France and England in N America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV

The chief alleged motive for this ruthless warfare was to prevent the people of New England from invading Canada, by giving them employment at home; though, in fact, they had never thought of invading Canada till after these attacks began. But for the intrigues of Denonville, the Bigots, Thury, and Saint-Castin, before war was declared, and the destruction of Salmon Falls after it, Phips's expedition would never have taken place. By successful raids against the borders of New England, Frontenac roused the Canadians from their dejection, and prevented his red allies from deserting him; but, in so doing, he brought upon himself an enemy who, as Charlevoix himself says, asked only to be let alone. If there was a political necessity for butchering women and children on the frontier of New England, it was a necessity created by the French themselves.

There was no such necessity. Massachusetts was the only one of the New England colonies which took an aggressive part in the contest. Connecticut did little or nothing. Rhode Island was non-combatant through Quaker influence; and New Hampshire was too weak for offensive war. Massachusetts was in no condition to fight, nor was she impelled to do so by the home government. Canada was organized for war, and must fight at the bidding of the king, who made the war and paid for it. Massachusetts was organized for peace; and, if she chose an aggressive part, it was at her own risk and her own cost. She had had fighting enough already against infuriated savages far more numerous than the Iroquois, and poverty and political revolution made peace a necessity to her. If there was danger of another attack on Quebec, it was not from New England, but from Old; and no amount of frontier butchery could avert it.

Nor, except their inveterate habit of poaching on Acadian fisheries, had the people of New England provoked these barbarous attacks. They never even attempted to retaliate them, though the settlements of Acadia offered a safe and easy revenge. Once, it is true, they pillaged Beaubassin; but they killed nobody, though countless butcheries in settlements yet more defenceless were fresh in their memory. 398

With New York, a colony separate in government and widely sundered in local position, the case was different. Its rulers had instigated the Iroquois to attack Canada, possibly before the declaration of war, and certainly after it; and they had no right to complain of reprisal. Yet the frontier of New York was less frequently assailed, because it was less exposed; while that of New England was drenched in blood, because it was open to attack, because the Abenakis were convenient instruments for attacking it, because the adhesion of these tribes was necessary to the maintenance of French power in Acadia, and because this adhesion could best be secured by inciting them to constant hostility against the English. They were not only needed as the barrier of Canada against New England, but the French commanders hoped, by means of their tomahawks, to drive the English beyond the Piscataqua, and secure the whole of Maine to the French crown.

Who were answerable for these offences against Christianity and civilization? First, the king; and, next, the governors and military officers who were charged with executing his orders, and who often executed them with needless barbarity. But a far different responsibility rests on the missionary priests, who hounded their converts on the track of innocent blood. The Acadian priests are not all open to this charge. Some of them are even accused of being too favorable to the English; while others gave themselves to their proper work, and neither abused their influence, nor perverted their teaching to political ends. The most prominent among the apostles of carnage, at this time, are the Jesuit Bigot on the Kennebec, and the seminary priest Thury on the Penobscot. There is little doubt that the latter instigated attacks on the English frontier before the war, and there is conclusive evidence that he had a hand in repeated forays after it began. Whether acting from fanaticism, policy, or an odious compound of both, he was found so useful, that the minister Ponchartrain twice wrote him letters of commendation, praising him in the same breath for his care of the souls of the Indians and his zeal in exciting them to war. "There is no better man," says an Acadian official, "to prompt the savages to any enterprise." 399 The king was begged to reward him with money; and Ponchartrain wrote to the bishop of Quebec to increase his pay out of the allowance furnished by the government to the Acadian clergy, because he, Thury, had persuaded the Abenakis to begin the war anew. 400

The French missionaries are said to have made use of singular methods to excite their flocks against the heretics. The Abenaki chief Bomaseen, when a prisoner at Boston in 1696, declared that they told the Indians that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and his mother, the Virgin, a French lady; that the English had murdered him, and that the best way to gain his favor was to revenge his death. 401

Whether or not these articles of faith formed a part of the teachings of Thury and his fellow-apostles, there is no doubt that it was a recognized part of their functions to keep their converts in hostility to the English, and that their credit with the civil powers depended on their success in doing so. The same holds true of the priests of the mission villages in Canada. They avoided all that might impair the warlike spirit of the neophyte, and they were well aware that in savages the warlike spirit is mainly dependent on native ferocity. They taught temperance, conjugal fidelity, devotion to the rites of their religion, and submission to the priest; but they left the savage a savage still. In spite of the remonstrances of the civil authorities, the mission Indian was separated as far as possible from intercourse with the French, and discouraged from learning the French tongue. He wore a crucifix, hung wampum on the shrine of the Virgin, told his beads, prayed three times a day, knelt for hours before the Host, invoked the saints, and confessed to the priest; but, with rare exceptions, he murdered, scalped, and tortured like his heathen countrymen. 402

The picture has another side, which must not pass unnoticed. Early in the war, the French of Canada began the merciful practice of buying English prisoners, and especially children, from their Indian allies. After the first fury of attack, many lives were spared for the sake of this ransom. Sometimes, but not always, the redeemed captives were made to work for their benefactors. They were uniformly treated well, and often with such kindness that they would not be exchanged, and became Canadians by adoption.

Villebon was still full of anxiety as to the adhesion of the Abenakis. Thury saw the danger still more clearly, and told Frontenac that their late attack at Oyster River was due more to levity than to any other cause; that they were greatly alarmed, wavering, half stupefied, afraid of the English, and distrustful of the French, whom they accused of using them as tools. 403 It was clear that something must be done; and nothing could answer the purpose so well as the capture of Pemaquid, that English stronghold which held them in constant menace, and at the same time tempted them by offers of goods at a low rate. To the capture of Pemaquid, therefore, the French government turned its thoughts.

One Pascho Chubb, of Andover, commanded the post, with a garrison of ninety-five militia-men. Stoughton, governor of Massachusetts, had written to the Abenakis, upbraiding them for breaking the peace, and ordering them to bring in their prisoners without delay. The Indians of Bigot's mission, that is to say, Bigot in their name, retorted by a letter to the last degree haughty and abusive. Those of Thury's mission, however, were so anxious to recover their friends held in prison at Boston that they came to Pemaquid, and opened a conference with Chubb. The French say that they meant only to deceive him. 404 This does not justify the Massachusetts officer, who, by an act of odious treachery, killed several of them, and captured the chief, Egeremet. Nor was this the only occasion on which the English had acted in bad faith. It was but playing into the hands of the French, who saw with delight that the folly of their enemies had aided their own intrigues. 405

Early in 1696, two ships of war, the "Envieux" and the "Profond," one commanded by Iberville and the other by Bonaventure, sailed from Rochefort to Quebec, where they took on board eighty troops and Canadians; then proceeded to Cape Breton, embarked thirty Micmac Indians, and steered for the St. John. Here they met two British frigates and a provincial tender belonging to Massachusetts. A fight ensued. The forces were very unequal. The "Newport," of twenty-four guns, was dismasted and taken; but her companion frigate along with the tender escaped in the fog. The French then anchored at the mouth of the St. John, where Villebon and the priest Simon were waiting for them, with fifty more Micmacs. Simon and the Indians went on board; and they all sailed for Pentegoet, where Villieu, with twenty-five soldiers, and Thury and Saint-Castin, with some three hundred Abenakis, were ready to join them. After the usual feasting, these new allies paddled for Pemaquid; the ships followed; and on the next day, the fourteenth of August, they all reached their destination.

The fort of Pemaquid stood at the west side of the promontory of the same name, on a rocky point at the mouth of Pemaquid River. It was a quadrangle, with ramparts of rough stone, built at great pains and cost, but exposed to artillery, and incapable of resisting heavy shot. The government of Massachusetts, with its usual military fatuity, had placed it in the keeping of an unfit commander, and permitted some of the yeoman garrison to bring their wives and children to this dangerous and important post.

Saint-Castin and his Indians landed at New Harbor, half a league from the fort. Troops and cannon were sent ashore; and, at five o'clock in the afternoon, Chubb was summoned to surrender. He replied that he would fight, "even if the sea were covered with French ships and the land with Indians." The firing then began; and the Indian marksmen, favored by the nature of the ground, ensconced themselves near the fort, well covered from its cannon. During the night, mortars and heavy ships' guns were landed, and by great exertion were got into position, the two priests working lustily with the rest. They opened fire at three o'clock on the next day. Saint-Castin had just before sent Chubb a letter, telling him that, if the garrison were obstinate, they would get no quarter, and would be butchered by the Indians. Close upon this message followed four or five bomb-shells. Chubb succumbed immediately, sounded a parley, and gave up the fort, on condition that he and his men should be protected from the Indians, sent to Boston, and exchanged for French and Abenaki prisoners. They all marched out without arms; and Iberville, true to his pledge, sent them to an island in the bay, beyond the reach of his red allies. Villieu took possession of the fort, where an Indian prisoner was found in irons, half dead from long confinement. This so enraged his countrymen that a massacre would infallibly have taken place but for the precaution of Iberville.

The cannon of Pemaquid were carried on board the ships, and the small arms and ammunition given to the Indians. Two days were spent in destroying the works, and then the victors withdrew in triumph. Disgraceful as was the prompt surrender of the fort, it may be doubted if, even with the best defence, it could have held out many days; for it had no casemates, and its occupants were defenceless against the explosion of shells. Chubb was arrested for cowardice on his return, and remained some months in prison. After his release, he returned to his family at Andover, twenty miles from Boston; and here, in the year following, he and his wife were killed by Indians, who seem to have pursued him to this apparently safe asylum to take revenge for his treachery toward their countrymen. 406

The people of Massachusetts, compelled by a royal order to build and maintain Pemaquid, had no love for it, and underrated its importance. Having been accustomed to spend their money as they themselves saw fit, they revolted at compulsion, though exercised for their good. Pemaquid was nevertheless of the utmost value for the preservation of their hold on Maine, and its conquest was a crowning triumph to the French.

The conquerors now projected a greater exploit. The Marquis de Nesmond, with a powerful squadron of fifteen ships, including some of the best in the royal navy, sailed for Newfoundland, with orders to defeat an English squadron supposed to be there, and then to proceed to the mouth of the Penobscot, where he was to be joined by the Abenaki warriors and fifteen hundred troops from Canada. The whole united force was then to fall upon Boston. The French had an exact knowledge of the place. Meneval, when a prisoner there, lodged in the house of John Nelson, had carefully examined it; and so also had the Chevalier d'Aux; while La Motte-Cadillac had reconnoitred the town and harbor before the war began. An accurate map of them was made for the use of the expedition, and the plan of operations was arranged with great care. Twelve hundred troops and Canadians were to land with artillery at Dorchester, and march at once to force the barricade across the neck of the peninsula on which the town stood. At the same time, Saint-Castin was to land at Noddle's Island, with a troop of Canadians and all the Indians; pass over in canoes to Charlestown; and, after mastering it, cross to the north point of Boston, which would thus be attacked at both ends. During these movements, two hundred soldiers were to seize the battery on Castle Island, and then land in front of the town near Long Wharf, under the guns of the fleet.

Boston had about seven thousand inhabitants, but, owing to the seafaring habits of the people, many of its best men were generally absent; and, in the belief of the French, its available force did not much exceed eight hundred. "There are no soldiers in the place," say the directions for attack, "at least there were none last September, except the garrison from Pemaquid, who do not deserve the name." An easy victory was expected. After Boston was taken, the land forces, French and Indian, were to march on Salem, and thence northward to Portsmouth, conquering as they went; while the ships followed along the coast to lend aid, when necessary. All captured places were to be completely destroyed after removing all valuable property. A portion of this plunder was to be abandoned to the officers and men, in order to encourage them, and the rest stowed in the ships for transportation to France. 407

Notice of the proposed expedition had reached Frontenac in the spring; and he began at once to collect men, canoes, and supplies for the long and arduous march to the rendezvous. He saw clearly the uncertainties of the attempt; but, in spite of his seventy-seven years, he resolved to command the land force in person. He was ready in June, and waited only to hear from Nesmond. The summer passed; and it was not till September that a ship reached Quebec with a letter from the marquis, telling him that head winds had detained the fleet till only fifty days' provision remained, and it was too late for action. The enterprise had completely failed, and even at Newfoundland nothing was accomplished. It proved a positive advantage to New England, since a host of Indians, who would otherwise have been turned loose upon the borders, were gathered by Saint-Castin at the Penobscot to wait for the fleet, and kept there idle all summer.

It is needless to dwell farther on the war in Acadia. There were petty combats by land and sea; Villieu was captured and carried to Boston; a band of New England rustics made a futile attempt to dislodge Villebon from his fort at Naxouat; while, throughout the contest, rivalry and jealousy rankled among the French officials, who continually maligned each other in tell-tale letters to the court. Their hope that the Abenakis would force back the English boundary to the Piscataqua was never fulfilled. At Kittery, at Wells, and even among the ashes of York, the stubborn settlers held their ground, while war-parties prowled along the whole frontier, from the Kennebec to the Connecticut. A single incident will show the nature of the situation, and the qualities which it sometimes called forth.

Early in the spring that followed the capture of Pemaquid, a band of Indians fell, after daybreak, on a number of farm-houses near the village of Haverhill. One of them belonged to a settler named Dustan, whose wife Hannah had borne a child a week before, and lay in the house, nursed by Mary Neff, one of her neighbors. Dustan had gone to his work in a neighboring field, taking with him his seven children, of whom the youngest was two years old. Hearing the noise of the attack, he told them to run to the nearest fortified house, a mile or more distant, and, snatching up his gun, threw himself on one of his horses and galloped towards his own house to save his wife. It was too late: the Indians were already there. He now thought only of saving his children; and, keeping behind them as they ran, he fired on the pursuing savages, and held them at bay till he and his flock reached a place of safety. Meanwhile, the house was set on fire, and his wife and the nurse carried off. Her husband, no doubt, had given her up as lost, when, weeks after, she reappeared, accompanied by Mary Neff and a boy, and bringing ten Indian scalps. Her story was to the following effect.

The Indians had killed the new-born child by dashing it against a tree, after which the mother and the nurse were dragged into the forest, where they found a number of friends and neighbors, their fellows in misery. Some of these were presently tomahawked, and the rest divided among their captors. Hannah Dustan and the nurse fell to the share of a family consisting of two warriors, three squaws, and seven children, who separated from the rest, and, hunting as they went, moved northward towards an Abenaki village, two hundred and fifty miles distant, probably that of the mission on the Chaudière. Every morning, noon, and evening, they told their beads, and repeated their prayers. An English boy, captured at Worcester, was also of the party. After a while, the Indians began to amuse themselves by telling the women that, when they reached the village, they would be stripped, made to run the gauntlet, and severely beaten, according to custom.

Hannah Dustan now resolved on a desperate effort to escape, and Mary Neff and the boy agreed to join in it. They were in the depths of the forest, half way on their journey, and the Indians, who had no distrust of them, were all asleep about their camp fire, when, late in the night, the two women and the boy took each a hatchet, and crouched silently by the bare heads of the unconscious savages. Then they all struck at once, with blows so rapid and true that ten of the twelve were killed before they were well awake. One old squaw sprang up wounded, and ran screeching into the forest, followed by a small boy whom they had purposely left unharmed. Hannah Dustan and her companions watched by the corpses till daylight; then the Amazon scalped them all, and the three made their way back to the settlements, with the trophies of their exploit. 408

CHAPTER XVIII

1693-1697French and English Rivalry

Le Moyne d'Iberville • His Exploits in Newfoundland • In Hudson's Bay • The Great Prize • The Competitors • Fatal Policy of the King • The Iroquois Question • Negotiation • Firmness of Frontenac • English Intervention • War renewed • State of the West • Indian Diplomacy • Cruel Measures • A Perilous Crisis • Audacity of Frontenac.

No Canadian, under the French rule, stands in a more conspicuous or more deserved eminence than Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. In the seventeenth century, most of those who acted a prominent part in the colony were born in Old France; but Iberville was a true son of the soil. He and his brothers, Longueuil, Serigny, Assigny, Maricourt, Sainte-Hélène, the two Châteauguays, and the two Bienvilles, were, one and all, children worthy of their father, Charles Le Moyne of Montreal, and favorable types of that Canadian noblesse, to whose adventurous hardihood half the continent bears witness. Iberville was trained in the French navy, and was already among its most able commanders. The capture of Pemaquid was, for him, but the beginning of greater things; and, though the exploits that followed were outside the main theatre of action, they were too remarkable to be passed in silence.

The French had but one post of any consequence on the Island of Newfoundland, the fort and village at Placentia Bay; while the English fishermen had formed a line of settlements two or three hundred miles along the eastern coast. Iberville had represented to the court the necessity of checking their growth, and to that end a plan was settled, in connection with the expedition against Pemaquid. The ships of the king were to transport the men; while Iberville and others associated with him were to pay them, and divide the plunder as their compensation. The chronicles of the time show various similar bargains between the great king and his subjects.

Pemaquid was no sooner destroyed, than Iberville sailed for Newfoundland, with the eighty men he had taken at Quebec; and, on arriving, he was joined by as many more, sent him from the same place. He found Brouillan, governor of Placentia, with a squadron formed largely of privateers from St. Malo, engaged in a vain attempt to seize St. John, the chief post of the English. Brouillan was a man of harsh, jealous, and impracticable temper; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he and Iberville could act in concert. They came at last to an agreement, made a combined attack on St. John, took it, and burned it to the ground. Then followed a new dispute about the division of the spoils. At length it was settled. Brouillan went back to Placentia, and Iberville and his men were left to pursue their conquests alone.

There were no British soldiers on the island. The settlers were rude fishermen without commanders, and, according to the French accounts, without religion or morals. In fact, they are described as "worse than Indians." Iberville now had with him a hundred and twenty-five soldiers and Canadians, besides a few Abenakis from Acadia. 409 It was mid-winter when he began his march. For two months he led his hardy band through frost and snow, from hamlet to hamlet, along those forlorn and desolate coasts, attacking each in turn and carrying havoc everywhere. Nothing could exceed the hardships of the way, or the vigor with which they were met and conquered. The chaplain Baudoin gives an example of them in his diary. "January 18th. The roads are so bad that we can find only twelve men strong enough to beat the path. Our snow-shoes break on the crust, and against the rocks and fallen trees hidden under the snow, which catch and trip us; but, for all that, we cannot help laughing to see now one, and now another, fall headlong. The Sieur de Martigny fell into a river, and left his gun and his sword there to save his life."

A panic seized the settlers, many of whom were without arms as well as without leaders. They imagined the Canadians to be savages, who scalped and butchered like the Iroquois. Their resistance was feeble and incoherent, and Iberville carried all before him. Every hamlet was pillaged and burned; and, according to the incredible report of the French writers, two hundred persons were killed and seven hundred captured, though it is admitted that most of the prisoners escaped. When spring opened, all the English settlements were destroyed, except the post of Bonavista and the Island of Carbonnière, a natural fortress in the sea. Iberville returned to Placentia, to prepare for completing his conquest, when his plans were broken by the arrival of his brother Serigny, with orders to proceed at once against the English at Hudson's Bay. 410

It was the nineteenth of May, when Serigny appeared with five ships of war, the "Pelican," the "Palmier," the "Wesp," the "Profond," and the "Violent." The important trading-post of Fort Nelson, called Fort Bourbon by the French, was the destined object of attack. Iberville and Serigny had captured it three years before, but the English had retaken it during the past summer, and, as it commanded the fur-trade of a vast interior region, a strong effort was now to be made for its recovery. Iberville took command of the "Pelican," and his brother of the "Palmier." They sailed from Placentia early in July, followed by two other ships of the squadron, and a vessel carrying stores. Before the end of the month they entered the bay, where they were soon caught among masses of floating ice. The store-ship was crushed and lost, and the rest were in extreme danger. The "Pelican" at last extricated herself, and sailed into the open sea; but her three consorts were nowhere to be seen. Iberville steered for Fort Nelson, which was several hundred miles distant, on the western shore of this dismal inland sea. He had nearly reached it, when three sail hove in sight; and he did not doubt that they were his missing ships. They proved, however, to be English armed merchantmen: the "Hampshire" of fifty-two guns, and the "Daring" and the "Hudson's Bay" of thirty-six and thirty-two. The "Pelican" carried but forty-four, and she was alone. A desperate battle followed, and from half past nine to one o'clock the cannonade was incessant. Iberville kept the advantage of the wind, and, coming at length to close quarters with the "Hampshire," gave her repeated broadsides between wind and water, with such effect that she sank with all on board. He next closed with the "Hudson's Bay," which soon struck her flag; while the "Daring" made sail, and escaped. The "Pelican" was badly damaged in hull, masts, and rigging; and the increasing fury of a gale from the east made her position more critical every hour. She anchored, to escape being driven ashore; but the cables parted, and she was stranded about two leagues from the fort. Here, racked by the waves and the tide, she split amidships; but most of the crew reached land with their weapons and ammunition. The northern winter had already begun, and the snow lay a foot deep in the forest. Some of them died from cold and exhaustion, and the rest built huts and kindled fires to warm and dry themselves. Food was so scarce that their only hope of escape from famishing seemed to lie in a desperate effort to carry the fort by storm, but now fortune interposed. The three ships they had left behind in the ice arrived with all the needed succors. Men, cannon, and mortars were sent ashore, and the attack began.