USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume I > Part 15
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and grandfather, Passaconaway, had always manifested. He and his small tribe had been in the sham fight and were captured, though immediately afterward liberated. Still the Penacooks remem- bered that event with cherished feeling of hatred and longing for revenge. The soldiers who took part in that fight were from Cochecho, Oyster River, Salmon Falls and Kittery, so far as the Indians could judge, and these places were marked by them for slaughter. Especially Major Richard Waldern and Major Charles Frost were held responsible. The tribes of Penacook and Pequawket joined to themselves some strange Indians and planned the attack on Cochecho, where there were five garrison houses. Three of them were on the north side of the River, viz., Waldern's near the site of the present county buildings, Otis's a short distance north, and Heard's still further north and on a little hill, afterward called Garrison Hill. The garrisons on the south of the river belonged to Peter Coffin and his son. These houses were surrounded by palisades, or walls of timber, and the gates thereof, as well as of the house-doors, were secured by bolts and bars. Indians were continually coming to Cochecho to trade furs for whatever the whitemen might persuade them to buy and so they knew well every house in the settlement.
On the night of the twenty-seventh of June, 1689, no watch was kept. This is astonishing, for suspicions had been aroused, and rumors were carried to the ear of Major Waldern. He thought he knew well the Indians and that there was no danger. Old age may have weakened his usual caution. He said he could summon a hundred defenders by lifting his finger, and told the fearful ones to go and plant their pumpkins. A young man told him that the town was full of Indians, but how could an aged Major learn caution of a young man? We know the story of Gen. Braddock and George Washington.
Two squaws asked for lodging at each of the garrisons, a not unusual thing. Their requests were granted and even they were instructed how to unbar and open the doors and gates. The hints contained in their ambiguous words were understood only when it was too late. They told Major Waldern that some Indians were coming to trade with him on the morrow. The squaws were admitted to all the garrisons save that of the younger Coffin, and they watched by the fires on the hearths.
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When all were asleep but themselves they opened the doors and gates to the Indians waiting in the darkness, who entered, left a guard at the gate and rushed into the Major's apartment. Awakened from sleep he seized his sword and drove them out, though he was seventy-four years old. Returning to his room for other weapons he was stunned by a blow from behind with a hatchet. He was bound and placed in an elbow chair on a long table in the hall. The Indians compelled the other mem- bers of the household to get them something to eat, and after they had feasted they fell to taunting and torturing the man they had hated so long. "Here I cross out my account," each said as he drew his knife across the Major's breast, referring to their unsettled trading in furs. "Who shall judge Indians Now?" they tauntingly shouted. Then they cut off his nose and ears and forced them into his mouth. Weakened by loss of blood he fell from the table and one of the Indians mercifully held the Major's own sword so that he fell upon it and put an end to his sufferings. An unpublished tradition in Dover still recounts that he was in the habit of saying to the Indians that his fist weighed a pound when weighing peltry, and so he bore down as he thought best in the opposite scale. After he was slain, they cut of his hand and weighed it, and to their surprise it weighed just a pound, which fact stirred up superstitious fears.
Thus perished Major Richard Waldern, founder of the present city of Dover. He was, undoubtedly, the ablest man in the province, if by ability we mean executive force and leader- ship in peace and war. That the General Court should five times select him their speaker, a man from a distant town and not a member of a ring at Boston, is proof of his popularity and efficiency as a presiding officer. There was no military office in the province higher than his, and he often had supreme command of expeditions against the Indians. His counsel was sought, and politically he generally had his own way, in spite of courts and orders from the king. As builder of mills and lumber-merchant he fostered the settlement and enriched him- self. For many years he paid no taxes, since he was a member of the governor's council. His prominence among the first settlers is probably due in part to the fact that he "got there first," saw the advantage of a large water-power and had the capital to develop it, receiving almost gratuitously large grants
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of land and timber. He was a stern, hard man, as his pitiless sentence against the Quaker women shows; a tricky opportunist, as the sham fight testifies; a fomenter of disloyalty to the king or an independent patriot, according to our point of view. The Indians killed his son-in-law, Abraham Lee, at the same time, and carried Mrs. Lee into captivity. The garrison house was pillaged and burned.
The garrison of Richard Otis suffered the same fate. He and his son, Stephen Otis, were slain. The latter had married Mary Pitman of Oyster River, April 16, 1674. She probably was carried into captivity with her children, John, Rose and Stephen Otis. Rose Otis returned after 1694 and married John Pinkham. The third wife of Richard Otis was Grizel, daughter of James Warren of upper Kittery, now South Berwick, Maine. Their daughter, Hannah, was killed, having her head dashed against the chamber stairs. Grizel Otis and a babe, three months old, named Margaret, were carried to Canada, where both were baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, the former as Mary Madeleine Warren and the latter as Christine. Mrs. Otis mar- ried in Canada Philip Robitaile, lived to the age of 89 and had several children. Christine Otis married a Frenchman, named Le Beau, and had children in Canada. After the death of her husband she returned to Dover and married Capt. Thomas Baker of Northampton, Massachusetts, and had other children. She embraced the Protestant faith, which occasioned an inter- esting letter from a priest in Canada, who sought to reconvert her, and a reply thereto by Governor William Burnett.1 She died February 23, 1773, having lived "a pattern of industry, prudence and economy."
The garrison of Capt. John Heard was saved by the barking of a dog and the presence of mind of Elder William Wentworth, who fell upon his back so as to escape the bullets of the Indians and set his feet against the door, holding it till he had alarmed the inmates of the house. He has already been mentioned as one of the first settlers of Exeter, and from him were descended the governors Wentworth. The wife of John Heard was Eliza- beth, daughter of the Rev. Joseph Hull, sometime minister at Oyster River and the Isles of Shoals. She and some of her
1 N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. VIII, pp. 405-427.
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children happened to be at Portsmouth on the night of the massacre. Coming up the Cochecho river in a canoe they heard the shouting of Indians and the firing of guns, about the break of day. They hoped to find refuge at Major Waldern's garrison, but they received no answer to their knocks and calls. Looking through a crack in the gate they saw Indians within and hastily fled, meeting with one of Otis's sons, who told them that his father and the rest of the family were killed. Mrs. Heard was unable to flee further and hid herself in a thicket of barbary bushes in the garden and a little later in other bushes about thirty rods from the house. Here a young Indian espied her and approached with pistol in hand. He peered into the bushes and went away. Soon he returned again and stared upon her as before. To her inquiry what he wanted he made no reply, but went away whooping. She stole away after the garrison had been burned, crossed the river on a boom and found shelter in the garrison of Captain Gerrish. The reason of her escape was this, that when the Indians were captured in the sham fight at Cochecho, 1676, a young Indian escaped and found refuge at her house. She concealed him and gave him his liberty, a kindness which he now requited by shielding her from harm, for Indians proverbially nourished gratitude as long as they did revenge. Five or six houses were burned, as well as the mills on the lower falis.
Peter Coffin's garrison house was captured and pillaged. Finding a bag of money the Indians compelled him to scatter it by handfuls on the floor, while they scrambled for it. His son, who had refused to admit the squaws the night before, was persuaded to surrender by their threats to kill his father. Both families were put into a deserted house, reserved as prisoners. In the confusion, while the Indians were plundering, the pris- oners made their escape.
The garrison of Capt. John Gerrish, son-in-law of Major Waldern, seems to have been at some distance at Bellamy falls, but his daughter, Sarah Gerrish, aged seven years, lodged that night with the Waldern family and was captured and taken to Canada after much suffering. She was sent to a nunnery for education, but after some years returned to her parents and died at the age of sixteen.
There is no evidence that the house of Thomas Paine,
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burned at this time, was a garrison. The family probably es- caped, as shown by his will, made in New Castle, in 1694.
The journal of the Rev. John Pike, who was minister at Dover at that time and must have been well acquainted with the facts, says that twenty-three persons were killed, principal of whom were Major Waldern, Abraham Lee, Mr. Evans, Richard Otis, Joseph Dug (probably Douglass), Joseph Duncan, Daniel Lunt, Joseph Sanders, Stephen Otis, Joseph Buss, Wil- liam Buss, William Arin, William Horn, and old widow Hanson. Twenty-nine were carried away captive, among whom were Joseph Chase, Mrs. Abraham Lee, Tobias Hanson's wife, Otis's wife and Sarah Gerrish. John Church was captured and es- caped. The town records of Dover make no mention of this event nor of any town business for the next four years,-the silence of desolation.
Some Indians had warned Major Hinchman of Chelmsford of the designed attack upon Cochecho. He communicated the information to Secretary Addington, who wrote immediately to Major Waldern from Boston, but the messenger was delayed at Newbury ferry and so arrived a few hours too late.
Captain Noyes led a pursuing party to Penacook, where he destroyed some corn but found no Indians; Capt. John Wincol marched his soldiers to lake Winnipiseogee, where one or two Indians were cut down, as well as the corn. Thus the Indian rogues crept upon the settlements stealthily, made their attacks usually in the night, surprised the inhabitants, burned, pillaged and killed, and then ran away with their captives to Quebec, where the French gave them rewards for scalps and captive women and children.
A few days after the massacre at Cochecho about twenty Indians were seen sculking at Oyster River, and some houses were burned. Philip Crommett was dispatched to Hampton to obtain assistance from Capt. Samuel Sherburne. There was no further report of mischief done at Oyster River till the fol- lowing August, when about sixty Indians, who had been con- cealed in the woods several days and watched the opportunity, attacked the house of Lieutenant James Huckins, poorly fortified. All the men were gathering corn, and soldiers under Captain Gardner had lodged at Huckins' house the night before and that
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morning had marched away to Cochecho. All the men in the field were slain, including Lieut. James Huckins, whose garrison stood a few rods south of the house lately occupied by Deacon Winthrop S. Meserve, about a mile from Durham village. The field in which the men were slain lies southeast of the garrison, beyond Huckins' brook. Eighteen persons were either killed or captured. The house was defended for some time by women and two boys. After the Indians promised to spare their lives and the roof was on fire the boys surrendered ; yet the Indians killed three or four of the children and carried away the rest of the inmates, except Robert Huckins, who escaped the next day. Belknap says that the Indians set one of the children upon a sharp stake, in the view of its distressed mother. Lieut. Huckins' widow was recovered after a year of captivity at an Indian fort in what is now Auburn, Maine, half a mile or so below the falls.
On the eighteenth of May, 1690, two hundred and fifty French and Indians, commanded by a French officer, Hertel, and the noted Indian chief, Hope Hood, made an attack upon Salmon Falls and Berwick. The attack began before sunrise when most of the people were in bed. No watch had been kept, either in fort or house. The fort and upwards of twenty houses were burned. Between eighty and one hundred persons were killed or taken, of whom twenty or thirty were men fit for military service. The Indians being pursued by forces hastily gathered made a stand at Wooster's River, where an indecisive fight occurred and several were slain. Another expedition of the French and Indians against the fort and settlement at Casco, Maine, and still another against Schenectady, New York, were equally "successful," from the enemy's point of view. Always the settlers were surprised. They felt so secure that no watch was kept. Repeated massacres could not teach them caution for more than a brief time.
The Rev. Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, seemingly on the authority of a letter written by William Vaughan of Ports- mouth, relates an attack made by Indians at Fox Point, where several houses were burned, six persons were taken captive, and a dozen more were killed, the Indians being led by Hope Hood. The late Charles W. Tuttle published weighty reasons for discred- iting this report. The traditions of Fox Point and Bloody Point,
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in Newington, say nothing about this massacre. Probate records, town records, Pike's Journal and church records say nothing about the slain and the captured. Vaughan's letter says that Capt. John Woodman of Oyster River was "forced to break up" his garrison, thus allowing the enemy to "come down that way" and to cross over to Fox Point in canoes, all of which is absurd to one who knows that region minutely. Did the Indians find canoes at the lower falls of Oyster River, near to Woodman's garrison? The garrison of Capt. John Woodman was never abandoned nor taken. The story of a massacre at Fox Point may be classed with another story related by Miss Mary P. Thompson, that seven daughters of William Durgin were taken from the north shore of Great Bay over to Furber's Point and there barbarously crucified,-a thing impossible to believe, especially since there is no evidence that William Durgin had any daughters at all. The people were everywhere in terror. Fears excited imagina- tion. Rumor magnified hasty reports. Tradition multiplied assertions and handed them down as facts.2
Hope Hood is said to have been wounded in the fight at Fox Point and soon afterward to have been killed by some Canada Indians, who mistook him for one of the Iroquois, with whom they were at war. Local tradition declares that he died and was buried at Hope Hood Point in Dover.
Pike's Journal records that on the fourth day of July, 1690, seven persons were slain and a lad taken at Lamprey River, in the vicinity of the present village of Newmarket. The next day Hilton's garrison, in the present town of Newfields, was attacked, and Lieut. Bancroft in endeavoring to relieve it lost eight or nine of his men. On the sixth of July occurred the battle of Wheelwright's Pond, in what is now the town of Lee. Capt. Floyd was forced to retire with the loss of sixteen men, seven of whom, wounded, were picked up the following day by Capt. Converse and brought to the hospital. In this battle, which was a running fight, one hundred men were engaged, under command of Capt. Noah Wiswall and Capt. John Floyd, who led their men from Dover and began the fight at Newtown, near Turtle Pond. All the militiamen of Oyster River joined in the fight.
2 Tuttle's Historical Papers, pp. 161-171; Miss Thompson's Landmarks in Ancient Dover.
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James Smith, who lived at the Falls, made such haste that he died of a surfeit. Thomas Footman was impressed as a soldier and was laid up in the hospital at Portsmouth seven months as the result of wounds received. Captain Wiswall, Lieutenant Flag, Sergeant Walker and twelve privates were killed. Within a week from this time forty persons were slain between Lamprey river and Amesbury.3
In the summer of 1691 a large force under four captains was sent against the Indians at Maquoit, about three miles south of the present village of Brunswick, Maine, then known as Pejep- scot. Finding no enemy they were reembarking when the Indians fell upon them from ambush, and Captain Samuel Sher- burne, inn-keeper at Hampton, was slain on the fourth of August. He was one of the prominent men of that town, thrice selectman and once deputy to the General Court. On the last Tuesday of September from twenty to forty Indians came in canoes from the eastward and landed at Sandy Beach, now in the town of Rye, a little after noon. They avoided the garrison and fell upon defenceless families, killing and making captive twenty of the old men, women and children. The Brackett and Rand families were especially afflicted. The Indians were seen carrying canoes on their heads. Next morning companies of soldiers from Hampton and Portsmouth came to the place and found only smoking ruins, the bodies of thirteen slain and the tracks of women and children who had been carried away.
At this time New Hampshire was without a government, and delegates met in Portsmouth to devise some method of com- mon defence. Scouts were sent out to range the woods, going in small parties from one frontier post to another. A young man was fired upon near Cochecho, in the woods. Lieutenant Wilson went out with eighteen men, came upon the Indians unawares and killed or wounded the whole party, save one. After this there was little fighting in New Hampshire for the space of more than two years, though the Indians continued to commit depredations in Maine, especially attacking Storer's garrison in Wells. Meanwhile a conference had been held with the Indians at Sagadahock. They brought in ten captives and agreed to a truce, till the first day of May. Hostilities began again in June.
3 Belknap's Hist. of N. H .. p. 134.
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Thus the war wore on, bands of Indians making raids all along the Maine and New Hampshire frontiers at unexpected times and places.
In the evening of the second day of September, 1691, the Indians fell upon a settlement at Salmon Brook, in the old town of Dunstable, nothwithstanding fifty scouts were ranging the woods. The town records inform us that the slain were Ben- jamin Hassell Senior, Anna Hassell his wife, Benjamin Hassell their son, and Mary daughter of Patrick Marks. On the morn- ing of the twenty-eighth of September, in the same year, Oba- diah Perry and Christopher Perry of Dunstable were killed. So much were the inhabitants terrified that two-thirds of them fled the town and in 1699 there were left only twenty heads of families.4
On the eleventh of August, 1693, the Indians of the east made a solemn agreement with the agents of Sir William Phips, governor of Massachusetts, to abstain from all hostilities against the English. The treaty was made in the fort at Pemaquid. They agreed to abandon the French and to be subject to the crown of England, to restore all captives and live in perpetual peace with the settlers. Four Indians were delivered as hostages. Sixteen Indian chiefs signed the agreement, among whom were Bomazeen and Doney, who within a year led in the attack upon Oyster River. On account of some disagreement of Sir William Phips with the president and council at Portsmouth about the seizure of a ship, Phips drew off the soldiers that Massachusetts had stationed in the province of New Hampshire. There was also difficulty and delay about raising the money to pay their expenses. New Hampshire seems to have been too much inclined to rely upon other provinces for protection, and the council once advised the governor to call upon Connecticut for aid. Yet it should be said to the honor of New Hampshire, that amid fearful massacres and continual alarms, while the eastern parts of Maine were abandoned as far as the town of Wells, no part of the four towns of New Hampshire was forsaken by settlers. After every burning they built again and stronger and better than before, determined to hold on to their lands, in spite of foes at court or in ambush.
4 Hill's Old Dunstable, p. II.
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The only injury done by the Indians in the year 1693 was on the tenth of May, when, as Pike relates, Tobias Hanson of Dover was killed, "as he travelled the path near the west corner of Thomas Downs' field."
It has been asserted that the Indians toward the east were incited by the French emissaries to break the peace agreed upon in the treaty of Pemaquid. In an address of the general assem- bly of New Hampshire to the king, about the year 1700, they refer to "the late war with the barbarous and treacherous enemy, the eastern Indians, whose bloody nature and perfidy have been much aggravated and improved of late years by Popish Emmis- saries from ffrance who have taught 'em that breaking faith with and murdering us is the sure way to gain paradise, and so far have deluded their Indian Disciples with their Inchantments and evil Superstitions that they are taught to spare neither age nor sex, having killed and scalped all (except a very few) both old and young that came within their power during the whole course of the war, and we know not how long these bloody Indians will forbear their hostilities. The ffrench Missionaries continuing among them as they do and poysoning them with their Hellish doctrines to the withdrawing them from their former Obedience and subjection to your Majesty."5
These assertions as to the conduct of the French mission- aries should be well scrutinized before being accepted at face value. The oppositions between Protestants and Roman Cath- olics were then so bitter and deep that each party was accused of wrongs. In every war there have been atrocities on both sides, and they are not to be laid at the door of religion, true or false. The lowest passions are aroused and delight in cruelty, under the plea of necessary retaliation. Religious principle may restrain the educated few; superstition may deaden the con- sciences of the ignorant many. The Indians were out for revenge and plunder, and the results were not so terrible as are those of recent wars of nominally Christian nations. No air- ships sailed about, dropping bombs ruthlessly upon the homes of defenceless women and children, while ministers were be- seeching God for the protection and success of the armies that perpetrated such outrages. In time of war there has been very
5 Manuscript at Concord, N. H., copied from English Archives, No. 1001.
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little difference between Protestantism, Roman Catholicism and heathenism. All alike are freed from the restraints of peaceful civilization.
The French and Indians seem to have had little regard for solemn treaties of peace. That of Pemaquid was suddenly broken by the attack on the inhabitants of Oyster River, July 18, 1694, said by captives to have been talked of in the streets of Quebec two months before. The commander of the French at Penobscot was Monsieur de Villieu, who had defended Quebec against the expedition of Sir William Phips. He collected an army of about two hundred and fifty from the eastern tribes, who were accompanied by at least two French priests. There were warnings that led some to be apprenhensive of danger. Knocks were heard by night at certain doors, and stones were thrown at garrisons, to find out whether the houses and gar- risons were defended and whether any watch were kept. Even this did not put the inhabitants on their guard. The plan of the enemy was to burn every house on both sides of Oyster river and along the north shore of Great Bay. Small bands of Indians were to make simultaneous attacks, but the plan was somewhat defeated by the premature shooting of John Dean, at the lower Falls, now Durham village. The Indians who had been concealed in the woods made their attack here before dawn, and Dean was going to the pasture to catch his horse, intending to leave home early in the morning. Some impatient Indian fired upon him and killed him. The report of the gun alarmed some households, and the word of warning was spread as far and as rapidly as possible. The undefended fled to the nearest garrisons and some were slain in their flight. Mrs. Dean and her daughters were captured and taken to a spruce swamp and left in the care of an old Indian who had a violent headache. He proved to be the sagamore Doney. He asked Mrs. Dean for a remedy for headache, and she replied "occapee," the Indian word for rum. He became intoxicated, and his captives made their escape, hiding in a thicket during the day and going down the river in a canoe by night to Burnham's garrison, where they found protection.
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