VII

NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG

When Mr. Seward, about forty years ago, spoke of the “irrepressible conflict” between slavery and freedom, it was generally felt that he had invented a happy and telling phrase. It was a conflict equally irrepressible that was carried on for seventy years between France and England for the possession of North America. It was the strife between absolutism and individualism, between paternal government carried to the last extreme, and the spontaneous life of communities that governed themselves in town meeting. Alike in Europe and in America each party was aggressive and uncompromising. Particularly in America the proximity of the Indians made it next to impossible to avoid bloodshed even when the governments of France and England were nominally at peace with one another. There is no better illustration of this than is afforded by the story of Norridgewock.

The treaty of Utrecht, by which the long war

of the Spanish succession was brought to an end in 1713, transferred the province of Acadia from France to England. After many changes of ownership backward and forward it was decided that Acadia was finally to become English. But what was Acadia? As customarily applied, the name included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and a part of Maine; and the English maintained that all this territory was ceded to them by the treaty; but the French, on the other hand, maintained that they had only given away Nova Scotia, and woe to the Englishman who should dare to meddle with the rest! It was intended that this question should be settled by a special commission, but the question was such a ticklish one that neither country was in haste to appoint a commission, and so things remained until the matter was settled forever by the mighty Seven Years’ War.

According to the French view, the boundary between their territory and that of New England was the river Kennebec. This line they felt it important to defend for two reasons. First, the New England settlements were rapidly extending northeastwardly along the coast; secondly, the sources of the Kennebec were connected by an intricate network of streams, marshes, and lakelets, with those of the Chaudière, which falls

into the St. Lawrence just opposite Quebec. It was an excessively difficult route by which to invade Canada, as Benedict Arnold found half a century later. Nevertheless, it was a possible route which the French felt it necessary to bar. In this they proceeded according to their usual manner by establishing a hold upon their Algonquin friends along the Kennebec River.

These Algonquins were commonly known as Abenakis, or Eastern Men. Their grade of culture was quite similar to that of the tribes in Massachusetts and considerably more advanced than that of the Micmacs of Nova Scotia. They were divided into numerous tribes and subtribes, the names of which, such as Kennebec, Penobscot, etc., have in many cases remained as local names upon the map, while the most important of these Abenaki tribes was that of the Norridgewocks, inasmuch as their position guarded the approaches to the upper waters of the Kennebec. The stockaded Norridgewock village was situated close by the river, about seventy-five miles from its mouth, and a journey to it from Portsmouth or Boston seemed like plunging into the innermost depths of the wilderness. These Indians were no longer heathen, for they had all been converted and baptized by the devoted efforts of Father Sebastian Rale. This interesting man was a native of that part of Burgundy known as Franche-Comté,

and when thirty-two years of age came over to Canada with Frontenac in 1689. After a more or less migratory service extending as far west as the Illinois River, Father Rale took charge of the Norridgewock Indians in 1693, and remained with them until his death. His attainments in American languages were very considerable, for he possessed a fluent knowledge of at least three dialects of Algonquin, besides the Huron dialect of Iroquois, and his knowledge of the Indian character was as thorough as his proficiency in their tongue. The Norridgewock village was a square enclosure 160 feet on each side, walled in with a palisade of stout logs about nine or ten feet in height. In the middle of each side was a gate, and the two streets connecting the gates crossed each other in an open square at the centre. Within the enclosure were twenty-six wigwams, and outside of it at a distance of a few yards stood the chapel. Altogether it was a much ruder village than the Iroquois Hochelaga which Cartier had visited nearly two centuries before, and very much ruder than the Onondaga village attacked by Champlain in 1615. Besides being the spiritual father of this little community, Father Rale was of necessity a jack-of-all-trades. He must be a bit of a carpenter, and more or less of a gardener, with a pennyweight

of medicine to an intolerable deal of theology, and unlimited devotion to the spiritual needs of his flock. To these duties he added those of linguist and diplomat; for his leisure hours were whiled away in making a vocabulary of the Abenaki tongue, while his own talent of speech was put to diligent use in instructing all the tribes of that region how to comport themselves in the presence of the much hated English.

At the time of the peace of Utrecht, the country between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec had been the scene of atrocious warfare for nearly forty years. First there was King Philip’s War in which the French had no part, and then there were the two great wars between France and England from 1689 to 1697, and from 1702 to 1713. The result was that this border country had almost relapsed into a desert. But after 1713, a new wave of settlement advanced northeasterly, old villages were rebuilt and new ones founded, and in all directions might be seen clearings in the forest, where the smoke curled up from the log cabins of English pioneers. Now this advance of the white frontier incensed and alarmed the Indians, as it was natural that it should. They maintained that the English were encroaching upon their lands. The English retorted that these lands were their own, inasmuch

as they had formerly been bought from Indian sachems, and prices had been paid for them which the Indians had deemed liberal and satisfactory. But the red man’s notions of ownership and transfer of real estate were in a hopelessly different stage of evolution from those of the white man. To an Indian, the selling of a territory meant little more than granting permission to catch fish and game upon it, or to pass through it unhindered for whatever purpose. The Indian had not arrived at the point where the sale of an estate conveys to the vendee the right to exclude the vendor; but his mind was open to a suggestion of Father Rale, that no sale of land by a sachem could be other than void because the land was the property of the clan, and must be kept in trust for the children born to the clan. This was exactly in accordance with Indian ways of thinking, and it is not strange that Father Rale’s doctrine suited the red men’s temper better than the English notion that after once buying the land they had a right to fence the Indian out. As the English farmhouses came nearer and an occasional blockhouse was erected, the disgust of the Abenakis increased beyond all bounds, but they entertained a wholesome dread of attacking the English without assistance from the French, and this was difficult to obtain in time of peace.

While the French, however, prudently refrained from gross violations of international law, they were nevertheless quite willing to incite the Indians to attack the English. Vaudreuil, the governor of Canada, expressly declared that it was convenient to maintain a secret alliance with the Indians, since the latter might inflict much damage upon the English, while the French could disclaim all responsibility for their acts.

In 1717, when Colonel Shute was royal governor of Massachusetts, a conference was held on Arrowsick Island at the mouth of the Kennebec River. There the Indians showed themselves so eager for peace that even the insults of Governor Shute, who was an arrogant person utterly destitute of tact, failed to produce an outbreak. A Puritan minister from Medfield by the name of Joseph Baxter was left among the Indians to counteract by his preaching the influence of Father Rale; and the twain indulged in a Latin correspondence, in which the writers not only attacked each other’s politics and theology, but made game of each other’s Latin style,—a kind of fierce banter in which the Puritan came off second best. This contest over the Kennebec River was typical of the whole struggle between the French and the

English. On the one hand, there was the steadily advancing front of the self-governing and greatly thriving agricultural community; on the other hand, there was the little group of French noblemen and priests governing a mere handful of settlers, and striving to keep back the advancing English by means of diplomatic control over barbarous Indians. It was a struggle which could really have but one issue. It was a struggle, moreover, that was conducted without pity or mercy, with scarcely a pretence of regard for the amenities of civilized warfare. Neither side was particularly scrupulous, while from that day to this, each side has kept up a terrible outcry against the other for doing the very same thing which it did itself. From that day to this English writers have held up their hands in holy horror at the atrocious conduct of the French in sending savages to burn villages and massacre women and children on the English border. Yet was it not an English governor of New York who in 1689 launched the Iroquois thunderbolt against Canada, one of the most frightful Indian incursions known to history? It does not appear that the conscience of either Puritan or Catholic was in the slightest degree disturbed by these horrors. Each felt sure that he was fighting the Devil, and thought it quite proper to fight him with his own weapons.

On the Kennebec frontier the problem for New France was to prevent English villages and fortresses from advancing in that direction, and the most obvious way of accomplishing the result was to instigate the Indian’s to acts of warfare. This was the avowed policy of Vaudreuil, and it was carried out by Father Rale to the best of his ability. When he found that his Norridgewock Indians were timid, and inclined to peace, he sent to Montreal and caused parties of warriors from divers tribes, Ottawas, Caughnawagas, Hurons, and others, to be sent to the Kennebec River, where all engaged in a frantic war dance, and quite carried away the Norridgewocks in a frenzy of bloodthirsty enthusiasm. This was in 1721. Then began the sickening tale so many times repeated in early American history,—the tale of burning homes, of youth and beauty struck down by the tomahawk, and of captives led away through the gloom of the forest to meet a fiery death. Thus, in turn, the English government at Boston was confronted with its problem: how to put a stop to these horrors without bringing on a new war with France. The practical New England mind saw that the principal hotbed of all the mischief must be destroyed, and if a Frenchman or two should come to grief in the process, it was his own fault for playing so recklessly with fire. It

was easier, however, for Boston to know what ought to be done than to do it; for there was the irreconcilable hostility between governor and legislature to be reckoned with. For example, when the Norridgewocks on one occasion complained to Governor Shute that they were cheated and shamefully used by irresponsible traders, the governor undertook to set up certain trading stations on the frontier which should be controlled by trustworthy persons, and where Indians might rest assured of fair treatment, but when he proposed this plan to the Assembly, that body flatly refused to appropriate any money for the purpose. Finally, when the torches were lighted and the shrieks of the victims were heard, when the indignant governor was raising his arm to strike, what should this contumacious Assembly do but interpose obstacle after obstacle! Not only was it unwilling to entrust the governor with the money for obtaining military supplies, but it even insisted upon carrying on the war through committees of its own. Its blundering conduct was not unlike that of the Continental Congress in the War for Independence. After a while the course of the legislature put the governor into such a rage that on New Year’s day, 1723, he drove down to the water side, and embarked in a ship for London

without so much as telling anybody what he was about to do. He left it for the town to rub its eyes in astonishment at finding its governor gone.

His place was filled by the lieutenant-governor, William Dummer, who fared no better at the hands of the Assembly, although he was a native of New England. The Assembly insisted that two competent but unpopular officers should be removed from command, and when Dummer refused, the many-headed king retorted by refusing to grant supplies until the officers in question should have been removed. When we read of such scenes as this, which were perpetually recurring during the seventy years’ struggle with France, we can understand why the British government thought it necessary to raise money by stamps in order to protect the frontier against the Indians.

After much tribulation an expedition under Colonel Westbrook sailed for the Penobscot River, ascended it for some distance above the site of Bangor, and destroyed a missionary village which the French had founded there. The next year, 1724, a force of about 200 men went up the Kennebec River, carried the Norridgewock village by storm, and slew many of its defenders,

while the rest were scattered. In the course of the fight Father Rale was shot through the head. Puritan writers have sought to stigmatize this interesting man as a murderer, while Catholics have praised him as a martyr. In the impartial light of history, he was neither the one nor the other. He was true to his own sense of duty, and the worst that can be said about him is that he was not exceptionally scrupulous in his choice of political and military means; while on the other hand, the title of “martyr” seems hardly to belong to a man who was killed in the ordinary course of battle, not because of his religious faith, but because he was fighting in the service of France! The fighting thus begun continued for nearly four years, and in the course of it the Norridgewock tribe was practically exterminated. The destruction of that mission was a serious blow to the French hold upon the Maine frontier, and they never succeeded in making good the loss.

Our forefathers of that time had come to regard Indians very much in the light of wolves or panthers, to be hunted and slain wherever found. Parties of yeomanry were enlisted for the purpose of penetrating into the wilderness

and finding the enemy in his lair. The regular wages paid by the Commonwealth for such service were half a crown a day, paid in a currency so depreciated that the half-crown amounted to about twenty-five cents of our money; but, in addition, there was a liberal bounty of a hundred pounds for each Indian scalp. Even in that detestable rag money a hundred pounds was worth securing. Among the leaders in this rough service was Captain John Lovewell of Dunstable on the Merrimac River, a son of one of Cromwell’s soldiers. In January, 1725, he earned his first hundred pounds by bringing a scalp from a remote point among the White Mountains. It was customary for the Massachusetts rangers to patrol those wild stretches of forest, through which Algonquins from Canada used to come on their murderous raids. Toward the end of February, 1725, Lovewell’s party were passing the shores of a large pond in what is now the township of Fryeburg in Maine, just on the border of New Hampshire, and about sixty miles north of Dover. That sheet of water is still known as Lovewell’s Pond. Near its shore his party suddenly came upon ten Indians sleeping around a fire, and immediately killed them all, for which they received a thousand pounds from the treasurer at Boston. The

Indians who were killed were on their way to join an expedition for massacre in the frontier villages, so that the bounty would seem to have been well bestowed. A few weeks later Lovewell once more tried his fortune at the head of forty-six men, but as they approached the pond which had witnessed their winter performance, one or two of their number fell sick, so that it was necessary to build a rude fortification and leave there a guard for the sick ones. This reduced the number to thirty-four. Early on a bright May morning these men fell into an ambuscade of Pequawket Indians, and they kept up a desperate fight all day against overwhelming odds. Toward sunset the Indians gave way and retired from the scene, leaving a tremendous harvest of scalps for the victors. But these children of the Ironsides had paid a high price for their victory. Captain Lovewell and eleven others were slain, being rather more than one third of the number. One coward had run away and told so dismal a story to the sick men and their guard that they deemed it best to quit their rude fortification and travel southward with all possible despatch. The retreat from the battlefield began at midnight and was led by Ensign Wyman. One of the party was the chaplain of the expedition, Rev. Jonathan Frye of Andover, a youth of twenty-one, recently graduated at Harvard, who

was as zealous an Indian killer as any of the party. He had been terribly wounded in the fight, and as he felt his strength giving out so that he, must lie down upon the ground, he begged his comrades not to incur danger by waiting with him, but to keep on their way, and he said to one of them, “Tell my father that I expect in a few hours to be in eternity, and am not afraid to die.” So they left him alone in the forest and nothing more was heard of him. The survivors of this expedition were rewarded with extensive grants of land on the mountain ridges between Lancaster and the Connecticut River, which down to that time were a howling wilderness, and it was in this way that Petersham and others of the hill towns in that region originated.

For half a century, until its memory was obscured by the incidents of the Revolutionary War, Lovewell’s fight was a popular theme with the New England farmers. Ballads as long as “Chevy Chase” were written about it, and perhaps a few verses should be quoted in this connection.

As for this worthy young chaplain, he was mourned by the fair Susanna Rogers, daughter of the minister at Boxford, to whom he was betrothed. She afterward wrote a long monody which thus begins:—

Such incidents as the destruction of Norridgewock and Lovewell’s fight occurred in what was reckoned as an interval of peace between the second and third great intercolonial wars.

We may now pass over twenty years and make some mention of the most important event that marked in America the war of the Austrian Succession, which began with the seizure of Silesia by Frederick the Great in 1740,

and ended with the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.

On the southeast side of Cape Breton Island, in a very commanding position, was a small town which had been known as English Harbour, but which in the many vicissitudes of Acadia had passed into the hands of the French and had been by them christened Louisburg, after the king. After the treaty of Utrecht, the French refused to surrender Cape Breton Island on the ground that the name “Acadia” applied only to Nova Scotia in the strictest sense, excluding the adjacent islands. About 1720 the French began fortifying this place, and went on until they had spent a sum equivalent to more than $10,000,000 of our modern money, and had made it one of the strongest places in the world, scarcely surpassed by Quebec or Gibraltar. With reference to Canada, France, and the West Indies, this place occupied a central position. It blocked the way to any English ascent of the St. Lawrence, such as had been attempted in 1690 and 1711, and it afforded an admirable base of supplies from which a powerful French squadron might threaten Boston or any other English city upon the Atlantic coast.

It was in 1744 that France and England were dragged into the war between Austria and

Prussia, and no sooner had the news arrived in America than Duquesnel, the French commander of Louisburg, sent a squadron to surprise and capture such English ports in Nova Scotia as might be found insufficiently guarded. The little port of Canseau was at once taken, and an energetic, but fruitless attack was made upon Port Royal. A certain number of prisoners who had been taken from Canseau to Louisburg were returned in the autumn of 1744, and they sent such messages to Governor Shirley as led him to believe that a prompt attack upon Louisburg itself might prove successful. Perhaps the first person to entertain such a scheme seriously was William Vaughan, a graduate of Harvard in 1722, whose father had been lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire. Vaughan had an estate on the Damariscotta River, and did a brisk trade in lumber and fish. There was imminent danger that Louisburg might work the destruction of the English fisheries, and Vaughan, who was daring to the verge of foolhardiness, thought it a good plan to anticipate such a calamity by capturing the impregnable fortress. So bold was the project that Parkman gives to his chapter on this subject the simple heading, “A Mad Scheme.”¹ Fortunately, Shirley was himself a man of courage and resource. After a conversation with

Vaughan, Shirley informed his legislature that he had a proposal to make of such great importance that he wished them before receiving it to take an oath of secrecy. Shirley had shown much tact in avoiding dissensions with his legislature, and this extraordinary request was granted, but when the Assembly came to consider the question of attacking Louisburg without assistance from British arms, the Assembly deemed the proposal chimerical, and voted to reject it. Nothing daunted, however, Shirley returned to the attack, and with the active cooperation of many merchants who felt that their business absolutely demanded the reduction of the French stronghold, he succeeded at last in obtaining a majority of one vote in the Assembly. The next step was to seek aid from the other colonies, but only New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut gave favourable responses. Connecticut and New Hampshire furnished each 500 men, and Rhode Island furnished the sloop of war Tartar. Massachusetts supplied 3000 men, and Shirley selected William Pepperell to command the expedition. Pepperell was a very wealthy merchant of Kittery, who had served as justice of the peace and as a militia officer of various grades, ending with colonel. He was by no means a genius, but a man of energy, good sense, and tact. He was now

raised to the rank of lieutenant-general, and Roger Wolcott of Connecticut was commissioned major-general and appointed second in command. Pepperell’s good sense was sufficient to make him doubt the possibility of success; and the Rev. George Whitefield, when asked to furnish a motto for one of the flags, suggested Nil desperandum Christo duce, or, in other words, There is room for hope when Christ is leader, which, under the circumstances, does not seem to indicate a very exuberant confidence on the part of the great preacher.

As for a naval force, it was always possible to extemporize something of the sort in New England, where almost every seaport had citizens ready to venture money in privateering, or perhaps in equipping expeditions for capturing privateers from Frenchmen and Spaniards. The force collected for the Louisburg expedition consisted of one new 24-gun frigate and twelve smaller vessels, mostly sloops of from 8 to 20 guns. This was a ludicrous force for the purpose assigned; one French line-of-battle ship could easily have destroyed the whole of it. To put 4000 men upon Cape Breton Island without an adequate naval force to insure their retreat might easily entail their starvation or capture. More ships must be had, and Shirley sent a message to Commodore Peter Warren, at the island of Antigua, requesting

assistance. Warren was inclined to give the aid required, but a council of war overruled him, and he declined; but Shirley had wisely provided another string to his bow, and had written some time before to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, pointing out the great danger to the fisheries and the Acadian ports from the proximity of Louisburg. It was this Duke of Newcastle who knew so little about American affairs that, one day when he was told that Annapolis must be fortified, replied, “Annapolis, Annapolis! Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended; to be sure, Annapolis should be defended. Where is Annapolis?”¹ Fortunately, this amiable secretary’s zeal was better than his knowledge, and he promptly wrote to Commodore Warren, ordering him to sail for Boston and do what he could to help the cause. Warren accordingly sailed with one line-of-battle ship and two 44-gun frigates. While on the way he met a Boston vessel which informed him that Pepperell’s force had already sailed, so Warren changed his course and joined the expedition at Canseau. Perhaps Pepperell had been precipitate, but in point of fact this headlong speed was the salvation of the enterprise. The French were practically

taken unawares; for although rumours of the scheme had reached them, they had been inclined to laugh them to scorn. What likelihood was there of an enemy attacking them with any hope? Their batteries mounted at least 150 heavy guns, against which the provincial assailants brought a vastly inferior armament in size and strength. The British ships, however, constituted a powerful reinforcement. The French garrison consisted of 560 French regulars and Swiss mercenaries, with about 1400 Canadian militia, some 2000 in all.

The New Englanders effected a landing on the 1st of May, and immediately laid siege to the town. On the next day Vaughan led 400 men behind a line of hills to a point where there were large magazines of naval stores. These he set on fire; and what with the pitch and tar and other such combustibles, the smoke that came up and floated over the town was something quite tremendous. One effect upon the French was absurd. Near the burning stores was a large fortification known as the Grand Battery, mounting 30 heavy guns. As the thick clouds of smoke rolled up and enveloped this battery, the defenders were seized with panic and abandoned it without firing a shot; so that when Vaughan’s men passed it, observing the profound quiet, they reconnoitred for a moment

and then exultingly marched in. So hastily had the French departed that they left an immense quantity of ammunition as a present for Vaughan’s men, while the cannon were so poorly spiked that the gunsmith, Seth Pomeroy, had them all ready for use the next morning. So that our New Englanders could now bombard the town with cannon and shot provided by the most Christian king.

This capture of the Grand Battery was something on which the besiegers had no right to count, for if it had been properly defended they probably could not have taken it. As it was, its loss by the French probably decided the issue of the whole conflict. The New England troops pressed matters with vigour, and at the end of a week demanded the surrender of the place, but the time had not yet come. On May 19 a French line-of-battle ship arrived upon the scene heavily laden with material of war, and on approaching the town she encountered one of the English ships of smaller calibre, which, retreating before her, lured her within reach of the whole British fleet. She was soon surrounded and captured, and all her material of war passed into the hands of the besiegers. Presently the latter received a great reinforcement by the arrival of eight British seventy-fours, under cover of which the troops were able to establish new

batteries at various points. By the middle of June there was scarcely a house in the town that had not been more or less riddled by shot and shell. The British fleet held the harbour closely invested, and 1000 scaling ladders were made ready for a grand attack. This was too much for the Frenchmen, and on the 17th of June this famous fortress was surrendered. The mad scheme of Vaughan and Shirley had become a sober reality. When the news was disseminated abroad the civilized world was dumb with amazement. For the first time it waked up to the fact that a new military power had grown up in America. One of the strongest fortresses on the face of the earth had surrendered to a force of New England militia. Pepperell was at once created a baronet, being the only native American who ever attained that rank. Warren was promoted to the grade of admiral. Louisburg Square in Boston commemorates the victory. Some twenty-five years ago, when we were rebuilding the eastern transept of Harvard College Library, I discovered in a gloomy corner an iron cross about thirty inches in height, which had stood in the market-place at Louisburg and was brought to Cambridge as a trophy. I thought it a pity to hide such a thing, so I had it gilded and set up over the southern entrance to the library,

where it remained several years, until one night some silly vandals, presumed to be students, succeeded in detaching this heavy mass of iron and carrying it away.¹