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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