A Half Century of Conflict Volume I Part 16

Out of the heart of the White Mountains springs the river Saco, fed by the bright cascades that leap from the crags of Mount Webster, brawling among rocks and bowlders down the great defile of the Crawford Notch, winding through the forests and intervales of Conway, then circling northward by the village of Fryeburg in devious wanderings by meadows, woods, and mountains, and at last turning eastward and southward to join the sea.

On the banks of this erratic stream lived an Abenaki tribe called the Sokokis. When the first white man visited the country, these Indians lived at the Falls, a few miles from the mouth of the river. They retired before the English settlers, and either joined their kindred in Maine, or migrated to St. Francis and other Abenaki settlements in Canada; but a Sokoki band called Pigwackets, or Pequawkets, still kept its place far in the interior, on the upper waters of the Saco, near Pine Hill, in the present town of Fryeburg. Except a small band of their near kindred on Lake Ossipee, they were the only human tenants of a wilderness many thousand square miles in extent. In their wild and remote abode they were difficult of access, and the forest and the river were well stocked with moose, deer, bear, beaver, otter, lynx, fisher, mink, and marten. In this, their happy hunting-ground, the Pequawkets thought themselves safe; and they would have been so for some time longer if they had not taken up the quarrel of the Norridgewocks and made b.l.o.o.d.y raids against the English border, under their war-chief, Paugus.

Not far from where their wigwams stood cl.u.s.tered in a bend of the Saco was the small lake now called Lovewell's Pond, named for John Lovewell of Dunstable, a Ma.s.sachusetts town on the New Hamps.h.i.+re line. Lovewell's father, a person of consideration in the village, where he owned a "garrison house," had served in Philip's War, and taken part in the famous Narragansett Swamp Fight. The younger Lovewell, now about thirty-three years of age, lived with his wife, Hannah, and two or three children on a farm of two hundred acres. The inventory of his effects, made after his death, includes five or six cattle, one mare, two steel traps with chains, a gun, two or three books, a feather-bed, and "under-bed," or mattress, along with sundry tools, pots, barrels, chests, tubs, and the like,--the equipment, in short, of a decent frontier yeoman of the time.[273] But being, like the tough veteran, his father, of a bold and adventurous disposition, he seems to have been less given to farming than to hunting and bush-fighting.

Dunstable was attacked by Indians in the autumn of 1724, and two men were carried off. Ten others went in pursuit, but fell into an ambush, and nearly all were killed, Josiah Farwell, Lovewell's brother-in-law, being, by some accounts, the only one who escaped.[274] Soon after this, a pet.i.tion, styled a "Humble Memorial," was laid before the House of Representatives at Boston. It declares that in order "to kill and destroy their enemy Indians," the pet.i.tioners and forty or fifty others are ready to spend one whole year in hunting them, "provided they can meet with Encouragement suitable." The pet.i.tion is signed by John Lovewell, Josiah Farwell, and Jonathan Robbins, all of Dunstable, Lovewell's name being well written, and the others after a cramped and unaccustomed fas.h.i.+on. The representatives accepted the proposal and voted to give each adventurer two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a day,--then equal in Ma.s.sachusetts currency to about one English s.h.i.+lling,--out of which he was to maintain himself. The men were, in addition, promised large rewards for the scalps of male Indians old enough to fight.

A company of thirty was soon raised. Lovewell was chosen captain, Farwell, lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one prisoner and one scalp. Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out again, this time with eighty-seven men, gathered from the villages of Dunstable, Groton, Lancaster, Haverhill, and Billerica. They ascended the frozen Merrimac, pa.s.sed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper Saco. Here they killed a moose,--a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snow-shoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped t.i.tmouse, so familiar to the winter woods. Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprint; but on the twentieth of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and, following the snow-shoe tracks that led from it, at length saw smoke rising at a distance out of the gray forest. The party lay close till two o'clock in the morning; then cautiously approached, found one or more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in number. They were warriors from Canada on a winter raid against the borders. Lovewell and his men, it will be seen, were much like hunters of wolves, catamounts, or other dangerous beasts, except that the chase of this fierce and wily human game demanded far more hardihood and skill.

They brought home the scalps in triumph, together with the blankets and the new guns furnished to the slain warriors by their Canadian friends; and Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt. The busy season of the farmers was at hand, and volunteers came in less freely than before. At the middle of April, however, he had raised a band of forty-six, of whom he was the captain, with Farwell and Robbins as his lieutenants. Though they were all regularly commissioned by the governor, they were leaders rather than commanders, for they and their men were neighbors or acquaintances on terms of entire social equality.

Two of the number require mention. One was Seth Wyman, of Woburn, an ensign; and the other was Jonathan Frye, of Andover, the chaplain, a youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College in 1723, and now a student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun, knife, and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was more prompt to use them.

They began their march on April 15. A few days afterwards, one William c.u.mmings, of Dunstable, became so disabled by the effects of a wound received from Indians some time before, that he could not keep on with the rest, and Lovewell sent him back in charge of a kinsman, thus reducing their number to forty-four. When they reached the west sh.o.r.e of Lake Ossipee, Benjamin Kidder, of Nutfield, fell seriously ill. To leave him defenceless in a place so dangerous was not to be thought of; and his comrades built a small fort, or palisaded log-cabin, near the water, where they left the sick man in charge of the surgeon, together with Sergeant Woods and a guard of seven men. The rest, now reduced to thirty-four, continued their march through the forest northeastward towards Pequawket, while the savage heights of the White Mountains, still covered with snow, rose above the dismal, bare forests on their left. They seem to have crossed the Saco just below the site of Fryeburg, and in the night of May 7, as they lay in the woods near the northeast end of Lovewell's Pond, the men on guard heard sounds like Indians prowling about them. At daybreak the next morning, as they stood bareheaded, listening to a prayer from the young chaplain, they heard the report of a gun, and soon after discovered an Indian on the sh.o.r.e of the pond at a considerable distance. Apparently he was shooting ducks; but Lovewell, suspecting a device to lure them into an ambuscade, asked the men whether they were for pus.h.i.+ng forward or falling back, and with one voice they called upon him to lead them on. They were then in a piece of open pine woods traversed by a small brook. He ordered them to lay down their packs and advance with extreme caution. They had moved forward for some time in this manner when they met an Indian coming towards them through the dense trees and bushes. He no sooner saw them than he fired at the leading men. His gun was charged with beaver-shot; but he was so near his mark that the effect was equal to that of a bullet, and he severely wounded Lovewell and one Whiting; on which Seth Wyman shot him dead, and the chaplain and another man scalped him.

Lovewell, though believed to be mortally hurt, was still able to walk, and the party fell back to the place where they had left their packs.

The packs had disappeared, and suddenly, with frightful yells, the whole body of the Pequawket warriors rushed from their hiding-places, firing as they came on. The survivors say that they were more than twice the number of the whites,--which is probably an exaggeration, though their conduct, so unusual with Indians, in rus.h.i.+ng forward instead of firing from their ambush, shows a remarkable confidence in their numerical strength.[275] They no doubt expected to strike their enemies with a panic. Lovewell received another mortal wound; but he fired more than once on the Indians as he lay dying. His two lieutenants, Farwell and Robbins, were also badly hurt. Eight others fell; but the rest stood their ground, and pushed the Indians so hard that they drove them back to cover with heavy loss. One man played the coward, Benjamin Ha.s.sell, of Dunstable, who ran off, escaped in the confusion, and made with his best speed for the fort at Lake Ossipee.

The situation of the party was desperate, and nothing saved them from destruction but the prompt action of their surviving officers, only one of whom, Ensign Wyman, had escaped unhurt. It was probably under his direction that the men fell back steadily to the sh.o.r.e of the pond, which was only a few rods distant. Here the water protected their rear, so that they could not be surrounded; and now followed one of the most obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of New England. It was about ten o'clock when the fight began, and it lasted till night. The Indians had the greater agility and skill in hiding and sheltering themselves, and the whites the greater steadiness and coolness in using their guns. They fought in the shade; for the forest was dense, and all alike covered themselves as they best could behind trees, bushes, or fallen trunks, where each man crouched with eyes and mind intent, firing whenever he saw, or thought he saw, the head, limbs, or body of an enemy exposed to sight for an instant. The Indians howled like wolves, yelled like enraged cougars, and made the forest ring with their whoops; while the whites replied with shouts and cheers. At one time the Indians ceased firing and drew back among the trees and undergrowth, where, by the noise they made, they seemed to be holding a "pow-wow," or incantation to procure victory; but the keen and fearless Seth Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the meeting. About the middle of the afternoon young Frye received a mortal wound. Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice.

Solomon Keyes, of Billerica, received two wounds, but fought on till a third shot struck him. He then crawled up to Wyman in the heat of the fight, and told him that he, Keyes, was a dead man, but that the Indians should not get his scalp if he could help it. Creeping along the sandy edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat, rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind.

Soon after sunset the Indians drew off and left the field to their enemies, living and dead, not even stopping to scalp the fallen,--a remarkable proof of the completeness of their discomfiture. Exhausted with fatigue and hunger,--for, having lost their packs in the morning, they had no food,--the surviving white men explored the scene of the fight. Jacob Farrar lay gasping his last by the edge of the water.

Robert Usher and Lieutenant Robbins were unable to move. Of the thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying, except the coward who had run off.

About midnight, an hour or more before the setting of the moon, such as had strength to walk left the ground. Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked one of them to load his gun, saying, "The Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of 'em if I can." They loaded the gun and left him.

To make one's way even by daylight through the snares and pitfalls of a New England forest is often a difficult task; to do so in the darkness of night and overshadowing boughs, among the fallen trees and the snarl of underbrush, was wellnigh impossible. Any but the most skilful woodsmen would have lost their way. The Indians, sick of fighting, did not molest the party. After struggling on for a mile or more, Farwell, Frye, and two other wounded men, Josiah Jones and Eleazer Davis, could go no farther, and, with their consent, the others left them, with a promise to send them help as soon as they should reach the fort. In the morning the men divided into several small bands, the better to elude pursuit. One of these parties was tracked for some time by the Indians, and Elias Barron, becoming separated from his companions, was never again heard of, though the case of his gun was afterwards found by the bank of the river Ossipee.

Eleven of the number at length reached the fort, and to their amazement found n.o.body there. The runaway, Ha.s.sell, had arrived many hours before them, and to excuse his flight told so frightful a story of the fate of his comrades that his hearers were seized with a panic, shamefully abandoned their post, and set out for the settlements, leaving a writing on a piece of birch-bark to the effect that all the rest were killed. They had left a supply of bread and pork, and while the famished eleven rested and refreshed themselves they were joined by Solomon Keyes, the man who, after being thrice wounded, had floated away in a canoe from the place of the fight. After drifting for a considerable distance, the wind blew him ash.o.r.e, when, spurred by necessity and feeling himself "wonderfully strengthened," he succeeded in gaining the fort.

Meanwhile Frye, Farwell, and their two wounded companions, Davis and Jones, after waiting vainly for the expected help, found strength to struggle forward again, till the chaplain stopped and lay down, begging the others to keep on their way, and saying to Davis, "Tell my father that I expect in a few hours to be in eternity, and am not afraid to die." They left him, and, says the old narrative, "he has not been heard of since." He had kept the journal of the expedition, which was lost with him.

Farwell died of exhaustion. The remaining two lost their way and became separated. After wandering eleven days, Davis reached the fort at Lake Ossipee, and, finding food there, came into Berwick on the twenty-seventh. Jones, after fourteen days in the woods, arrived, half dead, at the village of Biddeford.

Some of the eleven who had first made their way to the fort, together with Keyes, who joined them there, came into Dunstable during the night of the thirteenth, and the rest followed one or two days later. Ensign Wyman, who was now the only commissioned officer left alive, and who had borne himself throughout with the utmost intrepidity, decision, and good sense, reached the same place along with three other men on the fifteenth.

The runaway, Ha.s.sell, and the guard at the fort, whom he had infected with his terror, had lost no time in making their way back to Dunstable, which they seem to have reached on the evening of the eleventh. Hors.e.m.e.n were sent in haste to carry the doleful news to Boston, on which the governor gave orders to Colonel Tyng of the militia, who was then at Dunstable, to gather men in the border towns, march with all speed to the place of the fight, succor the wounded if any were still alive, and attack the Indians, if he could find them. Tyng called upon Ha.s.sell to go with him as a guide; but he was ill, or pretended to be so, on which one of the men who had been in the fight and had just returned offered to go in his place.

When the party reached the scene of the battle, they saw the trees plentifully scarred with bullets, and presently found and buried the bodies of Lovewell, Robbins, and ten others. The Indians, after their usual custom, had carried off or hidden their own dead; but Tyng's men discovered three of them buried together, and one of these was recognized as the war-chief Paugus, killed by Wyman, or, according to a more than doubtful tradition, by John Chamberlain.[276] Not a living Indian was to be seen.

The Pequawkets were cowed by the rough handling they had met when they plainly expected a victory. Some of them joined their Abenaki kinsmen in Canada and remained there, while others returned after the peace to their old haunts by the Saco; but they never again raised the hatchet against the English.

Lovewell's Pond, with its sandy beach, its two green islands, and its environment of lonely forests, reverted for a while to its original owners,--the wolf, bear, lynx, and moose. In our day all is changed.

Farms and dwellings possess those peaceful sh.o.r.es, and hard by, where, at the bend of the Saco, once stood, in picturesque squalor, the wigwams of the vanished Pequawkets, the village of Fryeburg preserves the name of the brave young chaplain, whose memory is still cherished, in spite of his uncanonical turn for scalping.[277] He had engaged himself to a young girl of a neighboring village, Susanna Rogers, daughter of John Rogers, minister of Boxford. It has been said that Frye's parents thought her beneath him in education and position; but this is not likely, for her father belonged to what has been called the "Brahmin caste" of New England, and, like others of his family, had had, at Harvard, the best education that the country could supply. The girl herself, though only fourteen years old, could make verses, such as they were; and she wrote an elegy on the death of her lover which, bating some grammatical lapses, deserves the modest praise of being no worse than many New England rhymes of that day.

The courage of Frye and his st.u.r.dy comrades contributed greatly to the pacification which in the next year relieved the borders from the scourge of Indian war.[278]

FOOTNOTES:

[267] _Dummer to Vaudreuil, 15 September, 1724._

[268] _Vaudreuil a Dummer, 29 Octobre, 1724._

[269] _Dummer to Vaudreuil, 19 January, 1725._ This, with many other papers relating to these matters, is in the Ma.s.sachusetts Archives.

[270] _Depeche de Vaudreuil, 7 Aout, 1725._ "Comme j'ai toujours ete persuade que rien n'est plus oppose a nos interets que la paix des Abenakis avec les Anglais (la surete de cette colonie du cote de l'est ayant ete l'unique objet de cette guerre), je songeai a pressentir ces sauvages avant qu'ils parla.s.sant aux Anglais et a leur insinuer tout ce que j'avais a leur dire."--_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Mai, 1725._

[271] _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 949.

[272] Penhallow gives the Boston treaty. For the ratifications, see _Collections of the Maine Hist. Soc._, iii. 377, 407.

[273] See the inventory, in Kidder, _The Expeditions of Captain John Lovewell_, 93, 94.

[274] Other accounts say that eight of the ten were killed. The headstone of one of the number, Thomas Lund, has these words: "This man, with seven more that lies in this grave, was slew All in A day by the Indiens."

[275] Penhallow puts their number at seventy, Hutchinson at eighty, Williamson at sixty-three, and Belknap at forty-one. In such cases the smallest number is generally nearest the truth.

[276] The tradition is that Chamberlain and Paugus went down to the small brook, now called Fight Brook, to clean their guns, hot and foul with frequent firing; that they saw each other at the same instant, and that the Indian said to the white man, in his broken English, "Me kill you quick!" at the same time hastily loading his piece; to which Chamberlain coolly replied, "Maybe not." His firelock had a large touch-hole, so that the powder could be shaken out into the pan, and the gun made to prime itself. Thus he was ready for action an instant sooner than his enemy, whom he shot dead just as Paugus pulled trigger, and sent a bullet whistling over his head. The story has no good foundation, while the popular ballad, written at the time, and very faithful to the facts, says that, the other officers being killed, the English made Wyman their captain,--

"Who shot the old chief Paugus, which did the foe defeat, Then set his men in order and brought off the retreat."

[277] The town, however, was not named for the chaplain, but for his father's cousin, General Joseph Frye, the original grantee of the land.

[278] Rev. Thomas Symmes, minister of Bradford, preached a sermon on the fate of Lovewell and his men immediately after the return of the survivors, and printed it, with a much more valuable introduction, giving a careful account of the affair, on the evidence of "the Valorous Captain Wyman and some others of good Credit that were in the Engagement." Wyman had just been made a captain, in recognition of his conduct. The narrative is followed by an attestation of its truth signed by him and two others of Lovewell's band.

A considerable number of letters relating to the expedition are preserved in the Ma.s.sachusetts Archives, from Benjamin Ha.s.sell, Colonel Tyng, Governor Dummer of Ma.s.sachusetts, and Governor Wentworth of New Hamps.h.i.+re. They give the various reports received from those in the fight, and show the action taken in consequence. The Archives also contain pet.i.tions from the survivors and the families of the slain; and the legislative Journals show that the pet.i.tioners received large grants of land. Lovewell's debts contracted in raising men for his expeditions were also paid.

The papers mentioned above, with other authentic records concerning the affair, have been printed by Kidder in his _Expeditions of Captain John Lovewell_, a monograph of thorough research. The names of all Lovewell's party, and biographical notices of some of them, are also given by Mr.

Kidder. Compare Penhallow, Hutchinson, Fox, _History of Dunstable_, and Bouton, _Lovewell's Great Fight_. For various suggestions touching Lovewell's Expedition, I am indebted to Mr. C. W. Lewis, who has made it the subject of minute and careful study.

A ballad which was written when the event was fresh, and was long popular in New England, deserves mention, if only for its general fidelity to the facts. The following is a sample of its eighteen stanzas:--

"'T was ten o'clock in the morning when first the fight begun, And fiercely did continue till the setting of the sun, Excepting that the Indians, some hours before 't was night, Drew off into the bushes, and ceased awhile to fight;

"But soon again returned in fierce and furious mood, Shouting as in the morning, but yet not half so loud; For, as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell, Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well.

"Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die; They killed Lieutenant Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, Who was our English chaplain; he many Indians slew, And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew."

Frye, as mentioned in the text, had engaged himself to Susanna Rogers, a young girl of the village of Boxford, who, after his death, wrote some untutored verses to commemorate his fate. They are ent.i.tled, _A Mournful Elegy on Mr. Jonathan Frye_, and begin thus:

"a.s.sist, ye muses, help my quill, Whilst floods of tears does down distil; Not from mine eyes alone, but all That hears the sad and doleful fall Of that young student, Mr. Frye, Who in his blooming youth did die.

Fighting for his dear country's good, He lost his life and precious blood.

His father's only son was he; His mother loved him tenderly; And all that knew him loved him well; For in bright parts he did excel Most of his age; for he was young,-- Just entering on twenty-one; A comely youth, and pious too; This I affirm, for him I knew."

She then describes her lover's brave deeds, and sad but heroic death, alone in a howling wilderness; condoles with the bereaved parents, exhorts them to resignation, and touches modestly on her own sorrow.