola. Here he found two
Spanish ships, which would not let him enter the
harbor. Spain, no less than England, was bent on
making good her claim to the Mississippi and the
Gulf of Mexico, and the two ships had come from
Vera Cruz on this errand. Three hundred men
1 Iberville au Ministre, 18 Juin, 1698 (Margry, IV. 51).
2 Memoire pour servir d' Instruction au Sieur d'Iberville (Margry, IV. 72)
1699.J IBERVILLE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 291
had been landed, and a stockade fort was already
built. Iberville left the Spaniards undisturbed and
unchallenged, and felt his way westward along the
coasts of Alabama and Mississippi, exploring and
sounding as he went. At the beginning of March
his boats were caught in a strong muddy current
of fresh water, and he saw that he had reached
the object of his search, the " fatal river " of the
unfortunate La Salle. He entered it, encamped, on
the night of the 3d, twelve leagues above its mouth,
climbed a solitary tree, and could see nothing but
broad flats of bushes and canebrakes. 1
Still pushing upward against the current, he
reached in eleven days a village of the Bayagoula
Indians, where he found the chief attired in a
blue capote, which was probably put on in honor
of the white strangers, and which, as the wearer
declared, had been given him by Henri de Tonty,
on his descent of the Mississippi in search of La
Salle, thirteen years before. Young Le Moyne de
Bienville, who accompanied his brother Iberville
in a canoe, brought him, some time after, a let-
ter from Tonty which the writer had left in the
hands of another chief, to be delivered to La Salle
in case of his arrival, and which Bienville had
bought for a hatchet. Iberville welcomed it as
convincing proof that the river he had entered was
in truth the Mississippi. 2 After pushing up the
1 Journal d' Iberville (Margry, IV. 131).
2 This letter, which DTberville gives in his Journal, is dated "Du
Village des Quinipissas, le 20 Avril, 1685." Iberville identifies the
Quinipissas with the Bayagoulas. The date of the letter was evidently
misread, as Tonty's journey was in 1686. See La Salle and the Discovery
292 • LOUISIANA. [1699.
stream till the 24th, he returned to the ships by
way of lakes Maurepas and Ponchartrain.
Iberville now repaired to the harbor of Biloxi,
on the coast of the present State of Mississippi.
Here he built a. small stockade fort, where he left
eighty men, under the Sieur de Sauvolle, to hold
the country for Louis XIV. ; and this done, he
sailed for France. Thus the first foundations of
Louisiana were laid in Mississippi.
Bienville, whom his brother had left at Biloxi
as second in command, was sent by Sauvolle on an
exploring expedition up the Mississippi with five
men in two canoes. At the bend of the river now
called English Turn, — Tour a V Anglais, — below
the site of New Orleans, he found an English
/f^/ corvette of ten guns, having, as passengers, a
number of French Protestant families taken on
board from the Carolinas, with the intention of
settling on the Mississippi. The commander, Cap-
% tain Louis Bank, declared that his vessel was one
of three sent from London by a company formed
jointly of Englishmen and Huguenot refugees for
the purpose of founding a colony. 1 Though not
quite sure that they were upon the Mississippi,
they were on their way up the stream to join a
party of Englishmen said to be among the Chicka-
saws, with whom they were trading for Indian
slaves. Bienville assured Bank that he was not
of the Great West, 429, note. Iberville's lieutenant, Sugeres, commanding
the " Marin," gives the date correctly. Journal de la Fregate le Marin,
1698, 1699 (Margry, IV.).
1 Journal du Voyage du Chevalier d' 'Iberville sur le Vaisseau du Roy la
Renommee en 1699 (Margry, IV. 395).
1699.] PETITION OF HUGUENOTS. 293
upon the Mississippi, but on another river belonging
to King Louis, who had a strong fort there and
several settlements. "The too-credulous English-
man," says a French writer, "believed these in-
ventions and turned back." 1 First, however, a
French engineer in the service of Bank contrived
to have an interview with Bienville, and gave him
a petition to the King of France, signed by four
hundred Huguenots who had taken refuge in the
Carolinas after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. The petitioners begged that they might
have leave to settle in Louisiana, with liberty of
conscience, under the French Crown. In due time
they got their answer. The King replied, through
the minister, Ponchartrain, that he had not ex-
pelled heretics from France in order that they
should set up a republic in America. 2 Thus, by
the bigotrj' that had been the bane of Canada and
of France herself, Louis XIV. threw away the
opportunity of establishing a firm and healthy
colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.
So threatening was the danger that England
would seize the country that Iberville had scarcely
landed in France when he was sent back with a
1 Gayarre, Histoire de la Louisiane (1846), I. 69. Benard de la Harpe,
Journal historique (1831), 20. Coxe says, in the preface to his Description
of Carohtna (1722), that " the present proprietor of Carolana, my honour'd
Father, . . . was the author of this English voyage to the Mississippi,
having in the year 1698 equipp'd and fitted out Two Ships for Discovery
by Sea, and also for building a Fortification and settling a Colony by
land; there being in both vessels, besides Sailors and Common Men,
above Thirty English and French Volunteers." Coxe adds that the
expedition would have succeeded if one of the commanders had not
failed to do his duty.
2 Gayarre', Histoire de la Louisiane (1846), I. 69.
294 LOUISIANA. [1699, 1701
reinforcement. The colonial views of the King
may be gathered from his instructions to his officer.
Iberville was told to seek out diligently the best
"places for establishing pearl-fisheries, though it was
admitted that .the pearls of Louisiana were un-
commonly bad. He was also to catch bison calves,
make a fenced park to hold them, and tame them
for the sake of their wool, which was reputed to
be of value for various fabrics. Above all, he was
to look for mines, the finding of which the docu-
ment declares to be " la grande affaire." 1
On the 8th of January, Iberville reached Biloxi,
and soon after went up the Mississippi to that re-
markable tribe of sun-worshippers, the Natchez,
whose villages were on and near the site of the
city that now bears their name. Some thirty miles
above, he found a kindred tribe, the Taensas,
whose temple took fire during his visit, when, to
his horror, he saw five living infants thrown into
the flames by their mothers to appease the angry
spirits. 2
Retracing his course, he built a wooden redoubt
near one of the mouths of the Mississippi to keep
out the dreaded English.
In the next year he made a third voyage, and
ordered the feeble establishment at Biloxi to be
moved to the bay of Mobile. This drew a protest
from the Spaniards, who rested their claims to the
s country on the famous bull of Pope Alexander VI.
1 Memoire pour servir d' Instruction au Sieur d' Iberville (Margry, IV.
348).
2 Journal du Voyage du Chevalier d'Iberville sur le Vaisseau du Roy la
Renomme'e, 1699, 1700.
1700-1704.] FRANCE AND SPAIN. 295
The question was referred to the two Crowns.
Louis XIV., a stanch champion of the papacy
when his duties as a Catholic did not clash with his
interests as a king, refused submission to the bull,
insisted that the Louisiana country was his, and
declared that he would hold fast to it because he
was bound, as a son of Holy Church, to convert
the Indians and keep out the English heretics. 1
Spain was then at peace with France, and her new
king, the Due d'Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV.,
needed the support of his powerful kinsman;
hence his remonstrance against French encroach-
ment was of the mildest. 2
Besides Biloxi and Mobile Bay, the French
formed a third establishment at Dauphin Island.
The Mississippi itself, which may be calfed the vital
organ of the colony, was thus far neglected, being
occupied by no settlement and guarded only by a
redoubt near one of its mouths.
Of the emigrants sent out by the court to the
new land of promise, the most valuable by far were
a number of Canadians who had served under
Iberville at Hudson Bay. The rest were largely
of the sort who are described by that officer as
" beggars sent out to enrich themselves," and who
expected the government to feed them while they
looked for pearls and gold mines. The paternal
1 Mtmoire de la Junte de Guerre des Indes. Le Ministre de la Marine
au Due d'Harcourt (Margry, IV 553, 568).
2 Iberville wrote in 1701 a long memorial, in which he tried to convince
the Spanish court that it was for the interest of Spain that the French
should form a barrier between her colonies and those of England, which,
he says, were about to seize the country as far as the Mississippi and
beyond it.
296 LOUISIANA. [1704-1706.
providence of Versailles, mindful of their needs,
sent them, in 1704, a gift of twenty marriageable
girls, described as " nurtured in virtue and piety,
and accustomed to work." Twenty-three more
came in the next year from the same benignant
source, besides seventy-five soldiers, five priests,
and two nuns. Food, however, was not sent in
proportion to the consumers ; and as no crops were
raised in Louisiana, famine and pestilence followed,
till the starving colonists were forced to live on
shell-fish picked up along the shores.
Disorder and discord filled the land of promise.
Nicolas de la Salle, the commissaire ordonnateui*,
an official answering to the Canadian intendant,
wrote to the minister Ponchartrain, that Iberville
and his brothers, Bienville and Chateauguay, were
" thieves and knaves." l La Vente, cure of Mobile,
joined in the cry against Bienville, and stirred
soldiers and settlers to disaffection ; but the
bitterest accuser of that truly valuable officer was
the worthy matron who held the unenviable post
of directress of the " King's girls," — that is, the
young women sent out as wives for the colonists.
It seems that she had matrimonial views for her-
self as well as for her charge ; and she wrote to
Ponchartrain that Major Boisbriant, commander of
the garrison, would certainly have married her if
Bienville had not interfered and dissuaded him. " It
is clear," she adds, " that M. de Bienville has not
the qualities necessary for governing the colony." 2
1 Nicolas de la Salle au Ministre, 7 Sept. 1706.
2 " II est clair que M. de Bienville n'a pas les qualites necessaires pour
1708.] OFFICIAL DISPUTES. 297
Bienville was now chief in authority. Charges
of peculation and other offences poured in against
him, and at last, though nothing was proved, one
De Muys was sent to succeed him, with orders to
send him home a prisoner if on examination the
accusations should prove to be true. De Muys
died on the voyage. Artaguette, the new inten-
dant, proceeded to make the inquiry, but refused to
tell Bienville the nature of the charges against him,
saying that he had orders not to do so. Never-
theless, when he had finished his investigation
he reported to the minister that the accused was
innocent ; on which Nicolas de la Salle, whom he
had supplanted as intendant, wrote to Ponchartrain
that Artaguette had deceived him, being no better
than Bienville himself. La Salle further declared
that Barrot, the surgeon of the colony, was an
ignoramus, and that he made money by selling
the medicines supplied by the King to cure his
Louisianian subjects. Such were the transatlan-
tic workings of the paternalism of Versailles.
Bienville, who had been permitted to resume
his authority, paints the state of the colony to
his masters, and tells them that the inhabitants
are dying of hunger, — not all, however, for he
mentions a few exceptional cases of prosperity.
These were certain thrifty colonists from Rochelle,
who, says Bienville, have grown rich by keeping
dram-shops, and now want to go back to France ;
but he has set a watch over them, thinking it just
bien gouverner la colonie." Gayarre found this curious letter in the
Archives de la Marine.
298 LOUISIANA. (1710.
that they should be forced to stay in the colony. 1
This was to add the bars of a prison to the other
attractions of the new home.
As the colonists would not work, there was an
attempt to make Indian slaves work for them ;
but as these continually ran off, Bienville proposed
to open a barter with the French West Indies,
giving three red slaves for two black ones, — an
exchange which he thought would be mutually ad-
vantageous, since the Indians, being upon islands,
could no longer escape. The court disapproved
the plan, on the ground that the West Indians
would give only their worst negroes in exchange,
and that the only way to get good ones was to
fetch them from Guinea.
Complaints against Bienville were renewed till
the court sent out La Mothe-Cadillac to succeed
him, with orders to examine the charges against
his predecessor, whom it was his interest to con-
demn, in order to keep the governorship. In his
new post, Cadillac displayed all his old faults, be-
gan by denouncing the country in unmeasured
terms, and wrote in his usual sarcastic vein to the
colonial minister : " I have seen the garden on
Dauphin Island, which had been described to me
as a terrestrial paradise. I saw there three seed-
ling pear-trees, three seedling apple-trees, a little
plum-tree about three feet high, with seven bad
plums on it, a vine some thirty feet long, with
nine bunches of grapes, some of them withered or
rotten and some partly ripe, about forty plants
1 De'peche de Bienville, 12 Oct. 1708.
1711,1712] STATE OF THE COLONY. 299
of French melons, and a few pumpkins. This
is M. d ' Artaguette's terrestrial paradise, M. de
Remonville's Pomona, and M. de Mandeville's For-
tunate Islands. Their stories are mere fables."
Then he slanders the soil, which, he declares, will
produce neither grain nor vegetables.
D'Artaguette, no longer fancying himself in
Eden, draws a dismal picture of the state of the
colony. There are, he writes, only ten or twelve
families who cultivate the soil. The inhabitants,
naturally lazy, are ruined by the extravagance of
their wives. "It is necessary to send out girls
and laboring-men. I am convinced that we shall
easily discover mines when persons are sent us
who understand that business. " 1
The colonists felt no confidence in the future of
Louisiana. The King was its sole support, and if,
as was likely enough, he should tire of it, their
case would be deplorable. When Bienville ruled
over them, they had used him as their scapegoat ;
but that which made the colony languish was not
he, but the vicious system it was his business to en-
force. The royal edicts and arbitrary commands
that took the place of law proceeded from masters
thousands of miles away, who knew nothing of
the country, could not understand its needs, and
scarcely tried to do so.
In 1711, though the mischievous phantom of
gold and silver mines still haunted the colony,
we find it reported that the people were beginning
1 D'Artaguette in Gayarre, Histoire de la Louisiane. This valuable
work consists of a series of documents, connected by a thread of narrative.
300 LOUISIANA. [1712.
to work, and were planting tobacco. The King,
however, was losing patience with a dependency
that cost him endless expense and trouble, and
brought little or nothing in return, — and this at
a time when he had a costly and disastrous war on
his hands, and was in no mood to bear supernu-
merary burdens. The plan of giving over a colony
to a merchant, or a company of merchants, was not
new. It had been tried in other French colonies
with disastrous effect. Yet it was now tried again.
Louisiana was farmed out for fifteen years to An-
toine Crozat, a wealthy man of business. The
countries made over to him extended from the
British colonies on the east, to New Mexico on
the west, and the Rio del Norte on the south, in-
cluding the entire region watered by the Missis-
sippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, and their tributaries,
as far north as the Illinois. In comparison with
this immense domain, which was all included un-
der the name of Louisiana, the present State so
called is but a small patch on the American map.
To Crozat was granted a monopoly of the trade,
wholesale and retail, domestic and foreign, of all
these countries, besides the product of all mines,
after deducting one-fourth reserved for the King.
He was empowered to send one vessel a year to
Guinea for a cargo of slaves. The King was to
pay the Governor and other Crown officers, and dur-
ing the first nine years the troops also ; though
after that time Crozat was to maintain them till
the end of his term.
In consideration of these and other privileges,
1712-1714.] MONOPOLY OF CROZAT. 301
the grantee was bound to send to Louisiana a spe-
cified number of settlers every year. His charter
provided that the royal edicts and the Coutume de
Paris should be the law of the colony, to be ad-
ministered by a council appointed by the King.
When Louisiana was thus handed over to a
speculator for a term of years, it needed no prophet
to foretell that he would get all he could out of it,
and put as little into it as possible. When Crozat
took possession of the colony, the French court
had been thirteen years at work in building it up.
The result of its labors was a total population, in-
cluding troops, government officials, and clergy, of
380 souls, of whom 170 were in the King's pay.
Only a few of the colonists were within the limits
of the present Louisiana. The rest lived in or
around the feeble stockade forts at Mobile, Biloxi,
Ship Island, and Dauphin Island. This last sta-
tion had been partially abandoned; but some of
the colonists proposed to return to it, in order to
live by fishing, and only waited, we are told, for
help from the King. This incessant dependence j
on government relaxed the fibres of the colony
and sapped its life-blood.
The King was now exchanged for Crozat and
his grinding monopoly. The colonists had carried
on a modest trade with the Spaniards at Pensa-
cola in skins, fowls, Indian corn, and a few other
articles, bringing back a little money in return.
This, their only source of profit, was now cut off ; r '
they could sell nothing, even to each other. They
were forbidden to hold meetings without perniis-
302 f&iS/^ LOUISIANA. [1712-1714.
sion ; but some of them secretly drew up a peti-
tion to La Mothe-Cadillac, who was stjll the
official chief of the colony, begging that the agents
of Crozat should be restricted to wholesale deal-
ings, and that the inhabitants might be allowed to
trade at retail. Cadillac denounced the petition
as seditious, threatened to hang the bearer of it,
and deigned no other answer.
He resumed his sarcasms against the colony.
" In my opinion this country is not worth a straw
(ne vaut pas un fetu). The inhabitants are eager
to be taken out of it. The soldiers are always
grumbling, and with reason/' As to the council,
which was to be the only court of justice, he says
that no such thing is possible, because there are
no proper persons to compose it ; and though
Duclos, the new intendant, has proposed two can-
didates, the first of these, the Sieur de Lafresniere,
learned to sign his name only four months ago, and
the other, being chief surgeon of the colony, is too
busy to serve. 1
Between Bienville, the late governor, and La
Mothe-Cadillac, who had supplanted him, there
was a standing quarrel ; and the colony was split
into hostile factions, led by the two disputants.
The minister at Versailles was beset by their mu-
tual accusations, and Bienville wrote that his re*
fusal to marry Cadillac's daughter was the cause
of the spite the Governor bore him. 2
1 La Mothe-Cadillac au Ministre, in Gay aire, I. 104, 105.
2 " Que si M. de Lamothe-Cadillac lui portoit tant d'animositie, c'e'tott
ft cause du refus qu'il avoit fait d'epouser sa fille." Bienville in Gayarre*,
I. 116.
I
1710-1714.] WIVES FOR THE COLONISTS. 303
The indefatigable cure De la Vente sent to Pon-
chartrain a memorial, in the preamble of which he
says that since Monsieur le Ministre wishes to be
informed exactly of the state of things in Loui-
siana, he, La 1 Vente, has the honor, with malice to
nobody, to make known the pure truth ; after
which he goes on to say that the inhabitants " are
nearly all drunkards, gamblers, blasphemers, and
enemies of everything good ; " and he proceeds to
illustrate the statement with many particulars. 1
As the inhabitants were expected to work for
Crozat, and not for themselves, it naturally fol-
lowed that they would not work at all ; and idle-
ness produced the usual results.
The yearly shipment of girls continued ; but
there was difficulty in finding husbands for them.
The reason was not far to seek. Duclos, the inten-
dant, reports the arrival of an invoice of twelve of
them, " so ugly that the inhabitants are in no hurry
to take them. ,, 2 The Canadians, who formed the
most vigorous and valuable part of the population, /
much preferred Indian squaws. " It seems to
me," pursues the Intendant, " that in the choice
of girls, good looks should be more considered
than virtue. " This latter requisite seems, at the
time, to have found no more attention than the
other, since the candidates for matrimony were
drawn from the Parisian hospitals and houses of
1 Me'moire du Cure* de la Vente, 1714.
2 The earlier cargoes of girls seem to have been better chosen, and
there was no difficulty in mating them. Serious disputes sometimes rose
' from the competition of rival suitors. Dumont, M€moires historiques de la
chap. v.
304 LOUISIANA. [1717.
correction, from the former of which Crozat was
authorized to take one hundred girls a year, " in
order to increase the population." These hospi-
tals were compulsory asylums for the poor and
vagrant of both sexes, of whom the great Hopital
General of Paris contained at one time more than
six thousand. 1
Crozat had built his chief hopes of profit on a
trade, contraband or otherwise, with the Mexican
ports ; but the Spanish officials, faithful instru-
ments of the exclusive policy of their government,
would not permit it, and were so vigilant that he
could not elude them. At the same time, to his
vexation, he found that the King's officers in Loui-
siana, with more address or better luck, and in
contempt of his monopoly, which it was their
business to protect, carried on, for their own profit,
a small smuggling trade with Vera Cruz. He
complained that they were always thwarting his
agents and conspiring against his interests. At
last, finding no resource left but an unprofitable
trade with the Indians, he gave up his charter,
which had been a bane to the colony and a loss to
himself. Louisiana returned to the Crown, and
was soon passed over to the new Mississippi Com-
pany, called also the Western Company. 2
That charlatan of genius, the Scotchman John
Law, had undertaken, with the eager support of
1 Prominent officials of the colony are said to have got wives from
these sources. Nicolas de la Salle is reported to have had two in suc-
cession, both from the hospitals. Be'nard de la Harpe, 107 (ed. 1831).
2 Lettres patentes en forme d'Edit porta nt e'ohlissement de In Comj>agnie
d' 'Occident, in Le Page du Pratz, Histoirt de la Louisiane, I. 4
1717-1720.] THE MISSISSIPPI COMPANY. 305
the Regent Duke of Orleans, to deliver France
from financial ruin through a prodigious system
of credit, of which Louisiana, with its imaginary
'gold mines, was made the basis. The government
used every means to keep up the stock of the Mis-
sissippi Company. It was ordered that the notes
of the royal bank and all certificates of public
debt should be accepted at par in payment for its
shares. Powers and privileges were lavished on
it. It was given the monopoly of the French
slave trade, the monopoly of tobacco, the profits
of the royal mint, and the farming of the revenues
of the kingdom. Ingots of gold, pretending to
have come from the new Eldorado of Louisiana,
were displayed in the shop-windows of Paris.
The fever of speculation rose to madness, and the
shares of the company were inflated to monstrous
and insane proportions.
When Crozat resigned his charter, Louisiana, by
the highest estimates, contained about seven hun-
dred souls, including soldiers, but not blacks or
Indians. Crozat's successors, however, say that
the whole number of whites, men, women, and
children, was not above four hundred. 1 When the
Mississippi Company took the colony in charge, it
was but a change of despots. Louisiana was a
prison. But while no inhabitant could leave it
without permission of the authorities, all Jews
were expelled, and all Protestants excluded. The
colonists could buy nothing except from the agents
of the company, and sell nothing except to the
1 Regtement de Regie, 1721.
vol. i. —20
306 LOUISIANA. [1717-1721.
same all-powerful masters, always at prices fixed
by them. Foreign vessels were forbidden to enter
any port of Louisiana, on pain of confiscation.
The coin in circulation was nearly all Spanish,
and in less than two years the Company, by a
series of decrees, made changes of about eighty per
cent in its value. Freedom of conscience, freedom
of speech, of trade, and of action, were alike de-
nied. Hence voluntary immigration was not to be
expected; "but," says the Due de Saint-Simon,
" the government wished to establish effective set-
tlements in these vast countries, after the example
of the English, and therefore, in order to people
them, vagabonds and beggars, male and female,
including many women of the town, were seized
for the purpose both in Paris and throughout
France." * Saint-Simon approves these proceed-
ings in themselves, as tending at once to purge
France and people Louisiana, but thinks the busi-
ness was managed in a way to cause needless
exasperation among the lower classes.
\ In 1720 it was ordered by royal edict that no
more vagabonds or criminals should be sent to
Louisiana. The edict, it seems, touched only one
sex, for in the next year eighty girls were sent
to the colony from the Parisian House of Cor-
rection called the Salpetriere. There had been
a more or less constant demand for wives, as
appears by letters still preserved in the archives
of Paris, the following extract from one of which
is remarkable for the freedom with which the
1 Saint-Simon> M&noires (ed. Cheruel), XVII. 461.
1717-1722.] BIENVILLE REAPPOINTED. 307
writer, a M. de Chassin, takes it upon him to ad-
dress a minister of state in a court where punctilio
reigned supreme. " You see, Monseigneur, that
nothing is wanting now to make a solid settle
ment in Louisiana but a certain piece of furni-
ture which one often repents having got, and
with which I shall dispense, like the rest, till
the Company sends us girls who have at least
some show of virtue. If there happens to be any
young woman of your acquaintance who wants to>
make the voyage for love of me, I should be
much obliged to her, and would do my best to
show her my gratitude.' ' 1
The Company, which was invested with sov-
ereign powers, began its work by sending to
Louisiana three companies of soldiers and sixty-
nine colonists. Its wisest act was the removal of
the Governor, L'Epinay, who had supplanted La
Mothe-Cadillac, and the reappointment of Bien-
ville in his place. Bienville immediately sought
out a spot for establishing a permanent station on
the Mississippi. Fifty men were sent to clear the
ground, and in spite of an inundation which
overflowed it for a time, the feeble foundations
of New Orleans were laid. Louisiana, hitherto dif-
fused through various petty cantonments, far and
near, had at last a capital, or the germ of one.
It was the 6th of September, 1717, when the
charter of the Mississippi Company was entered
in the registers of the Parliament of Paris; and
from that time forward, before the offices of the
1 De Chassin au Ministre, 1 Juillet, 1722, in Gayarre, I. 190.
I
308 LOUISIANA. [1722
1723.
Company in the Rue Quincampoix, crowds of
crazed speculators jostled and fought from morning
till night to get their names inscribed among the
stockholders. Within five years after, the huge
glittering bubble had burst. The shares, each one
of which had seemed a fortune, found no more
purchasers, and in its fall the Company dragged
down with it its ally and chief creditor, the bank.
All was dismay and despair, except in those who
had sold out In time, and turned delusive paper
into solid values. John Law, lately the idol and
reputed savior of France, fled for his life, amid a
howl of execration.
Yet the interests of the kingdom required that
Louisiana should be sustained. The illusions that
had given to the Mississippi Company a morbid and
intoxicated vitality were gone, but the Company
lingered on, and the government still lent it a help-
ing hand. A French writer remarks that the few
Frenchmen who were famishing on the shores of
the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico had cost
the King, since the colony began, more than
150,000 livres a year. The directors of the Com-
pany reported that they had shipped 7,020 per-
sons to the colony, besides four hundred already
there when they took possession, and that 5,420
still remained, the rest having died or escaped. 1
Besides this importation of whites, they had also
brought six hundred slaves from Guinea. It is
1 A considerable number of the whites brought to Louisiana in the
name of the Company had been sent at the charge of persons to whom
it had granted lands in various parts of the colony. Among these was
John Law himself, who had the grant of large tracts on the Arkansas.
1724.] ROYAL EDICTS. 309
reckoned that the King, Crozat, and the Mis-
sissippi Company had spent among them about
eight million livres on Louisiana, without any
return. 1
. The bursting of the Mississippi bubble did not
change the principles of administration in Loui-
siana. The settlers, always looking to France to
supply their needs and protect them against their
own improvidence, were in the habit of butchering
for food the live-stock sent them for propaga-
tion. The remedy came in the shape of a royal
edict forbidding any colonist to kill, without per- '
mission of the authorities, any cow, sheep, or lamb
belonging to himself, on pain of a fine of three
hundred livres ; or to kill any horse, cow, or bull
belonging to another, on pain of death.
Authority and order were the watchwords, and ^
disorder was the rule. The agents of power quar-
relled among themselves, except when they leagued
together to deceive their transatlantic masters and
cover their own misdeeds. Each maligned the
other, and it was scarcely possible for the King or
the Company to learn the true state of affairs in
their distant colony.
Accusations were renewed against Bienville, till
in 1724 he was ordered to France to give account
of his conduct, and the Sieur Perier was sent out to
take his place. Perier had no easy task. The
Natchez Indians, among whom the French had
made a settlement and built a fort called Fort
Rosalie, suddenly rose on their white neighbors
1 Benard de la Harpe, 371 (ed. 1831).
1733.
310 LOUISIANA. [1729-1733.
and massacred nearly all of them. 1 Then followed
a long course of Indian wars. The French believed
that there was a general conspiracy among the
Southern tribes for their destruction, — though
this was evidently an exaggeration of the danger,
which, however, was serious. The Chickasaws, a
brave and warlike people, living chiefly in what
is now western Tennessee and Kentucky, made
common cause with the Natchez, while the more
numerous Choctaws, most of whose villages were
in the present State of Mississippi, took part with
the French. More than a thousand soldiers had
been sent to Louisiana; but Perier pronounced them
" so bad that they seem to have been made on pur-
pose for the colony." 2 There were also about eight
hundred militia. Perier showed little vigor, and
had little success. His chief resource was to set
the tribes against each other. He reports that
his Indian allies had brought him a number of
Natchez prisoners, and that he had caused six of
them, four men and two women, to be burned
alive, and had sent the rest as slaves to St.
Domingo. The Chickasaws, aided by English
traders from the Carolinas, proved formidable ad-
versaries, and when attacked, ensconced themselves
in stockade forts so strong that, as the Governor
complains, there was no dislodging the defenders
without cannon and heavy mortars.
In this state of things the directors of the Mis-
1 Lettre du Pere le Petit, in Lettres Edifiantes ; Dumont, Memoires
historiques, chap, xxvii.
2 " Nos soldats, qui semblent etre faits express pour la colonie, tant ils
sont mauvais." Depeche de Perier, 18 Mars, 1730.
1731-1733.] A CHANGE OF MASTERS. 311
sissippi Company, whose affairs had gone from bad
to worse, declared that they could no longer bear
the burden of Louisiana, and begged the King to
take it off; their hands. The colony was there-
fore transferred from the mercantile despotism of
the Company to the paternal despotism of the
Crown, and it profited by the change. Commercial
monopoly was abolished. Trade between France
and Louisiana was not only permitted, but en-
couraged by bounties and exemption from duties ;
and instead of paying to the Company two hundred
per cent of profit on indispensable supplies, the
colonists now got them at a reasonable price.
Perier was removed, and again Bienville was
made governor. Diron d'Artaguette, who came
with him as intendant, reported that the colonists
were flying the country to escape starvation, and
Bienville adds that during the past year they had
subsisted for three months on the seed of reeds and
wild grasses. 1 The white population had rather
diminished than increased during the last twelve
years, while the blacks, who had lately conspired
to massacre all the French along the Mississippi,
had multiplied to two thousand. 2 A French writer
says : " There must have been a worm gnawing the
root of the tree that had been transplanted into so f\<{
rich a soil, to make it wither instead of growing.
What it needed was the air of liberty." But the
air of liberty is malaria to those who have not
1 Memoire de Bienville, 1730.
* 2 For a curious account of the discovery of this negro plot, see Le Page
du Pratz, III. 304.
V
312 LOUISIANA. [1739,1740.
learned to breathe it. The English colonists throve
in it because they and their forefathers had been
trained in a school of self-control and self-depen-
dence ; and what would have been intoxication for
others, was vital force to them.
Bienville found the colony again threatened with
a general rising, or, as he calls it, a revolt, of the
Indian tribes. The Carolina traders, having no
advantage of water-ways, had journeyed by land
with pack-horses through a thousand miles of wil-
derness, and with the aid of gifts had instigated
the tribes to attack the French. The Chickasaws
especially, friends of the English and arch-enemies
of Louisiana, became so threatening that a crush-
ing blow against them was thought indispensable.
The forces of the colony were mustered to attempt
it; the enterprise was mismanaged, and failed
completely. 1 Bienville tried to explain the dis-
aster ; but his explanation was ill-received at
court, he was severely rebuked, reproved at the
same time for permitting two families to emigrate
to St. Domingo, and sharply ordered to suffer
nobody to leave Louisiana without express license
-"from Versailles. Deeply wounded, he offered his
resignation, and it was accepted. Whatever his
i failings, he had faithfully served the colony,
I and gained from posterity the title of Father of
Louisiana.
With the help of industrious nursing, — or, one
might almost say, in spite of it, — Louisiana began
1 Depeche de Bienville, 6 Mai, 1740. Compare Le Page du Pratz, III.,
chap. xxiv.
1720-1740.] THE TWO FRENCH COLONIES. 313
at last to strike roots into the soil and show signs
of growth, though feebly as compared with its
sturdy rivals along the Atlantic seaboard, which
had cost their King nothing, and had been
treated, for the most part, with the coolest neglect.
Cavelier de la Salle's dream of planting a firm
settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, and
utilizing, by means of it, the resources of the vast
interior, was, after half a century, in some meas-
ure realized. New France (using that name in
its broadest geographical sense) had now two
heads, — Canada and Louisiana ; one looking upon "
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the other upon the
Gulf of Mexico. Canada was not without jealousy •*"'
of her younger and weaker sister, lest she might
draw away, as she had begun to do at the first,
some of the most active and adventurous elements
of the Canadian population ; lest she might prove
a competitor in the fur-trade ; and lest she should
encroach on the Illinois and other western do-
mains, which the elder and stronger sister claimed
as her own. These fears were not unfounded ; yet
the vital interests of the two French colonies
were the same, and each needed the help of the
other in the prime and all-essential task of keep- */
ing the British colonies in check. The chiefs of
Louisiana looked forward to a time when the
great Southern tribes, Creeks, Cherokees, Choc-
taws, and even the dreaded Chickasaws, won over ^
by French missionaries to the Church, and there-
fore to France, should be turned against the en-
croaching English to stop their westward progress
314 LOUISIANA. [1730-1750.
and force them back to the borders of the Atlantic.
Meanwhile the chiefs of Canada were maturing the
plan — pursued with varying assiduity, but always
kept in view — of connecting the two vital extremi-
ties of New France by a chain of forts to control
the passes of the West, keep communications open,
and set English invasion at defiance.
CHAPTER XIV.
1700-1732.
THE OUTAGAMIE WAR.
The Western Posts. — Detroit. — The Illinois. — Perils op thb
West. — The Outagamies. — Their Turbulence. — English
Instigation. — Louvigny's Expedition. — Defeat op Outaga-
mies. — Hostilities renewed. — Lignery's Expedition. — Ou«
TAGAMIES ATTACKED BY VlLLIERS. — By HuRONS AND IROQUOIS.
— La Butte des Morts. — The Sacs and Foxes.
The rulers of Canada labored without ceasing in
their perplexing task of engrossing the fur-trade
of the West and controlling the Western tribes to
the exclusion of the English. Every day made
it clearer that to these ends the Western wilder-
ness must be held by forts and trading-posts ; and
this policy of extension prevailed more and more,
in spite of the league of merchants who wished to
draw the fur-trade to Montreal, in spite of the
Jesuits, who felt that their influence over the re-
moter tribes would be compromised by the presence
among them of officers, soldiers, and traders, and
in spite of the King himself, who feared that the
diffusion of the colony would breed disorder and
insubordination.
Detroit, the most important of the Western
posts, struggled through a critical infancy, in the
316 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1700-1722.
charge of its founder, La Mothe-Cadillac, till, by a
choice not very judicious, he was made governor
of Louisiana. During his rule the population
had slowly increased to about two hundred souls ;
but after he left the place it diminished to a
point that seemed to threaten the feeble post
with extinction. About 1722 it revived again ;
voyageurs and discharged soldiers settled about
the fort, and the parish register shows six or
eight births in the course of the year. 1
Meanwhile, on the banks of the Mississippi
another settlement was growing up which did not
owe its birth to official patronage, and yet was
destined to become the most noteworthy offspring
of Canada in the West. It was known to the
French as " the Illinois/' from the name of the
group of tribes belonging to that region. La
Salle had occupied the banks of the river Illinois
in 1682 ; but the curious Indian colony which he
gathered about his fort on the rock of St. Louis 2
dispersed after his death, till few or none were left
except the Kaskaskias, a sub-tribe of the Illinois.
These still lived on the meadow below Fort St.
Louis, where the Jesuits Marquette, Allouez, Rale,
Gravier, and Marest labored in turn for their con-
version, till, in 1700, they or some of them fol-
lowed Marest to the Mississippi and set up their
wigwams where the town of Kaskaskia now stands,
near the mouth of the little river which bears the
same name. Charlevoix, who was here in 1721,
1 Rameau, Notes historiqnes sur la Colonie Canadienne du Detroit.
2 See La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, 295.
1700-1718.] THE ILLINOIS. 317
calls this the oldest settlement of the Illinois, 1
though there is some reason to believe that the
village of Cahokia, established as a mission by the
Jesuit Pinet, sixty miles or more above Kaskaskia,
and nearly opposite the present city of St. Louis,
is, by a few weeks, the elder of the two. The
voyageurs, coureurs de hois, and other roving Ca-
nadians made these young settlements their resort,
took to wife converted squaws, 2 and ended with
making the Illinois their home. The missions y
turned to parishes, the missionaries to cures, and
the wigwams to those compact little Canadian
houses that cause one to marvel at the ingenuity
which can store so multitudinous a progeny with-
in such narrow limits.
White women from Canada or Louisiana began. :
to find their way to these wilderness settlements,
which with every generation grew more French
and less Indian. The river Mississippi was at ^
once their friend and their enemy. It carried
their produce to New Orleans, but undermined
their rich alluvial shores, cut away fields and
meadows, and swept them in its turbid eddies
thirteen hundred miles southward, as a contribu-
tion to the mud-banks of the delta.
When the Mississippi Company came into power,
the Illinois, hitherto a dependency of Canada, was
annexed to Louisiana. Pierre Dugue' de Boisbriant
1 "Ce poste, le premier de tons par droit d'antiquite." Journal his-
torique, 403 (ed. 1744).
2 The old parish registers of Kaskaskia are full of records of these
mixed marriages. See Edward G. Magon, Illinois in the Eighteenth
Century.
318 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1718-1734.
was sent to take command of it, and under his
direction a fort was built on the bank of the Mis-
sissippi sixteen miles above Kaskaskia. It was
named Fort Chartres, in honor of the Due cle Char-
tres, son of the Regent, who had himself once
borne the same title. This work, built at first of
wood and earth, was afterwards rebuilt of stone,
and became one of the chief links in the chain
of military communication between Canada and
Louisiana.
Here, with the commandant at its head, sat the
council of three which ruled over the little settle-
ment. 1 Here too was a garrison to enforce the de-
crees of the council, keep order among the settlers,
and give them a protection which they greatly
needed, since they were within striking distance
of the formidable Chickasaws, the effects of whose
hostility appear year after year on the parish
register of deaths at Kaskaskia. Worse things
were in store, for the gallant young Pierre d'Arta-
guette, who was appointed to the command in
1734, and who marched against the Chickasaws
with a band of Frenchmen and Indians, was de-
feated, captured, and burned alive, astonishing his
torturers by the fortitude with which he met his
fate. The settlement had other foes not less dan-
gerous. These were the Outagamies, or Foxes, be-
tween whom and the tribes of the Illinois there
was a deadly feud. We have seen how, in 1712,
1 The two other members were La Loire des Ursins, director of the
Mississippi Company, and Michel Chassin, its commissary, — he who
wrote the curious letter to Ponchartrain, asking for a wife, quoted in the
last chapter, p. 307.
1708-1723.] THE SCOURGE OE THE WEST. 319
a band of Outagamies, with their allies, the Mas-
coutins, appeared at Detroit and excited an alarm,
which, after a savage conflict, was ended with
their ruin. In 1714 the Outagamies made a
furious attack upon the Illinois, and killed or
carried of! seventy-seven of them. 1 A few years
later they made another murderous onslaught in
tiie same quarter. They were the scourge of the
West, and no w T hite man could travel between
Canada and Louisiana except at the risk of his life.
In vain the French parleyed with them ;
threats and blandishments were useless alike.
Their chiefs would promise, sometimes in good
faith, to keep the peace and no more offend their
Father Onontio ; but nearly all the tribes of the
Lake country were their hereditary enemies, and
some bloody revenge for ancient wrongs would
excite their young warriors to a fury which the
elders could not restrain. Thus, in 1722 the
Saginaws, a fierce Algonkin band on the eastern
borders of Michigan, killed twenty-three Outa-
gamies ; the tribesmen of the slain returned the
blow, other tribes joined the fray, and the wilder-
ness was again on fire. 2
The Canadian authorities were sorely perplexed, \s*
for this fierce inter-tribal war threatened their
whole system of Western trade. Meanwhile the
English and Dutch of New York were sending
wampum belts to the Indians of the upper Lakes,
inviting them to bring their furs to Albany ; and
1 Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Sept. 1714.
2 Idem, 2 Oct. 1723.
-1713.
320 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1708-
Ramesay, governor of Montreal, complains that
they were all disposed to do so. " Twelve of the
upper tribes," says Lord Cornbury, " have come
down this year to trade at Albany ; " but he adds
that as the Indians have had no presents for above
six years, he is afraid " we shall lose them before
next summer." * The Governor of Canada him-
self is said to have been in collusion with the
English traders for his own profit. 2 The Jesu-
its denied the charge, and Father Marest wrote to
the Governor, after the disaster to Walker's fleet
on its way to attack Quebec, " The protection you
have given to the missions has drawn on you and
the colony the miraculous protection of God." 3
Whether his accusers did him wrong or not,
Vaudreuil felt the necessity of keeping the peace
among the Western Indians and suppressing the
Outagamie incendiaries. In fact, nothing would
satisfy him but their destruction. " They are
the common enemies of all the Western tribes,"
he writes. " They have lately murdered three
Frenchmen and five Hurons at Detroit. The
Hurons ask for our help against them, and we
must give it, or all the tribes will despise us." 4
He put his chief trust in Loiivigny, formerly
commandant at Michillimackinac. That officer
proposed to muster the friendly tribes and march
on the Outagamies just as their corn was ripening,
i N. Y. Col. Docs., V. 65.
2 Memoir e pr€sente au Comte de Ponchartrain par M. d'Auteuil, pro*
cureur-cjeneral du Roy, 1708.
8 Marest a Vaudreuil, 21 Jan. 1712.
* Vaudreuil et Be'gon au Ministre, 15 Nov. 1713.
1714-1716.]
LOUVIGNY'S EXPEDITION. 321
fight them if they stood their ground, or if not,
destroy their crops, burn their wigwams, and en-
camp on the spot till winter ; then send out
parties to harass them as they roamed the woods
seeking a meagre subsistence by hunting. In this
way he hoped to cripple, if not destroy them. 1
The Outagamies lived at this time on the Fox
River of Green Bay, — a stream which owes its
name to them. 2 Their chief village seems to have
been between thirty and forty miles from the mouth
of the river, where it creeps through broad tracts
of rushes, willows, and wild rice. In spite of their
losses at Detroit in 1712, their strength was far
from being broken.
During two successive summers preparations
were made to attack them; but the march was
delayed, once by the tardiness of the Indian allies,
and again by the illness of Louvigny. At length,
on the 1st of May, 1716, he left Montreal witlu-~
two hundred and twenty-five Frenchmen, while
two hundred more waited to join him at Detroit
and Michillimackinac, where the Indian allies were
also to meet him. To save expense in pay and
outfit, the Canadians recruited for the war were
allowed to take with them goods for trading with
the Indians. Hence great disorder and insub-
ordination, especially as more than forty barrels
of brandy were carried in the canoes, as a part
of these commercial ventures, in consequence of
1 Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Sept. 1714.
2 "Les Renards [Outagamies] sont placez sur une riviere qui tombe
dans la Baye des Fuants [Green Bay]." Registre du Conseil de la Marine,
28 Mars, 1716.
VOL. I — 21
322 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1716
which we hear that when French and Indians were
encamped together, " hell was thrown open." *
The Outagamies stood their ground. Louvigny
says, with probable exaggeration, that when he
made his attack their village held five hundred
warriors, and no less than three thousand women,
— a disparity of sexes no doubt due to the inveter-
ate fighting habits of the tribe. The wigwams were
enclosed by a strong fence, consisting of three rows
of heavy oaken palisades. This method of fortifi-
cation was used also by tribes farther southward.
When Bienville attacked the Chickasaws, he was
foiled by the solid wooden wall that resisted his
cannon, being formed of trunks of trees as large
as a man's body, set upright, close together, and
made shot-proof by smaller trunks, planted within
so as to close the interstices of the outer row. 2
The fortified village of the Outagamies was of
a somewhat different construction. The defences
consisted of three rows of palisades, those of the
middle row being probably planted upright, and
the other two set aslant against them. Below,
along the inside of the triple row, ran a sort of
shallow trench or rifle-pit, where the defenders lay
ensconced, firing through interstices left for the
purpose between the palisades. 3
1 " Ou il y a des Francois et des sauvages, c'est un enfer ouvert."
Registre du Cvnseil de Marine, 28 Mars, 1716.
2 Le Page du Pratz.
3 Louvigny au Ministre, 14 Oct. 1716. Louvigny's account of the
Outagamie defences is short, and not very clear. La Mothe-Cadillac,
describing similar works at Michillimackinac, says that the palisades of
the innermost row alone were set close together, those of the two other
rows being separated by spaces of six inches or more, through which the
1716.] THE SIEGE. 323
Louvigny had brought with him two cannon
and a mortar; but being light, they had little
effect on the wooden wall, and as he was provided
with mining tools, he resolved to attack the Outa-
gamie stronghold by regular approaches, as if he
were besieging a fortress of Vauban. Covered
by the fire of three pieces of artillery and eight
hundred French and Indian small-arms, he opened
trenches during the night within seventy yards of
the palisades, pushed a sap sixty feet nearer be-
fore morning, and on the third night burrowed
to within about twenty-three yards of the wall.
His plan was to undermine and blow up the
palisades.
The Outagamies had made a furious resistance,
in which their women took part with desperation ;
but dreading the threatened explosion, and unable
to resist the underground approaches of their ene-
my, they asked for a parley, and owned themselves
beaten. Louvigny demanded that they should
make peace with all tribes friendly to the French,
give up all prisoners, and make war on distant
tribes, such as the Pawnees, in order to take cap-
tives who should supply the place of those they
had killed among the allies of the French; that
they should pay, in furs, the costs of the war, and
give six chiefs, or sons of chiefs, as hostages for
the fulfilment of these conditions. 1
On the 12th of October Louvigny reached
defenders fired from their loopholes. The plan seems borrowed from
the Iroquois.
1 Depeche de Vaudreuil, 14 Oct. 1716.
324 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1718-1726.
Quebec in triumph, bringing with him the six
hostages.
The Outagamie question was settled for a time.
The tribe remained quiet for some years, and in
1718 sent a deputation to Montreal and renewed
their submission, which the Governor accepted,
though they had evaded the complete fulfilment
of the conditions imposed on them. Yet peace
was not secure for a moment. The Kickapoos
and Mascoutins would not leave their neighbors,
the Illinois, at rest; the Saginaws made raids on
the Miamis ; and a general war seemed imminent.
" The difficulty is inconceivable of keeping these
Western tribes quiet," writes the Governor, almost
in despair. 1
-, At length the crisis came. The Illinois captured
the nephew of Oushala, the principal Outagamie
war-chief, and burned him alive ; on which the
Outagamies attacked them, drove them for refuge
to the top of the rock on which La Salle's fort of
St. Louis had been built, and held them there at
mercy. They would have starved to death, had
not the victors, dreading the anger of the French,
suffered them to escape. 2 For this they took to
themselves great credit, not without reason, in
view of the provocation. At Versailles, however,
their attack on the Illinois seemed an unpardon-
able offence, and the next ship from France
brought a letter from the colonial minister de-
claring that the Outagamies must be effectually
1 Vaudreuil au Conseil de Marine, 28 Oct. 1719.
2 Paroles des Renards [Outagamies] dans un Conseil tenu le 6 Sept. 1722.
1726,1727.] CONFLICTING PLANS. 325
put down, and that " his Majesty will reward the +
officer who will reduce, or rather destroy, them.' , *
The authorities of Canada were less truculent
than their masters at the court, or were better
able to count the costs of another war. Lon-
gueuil, the provisional governor, persisted in meas-
ures of peace, and the Sieur de Lignery called a
council of the Outagamies and their neighbors, the
Sacs and Winnebagoes, at Green Bay. He told
them that the Great Onontio, the King, ordered
them, at their peril, to make no more attacks on
the Illinois ; and they dutifully promised to obey,
while their great chief, Oushala, begged that a
French officer might be sent to his village to help
him keep his young warriors from the war-path. 2
The pacific policy of Longueuil was not approved •
by Desliettes, then commanding in the Illinois
country ; and he proposed to settle accounts with
the Outagamies by exterminating them. " This
is very well,'* observes a writer of the time ; " but
to try to exterminate them and fail would be
disastrous." 3
The Marquis de Beauharnois, who came out as
governor of Canada in 1726, was averse to violent
measures, since if an attempt to exterminate the
offending tribe should be made without success,
the life of every Frenchman in the West would be
in jeopardy. 4 Lignery thought that if the Outa-
1 Reponse du Ministre a la lettre du Marquis de Vaudreuil dull Oct. 1723.
2 Me moire sur les Renards, 27 Avril t 1727.
8 Memoire concernant la Paix que M. de Lignery afaite avec les Chefs
des Renards, Sakis [Sacs] et Puants [Winnebagoes], 7 Juin, 1726.
* Me'moire sur les Renards, 27 Avril, 1727.
326 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1727,1728.
gamies broke the promises they had made him at
Green Bay, the forces of Canada and Louisiana
should unite to crush them. The missionary,
Chardon, advised that they should be cut off from
all supplies of arms, ammunition, and merchan-
dise of any kind, and that all the well-disposed
Western tribes should then be set upon them, —
which, he thought, would infallibly bring them to
reason. 1
The new Governor, perplexed by the multitude of
counsellors, presently received a missive from the
King, directing him not to fight the Outagamies
if he could help it, " since the consequences of
failure would be frightful." 2 On the other hand,
Beauharnois was told that the English had sent
messages to the Lake tribes urging them to kill
the French in their country, and that the Outa-
gamies had promised to do so. " This," writes the
Governor, u compels us to make war in earnest.
It will cost sixty thousand livres." 3
Dupuy, the intendant, had joined with Beauhar-
nois in this letter to the minister ; but being at
the time in a hot quarrel with the Governor, he
soon after sent a communication of his own to
Versailles, in which he declares that the war
against the Outagamies was only a pretext of
Beauharnois for spending the King's money and
enriching himself by buying up all the furs of the
countries traversed by the army. 4
1 Memoire sur les Renards, 27 Avril, 1727.
2 Mimoire du Roy, 29 Avril, 1727.
8 Beauharnois et Dupuy au Ministre, 25 Oct. 1727.
4 Memoire de Dupuy, 1728.
1728-1730.] ADVANCE OF LIGNERY. 327
Whatever the motives of the expedition, it left
Montreal in June, under the Sieur de Lignery, fol-
lowed the rugged old route of the Ottawa, and did
not reach Michillimackinac till after midsummer.
Thence, in a flotilla of birch canoes carrying about
a thousand Indians and five hundred French, the
party set out for the fort at the head of Green
Bay. 1 Here they caught one Outagamie warrior
and three Winnebagoes, whom the Indian allies tor-
tured to death. Then they paddled their canoes
up Fox River, reached a Winnebago village on the
24th of August, followed the channel of the stream,
a ribbon of lazy water twisting in a vague, perplex-
ing way through the broad marsh of wild rice and
flags, till they saw the chief village of the Outa-
gamies on a tract of rising ground a little above
the level of the bog. 2 It consisted of bark wig-
wams, without palisades or defences of any kind.
Its only inmates were three squaws and one old
man. These were all seized, and, to the horror
of Pere Crespel, the chaplain, were given to the
Indian allies, who kept the women as slaves, and
burned the old man at a slow fire. 3 Then, after
burning the village and destroying the crop of
maize, peas, beans, and squashes that surrounded
it, the whole party returned to Michillimackinac. 4
1 Desliettes came to meet them, by way of Chicago, with five hundred
Illinois warriors and twenty Frenchmen. La Perriere et La Fresniere a
Beauharnois, 10 Sept. 1728.
2 Guignas a. Beauharnois, 29 Mai, 1728.
3 Depeche de Beauharnois, 1 Sept. 1728.
4 The best account of this expedition is that of Pere Emanuel Crespel.
Lignery made a report which seems to be lost, as it does not appear in
the Archives.
328 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1730.
The expedition was not a success. Lignery had
hoped to surprise the enemy ; but the alert and
nimble savages had escaped him. Beauharnois
makes the best of the miscarriage, and writes that
" the army did good work ; " but says a few weeks
later that something must be done to cure the con-
tempt which the Western allies of the French have
conceived for them " since the last affair." *
Two years after Lignery's expedition, there was
another attempt to humble the Outagamies. Late
in the autumn of 1730 young Coulon de Villiers,
who twenty-four years later defeated Washington
at Fort Necessity, appeared at Quebec with news
that the Sieur de Villiers, his father, who com-
manded the post on the St. Joseph, had struck the
Outagamies a deadly blow and killed two hundred
of their warriors, besides six hundred of their
women and children. The force under Villiers
consisted of a body of Frenchmen gathered from
various Western posts, another body from the Illi-
nois, led by the Sieurs de Saint-Ange, father and
son, and twelve or thirteen hundred Indian allies
from many friendly tribes. 2
The accounts of this affair are obscure and not
1 Beauharnois au Ministre, 15 Mai, 1729; Ibid., 21 Juillet, 1729.
2 Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 2 Nov. 1730. An Indian tra-
dition says that about this time there was a great battle between the
Outagamies and the French, aided by their Indian allies, at the place
called Little Butte des Morts, on the Fox River. According to the story,
the Outagamies were nearly destroyed. Perhaps this is a perverted
version of the Villiers affair. See Wisconsin Historical Collections, VIII.
207. Beauharnois also reports, under date of 6 May, 1730, that a party
of Outagamies, returning from a buffalo hunt, were surprised by two
hundred Ottawas, Ojibwas, Menomonies, and Winnebagoes, who killed
eighty warriors and three hundred women and children.
1730,1731.] ANOTHER BLOW. 829
very trustworthy. It seems that the Outagamies
began the fray by an attack on the Illinois at La
Salle's old station of Le Rocher, on the river Illi-
nois. On hearing of this, the French commanders
mustered their Indian allies, hastened to the spot,
and found the Outagamies intrenched in a grove
which they had surrounded with a stockade. They
defended themselves with their usual courage, but
being hard pressed by hunger and thirst, as well
as by the greatly superior numbers of their assail-
ants, they tried to escape during a dark night, as
their tribesmen had done at Detroit in 1712. The
French and their allies pursued, and there was a
great slaughter, in which many warriors and many
more women and children were the victims. 1
The offending tribe must now, one would think,
have ceased to be dangerous ; but nothing less
than its destruction would content the French
officials. To this end, their best resource was in
their Indian allies, among whom the Outagamies
had no more deadly enemy than the Hurons of
Detroit, who, far from relenting in view of their
disasters, were more eager than ever to wreak their
ire on their unfortunate foe. Accordingly, they
sent messengers to the converted Iroquois at the
Mission of Two Mountains, and invited them to join
in making an end of the Outagamies. The invi-
tation was accepted, and in the autumn of 1731
forty-seven warriors from the Two Mountains
1 Some particulars of this affair are given by Ferland, Cours d'Histoire
du Canada, II. 437 ; but he does not give his authority. I have found no
report of it by those engaged.
330 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1731.
appeared at Detroit. The party was soon made
up. It consisted of seventy-four Hurons, forty-six
Iroquois, and four Ottawas. They took the trail
to the mouth of the river St. Joseph, thence around
the head of Lake Michigan to the Chicago portage,
and thence westward to Rock River. Here were
the villages of the Kickapoos and Mascoutins, who
had been allies of the Outagamies, but having
lately quarrelled with them, received the strangers
as friends and gave them guides. The party now
filed northward, by forests and prairies, towards
the Wisconsin, to the banks of which stream the
Outagamies had lately removed their villages.
The warriors were all on snow-shoes, for the
weather was cold and the snow deep. Some of
the elders, overcome by the hardships of the way,
called a council and proposed to turn back; but
the juniors were for pushing on at all risks, and
a young warrior declared that he would rather
die than go home without killing somebody. The
result was a division of the party; the elders
returned to Chicago, and the younger men, forty
Hurons and thirty Iroquois, kept on their way.
At last, as they neared the Wisconsin, they saw**
on an open prairie three Outagamies, who ran for
their lives. The Hurons and Iroquois gave chase J
till from the ridge of a hill they discovered the
principal Outagamie village, consisting, if we may
believe their own story, of forty-six wigwams,
near the bank of the river. The Outagamie war-
riors came out to meet them, in number, as they
pretended, much greater than theirs ; but the Hu-
1731-1746.] OUTAGAMIES DEFEATED. 331
ron and Iroquois chiefs reminded their followers
that they had to do with dogs who did not believe
in God, on which they fired two volleys against
the enemy, then dropped their guns and charged
with the knife in one hand and the war-club
in the other. According to their own story,
which shows every sign of mendacity, they drove
back the Outagamies into their village, killed sev-
enty warriors, and captured fourteen more, with-
out counting eighty women and children killed,
and a hundred and forty taken prisoners. In
short, they would have us believe that they de-
stroyed the whole village, except ten men, who
escaped entirely naked, and soon froze to death.
They declared further that they sent one of their
prisoners to the remaining Outagamie villages, or-
dering him to tell the inhabitants that they had
just devoured the better part of the tribe, and
meant to stay on the spot two days; that the
tribesmen of the slain were free to attack them if
they chose, but in that case, they would split the
heads of all the women and children prisoners in
their hands, make a breastwork of the dead bodies,
and then finish it by piling upon it those of the
assailants. 1
Nothing is more misleading than Indian tradi-
tion, which is of the least possible value as evi-
dence. It may be well, however, to mention
another story, often repeated, touching these dark
days of the Outagamies. It is to the effect that
1 Relation de la D€faite des Renards par les Sauvages Hurons et Iroquois,
le 28 Ftv. 1732. (Archives de la Marine.)
332 THE OUTAGAMIE WAR. [1731-1746.
a French trader named Marin, whom they had
incensed by levying blackmail from him, raised a
party of Indians, with whose aid he surprised and
defeated the unhappy tribe at the Little Butte des
Morts, that they retired to the Great Butte des
Morts, higher up Fox River, and that Marin here
attacked them again, killing or capturing the
whole. Extravagant as the story seems, it may
have some foundation, though various dates, from
1725 to 1746, are assigned to the alleged exploit,
and contemporary documents are silent concerning
it. It is certain that the Outagamies were not
destroyed, as the tribe exists to this day. 1
In 1736 it was reported that sixty or eighty
Outagamie warriors were still alive. 2 Their women,
who when hard pushed would fight like furies,
were relatively numerous and tolerably prolific,
and their villages were full of sturdy boys, likely
to be dangerous in a few years. Feeling their
losses and their weakness, the survivors of the
tribe incorporated themselves with their kindred
and neighbors, the Sacs, Sakis, or Saukies, the
two forming henceforth one tribe, afterwards
known to the Americans as the Sacs and Foxes.
1 The story is told in Snelling, Tales of the Northwest (1830), under the
title of La Butte des Morts, and afterwards, with variations, by the aged
Augustus Grignon, in his Recollections, printed in the Collections of the
Wisconsin Historical Society, III.; also by Judge M. L. Martin and
others. Grignon, like all the rest, was not born till after the time of the
alleged event. The nearest approach to substantial evidence touching it
is in a letter of Beauharnois, who writes in 1730 that the Sieur Dubuisson
was to attack the Outagamies with fifty Frenchmen and five hundred and
fifty Indians, and that Marin, commander at Green Bay, was to join him.
Beauharnois au Ministre, 25 Juin, 1730.
2 Memoire surle Canada, 1736.
1832-1837.] SACS AND FOXES. 333
Early in the nineteenth century they were settled
on both banks of the upper Mississippi. Brave
and restless like their forefathers, they were a
continual menace to the American frontiersmen,
and in 1832 they rose in open war, under their
famous chief, Blackhawk, displaying their heredi-
tary prowess both on foot and on horseback, and
more than once defeating superior numbers of
American mounted militia. In the next year that
excellent artist, Charles Bodmer, painted a group
of them from life, — grim-visaged savages, armed
with war-club, spear, or rifle, and wrapped in red,
green, or brown blankets, their heads close shaven
except the erect and bristling scalplock, adorned
with long eagle-plumes, while both heads and
faces are painted with fantastic figures in blue,
white, yellow, black, and vermilion. 1
Three or four years after, a party of their chiefs
and warriors was conducted through the country
by order of the Washington government, in order
to impress them with the number and power of
the whites. At Boston they danced a war-dance
on the Common in full costume, to the delight of
the boy spectators, of whom I was one.
1 Charles Bodmer was the artist who accompanied Prince Maximilian
of Wied in his travels in the interior of North America.
The name Outagamie is Algonkin for a fox. Hence the French called
the tribe Renards, and the Americans, Foxes. They called themselves
Musquawkies, which is said to mean " red earth," and to be derived from
the color of the soil near one of their villages.
END OF VOL. I.
14 DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
; '-.v;,r'"- : ^
mR27'67
4&
REC'D LD
— ~
J=rH±L
Z2_
MAR 1 5 ISbi
uwrm
^9^
NOV 1 5*64-6 PW
^
fi£
U OAN L>^ pT -
^
IV£D
HAY 10*67-U r-
UOAN DEpt
YB 44826