CHAPTER 5
1704-1713. 

THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. 
BORDER RAIDS,  HAVERHILL,  ATTACK AND DEFENCE,  WAR TO THE KNIFE,  MOTIVES OF THE FRENCH,  PROPOSED NEUTRALITY,  JOSEPH DUDLEY,  TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

I have told the fate of Deerfield in full, as an example of the desolating raids which for years swept the borders of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  The rest of the miserable story may be passed more briefly.  It is in the main a weary detail of the murder of one, two, three, or more men, women, or children waylaid in fields, woods, and lonely roads, or surprised in solitary cabins.  Sometimes the attacks were on a larger scale.  Thus, not long after the capture of Deerfield, a band of fifty or more Indians fell at dawn of day on a hamlet of five houses near Northampton.  The alarm was sounded, and they were pursued.  Eight of the prisoners were rescued, and three escaped; most of the others being knocked in the head by their captors.  At Oyster River the Indians attacked a loopholed house, in which the women of the neighboring farms had taken refuge while the men were at work in the fields.  The women disguised themselves in hats and jackets, fired from the loopholes, and drove off the assailants.  In 1709 a hundred and eighty French and Indians again attacked Deerfield, but failed to surprise it, and were put to flight.  At Dover, on a Sunday, while the people were at church, a scalping-party approached a fortified house, the garrison of which consisted of one woman,—Esther Jones, who, on seeing them, called out to an imaginary force within, "Here they are! come on! come on!" on which the Indians disappeared. 

Soon after the capture of Deerfield, the French authorities, being, according to the prisoner Williams, "wonderfully lifted up with pride," formed a grand war-party, and assured the minister that they would catch so many prisoners that they should not know what to do with them.  Beaucour, an officer of great repute, had chief command, and his force consisted of between seven and eight hundred men, of whom about a hundred and twenty were French, and the rest mission Indians.  They declared that they would lay waste all the settlements on the Connecticut,—meaning, it seems, to begin with Hatfield.  "This army," says Williams, "went away in such a boasting, triumphant manner that I had great hopes God would discover and disappoint their designs. " In fact, their plans came to nought, owing, according to French accounts, to the fright of the Indians; for a soldier having deserted within a day's march of the English settlements, most of them turned back, despairing of a surprise, and the rest broke up into small parties to gather scalps on the outlying farms. 

In the summer of 1708 there was a more successful attempt.  The converts of all the Canadian missions were mustered at Montreal, where Vaudreuil, by exercising, as he says, "the patience of an angel," soothed their mutual jealousies and persuaded them to go upon a war-party against Newbury, Portsmouth, and other New England villages.  Fortunately for the English, the Caughnawagas were only half-hearted towards the enterprise; and through them the watchful Peter Schuyler got hints of it which enabled him, at the eleventh hour, to set the intended victims on their guard.  The party consisted of about four hundred, of whom one hundred were French, under twelve young officers and cadets; the whole commanded by Saint-Ours des Chaillons and Hertel de Rouville.  For the sake of speed and secrecy, they set out in three bodies, by different routes.  The rendezvous was at Lake Winnepesaukee, where they were to be joined by the Norridgewocks, Penobscots, and other eastern Abenakis.  The Caughnawagas and Hurons turned back by reason of evil omens and a disease which broke out among them.  The rest met on the shores of the lake,—probably at Alton Bay,—where, after waiting in vain for their eastern allies, they resolved to make no attempt on Portsmouth or Newbury, but to turn all their strength upon the smaller village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac.  Advancing quickly under cover of night, they made their onslaught at half an hour before dawn, on Sunday, the twenty-ninth of August. 

Haverhill consisted of between twenty and thirty dwelling-houses, a meeting-house, and a small picket fort.  A body of militia from the lower Massachusetts towns had been hastily distributed along the frontier, on the vague reports of danger sent by Schuyler from Albany; and as the intended point of attack was unknown, the men were of necessity widely scattered.  French accounts say that there were thirty of them in the fort at Haverhill, and more in the houses of the villagers; while others still were posted among the distant farms and hamlets. 

In spite of darkness and surprise, the assailants met a stiff resistance and a hot and persistent fusillade.  Vaudreuil says that they could dislodge the defenders only by setting fire to both houses and fort.  In this they were not very successful, as but few of the dwellings were burned.  A fire was kindled against the meeting-house, which was saved by one Davis and a few others, who made a dash from behind the adjacent parsonage, drove the Indians off, and put out the flames.  Rolfe, the minister, had already been killed while defending his house.  His wife and one of his children were butchered; but two others—little girls of six and eight years—were saved by the self-devotion of his maid-servant, Hagar, apparently a negress, who dragged them into the cellar and hid them under two inverted tubs, where they crouched, dumb with terror, while the Indians ransacked the place without finding them.  English accounts say that the number of persons killed—men, women, and children—was forty-eight; which the French increase to a hundred. 

The distant roll of drums was presently heard, warning the people on the scattered farms; on which the assailants made a hasty retreat.  Posted near Haverhill were three militia officers,—Turner, Price, and Gardner,—lately arrived from Salem.  With such men as they had with them, or could hastily get together, they ambushed themselves at the edge of a piece of woods, in the path of the retiring enemy, to the number, as the French say, of sixty or seventy, which it is safe to diminish by a half.  The French and Indians, approaching rapidly, were met by a volley which stopped them for the moment; then, throwing down their packs, they rushed on, and after a sharp skirmish broke through the ambuscade and continued their retreat.  Vaudreuil sets their total loss at eight killed and eighteen wounded,—the former including two officers, Verchères and Chambly.  He further declares that in the skirmish all the English, except ten or twelve, were killed outright; while the English accounts say that the French and Indians took to the woods, leaving nine of their number dead on the spot, along with their medicine chest and all their packs. 

Scarcely a hamlet of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire borders escaped a visit from the nimble enemy.  Groton, Lancaster, Exeter, Dover, Kittery, Casco, Kingston, York, Berwick, Wells, Winter Harbor, Brookfield, Amesbury, Marlborough, were all more or less infested, usually by small scalping-parties, hiding in the outskirts, waylaying stragglers, or shooting men at work in the fields, and disappearing as soon as their blow was struck.  These swift and intangible persecutors were found a far surer and more effectual means of annoyance than larger bodies.  As all the warriors were converts of the Canadian missions, and as prisoners were an article of value, cases of torture were not very common; though now and then, as at Exeter, they would roast some poor wretch alive, or bite off his fingers and sear the stumps with red-hot tobacco pipes. 

This system of petty, secret, and transient attack put the impoverished colonies to an immense charge in maintaining a cordon of militia along their northern frontier,—a precaution often as vain as it was costly; for the wily savages, covered by the forest, found little difficulty in dodging the scouting-parties, pouncing on their victims, and escaping.  Rewards were offered for scalps; but one writer calculates that, all things considered, it cost Massachusetts a thousand pounds of her currency to kill an Indian. 

In 1703-1704 six hundred men were kept ranging the woods all winter without finding a single Indian, the enemy having deserted their usual haunts and sought refuge with the French, to emerge in February for the destruction of Deerfield.  In the next summer nineteen hundred men were posted along two hundred miles of frontier.  This attitude of passive defence exasperated the young men of Massachusetts, and it is said that five hundred of them begged Dudley for leave to make a raid into Canada, on the characteristic condition of choosing their own officers.  The governor consented; but on a message from Peter Schuyler that he had at last got a promise from the Caughnawagas and other mission Indians to attack the New England borders no more, the raid was countermanded, lest it should waken the tempest anew. 

What was the object of these murderous attacks, which stung the enemy without disabling him, confirmed the Indians in their native savagery, and taught the French to emulate it? In the time of Frontenac there was a palliating motive for such barbarous warfare.  Canada was then prostrate and stunned under the blows of the Iroquois war.  Successful war-parties were needed as a tonic and a stimulant to rouse the dashed spirits of French and Indians alike; but the remedy was a dangerous one, and it drew upon the colony the attack under Sir William Phips, which was near proving its ruin.  At present there was no such pressing call for butchering women, children, and peaceful farmers.  The motive, such as it was, lay in the fear that the Indian allies of France might pass over to the English, or at least stand neutral.  These allies were the Christian savages of the missions, who, all told, from the Caughnawagas to the Micmacs, could hardly have mustered a thousand warriors.  The danger was that the Caughnawagas, always open to influence from Albany, might be induced to lay down the hatchet and persuade the rest to follow their example.  Therefore, as there was for the time a virtual truce with New York, no pains were spared to commit them irrevocably to war against New England.  With the Abenaki tribes of Maine and New Hampshire the need was still more urgent, for they were continually drawn to New England by the cheapness and excellence of English goods; and the only sure means to prevent their trading with the enemy was to incite them to kill him.  Some of these savages had been settled in Canada, to keep them under influence and out of temptation; but the rest were still in their native haunts, where it was thought best to keep them well watched by their missionaries, as sentinels and outposts to the colony. 

There were those among the French to whom this barbarous warfare was repugnant.  The minister, Ponchartrain, by no means a person of tender scruples, also condemned it for a time.  After the attack on Wells and other places under Beaubassin in 1703, he wrote: "It would have been well if this expedition had not taken place.  I have certain knowledge that the English want only peace, knowing that war is contrary to the interests of all the colonies.  Hostilities in Canada have always been begun by the French. " Afterwards, when these bloody raids had produced their natural effect and spurred the sufferers to attempt the ending of their woes once for all by the conquest of Canada, Ponchartrain changed his mind and encouraged the sending out of war-parties, to keep the English busy at home. 

The schemes of a radical cure date from the attack on Deerfield and the murders of the following summer.  In the autumn we find Governor Dudley urging the capture of Quebec.  "In the last two years," he says, "the Assembly of Massachusetts has spent about £50,000 in defending the Province, whereas three or four of the Queen's ships and fifteen hundred New England men would rid us of the French and make further outlay needless,"—a view, it must be admitted, sufficiently sanguine. 

But before seeking peace with the sword, Dudley tried less strenuous methods.  It may be remembered that in 1705 Captain Vetch and Samuel Hill, together with the governor's young son William, went to Quebec to procure an exchange of prisoners.  Their mission had also another object.  Vetch carried a letter from Dudley to Vaudreuil, proposing a treaty of neutrality between their respective colonies, and Vaudreuil seems to have welcomed the proposal.  Notwithstanding the pacific relations between Canada and New York, he was in constant fear that Dutch and English influence might turn the Five Nations into open enemies of the French; and he therefore declared himself ready to accept the proposals of Dudley, on condition that New York and the other English colonies should be included in the treaty, and that the English should be excluded from fishing in the Gulf of Saint  Lawrence and the Acadian seas.  The first condition was difficult, and the second impracticable; for nothing could have induced the people of New England to accept it.  Vaudreuil, moreover, would not promise to give up prisoners in the hands of the Indians, but only to do what he could to persuade their owners to give them up.  The negotiations dragged on for several years.  For the first three or four months Vaudreuil stopped his war-parties; but he let them loose again in the spring, and the New England borders were tormented as before. 

The French governor thought that the New England country people, who had to bear the brunt of the war, were ready to accept his terms.  The French court approved the plan, though not without distrust; for some enemy of the governor told Ponchartrain that under pretence of negotiations he and Dudley were carrying on trading speculations,—which is certainly a baseless slander.  Vaudreuil on his part had strongly suspected Dudley's emissary, Vetch, of illicit trade during his visit to Quebec; and perhaps there was ground for the suspicion.  It is certain that Vetch, who had visited the Saint  Lawrence before, lost no opportunity of studying the river, and looked forward to a time when he could turn his knowledge to practical account. 

Joseph Dudley, governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was the son of a former governor of Massachusetts,—that upright, sturdy, narrow, bigoted old Puritan, Thomas Dudley, in whose pocket was found after his death the notable couplet,—

"Let men of God in courts and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch. "

Such a son of such a father was the marvel of New England.  Those who clung to the old traditions and mourned for the old theocracy under the old charter, hated Joseph Dudley as a renegade; and the worshippers of the Puritans have not forgiven him to this day.  He had been president of the council under the detested Andros, and when that representative of the Stuarts was overthrown by a popular revolution, both he and Dudley were sent prisoners to England.  Here they found a reception different from the expectations and wishes of those who sent them.  Dudley became a member of Parliament and lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight, and was at length, in the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne, sent back to govern those who had cast him out.  Any governor imposed on them by England would have been an offence; but Joseph Dudley was more than they could bear. 

He found bitter opposition from the old Puritan party.  The two Mathers, father and son, who through policy had at first favored him, soon denounced him with insolent malignity, and the honest and conscientious Samuel Sewall regarded him with as much asperity as his kindly nature would permit.  To the party of religious and political independency he was an abomination, and great efforts were made to get him recalled.  Two pamphlets of the time, one printed in 1707 and the other in the next year, reflect the bitter animosity he excited.  Both seem to be the work of several persons, one of whom, there can be little doubt, was Cotton Mather; for it is not easy to mistake the mingled flippancy and pedantry of his style.  He bore the governor a grudge, for Dudley had chafed him in his inordinate vanity and love of power. 

If Dudley loved himself first, he loved his native New England next, and was glad to serve her if he could do so in his own way and without too much sacrifice of his own interests.  He was possessed by a restless ambition, apparently of the cheap kind that prefers the first place in a small community to the second in a large one.  He was skilled in the arts of the politician, and knew how, by attentions, dinners, or commissions in the militia, to influence his Council and Assembly to do his will.  His abilities were beyond question, and his manners easy and graceful; but his instincts were arbitrary.  He stood fast for prerogative, and even his hereditary Calvinism had strong Episcopal leanings.  He was a man of the world in the better as well as the worse sense of the term; was loved and admired by some as much as he was hated by others; and in the words of one of his successors, "had as many virtues as can consist with so great a thirst for honor and power. "

His enemies, however, set no bounds to their denunciation.  "All the people here are bought and sold betwixt the governour and his son Paul," says one.  "It is my belief," says another, probably Cotton Mather, "that he means to help the French and Indians to destroy all they can. " And again, "He is a criminal governour. . . .  His God is Mammon, his aim is the ruin of his country. " The meagreness and uncertainty of his salary, which was granted by yearly votes of the Assembly, gave color to the charge that he abused his official position to improve his income.  The worst accusation against him was that of conniving in trade with the French and Indians under pretence of exchanging prisoners.  Six prominent men of the colony—Borland, Vetch, Lawson, Rous, Phillips, and Coffin, only three of whom were of New England origin—were brought to trial before the Assembly for trading at Port Royal; and it was said that Dudley, though he had no direct share in the business, found means to make profit from it.  All the accused were convicted and fined.  The more strenuous of their judges were for sending them to jail, and Rous was to have been sentenced to "sit an hour upon the gallows with a rope about his neck;" but the governor and council objected to these severities, and the Assembly forbore to impose them.  The popular indignation against the accused was extreme, and probably not without cause.  There was no doubt an illicit trade between Boston and the French of Acadia, who during the war often depended on their enemies for the necessaries of life, since supplies from France, precarious at the best, were made doubly so by New England cruisers.  Thus the Acadians and their Indian allies were but too happy to exchange their furs for very modest supplies of tools, utensils, and perhaps, at times, of arms, powder, and lead.  What with privateering and illicit trade, it was clear that the war was a source of profit to some of the chief persons in Boston.  That place, moreover, felt itself tolerably safe from attack, while the borders were stung from end to end as by a swarm of wasps; and thus the country conceived the idea that the town was fattening at its expense.  Vaudreuil reports to the minister that the people of New England want to avenge themselves by an attack on Canada, but that their chief men are for a policy of defence.  This was far from being wholly true; but the notion that the rural population bore a grudge against Boston had taken strong hold of the French, who even believed that if the town were attacked, the country would not move hand or foot to help it.  Perhaps it was well for them that they did not act on the belief, which, as afterwards appeared, was one of their many mistakes touching the character and disposition of their English neighbors. 

The sentences on Borland and his five companions were annulled by the Queen and Council, on the ground that the Assembly was not competent to try the case.  The passionate charges against Dudley and a petition to the Queen for his removal were equally unavailing.  The Assemblies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the chief merchants, the officers of militia, and many of the ministers sent addresses to the Queen in praise of the governor's administration; and though his enemies declared that the votes and signatures were obtained by the arts familiar to him, his recall was prevented, and he held his office seven years longer.