USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Warren > The history of Warren; a mountain hamlet, located among the White hills of New Hampshire > Part 10
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115
THE LOGIC OF SABATIS.
With a haughty air he said, "Me not to blame; St. Francis Indians no make treaty with the English. No harm to steal nig- gers ; white men steal niggers in Africa! Red men same right to steal niggers in 'Merica."
This was an irrefragible argument, equal to that learned from the great Socrates by one Strepsiades, and the white settlers would willingly have allowed him to be a keen logician if they could only have had the pleasure of seeing him cantering fast away from Canterbury.
But Sabatis would not go. He put on airs. Like other men who think they have performed great feats, he became insolent in his conduct, boasted in bragadocia style of what he had done, threatened to butcher the inhabitants, flourished a glittering knife, and like another Jack Falstaff, brave where was no danger, bran- dished his tomahawk over the head of a defenceless woman.
But worse than this - some keen-eyed settler discovered that he carried, secreted about his person, a collar and lines, nice con- trivances with which to fetter captives, and then the whole settle- ment was alive with the kidnapping affair again. "It might do to steal negroes," said an old farmer, " but 'pon honor it will never . do to steal white folks." Brag was a game that two could play at, and some old soldier-citizens of Canterbury, who had seen service at the siege of Louisburg, believed that they themselves would be yet good for blows and even bullets. So when Sabatis commenced his insolence again, he heard something that he had never heard before in that settlement. Gleam of steel shone on steel, and the cry of " Blood for blood !" greeted the ears of the tawny brave. The frontier hamlet grew too hot for the St. Francis men, and one July day they quietly decamped, this time without any prisoners, crossed the bright Merrimack in a beautiful birch canoe, and took up their residence in Contoocook, now Boscawen.
But they had not yet learned to be civil; they were just as insolent as ever. Plunder, captives, and scalps were continually on their tongues, and the whole settlement soon grew heartily sick of them. They were the guests of two men, Messrs. Morrill and Bowen. The first was a farmer, but Peter Bowen was a wild bor- derer. He knew every trait of Indian character. A hunter and trapper, he had passed half his life in the woods. He was well
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
acquainted with the two Indians and their misdeeds, and knew that they were hated by every settler. For years it was reported how Bowen fought them in self-defence- but this was an idle tale got up for effect. Bowen reasoned in this wise: "The Indians have murdered a great many white men. They say they will murder more. Only last year they stole the negroes. At any moment my neighbor or myself is liable to be killed. Now to protect them and my family, and to get a rich lot of furs-for the Indians in question have two hundred pounds worth-I will put the pestilent serpents out of the way. Every one will justify the deed, and I shall be the gainer."
So when Sabatis and Plausawa were about to leave the settle- ment, Bowen invited them to have a treat at his house. Both Indians got drunk, and Bowen drew the charges from their guns. Then, when they departed, they went into the woods towards the Merrimack. The Indians got separated some distance apart and then Bowen attacked Sabatis. The drunken brave snapped his gun at him, but Bowen sank a hatchet to the helve in his brain, cut him with it several times in the back, and plunged a hunting- knife into his heart. Plausawa coming up begged for his life. Bowen answered not a word, but killed him on the spot .*
That night he left them by the path-side. The gibbous moon looked through the trees upon their upturned, ghastly faces. The wolf howled on the mountain as he scented their blood afar, and the solemn owl hooted in harsh, discordant notes-nature's requiem over wild spirits departed, whose earthly delight had been human butchery.
On the morrow Bowen returned with his son, scooped a shal- low hole and threw the bodies in, slightly covering them with earth and leaves. But wild animals and dogs dug them up, and for years. afterwards their white bones bleached by the road side in the woods.
Indian hunters, who had come to the settlements to traffic, heard of the murder of the two Indians, and bore the news to the St. Francis.
The New Hampshire authorities also heard the story. As in duty bound, the government officials clapped a legal hand upon
* Potter's Hist. of Manchester, 281.
117
PURITAN MOB LAW.
Morrill and Bowen. Like Paul and Silas they were borne away to prison, yet for a very unlike cause. They were incarcerated within the walls of the old jail at Portsmouth. That they might not attempt the role of Jack Shepard, their limbs were placed in iron manacles. They were indicted for murder, and were to have their trial March 21st, 1754.
Telegraphic operators sometimes send messages without the aid of. a battery. The air, overcharged with electricity, produces an almost'magical effect upon the wires, and with hardly an effort the thoughts of the operator leap thousands of miles away. Al- though there was no telegraph at that time, still a subtle and mys- terious agency, almost as wonderful, seemed to be at work. It pervaded every settlement. An almost unexplainable attraction seemed to impel men, and on the cold night of March 20th, as the story is told, hundreds were threading their way through the dark and the storm. Down by Dover Neck, along by Squamscott's snowy banks they came, and up by the ocean shore, where the waves were " roaring on the rocks."
At midnight scores of dark forms crouched under the walls of the jail, and then simultaneously rushed at the gate, broke it in, knocked the irons from the limbs of Morrill and Bowen, and set them free. In the morning a thrill of excitement ran through the community. Law-abiding citizens demanded their recapture ; but the larger number rejoiced at their escape. The two men were generally justified. The best men in New Hampshire had aided them. Governor Wentworth offered a reward for their recapture, but no man troubled himself to apprehend them. In a short time they went wholly at large, and an arrest could not easily have been made. If it had been, as in the case of James the Second, every body would have been displeased with the captors, and would have given the Indian killers a chance to run away again as fast as they were able.
But something must be done to appease the Indians, who were not so readily satisfied. New Hampshire therefore sent presents to the relatives of Sabatis and Plausawa, and with them the blood was wiped out-but not so with the St. Francis people. They were enraged; they muttered threats of vengeance. The retalia- ting blow was planned, and " like a thunderbolt it fell on the
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
infant settlement, but a kind Providence partly averted its effects." It was May 11th, 1754, one of the brightest days of spring. A party of thirty Indians, every one of them painted like a circus clown, and with scalp-locks dancing in the wind, had come down from Canada. Nathaniel Meloon and William Emery, who lived in Stevenstown, now a part of Franklin, discovered them the night before. Emery was a wide-awake man, and he immediately took his family to a garrison-house near by. But Meloon was dilatory, and like the Mr. Slow mentioned in Mother Goose's melodies, was given to procrastination. His family were all at home in uncon- scious innocence, except one son, Nathaniel, Jr., who was at work in a field near by. They were taking a hearty breakfast of bean porridge, when they were startled by the wild whoop of the Indians, who had captured the elder and slow Meloon, as he was returning from the garrison.
The capture of the family was also but the work of a moment, and then the painted demons, to speak in the respectful language of earlier historians, brandished their tomahawks and flourished their scalping-knives, as they proceeded to rip open feather-beds, for the sake of the ticks, and to steal all the clothing and provis- ion they could lay their hands upon.
In a wonderfully short time they served Emery's house in the same manner and then, before the sun was very high, were all on their way to Canada.
Meloon, junior, who had seen the Indians approach, fled five miles as fast as his legs could carry him, to Contoocook, raised eight men, and hurried back to the rescue. But he was too late. Father, mother, sisters, brother, had been gone for hours .*
The people of Stevenstown and Contoocook were terribly aroused by the Indian depredations. It was necessary to do some- thing, and so Stephen Gerrish was dispatched to Portsmouth. On the 17th of May-quick time in those days of tote-roads and bridle-paths-he laid a petition before the Governor and Council, signed by all the inhabitants, praying for assistance.
" Oh! how we wish the forts at Coos intervals had been built," said one; " And the four hundred stout men with mus-
* Meloon and his family, with the exception of one child, Sarah, who died in Canada, all got safe home about four years afterwards, having experienced numer- ous hardships and many strange adventures .- Potter's Hist. of Manchester, 283.
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MORE MOUNTED RANGERS.
kets," added another; "Then our settlers would have been secure," said all. But it was of no use to wish that. The next best thing, however, could be done. What that was it took a long time to determine. But finally, with great wisdom and foresight on the part of His Excellency the Governor, and his council, it was ordered that twenty mounted men-good cavalry soldiers-should . be sent to the woods of Contoocook and Stevenstown, riding through underbrush and over windfalls, across marshes, bogs, and fens, with what effectiveness must be very plain to every one familiar with the north woods of New Hampshire.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW CAPTAIN PETER POWERS MARCHED GALLANTLY THROUGH THE PEMIGEWASSETT COUNTRY TO THE LAND OF THE COOSUCKS, OF A BRAVE EXPLOIT AND A HEROIC RETREAT. 1
THE wild moss-troopers-brave cavalry soldiers as they were-scouted valiantly in the shaggy woods of Contoocook and Stevenstown. For a month they galloped up hill and for a month they galloped down. Not a red-skin was discovered, for with their prisoners and plunder they had all gone to Canada. Yet we would not detract a particle from the merit of the brave English scouts. Captain John Webster was leader, and a bold man was he. James Proctor was lieutenant and Christopher Gould was clerk. . But their month's term of duty soon expired and they returned home, having done good service in beating the bush without catching the bird.
But the high functionaries of the royal province of New Hampshire, so loyal to George the Third-for the reader must recollect that our worthy ancestry once lived under a king- were not satisfied with the results of the expedition. They had been frightened out of the plan of building strong fortresses at Coos, and now they believed it necessary to hold that territory with companies of scouts and rangers. So another expedition was immediately planned, and Captain Peter Powers, of Hollis, N. H., was put in command. James Stevens was his lieutenant, and Ephraim Hale, ensign. Both these latter were from Town- send, Massachusetts.
And here, by the way, we must acknowledge our obligations to the first historian of Coos, the Rev. Grant Powers, in most
121
THE EXPEDITION ON THE MARCH.
respects truthful, yet not without family pride. This is plainly exhibited when he tries to exalt Captain Peter, his grandfather or great-uncle -no matter which-into a distinguished traveller, like Marco Polo of former times, or a Humboldt of later days; or into a great military hero and explorer, like John Charles Fremont, who rode a woolly horse over a mountain 18,000 feet high! But we honor the historian for wringing from oblivion so many im- portant facts of history that would soon have been lost forever.
Captain Powers was an active man. His company immedi- ately rendezvoused at Rumford, formerly Pennacook, now Con- cord, N. H. It was June 14th, 1754, when the last man of the party arrived there. On Saturday, the 15th, they proceeded to Contoocook, where they tarried over the Sabbath and went to meeting, as good Christians should.
Let us now pause here for a moment. It is no holiday excur- sion upon which these stout hearts are entering. No one of all the gallant heroes who had formerly headed expeditions against the bloodthirsty Arosagunticooks, had ever penetrated much far- ther north than the White mountains; but now Captain Powers was going to eclipse all the historic deeds of previous brave Indian fighters, to plunge further into the wilderness, and perform deeds of glory that should render him immortal.
We have said they were all ready for a brave dash into the northern wilderness, and so on Monday morning, the 17th, at the first dawn, they put their baggage into theirZcanoes. By nine o'clock A. M., a part on the shore, a part in their light barks, they were hurrying up the Merrimack. The painted salvages were in the upper country, and Captain Powers' men were eager for the fray. They passed the forks, or " crotch" of the river, where the "dark Aquadocta " mingles with the bright Pemigewassett, pushed up the latter stream, toted their baggage and canoes round the falls and camped the first night at the head of "the hundred rod carrying place."
Beautiful weather greeted them in the morning, and they shot rapidly up the winding stream, shut in by green woods. The winds piped in the foliage, and the wood-thrush mingled his sweetest melody with the roar of Sawheganet falls. Here they saw great fat salmon shooting up the rushing waters. They
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
looked into the dark opening from whence came Squam river, flowing from the most beautiful New England lake; gazed with delight on the broad intervals of Plymouth, and saw in the dis- tance the sharp Haystacks, yet white with winter's snow .*
They turned up the Asquamchumauke, otherwise called Baker river, which came down from the west, and paddled their light canoes rapidly along its crooked and sluggish course. The fourth day, the setting sun half an hour high, saw them camped at the foot of Rattlesnake mountain, t the most bold and precipitous peak in the valley, and its towering cliffs echoed to the report of their muskets, as they shot a moose for their supper. They left their canoes in the shoal head water of the river, thought they would try the west route to the Connecticut, and that night they camped between the two Baker ponds in the present town of Orford.
Storms of "haile " and "heavy showers of raine" kept them here for two days. This detention very much tried the patience of the Captain and his trusty scouts. They were eager to cope with the brave salvages, whom they expected to find at the head of the long river towards which they were hastening.
But Captain Powers managed to while away the time, watch-
*" Wednesday, June 19th, 1654 .- We marched on our journey, and carried across the long carrying place on Pemigewassett river, two miles north-east, which land hath a good soil, beech and maple, with a good quantity of large masts. From the place where we put in the canoes we steered east, north-east, up the river about one mile, and then we steered north-east one mile, and north six miles, up to Sawheganet Falls, where we carried by about four rods; and from the falls we steered about north-east to Pemigewasset interval, two miles, and from the beginning of the interval we made good our course north four miles, and there camped on a narrow point of land. The last four miles of the river was extremely crooked."
" Thursday, June 20th. - We steered our course one turn with another, which were great turns, west north-west, about two miles and a half, to the crotch, or parting of the Pemigewasset river at Baker river mouth, thence from the mouth of Baker river, up said river, north-west six miles. This river is extraordinarily crooked, and good interval. Thence up the river about two miles, northwest, and there we shot a moose, the sun about a half an hour high, and there camped."
[ This must have been in the town of Romney.]
" Friday, June 21st .- We steered up the said Bakerriver with our canoes about five miles, as the river ran, which was extraordinarily crooked. In the after part of this day there was a great shower of 'haile and raine,' which prevented our pro- ceeding further and here we camped : and here we left our canoes, for the water in the river was so shoal that we could not go with them any further."
" Saturday, June, 22d .- This morning was dark and cloudy weather, but after ten of the clock, it cleared off hot, and we marched up the river, near the Indian carrying place, from Baker river to Connecticut river, and there camped, and could not go any further by reason of a great shower of rain, which held almost all this afternoon."-Capt. Peter Powers' Journal, Hist. of Coos, 18.
t Powers says the inhabitants of our valley can without doubt fix upon Capt. Peter's several encampments with tolerable accuracy, and that it must be very interesting to mark out the places which were thus occupied by swords and brist- ling bayonets in 1754, whilst the whole country around remained an unbroken wilderness -- History of Coos, 19.
123
REALITY VS. ROMANCE.
ing the clouds whirling around the summits of the lofty eastern mountains, and writing in his journal of the broad and fertile intervals, the beautiful white pine that grew upon them, and how " back from the intreval is a considerable quantity of large moun- tains " which he looked upon with much admiration.
Reader, think of the forest stretching a hundred miles away, unbroken by a single white man's clearing; of the bright lakes, the silver rivers winding through the woods; of the wild and savage beasts that roamed and howled and bellowed therein; of the great shaggy mountains, " daunting terrible; " of the numer- ous cruel murders committed on the frontiers by the Indians; of this company of stalwart hearts, camped in storm of " haile and raine and thunder," beside these exceedingly solitary ponds in the basin of the great mountains, each man eager with trusty "Queen's arm " to hurry further away into the wilderness, to fight what were to them veritable " painted, red demons; " perchance to be slain, to be scalped, to be devoured by wolves, or to rot in some cold swamp-and you have the romance of Captain Powers' expedition. Truly one might expect heroic deeds from such brave men.
On Tuesday, June 25th, they struck Connecticut river. Pro- ceeding up the east bank they crossed the Oliverian, swollen by the great rain, and pushed rapidly forward until they came to the mouth of the Ammonoosuc. Here they tarried a day, built a canoe with which to cross the latter stream, and there dismissing four of the men who were lame, sent them in it down the Connec- ticut to "Number Four."
From Ammonoosuc river they went tramping through the woods northward, over John's river and over Israel's river, to. the beautiful interval of upper Coos. On this interval the brave Captain left his soldiers to mend their shoes, and with two men proceeded up the Connecticut " to see what they could discover."
Five miles on he met with an Indian encampment-a sight that gladdened his very eyes-and found where not more than two days before they had constructed several canoes. Like every other great military hero, he was now eager for the contest; so, musing on this sight for a few moments, he returned to his men. They were soon mustered in battle-array. A council of war was
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
held. That their shoes were worn out, that their provisions were nearly gone, that they were foot-sore and lame, and that their hail- pelted bodies were rheumatic- was all true. But notwithstanding this, now was the time, and they determined to make a vigorous campaign after the Indians, and if possible to eclipse the renown of the bold cavalry troopers in the woods of Stevenstown and Contoocook. To do this it was necessary there should be a change of base. Strategy must be used, and this should be the great plan: They would advance towards home on the double-quick; the "painted salvages" of course would pursue them; the bold strategists would then make a deadly ambuscade, and there shoot and capture the whole Arosagunticook army.
And here some skeptical reader may ask us where we got our information. We can only reply, if this was not the "plan," what was it?
But the Indians, obdurate pagans, did not pursue, although Captain Powers advanced homeward most gallantly. We are sin- cerely sorry they did not, for we are thereby prevented from recording a most fierce fight, wherein Captain Peter and his men would have won immortal renown, and some hallowed spot on "the long river of pines" would have been as celebrated as the mouth of Baker river or Lovewell's pond.
The last we hear of the war-party they are hurrying on through the gap of the eastern mountains-the Oliverian* notch- to their canoes waiting in the Asquamchumauke. No doubt they reached home in safety, for we never heard anything to the con- trary, told big stories of their brave exploits to the day of their death, relating how they enjoyed themselves killing moose and deer, and eating the same, how they saw the pleasant lands about Moosilauke and the head waters of the Asquamchumauke, and how they got well paid in " old tenor" money for these important services.
In all probability the Governor thought this expedition would aid materially in keeping off the Indians; indeed, much more than
* Saturday, July 6 .- Marched down the great river to Great Coos, and crossed the river below the great turn of clear interval, and there left the great river, and steered south by east about three miles and there camped .- Powers' Hist. of Coos, 31. Powers says he knows no more of the homeward march. The journal ceases at the point where he left the river. - Do. 32.
125
A MANŒUVRE IN FLANK.
the two forts which were to have stood on the Coos intervals, or the four hundred armed men who were to have held them, or than even the two score of moss-troopers at Contoocook and Stevens- town. But how great must have been his surprise at the shock- ing deeds committed by the Arosagunticook braves in a very few days after Captain Powers' gallant change of base, as will be truthfully set forth in this brief history of Indian wars, in which the armies marched and countermarched through our much loved territory of Warren.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF A GALLANT EXPLOIT ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE FRONTIER, OF AN EXCITED CAMP ON THE SHORE OF WACHIPAUKA POND, WITH OTHER ENTERTAINING AND CURIOUS MATTER, VERY INTEREST- ING TO KNOW.
EVERY child of New England has heard of the old French war. It had much to do with the settlement of our mountain hamlet, Warren-almost as much as the creation of the world, or the discovery of America by Christopher Colon. The narration of all its great and important events would be decidedly foreign to our purpose, and we prefer to place ourselves immediately in medias res, and only describe those extraordinary occurrences that served to make the Indian corn-fields and pumpkin patches, fishing waters and hunting grounds under the shadows of bald Moosilauke, so well-known.
War was declared in Europe in 1753. A colonial congress met at Albany, New York, in 1754, to devise means of defence. . Canada roused the Indians to further hostilities, and the New Hampshire frontier bled again.
Like a wolf skulking about a sheep-fold, or a thief crawling down chimney at night, thirty brave Indian fellows, armed cap-a- pie, guns on their shoulders, scalping-knives in their belts, plumes in their tufted scalp-locks waving like the white feather of Murat, bright uniforms in the shape of dirty breech-clouts, and moose- hide moccasins, came down for open war.
'Twas the morn of August 15th. Jolly Phoebus had just cooled his hissing hot axletrees in the cold currents of the Atlantic, and was driving pell-mell up the eastern sky, when the above-
127
MURDERS AT STEVENSTOWN.
mentioned war party boldly marched into a little clearing in Stevenstown. A one-story log cabin, with a cow pen and pig sty near by, stood on one side of the small field. Mrs. Call, her daughter-in-law, wife of Philip Call, and an infant of the latter, were there. Mr. Call, and young Call, and Timothy Cook were at work on the other side of the clearing .*
The braves made directly for the house. Mrs. Call, like a Spartan mother or a Roman matron, bravely met them at the door. Without a word the foremost Indian with a blow of his toma- hawk felled her to the earth, and her warm blood drenched the threshhold. Kicking her dead body aside they rushed into the house. The young woman crept into a hole behind the chimney, kept her child quiet, and escaped.
The father and son, and Timothy Cook, attempted to get into the house before the Indians but did not succeed. They heard the blow that knocked down Mrs. Call, her scream and death groan, and the wild war whoop, and then, as the savages rushed towards them they fled. Cook, like Horatius Cocles, leaped into the river; but unlike that Roman swimmer, did not reach the opposite shore. The Indians shot him from the bank. Dragging him from the water they peeled off his scalp, served Mrs. Call's head in the same manner, rifled the house, and then took to the woods.
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