1740-1747.
WAR AND POLITICS.
GOVERNOR AND ASSEMBLY.--SARATOGA DESTROYED.--WILLIAM
JOHNSON.--BORDER RAVAGES.--UPPER ASHUELOT.--FRENCH “MILITARY
MOVEMENTS.”--NUMBER FOUR.--NIVERVILLE’S ATTACK.--PHINEAS
STEVENS.--THE FRENCH REPULSED.
From the East we turn to the West, for the province of New York passed
for the West at that day. Here a vital question was what would be the
attitude of the Five Nations of the Iroquois towards the rival
European colonies, their neighbors. The Treaty of Utrecht called them
British subjects. What the word “subjects” meant, they themselves
hardly knew. The English told them that it meant children; the French
that it meant dogs and slaves. Events had tamed the fierce
confederates; and now, though, like all savages, unstable as children,
they leaned in their soberer moments to a position of neutrality
between their European neighbors, watching with jealous eyes against
the encroachments of both. The French would gladly have enlisted them
and their tomahawks in the war; but seeing little hope of this, were
generally content if they could prevent them from siding with the 206
English, who on their part regarded them as their Indians, and were
satisfied with nothing less than active alliance.
When Shirley’s plan for the invasion of Canada was afoot, Clinton,
governor of New York, with much ado succeeded in convening the
deputies of the confederacy at Albany, and by dint of speeches and
presents induced them to sing the war-song and take up the hatchet for
England. The Iroquois were disgusted when the scheme came to nought,
their warlike ardor cooled, and they conceived a low opinion of
English prowess.
The condition of New York as respects military efficiency was
deplorable. She was divided against herself, and, as usual in such
cases, party passion was stronger than the demands of war. The
province was in the midst of one of those disputes with the
representative of the Crown, which, in one degree or another, crippled
or paralyzed the military activity of nearly all the British colonies.
Twenty years or more earlier, when Massachusetts was at blows with the
Indians on her borders, she suffered from the same disorders; but her
governor and Assembly were of one mind as to urging on the war, and
quarrelled only on the questions in what way and under what command it
should be waged. But in New York there was a strong party that opposed
the war, being interested in the contraband trade long carried on with
Canada. Clinton, the governor, had, too, an enemy in the person of the
chief justice, James de Lancey, with whom he had had an after-dinner 207
dispute, ending in a threat on the part of De Lancey that he would
make the governor’s seat uncomfortable. To marked abilities, better
education, and more knowledge of the world than was often found in the
provinces, ready wit, and conspicuous social position, the chief
justice joined a restless ambition and the arts of a demagogue.
He made good his threat, headed the opposition to the governor, and
proved his most formidable antagonist. If either Clinton or Shirley
had had the independent authority of a Canadian governor, the conduct
of the war would have been widely different. Clinton was hampered at
every turn. The Assembly held him at advantage; for it was they, and
not the King, who paid his salary, and they could withhold or retrench
it when he displeased them. The people sympathized with their
representatives and backed them in opposition,--at least, when not
under the stress of imminent danger.
A body of provincials, in the pay of the King, had been mustered at
Albany for the proposed Canada expedition; and after that plan was
abandoned, Clinton wished to use them for protecting the northern
frontier and capturing that standing menace to the province, Crown
Point. The Assembly, bent on crossing him at any price, refused to
provide for transporting supplies farther than Albany. As the
furnishing of provisions and transportation depended on that body,
they could stop the movement of troops and defeat the governor’s 208
military plans at their pleasure. In vain he told them, “If you deny
me the necessary supplies, all my endeavors must become fruitless; I
must wash my own hands, and leave at your doors the blood of the
innocent people.”[224]
He urged upon them the necessity of building forts on the two
carrying-places between the Hudson and Lakes George and Champlain,
thus blocking the path of war-parties from Canada. They would do
nothing, insisting that the neighboring colonies, to whom the forts
would also be useful, ought to help in building them; and when it was
found that these colonies were ready to do their part, the Assembly
still refused. Passionate opposition to the royal governor seemed to
blind them to the interests of the province. Nor was the fault all on
their side; for the governor, though he generally showed more
self-control and moderation than could have been expected, sometimes
lost temper and betrayed scorn for his opponents, many of whom were
but the instruments of leaders urged by personal animosities and small
but intense ambitions. They accused him of treating them with
contempt, and of embezzling public money; while he retorted by
charging them with encroaching on the royal prerogative and treating
the representative of the King with indecency. Under such conditions
an efficient conduct of the war was out of the question.
Once, when the frontier was seriously threatened, Clinton, as 209
commander-in-chief, called out the militia to defend it; but they
refused to obey, on the ground that no Act of the Assembly required
them to do so.[225]
Clinton sent home bitter complaints to Newcastle and the Lords of
Trade. “They [the Assembly] are selfish, jealous of the power of the
Crown, and of such levelling principles that they are constantly
attacking its prerogative.... I find that neither dissolutions nor
fair means can produce from them such Effects as will tend to a
publick good or their own preservation. They will neither act for
themselves nor assist their neighbors.... Few but hirelings have a
seat in the Assembly, who protract time for the sake of their wages,
at a great expence to the Province, without contributing anything
material for its welfare, credit, or safety.” And he declares that
unless Parliament takes them in hand he can do nothing for the service
of the King or the good of the province,[226] for they want to usurp
the whole administration, both civil and military.[227]
At Saratoga there was a small settlement of Dutch farmers, with a
stockade fort for their protection. This was the farthest outpost of 210
the colony, and the only defence of Albany in the direction of Canada.
It was occupied by a sergeant, a corporal, and ten soldiers, who
testified before a court of inquiry that it was in such condition that
in rainy weather neither they nor their ammunition could be kept dry.
As neither the Assembly nor the merchants of Albany would make it
tenable, the garrison was withdrawn before winter by order of the
governor.[228]
Scarcely was this done when five hundred French and Indians, under the
partisan Marin, surprised the settlement in the night of the
twenty-eighth of November, burned fort, houses, mills, and stables,
killed thirty persons, and carried off about a hundred prisoners.[229]
Albany was left uncovered, and the Assembly voted £150 in provincial
currency to rebuild the ruined fort. A feeble palisade work was
accordingly set up, but it was neglected like its predecessor. Colonel
Peter Schuyler was stationed there with his regiment in 1747, but was
forced to abandon his post for want of supplies. Clinton then directed
Colonel Roberts, commanding at Albany, to examine the fort, and if he 211
found it indefensible, to burn it,--which he did, much to the
astonishment of a French war-party, who visited the place soon after,
and found nothing but ashes.[230]
The burning of Saratoga, first by the French and then by its own
masters, made a deep impression on the Five Nations, and a few years
later they taunted their white neighbors with these shortcomings in no
measured terms. “You burned your own fort at Seraghtoga and ran away
from it, which was a shame and a scandal to you.”[231] Uninitiated as
they were in party politics and faction quarrels, they could see
nothing in this and other military lapses but proof of a want of
martial spirit, if not of cowardice. Hence the difficulty of gaining
their active alliance against the French was redoubled. Fortunately
for the province, the adverse influence was in some measure
counteracted by the character and conduct of one man. Up to this time
the French had far surpassed the rival nation in the possession of men
ready and able to deal with the Indians and mould them to their will.
Eminent among such was Joncaire, French emissary among the Senecas in
western New York, who, with admirable skill, held back that powerful
member of the Iroquois league from siding with the English. But now,
among the Mohawks of eastern New York, Joncaire found his match in the
person of William Johnson, a vigorous and intelligent young Irishman, 212
nephew of Admiral Warren, and his agent in the management of his
estates on the Mohawk. Johnson soon became intimate with his Indian
neighbors, spoke their language, joined in their games and dances,
sometimes borrowed their dress and their paint, and whooped, yelped,
and stamped like one of themselves. A white man thus playing the
Indian usually gains nothing in the esteem of those he imitates; but,
as before in the case of the redoubtable Count Frontenac, Johnson’s
adoption of their ways increased their liking for him and did not
diminish their respect. The Mohawks adopted him into their tribe and
made him a warchief. Clinton saw his value; and as the Albany
commissioners hitherto charged with Indian affairs had proved wholly
inefficient, he transferred their functions to Johnson; whence arose
more heartburnings. The favor of the governor cost the new functionary
the support of the Assembly, who refused the indispensable presents to
the Indians, and thus vastly increased the difficulty of his task. Yet
the Five Nations promised to take up the hatchet against the French,
and their orator said, in a conference at Albany, “Should any French
priests now dare to come among us, we know no use for them but to
roast them.”[232] Johnson’s present difficulties, however, sprang more
from Dutch and English traders than from French priests, and he begs
that an Act may be passed against the selling of liquor to the Indians, 213
“as it is impossible to do anything with them while there is such a
plenty to be had all round the neighborhood, being forever drunk.” And
he complains especially of one Clement, who sells liquor within twenty
yards of Johnson’s house, and immediately gets from the Indians all
the bounty money they receive for scalps, “which leaves them as poor
as ratts,” and therefore refractory and unmanageable. Johnson says
further: “There is another grand villain, George Clock, who lives by
Conajoharie Castle, and robs the Indians of all their cloaths, etc.”
The chiefs complained, “upon which I wrote him twice to give over that
custom of selling liquor to the Indians; the answer was he gave the
bearer, I might hang myself.”[233] Indian affairs, it will be seen,
were no better regulated then than now.
Meanwhile the French Indians were ravaging the frontiers and burning
farmhouses to within sight of Albany. The Assembly offered rewards for
the scalps of the marauders, but were slow in sending money to pay
them,--to the great discontent of the Mohawks, who, however, at
Johnson’s instigation, sent out various war-parties, two of which,
accompanied by a few whites, made raids as far as the island of
Montreal, and somewhat checked the incursions of the mission Indians
by giving them work near home. The check was but momentary. Heathen
Indians from the West joined the Canadian converts, and the frontiers 214
of New York and New England, from the Mohawk to beyond the Kennebec,
were stung through all their length by innumerable nocturnal surprises
and petty attacks. The details of this murderous though ineffective
partisan war would fill volumes, if they were worth recording. One or
two examples will show the nature of all.
In the valley of the little river Ashuelot, a New Hampshire affluent
of the Connecticut, was a rude border-settlement which later years
transformed into a town noted in rural New England for kindly
hospitality, culture without pretence, and good-breeding without
conventionality.[234] In 1746 the place was in all the rawness and
ugliness of a backwoods hamlet. The rough fields, lately won from the
virgin forest, showed here and there, among the stumps, a few
log-cabins, roofed with slabs of pine, spruce, or hemlock. Near by was
a wooden fort, made, no doubt, after the common frontier pattern, of a
stockade fence ten or twelve feet high, enclosing cabins to shelter
the settlers in case of alarm, and furnished at the corners with what
were called flankers, which were boxes of thick plank large enough to
hold two or more men, raised above the ground on posts, and pierced
with loopholes, so that each face of the stockade could be swept by a
flank fire. One corner of this fort at Ashuelot was, however, guarded 215
by a solid blockhouse, or, as it was commonly called, a “mount.”
On the twenty-third of April a band of sixty, or, by another account,
a hundred Indians, approached the settlement before daybreak, and hid
in the neighboring thickets to cut off the men in the fort as they
came out to their morning work. One of the men, Ephraim Dorman,
chanced to go out earlier than the rest. The Indians did not fire on
him, but, not to give an alarm, tried to capture or kill him without
noise. Several of them suddenly showed themselves, on which he threw
down his gun in pretended submission. One of them came up to him with
hatchet raised; but the nimble and sturdy borderer suddenly struck him
with his fist a blow in the head that knocked him flat, then snatched
up his own gun, and, as some say, the blanket of the half-stunned
savage also, sprang off, reached the fort unhurt, and gave the alarm.
Some of the families of the place were living in the fort; but the
bolder or more careless still remained in their farmhouses, and if
nothing were done for their relief, their fate was sealed. Therefore
the men sallied in a body, and a sharp fight ensued, giving the
frightened settlers time to take refuge within the stockade. It was
not too soon, for the work of havoc had already begun. Six houses and
a barn were on fire, and twenty-three cattle had been killed. The
Indians fought fiercely, killed John Bullard, and captured Nathan
Blake, but at last retreated; and after they were gone, the charred 216
remains of several of them were found among the ruins of one of the
burned cabins, where they had probably been thrown to prevent their
being scalped.
Before Dorman had given the alarm, an old woman, Mrs. McKenney, went
from the fort to milk her cow in a neighboring barn. As she was
returning, with her full milk-pail, a naked Indian was seen to spring
from a clump of bushes, plunge a long knife into her back, and dart
away without stopping to take the gray scalp of his victim. She tried
feebly to reach the fort; but from age, corpulence, and a mortal wound
she moved but slowly, and when a few steps from the gate, fell and
died.
Ten days after, a party of Indians hid themselves at night by this
same fort, and sent one of their number to gain admission under
pretence of friendship, intending, no doubt, to rush in when the gate
should be opened; but the man on guard detected the trick, and instead
of opening the gate, fired through it, mortally wounding the Indian,
on which his confederates made off. Again, at the same place, Deacon
Josiah Foster, who had taken refuge in the fort, ventured out on a
July morning to drive his cows to pasture. A gunshot was heard; and
the men who went out to learn the cause, found the deacon lying in the
wood-road, dead and scalped. An ambushed Indian had killed him and
vanished. Such petty attacks were without number.
There is a French paper, called a record of “military movements,”
which gives a list of war-parties sent from Montreal against the 217
English border between the twenty-ninth of March, 1746, and the
twenty-first of June in the same year. They number thirty-five
distinct bands, nearly all composed of mission Indians living in or
near the settled parts of Canada,--Abenakis, Iroquois of the Lake of
Two Mountains and of Sault St. Louis (Caughnawaga), Algonquins of the
Ottawa, and others, in parties rarely of more than thirty, and often
of no more than six, yet enough for waylaying travellers or killing
women in kitchens or cow-sheds, and solitary laborers in the fields.
This record is accompanied by a list of wild Western Indians who came
down to Montreal in the summer of 1746 to share in these “military
movements.”[235]
No part of the country suffered more than the western borders of
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and here were seen too plainly the
evils of the prevailing want of concert among the British colonies.
Massachusetts claimed extensive tracts north of her present northern
boundary, and in the belief that her claim would hold good, had built
a small wooden fort, called Fort Dummer, on the Connecticut, for the
protection of settlers. New Hampshire disputed the title, and the
question, being referred to the Crown, was decided in her favor. On
this, Massachusetts withdrew the garrison of Fort Dummer and left New 218
Hampshire to defend her own. This the Assembly of that province
refused to do, on the ground that the fort was fifty miles from any
settlement made by New Hampshire people, and was therefore useless to
them, though of great value to Massachusetts as a cover to Northfield
and other of her settlements lower down the Connecticut, to
protect[236] which was no business of New Hampshire. But some years
before, in 1740, three brothers, Samuel, David, and Stephen
Farnsworth, natives of Groton, Massachusetts, had begun a new
settlement on the Connecticut about forty-five miles north of the
Massachusetts line and on ground which was soon to be assigned to New
Hampshire. They were followed by five or six others. They acted on the
belief that their settlement was within the jurisdiction of
Massachusetts, and that she could and would protect them. The place
was one of extreme exposure, not only from its isolation, far from
help, but because it was on the banks of a wild and lonely river, the
customary highway of war-parties on their descent from Canada. Number
Four--for so the new settlement was called, because it was the fourth
in a range of townships recently marked out along the Connecticut,
but, with one or two exceptions, wholly unoccupied as yet--was a rude
little outpost of civilization, buried in forests that spread unbroken
to the banks of the St. Lawrence, while its nearest English neighbor 219
was nearly thirty miles away. As may be supposed, it grew slowly, and
in 1744 it had but nine or ten families. In the preceding year, when
war seemed imminent, and it was clear that neither Massachusetts nor
New Hampshire would lend a helping hand, the settlers of Number Four,
seeing that their only resource was in themselves, called a meeting to
consider the situation and determine what should be done. The meeting
was held at the house, or log-cabin, of John Spafford, Jr., and being
duly called to order, the following resolutions were adopted: that a
fort be built at the charge of the proprietors of the said township of
Number Four; that John Hastings, John Spafford, and John Avery be a
committee to direct the building; that each carpenter be allowed nine
shillings, old tenor, a day, each laborer seven shillings, and each
pair of oxen three shillings and sixpence; that the proprietors of the
township be taxed in the sum of three hundred pounds, old tenor, for
building the fort; that John Spafford, Phineas Stevens, and John
Hastings be assessors to assess the same, and Samuel Farnsworth
collector to collect it.[237] And to the end that their fort should be
a good and creditable one, they are said to have engaged the services
of John Stoddard, accounted the foremost man of western Massachusetts,
Superintendent of Defence, Colonel of Militia, Judge of Probate, Chief
Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, a reputed authority in the 220
construction of backwoods fortifications, and the admired owner of the
only gold watch in Northampton.
Timber was abundant and could be had for the asking; for the
frontiersman usually regarded a tree less as a valuable possession
than as a natural enemy, to be got rid of by fair means or foul. The
only cost was the labor. The fort rose rapidly. It was a square
enclosing about three quarters of an acre, each side measuring a
hundred and eighty feet. The wall was not of palisades, as was more
usual, but of squared logs laid one upon another, and interlocked at
the corners after the fashion of a log-cabin. Within were several
houses, which had been built close together, for mutual protection,
before the fort was begun, and which belonged to Stevens, Spafford,
and other settlers. Apparently they were small log-cabins; for they
were valued at only from eight to thirty-five pounds each, in old
tenor currency wofully attenuated by depreciation; and these sums
being paid to the owners out of the three hundred pounds collected for
building the fort, the cabins became public property. Either they were
built in a straight line, or they were moved to form one, for when the
fort was finished, they all backed against the outer wall, so that
their low roofs served to fire from. The usual flankers completed the
work, and the settlers of Number Four were so well pleased with it
that they proudly declared their fort a better one than Fort Dummer, 221
its nearest neighbor, which had been built by public authority at the
charge of the province.
But a fort must have a garrison, and the ten or twelve men of Number
Four would hardly be a sufficient one. Sooner or later an attack was
certain; for the place was a backwoods Castle Dangerous, lying in the
path of war-parties from Canada, whether coming down the Connecticut
from Lake Memphremagog, or up Otter Creek from Lake Champlain, then
over the mountains to Black River, and so down that stream, which
would bring them directly to Number Four. New Hampshire would do
nothing for them, and their only hope was in Massachusetts, of which
most of them were natives, and which had good reasons for helping them
to hold their ground, as a cover to its own settlements below. The
governor and Assembly of Massachusetts did, in fact, send small
parties of armed men from time to time to defend the endangered
outpost, and the succor was timely; for though, during the first year
of the war, Number Four was left in peace, yet from the nineteenth of
April to the nineteenth of June, 1746, it was attacked by Indians five
times, with some loss of scalps, and more of cattle, horses, and hogs.
On the last occasion there was a hot fight in the woods, ending in the
retreat of the Indians, said to have numbered a hundred and fifty,
into a swamp, leaving behind them guns, blankets, hatchets, spears,
and other things, valued at forty pounds, old tenor,--which, says the 222
chronicle, “was reckoned a great booty for such beggarly
enemies.”[238]
But Massachusetts grew tired of defending lands that had been adjudged
to New Hampshire, and as the season drew towards an end, Number Four
was left again to its own keeping. The settlers saw no choice but to
abandon a place which they were too few to defend, and accordingly
withdrew to the older settlements, after burying such of their effects
as would bear it, and leaving others to their fate. Six men, a dog,
and a cat remained to keep the fort. Towards midwinter the human part
of the garrison also withdrew, and the two uncongenial quadrupeds were
left alone.
When the authorities of Massachusetts saw that a place so useful to
bear the brunt of attack was left to certain destruction, they
repented of their late withdrawal, and sent Captain Phineas Stevens,
with thirty men, to reoccupy it. Stevens, a native of Sudbury,
Massachusetts, one of the earliest settlers of Number Four, and one of
its chief proprietors, was a bold, intelligent, and determined man,
well fitted for the work before him. He and his band reached the fort
on the twenty-seventh of March, 1747, and their arrival gave peculiar
pleasure to its tenants, the dog and cat, the former of whom met them
with lively demonstrations of joy. The pair had apparently lived in 223
harmony, and found means of subsistence, as they are reported to have
been in tolerable condition.
Stevens had brought with him a number of other dogs,--animals found
useful for detecting the presence of Indians and tracking them to
their lurking-places. A week or more after the arrival of the party,
these canine allies showed great uneasiness and barked without
ceasing; on which Stevens ordered a strict watch to be kept, and great
precaution to be used in opening the gate of the fort. It was time,
for the surrounding forest concealed what the New England chroniclers
call an “army,” commanded by General Debeline. It scarcely need be
said that Canada had no General Debeline, and that no such name is to
be found in Canadian annals. The “army” was a large war-party of both
French and Indians, and a French record shows that its commander was
Boucher de Niverville, ensign in the colony troops.[239]
The behavior of the dogs was as yet the only sign of danger, when,
about nine o’clock on the morning of the seventh of April, one of
Stevens’s men took it upon him to go out and find what was amiss.
Accompanied by two or three of the dogs, he advanced, gun in hand,
into the clearing, peering at every stump, lest an Indian should lurk
behind it. When about twenty rods from the gate, he saw a large log,
or trunk of a fallen tree, not far before him, and approached it 224
cautiously, setting on the dogs, or, as Stevens whimsically phrases
it, “saying _Choboy!_” to them. They ran forward barking, on
which several heads appeared above the log, and several guns were
fired at him. He was slightly wounded, but escaped to the fort. Then,
all around, the air rang with war-whoops, and a storm of bullets flew
from the tangle of bushes that edged the clearing, and rapped
spitefully, but harmlessly, against the wooden wall. At a little
distance on the windward side was a log-house, to which, with adjacent
fences, the assailants presently set fire, in the hope that, as the
wind was strong, the flames would catch the fort. When Stevens saw
what they were doing, he set himself to thwart them; and while some of
his men kept them at bay with their guns, the rest fell to work
digging a number of short trenches under the wall, on the side towards
the fire. As each trench was six or seven feet deep, a man could stand
in it outside the wall, sheltered from bullets, and dash buckets of
water, passed to him from within, against the scorching timbers.
Eleven such trenches were dug, and eleven men were stationed in them,
so that the whole exposed front of the wall was kept wet.[240] Thus,
though clouds of smoke drifted over the fort, and burning cinders 225
showered upon it, no harm was done, and the enemy was forced to other
devices. They found a wagon, which they protected from water and
bullets by a shield of planks,--for there was a saw-mill hard by,--and
loaded it with dry fagots, thinking to set them on fire and push the
blazing machine against a dry part of the fort wall; but the task
proved too dangerous, “for,” says Stevens, “instead of performing what
they threatened and seemed to be immediately going to undertake, they
called to us and desired a cessation of arms till sunrise the next
morning, which was granted, at which time they said they would come to
a parley.” In fact, the French commander, with about sixty of his men,
came in the morning with a flag of truce, which he stuck in the ground
at a musket-shot from the fort, and, in the words of Stevens, “said,
if we would send three men to him, he would send as many to us.”
Stevens agreed to this, on which two Frenchmen and an Indian came to
the fort, and three soldiers went out in return. The two Frenchmen
demanded, on the part of their commander, that the garrison should
surrender, under a promise of life, and be carried prisoners to
Quebec; and they farther required that Stevens should give his answer
to the French officer in person.
Wisely or unwisely, Stevens went out at the gate, and was at once 226
joined by Niverville, attended, no doubt, by an interpreter. “Upon
meeting the Monsieur,” says the English captain, “he did not wait for
me to give him an answer,” but said, in a manner sufficiently
peremptory, that he had seven hundred men with him, and that if his
terms were refused, he would storm the fort, “run over it,” burn it to
the ground, and if resistance were offered, put all in it to the
sword; adding that he would have it or die, and that Stevens might
fight or not as he pleased, for it was all one to him. His terms being
refused, he said, as Stevens reports, “Well, go back to your fort and
see if your men dare fight any more, and give me an answer quickly;
for my men want to be fighting.” Stevens now acted as if he had been
the moderator of a town-meeting. “I went into the fort and called the
men together, and informed them what the general said, and then put it
to vote whether they would fight or resign; and they voted to a man to
stand it out, and also declared that they would fight as long as they
had life.”[241]
Answer was made accordingly, but Niverville’s promise to storm the
fort and “run over it” was not kept. Stevens says that his enemies had
not the courage to do this, or even to bring up their “fortification,”
meaning their fire-wagon with its shield of planks. In fact, an open
assault upon a fortified place was a thing unknown in this border
warfare, whether waged by Indians alone, or by French and Indians 227
together. The assailants only raised the war-whoop again, and fired,
as before, from behind stumps, logs, and bushes. This amusement they
kept up from two o’clock till night, when they grew bolder, approached
nearer, and shot flights of fire-arrows into the fort, which, water
being abundant, were harmless as their bullets. At daylight they gave
over this exercise, called out, “Good morning!” to the garrison, and
asked for a suspension of arms for two hours. This being agreed to,
another flag of truce presently appeared, carried by two Indians, who
planted it in the ground within a stone’s throw of the fort, and asked
that two men should be sent out to confer with them. This was done,
and the men soon came back with a proposal that Stevens should sell
provisions to his besiegers, under a promise on their part that they
would give him no farther trouble. He answered that he would not sell
them provisions for money, but would exchange them for prisoners, and
give five bushels of Indian corn for every hostage placed in his hands
as security for the release of an English captive in Canada. To this
their only answer was firing a few shots against the fort, after which
they all disappeared, and were seen no more. The garrison had scarcely
eaten or slept for three days. “I believe men were never known to hold
out with better resolution,” writes Stevens; and “though there were
some thousands of guns shot at us, we had but two men slightly wounded, 228
John Brown and Joseph Ely.”[242]
Niverville and his party, disappointed and hungry, now made a tour
among the scattered farms and hamlets of the country below, which,
incapable of resisting such an inroad, were abandoned at their
approach. Thus they took an easy revenge for their rebuff at Number
Four, and in a march of thirty or forty leagues, burned five small
deserted forts or stockaded houses, “three meeting-houses, several
fine barns, about one hundred dwellings, mostly of two stories,
furnished even to chests of drawers, and killed five to six hundred
sheep and hogs, and about thirty horned cattle. This devastation is
well worth a few prisoners or scalps.”[243] It is curious to find such
exploits mentioned with complacency, as evidence of prowess.
The successful defence of the most exposed place on the frontier was
welcome news throughout New England, and Commodore Charles Knowles,
who was then at Boston, sent Stevens a silver-hilted sword in
recognition of his conduct. The settlers of Number Four, who soon
returned to their backwoods home, were so well pleased with this
compliment to one of their fellows that they gave to the settlement
the baptismal name of the Commodore, and the town that has succeeded
the hamlet of Number Four is Charlestown to this day.[244]
[224] _Extract from the Governor’s Message_, in Smith,
_History of New York_, ii. 124 (1830).
[225] _Clinton to the Lords of Trade, 10 November, 1747._
[226] _Ibid., 30 November, 1745._
[227] _Remarks on the Representation of the Assembly of New York,
May, 1747_, in N. Y. _Col. Docs._, vi. 365. On the disputes of
the governor and Assembly see also Smith, _History of New York_,
ii. (1830), and Stone, _Life and Times of Sir William Johnson_, i.
N. Y. _Colonial Documents_, vi., contains many papers on the
subject, chiefly on the governor’s side.
[228] _Examinations at a Court of Inquiry at Albany, 11 December,
1745_, in N. Y. _Col. Docs._, vi. 374.
[229] The best account of this affair is in the journal of
a French officer in Schuyler, _Colonial New York_, ii.
115. The dates, being in new style, differ by eleven days
from those of the English accounts. The Dutch hamlet of
Saratoga, surprised by Marin, was near the mouth of the Fish
Kill, on the west side of the Hudson. There was also a small
fort on the east side, a little below the mouth of the
Batten Kill.
[230] Schuyler, _Colonial New York_, ii. 121.
[231] _Report of a Council with the Indians at Albany, 28 June,
1754._
[232] _Answer of the Six [Five] Nations to His Excellency the
Governor at Albany, 23 August, 1746._
[233] _Johnson to Clinton, 7 May, 1747._
[234] Keene, originally called Upper Ashuelot. On the same
stream, a few miles below, was a similar settlement, called
Lower Ashuelot,--the germ of the present Swanzey. This, too,
suffered greatly from Indian attacks.
[235] _Extrait sur les différents Mouvements Militaires qui
se sont faits à Montréal à l’occasion de la Guerre, 1745,
1746._ There is a translation in _N. Y. Col. Docs._
[236] _Journal of the Assembly of New Hampshire_, quoted in
Saunderson, _History of Charlestown, N. H._, 20.
[237] Extracts from the Town Record, in Saunderson, _History of
Charlestown, N. H. (Number Four)_, 17, 18.
[238] Saunderson, _History of Charlestown, N. H._ 29.
Doolittle, _Narrative of Mischief done by the Indian
Enemy_,--a contemporary chronicle.
[239] _Extrait en forme de Journal de ce qui s’est passé
d’intéressant dans la Colonie à l’occasion des Mouvements de
Guerre, etc., 1746, 1747._
[240] “Those who were not employed in firing at the enemy were
employed in digging trenches under the bottom of the fort.
We dug no less than eleven of them, so deep that a man could
go and stand upright on the outside and not endanger
himself; so that when these trenches were finished, we could
wet all the outside of the fort, which we did, and kept it
wet all night. We drew some hundreds of barrels of water;
and to undergo all this hard service there were but thirty
men.”--_Stevens to Colonel W. Williams, April, 1747._
[241] _Stevens to Colonel William Williams, April, 1747._
[242] _Stevens to Colonel W. Williams, April, 1747._
[243] _N. Y. Col. Docs._, x. 97.
[244] Just after the withdrawal of the French and Indians,
Stevens wrote two letters giving an account of the affair,
one to Governor Shirley, and the other to Colonel William 229
Williams, who seems to have been his immediate military
superior. At most points they are substantially the same;
but that to Williams contains some passages not found in the
other. The letter to Shirley is printed in Saunderson,
_History of Charlestown, N. H._, 34-37, and that to
Williams in _Collections of the New Hampshire Historical
Society_, iv. 109-113. Stevens also kept a diary, which
was long in possession of his descendants. One of these, Mr.
B. F. Stevens, kindly made a search for it, at my request,
and learned that it had been unfortunately destroyed by
fire, in 1856. Doolittle, in his _Narrative of Mischief_,
and Hoyt, in his _Antiquarian Researches_, give other
accounts. The French notices of the affair are few and
short, as usual in cases of failure. For the principal one,
see _N. Y. Col. Docs._, x. 97. It is here said that Stevens
asked for a parley, in order to capitulate; but all the
English accounts say that the French made the first advances.