Massachusetts despatched a few companies, and Captain Church was sent from Plymouth. The name of the conqueror of Philip was a terror to the Indians. Along the Androscoggin, the Penobscot, and the Kennebec, he made several campaigns, never fighting without success, but often unable to overtake the savages, who fled on hearing of his approach, leaving behind them only the ashes of their villages and their stores. But the blow of the enemy always fell upon places where it was least expected. At Oyster River the Indians Other raids waited till the garrison went out to work, then slipped between them and the house, and killed all but one. Two boys defended the house bravely, Elizabeth Heard and the Indian. till it was set on fire, and even then refused to surrender, save on condition that the lives of the women and children should be spared. The promise was broken: one of the little children was impaled before the eyes of the mother. In 1690 the French were at war with England. The Governor Later Indian of Canada organized expeditions of French and Indians, hostilities. against various points of the colonies in New England and New York. Fifty-two men attacked Salmon Falls on the morning 1690.] THE FRENCH AND INDIANS. 447 of the 18th of March. The inhabitants made a brave but vain resistance. Thirty were killed and the rest surrendered. Twentyseven houses and two thousand head of cattle in the barns were destroyed.1 This party was pursued by one hundred and forty men, and warmly engaged, but made good their retreat with little loss, carrying off the women and children, some of whom were treated with great cruelty. The incident of dashing a babe's brains out against a tree, which is told of various places, occurred upon this journey through the woods to Canada. It was more economical to slay the weaker captives, because each scalp brought a premium when presented before some French officer. The details of every fight in this war need not be told. Casco was destroyed, Exeter was attacked, houses were burned, and people killed in the field in various directions. Twenty persons were killed and captured at Rye Beach in 1691. York was destroyed the previous year. In 1694, a body of two hundred and fifty Eastern Indians under French guidance, and with a French priest to shrive the dying, made an attack upon the settlement at Oyster River. Twelve of the houses were fortified, but they were badly River Settlewatched and ill provided for defence. Many of the people lived carelessly, in ordinary houses. How easily the edge of bitter experience grows dull in a frontier life, where Nature's sense of security seems to be shared by human beings. An important element of success in these enterprises of the savages was the short memories of the victims. Attack on the Oyster ment. On this occasion the party divided into small groups, one being detailed to each house on either side of the river. The first gun fired was to be the signal for a simultaneous assault, but a man drew the first shot prematurely by appearing at the door of his house. The attacking parties were not all in readiness, so that only five of the garrison-houses were taken, but nearly all the other houses were destroyed, a great many people killed, with the usual barbarities. Persons who surrendered on a promise that their life should be spared were instantly butchered. A woman with child was ripped open; a little boy of nine was made to run down a lane of the Indians, who pelted him with tomahawks till he was killed. Thomas Bickford, who was alone in his house, managed to repel an assault by frequently changing his hat and dress, and issuing orders as to a number of men. While the massacre was going on the French priest got into the meeting-house, and amused himself by scrawling the tenets of his faith with a piece of chalk on the pulpit. About a hundred persons were 1 Charlevoix is quoted with some incredulity by Belknap's Hist. of New Hampshire, i., 207. killed and captured. One woman during the succeeding winter was delivered of a child in a violent snow-storm. The Indians killed it. She lived fourteen days on a decoction of bark and water, became senseless from the cold, was revived by the usual Indian remedy of warm water poured down her throat, remained in brutal captivity four years, rejoined her husband, had fourteen children, and died at eightynine! Of such stuff were made the matrons of those perilous times. About three miles up the river from Portsmouth, Madame Ursula Cutts, widow of John Cutts, the first royal President, lived upon her farm. The affair at Oyster River did not scare her into town. She insisted upon staying in the country till all her hay was in the barn. Some Indians lay in ambush as she was in the field directing her laborers. She was shot and scalped, and her fingers were cut off for the rings. Colonel Richard Waldron and his wife were going up the river in a boat to dine with the old lady when the tidings of her death intercepted them. In the summer of 1696 the Indians crossed from York to Rye Beach in canoes, and made an attack upon some houses near Little Harbor, killing fourteen people and firing the houses. They were pursued, but reached their canoes and put to sea. Some boats that were sent to intercept them, delivered fire too soon, and they escaped by going round the Isles of Shoals. Fort William Henry at Pemaquid, which the Indians had captured six years before, was the scene of a serious disaster. Sir William Phips had rebuilt and fortified it at great expense contrary to the advice of Church, who believed that 1 Belknap's Hist. of New Hampshire, i., 216–220. 1697.] THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. 449 in Indian warfare such places were only "nests of destruction." It was a constant provocation to the French of Canada, who were determined to take and destroy it. A force of two ships of war, with two companies of soldiers, under Iberville, to be reinforced by Baron Castin with Indians, was sent against it. On the way Iberville encountered two English ships of war, the Newport and the Sorlings, and a cutter belonging to the Province of Massachusetts. The Newport he took, the others escaped in a fog. At the mouth of the Penobscot Castin joined the expedition with two hundred savages in a fleet of canoes. This formidable force invested Pemaquid, and summoned it to surrender. The fortress had a garrison of a hundred men, ammunition and food enough to stand a siege, and mounted fifteen guns. The first summons was rejected; but in the night the French set up a battery on shore, and on the second day threw shot and shell into the town and fort. Castin threatened that if the place was taken by storm it should be given up to the plunder of the savages. Captain Chubbs, the commander, yielded, and threw open his gates. The garrison was only saved from massacre by being taken to an island in the harbor and put under a guard of French marines. But the fort was demolished and the town plundered. Chubbs may have only meant to save the lives of his men, but he was, nevertheless, tried for cowardice on his return to Boston, and cashiered.1 At Dover three persons were killed returning home from divine service. Belknap relates the remarkable escape of Exeter in the summer of 1697. A number of Indians were concealed near the town waiting for an opportunity. By a stroke of foolish good luck some women and children took that very time to go into the fields for strawberries, and would not be prevented. Somebody in town fired a gun to scare them back, but the report scared the Indians also, who retreated, supposing that they had been discovered. But on the 4th of July End of the of that year they killed Major Frost, at Kittery, thus clos- war. ing a piteous list of massacres, and making the circle of their revenge complete by the death of an officer who was concerned in Major Waldron's sham-fight at Dover. This, probably, was the last Indian shot fired in New Hampshire during the war. In 1698 the Peace of Ryswick restrained the Indians from further hostilities. Many of the captives were returned, but a good many preferred to remain, and thus started a race of half-breeds to be most dangerous enemies in future wars. 1 Sewall's Ancient Dominions of Maine. Annals of Salem. OUTBREAK OF THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. ITS EARLIER HISTORY.-CAUSES OF 66 THE important and interesting political events ending with Phips's return from England with the new charter - following the close of Philip's War, had hardly ceased to agitate the colonies, when there came, especially upon Massachusetts, a dispensation more gloomy and terrible than marked any other period of the century. It cannot, indeed, be said that the witchcraft panic, which broke out in 1692, was a result of Puritan theology, or due to the sombre and intolerant temperament which its doctrines nourished. The belief in a diabolical possession is coextensive with and as old as the human |