Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

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[5] The principal authority for the above is the very curious
_Relation du Voyage fait par le Sieur de Villieu ... pour faire la
Guerre aux Anglois au printemps de l'an 1694_. It is the narrative
of Villieu himself, written in the form of a journal, with great
detail. He also gives a brief summary in a letter to the minister, 7
Sept. The best English account is that of Belknap, in his _History
of New Hampshire_. Cotton Mather tells the story in his usual
unsatisfactory and ridiculous manner. Pike, in his journal, says that
ninety-four persons in all were killed or taken. Mather says, "ninety
four or a hundred." The _Provincial Record of New Hampshire_
estimates it at eighty. Charlevoix claims two hundred and thirty, and
Villieu himself but a hundred and thirty-one. Champigny, Frontenac,
and Callières, in their reports to the court, adopt Villieu's
statements. Frontenac says that the success was due to the assurances
of safety which Phips had given the settlers.

In the Massachusetts archives is a letter to Phips, written just after
the attack. The devastation extended six or seven miles. There are
also a number of depositions from persons present, giving a horrible
picture of the cruelties practised.




CHAPTER XVII.

1690-1697.

NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND.

THE FRONTIER OF NEW ENGLAND.--BORDER WARFARE.--MOTIVES OF THE FRENCH.--
NEEDLESS BARBARITY.--WHO WERE ANSWERABLE?--FATHER THURY.--THE ABENAKIS
WAVER.--TREACHERY AT PEMAQUID.--CAPTURE OF PEMAQUID.--PROJECTED ATTACK
ON BOSTON.--DISAPPOINTMENT.--MISERIES OF THE FRONTIER.--A CAPTIVE
AMAZON.


"This stroke," says Villebon, speaking of the success at Oyster River,
"is of great advantage, because it breaks off all the talk of peace
between our Indians and the English. The English are in despair, for
not even infants in the cradle were spared." [Footnote: "Ce coup est
très avantageux, parcequ'il rompte tous les pour-parlers de paix entre
nos sauvages et les Anglois. Les Anglois sont au désespoir de ce
qu'ils ont tué jusqu'aux enfants au berceau." _Villebon au Ministre_,
19 _Sept_., 1694.]

I have given the story in detail, as showing the origin and character
of the destructive raids, of which New England annalists show only the
results. The borders of New England were peculiarly vulnerable. In
Canada, the settlers built their houses in lines, within supporting
distance of each other, along the margin of a river which supplied
easy transportation for troops; and, in time of danger, they all took
refuge in forts under command of the local seigniors, or of officers
with detachments of soldiers. The exposed part of the French colony
extended along the St. Lawrence about ninety miles. The exposed
frontier of New England was between two and three hundred miles long,
and consisted of farms and hamlets, loosely scattered through an
almost impervious forest. Mutual support was difficult or impossible.
A body of Indians and Canadians, approaching secretly and swiftly,
dividing into small bands, and falling at once upon the isolated
houses of an extensive district, could commit prodigious havoc in a
short time, and with little danger. Even in so-called villages, the
houses were far apart, because, except on the sea-shore, the people
lived by farming. Such as were able to do so fenced their dwellings
with palisades, or built them of solid timber, with loopholes, a
projecting upper story like a blockhouse, and sometimes a flanker at
one or more of the corners. In the more considerable settlements, the
largest of these fortified houses was occupied, in time of danger, by
armed men, and served as a place of refuge for the neighbors. The
palisaded house defended by Convers at Wells was of this sort, and so
also was the Woodman house at Oyster River. These were "garrison
houses," properly so called, though the name was often given to
fortified dwellings occupied only by the family. The French and Indian
war-parties commonly avoided the true garrison houses, and very rarely
captured them, except unawares; for their tactics were essentially
Iroquois, and consisted, for the most part, in pouncing upon peaceful
settlers by surprise, and generally in the night. Combatants and
non-combatants were slaughtered together. By parading the number of
slain, without mentioning that most of them were women and children,
and by counting as forts mere private houses surrounded with
palisades, Charlevoix and later writers have given the air of gallant
exploits to acts which deserve a very different name. To attack
military posts, like Casco and Pemaquid, was a legitimate act of war;
but systematically to butcher helpless farmers and their families can
hardly pass as such, except from the Iroquois point of view.

The chief alleged motive for this ruthless warfare was to prevent the
people of New England from invading Canada, by giving them employment
at home; though, in fact, they had never thought of invading Canada
till after these attacks began. But for the intrigues of Denonville,
the Bigots, Thury, and Saint-Castin, before war was declared, and the
destruction of Salmon Falls after it, Phips's expedition would never
have taken place. By successful raids against the borders of New
England, Frontenac roused the Canadians from their dejection, and
prevented his red allies from deserting him; but, in so doing, he
brought upon himself an enemy who, as Charlevoix himself says, asked
only to be let alone. If there was a political necessity for
butchering women and children on the frontier of New England, it was a
necessity created by the French themselves.

There was no such necessity. Massachusetts was the only one of the New
England colonies which took an aggressive part in the contest.
Connecticut did little or nothing. Rhode Island was non-combatant
through Quaker influence; and New Hampshire was too weak for offensive
war. Massachusetts was in no condition to fight, nor was she impelled
to do so by the home government. Canada was organized for war, and
must fight at the bidding of the king, who made the war and paid for
it. Massachusetts was organized for peace; and, if she chose an
aggressive part, it was at her own risk and her own cost. She had had
fighting enough already against infuriated savages far more numerous
than the Iroquois, and poverty and political revolution made peace a
necessity to her. If there was danger of another attack on Quebec, it
was not from New England, but from Old; and no amount of frontier
butchery could avert it.

Nor, except their inveterate habit of poaching on Acadian fisheries,
had the people of New England provoked these barbarous attacks. They
never even attempted to retaliate them, though the settlements of
Acadia offered a safe and easy revenge. Once, it is true, they
pillaged Beaubassin; but they killed nobody, though countless
butcheries in settlements yet more defenceless were fresh in their
memory. [Footnote: The people of Beaubassin had taken an oath of
allegiance to England in 1690, and pleaded it as a reason for
exemption from plunder; but it appears by French authorities that they
had violated it (_Observations sur les Depêches touchant l'Acadie_,
1695), and their priest Baudoin had led a band of Micmacs to the
attack of Wells (Villebon, _Journal_). When the "Bostonnais" captured
Port Royal, they are described by the French as excessively irritated
by the recent slaughter at Salmon Falls, yet the only revenge they
took was plundering some of the inhabitants.]

With New York, a colony separate in government and widely sundered in
local position, the case was different. Its rulers had instigated the
Iroquois to attack Canada, possibly before the declaration of war, and
certainly after it; and they had no right to complain of reprisal. Yet
the frontier of New York was less frequently assailed, because it was
less exposed; while that of New England was drenched in blood, because
it was open to attack, because the Abenakis were convenient
instruments for attacking it, because the adhesion of these tribes was
necessary to the maintenance of French power in Acadia, and because
this adhesion could best be secured by inciting them to constant
hostility against the English. They were not only needed as the
barrier of Canada against New England, but the French commanders
hoped, by means of their tomahawks, to drive the English beyond the
Piscataqua, and secure the whole of Maine to the French crown.

Who were answerable for these offences against Christianity and
civilization? First, the king; and, next, the governors and military
officers who were charged with executing his orders, and who often
executed them with needless barbarity. But a far different
responsibility rests on the missionary priests, who hounded their
converts on the track of innocent blood. The Acadian priests are not
all open to this charge. Some of them are even accused of being too
favorable to the English; while others gave themselves to their proper
work, and neither abused their influence, nor perverted their teaching
to political ends. The most prominent among the apostles of carnage,
at this time, are the Jesuit Bigot on the Kennebec, and the seminary
priest Thury on the Penobscot. There is little doubt that the latter
instigated attacks on the English frontier before the war, and there
is conclusive evidence that he had a hand in repeated forays after it
began. Whether acting from fanaticism, policy, or an odious compound
of both, he was found so useful, that the minister Ponchartrain twice
wrote him letters of commendation, praising him in the same breath for
his care of the souls of the Indians and his zeal in exciting them to
war. "There is no better man," says an Acadian official, "to prompt
the savages to any enterprise." [Footnote: Tibièrge, _Mémoire sur
l'Acadie_, 1695.] The king was begged to reward him with money; and
Ponchartrain wrote to the bishop of Quebec to increase his pay out of
the allowance furnished by the government to the Acadian clergy,
because he, Thury, had persuaded the Abenakis to begin the war anew. [1]

The French missionaries are said to have made use of singular methods
to excite their flocks against the heretics. The Abenaki chief
Bomaseen, when a prisoner at Boston in 1696, declared that they told
the Indians that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and his mother, the
Virgin, a French lady; that the English had murdered him, and that the
best way to gain his favor was to revenge his death. [Footnote:
Mather, _Magnalia_, II. 629. Compare Dummer, _Memorial_, 1709, in
_Mass. Hist. Coll_., 3 _Ser_., I., and the same writer's _Letter to a
Noble Lord concerning the Late Expedition to Canada_, 1712. Dr.
Charles T. Jackson, the geologist, when engaged in the survey of Maine
in 1836, mentions, as an example of the simplicity of the Acadians of
Madawaska, that one of them asked him "if Bethlehem, where Christ was
born, was not a town in France." _First Report on the Geology of
Maine_, 72. Here, perhaps, is a tradition from early missionary
teaching.]

Whether or not these articles of faith formed a part of the teachings
of Thury and his fellow-apostles, there is no doubt that it was a
recognized part of their functions to keep their converts in hostility
to the English, and that their credit with the civil powers depended
on their success in doing so. The same holds true of the priests of
the mission villages in Canada. They avoided all that might impair the
warlike spirit of the neophyte, and they were well aware that in
savages the warlike spirit is mainly dependent on native ferocity.
They taught temperance, conjugal fidelity, devotion to the rites of
their religion, and submission to the priest; but they left the savage
a savage still. In spite of the remonstrances of the civil
authorities, the mission Indian was separated as far as possible from
intercourse with the French, and discouraged from learning the French
tongue. He wore a crucifix, hung wampum on the shrine of the Virgin,
told his beads, prayed three times a day, knelt for hours before the
Host, invoked the saints, and confessed to the priest; but, with rare
exceptions, he murdered, scalped, and tortured like his heathen
countrymen. [2]

The picture has another side, which must not pass unnoticed. Early in
the war, the French of Canada began the merciful practice of buying
English prisoners, and especially children, from their Indian allies.
After the first fury of attack, many lives were spared for the sake of
this ransom. Sometimes, but not always, the redeemed captives were
made to work for their benefactors. They were uniformly treated well,
and often with such kindness that they would not be exchanged, and
became Canadians by adoption.

Villebon was still full of anxiety as to the adhesion of the Abenakis.
Thury saw the danger still more clearly, and told Frontenac that their
late attack at Oyster River was due more to levity than to any other
cause; that they were greatly alarmed, wavering, half stupefied,
afraid of the English, and distrustful of the French, whom they
accused of using them as tools. [Footnote: _Thury à Frontenac_, 11
_Sept_., 1694.] It was clear that something must be done; and nothing
could answer the purpose so well as the capture of Pemaquid, that
English stronghold which held them in constant menace, and at the same
time tempted them by offers of goods at a low rate. To the capture of
Pemaquid, therefore, the French government turned its thoughts.

One Pascho Chubb, of Andover, commanded the post, with a garrison of
ninety-five militia-men. Stoughton, governor of Massachusetts, had
written to the Abenakis, upbraiding them for breaking the peace, and
ordering them to bring in their prisoners without delay. The Indians
of Bigot's mission, that is to say, Bigot in their name, retorted by a
letter to the last degree haughty and abusive. Those of Thury's
mission, however, were so anxious to recover their friends held in
prison at Boston that they came to Pemaquid, and opened a conference
with Chubb. The French say that they meant only to deceive him.
[Footnote: Villebon, _Journal_, 1694-1696.] This does not justify the
Massachusetts officer, who, by an act of odious treachery, killed
several of them, and captured the chief, Egeremet. Nor was this the
only occasion on which the English had acted in bad faith. It was but
playing into the hands of the French, who saw with delight that the
folly of their enemies had aided their own intrigues. [Footnote: _N.
Y. Col Docs._, IX. 613, 616, 642, 643; La Potherie, III. 258;
_Calières au Mlnistre_, 25 _Oct_., 1695; _Rev. John Pike to Governor
and Council_, 7 _Jan_., 1694 (1695), in Johnston, _Hist. of Bristol
and Bremen_; Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass._, II. 81, 90.]

Early in 1696, two ships of war, the "Envieux" and the "Profond," one
commanded by Iberville and the other by Bonaventure, sailed from
Rochefort to Quebec, where they took on board eighty troops and
Canadians; then proceeded to Cape Breton, embarked thirty Micmac
Indians, and steered for the St. John. Here they met two British
frigates and a provincial tender belonging to Massachusetts. A fight
ensued. The forces were very unequal. The "Newport," of twenty-four
guns, was dismasted and taken; but her companion frigate along with
the tender escaped in the fog. The French then anchored at the mouth
of the St. John, where Villebon and the priest Simon were waiting for
them, with fifty more Micmacs. Simon and the Indians went on board;
and they all sailed for Pentegoet, where Villieu, with twenty-five
soldiers, and Thury and Saint-Castin, with some three hundred
Abenakis, were ready to join them. After the usual feasting, these new
allies paddled for Pemaquid; the ships followed; and on the next day,
the fourteenth of August, they all reached their destination.

The fort of Pemaquid stood at the west side of the promontory of the
same name, on a rocky point at the mouth of Pemaquid River. It was a
quadrangle, with ramparts of rough stone, built at great pains and
cost, but exposed to artillery, and incapable of resisting heavy shot.
The government of Massachusetts, with its usual military fatuity, had
placed it in the keeping of an unfit commander, and permitted some of
the yeoman garrison to bring their wives and children to this
dangerous and important post.

Saint-Castin and his Indians landed at New Harbor, half a league from
the fort. Troops and cannon were sent ashore; and, at five o'clock in
the afternoon, Chubb was summoned to surrender. He replied that he
would fight, "even if the sea were covered with French ships and the
land with Indians." The firing then began; and the Indian marksmen,
favored by the nature of the ground, ensconced themselves near the
fort, well covered from its cannon. During the night, mortars and
heavy ships' guns were landed, and by great exertion were got into
position, the two priests working lustily with the rest. They opened
fire at three o'clock on the next day. Saint-Castin had just before
sent Chubb a letter, telling him that, if the garrison were obstinate,
they would get no quarter, and would be butchered by the Indians.
Close upon this message followed four or five bomb-shells. Chubb
succumbed immediately, sounded a parley, and gave up the fort, on
condition that he and his men should be protected from the Indians,
sent to Boston, and exchanged for French and Abenaki prisoners. They
all marched out without arms; and Iberville, true to his pledge, sent
them to an island in the bay, beyond the reach of his red allies.
Villieu took possession of the fort, where an Indian prisoner was
found in irons, half dead from long confinement. This so enraged his
countrymen that a massacre would infallibly have taken place but for
the precaution of Iberville. The cannon of Pemaquid were carried on
board the ships, and the small arms and ammunition given to the
Indians. Two days were spent in destroying the works, and then the
victors withdrew in triumph. Disgraceful as was the prompt surrender
of the fort, it may be doubted if, even with the best defence, it
could have held out many days; for it had no casemates, and its
occupants were defenceless against the explosion of shells. Chubb was
arrested for cowardice on his return, and remained some months in
prison. After his release, he returned to his family at Andover,
twenty miles from Boston; and here, in the year following, he and his
wife were killed by Indians, who seem to have pursued him to this
apparently safe asylum to take revenge for his treachery toward their
countrymen. [Footnote: Baudoin, _Journal d'un Voyage fait avec M.
d'Iberville_. Baudoin was an Acadian priest, who accompanied the
expedition, which he describes in detail. _Relation de ce qui s'est
passé, etc., 1695, 1696; Des Goutins au Ministre, 23 Sept., 1696_;
Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass._, II 89; Mather, _Magnalia_, II. 633. A
letter from Chubb, asking to be released from prison, is preserved in
the archives of Massachusetts. I have examined the site of the fort,
the remains of which are still distinct.]

The people of Massachusetts, compelled by a royal order to build and
maintain Pemaquid, had no love for it, and underrated its importance.
Having been accustomed to spend their money as they themselves saw
fit, they revolted at compulsion, though exercised for their good.
Pemaquid was nevertheless of the utmost value for the preservation of
their hold on Maine, and its conquest was a crowning triumph to the
French.

The conquerors now projected a greater exploit. The Marquis de
Nesmond, with a powerful squadron of fifteen ships, including some of
the best in the royal navy, sailed for Newfoundland, with orders to
defeat an English squadron supposed to be there, and then to proceed
to the mouth of the Penobscot, where he was to be joined by the
Abenaki warriors and fifteen hundred troops from Canada. The whole
united force was then to fall upon Boston. The French had an exact
knowledge of the place. Meneval, when a prisoner there, lodged in the
house of John Nelson, had carefully examined it; and so also had the
Chevalier d'Aux; while La Motte-Cadillac had reconnoitred the town and
harbor before the war began. An accurate map of them was made for the
use of the expedition, and the plan of operations was arranged with
great care. Twelve hundred troops and Canadians were to land with
artillery at Dorchester, and march at once to force the barricade
across the neck of the peninsula on which the town stood. At the same
time, Saint-Castin was to land at Noddle's Island, with a troop of
Canadians and all the Indians; pass over in canoes to Charlestown;
and, after mastering it, cross to the north point of Boston, which
would thus be attacked at both ends. During these movements, two
hundred soldiers were to seize the battery on Castle Island, and then
land in front of the town near Long Wharf, under the guns of the
fleet. Boston had about seven thousand inhabitants, but, owing to the
seafaring habits of the people, many of its best men were generally
absent; and, in the belief of the French, its available force did not
much exceed eight hundred. "There are no soldiers in the place," say
the directions for attack, "at least there were none last September,
except the garrison from Pemaquid, who do not deserve the name." An
easy victory was expected. After Boston was taken, the land forces,
French and Indian, were to march on Salem, and thence northward to
Portsmouth, conquering as they went; while the ships followed along
the coast to lend aid, when necessary. All captured places were to be
completely destroyed after removing all valuable property. A portion
of this plunder was to be abandoned to the officers and men, in order
to encourage them, and the rest stowed in the ships for transportation
to France. [3]

Notice of the proposed expedition had reached Frontenac in the spring;
and he began at once to collect men, canoes, and supplies for the long
and arduous march to the rendezvous. He saw clearly the uncertainties
of the attempt; but, in spite of his seventy-seven years, he resolved
to command the land force in person. He was ready in June, and waited
only to hear from Nesmond. The summer passed; and it was not till
September that a ship reached Quebec with a letter from the marquis,
telling him that head winds had detained the fleet till only fifty
days' provision remained, and it was too late for action. The
enterprise had completely failed, and even at Newfoundland nothing was
accomplished. It proved a positive advantage to New England, since a
host of Indians, who would otherwise have been turned loose upon the
borders, were gathered by Saint-Castin at the Penobscot to wait for
the fleet, and kept there idle all summer. It is needless to dwell
farther on the war in Acadia. There were petty combats by land and
sea; Villieu was captured and carried to Boston; a band of New England
rustics made a futile attempt to dislodge Villebon from his fort at
Naxouat; while, throughout the contest, rivalry and jealousy rankled
among the French officials, who continually maligned each other in
tell-tale letters to the court. Their hope that the Abenakis would
force back the English boundary to the Piscataqua was never fulfilled.
At Kittery, at Wells, and even among the ashes of York, the stubborn
settlers held their ground, while war-parties prowled along the whole
frontier, from the Kennebec to the Connecticut. A single incident will
show the nature of the situation, and the qualities which it sometimes
called forth. Early in the spring that followed the capture of
Pemaquid, a band of Indians fell, after daybreak, on a number of
farm-houses near the village of Haverhill. One of them belonged to a
settler named Dustan, whose wife Hannah had borne a child a week
before, and lay in the house, nursed by Mary Neff, one of her
neighbors. Dustan had gone to his work in a neighboring field, taking
with him his seven children, of whom the youngest was two years old.
Hearing the noise of the attack, he told them to run to the nearest
fortified house, a mile or more distant, and, snatching up his gun,
threw himself on one of his horses and galloped towards his own house
to save his wife. It was too late: the Indians were already there. He
now thought only of saving his children; and, keeping behind them as
they ran, he fired on the pursuing savages, and held them at bay till
he and his flock reached a place of safety. Meanwhile, the house was
set on fire, and his wife and the nurse carried off. Her husband, no
doubt, had given her up as lost, when, weeks after, she reappeared,
accompanied by Mary Neff and a boy, and bringing ten Indian scalps.
Her story was to the following effect.

The Indians had killed the new-born child by dashing it against a
tree, after which the mother and the nurse were dragged into the
forest, where they found a number of friends and neighbors, their
fellows in misery. Some of these were presently tomahawked, and the
rest divided among their captors. Hannah Dustan and the nurse fell to
the share of a family consisting of two warriors, three squaws, and
seven children, who separated from the rest, and, hunting as they
went, moved northward towards an Abenaki village, two hundred and
fifty miles distant, probably that of the mission on the Chaudière.
Every morning, noon, and evening, they told their beads, and repeated
their prayers. An English boy, captured at Worcester, was also of the
party. After a while, the Indians began to amuse themselves by telling
the women that, when they reached the village, they would be stripped,
made to run the gauntlet, and severely beaten, according to custom.

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