1724, 1725.
LOVEWELL'S FIGHT.
Vaudreuil and Dummer.--Embassy to Canada.--Indians intractable.--Treaty
of Peace.--The Pequawkets.--John Lovewell.--A Hunting Party.--Another
Expedition.--The Ambuscade.--The Fight.--Chaplain Frye: his Fate.--The
Survivors.--Susanna Rogers.
The death of Rale and the destruction of Norridgewock did not at once
end the war. Vaudreuil turned all the savages of the Canadian missions
against the borders, not only of Maine, but of western Massachusetts,
whose peaceful settlers had given no offence. Soon after the
Norridgewock expedition, Dummer wrote to the French governor, who had
lately proclaimed the Abenakis his allies: "As they are subjects of his
Britannic Majesty, they cannot be your allies, except through me, his
representative. You have instigated them to fall on our people in the
most outrageous manner. I have seen your commission to Sebastien Rale.
But for your protection and incitements they would have made peace long
ago."[267]
In reply, Vaudreuil admitted that he had given a safe-conduct and a
commission to Rale, which he could not deny, as the Jesuit's papers
were in the hands of the English governor. "You will have to answer to
your king for his murder," he tells Dummer. "It would have been strange
if I had abandoned our Indians to please you. I cannot help taking the
part of our allies. You have brought your troubles upon yourself. I
advise you to pull down all the forts you have built on the Abenaki
lands since the Peace of Utrecht. If you do so, I will be your mediator
with the Norridgewocks. As to the murder of Rale, I leave that to be
settled between the two Crowns."[268]
Apparently the French court thought it wise to let the question rest,
and make no complaint. Dummer, however, gave his views on the subject to
Vaudreuil. "Instead of preaching peace, love, and friendship, agreeably
to the Christian religion, Rale was an incendiary, as appears by many
letters I have by me. He has once and again appeared at the head of a
great many Indians, threatening and insulting us. If such a disturber of
the peace has been killed in the heat of action, nobody is to blame but
himself. I have much more cause to complain that Mr. Willard, minister
of Rutland, who is innocent of all that is charged against Rale, and
always confined himself to preaching the Gospel, was slain and scalped
by your Indians, and his scalp carried in triumph to Quebec."
Dummer then denies that France has any claim to the Abenakis, and
declares that the war between them and the English is due to the
instigations of Rale and the encouragements given them by Vaudreuil. But
he adds that in his wish to promote peace he sends two prominent
gentlemen, Colonel Samuel Thaxter and Colonel William Dudley, as bearers
of his letter.[269]
Mr. Atkinson, envoy on the part of New Hampshire, joined Thaxter and
Dudley, and the three set out for Montreal, over the ice of Lake
Champlain. Vaudreuil received them with courtesy. As required by their
instructions, they demanded the release of the English prisoners in
Canada, and protested against the action of the French governor in
setting on the Indians to attack English settlements when there was
peace between the two Crowns. Vaudreuil denied that he had done so, till
they showed him his own letters to Rale, captured at Norridgewock. These
were unanswerable; but Vaudreuil insisted that the supplies sent to the
Indians were only the presents which they received every year from the
King. As to the English prisoners, he said that those in the hands of
the Indians were beyond his power; but that the envoys could have those
whom the French had bought from their captors, on paying back the price
they had cost. The demands were exorbitant, but sixteen prisoners were
ransomed, and bargains were made for ten more. Vaudreuil proposed to
Thaxter and his colleagues to have an interview with the Indians, which
they at first declined, saying that they had no powers to treat with
them, though, if the Indians wished to ask for peace, they were ready to
hear them. At length a meeting was arranged. The French governor writes:
"Being satisfied that nothing was more opposed to our interests than a
peace between the Abenakis and the English, I thought that I would sound
the chiefs before they spoke to the English envoys, and insinuate to
them everything that I had to say."[270] This he did with such success
that, instead of asking for peace, the Indians demanded the demolition
of the English forts, and heavy damages for burning their church and
killing their missionary. In short, to Vaudreuil's great satisfaction,
they talked nothing but war. The French despatch reporting this
interview has the following marginal note: "Nothing better can be done
than to foment this war, which at least retards the settlements of the
English;" and against this is written, in the hand of the colonial
minister, the word "_Approved_."[271] This was, in fact, the policy
pursued from the first, and Rale had been an instrument of it. The
Jesuit La Chasse, who spoke both English and Abenaki, had acted as
interpreter, and so had had the meeting in his power, as he could make
both parties say what he pleased. The envoys thought him more
anti-English than Vaudreuil himself, and ascribed the intractable mood
of the Indians to his devices. Under the circumstances, they made a
mistake in consenting to the interview at all. The governor, who had
treated them with civility throughout, gave them an escort of soldiers
for the homeward journey, and they and the redeemed prisoners returned
safely to Albany.
The war went on as before, but the Indians were fast growing tired of
it. The Penobscots had made themselves obnoxious by their attacks on
Fort St. George, and Captain Heath marched across country from the
Kennebec to punish them. He found their village empty. It was built,
since Westbrook's attack, at or near the site of Bangor, a little below
Indian Old Town,--the present abode of the tribe,--and consisted of
fifty wigwams, which Heath's men burned to the ground.
One of the four hostages still detained at Boston, together with another
Indian captured in the war, was allowed to visit his people, under a
promise to return. Strange to say, the promise was kept. They came back
bringing a request for peace from their tribesmen. On this,
commissioners were sent to the St. George, where a conference was held
with some of the Penobscot chiefs, and it was arranged that deputies of
that people should be sent to Boston to conclude a solid peace. After
long delay, four chiefs appeared, fully empowered, as they said, to make
peace, not for the Penobscots only, but for the other Abenaki tribes,
their allies. The speeches and ceremonies being at last ended, the four
deputies affixed their marks to a paper in which, for themselves and
those they represented, they made submission "unto his most excellent
Majesty George, by the grace of God king of Great Britain, France, and
Ireland, defender of the Faith," etc., promising to "cease and forbear
all acts of hostility, injuries, and discord towards all his subjects,
and never confederate or combine with any other nation to their
prejudice." Here was a curious anomaly. The English claimed the Abenakis
as subjects of the British Crown, and at the same time treated with them
as a foreign power. Each of the four deputies signed the above-mentioned
paper, one with the likeness of a turtle, the next with that of a bird,
the third with the untutored portrait of a beaver, and the fourth with
an extraordinary scrawl, meant, it seems, for a lobster,--such being
their respective totems. To these the lieutenant-governor added the seal
of the province of Massachusetts, coupled with his own autograph.
In the next summer, and again a year later, other meetings were held at
Casco Bay with the chiefs of the various Abenaki tribes, in which, after
prodigious circumlocution, the Boston treaty was ratified, and the war
ended.[272] This time the Massachusetts Assembly, taught wisdom by
experience, furnished a guarantee of peace by providing for government
trading-houses in the Indian country, where goods were supplied, through
responsible hands, at honest prices.
The Norridgewocks, with whom the quarrel began, were completely broken.
Some of the survivors joined their kindred in Canada, and others were
merged in the Abenaki bands of the Penobscot, Saco, or Androscoggin.
Peace reigned at last along the borders of New England; but it had cost
her dear. In the year after the death of Rale, there was an incident of
the conflict too noted in its day, and too strongly rooted in popular
tradition, to be passed unnoticed.
Out of the heart of the White Mountains springs the river Saco, fed by
the bright cascades that leap from the crags of Mount Webster, brawling
among rocks and bowlders down the great defile of the Crawford Notch,
winding through the forests and intervales of Conway, then circling
northward by the village of Fryeburg in devious wanderings by meadows,
woods, and mountains, and at last turning eastward and southward to join
the sea.
On the banks of this erratic stream lived an Abenaki tribe called the
Sokokis. When the first white man visited the country, these Indians
lived at the Falls, a few miles from the mouth of the river. They
retired before the English settlers, and either joined their kindred in
Maine, or migrated to St. Francis and other Abenaki settlements in
Canada; but a Sokoki band called Pigwackets, or Pequawkets, still kept
its place far in the interior, on the upper waters of the Saco, near
Pine Hill, in the present town of Fryeburg. Except a small band of their
near kindred on Lake Ossipee, they were the only human tenants of a
wilderness many thousand square miles in extent. In their wild and
remote abode they were difficult of access, and the forest and the river
were well stocked with moose, deer, bear, beaver, otter, lynx, fisher,
mink, and marten. In this, their happy hunting-ground, the Pequawkets
thought themselves safe; and they would have been so for some time
longer if they had not taken up the quarrel of the Norridgewocks and
made bloody raids against the English border, under their war-chief,
Paugus.
Not far from where their wigwams stood clustered in a bend of the Saco
was the small lake now called Lovewell's Pond, named for John Lovewell
of Dunstable, a Massachusetts town on the New Hampshire line. Lovewell's
father, a person of consideration in the village, where he owned a
"garrison house," had served in Philip's War, and taken part in the
famous Narragansett Swamp Fight. The younger Lovewell, now about
thirty-three years of age, lived with his wife, Hannah, and two or three
children on a farm of two hundred acres. The inventory of his effects,
made after his death, includes five or six cattle, one mare, two steel
traps with chains, a gun, two or three books, a feather-bed, and
"under-bed," or mattress, along with sundry tools, pots, barrels,
chests, tubs, and the like,--the equipment, in short, of a decent
frontier yeoman of the time.[273] But being, like the tough veteran, his
father, of a bold and adventurous disposition, he seems to have been
less given to farming than to hunting and bush-fighting.
Dunstable was attacked by Indians in the autumn of 1724, and two men
were carried off. Ten others went in pursuit, but fell into an ambush,
and nearly all were killed, Josiah Farwell, Lovewell's brother-in-law,
being, by some accounts, the only one who escaped.[274] Soon after this,
a petition, styled a "Humble Memorial," was laid before the House of
Representatives at Boston. It declares that in order "to kill and
destroy their enemy Indians," the petitioners and forty or fifty others
are ready to spend one whole year in hunting them, "provided they can
meet with Encouragement suitable." The petition is signed by John
Lovewell, Josiah Farwell, and Jonathan Robbins, all of Dunstable,
Lovewell's name being well written, and the others after a cramped and
unaccustomed fashion. The representatives accepted the proposal and
voted to give each adventurer two shillings and sixpence a day,--then
equal in Massachusetts currency to about one English shilling,--out of
which he was to maintain himself. The men were, in addition, promised
large rewards for the scalps of male Indians old enough to fight.
A company of thirty was soon raised. Lovewell was chosen captain,
Farwell, lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end
of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one
prisoner and one scalp. Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out
again, this time with eighty-seven men, gathered from the villages of
Dunstable, Groton, Lancaster, Haverhill, and Billerica. They ascended
the frozen Merrimac, passed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed nearly to the
White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper Saco. Here they
killed a moose,--a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of
starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back
a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snow-shoes
through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the
light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the
hardy little chickadee, or black-capped titmouse, so familiar to the
winter woods. Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprint; but on
the twentieth of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and,
following the snow-shoe tracks that led from it, at length saw smoke
rising at a distance out of the gray forest. The party lay close till
two o'clock in the morning; then cautiously approached, found one or
more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in
number. They were warriors from Canada on a winter raid against the
borders. Lovewell and his men, it will be seen, were much like hunters
of wolves, catamounts, or other dangerous beasts, except that the chase
of this fierce and wily human game demanded far more hardihood and
skill.
They brought home the scalps in triumph, together with the blankets and
the new guns furnished to the slain warriors by their Canadian friends;
and Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt. The busy
season of the farmers was at hand, and volunteers came in less freely
than before. At the middle of April, however, he had raised a band of
forty-six, of whom he was the captain, with Farwell and Robbins as his
lieutenants. Though they were all regularly commissioned by the
governor, they were leaders rather than commanders, for they and their
men were neighbors or acquaintances on terms of entire social equality.
Two of the number require mention. One was Seth Wyman, of Woburn, an
ensign; and the other was Jonathan Frye, of Andover, the chaplain, a
youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College in 1723, and now a
student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun, knife,
and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was more prompt to
use them.
They began their march on April 15. A few days afterwards, one William
Cummings, of Dunstable, became so disabled by the effects of a wound
received from Indians some time before, that he could not keep on with
the rest, and Lovewell sent him back in charge of a kinsman, thus
reducing their number to forty-four. When they reached the west shore of
Lake Ossipee, Benjamin Kidder, of Nutfield, fell seriously ill. To leave
him defenceless in a place so dangerous was not to be thought of; and
his comrades built a small fort, or palisaded log-cabin, near the water,
where they left the sick man in charge of the surgeon, together with
Sergeant Woods and a guard of seven men. The rest, now reduced to
thirty-four, continued their march through the forest northeastward
towards Pequawket, while the savage heights of the White Mountains,
still covered with snow, rose above the dismal, bare forests on their
left. They seem to have crossed the Saco just below the site of
Fryeburg, and in the night of May 7, as they lay in the woods near the
northeast end of Lovewell's Pond, the men on guard heard sounds like
Indians prowling about them. At daybreak the next morning, as they stood
bareheaded, listening to a prayer from the young chaplain, they heard
the report of a gun, and soon after discovered an Indian on the shore of
the pond at a considerable distance. Apparently he was shooting ducks;
but Lovewell, suspecting a device to lure them into an ambuscade, asked
the men whether they were for pushing forward or falling back, and with
one voice they called upon him to lead them on. They were then in a
piece of open pine woods traversed by a small brook. He ordered them to
lay down their packs and advance with extreme caution. They had moved
forward for some time in this manner when they met an Indian coming
towards them through the dense trees and bushes. He no sooner saw them
than he fired at the leading men. His gun was charged with beaver-shot;
but he was so near his mark that the effect was equal to that of a
bullet, and he severely wounded Lovewell and one Whiting; on which Seth
Wyman shot him dead, and the chaplain and another man scalped him.
Lovewell, though believed to be mortally hurt, was still able to walk,
and the party fell back to the place where they had left their packs.
The packs had disappeared, and suddenly, with frightful yells, the whole
body of the Pequawket warriors rushed from their hiding-places, firing
as they came on. The survivors say that they were more than twice the
number of the whites,--which is probably an exaggeration, though their
conduct, so unusual with Indians, in rushing forward instead of firing
from their ambush, shows a remarkable confidence in their numerical
strength.[275] They no doubt expected to strike their enemies with a
panic. Lovewell received another mortal wound; but he fired more than
once on the Indians as he lay dying. His two lieutenants, Farwell and
Robbins, were also badly hurt. Eight others fell; but the rest stood
their ground, and pushed the Indians so hard that they drove them back
to cover with heavy loss. One man played the coward, Benjamin Hassell,
of Dunstable, who ran off, escaped in the confusion, and made with his
best speed for the fort at Lake Ossipee.
The situation of the party was desperate, and nothing saved them from
destruction but the prompt action of their surviving officers, only one
of whom, Ensign Wyman, had escaped unhurt. It was probably under his
direction that the men fell back steadily to the shore of the pond,
which was only a few rods distant. Here the water protected their rear,
so that they could not be surrounded; and now followed one of the most
obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of New England. It was
about ten o'clock when the fight began, and it lasted till night. The
Indians had the greater agility and skill in hiding and sheltering
themselves, and the whites the greater steadiness and coolness in using
their guns. They fought in the shade; for the forest was dense, and all
alike covered themselves as they best could behind trees, bushes, or
fallen trunks, where each man crouched with eyes and mind intent, firing
whenever he saw, or thought he saw, the head, limbs, or body of an enemy
exposed to sight for an instant. The Indians howled like wolves, yelled
like enraged cougars, and made the forest ring with their whoops; while
the whites replied with shouts and cheers. At one time the Indians
ceased firing and drew back among the trees and undergrowth, where, by
the noise they made, they seemed to be holding a "pow-wow," or
incantation to procure victory; but the keen and fearless Seth Wyman
crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the
meeting. About the middle of the afternoon young Frye received a mortal
wound. Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to
time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice.
Solomon Keyes, of Billerica, received two wounds, but fought on till a
third shot struck him. He then crawled up to Wyman in the heat of the
fight, and told him that he, Keyes, was a dead man, but that the Indians
should not get his scalp if he could help it. Creeping along the sandy
edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat,
rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind.
Soon after sunset the Indians drew off and left the field to their
enemies, living and dead, not even stopping to scalp the fallen,--a
remarkable proof of the completeness of their discomfiture. Exhausted
with fatigue and hunger,--for, having lost their packs in the morning,
they had no food,--the surviving white men explored the scene of the
fight. Jacob Farrar lay gasping his last by the edge of the water.
Robert Usher and Lieutenant Robbins were unable to move. Of the
thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were
badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying, except the coward who
had run off.
About midnight, an hour or more before the setting of the moon, such as
had strength to walk left the ground. Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked
one of them to load his gun, saying, "The Indians will come in the
morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of 'em if I can." They loaded
the gun and left him.
To make one's way even by daylight through the snares and pitfalls of a
New England forest is often a difficult task; to do so in the darkness
of night and overshadowing boughs, among the fallen trees and the snarl
of underbrush, was wellnigh impossible. Any but the most skilful
woodsmen would have lost their way. The Indians, sick of fighting, did
not molest the party. After struggling on for a mile or more, Farwell,
Frye, and two other wounded men, Josiah Jones and Eleazer Davis, could
go no farther, and, with their consent, the others left them, with a
promise to send them help as soon as they should reach the fort. In the
morning the men divided into several small bands, the better to elude
pursuit. One of these parties was tracked for some time by the Indians,
and Elias Barron, becoming separated from his companions, was never
again heard of, though the case of his gun was afterwards found by the
bank of the river Ossipee.
Eleven of the number at length reached the fort, and to their amazement
found nobody there. The runaway, Hassell, had arrived many hours before
them, and to excuse his flight told so frightful a story of the fate of
his comrades that his hearers were seized with a panic, shamefully
abandoned their post, and set out for the settlements, leaving a
writing on a piece of birch-bark to the effect that all the rest were
killed. They had left a supply of bread and pork, and while the famished
eleven rested and refreshed themselves they were joined by Solomon
Keyes, the man who, after being thrice wounded, had floated away in a
canoe from the place of the fight. After drifting for a considerable
distance, the wind blew him ashore, when, spurred by necessity and
feeling himself "wonderfully strengthened," he succeeded in gaining the
fort.
Meanwhile Frye, Farwell, and their two wounded companions, Davis and
Jones, after waiting vainly for the expected help, found strength to
struggle forward again, till the chaplain stopped and lay down, begging
the others to keep on their way, and saying to Davis, "Tell my father
that I expect in a few hours to be in eternity, and am not afraid to
die." They left him, and, says the old narrative, "he has not been heard
of since." He had kept the journal of the expedition, which was lost
with him.
Farwell died of exhaustion. The remaining two lost their way and became
separated. After wandering eleven days, Davis reached the fort at Lake
Ossipee, and, finding food there, came into Berwick on the
twenty-seventh. Jones, after fourteen days in the woods, arrived, half
dead, at the village of Biddeford.
Some of the eleven who had first made their way to the fort, together
with Keyes, who joined them there, came into Dunstable during the night
of the thirteenth, and the rest followed one or two days later. Ensign
Wyman, who was now the only commissioned officer left alive, and who had
borne himself throughout with the utmost intrepidity, decision, and good
sense, reached the same place along with three other men on the
fifteenth.
The runaway, Hassell, and the guard at the fort, whom he had infected
with his terror, had lost no time in making their way back to Dunstable,
which they seem to have reached on the evening of the eleventh. Horsemen
were sent in haste to carry the doleful news to Boston, on which the
governor gave orders to Colonel Tyng of the militia, who was then at
Dunstable, to gather men in the border towns, march with all speed to
the place of the fight, succor the wounded if any were still alive, and
attack the Indians, if he could find them. Tyng called upon Hassell to
go with him as a guide; but he was ill, or pretended to be so, on which
one of the men who had been in the fight and had just returned offered
to go in his place.
When the party reached the scene of the battle, they saw the trees
plentifully scarred with bullets, and presently found and buried the
bodies of Lovewell, Robbins, and ten others. The Indians, after their
usual custom, had carried off or hidden their own dead; but Tyng's men
discovered three of them buried together, and one of these was
recognized as the war-chief Paugus, killed by Wyman, or, according to a
more than doubtful tradition, by John Chamberlain.[276] Not a living
Indian was to be seen.
The Pequawkets were cowed by the rough handling they had met when they
plainly expected a victory. Some of them joined their Abenaki kinsmen in
Canada and remained there, while others returned after the peace to
their old haunts by the Saco; but they never again raised the hatchet
against the English.
Lovewell's Pond, with its sandy beach, its two green islands, and its
environment of lonely forests, reverted for a while to its original
owners,--the wolf, bear, lynx, and moose. In our day all is changed.
Farms and dwellings possess those peaceful shores, and hard by, where,
at the bend of the Saco, once stood, in picturesque squalor, the wigwams
of the vanished Pequawkets, the village of Fryeburg preserves the name
of the brave young chaplain, whose memory is still cherished, in spite
of his uncanonical turn for scalping.[277] He had engaged himself to a
young girl of a neighboring village, Susanna Rogers, daughter of John
Rogers, minister of Boxford. It has been said that Frye's parents
thought her beneath him in education and position; but this is not
likely, for her father belonged to what has been called the "Brahmin
caste" of New England, and, like others of his family, had had, at
Harvard, the best education that the country could supply. The girl
herself, though only fourteen years old, could make verses, such as they
were; and she wrote an elegy on the death of her lover which, bating
some grammatical lapses, deserves the modest praise of being no worse
than many New England rhymes of that day.
The courage of Frye and his sturdy comrades contributed greatly to the
pacification which in the next year relieved the borders from the
scourge of Indian war.[278]
FOOTNOTES:
[267] _Dummer to Vaudreuil, 15 September, 1724._
[268] _Vaudreuil à Dummer, 29 Octobre, 1724._
[269] _Dummer to Vaudreuil, 19 January, 1725._ This, with many other
papers relating to these matters, is in the Massachusetts Archives.
[270] _Dépêche de Vaudreuil, 7 Août, 1725._ "Comme j'ai toujours été
persuadé que rien n'est plus opposé à nos intérêts que la paix des
Abenakis avec les Anglais (la sureté de cette colonie du côté de l'est
ayant été l'unique objet de cette guerre), je songeai à pressentir ces
sauvages avant qu'ils parlassant aux Anglais et à leur insinuer tout ce
que j'avais à leur dire."--_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Mai, 1725._
[271] _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 949.
[272] Penhallow gives the Boston treaty. For the ratifications, see
_Collections of the Maine Hist. Soc._, iii. 377, 407.
[273] See the inventory, in Kidder, _The Expeditions of Captain John
Lovewell_, 93, 94.
[274] Other accounts say that eight of the ten were killed. The
headstone of one of the number, Thomas Lund, has these words: "This man,
with seven more that lies in this grave, was slew All in A day by the
Indiens."
[275] Penhallow puts their number at seventy, Hutchinson at eighty,
Williamson at sixty-three, and Belknap at forty-one. In such cases the
smallest number is generally nearest the truth.
[276] The tradition is that Chamberlain and Paugus went down to the
small brook, now called Fight Brook, to clean their guns, hot and foul
with frequent firing; that they saw each other at the same instant, and
that the Indian said to the white man, in his broken English, "Me kill
you quick!" at the same time hastily loading his piece; to which
Chamberlain coolly replied, "Maybe not." His firelock had a large
touch-hole, so that the powder could be shaken out into the pan, and the
gun made to prime itself. Thus he was ready for action an instant sooner
than his enemy, whom he shot dead just as Paugus pulled trigger, and
sent a bullet whistling over his head. The story has no good foundation,
while the popular ballad, written at the time, and very faithful to the
facts, says that, the other officers being killed, the English made
Wyman their captain,--
"Who shot the old chief Paugus, which did the foe defeat,
Then set his men in order and brought off the retreat."
[277] The town, however, was not named for the chaplain, but for his
father's cousin, General Joseph Frye, the original grantee of the land.
[278] Rev. Thomas Symmes, minister of Bradford, preached a sermon on the
fate of Lovewell and his men immediately after the return of the
survivors, and printed it, with a much more valuable introduction,
giving a careful account of the affair, on the evidence of "the Valorous
Captain Wyman and some others of good Credit that were in the
Engagement." Wyman had just been made a captain, in recognition of his
conduct. The narrative is followed by an attestation of its truth signed
by him and two others of Lovewell's band.
A considerable number of letters relating to the expedition are
preserved in the Massachusetts Archives, from Benjamin Hassell, Colonel
Tyng, Governor Dummer of Massachusetts, and Governor Wentworth of New
Hampshire. They give the various reports received from those in the
fight, and show the action taken in consequence. The Archives also
contain petitions from the survivors and the families of the slain; and
the legislative Journals show that the petitioners received large grants
of land. Lovewell's debts contracted in raising men for his expeditions
were also paid.
The papers mentioned above, with other authentic records concerning the
affair, have been printed by Kidder in his _Expeditions of Captain John
Lovewell_, a monograph of thorough research. The names of all Lovewell's
party, and biographical notices of some of them, are also given by Mr.
Kidder. Compare Penhallow, Hutchinson, Fox, _History of Dunstable_, and
Bouton, _Lovewell's Great Fight_. For various suggestions touching
Lovewell's Expedition, I am indebted to Mr. C. W. Lewis, who has made it
the subject of minute and careful study.
A ballad which was written when the event was fresh, and was long
popular in New England, deserves mention, if only for its general
fidelity to the facts. The following is a sample of its eighteen
stanzas:--
"'T was ten o'clock in the morning when first the fight begun,
And fiercely did continue till the setting of the sun,
Excepting that the Indians, some hours before 't was night,
Drew off into the bushes, and ceased awhile to fight;
"But soon again returnèd in fierce and furious mood,
Shouting as in the morning, but yet not half so loud;
For, as we are informèd, so thick and fast they fell,
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well.
* * * * *
"Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die;
They killed Lieutenant Robbins, and wounded good young Frye,
Who was our English chaplain; he many Indians slew,
And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew."
Frye, as mentioned in the text, had engaged himself to Susanna Rogers, a
young girl of the village of Boxford, who, after his death, wrote some
untutored verses to commemorate his fate. They are entitled, _A Mournful
Elegy on Mr. Jonathan Frye_, and begin thus:
"Assist, ye muses, help my quill,
Whilst floods of tears does down distil;
Not from mine eyes alone, but all
That hears the sad and doleful fall
Of that young student, Mr. Frye,
Who in his blooming youth did die.
Fighting for his dear country's good,
He lost his life and precious blood.
His father's only son was he;
His mother loved him tenderly;
And all that knew him loved him well;
For in bright parts he did excel
Most of his age; for he was young,--
Just entering on twenty-one;
A comely youth, and pious too;
This I affirm, for him I knew."
She then describes her lover's brave deeds, and sad but heroic death,
alone in a howling wilderness; condoles with the bereaved parents,
exhorts them to resignation, and touches modestly on her own sorrow.
In more recent times the fate of Lovewell and his companions has
inspired several poetical attempts, which need not be dwelt upon.
Lovewell's Fight, as Dr. Palfrey observes, was long as famous in New
England as Chevy Chase on the Scottish Border.