The incursions of the Indians on our frontiers in early times were
usually the result of Spanish influence in the South, or French influence
in the North. The French reduced the incitement of Indian hostilities to
a complete system, and their officers and soldiers were not ashamed to
accompany the savages in their murdering and marauding expeditions into
New England and New York. Among all the recorded instances of this kind,
none appears to have been attended with more atrocious circumstances
of cruelty and rapine, than the burning of Schenectady. This affair is
marked by many traits of the very worst description. The inhumanity of
murdering in their beds the very people who had formerly relieved their
wants, is, perhaps, without a parallel.
In 1690, Count de Frontignac, governor general of Canada, sent out
three expeditions against the American colonies. The first of these
proceeded against Schenectady, then a small village, situated on the
Mohawk river. This party, after wandering for twenty-two days through
deserts rendered trackless by snow, approached the village of Schenectady
in so exhausted a condition, that they had determined to surrender
themselves to the inhabitants as prisoners of war. But, arriving at a
late hour on an inclement night, and hearing from the messengers they
had sent forward that the inhabitants were all in bed, without even the
precaution of a public watch, they exchanged their intention of imploring
mercy to themselves, for a plan of nocturnal attack and massacre of
the defenceless people, to whose charity their own countrymen had once
been so highly indebted. This detestable requital of good with evil
was executed with a barbarity which, of itself, must be acknowledged
to form one of the most revolting and terrific pictures that has ever
been exhibited of human cruelty and ferocity. Dividing themselves into
a number of parties, they set fire to the village in various places,
and attacked the inhabitants with fatal advantage when, alarmed by the
conflagration, they endeavoured to escape from their burning houses. The
exhausted strength of the Frenchmen appeared to revive with the work of
destruction, and to gather energy from the animated horror of the scene.
Not only were all the male inhabitants they could reach put to death,
but women were murdered, and their infants dashed on the walls of the
houses. But either the delay caused by this elaborate cruelty, or the
more merciful haste of the flames to announce the calamity to those who
might still fly from the assassins, enabled many of the inhabitants to
escape. The efforts of the assailants were also somewhat impeded by a
sagacious discrimination which they thought it expedient to exercise.
Though unmindful of benefits, they were not regardless of policy: and of
a number of Mohawk Indians who were in the village, not one sustained
an injury. Sixty persons perished in the massacre, and twenty-seven
were taken prisoners. Of the fugitives who escaped half naked, and made
their way through a storm of snow to Albany, twenty-five lost their limbs
from the intensity of the frost. The French, having totally destroyed
Schenectady, retired loaded with plunder from a place where, we think,
it must be acknowledged that even the accustomed atrocities of Indian
warfare had been outdone.
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