Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

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The whole force now gathered for a final attack on the garrison house.
Their appearance was so frightful, and their clamor so appalling, that
one of the English muttered something about surrender. Convers
returned, "If you say that again, you are a dead man." Had the allies
made a bold assault, he and his followers must have been overpowered;
but this mode of attack was contrary to Indian maxims. They merely
leaped, yelled, fired, and called on the English to yield. They were
answered with derision. The women in the house took part in the
defence, passed ammunition to the men, and sometimes fired themselves
on the enemy. The Indians at length became discouraged, and offered
Convers favorable terms. He answered, "I want nothing but men to fight
with." An Abenaki who spoke English cried out: "If you are so bold,
why do you stay in a garrison house like a squaw? Come out and fight
like a man!" Convers retorted, "Do you think I am fool enough to come
out with thirty men to fight five hundred?" Another Indian shouted,
"Damn you, we'll cut you small as tobacco before morning." Convers
returned a contemptuous defiance.

After a while, they ceased firing, and dispersed about the
neighborhood, butchering cattle and burning the church and a few empty
houses. As the tide began to ebb, they sent a fire-raft in full blaze
down the creek to destroy the sloops; but it stranded, and the attempt
failed. They now wreaked their fury on the prisoner Diamond, whom they
tortured to death, after which they all disappeared. A few resolute
men had foiled one of the most formidable bands that ever took the
war-path in Acadia. [3]

The warriors dispersed to their respective haunts; and, when a band of
them reached the St. John, Villebon coolly declares that he gave them
a prisoner to burn. They put him to death with all their ingenuity of
torture. The act, on the part of the governor, was more atrocious, as
it had no motive of reprisal, and as the burning of prisoners was not
the common practice of these tribes. [Footnote: "Le 18me (_Août_) un
sauvage anglois fut pris au bas de la rivière de St. Jean. Je le
donnai à nos sauvages pour estre brulé, ce qu'ils firent le lendemain.
On ne peut rien adjouter aux tourmens qu'ils luy firent souffrir."
Villebon, _Journal_, 1691, 1692.]

The warlike ardor of the Abenakis cooled after the failure at Wells,
and events that soon followed nearly extinguished it. Phips had just
received his preposterous appointment to the government of
Massachusetts. To the disgust of its inhabitants, the stubborn colony
was no longer a republic. The new governor, unfit as he was for his
office, understood the needs of the eastern frontier, where he had
spent his youth; and he brought a royal order to rebuild the ruined
fort at Pemaquid. The king gave the order, but neither men, money, nor
munitions to execute it; and Massachusetts bore all the burden. Phips
went to Pemaquid, laid out the work, and left a hundred men to finish
it. A strong fort of stone was built, the abandoned cannon of Casco
mounted on its walls, and sixty men placed in garrison.

The keen military eye of Frontenac saw the danger involved in the
re-establishment of Pemaquid. Lying far in advance of the other
English stations, it barred the passage of war-parties along the
coast, and was a standing menace to the Abenakis. It was resolved to
capture it. Two ships of war, lately arrived at Quebec, the "Poli" and
the "Envieux," were ordered to sail for Acadia with above four hundred
men, take on board two or three hundred Indians at Pentegoet, reduce
Pemaquid, and attack Wells, Portsmouth, and the Isles of Shoals; after
which, they were to scour the Acadian seas of "Bostonnais" fishermen.

At this time, a gentleman of Boston, John Nelson, captured by Villebon
the year before, was a prisoner at Quebec. Nelson was nephew and heir
of Sir Thomas Temple, in whose right he claimed the proprietorship of
Acadia, under an old grant of Oliver Cromwell. He was familiar both
with that country and with Canada, which he had visited several times
before the war. As he was a man of birth and breeding, and a declared
enemy of Phips, and as he had befriended French prisoners, and shown
especial kindness to Meneval, the captive governor of Acadia, he was
treated with distinction by Frontenac, who, though he knew him to be a
determined enemy of the French, lodged him at the château, and
entertained him at his own table. [Footnote: _Champigny au Ministre_,
4 _Nov_., 1693.] Madockawando, the father-in-law of Saint-Castin,
made a visit to Frontenac; and Nelson, who spoke both French and
Indian, contrived to gain from him and from other sources a partial
knowledge of the intended expedition. He was not in favor at Boston;
for, though one of the foremost in the overthrow of Andros, his creed
and his character savored more of the Cavalier than of the Puritan.
This did not prevent him from risking his life for the colony. He
wrote a letter to the authorities of Massachusetts, and then bribed
two soldiers to desert and carry it to them. The deserters were hotly
pursued, but reached their destination, and delivered their letter.
The two ships sailed from Quebec; but when, after a long delay at
Mount Desert, they took on board the Indian allies and sailed onward
to Pemaquid, they found an armed ship from Boston anchored in the
harbor. Why they did not attack it, is a mystery. The defences of
Pemaquid were still unfinished, the French force was far superior to
the English, and Iberville, who commanded it, was a leader of
unquestionable enterprise and daring. Nevertheless, the French did
nothing, and soon after bore away for France. Frontenac was indignant,
and severely blamed Iberville, whose sister was on board his ship, and
was possibly the occasion of his inaction. [Footnote: _Frontenac au
Ministre_, 25 _Oct_., 1693.]

Thus far successful, the authorities of Boston undertook an enterprise
little to their credit. They employed the two deserters, joined with
two Acadian prisoners, to kidnap Saint-Castin, whom, next to the
priest Thury, they regarded as their most insidious enemy. The
Acadians revealed the plot, and the two soldiers were shot at Mount
Desert. Nelson was sent to France, imprisoned two years in a dungeon
of the Château of Angoulême, and then placed in the Bastile. Ten years
passed before he was allowed to return to his family at Boston. [4]
The French failure at Pemaquid completed the discontent of the
Abenakis; and despondency and terror seized them when, in the spring
of 1693, Convers, the defender of Wells, ranged the frontier with a
strong party of militia, and built another stone fort at the falls of
the Saco. In July, they opened a conference at Pemaquid; and, in
August, thirteen of their chiefs, representing, or pretending to
represent, all the tribes from the Merrimac to the St. Croix, came
again to the same place to conclude a final treaty of peace with the
commissioners of Massachusetts. They renounced the French alliance,
buried the hatchet, declared themselves British subjects, promised to
give up all prisoners, and left five of their chief men as hostages.
[Footnote: For the treaty in full, Mather, _Magnalia_, II. 625.] The
frontier breathed again. Security and hope returned to secluded
dwellings buried in a treacherous forest, where life had been a
nightmare of horror and fear; and the settler could go to his work
without dreading to find at evening his cabin burned and his wife and
children murdered. He was fatally deceived, for the danger was not
past.

It is true that some of the Abenakis were sincere in their pledges of
peace. A party among them, headed by Madockawando, were dissatisfied
with the French, anxious to recover their captive countrymen, and
eager to reopen trade with the English. But there was an opposing
party, led by the chief Taxous, who still breathed war; while between
the two was an unstable mob of warriors, guided by the impulse of the
hour. [Footnote: The state of feeling among the Abenakis is shown in a
letter of Thury to Frontenac, 11 Sept., 1694, and in the journal of
Villebon for 1693.] The French spared no efforts to break off the
peace. The two missionaries, Bigot on the Kennebec and Thury on the
Penobscot, labored with unwearied energy to urge the savages to war.
The governor, Villebon, flattered them, feasted them, adopted Taxous
as his brother, and, to honor the occasion, gave him his own best
coat. Twenty-five hundred pounds of gunpowder, six thousand pounds of
lead, and a multitude of other presents, were given this year to the
Indians of Acadia. [Footnote: _Estat de Munitions, etc., pour les
Sauvages de l'Acadie_, 1693.] Two of their chiefs had been sent to
Versailles. They now returned, in gay attire, their necks hung with
medals, and their minds filled with admiration, wonder, and
bewilderment.

The special duty of commanding Indians had fallen to the lot of an
officer named Villieu, who had been ordered by the court to raise a
war-party and attack the English. He had lately been sent to replace
Portneuf, who had been charged with debauchery and peculation.
Villebon, angry at his brother's removal, was on ill terms with his
successor; and, though he declares that he did his best to aid in
raising the war-party, Villieu says, on the contrary, that he was
worse than indifferent. The new lieutenant spent the winter at
Naxouat, and on the first of May went up in a canoe to the Malicite
village of Medoctec, assembled the chiefs, and invited them to war.
They accepted the invitation with alacrity. Villieu next made his way
through the wilderness to the Indian towns of the Penobscot. On the
ninth, he reached the mouth of the Mattawamkeag, where he found the
chief Taxous, paddled with him down the Penobscot, and, at midnight on
the tenth, landed at a large Indian village, at or near the place now
called Passadumkeag. Here he found a powerful ally in the Jesuit
Vincent Bigot, who had come from the Kennebec, with three Abenakis, to
urge their brethren of the Penobscot to break off the peace. The chief
envoy denounced the treaty of Pemaquid as a snare; and Villieu
exhorted the assembled warriors to follow him to the English border,
where honor and profit awaited them. But first he invited them to go
back with him to Naxouat to receive their presents of arms,
ammunition, and every thing else that they needed.

They set out with alacrity. Villieu went with them, and they all
arrived within a week. They were feasted and gifted to their hearts'
content; and then the indefatigable officer led them back by the same
long and weary routes which he had passed and repassed before, rocky
and shallow streams, chains of wilderness lakes, threads of water
writhing through swamps where the canoes could scarcely glide among
the water-weeds and alders. Villieu was the only white man. The
governor, as he says, would give him but two soldiers, and these had
run off. Early in June, the whole flotilla paddled down the Penobscot
to Pentegeot. Here the Indians divided their presents, which they
found somewhat less ample than they had imagined. In the midst of
their discontent, Madockawando came from Pemaquid with news that the
governor of Massachusetts was about to deliver up the Indian prisoners
in his hands, as stipulated by the treaty. This completely changed the
temper of the warriors. Madockawando declared loudly for peace, and
Villieu saw all his hopes wrecked. He tried to persuade his
disaffected allies that the English only meant to lure them to
destruction, and the missionary Thury supported him with his utmost
eloquence. The Indians would not be convinced; and their trust in
English good faith was confirmed, when they heard that a minister had
just come to Pemaquid to teach their children to read and write. The
news grew worse and worse. Villieu was secretly informed that Phips
had been off the coast in a frigate, invited Madockawando and other
chiefs on board, and feasted them in his cabin, after which they had
all thrown their hatchets into the sea, in token of everlasting peace.
Villieu now despaired of his enterprise, and prepared to return to the
St. John; when Thury, wise as the serpent, set himself to work on the
jealousy of Taxous, took him aside, and persuaded him that his rival,
Madockawando, had put a slight upon him in presuming to make peace
without his consent. "The effect was marvellous," says Villieu.
Taxous, exasperated, declared that he would have nothing to do with
Madockawando's treaty. The fickle multitude caught the contagion, and
asked for nothing but English scalps; but, before setting out, they
must needs go back to Passadumkeag to finish their preparations.

Villieu again went with them, and on the way his enterprise and he
nearly perished together. His canoe overset in a rapid at some
distance above the site of Bangor: he was swept down the current, his
head was dashed against a rock, and his body bruised from head to
foot. For five days he lay helpless with fever. He had no sooner
recovered than he gave the Indians a war-feast, at which they all sang
the war-song, except Madockawando and some thirty of his clansmen,
whom the others made the butt of their taunts and ridicule. The chief
began to waver. The officer and the missionary beset him with presents
and persuasion, till at last he promised to join the rest.

It was the end of June when Villieu and Thury, with one Frenchman and
a hundred and five Indians, began their long canoe voyage to the
English border. The savages were directed to give no quarter, and told
that the prisoners already in their hands would insure the safety of
their hostages in the hands of the English. [Footnote: Villebon,
_Mémoire, Juillet_, 1694; _Instruction du Sr. de Villebon au Sr. de
Villieu._] More warriors were to join them from Bigot's mission on the
Kennebec. On the ninth of July, they neared Pemaquid; but it was no
part of their plan to attack a garrisoned post. The main body passed
on at a safe distance; while Villieu approached the fort, dressed and
painted like an Indian, and accompanied by two or three genuine
savages, carrying a packet of furs, as if on a peaceful errand of
trade. Such visits from Indians had been common since the treaty; and,
while his companions bartered their beaver skins with the unsuspecting
soldiers, he strolled about the neighborhood and made a plan of the
works. The party was soon after joined by Bigot's Indians, and the
united force now amounted to two hundred and thirty. They held a
council to determine where they should make their attack, but opinions
differed. Some were for the places west of Boston, and others for
those nearer at hand. Necessity decided them. Their provisions were
gone, and Villieu says that he himself was dying of hunger. They
therefore resolved to strike at the nearest settlement, that of Oyster
River, now Durham, about twelve miles from Portsmouth. They cautiously
moved forward, and sent scouts in advance, who reported that the
inhabitants kept no watch. In fact, a messenger from Phips had assured
them that the war was over, and that they could follow their usual
vocations without fear.

Villieu and his band waited till night, and then made their approach.
There was a small village; a church; a mill; twelve fortified houses,
occupied in most cases only by families; and many unprotected
farm-houses, extending several miles along the stream. The Indians
separated into bands, and, stationing themselves for a simultaneous
attack at numerous points, lay patiently waiting till towards day. The
moon was still bright when the first shot gave the signal, and the
slaughter began. The two palisaded houses of Adams and Drew, without
garrisons, were taken immediately, and the families butchered. Those
of Edgerly, Beard, and Medar were abandoned, and most of the inmates
escaped. The remaining seven were successfully defended, though
several of them were occupied only by the families which owned them.
One of these, belonging to Thomas Bickford, stood by the river near
the lower end of the settlement. Roused by the firing, he placed his
wife and children in a boat, sent them down the stream, and then went
back alone to defend his dwelling. When the Indians appeared, he fired
on them, sometimes from one loophole and sometimes from another,
shouting the word of command to an imaginary garrison, and showing
himself with a different hat, cap, or coat, at different parts of the
building. The Indians were afraid to approach, and he saved both
family and home. One Jones, the owner of another of these fortified
houses, was wakened by the barking of his dogs, and went out, thinking
that his hog-pen was visited by wolves. The flash of a gun in the
twilight of the morning showed the true nature of the attack. The shot
missed him narrowly; and, entering the house again, he stood on his
defence, when the Indians, after firing for some time from behind a
neighboring rock, withdrew and left him in peace. Woodman's garrison
house, though occupied by a number of men, was attacked more
seriously, the Indians keeping up a long and brisk fire from behind a
ridge where they lay sheltered; but they hit nobody, and at length
disappeared. [Footnote: Woodman's garrison house is still standing,
having been carefully preserved by his descendants.]

Among the unprotected houses, the carnage was horrible. A hundred and
four persons, chiefly women and children half naked from their beds,
were tomahawked, shot, or killed by slower and more painful methods.
Some escaped to the fortified houses, and others hid in the woods.
Twenty-seven were kept alive as prisoners. Twenty or more houses were
burned; but, what is remarkable, the church was spared. Father Thury
entered it during the massacre, and wrote with chalk on the pulpit
some sentences, of which the purport is not preserved, as they were no
doubt in French or Latin.

Thury said mass, and then the victors retreated in a body to the place
where they had hidden their canoes. Here Taxous, dissatisfied with the
scalps that he and his band had taken, resolved to have more; and with
fifty of his own warriors, joined by others from the Kennebec, set out
on a new enterprise. "They mean," writes Villieu in his diary, "to
divide into bands of four or five, and knock people in the head by
surprise, which cannot fail to produce a good effect." [Footnote:
"Casser des testes à la surprise après s'estre divisés en plusieurs
bandes de quatre au cinq, ce qui ne peut manquer de faire un bon
effect." Villieu, _Relation_.] They did in fact fall a few days after
on the settlements near Groton, and killed some forty persons.

Having heard from one of the prisoners a rumor of ships on the way
from England to attack Quebec, Villieu thought it necessary to inform
Frontenac at once. Attended by a few Indians, he travelled four days
and nights, till he found Bigot at an Abenaki fort on the Kennebec.
His Indians were completely exhausted. He took others in their place,
pushed forward again, reached Quebec on the twenty-second of August,
found that Frontenac had gone to Montreal, followed him thither, told
his story, and presented him with thirteen English scalps. [Footnote:
"Dans cette assemblée M. de Villieu avec 4 sauvages qu'il avoit amenés
de l'Accadie présenta à Monsieur le Comte de Frontenac 13 chevelures
angloises." _Callières au Ministre_, 10 _Oct_., 1694.] He had
displayed in the achievement of his detestable exploit an energy,
perseverance, and hardihood rarely equalled; but all would have been
vain but for the help of his clerical colleague Father Pierre Thury. [5]

THE INDIAN TRIBES OF ACADIA.--The name _Abenaki_ is generic, and of
very loose application. As employed by the best French writers at the
end of the seventeenth century, it may be taken to include the tribes
from the Kennebec eastward to the St. John. These again may be
sub-divided as follows. First, the Canibas (Kenibas), or tribes of the
Kennebec and adjacent waters. These with kindred neighboring tribes on
the Saco, the Androscoggin, and the Sheepscot, have been held by some
writers to be the Abenakis proper, though some of them, such as the
Sokokis or Pequawkets of the Saco, spoke a dialect distinct from the
rest. Secondly, the tribes of the Penobscot, called Tarratines by
early New England writers, who sometimes, however, give this name a
more extended application. Thirdly, the Malicites (Marechites) of the
St. Croix and the St. John. These, with the Penobscots or Tarratines,
are the Etchemins of early French waiters. All these tribes speak
dialects of Algonquin, so nearly related that they understand each
other with little difficulty. That eminent Indian philologist, Mr. J.
Hammond Trumbull, writes to me: "The Malicite, the Penobscot, and the
Kennebec, or Caniba, are dialects of the same language, which may as
well be called _Abenaki_. The first named differs more considerably
from the other two than do these from each other. In fact the Caniba
and the Penobscot are merely provincial dialects, with no greater
difference than is found in two English counties." The case is widely
different with the Micmacs, the Souriquois of the French, who occupy
portions of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and who speak a language
which, though of Algonquin origin, differs as much from the Abenaki
dialects as Italian differs from French, and was once described to me
by a Malicite (Passamaquoddy) Indian as an unintelligible jargon.


[1] "Comme vostre principal objet doit estre de faire la guerre sans
relâche aux Anglois, il faut que vostre plus particulière application
soit de detourner de tout autre employ les François qui sont avec
vous, en leur donnant de vostre part un si bon exemple en cela qu'ils
ne soient animez que du désir de chercher à faire du proffit sur les
ennemis. Je n'ay aussy rien à vous recommander plus fortement que de
mettre en usage tout ce que vous pouvez avoir de capacité et de
prudence afin que les Canibas (_Abenakis_) ne s'employent qu'à la
guerre, et que par l'économie de ce que vous avez à leur fournir ils y
puissent trouver leur subsistance et plus d'avantage qu'à la chasse."
_Le Ministre à Villebon, Avril_, 1692. Two years before, the king
had ordered that the Abenakis should be made to attack the English
settlements.

[2] The best French account of the capture of York is that of
Champigny in a letter to the minister, 5 Oct., 1692. His information
came from an Abenaki chief, who was present. The journal of Villebon
contains an exaggerated account of the affair, also derived from
Indians. Compare the English accounts in Mather, Williamson, and
Niles. These writers make the number of slain and captives much less
than that given by the French. In the contemporary journal of Rev.
John Pike, it is placed at 48 killed and 78 taken.

Two fortified houses of this period are still (1875) standing at York.
They are substantial buildings of squared timber, with the upper story
projecting over the lower, so as to allow a vertical fire on the heads
of assailants. In one of them some of the loopholes for musketry are
still left open. They may or may not have been originally enclosed by
palisades.

[3] Villebon, _Journal de ce qui s'est passé à l'Acadie_, 1691, 1692;
Mather, _Magnalia_, II. 613; Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass._, II. 67;
Williamson, _History of Maine_, I. 631; Bourne, _History of Wells_,
213; Niles, _Indian and French Wars_, 229. Williamson, like Sylvanus
Davis, calls Portneuf _Barneffe_ or _Barniffe_. He, and other English
writers, call La Brognerie _Labocree_. The French could not recover
his body, on which, according to Niles and others, was found a pouch
"stuffed full of relics, pardons, and indulgences." The prisoner
Diamond told the captors that there were thirty men in the sloops.
They believed him, and were cautious accordingly. There were, in fact,
but fourteen. Most of the fighting was on the tenth. On the evening of
that day, Convers received a reinforcement of six men. They were a
scouting party, whom he had sent a few days before in the direction of
Salmon River. Returning, they were attacked, when near the garrison
house, by a party of Portneuf's Indians. The sergeant in command
instantly shouted, "Captain Convers, send your men round the hill, and
we shall catch these dogs." Thinking that Convers had made a sortie,
the Indians ran off, and the scouts joined the garrison without loss.

[4] Lagny, _Mémoire sur l'Acadie_, 1692; _Mémoire sur l'Enlèvement de
Saint-Castin; Frontenac au Ministre_, 25 _Oct_., 1693; _Relation de ce
qui s'est passè de plus remarquable_, 1690, 1691 (capture of Nelson);
_Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Sept_., 1692; _Champigny au Ministre_, 15
_Oct_., 1692. Champigny here speaks of Nelson as the most audacious of
the English, and the most determined on the destruction of the French.
Nelson's letter to the authorities of Boston is printed in Hutchinson,
I. 338. It does not warn them of an attempt against Pemaquid, of the
rebuilding of which he seems not to have heard, but only of a design
against the seaboard towns. Compare _N. Y. Col. Docs._, IX. 555. In
the same collection is a _Memorial on the Northern Colonies_, by
Nelson, a paper showing much good sense and penetration. After an
imprisonment of four and a half years, he was allowed to go to England
on parole; a friend in France giving security of 15,000 livres for his
return, in case of his failure to procure from the king an order for
the fulfilment of the terms of the capitulation of Port Royal. (_Le
Ministre à Bégon_, 13 _Jan_., 1694.) He did not succeed, and the king
forbade him to return. It is characteristic of him that he preferred
to disobey the royal order, and thus incur the high displeasure of his
sovereign, rather than break his parole and involve his friend in
loss. La Hontan calls him a "fort galant homme." There is a portrait
of him at Boston, where his descendants are represented by the
prominent families of Derby and Borland.

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