Volume Ii Part 10 (1/2)

There is a French paper, called a record of ”military movements,” which gives a list of war-parties sent from Montreal against the English border between the 29th of March, 1746, and the 21st 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), Algonkins 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.” [Footnote: _Extrait sur les differents Mouvements Militaires qui se sont faits a Montreal a l'occasion de la Guerre, 1745, 1746._ There is a translation in _N. Y. Col. Docs._]

No part of the country suffered more than the western borders of Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hamps.h.i.+re, and here were seen too plainly the evils of the prevailing want of concert among the British colonies. Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Hamps.h.i.+re disputed the t.i.tle, and the question, being referred to the Crown, was decided in her favor. On this, Ma.s.sachusetts withdrew the garrison of Fort Dummer and left New Hamps.h.i.+re to defend her own. This the a.s.sembly of that province refused to do, on the ground that the fort was fifty miles from any settlement made by New Hamps.h.i.+re people, and was therefore useless to them, though of great value to Ma.s.sachusetts as a cover to Northfield and other of her settlements lower down the Connecticut, to protect which was no business of New Hamps.h.i.+re. [Footnote: _Journal of the a.s.sembly of New Hamps.h.i.+re,_ quoted in Saunderson, _History of Charlestown, N. H.,_ 20.] But some years before, in 1740, three brothers, Samuel, David, and Stephen Farnsworth, natives of Groton, Ma.s.sachusetts, had begun a new settlement on the Connecticut about forty-five miles north of the Ma.s.sachusetts line and on ground which was soon to be a.s.signed to New Hamps.h.i.+re. They were followed by five or six others. They acted on the belief that their settlement was within the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 towns.h.i.+ps 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 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 Ma.s.sachusetts nor New Hamps.h.i.+re 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 towns.h.i.+p of Number Four; that John Hastings, John Spafford, and John Avery be a committee to direct the building; that each carpenter be allowed nine s.h.i.+llings, old tenor, a day, each laborer seven s.h.i.+llings, and each pair of oxen three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence; that the proprietors of the towns.h.i.+p be taxed in the sum of three hundred pounds, old tenor, for building the fort; that John Spafford, Phineas Stevens, and John Hastings be a.s.sessors to a.s.sess the same, and Samuel Farnsworth collector to collect it. [Footnote: Extracts from the Town Record, in Saunderson, _History of Charlestown, N.H. (Number Four)_, 17,18.] 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, Superintendent of Defence, Colonel of Militia, Judge of Probate, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, a reputed authority in the 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 fas.h.i.+on 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, 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 Hamps.h.i.+re would do nothing for them, and their only hope was in Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 a.s.sembly of Ma.s.sachusetts 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 19th of April to the 19th 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 chronicle, ”was reckoned a great booty for such beggarly enemies.” [Footnote: Saunderson, _History of Charlestown, N. H._, 29. Doolittle, _Narrative of Mischief done by the Indian Enemy_,--a contempory chronicle.]

But Ma.s.sachusetts grew tired of defending lands that had been adjudged to New Hamps.h.i.+re, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 re-occupy it. Stevens, a native of Sudbury, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 27th 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 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. [Footnote: _Extrait en forme de Journal de ce qui s'est pa.s.se d'interessant dans la Colonie a l'occasion des Mouvements de Guerre, etc., 1746, 1747_.]

The behavior of the dogs was as yet the only sign of danger, when, about nine o'clock on the morning of the 7th 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 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 a.s.sailants 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, pa.s.sed 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. [Footnote: ”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._] Thus, though clouds of smoke drifted over the fort, and burning cinders 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 s.h.i.+eld of planks,--for there was a saw-mill hard by,--and loaded it with dry f.a.gots, 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 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.”

[Footnote: _Stevens to Colonel William Williams,--April, 1747._]

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 s.h.i.+eld of planks. In fact, an open a.s.sault upon a fortified place was a thing unknown in this border warfare, whether waged by Indians alone, or by French and Indians together. The a.s.sailants only raised the war-whoop again, and fired, as before, from behind stumps, logs, and bushes. This amus.e.m.e.nt 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, John Brown and Joseph Ely.” [Footnote: _Stevens to Colonel W. Williams,--April, 1747._]

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.” [Footnote: _N. Y.

Col. Docs._, X. 97.] 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. [Footnote: Just after the withdrawal of the French and Indians, Stevens wrote two letters giving an account of the affair, one to Governor s.h.i.+rley, and the other to Colonel William Williams, who seems to have been his immediate military superior. At most points they are substantially the same; but that to Williams contains some pa.s.sages not found in the other.

The letter to s.h.i.+rley is printed in Saunderson, _History of Charlestown, N. H._, 34-37, and that to Williams in _Collections of the New Hamps.h.i.+re 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 princ.i.p.al 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.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

1745-1748.

FORT Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

FRONTIER DEFENCE.--NORTHFIELD AND ITS MINISTER.--MILITARY CRITICISMS OF REV. BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.--RIGAUD DE VAUDREUIL.--HIS GREAT WAR-PARTY.--HE ATTACKS FORT Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.--SERGEANT HAWKS AND HIS GARRISON.--A GALLANT DEFENCE.--CAPITULATION.--HUMANITY OF THE FRENCH.--RAVAGES.--RETURN TO CROWN POINT.--PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

Since the last war, the settlements of Ma.s.sachusetts had pushed westward and begun to invade the beautiful region of mountains and valleys that now forms Berks.h.i.+re. Villages, or rudiments of villages, had grown up on the Housatonic, and an establishment had been attempted at Pontoosuc, now Pittsfield, on the extreme western limits of the province. The position of these new settlements was critical, for the enemy could reach them with little difficulty by way of Lake Champlain and Wood Creek. The Ma.s.sachusetts Government was not unmindful of them, and when war again broke out, three wooden forts were built for their protection, forming a line of defence westward from Northfield on the northern frontier of the province. One of these forts was in the present town of Heath, and was called Fort s.h.i.+rley; another, named Fort Pelham, was in the present town of Rowe; while the third, Fort Ma.s.sachusetts, was farther westward, in what is now the town of Adams, then known as East Hoosac. Two hundred men from the militia were taken into pay to hold these posts and patrol the intervening forests. Other defensive works were made here and there, sometimes by the votes of town meetings, and sometimes by individuals, at their own cost.

These works consisted of a fence of palisades enclosing a farm-house, or sometimes of a blockhouse of timber or heavy planks. Thus, at Northfield, Deacon Ebenezer Alexander, a veteran of sixty who had served at Louisbourg, built a ”mount,” or blockhouse, on the knoll behind his house, and carried a stockade from it to enclose the dwelling, shed, and barn, the whole at the cost of thirty-six pounds, one s.h.i.+lling, and sixpence, in Ma.s.sachusetts currency, which the town repaid him, his fortifications being of public utility as a place of refuge for families in case of attack. [Footnote: Temple and Sheldon, _History of Northfield_, 237, give the items from the original account. This is one of the best of the innumerable town-histories of New England.] Northfield was a place notoriously dangerous, and military methods were in vogue there in season and out of season. Thus, by a vote of the town, the people were called to the Sunday sermon by beat of drum, and Eleazer Holton was elected to sound the call in consideration of one pound and ten s.h.i.+llings a year, the drum being hired of Ensign Field, its fortunate possessor, for the farther sum of three s.h.i.+llings. This was in the earlier days of Northfield. In 1734 the Sunday drum-beat was stopped, and the wors.h.i.+ppers were summoned by the less obstreperous method of ”hanging out a flagg,” for the faithful discharge of which function Daniel Wright received in 1744 one pound and five s.h.i.+llings.

[Footnote: Temple and Sheldon, _History of Northfield_, 218.]

The various fortifications, public and private, were garrisoned, sometimes by the owner and his neighbors, sometimes by men in pay of the provincial a.s.sembly. As was to be expected from a legislative body undertaking warlike operations, the work of defence was but indifferently conducted. John Stoddard, the village magnate of Northampton, was charged, among the rest of his multifarious employments, with the locating and construction of forts; Captain Ephraim Williams was a.s.signed to the general command on the western frontier, with headquarters at Fort s.h.i.+rley and afterwards at Fort Ma.s.sachusetts; and Major Israel Williams, of Hatfield, was made commissary.