Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

F >> Francis Parkman >> Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV




It was the depth of winter when they began their march, striding on
snow-shoes over the vast white field of the frozen St. Lawrence, each
with the hood of his blanket coat drawn over his head, a gun in his
mittened hand, a knife, a hatchet, a tobacco pouch, and a bullet pouch
at his belt, a pack on his shoulders, and his inseparable pipe hung at
his neck in a leather case. They dragged their blankets and provisions
over the snow on Indian sledges. Crossing the forest to Chambly, they
advanced four or five days up the frozen Richelieu and the frozen Lake
Champlain, and then stopped to hold a council. Frontenac had left the
precise point of attack at the discretion of the leaders, and thus far
the men had been ignorant of their destination. The Indians demanded
to know it. Mantet and Sainte-Hélène replied that they were going to
Albany. The Indians demurred. "How long is it," asked one of them,
"since the French grew so bold?" The commanders answered that, to
regain the honor of which their late misfortunes had robbed them, the
French would take Albany or die in the attempt. The Indians listened
sullenly; the decision was postponed, and the party moved forward
again. When after eight days they reached the Hudson, and found the
place where two paths diverged, the one for Albany and the other for
Schenectady, they all without farther words took the latter. Indeed,
to attempt Albany would have been an act of desperation. The march was
horrible. There was a partial thaw, and they waded knee-deep through
the half melted snow, and the mingled ice, mud, and water of the
gloomy swamps. So painful and so slow was their progress, that it was
nine days more before they reached a point two leagues from
Schenectady. The weather had changed again, and a cold, gusty
snow-storm pelted them. It was one of those days when the trees stand
white as spectres in the sheltered hollows of the forest, and bare and
gray on the wind-swept ridges. The men were half dead with cold,
fatigue, and hunger. It was four in the afternoon of the eighth of
February. The scouts found an Indian hut, and in it were four Iroquois
squaws, whom they captured. There was a fire in the wigwam; and the
shivering Canadians crowded about it, stamping their chilled feet and
warming their benumbed hands over the blaze. The Christian chief of
the Saut St. Louis, known as Le Grand Agnié, or the Great Mohawk, by
the French, and by the Dutch called Kryn, harangued his followers, and
exhorted them to wash out their wrongs in blood. Then they all
advanced again, and about dark reached the river Mohawk, a little
above the village. A Canadian named Gignières, who had gone with nine
Indians to reconnoitre, now returned to say that he had been within
sight of Schenectady, and had seen nobody. Their purpose had been to
postpone the attack till two o'clock in the morning; but the situation
was intolerable, and the limit of human endurance was reached. They
could not make fires, and they must move on or perish. Guided by the
frightened squaws, they crossed the Mohawk on the ice, toiling through
the drifts amid the whirling snow that swept down the valley of the
darkened stream, till about eleven o'clock they descried through the
storm the snow-beplastered palisades of the devoted village. Such was
their plight that some of them afterwards declared that they would all
have surrendered if an enemy had appeared to summon them. [Footnote:
Colden, 114 (ed. 1747).]

Schenectady was the farthest outpost of the colony of New York.
Westward lay the Mohawk forests; and Orange, or Albany, was fifteen
miles or more towards the south-east. The village was oblong in form,
and enclosed by a palisade which had two gates, one towards Albany and
the other towards the Mohawks. There was a blockhouse near the eastern
gate, occupied by eight or nine Connecticut militia men under
Lieutenant Talmage. There were also about thirty friendly Mohawks in
the place, on a visit. The inhabitants, who were all Dutch, were in a
state of discord and confusion. The revolution in England had produced
a revolution in New York. The demagogue Jacob Leisler had got
possession of Fort William, and was endeavoring to master the whole
colony. Albany was in the hands of the anti-Leisler or conservative
party, represented by a convention of which Peter Schuyler was the
chief. The Dutch of Schenectady for the most part favored Leisler,
whose emissaries had been busily at work among them; but their chief
magistrate, John Sander Glen, a man of courage and worth, stood fast
for the Albany convention, and in consequence the villagers had
threatened to kill him. Talmage and his Connecticut militia were under
orders from Albany; and therefore, like Glen, they were under the
popular ban. In vain the magistrate and the officer entreated the
people to stand on their guard. They turned the advice to ridicule,
laughed at the idea of danger, left both their gates wide open, and
placed there, it is said, two snow images as mock sentinels. A French
account declares that the village contained eighty houses, which is
certainly an exaggeration. There had been some festivity during the
evening, but it was now over; and the primitive villagers, fathers,
mothers, children, and infants, lay buried in unconscious sleep. They
were simple peasants and rude woodsmen, but with human affections and
capable of human woe.

The French and Indians stood before the open gate, with its blind and
dumb warder, the mock sentinel of snow. Iberville went with a
detachment to find the Albany gate, and bar it against the escape of
fugitives; but he missed it in the gloom, and hastened back. The
assailants were now formed into two bands, Sainte-Hélène leading the
one and Mantet the other. They passed through the gate together in
dead silence: one turned to the right and the other to the left, and
they filed around the village between the palisades and the houses
till the two leaders met at the farther end. Thus the place was
completely surrounded. The signal was then given: they all screeched
the war-whoop together, burst in the doors with hatchets, and fell to
their work. Roused by the infernal din, the villagers leaped from
their beds. For some it was but a momentary nightmare of fright and
horror, ended by the blow of the tomahawk. Others were less fortunate.
Neither women nor children were spared. "No pen can write, and no
tongue express," wrote Schuyler, "the cruelties that were committed."
[Footnote: "The women bigg with Childe rip'd up, and the Children
alive throwne into the flames, and their heads dashed to pieces
against the Doors and windows." _Schuyler to the Council of
Connecticut_, 15 _Feb_., 1690. Similar statements are made by Leisler.
See _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, I. 307, 310.] There was little resistance,
except at the block-house, where Talmage and his men made a stubborn
fight; but the doors were at length forced open, the defenders killed
or taken, and the building set on fire. Adam Vrooman, one of the
villagers, saw his wife shot and his child brained against the
door-post; but he fought so desperately that the assailants promised
him his life. Orders had been given to spare Peter Tassemaker, the
domine or minister, from whom it was thought that valuable information
might be obtained; but he was hacked to pieces, and his house burned.
Some, more agile or more fortunate than the rest, escaped at the
eastern gate, and fled through the storm to seek shelter at Albany or
at houses along the way. Sixty persons were killed outright, of whom
thirty-eight were men and boys, ten were women, and twelve were
children. [Footnote: _List of ye. People kild and destroyed by ye.
French of Canida and there Indians at Skinnechtady_, in _Doc. Hist. N.
Y._, I. 304.] The number captured appears to have been between eighty
and ninety. The thirty Mohawks in the town were treated with studied
kindness by the victors, who declared that they had no quarrel with
them, but only with the Dutch and English.

The massacre and pillage continued two hours; then the prisoners were
secured, sentinels posted, and the men told to rest and refresh
themselves. In the morning, a small party crossed the river to the
house of Glen, which stood on a rising ground half a mile distant. It
was loopholed and palisaded; and Glen had mustered his servants and
tenants, closed his gates, and prepared to defend himself. The French
told him to fear nothing, for they had orders not to hurt a chicken of
his; whereupon, after requiring them to lay down their arms, he
allowed them to enter. They urged him to go with them to the village,
and he complied; they on their part leaving one of their number as a
hostage in the hands of his followers. Iberville appeared at the gate
with the Great Mohawk, and, drawing his commission from the breast of
his coat, told Glen that he was specially charged to pay a debt which
the French owed him. On several occasions, he had saved the lives of
French prisoners in the hands of the Mohawks; and he, with his family,
and, above all, his wife, had shown them the greatest kindness. He was
now led before the crowd of wretched prisoners, and told that not only
were his own life and property safe, but that all his kindred should
be spared. Glen stretched his privilege to the utmost, till the French
Indians, disgusted at his multiplied demands for clemency, observed
that everybody seemed to be his relation.

Some of the houses had already been burned. Fire was now set to the
rest, excepting one, in which a French officer lay wounded, another
belonging to Glen, and three or four more which he begged the victors
to spare. At noon Schenectady was in ashes. Then the French and
Indians withdrew, laden with booty. Thirty or forty captured horses
dragged their sledges; and a troop of twenty-seven men and boys were
driven prisoners into the forest. About sixty old men, women, and
children were left behind, without farther injury, in order, it is
said, to conciliate the Mohawks in the place, who had joined with Glen
in begging that they might be spared. Of the victors, only two had
been killed. [1]

At the outset of the attack, Simon Schermerhorn threw himself on a
horse, and galloped through the eastern gate. The French shot at and
wounded him; but he escaped, reached Albany at daybreak, and gave the
alarm. The soldiers and inhabitants were called to arms, cannon were
fired to rouse the country, and a party of horsemen, followed by some
friendly Mohawks, set out for Schenectady. The Mohawks had promised to
carry the news to their three towns on the river above; but, when they
reached the ruined village, they were so frightened at the scene of
havoc that they would not go farther. Two days passed before the alarm
reached the Mohawk towns. Then troops of warriors came down on
snow-shoes, equipped with tomahawk and gun, to chase the retiring
French. Fifty young men from Albany joined them; and they followed the
trail of the enemy, who, with the help of their horses, made such
speed over the ice of Lake Champlain that it seemed impossible to
overtake them. They thought the pursuit abandoned; and, having killed
and eaten most of their horses, and being spent with fatigue, they
moved more slowly as they neared home, when a band of Mohawks, who had
followed stanchly on their track, fell upon a party of stragglers, and
killed or captured fifteen or more, almost within sight of Montreal.

Three of these prisoners, examined by Schuyler, declared that
Frontenac was preparing for a grand attack on Albany in the spring. In
the political confusion of the time, the place was not in fighting
condition; and Schuyler appealed for help to the authorities of
Massachusetts. "Dear neighbours and friends, we must acquaint you that
nevir poor People in the world was in a worse Condition than we are at
Present, no Governour nor Command, no money to forward any expedition,
and scarce Men enough to maintain the Citty. We have here plainly laid
the case before you, and doubt not but you will so much take it to
heart, and make all Readinesse in the Spring to invade Canida by
water." [Footnote: _Schuyler, Wessell, and Van Rensselaer to the
Governor and Council of Massachusetts,_ 15 _Feb.,_ 1690, in _Andros
Tracts,_ III. 114.] The Mohawks were of the same mind. Their elders
came down to Albany to condole with their Dutch and English friends on
the late disaster. "We are come," said their orator, "with tears in
our eyes, to lament the murders committed at Schenectady by the
perfidious French. Onontio comes to our country to speak of peace, but
war is at his heart. He has broken into our house at both ends, once
among the Senecas and once here; but we hope to be revenged. Brethren,
our covenant with you is a silver chain that cannot rust or break. We
are of the race of the bear; and the bear does not yield, so long as
there is a drop of blood in his body. Let us all be bears. We will go
together with an army to ruin the country of the French. Therefore,
send in all haste to New England. Let them be ready with ships and
great guns to attack by water, while we attack by land." [Footnote:
_Propositions made by the Sachems of ye. Maquase (Mohawk) Castles to
ye. Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonality of ye. Citty of Albany, ye. 25
day of february_, 1690, in _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, II. 164-169.] Schuyler
did not trust his red allies, who, however, seem on this occasion to
have meant what they said. He lost no time in sending commissioners to
urge the several governments of New England to a combined attack on
the French.

New England needed no prompting to take up arms; for she presently
learned to her cost that, though feeble and prostrate, Canada could
sting. The war-party which attacked Schenectady was, as we have seen,
but one of three which Frontenac had sent against the English borders.
The second, aimed at New Hampshire, left Three Rivers on the
twenty-eighth of January, commanded by François Hertel. It consisted
of twenty-four Frenchmen, twenty Abenakis of the Sokoki band, and five
Algonquins. After three months of excessive hardship in the vast and
rugged wilderness that intervened, they approached the little
settlement of Salmon Falls on the stream which separates New Hampshire
from Maine; and here for a moment we leave them, to observe the state
of this unhappy frontier.

It was twelve years and more since the great Indian outbreak, called
King Philip's War, had carried havoc through all the borders of New
England. After months of stubborn fighting, the fire was quenched in
Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut; but in New Hampshire and
Maine it continued to burn fiercely till the treaty of Casco, in 1678.
The principal Indians of this region were the tribes known
collectively as the Abenakis. The French had established relations
with them through the missionaries; and now, seizing the opportunity,
they persuaded many of these distressed and exasperated savages to
leave the neighborhood of the English, migrate to Canada, and settle
first at Sillery near Quebec and then at the falls of the Chaudière.
Here the two Jesuits, Jacques and Vincent Bigot, prime agents in their
removal, took them in charge; and the missions of St. Francis became
villages of Abenaki Christians, like the village of Iroquois
Christians at Saut St. Louis. In both cases, the emigrants were
sheltered under the wing of Canada; and they and their tomahawks were
always at her service. The two Bigots spared no pains to induce more
of the Abenakis to join these mission colonies. They were in good
measure successful, though the great body of the tribe still clung to
their ancient homes on the Saco, the Kennebec, and the Penobscot.
[Footnote: The Abenaki migration to Canada began as early as the
autumn of 1675 (_Relation,_ 1676-77). On the mission of St. Francis on
the Chaudière, see Bigot, _Relation,_ 1684; _Ibid.,_ 1685. It was
afterwards removed to the river St. Francis.]

There were ten years of critical and dubious peace along the English
border, and then the war broke out again. The occasion of this new
uprising is not very clear, and it is hardly worth while to look for
it. Between the harsh and reckless borderer on the one side, and the
fierce savage on the other, a single spark might at any moment set the
frontier in a blaze. The English, however, believed firmly that their
French rivals had a hand in the new outbreak; and, in fact, the
Abenakis told some of their English captives that Saint-Castin, a
French adventurer on the Penobscot, gave every Indian who would go to
the war a pound of gunpowder, two pounds of lead, and a supply of
tobacco. [Footnote: Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass.,_ I. 326. Compare _N. Y.
Col. Docs.,_ IV. 282, 476.] The trading house of Saint-Castin, which
stood on ground claimed by England, had lately been plundered by Sir
Edmund Andros, and some of the English had foretold that an Indian war
would be the consequence; but none of them seem at this time to have
suspected that the governor of Canada and his Jesuit friends had any
part in their woes. Yet there is proof that this was the case; for
Denonville himself wrote to the minister at Versailles that the
successes of the Abenakis on this occasion were due to the "good
understanding which he had with them," by means of the two brothers
Bigot and other Jesuits. [2]

Whatever were the influences that kindled and maintained the war, it
spread dismay and havoc through the English settlements. Andros at
first made light of it, and complained of the authorities of Boston,
because in his absence they had sent troops to protect the settlers;
but he soon changed his mind, and in the winter went himself to the
scene of action with seven hundred men. Not an Indian did he find.
They had all withdrawn into the depths of the frozen forest. Andros
did what he could, and left more than five hundred men in garrison on
the Kennebec and the Saco, at Casco Bay, Pemaquid, and various other
exposed points. He then returned to Boston, where surprising events
awaited him. Early in April, news came that the Prince of Orange had
landed in England. There was great excitement. The people of the town
rose against Andros, whom they detested as the agent of the despotic
policy of James II. They captured his two forts with their garrisons
of regulars, seized his frigate in the harbor, placed him and his
chief adherents in custody, elected a council of safety, and set at
its head their former governor, Bradstreet, an old man of
eighty-seven. The change was disastrous to the eastern frontier. Of
the garrisons left for its protection the winter before, some were
partially withdrawn by the new council; while others, at the first
news of the revolution, mutinied, seized their officers, and returned
home. [3] These garrisons were withdrawn or reduced, partly perhaps
because the hated governor had established them, partly through
distrust of his officers, some of whom were taken from the regulars,
and partly because the men were wanted at Boston. The order of
withdrawal cannot be too strongly condemned. It was a part of the
bungling inefficiency which marked the military management of the New
England governments from the close of Philip's war to the peace of
Utrecht.

When spring opened, the Indians turned with redoubled fury against the
defenceless frontier, seized the abandoned stockades, and butchered
the helpless settlers. Now occurred the memorable catastrophe at
Cocheco, or Dover. Two squaws came at evening and begged lodging in
the palisaded house of Major Waldron. At night, when all was still,
they opened the gates and let in their savage countrymen. Waldron was
eighty years old. He leaped from his bed, seized his sword, and drove
back the assailants through two rooms; but, as he turned to snatch his
pistols, they stunned him by the blow of a hatchet, bound him in an
arm-chair, and placed him on a table, where after torturing him they
killed him with his own sword. The crowning event of the war was the
capture of Pemaquid, a stockade work, mounted with seven or eight
cannon. Andros had placed in it a garrison of a hundred and fifty-six
men, under an officer devoted to him. Most of them had been withdrawn
by the council of safety; and the entire force of the defenders
consisted of Lieutenant James Weems and thirty soldiers, nearly half
of whom appear to have been absent at the time of the attack. [4]
The Indian assailants were about a hundred in number, all Christian
converts from mission villages. By a sudden rush, they got possession
of a number of houses behind the fort, occupied only by women and
children, the men being at their work. [Footnote: _Captivity of John
Gyles._ Gyles was one of the inhabitants.] Some ensconced themselves
in the cellars, and others behind a rock on the seashore, whence they
kept up a close and galling fire. On the next day, Weems surrendered,
under a promise of life, and, as the English say, of liberty to
himself and all his followers. The fourteen men who had survived the
fire, along with a number of women and children, issued from the gate,
upon which some were butchered on the spot, and the rest, excepting
Weems and a few others, were made prisoners. In other respects, the
behavior of the victors is said to have been creditable. They tortured
nobody, and their chiefs broke the rum barrels in the fort, to prevent
disorder. Father Thury, a priest of the seminary of Quebec, was
present at the attack; and the assailants were a part of his Abenaki
flock. Religion was one of the impelling forces of the war. In the
eyes of the Indian converts, it was a crusade against the enemies of
God. They made their vows to the Virgin before the fight; and the
squaws, in their distant villages on the Penobscot, told unceasing
beads, and offered unceasing prayers for victory. [5]

The war now ran like wildfire through the settlements of Maine and New
Hampshire. Sixteen fortified houses, with or without defenders, are
said to have fallen into the hands of the enemy; and the extensive
district then called the county of Cornwall was turned to desolation.
Massachusetts and Plymouth sent hasty levies of raw men, ill-armed and
ill-officered, to the scene of action. At Casco Bay, they met a large
body of Indians, whom they routed after a desultory fight of six
hours; and then, as the approaching winter seemed to promise a respite
from attack, most of them were withdrawn and disbanded.

It was a false and fatal security. Through snow and ice and storm,
Hertel and his band were moving on their prey. On the night of the
twenty-seventh of March, they lay hidden in the forest that bordered
the farms and clearings of Salmon Falls. Their scouts reconnoitred the
place, and found a fortified house with two stockade forts, built as a
refuge for the settlers in case of alarm. Towards daybreak, Hertel,
dividing his followers into three parties, made a sudden and
simultaneous attack. The settlers, unconscious of danger, were in
their beds. No watch was kept even in the so-called forts; and, when
the French and Indians burst in, there was no time for their few
tenants to gather for defence. The surprise was complete; and, after a
short struggle, the assailants were successful at every point. They
next turned upon the scattered farms of the neighborhood, burned
houses, barns, and cattle, and laid the entire settlement in ashes.
About thirty persons of both sexes and all ages were tomahawked or
shot; and fifty-four, chiefly women and children, were made prisoners.
Two Indian scouts now brought word that a party of English was
advancing to the scene of havoc from Piscataqua, or Portsmouth, not
many miles distant. Hertel called his men together, and began his
retreat. The pursuers, a hundred and forty in number, overtook him
about sunset at Wooster River, where the swollen stream was crossed by
a narrow bridge. Hertel and his followers made a stand on the farther
bank, killed and wounded a number of the English as they attempted to
cross, kept up a brisk fire on the rest, held them in check till
night, and then continued their retreat. The prisoners, or some of
them, were given to the Indians, who tortured one or more of the men,
and killed and tormented children and infants with a cruelty not
always equalled by their heathen countrymen. [6]

Hertel continued his retreat to one of the Abenaki villages on the
Kennebec. Here he learned that a band of French and Indians had lately
passed southward on their way to attack the English fort at Casco Bay,
on the site of Portland. Leaving at the village his eldest son, who
had been badly wounded at Wooster River, he set out to join them with
thirty-six of his followers. The band in question was Frontenac's
third war-party. It consisted of fifty French and sixty Abenakis from
the mission of St. Francis; and it had left Quebec in January, under a
Canadian officer named Portneuf and his lieutenant, Courtemanche. They
advanced at their leisure, often stopping to hunt, till in May they
were joined on the Kennebec by a large body of Indian warriors. On the
twenty-fifth, Portneuf encamped in the forest near the English forts,
with a force which, including Hertel's party, the Indians of the
Kennebec, and another band led by Saint-Castin from the Penobscot,
amounted to between four and five hundred men. [Footnote: _Declaration
of Sylvanus Davis; Mather, Magnalia_, II. 603.] Fort Loyal was a
palisade work with eight cannon, standing on rising ground by the
shore of the bay, at what is now the foot of India Street in the city
of Portland. Not far distant were four block-houses and a village
which they were designed to protect. These with the fort were occupied
by about a hundred men, chiefly settlers of the neighborhood, under
Captain Sylvanus Davis, a prominent trader. Around lay rough and
broken fields stretching to the skirts of the forest half a mile
distant. Some of Portneuf's scouts met a straggling Scotchman, and
could not resist the temptation of killing him. Their scalp-yells
alarmed the garrison, and thus the advantage of surprise was lost.
Davis resolved to keep his men within their defences, and to stand on
his guard; but there was little or no discipline in the yeoman
garrison, and thirty young volunteers under Lieutenant Thaddeus Clark
sallied out to find the enemy. They were too successful; for, as they
approached the top of a hill near the woods, they observed a number of
cattle staring with a scared look at some object on the farther side
of a fence; and, rightly judging that those they sought were hidden
there, they raised a cheer, and ran to the spot. They were met by a
fire so close and deadly that half their number were shot down. A
crowd of Indians leaped the fence and rushed upon the survivors, who
ran for the fort; but only four, all of whom were wounded, succeeded
in reaching it. [Footnote: _Relation de Monseignat_; La Potherie, III.
79.]

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