Part 15 (1/2)
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 Pen.o.bscot, 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 seash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es 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 sh.e.l.ls as a contribution to the sh.e.l.l-heaps that have acc.u.mulated for ages along these sh.o.r.es. The men fished, speared porpoises, or shot seals. A priest was often in the camp watching over his flock, and saying ma.s.s 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, Beauba.s.sin, 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.”
[Footnote: _Memoire du Sieur Bergier_, 1685.] Their relations with the Acadians were of a mixed sort. They continually encroached on Acadian fis.h.i.+ng 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 Pre, 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 Pet.i.t, the cure 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.” [Footnote: _L'Eveque au Roy_, 10 _Nov_., 1683. For the preceding pages, the authorities are chiefly the correspondence of Grandfontaine, Marson, La Valliere, Meneval, Bergier, Goutins, Perrot, Talon, Frontenac, and other officials. A large collection of Acadian doc.u.ments, from the archives of Paris, is in my possession. I have also examined the Acadian collections made for the government of Canada and for that of Ma.s.sachusetts.]
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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. [Footnote: Meneval, _Memoire_, 1688; Denonville, _Memoire_, 18 _Oct_., 1688; _Proces-verbal du Pillage de Chedabucto; Relation de la Boullaye_, 1688.] 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 Pen.o.bscot Bay. Chambly, then commanding for the king in Acadia, was in the place. They a.s.saulted 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. [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 14 _Nov_., 1674; _Frontenac a Leverett, gouverneur de Baston_, 24 _Sept_., 1674; _Frontenac to the Governor and Council of Ma.s.sachusetts_, 25 _May_, 1675 (see 3 _Ma.s.s. Hist. Coll._, I. 64); _Colbert a Frontenac_, 15 _May_, 1675. Frontenac supposed the a.s.sailants to be buccaneers. They had, however, a commission from William of Orange. Hutchinson says that the Dutch again took Pentegoet in 1676, but were driven off by s.h.i.+ps from Boston, as the English claimed the place for themselves.]
This young ensign was Jean Vincent de l'Abadie, Baron de Saint-Castin, a native of Bearn, 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-Salieres, 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.
[Footnote: On its condition in 1670, _Estat du Fort et Place de Pentegoet fait en l'annee 1670, lorsque les Anglois l'ont rendu_. In 1671, fourteen soldiers and eight laborers were settled near the fort.
_Talon au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1671_. In the next year, Talon recommends an _envoi de filles_ for the benefit of Pentegoet. _Memoire sur le Canada, 1672_. As late as 1698, we find Acadian officials advising the reconstruction of the fort.] 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 a.s.sociates that, according to La Hontan, they looked upon him as their tutelary G.o.d. 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 Pet.i.t of Port Royal, who knew him well, ”he himself has need of spiritual aid to sustain him in the paths of virtue.” [Footnote: Pet.i.t in Saint-Vallier, _Estat de l'Eglise_, 39 (1856).] 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 ma.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al rival, they were never on good terms. Saint-Castin complained to Denonville.
”Monsieur Pet.i.t,” 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.” [Footnote: _Saint-Castin a Denonville_, 2 _Juiliet_, 1687.]
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 a.s.sure 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. [Footnote: _Instruction du Roy au Sieur de Meneval_, 5 _Avril_, 1687.]
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. [Footnote: _Memoire du Sieur de Meneval sur l'Acadie_, 10 _Sept_., 1688.] 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 Pen.o.bscots.
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, anch.o.r.ed 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 princ.i.p.al 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. [Footnote: _Memoire presente au Roy d'Angleterre_, 1687; _Saint-Castin a Denonville_, 7 _Juillet_, 1687; _Hutchinson Collection_, 562, 563; _Andros Tracts_, I. 118.]
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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 pa.s.ses 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 a.s.sure them of support, so long as they fought for France. [Footnote: _Memoire pour servir d'Instruction au Sieur de Villebon_, 1691.] 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.” [1]
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 n.o.body there to oppose him, he easily succeeded. The settlers renounced allegiance to Ma.s.sachusetts and King William, and swore fidelity to their natural sovereign. [Footnote: _Proces-verbal de la Prise de Possession du Port Royal_, 27 _Sept_., 1691.] 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. [Footnote: _Paroles des Sauvages de la Mission de Pentegoet_.] They were under no such necessity. Guns, powder, and lead were given them in abundance; and Thury, the priest on the Pen.o.bscot, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 paris.h.i.+oners, 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, Alc.o.c.k, 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.
The wish of King Louis was fulfilled. A good profit had been made out of the enemy. The victors withdrew into the forest with their plunder and their prisoners, among whom were several old women and a number of children from three to seven years old. These, with a forbearance which does them credit, they permitted to return uninjured to the nearest fortified house, in requital, it is said, for the lives of a number of Indian children spared by the English in a recent attack on the Androscoggin. The wife of the minister was allowed to go with them; but her son remained a prisoner, and the agonized mother went back to the Indian camp to beg for his release. They again permitted her to return; but, when she came a second time, they told her that, as she wanted to be a prisoner, she should have her wish. She was carried with the rest to their village, where she soon died of exhaustion and distress. One of the warriors arrayed himself in the gown of the slain minister, and preached a mock sermon to the captive paris.h.i.+oners. [2]
Leaving York in ashes, the victors began their march homeward; while a body of men from Portsmouth followed on their trail, but soon lost it, and failed to overtake them. There was a season of feasting and scalp-dancing at the Abenaki towns; and then, as spring opened, a hundred of the warriors set out to visit Villebon, tell him of their triumph, and receive the promised gifts from their great father the king. Villebon and his brothers, Portneuf, Neuvillette, and Desiles, with their Canadian followers, had spent the winter chiefly on the St.
John, finis.h.i.+ng their fort at Naxouat, and preparing for future operations. The Abenaki visitors arrived towards the end of April, and were received with all possible distinction. There were speeches, gifts, and feasting; for they had done much, and were expected to do more. Portneuf sang a war-song in their language; then he opened a barrel of wine: the guests emptied it in less than fifteen minutes, sang, whooped, danced, and promised to repair to the rendezvous at Saint-Castin's station of Pentegoet. [Footnote: Villebon, _Journal de ce qui s'est pa.s.se a l'Acadie_, 1691, 1692.] A grand war-party was afoot; and a new and withering blow was to be struck against the English border. The guests set out for Pentegoet, followed by Portneuf, Desiles, La Brognerie, several other officers, and twenty Canadians. A few days after, a large band of Micmacs arrived; then came the Malicite warriors from their village of Medoctec; and at last Father Baudoin appeared, leading another band of Micmacs from his mission of Beauba.s.sin. Speeches, feasts, and gifts were made to them all; and they all followed the rest to the appointed rendezvous.
At the beginning of June, the site of the town of Castine was covered with wigwams and the beach lined with canoes. Malecites and Micmacs, Abenakis from the Pen.o.bscot and Abenakis from the Kennebec, were here, some four hundred warriors in all. [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Sept_., 1692.] Here, too, were Portneuf and his Canadians, the Baron de Saint-Castin and his Indian father-in-law, Madockawando, with Moxus, Egeremet, and other noted chiefs, the terror of the English borders. They crossed Pen.o.bscot Bay, and marched upon the frontier village of Wells.
Wells, like York, was a small settlement of scattered houses along the sea-sh.o.r.e. The year before, Moxus had vainly attacked it with two hundred warriors. All the neighboring country had been laid waste by a murderous war of detail, the lonely farm-houses pillaged and burned, and the survivors driven back for refuge to the older settlements.
[Footnote: The ravages committed by the Abenakis in the preceding year among the scattered farms of Maine and New Hamps.h.i.+re are said by Frontenac to have been ”impossible to describe.” Another French writer says that they burned more than 200 houses.] Wells had been crowded with these refugees; but famine and misery had driven most of them beyond the Piscataqua, and the place was now occupied by a remnant of its own dest.i.tute inhabitants, who, warned by the fate of York, had taken refuge in five fortified houses. The largest of these, belonging to Joseph Storer, was surrounded by a palisade, and occupied by fifteen armed men, under Captain Convers, an officer of militia. On the ninth of June, two sloops and a sail-boat ran up the neighboring creek, bringing supplies and fourteen more men. The succor came in the nick of time. The sloops had scarcely anch.o.r.ed, when a number of cattle were seen running frightened and wounded from the woods. It was plain that an enemy was lurking there. All the families of the place now gathered within the palisades of Storer's house, thus increasing his force to about thirty men; and a close watch was kept throughout the night.
In the morning, no room was left for doubt. One John Diamond, on his way from the house to the sloops, was seized by Indians and dragged off by the hair. Then the whole body of savages appeared swarming over the fields, so confident of success that they neglected their usual tactics of surprise. A French officer, who, as an old English account says, was ”habited like a gentleman,” made them an harangue: they answered with a burst of yells, and then attacked the house, firing, screeching, and calling on Convers and his men to surrender. Others gave their attention to the two sloops, which lay together in the narrow creek, stranded by the ebbing tide. They fired at them for a while from behind a pile of planks on the sh.o.r.e, and threw many fire-arrows without success, the men on board fighting with such cool and dexterous obstinacy that they held them all at bay, and lost but one of their own number. Next, the Canadians made a huge s.h.i.+eld of planks, which they fastened vertically to the back of a cart. La Brognerie with twenty-six men, French and Indians, got behind it, and shoved the cart towards the stranded sloops. It was within fifty feet of them, when a wheel sunk in the mud, and the machine stuck fast. La Brognerie tried to lift the wheel, and was shot dead. The tide began to rise. A Canadian tried to escape, and was also shot. The rest then broke away together, some of them, as they ran, dropping under the bullets of the sailors.