Kitabı oku: «France and England in N America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV», sayfa 16

The bishop did, in fact, make a vehement speech against Mareuil before the council on the day in question; Mareuil stoutly defending himself, and entering his appeal against the episcopal mandate. ³⁴⁶ The battle was now fairly joined. Frontenac stood alone for the accused. The intendant tacitly favored his opponents. Auteuil, the attorney-general, and Villeray, the first councillor, owed the governor an old grudge; and they and their colleagues sided with the bishop, with the outside support of all the clergy, except the Récollets, who, as usual, ranged themselves with their patron. At first, Frontenac showed great moderation, but grew vehement, and then violent, as the dispute proceeded; as did also the attorney-general, who seems to have done his best to exasperate him. Frontenac affirmed that, in depriving Mareuil and others of the sacraments, with no proof of guilt and no previous warning, and on allegations which, even if true, could not justify the act, the bishop exceeded his powers, and trenched on those of the king. The point was delicate. The attorney-general avoided the issue, tried to raise others, and revived the old quarrel about Frontenac's place in the council, which had been settled fourteen years before. Other questions were brought up, and angrily debated. The governor demanded that the debates, along with the papers which introduced them, should be entered on the record, that the king might be informed of every thing; but the demand was refused. The discords of the council chamber spread into the town. Quebec was divided against itself. Mareuil insulted the bishop; and some of his scapegrace sympathizers broke the prelate's windows at night, and smashed his chamber-door. ³⁴⁷ Mareuil was at last ordered to prison, and the whole affair was referred to the king. ³⁴⁸

These proceedings consumed the spring, the summer, and a part of the autumn. Meanwhile, an access of zeal appeared to seize the bishop; and he launched interdictions to the right and left. Even Champigny was startled when he refused the sacraments to all but four or five of the military officers for alleged tampering with the pay of their soldiers, a matter wholly within the province of the temporal authorities. ³⁴⁹ During a recess of the council, he set out on a pastoral tour, and, arriving at Three Rivers, excommunicated an officer named Desjordis for a reputed intrigue with the wife of another officer. He next repaired to Sorel, and, being there on a Sunday, was told that two officers had neglected to go to mass. He wrote to Frontenac, complaining of the offence. Frontenac sent for the culprits, and rebuked them; but retracted his words when they proved by several witnesses that they had been duly present at the rite. ³⁵⁰ The bishop then went up to Montreal, and discord went with him.

Except Frontenac alone, Callières, the local governor, was the man in all Canada to whom the country owed most; but, like his chief, he was a friend of the Récollets, and this did not commend him to the bishop. The friars were about to receive two novices into their order, and they invited the bishop to officiate at the ceremony. Callières was also present, kneeling at a prie-dieu, or prayer-desk, near the middle of the church. Saint-Vallier, having just said mass, was seating himself in his arm-chair, close to the altar, when he saw Callières at the prie-dieu, with the position of which he had already found fault as being too honorable for a subordinate governor. He now rose, approached the object of his disapproval, and said, "Monsieur, you are taking a place which belongs only to Monsieur de Frontenac." Callières replied that the place was that which properly belonged to him. The bishop rejoined that, if he did not leave it, he himself would leave the church. "You can do as you please," said Callières; and the prelate withdrew abruptly through the sacristy, refusing any farther part in the ceremony. ³⁵¹ When the services were over, he ordered the friars to remove the obnoxious prie-dieu. They obeyed; but an officer of Callières replaced it, and, unwilling to offend him, they allowed it to remain. On this, the bishop laid their church under an interdict; that is, he closed it against the celebration of all the rites of religion. ³⁵² He then issued a pastoral mandate, in which he charged Father Joseph Denys, their superior, with offences which he "dared not name for fear of making the paper blush." ³⁵³ His tongue was less bashful than his pen; and he gave out publicly that the father superior had acted as go-between in an intrigue of his sister with the Chevalier de Callières. ³⁵⁴ It is said that the accusation was groundless, and the character of the woman wholly irreproachable. The Récollets submitted for two months to the bishop's interdict, then refused to obey longer, and opened their church again.

Quebec, Three Rivers, Sorel, and Montreal had all been ruffled by the breeze of these dissensions, and the farthest outposts of the wilderness were not too remote to feel it. La Motte-Cadillac had been sent to replace Louvigny in the command of Michillimackinac, where he had scarcely arrived, when trouble fell upon him. "Poor Monsieur de la Motte-Cadillac," says Frontenac, "would have sent you a journal to show you the persecutions he has suffered at the post where I placed him, and where he does wonders, having great influence over the Indians, who both love and fear him, but he has had no time to copy it. Means have been found to excite against him three or four officers of the posts dependent on his, who have put upon him such strange and unheard of affronts, that I was obliged to send them to prison when they came down to the colony. A certain Father Carheil, the Jesuit who wrote me such insolent letters a few years ago, has played an amazing part in this affair. I shall write about it to Father La Chaise, that he may set it right. Some remedy must be found; for, if it continues, none of the officers who were sent to Michillimackinac, the Miamis, the Illinois, and other places, can stay there on account of the persecutions to which they are subjected, and the refusal of absolution as soon as they fail to do what is wanted of them. Joined to all this is a shameful traffic in influence and money. Monsieur de Tonty could have written to you about it, if he had not been obliged to go off to the Assinneboins, to rid himself of all these torments." ³⁵⁵ In fact, there was a chronic dispute at the forest outposts between the officers and the Jesuits, concerning which matter much might be said on both sides.

The bishop sailed for France. "He has gone," writes Callières, "after quarrelling with everybody." The various points in dispute were set before the king. An avalanche of memorials, letters, and procès-verbaux, descended upon the unfortunate monarch; some concerning Mareuil and the quarrels in the council, others on the excommunication of Desjordis, and others on the troubles at Montreal. They were all referred to the king's privy council. ³⁵⁶ An adjustment was effected: order, if not harmony, was restored; and the usual distribution of advice, exhortation, reproof, and menace, was made to the parties in the strife. Frontenac was commended for defending the royal prerogative, censured for violence, and admonished to avoid future quarrels. ³⁵⁷ Champigny was reproved for not supporting the governor, and told that "his Majesty sees with great pain that, while he is making extraordinary efforts to sustain Canada at a time so critical, all his cares and all his outlays are made useless by your misunderstanding with Monsieur de Frontenac." ³⁵⁸ The attorney-general was sharply reprimanded, told that he must mend his ways or lose his place, and ordered to make an apology to the governor. ³⁵⁹ Villeray was not honored by a letter, but the intendant was directed to tell him that his behavior had greatly displeased the king. Callières was mildly advised not to take part in the disputes of the bishop and the Récollets. ³⁶⁰ Thus was conjured down one of the most bitter as well as the most needless, trivial, and untimely, of the quarrels that enliven the annals of New France.

A generation later, when its incidents had faded from memory, a passionate and reckless partisan, Abbé La Tour, published, and probably invented, a story which later writers have copied, till it now forms an accepted episode of Canadian history. According to him, Frontenac, in order to ridicule the clergy, formed an amateur company of comedians expressly to play "Tartuffe;" and, after rehearsing at the château during three or four months, they acted the piece before a large audience. "He was not satisfied with having it played at the château, but wanted the actors and actresses and the dancers, male and female, to go in full costume, with violins, to play it in all the religious communities, except the Récollets. He took them first to the house of the Jesuits, where the crowd entered with him; then to the Hospital, to the hall of the paupers, whither the nuns were ordered to repair; then he went to the Ursuline Convent, assembled the sisterhood, and had the piece played before them. To crown the insult, he wanted next to go to the seminary, and repeat the spectacle there; but, warning having been given, he was met on the way, and begged to refrain. He dared not persist, and withdrew in very ill-humor." ³⁶¹

Not one of numerous contemporary papers, both official and private, and written in great part by enemies of Frontenac, contains the slightest allusion to any such story, and many of them are wholly inconsistent with it. It may safely be set down as a fabrication to blacken the memory of the governor, and exhibit the bishop and his adherents as victims of persecution. ³⁶²

CHAPTER XVI

1690-1694

The War in Acadia

State of that Colony • The Abenakis • Acadia and New England • Pirates • Baron de Saint-Castin • Pentegoet • The English Frontier • The French and the Abenakis • Plan of the War • Capture of York • Villebon • Grand War-party • Attack of Wells • Pemaquid rebuilt • John Nelson • A Broken Treaty • Villieu and Thury • Another War-party • Massacre at Oyster River.

Amid domestic strife, the war with England and the Iroquois still went on. The contest for territorial mastery was fourfold: first, for the control of the west; secondly, for that of Hudson's Bay; thirdly, for that of Newfoundland; and, lastly, for that of Acadia. All these vast and widely sundered regions were included in the government of Frontenac. Each division of the war was distinct from the rest, and each had a character of its own. As the contest for the west was wholly with New York and her Iroquois allies, so the contest for Acadia was wholly with the "Bostonnais," or people of New England.

Acadia, as the French at this time understood the name, included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the greater part of Maine. Sometimes they placed its western boundary at the little River St. George, and sometimes at the Kennebec. Since the wars of D'Aulnay and La Tour, this wilderness had been a scene of unceasing strife; for the English drew their eastern boundary at the St. Croix, and the claims of the rival nationalities overlapped each other. In the time of Cromwell, Sedgwick, a New England officer, had seized the whole country. The peace of Breda restored it to France: the Chevalier de Grandfontaine was ordered to reoccupy it, and the king sent out a few soldiers, a few settlers, and a few women as their wives. ³⁶³ Grandfontaine held the nominal command for a time, followed by a succession of military chiefs, Chambly, Marson, and La Vallière. Then Perrot, whose malpractices had cost him the government of Montreal, was made governor of Acadia; and, as he did not mend his ways, he was replaced by Meneval. ³⁶⁴

One might have sailed for days along these lonely coasts, and seen no human form. At Canseau, or Chedabucto, at the eastern end of Nova Scotia, there was a fishing station and a fort; Chibuctou, now Halifax, was a solitude; at La Hêve there were a few fishermen; and thence, as you doubled the rocks of Cape Sable, the ancient haunt of La Tour, you would have seen four French settlers, and an unlimited number of seals and seafowl. Ranging the shore by St. Mary's Bay, and entering the Strait of Annapolis Basin, you would have found the fort of Port Royal, the chief place of all Acadia. It stood at the head of the basin, where De Monts had planted his settlement nearly a century before. Around the fort and along the neighboring river were about ninety-five small houses; and at the head of the Bay of Fundy were two other settlements, Beaubassin and Les Mines, comparatively stable and populous. At the mouth of the St. John were the abandoned ruins of La Tour's old fort; and on a spot less exposed, at some distance up the river, stood the small wooden fort of Jemsec, with a few intervening clearings. Still sailing westward, passing Mount Desert, another scene of ancient settlement, and entering Penobscot Bay, you would have found the Baron de Saint-Castin with his Indian harem at Pentegoet, where the town of Castine now stands. All Acadia was comprised in these various stations, more or less permanent, together with one or two small posts on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the huts of an errant population of fishermen and fur traders. In the time of Denonville, the colonists numbered less than a thousand souls. The king, busied with nursing Canada, had neglected its less important dependency. ³⁶⁵

Rude as it was, Acadia had charms, and it has them still: in its wilderness of woods and its wilderness of waves; the rocky ramparts that guard its coasts; its deep, still bays and foaming headlands; the towering cliffs of the Grand Menan; the innumerable islands that cluster about Penobscot Bay; and the romantic highlands of Mount Desert, down whose gorges the sea-fog rolls like an invading host, while the spires of fir-trees pierce the surging vapors like lances in the smoke of battle.

Leaving Pentegoet, and sailing westward all day along a solitude of woods, one might reach the English outpost of Pemaquid, and thence, still sailing on, might anchor at evening off Casco Bay, and see in the glowing west the distant peaks of the White Mountains, spectral and dim amid the weird and fiery sunset.

Inland Acadia was all forest, and vast tracts of it are a primeval forest still. Here roamed the Abenakis with their kindred tribes, a race wild as their haunts. In habits they were all much alike. Their villages were on the waters of the Androscoggin, the Saco, the Kennebec, the Penobscot, the St. Croix, and the St. John; here in spring they planted their corn, beans, and pumpkins, and then, leaving them to grow, went down to the sea in their birch canoes. They returned towards the end of summer, gathered their harvest, and went again to the sea, where they lived in abundance on ducks, geese, and other water-fowl. During winter, most of the women, children, and old men remained in the villages; while the hunters ranged the forest in chase of moose, deer, caribou, beavers, and bears.

Their summer stay at the seashore was perhaps the most pleasant, and certainly the most picturesque, part of their lives. Bivouacked by some of the innumerable coves and inlets that indent these coasts, they passed their days in that alternation of indolence and action which is a second nature to the Indian. Here in wet weather, while the torpid water was dimpled with rain-drops, and the upturned canoes lay idle on the pebbles, the listless warrior smoked his pipe under his roof of bark, or launched his slender craft at the dawn of the July day, when shores and islands were painted in shadow against the rosy east, and forests, dusky and cool, lay waiting for the sunrise.

The women gathered raspberries or whortleberries in the open places of the woods, or clams and oysters in the sands and shallows, adding their shells as a contribution to the shell-heaps that have accumulated for ages along these shores. The men fished, speared porpoises, or shot seals. A priest was often in the camp watching over his flock, and saying mass every day in a chapel of bark. There was no lack of altar candles, made by mixing tallow with the wax of the bayberry, which abounded among the rocky hills, and was gathered in profusion by the squaws and children.

The Abenaki missions were a complete success. Not only those of the tribe who had been induced to migrate to the mission villages of Canada, but also those who remained in their native woods, were, or were soon to become, converts to Romanism, and therefore allies of France. Though less ferocious than the Iroquois, they were brave, after the Indian manner, and they rarely or never practised cannibalism.

Some of the French were as lawless as their Indian friends. Nothing is more strange than the incongruous mixture of the forms of feudalism with the independence of the Acadian woods. Vast grants of land were made to various persons, some of whom are charged with using them for no other purpose than roaming over their domains with Indian women. The only settled agricultural population was at Port Royal, Beaubassin, and the Basin of Minas. The rest were fishermen, fur traders, or rovers of the forest. Repeated orders came from the court to open a communication with Quebec, and even to establish a line of military posts through the intervening wilderness, but the distance and the natural difficulties of the country proved insurmountable obstacles. If communication with Quebec was difficult, that with Boston was easy; and thus Acadia became largely dependent on its New England neighbors, who, says an Acadian officer, "are mostly fugitives from England, guilty of the death of their late king, and accused of conspiracy against their present sovereign; others of them are pirates, and they are all united in a sort of independent republic." ³⁶⁶ Their relations with the Acadians were of a mixed sort. They continually encroached on Acadian fishing grounds, and we hear at one time of a hundred of their vessels thus engaged. This was not all. The interlopers often landed and traded with the Indians along the coast. Meneval, the governor, complained bitterly of their arrogance. Sometimes, it is said, they pretended to be foreign pirates, and plundered vessels and settlements, while the aggrieved parties could get no redress at Boston. They also carried on a regular trade at Port Royal and Les Mines or Grand Pré, where many of the inhabitants regarded them with a degree of favor which gave great umbrage to the military authorities, who, nevertheless, are themselves accused of seeking their own profit by dealings with the heretics; and even French priests, including Petit, the curé of Port Royal, are charged with carrying on this illicit trade in their own behalf, and in that of the seminary of Quebec. The settlers caught from the "Bostonnais" what their governor stigmatizes as English and parliamentary ideas, the chief effect of which was to make them restive under his rule. The Church, moreover, was less successful in excluding heresy from Acadia than from Canada. A number of Huguenots established themselves at Port Royal, and formed sympathetic relations with the Boston Puritans. The bishop at Quebec was much alarmed. "This is dangerous," he writes. "I pray your Majesty to put an end to these disorders." ³⁶⁷

A sort of chronic warfare of aggression and reprisal, closely akin to piracy, was carried on at intervals in Acadian waters by French private armed vessels on one hand, and New England private armed vessels on the other. Genuine pirates also frequently appeared. They were of various nationality, though usually buccaneers from the West Indies. They preyed on New England trading and fishing craft, and sometimes attacked French settlements. One of their most notorious exploits was the capture of two French vessels and a French fort at Chedabucto by a pirate, manned in part, it is said, from Massachusetts. ³⁶⁸ A similar proceeding of earlier date was the act of Dutchmen from St. Domingo. They made a descent on the French fort of Pentegoet, on Penobscot Bay. Chambly, then commanding for the king in Acadia, was in the place. They assaulted his works, wounded him, took him prisoner, and carried him to Boston, where they held him at ransom. His young ensign escaped into the woods, and carried the news to Canada; but many months elapsed before Chambly was released. ³⁶⁹

This young ensign was Jean Vincent de l'Abadie, Baron de Saint-Castin, a native of Béarn, on the slopes of the Pyrenees, the same rough, strong soil that gave to France her Henri IV. When fifteen years of age, he came to Canada with the regiment of Carignan-Salières, ensign in the company of Chambly; and, when the regiment was disbanded, he followed his natural bent, and betook himself to the Acadian woods. At this time there was a square bastioned fort at Pentegoet, mounted with twelve small cannon; but after the Dutch attack it fell into decay. ³⁷⁰ Saint-Castin, meanwhile, roamed the woods with the Indians, lived like them, formed connections more or less permanent with their women, became himself a chief, and gained such ascendency over his red associates that, according to La Hontan, they looked upon him as their tutelary god. He was bold, hardy, adroit, tenacious; and, in spite of his erratic habits, had such capacity for business, that, if we may believe the same somewhat doubtful authority, he made a fortune of three or four hundred thousand crowns. His gains came chiefly through his neighbors of New England, whom he hated, but to whom he sold his beaver skins at an ample profit. His trading house was at Pentegoet, now called Castine, in or near the old fort; a perilous spot, which he occupied or abandoned by turns, according to the needs of the time. Being a devout Catholic he wished to add a resident priest to his establishment for the conversion of his Indian friends; but, observes Father Petit of Port Royal, who knew him well, "he himself has need of spiritual aid to sustain him in the paths of virtue." ³⁷¹ He usually made two visits a year to Port Royal, where he gave liberal gifts to the church of which he was the chief patron, attended mass with exemplary devotion, and then, shriven of his sins, returned to his squaws at Pentegoet. Perrot, the governor, maligned him; the motive, as Saint-Castin says, being jealousy of his success in trade, for Perrot himself traded largely with the English and the Indians. This, indeed, seems to have been his chief occupation; and, as Saint-Castin was his principal rival, they were never on good terms. Saint-Castin complained to Denonville. "Monsieur Petit," he writes, "will tell you every thing. I will only say that he (Perrot) kept me under arrest from the twenty-first of April to the ninth of June, on pretence of a little weakness I had for some women, and even told me that he had your orders to do it: but that is not what troubles him; and as I do not believe there is another man under heaven who will do meaner things through love of gain, even to selling brandy by the pint and half-pint before strangers in his own house, because he does not trust a single one of his servants,—I see plainly what is the matter with him. He wants to be the only merchant in Acadia." ³⁷²

Perrot was recalled this very year; and his successor, Meneval, received instructions in regard to Saint-Castin, which show that the king or his minister had a clear idea both of the baron's merits and of his failings. The new governor was ordered to require him to abandon "his vagabond life among the Indians," cease all trade with the English, and establish a permanent settlement. Meneval was farther directed to assure him that, if he conformed to the royal will, and led a life "more becoming a gentleman," he might expect to receive proofs of his Majesty's approval. ³⁷³

In the next year, Meneval reported that he had represented to Saint-Castin the necessity of reform, and that in consequence he had abandoned his trade with the English, given up his squaws, married, and promised to try to make a solid settlement. ³⁷⁴ True he had reformed before, and might need to reform again; but his faults were not of the baser sort: he held his honor high, and was free-handed as he was bold. His wife was what the early chroniclers would call an Indian princess; for she was the daughter of Madockawando, chief of the Penobscots.

So critical was the position of his post at Pentegoet that a strong fort and a sufficient garrison could alone hope to maintain it against the pirates and the "Bostonnais." Its vicissitudes had been many. Standing on ground claimed by the English, within territory which had been granted to the Duke of York, and which, on his accession to the throne, became a part of the royal domain, it was never safe from attack. In 1686, it was plundered by an agent of Dongan. In 1687, it was plundered again; and in the next year Andros, then royal governor, anchored before it in his frigate, the "Rose," landed with his attendants, and stripped the building of all it contained, except a small altar with pictures and ornaments, which they found in the principal room. Saint-Castin escaped to the woods; and Andros sent him word by an Indian that his property would be carried to Pemaquid, and that he could have it again by becoming a British subject. He refused the offer. ³⁷⁵

The rival English post of Pemaquid was destroyed, as we have seen, by the Abenakis in 1689; and, in the following year, they and their French allies had made such havoc among the border settlements that nothing was left east of the Piscataqua except the villages of Wells, York, and Kittery. But a change had taken place in the temper of the savages, mainly due to the easy conquest of Port Royal by Phips, and to an expedition of the noted partisan Church by which they had suffered considerable losses. Fear of the English on one hand, and the attraction of their trade on the other, disposed many of them to peace. Six chiefs signed a truce with the commissioners of Massachusetts, and promised to meet them in council to bury the hatchet for ever.

The French were filled with alarm. Peace between the Abenakis and the "Bostonnais" would be disastrous both to Acadia and to Canada, because these tribes held the passes through the northern wilderness, and, so long as they were in the interest of France, covered the settlements on the St. Lawrence from attack. Moreover, the government relied on them to fight its battles. Therefore, no pains were spared to break off their incipient treaty with the English, and spur them again to war. Villebon, a Canadian of good birth, one of the brothers of Portneuf, was sent by the king to govern Acadia. Presents for the Abenakis were given him in abundance; and he was ordered to assure them of support, so long as they fought for France. ³⁷⁶ He and his officers were told to join their war-parties; while the Canadians, who followed him to Acadia, were required to leave all other employments and wage incessant war against the English borders. "You yourself," says the minister, "will herein set them so good an example, that they will be animated by no other desire than that of making profit out of the enemy: there is nothing which I more strongly urge upon you than to put forth all your ability and prudence to prevent the Abenakis from occupying themselves in any thing but war, and by good management of the supplies which you have received for their use to enable them to live by it more to their advantage than by hunting." ³⁷⁷

Armed with these instructions, Villebon repaired to his post, where he was joined by a body of Canadians under Portneuf. His first step was to reoccupy Port Royal; and, as there was nobody there to oppose him, he easily succeeded. The settlers renounced allegiance to Massachusetts and King William, and swore fidelity to their natural sovereign. ³⁷⁸ The capital of Acadia dropped back quietly into the lap of France; but, as the "Bostonnais" might recapture it at any time, Villebon crossed to the St. John, and built a fort high up the stream at Naxouat, opposite the present city of Fredericton. Here no "Bostonnais" could reach him, and he could muster war-parties at his leisure.

One thing was indispensable. A blow must be struck that would encourage and excite the Abenakis. Some of them had had no part in the truce, and were still so keen for English blood that a deputation of their chiefs told Frontenac at Quebec that they would fight, even if they must head their arrows with the bones of beasts. ³⁷⁹ They were under no such necessity. Guns, powder, and lead were given them in abundance; and Thury, the priest on the Penobscot, urged them to strike the English. A hundred and fifty of his converts took the war-path, and were joined by a band from the Kennebec. It was January; and they made their way on snow-shoes along the frozen streams, and through the deathly solitudes of the winter forest, till, after marching a month, they neared their destination, the frontier settlement of York. In the afternoon of the fourth of February, they encamped at the foot of a high hill, evidently Mount Agamenticus, from the top of which the English village lay in sight. It was a collection of scattered houses along the banks of the river Agamenticus and the shore of the adjacent sea. Five or more of them were built for defence, though owned and occupied by families like the other houses. Near the sea stood the unprotected house of the chief man of the place, Dummer, the minister. York appears to have contained from three to four hundred persons of all ages, for the most part rude and ignorant borderers.

The warriors lay shivering all night in the forest, not daring to make fires. In the morning, a heavy fall of snow began. They moved forward, and soon heard the sound of an axe. It was an English boy chopping wood. They caught him, extorted such information as they needed, then tomahawked him, and moved on, till, hidden by the forest and the thick snow, they reached the outskirts of the village. Here they divided into two parties, and each took its station. A gun was fired as a signal, upon which they all yelled the war-whoop, and dashed upon their prey. One party mastered the nearest fortified house, which had scarcely a defender but women. The rest burst into the unprotected houses, killing or capturing the astonished inmates. The minister was at his door, in the act of mounting his horse to visit some distant parishioners, when a bullet struck him dead. He was a graduate of Harvard College, a man advanced in life, of some learning, and greatly respected. The French accounts say that about a hundred persons, including women and children, were killed, and about eighty captured. Those who could, ran for the fortified houses of Preble, Harmon, Alcock, and Norton, which were soon filled with the refugees. The Indians did not attack them, but kept well out of gun-shot, and busied themselves in pillaging, killing horses and cattle, and burning the unprotected houses. They then divided themselves into small bands, and destroyed all the outlying farms for four or five miles around.