USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Lowell > Memories of the Indians and pioneers of the region of Lowell [Mass.] > Part 4
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river at Souhegan, and warned the Cap-
On his return from the wilderness, Wan- tain to be on his guard. By order of the nalancet brought with him seven white Council, Lieutenant Richardson traversed captives-Phillip Eastman, and the wife the whole valley during the following sea- and five children of Thomas Kimball, of son, with a scouting party, to ward off Bradford-who had been captured by some attack.
of the adherents of Phillip-whom Wanna-
In September, 1677, Wannalancet re- lancet's good offices had saved from death, ceived a visit from a party of the St. Fran- even after they had been condemned, and cis Indians from Canada, accompanied by the fires twice prepared to burn them one of his brothers, who urged him to unite This return of good for evil, kindness for with them. He finally yielded to their cruelty, was the only revenge which Wan- solicitations, and with nearly all the In- nalancet ever inflicted on his persecutors. dians then residing here, about fifty in
Wannalancet, with the remains of his number, bade a final adieu to Wamesit.
In July, 1678, the treaty of Nimeguen
broken tribe, now returned to his abode at Wamesit; but he never afterward felt being concluded between Charles the Sec- reconciled bere; for his corn-fields had ond and Louis the Fourteenth, hostilities been seized by the white settlers, and the ceased, and the white settlers left their whole aspect of his affairs was changed. garrison houses and resumed their former By order of the General Court, he and his abodes. The dwellers on the Merrimack
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slept under the security of that treaty as frontier towns, should desert the same calmly as the dwellers on the Thames or during the war, such estate should be for- the Seine. feited ; and that if any male inhabitant of
Wannalancet soon regretted the facility either of said towns, above sixteen years with which he had yielded to the solicita- of age, should desert such town, he should tions of his French-Canadian friends. He forfeit the sum of ten pounds."
returned to Pennacook, and in September, The Indians of the region of Canada, 1685, received a grant of ten pounds ster- excited by the Jesuits in league with the ling from the Massachusetts General Court. French, made continual attacks on the In 1686, Wannalancet and the Indians re- colonists of the frontiers. Forts and forti- maining at Wamesit, Pawtucket, Nashua, fied houses were again the retreats of all Concord, Groton, Lancaster, Stow, and such as could get into them. Garrisons Dunstable, sold all their lands in those were established in Amesbury, Haverhill, places to Jonathan Tyng and others, and Billerica (including Tewksbury), Chelms- retired to the fast-receding forests of the ford, Dunstable, Groton, and Maribo- North and North-East .* Their final depar- rough. t
ture must have presented a scene not dis- The fort at Pawtucket Falls was occupied similar to that pictured by Goldsmith in by a garrison commanded by Major Hench-
his " Deserted Village :" ---
man ; and mounted scouts were employed "Good Heavens ! what sorrows gloomed that parting day That called them from their native walks away." etc. to scour the frontiers, and ward off attack. But this did not entirely save them. On the first of August, 1692, the Indians in In 1688 came the English Revolution, the dethronement of the Stuart Dynasty, and the accession of William, Prince of Orange. The New England Colonists, rising against their Governor, Sir Edmund Andros, warmly espoused the cause of " the immortal Deliverer." In the follow- ing year came King William's War ; France and her Colonies supporting the ers. league with the French in Canada, at- tacked Billerica, and killed eight of the inhabitants-Mrs. Ann Shed and two daughters, Mrs. Joanna Dutton and two daughters, and two others. On the fifth of August, 1695, they visited that part of Billerica which is now Tewksbury, and killed Mr. John Rogers and fourteen oth- These attacks were planned with dethroned King James ; while the English great secrecy and skill. It was always
Colonies, prompted alike by principle and by self-interest, fought on the side of King William. This conflict lasted nine years, and was closed by the treaty of Ryswick in 1798. The general events of this war, from its commencement to its brilliant termination, have been narrated in tull by the masterly pen of Lord Macaulay, and need no recital here.
The nine years of this war were years of terror to the people of this region and of all the border settlements of New Eng- land. To prevent the settlers from sur- rendering to their fears, in March, 1694, the General Court enacted that if any person, having an estate of freehold in Chelmsford, Dunstable, and sundry other
when the danger of assault seemed the least, that the foe, with stealthy step, ac- tually appeared, to execute the work of death. Colonel Joseph Lynde, of Charles- town, with three hundred armed men, horse and foot, ranged all the swamps and woods of Andover, Chelmsford and Bil- lerica, but found no trace of the foe. The hill in Belvidere called Lynde's Hill, de- rives its name from this Colonel Lynde, having been fortified and occupied for some time by him and his command.
We hear nothing of Wannalancet after the sale of lands before mentioned, till 1697 and 1698, at the close of King Wil- liam's War, when he turns up for the last time, under the guardianship of Colonel
· See Alass. Archives, vol. 70, pp. 240-212. t 1bid, p. 261.
See Bentley's History of Salem.
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Tyng. After this, we hear of him no more. the fourteen Christian towns which he had Wandering, a stranger-if not also a prison- organized, reduced first to seven, and af- cr-among the haunts of his infancy, and terward to four; and even these were not over the graves of his fathers, with the long to survive. Much of his time toward impress of hope long deferred stamped in the close of his life was spent in promoting deep furrows upon his brow, the sighing education among the negroes, many of breezes of heaven, and the multitudinous whom were now living in the colony as voices of the river's waves, must have slaves. In his old age, he was compared filled him with sad and pensive memories, to Homer's Nestor, whose lips dropped falling upon his ear like voices from the manna sweeter than honey; and his bi- spirit-land. That he lingered so long ographers point out many beautiful corres- around the graves of his fathers, shows pondences between him and John, "the that it would have pleased him to be laid disciple whom Jesus loved."
at their feet at last, and to mingle his own But while history must accord to Eliot dust with theirs. But this was not to be. the highest honors as a philanthropist, a It is believed by all who have made Indian saint, and an apostle, it cannot withhold history their study, that, dissatisfied with the confession that, when compared with his strange life here, he finally retired to the missionary achievements of the Jesu- the St. Francis tribe, and ended his days its, the efforts of Eliot sink into almost with them. The chief glory of his life perfect insignificance. About all that was to be a true Christian, and to be ever now remains to remind us of the labors of the white man's friend. His renunciation Eliot and bis compeers, are a few copies of the rude creed of his childhood, and of his Bible and other Indian books, as his refusal to join the coalition of King unintelligible as the inscriptions on the Phillip, lost him a majority of the old obelisk of Luxor. The works of the Jesu- Pawtucket or Pennacook Confederacy,
it fathers, on the other hand, are visible which chose his nephew, the brave and from the tropics to the poles. There is wary Kancamagus, or John Hogkins, as not a tribe on the whole continent, from their chief,-he being in full sympathy with Newfoundland to the Aleutian Islands, the young and warlike spirits of the which has not furnished converts to the So- · tribe.
ciety of Jesus. We Protestants may re-
The portion of the tribe which followed gret it; we may dislike to confess it ; but Kancamagus, took part in all the wars of the fact is incontestable, that as a mission- this period. On the night of the twenty- ary or proselyting church, the Roman seventh of June, 1689, they attacked Do- Catholic Church ranks far superior to any ver, New Hampshire, put the commander, of the heretical churches that have sprung Waldron, to death with the most protract- from her prolific loins.
ed tortures, burned six houses and the Nor is it difficult to account for this. mills of the settlement, and captured and The Protestant labored mainly to elevate killed fifty-two men, women and children. the savage to the plane of his own civili- They afterward became merged with the zation-a task in itself impossible. The Androscoggin tribe in Maine, as those religion which he presented consisted in who adhered to Wannalancet became abstract ideas and dogmas hard to be- merged with the St. Francis tribe in lieve and impossible to understand .-- Canada.
The Jesuits, on the contrary, talked lit-
The Apostle Eliot did not live to see the tle of dogma, made nothing of abstrac- end of this war, but passed to the world tions, and adopted, to a great extent, which had been the theme of his dis- the Indian modes of thought and life. courses, in 1690. He had the mortification They initiated their simple minded re- to see the labors of more than forty years cruits into the mysteries of their elabo- terminate in failure. He lived to witness rate and beautiful symbolism; they chant-
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ed in their ears Te Deum Laudamus, ly a week passed without witnessing scenes hymns to Mary, and all those glorious of blood and cruelty, the mere recital of soul-stirring anthems which grew like blos- which shocks the feelings, and makes soms out of the piety of the Catholic the flesh creep with horror. Neither Church of the early ages ; and the hearts age nor sex was spared. The blood of of their converts throbbed and melted un- the whites everywhere crimsoned the der the tones of this divine music ; they ground. The flames of burning dwellings saw the Jesuits bow down before the host reddened the midnight sky. The shrieks and kiss the crucifix, and they bowed of captives, dying in excruciating tortures, down before the host and kissed the cru- echoed from every mountain-top; and cifix too. Thus almost unconsciously, the whole body of the colonists, like Mac- they caught the spirit of the new faith, beth in the tragedy, " supped full of hor- and became, with their children, willing rors." T'hose in this region, though liv- subjects for the baptism without which, ing at the time in garrisons, were not they were assured, they must perish ever- spared their share of these troubles, more lastingly.
REVENGES OF HISTORY.
The remainder of our narrative is chicf- ly a record of bloody revenges. We have al- ready seen what abominable cruelties the Indians suffered from the whites. We have seen them sold into West Indian Slavery, shot down like dogs in the street at noonday, hung on trees in Boston, and burned to death in their own wigwams. The souls of the slain cried for years for redress to that God who bas said, " ven- geance is mine ;" nor did they cry in vain. As long as the helm of this universe is held by God, and not by the Devil, such villainies as we have related can never pass unpunished.
" The hand that slew till it could slay no more, Was glued to the sword-hilt with Indian gore."
But for every drop of Indian blood shed by the early settlers, the sons of those settlers were compelled to make full and fearful expiation. The record that was written in blood was wiped out in blood. Driven from the valley of the Merrimack,
especially during Queen Anne's War, which lasted from 1703 to 1713,-as the histories of Chelmsford and Dunstable, by Allen and Fox, abundantly attest. From the beginning of King Phillip's War to the close of Queen Anne's War, that is, from 1675 to 1714, the colonies of Massa- chusetts and New Hampshire alone lost not less than six thousand of their male population .* These troubles did not whol- ly cease till the fall of Quebec before the arms of the heroic Wolfe, and the final conquest of Canada.
CONCLUSION.
But it is time these retrospections were ended. Though some of them must shock our sense of justice, others of them bring the satisfying assurance that there is a law of compensation traceable through history, and that, as Tennyson beautifully says, --
" All the while the whirligig of Time Is bringing its revenges.
Our narrative has unfolded many facts and from the other river-bottoms of Mas- calculated to live in the memory, and im- sachusetts, the red sons of the forest found part new attractions to the region in refuge in the trackless wilds of Canada which our lot is cast. No part of the and Maine, and infused their own thirst earth's service is more worthy of study, for revenge into the tribes whom they for us, than that on which we live, No joined. Sallying forth from these far-off part can boast a history more replete with forest homes, their war-whoop reverber- the clements of poetry and romance.
ated through the colonies for seventy years, and kept the people of the fron- tiers in continual consternation. Scarce-
" For a picture, drawn by a master hand, of the condition of the frontiers during this period, seo Lan- croft's History, vol. 2, p. 103.
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What Lowell now is,-what her industry Well and truly does one of our Merrimac! is,-what she has done for the advance- Valley poets say --
ment of the mechanic arts, -what she has "Had Homer, 'stead of Argos' classic strand, contributed to the comfort and well-being Claimed this fair valley as his native land, of civilized mankind,-what her citizens have done, and are now doing, for the preservation of the unity and nationality of America,-the world well knows. If this narrative has not wholly failed of its object, it has shown that there are Indian and Pioneer memories associated with this region, not unworthy to be remembered in connection with more recent events.f
How would these scenes have swarmed with not men ;
How buried heroes would have lived againI Each lofty mountain, and each woody hill, Each winding stream, and gently flowing rill, Each rock and dell along this river shore,
In flowing verse would live forevermore." 1
el! ; Miles' Lowell as it was and as it is; Whittier'e Stranger in Lowell ; Francis' Lowell Hydraulic Fx- periments; Watson's Hand-Book for the Visitor to Lowell ; Scoresby's American Factories and their Fe- male Operatives; Montgomery's History of the Cot- ton vanufacture in America ; Everett's Memoir of John Lowell ; Lowell's Memoir of Patrick T. Jack- son : Edson's, ot Warren Colburn ; Huntington's, of Elisha Bartlett, etc.
# William Stark's Manchester, N. I., Centennial
1 For information in relation to Lowell, see Cow- ley's Ilistory of Lowell ; Appleton's Origin of Low- Poem (IS51), in Potter's Manchester, p. 80.
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