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.
I have told the fate of Deerfield in full, as an example of the
desolating raids which for years swept 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
neighboring farms had taken refuge while the men were at work in the
fields. The women disguised themselves in hats and jackets, fired from
the loopholes, 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.[77] They
declared that they would lay waste all the settlements on the
Connecticut,--meaning, it seems, to begin with Hatfield. "This army,"
says Williams, "went away in such a boasting, triumphant manner that I
had great hopes God would discover and disappoint their designs." In
fact, their plans came to nought, owing, according to French accounts,
to the fright of the Indians; for a soldier 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 into small parties to
gather scalps on the outlying farms.[78]
In the summer of 1708 there was a more successful attempt. The converts
of all the Canadian 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 Caughnawagas were only half-hearted towards the enterprise;
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 Rouville. 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. Advancing quickly under cover of night, they
made their onslaught at half an hour before dawn, on Sunday, the
twenty-ninth of August.
Haverhill consisted of between twenty and thirty dwelling-houses, a
meeting-house, and a small picket fort. A body of militia from the lower
Massachusetts 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
dislodge 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 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 themselves 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, Verchères and Chambly. He further declares that in the
skirmish all the English, 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
medicine chest and all their packs.[79]
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,
Brookfield, Amesbury, Marlborough, were all more or less infested,
usually by small scalping-parties, hiding in the outskirts, waylaying
stragglers, 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 immense 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 difficulty 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.[80]
In 1703-1704 six hundred men were kept ranging 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 Deerfield. In the next summer nineteen hundred men were
posted along two hundred miles of frontier.[81] This attitude of passive
defence exasperated 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 borders no more, the raid was countermanded, lest
it should waken the tempest anew.[82]
What was the object of these murderous attacks, which stung the enemy
without disabling him, confirmed 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. 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 dangerous 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. 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 missions, who, all told, from the Caughnawagas
to the Micmacs, could hardly have mustered a thousand warriors. The
danger was that the Caughnawagas, 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 irrevocably to war against
New England. With the Abenaki tribes of Maine and New Hampshire the need
was still more urgent, for they were continually 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.
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."[83] Afterwards, 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 conquest of Canada,
Ponchartrain changed his mind and encouraged the sending out of
war-parties, to keep the English busy at home.
The schemes of a radical cure date from the attack on Deerfield and the
murders of the following summer. In the autumn we find Governor Dudley
urging the capture of Quebec. "In the last two years," he says, "the
Assembly of Massachusetts has spent about £50,000 in defending the
Province, whereas three or four of the Queen's ships and fifteen hundred
New England men would rid us of the French and make further outlay
needless,"--a view, it must be admitted, sufficiently sanguine.[84]
But before seeking peace with the sword, Dudley tried less strenuous
methods. It may be remembered that in 1705 Captain Vetch and Samuel
Hill, together with the governor's young son William, went to Quebec to
procure an exchange of prisoners. Their mission had also another object.
Vetch carried a letter from Dudley to Vaudreuil, proposing a treaty of
neutrality between their respective colonies, and Vaudreuil seems to
have 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 English 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 impracticable; 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 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 England 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 without distrust; for some enemy of
the governor told Ponchartrain that under pretence of negotiations he
and Dudley were carrying on trading speculations,--which is certainly a
baseless slander.[85] Vaudreuil 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 suspicion. 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.[86]
Joseph Dudley, governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was the son
of a former governor of Massachusetts,--that upright, sturdy, narrow,
bigoted 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 traditions and mourned for the old theocracy under the
old charter, hated Joseph Dudley as a renegade; and the worshippers of
the Puritans have not forgiven him to this day. He had been president of
the council under the detested Andros, and when that representative of
the Stuarts was overthrown by a popular revolution, both he and Dudley
were sent prisoners to England. Here they found a reception different
from the expectations and wishes of those who sent them. Dudley became 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
denounced him with insolent malignity, and the honest and conscientious
Samuel Sewall regarded him with as much asperity as his kindly nature
would permit. To the party of religious and political 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 animosity he excited.[87] Both seem to be the
work of 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 cheap kind 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 militia, to influence his Council and Assembly to do his will.
His abilities were beyond question, and his manners easy and graceful;
but his instincts were arbitrary. He stood fast for prerogative, and
even his hereditary Calvinism had strong Episcopal 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."[88]
His enemies, however, set no bounds to their denunciation. "All the
people here are bought and sold betwixt the governour and his son Paul,"
says one. "It is my belief," says another, probably 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 country." 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 conniving 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 popular
indignation against the accused was extreme, and probably not without
cause.[89] There was no doubt an illicit trade between Boston and the
French of Acadia, who during the war often depended 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.[90] What with privateering 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 population 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 mistakes touching
the character and disposition of their English neighbors.
The sentences on Borland and his five companions were annulled by the
Queen and Council, on the ground that the Assembly was not competent to
try the case.[91] The passionate charges against Dudley and a petition
to the Queen for his removal were equally unavailing. The Assemblies of
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the chief merchants, the officers of
militia, and many of the ministers sent addresses to the Queen in praise
of the governor's administration;[92] and though his enemies declared
that the votes and signatures were obtained by the arts familiar to him,
his recall was prevented, and he held his office seven years longer.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] _Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Novembre, 1704._
[78] _Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Novembre, 1704_;
_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Novembre, 1704_; _Ramesay au Ministre, 14
Novembre, 1704_. Compare Penhallow.
[79] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Novembre, 1708_; _Vaudreuil et Raudot au
Ministre, 14 Novembre, 1708_; Hutchinson, ii. 156; _Mass. Hist. Coll. 2d
Series_, iv. 129; Sewall, _Diary_, ii. 234. Penhallow.
[80] 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 August, 1706._
[81] _Dudley to Lord ----, 21 April, 1704._ _Address of Council and
Assembly 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.
[82] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 12 Novembre, 1708._ Vaudreuil says that he
got his information from prisoners.
[83] _Resumé d'une Lettre de MM. de Vaudreuil et de Beauharnois du 15
Novembre, 1703, avec les Observations du Ministre._ Subercase, governor
of Acadia, writes on 25 December, 1708, that he hears that a party of
Canadians and Indians have attacked a place on the _Maramet_ (Merrimac),
"et qu'ils y ont égorgé 4 à 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 cruauté devroient être modérées:" to which Ponchartrain adds: "Bon;
les défendre." His attitude, however, was uncertain; for as early as
1707 we find him approving Vaudreuil for directing the missionaries to
prompt the Abenakis to war. _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 805.
[84] _Dudley to ----, 26 November, 1704._
[85] _Abrégé d'une lettre de M. de Vaudreuil, avec les notes du
Ministre, 19 Octobre, 1705._
[86] 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.
[87] _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
first of the above is answered by a pamphlet called a _Modest Inquiry_.
All three are reprinted in _Mass. Hist. Coll., 5th Series_, vi.
[88] Hutchinson, ii. 194.
[89] 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_.
[90] 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 Novembre,
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 January, 1708._
[91] _Council Record_, in Hutchinson, ii. 144.
[92] These addresses are appended to _A Modest Inquiry into the Grounds
and Occasions of a late Pamphlet intituled a Memorial of the present
Deplorable State of New England. London, 1707._