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A Half Century of Conflict, Volume II

F >> Francis Parkman >> A Half Century of Conflict, Volume II




On the 20th of August they all embarked and paddled southward, passed the
lonely promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was afterwards built, and held
their course till the lake dwindled to a mere canal creeping through the
weedy marsh then called the Drowned Lands. Here, nine summers later, passed
the flotilla of Baron Dieskau, bound to defeat and ruin by the shores of
Lake George. Rigaud stopped at a place known as East Bay, at the mouth of
a stream that joins Wood Creek, just north of the present town of
Whitehall. Here he left the younger De Muy, with thirty men, to guard the
canoes. The rest of the party, guided by a brother of the slain Cadenaret,
filed southward on foot along the base of Skene Mountain, that overlooks
Whitehall. They counted about seven hundred men, of whom five hundred were
French, and a little above two hundred were Indians. [Footnote: "Le 19,
ayant fait passer l'armée en Revue qui se trouva de 700 hommes, scavoir 500
françois environ et 200 quelques sauvages." _Journal de Rigaud_.] Some
other French reports put the whole number at eleven hundred, or even twelve
hundred, [Footnote: See _N. Y. Col. Docs._, X. 103, 132.] while
several English accounts make it eight hundred or nine hundred. The
Frenchmen of the party included both regulars and Canadians, with six
regular officers and ten cadets, eighteen militia officers, two
chaplains,--one for the whites and one for the Indians,--and a surgeon.
[Footnote: _Ibid._, X. 35.]

After a march of four days, they encamped on the 26th by a stream which ran
into the Hudson, and was no doubt the Batten Kill, known to the French as
_la rivière de Saratogue_. Being nearly opposite Saratoga, where there
was then a garrison, they changed their course, on the 27th, from south to
southeast, the better to avoid scouting-parties, which might discover their
trail and defeat their plan of surprise. Early on the next day they reached
the Hoosac, far above its mouth; and now their march was easier, "for,"
says Rigaud, "we got out of the woods and followed a large road that led up
the river." In fact, there seem to have been two roads, one on each side of
the Hoosac; for the French were formed into two brigades, one of which,
under the Sieur de la Valterie, filed along the right bank of the stream,
and the other, under the Sieur de Sabrevois, along the left; while the
Indians marched on the front, flanks, and rear. They passed deserted houses
and farms belonging to Dutch settlers from the Hudson; for the Hoosac, in
this part of its course, was in the province of New York. [Footnote: These
Dutch settlements on the Hoosac were made under what was called the "Hoosac
Patent," granted by Governor Dongan of New York in 1688. The settlements
were not begun till nearly forty years after the grant was made. For
evidence on this point I am indebted to Professor A. L. Perry, of Williams
College.] They did not stop to burn barns and houses, but they killed
poultry, hogs, a cow, and a horse, to supply themselves with meat. Before
night they had passed the New York line, and they made their camp in or
near the valley where Williamstown and Williams College now stand. Here
they were joined by the Sieurs Beaubassin and La Force, who had gone
forward, with eight Indians, to reconnoitre. Beaubassin had watched Fort
Massachusetts from a distance, and had seen a man go up into the
watch-tower, but could discover no other sign of alarm. Apparently, the
fugitive Dutch farmers had not taken pains to warn the English garrison of
the coming danger, for there was a coolness between the neighbors.

Before breaking up camp in the morning, Rigaud called the Indian chiefs
together and said to them: "My children, the time is near when we must get
other meat than fresh pork, and we will all eat it together." "Meat," in
Indian parlance, meant prisoners; and as these were valuable by reason of
the ransoms paid for them, and as the Indians had suspected that the French
meant to keep them all, they were well pleased with this figurative
assurance of Rigaud that they should have their share. [Footnote: "Mes
enfans, leur dis-je, le temps approche où il faut faire d'autre viande que
le pore frais; au reste, nous la mangerons tous eusemble; ce mot les flatta
dans la crainte qu'ils avoient qu'après la prise du fort nous ne nous
réservâmes tous les prisonniers" _Journal de Rigaud_.]

The chaplain said mass, and the party marched in a brisk rain up the
Williamstown valley, till after advancing about ten miles they encamped
again. Fort Massachusetts was only three or four miles distant. Rigaud held
a talk with the Abenaki chiefs who had acted as guides, and it was agreed
that the party should stop in the woods near the fort, make
scaling-ladders, battering-rams to burst the gates, and other things
needful for a grand assault, to take place before daylight; but their plan
came to nought through the impetuosity of the young Indians and Canadians,
who were so excited at the first glimpse of the watch-tower of the fort
that they dashed forward, as Rigaud says, "like lions." Hence one might
fairly expect to see the fort assaulted at once; but by the maxims of
forest war this would have been reprehensible rashness, and nothing of the
kind was attempted. The assailants spread to right and left, squatted
behind stumps, and opened a distant and harmless fire, accompanied with
unearthly yells and howlings.

Fort Massachusetts was a wooden enclosure formed, like the fort at Number
Four, of beams laid one upon another, and interlocked at the angles. This
wooden wall seems to have rested, not immediately upon the ground, but upon
a foundation of stone, designated by Mr. Norton, the chaplain, as the
"underpinning,"--a name usually given in New England to foundations of the
kind. At the northwest corner was a blockhouse, crowned with the
watch-tower, the sight of which had prematurely kindled the martial fire of
the Canadians and Indians. [Footnote: The term "blockhouse" was loosely
used, and was even sometimes applied to an entire fort when constructed of
hewn logs, and not of palisades. The true blockhouse of the New England
frontier was a solid wooden structure about twenty feet high, with a
projecting upper story and loopholes above and below.] This wooden
structure, at the apex of the blockhouse, served as a lookout, and also
supplied means of throwing water to extinguish fire-arrows shot upon the
roof. There were other buildings in the enclosure, especially a large
log-house on the south side, which seems to have overlooked the outer wall,
and was no doubt loopholed for musketry. On the east side there was a well,
furnished probably with one of those long well-sweeps universal in
primitive New England. The garrison, when complete, consisted of fifty-one
men under Captain Ephraim Williams, who has left his name to Williamstown
and Williams College, of the latter of which he was the founder. He was
born at Newton, near Boston; was a man vigorous in body and mind; better
acquainted with the world than most of his countrymen, having followed the
seas in his youth, and visited England, Spain, and Holland; frank and
agreeable in manners, well fitted for such a command, and respected and
loved by his men. [Footnote: See the notice of Williams in _Mass. Hist.
Coll._, VIII. 47. He was killed in the bloody skirmish that preceded the
Battle of Lake George in 1755. _Montcalm and Wolfe_, chap. ix.] When
the proposed invasion of Canada was preparing, he and some of his men went
to take part in it, and had not yet returned. The fort was left in charge
of a sergeant, John Hawks, of Deerfield, with men too few for the extent of
the works, and a supply of ammunition nearly exhausted. Canada being then
put on the defensive, the frontier forts were thought safe for a time. On
the Saturday before Rigaud's arrival, Hawks had sent Thomas Williams, the
surgeon, brother of the absent captain, to Deerfield, with a detachment of
fourteen men, to get a supply of powder and lead. This detachment reduced
the entire force, including Hawks himself and Norton, the chaplain, to
twenty-two men, half of whom were disabled with dysentery, from which few
of the rest were wholly free. [Footnote: "Lord's Day and Monday...the
sickness was very distressing.... Eleven of our men were sick, and scarcely
one of us in perfect health; almost every man was troubled with the griping
and flux." Norton, _The Redeemed Captive_.] There were also in the
fort three women and five children. [Footnote: Rigaud erroneously makes the
garrison a little larger. "La garnison se trouva de 24 hommes, entre
lesquels il y avoit un ministre, 3 femmes, et 5 enfans." The names and
residence of all the men in the fort when the attack began are preserved.
Hawks made his report to the provincial government under the title _"An
Account of the Company in his Majesty's Service under the command of Serg't
John Hawks...at Fort Massachusetts, Aug. 20_ [31, new style],
_1746._" The roll is attested on oath "Before William Williams,
_Just. Pacis._" The number of men is 22, including Hawks and Norton.
Each man brought his own gun. I am indebted to the kindness of Professor A.
L. Perry for a copy of Hawks's report, which is addressed to "the Honble.
Spencer Phipps, Esq., Lieut. Gov'r and Commander in Chief [and] the
Hon'ble. his Majesty's Council and House of Representatives in General
Court assembled."]

The site of Fort Massachusetts is now a meadow by the banks of the Hoosac.
Then it was a rough clearing, encumbered with the stumps and refuse of the
primeval forest, whose living hosts stood grimly around it, and spread,
untouched by the axe, up the sides of the neighboring Saddleback Mountain.
The position of the fort was bad, being commanded by high ground, from
which, as the chaplain tells us, "the enemy could shoot over the north side
into the middle of the parade,"--for which serious defect, John Stoddard,
of Northampton, legist, capitalist, colonel of militia, and "Superintendent
of Defence," was probably answerable. These frontier forts were, however,
often placed on low ground with a view to an abundant supply of water, fire
being the most dreaded enemy in Indian warfare. [Footnote: When I visited
the place as a college student, no trace of the fort was to be seen except
a hollow, which may have been the remains of a cellar, and a thriving
growth of horse-radish,--a relic of the garrison garden. My friend Dr. D.
D. Slade has given an interesting account of the spot in the _Magazine of
American History_ for October, 1888.]

Sergeant Hawks, the provisional commander, was, according to tradition, a
tall man with sun-burnt features, erect, spare, very sinewy and strong, and
of a bold and resolute temper. He had need to be so, for counting every man
in the fort, lay and clerical, sick and well, he was beset by more than
thirty times his own number; or, counting only his effective men, by more
than sixty times,--and this at the lowest report of the attacking force. As
there was nothing but a log fence between him and his enemy, it was clear
that they could hew or burn a way through it, or climb over it with no
surprising effort of valor. Rigaud, as we have seen, had planned a general
assault under cover of night, but had been thwarted by the precipitancy of
the young Indians and Canadians. These now showed no inclination to depart
from the cautious maxims of forest warfare. They made a terrific noise,
but when they came within gunshot of the fort, it was by darting from stump
to stump with a quick, zigzag movement that made them more difficult to hit
than birds on the wing. The best moment for a shot was when they reached a
stump, and stopped for an instant to duck and hide behind it. By seizing
this fleeting opportunity, Hawks himself put a bullet into the breast of an
Abenaki chief from St. Francis,--"which ended his days," says the chaplain.
In view of the nimbleness of the assailants, a charge of buckshot was found
more to the purpose than a bullet. Besides the slain Abenaki, Rigaud
reports sixteen Indians and Frenchmen wounded, [Footnote: "L'Ennemi me tua
un abenakis et me blessa 16 hommes, tant Iroquois qu'Abenaquis, nipissings
et françois." _Journal de Rigaud_.]--which, under the circumstances,
was good execution for ten farmers and a minister; for Chaplain Norton
loaded and fired with the rest. Rigaud himself was one of the wounded,
having been hit in the arm and sent to the rear, as he stood giving orders
on the rocky hill about forty rods from the fort. Probably it was a chance
shot, since, though rifles were invented long before, they were not yet in
general use, and the yeoman garrison were armed with nothing but their own
smooth-bore hunting-pieces, not to be trusted at long range. The supply of
ammunition had sunk so low that Hawks was forced to give the discouraging
order not to fire except when necessary to keep the enemy in check, or when
the chance of hitting him should be unusually good. Such of the sick men as
were strong enough aided the defence by casting bullets and buckshot.

The outrageous noise lasted till towards nine in the evening, when the
assailants greeted the fort with a general war-whoop, and repeated it three
or four times; then a line of sentinels was placed around it to prevent
messengers from carrying the alarm to Albany or Deerfield. The evening was
dark and cloudy. The lights of a camp could be seen by the river towards
the southeast, and those of another near the swamp towards the west. There
was a sound of axes, as if the enemy were making scaling-ladders for a
night assault; but it was found that they were cutting fagots to burn the
wall. Hawks ordered every tub and bucket to be filled with water, in
preparation for the crisis. Two men, John Aldrich and Jonathan Bridgman,
had been wounded, thus farther reducing the strength of the defenders. The
chaplain says: "Of those that were in health, some were ordered to keep the
watch, and some lay down and endeavored to get some rest, lying down in our
clothes with our arms by us.... We got little or no rest; the enemy
frequently raised us by their hideous outcries, as though they were about
to attack us. The latter part of the night I kept the watch."

Rigaud spent the night in preparing for a decisive attack, "being resolved
to open trenches two hours before sunrise, and push them to the foot of the
palisade, so as to place fagots against it, set them on fire, and deliver
the fort a prey to the fury of the flames." [Footnote: "Je passay la nuit à
conduire l'ouvrage auquel j'avois destiné le jour précédent, résolu à faire
ouvrir la tranchée deux heures avant le lever du soleil, et de la pousser
jusqu'au pied de la palissade, pour y placer les fascines, y appliquer
l'artifice, et livrer le fort en proye à la fureur du feu." _Journal de
Rigaud_. He mistakes in calling the log wall of the fort a palisade.] It
began to rain, and he determined to wait till morning. That the commander
of seven hundred French and Indians should resort to such elaborate devices
to subdue a sergeant, seven militia-men, and a minister,--for this was now
the effective strength of the besieged,--was no small compliment to the
spirit of the defence.

The firing was renewed in the morning, but there was no attempt to open
trenches by daylight. Two men were sent up into the watchtower, and about
eleven o'clock one of them, Thomas Knowlton, was shot through the head.
The number of effectives was thus reduced to eight, including the chaplain.
Up to this time the French and English witnesses are in tolerable accord;
but now there is conflict of evidence. Rigaud says that when he was about
to carry his plan of attack into execution, he saw a white flag hung out,
and sent the elder De Muy, with Montigny and D'Auteuil, to hear what the
English commandant--whose humble rank he nowhere mentions--had to say. On
the other hand, Norton, the chaplain, says that about noon the French
"desired to parley," and that "we agreed to it." He says farther that the
sergeant, with himself and one or two others, met Rigaud outside the gate,
and that the French commander promised "good quarter" to the besieged if
they would surrender, with the alternative of an assault if they would not.
This account is sustained by Hawks, who says that at twelve o'clock an
Indian came forward with a flag of truce, and that he, Hawks, with two or
three others, went to meet Rigaud, who then offered honorable terms of
capitulation. [Footnote: _Journal of Sergeant Hawks_, cited by William
L. Stone, _Life and Times of Sir William Johnson_, I. 227. What seems
conclusive is that the French permitted Norton to nail to a post of the
fort a short account of its capture, in which it is plainly stated that the
first advances were made by Rigaud.] The sergeant promised an answer within
two hours; and going back to the fort with his companions, examined their
means of defence. He found that they had left but three or four pounds of
gunpowder, and about as much lead. Hawks called a council of his effective
men. Norton prayed for divine aid and guidance, and then they fell to
considering the situation. "Had we all been in health, or had there been
only those eight of us that were in health, I believe every man would
willingly have stood it out to the last. For my part, I should," writes
the manful chaplain. But besides the sick and wounded, there were three
women and five children, who, if the fort were taken by assault, would no
doubt be butchered by the Indians, but who might be saved by a
capitulation. Hawks therefore resolved to make the best terms he could. He
had defended his post against prodigious odds for twenty-eight hours.
Rigaud promised that all in the fort should be treated with humanity as
prisoners of war, and exchanged at the first opportunity. He also promised
that none of them should be given to the Indians, though he had lately
assured his savage allies that they should have their share of the
prisoners.

At three o'clock the principal French officers were admitted into the fort,
and the French flag was raised over it. The Indians and Canadians were
excluded; on which some of the Indians pulled out several of the stones
that formed the foundation of the wall, crawled through, opened the gate,
and let in the whole crew. They raised a yell when they saw the blood of
Thomas Knowlton trickling from the watch-tower where he had been shot, then
rushed up to where the corpse lay, brought it down, scalped it, and cut off
the head and arms. The fort was then plundered, set on fire, and burned to
the ground.

The prisoners were led to the French camp; and here the chaplain was
presently accosted by one Doty, Rigaud's interpreter, who begged him to
persuade some of the prisoners to go with the Indians. Norton replied that
it had been agreed that they should all remain with the French; and that to
give up any of them to the Indians would be a breach of the capitulation.
Doty then appealed to the men themselves, who all insisted on being left
with the French, according to the terms stipulated. Some of them, however,
were given to the Indians, who, after Rigaud's promise to them, could have
been pacified in no other way. His fault was in making a stipulation that
he could not keep. Hawks and Norton, with all the women and children,
remained in the French camp.

Hearing that men were expected from Deerfield to take the places of the
sick, Rigaud sent sixty Indians to cut them off. They lay in wait for the
English reinforcement, which consisted of nineteen men, gave them a close
fire, shot down fifteen of them, and captured the rest. [Footnote: One
French account says that the Indians failed to meet the English party.
_N. Y. Col. Docs,_ X. 35.] This or another party of Rigaud's Indians
pushed as far as Deerfield and tried to waylay the farmers as they went to
their work on a Monday morning. The Indians hid in a growth of alder-bushes
along the edge of a meadow where men were making hay, accompanied by some
children. One Ebenezer Hawks, shooting partridges, came so near the
ambushed warriors that they could not resist the temptation of killing and
scalping him. This alarmed the haymakers and the children, who ran for
their lives towards a mill on a brook that entered Deerfield River,
fiercely pursued by about fifty Indians, who caught and scalped a boy named
Amsden. Three men, Allen, Sadler, and Gillet, got under the bank of the
river and fired on the pursuers. Allen and Gillet were soon killed, but
Sadler escaped unhurt to an island. Three children of Allen--Eunice,
Samuel, and Caleb--were also chased by the Indians, who knocked down Eunice
with a tomahawk, but were in too much haste to stop and scalp her, and she
lived to a good old age. Her brother Samuel was caught and dragged off, but
Caleb ran into a field of tall maize, and escaped.

The firing was heard in the village, and a few armed men, under Lieutenant
Clesson, hastened to the rescue; but when they reached the spot the Indians
were gone, carrying the boy Samuel Allen with them, and leaving two of
their own number dead. Clesson, with such men as he had, followed their
trail up Deerfield River, but could not overtake the light-footed savages.

Meanwhile, the prisoners at Fort Massachusetts spent the first night, well
guarded, in the French and Indian camps. In the morning, Norton,
accompanied by a Frenchman and several Indians, was permitted to nail to
one of the charred posts of the fort a note to tell what had happened to
him and his companions. [Footnote: The note was as follows: "August 20 [31,
new style], 1746. These are to inform you that yesterday, about 9 of the
clock, we were besieged by, as they say, seven hundred French and Indians.
They have wounded two men and killed one Knowlton. The General de Vaudreuil
desired capitulations, and we were so distressed that we complied with his
terms. We are the French's prisoners, and have it under the general's hand
that every man, woman, and child shall be exchanged for French prisoners."]
The victors then marched back as they had come, along the Hoosac road.
They moved slowly, encumbered as they were by the sick and wounded. Rigaud
gave the Indians presents, to induce them to treat their prisoners with
humanity. Norton was in charge of De Muy, and after walking four miles sat
down with him to rest in Williamstown valley. There was a yell from the
Indians in the rear. "I trembled," writes Norton, "thinking they had
murdered some of our people, but was filled with admiration when I saw all
our prisoners come up with us, and John Aldrich carried on the back of his
Indian master." Aldrich had been shot in the foot, and could not walk. "We
set out again, and had gone but a little way before we came up with Josiah
Reed." Reed was extremely ill, and could go no farther. Norton thought that
the Indians would kill him, instead of which one of them carried him on his
back. They were said to have killed him soon after, but there is good
reason to think that he died of disease. "I saw John Perry's wife," pursues
the chaplain; "she complained that she was almost ready to give out." The
Indians threatened her, but Hawks spoke in her behalf to Rigaud, who
remonstrated with them, and they afterwards treated her well. The wife of
another soldier, John Smead, was near her time, and had lingered behind.
The French showed her great kindness. "Some of them made a seat for her to
sit upon, and brought her to the camp, where, about ten o'clock, she was
graciously delivered of a daughter, and was remarkably well.... Friday:
this morning I baptized John Smead's child. He called its name
_Captivity_." The French made a litter of poles, spread over it a
deer-skin and a bear-skin, on which they placed the mother and child, and
so carried them forward. Three days after, there was a heavy rain, and the
mother was completely drenched, but suffered no harm, though "Miriam, the
wife of Moses Scott, hereby catched a grievous cold." John Perry was
relieved of his pack, so that he might help his wife and carry her when her
strength failed. Several horses were found at the farms along the way, and
the sick Benjamin Simons and the wounded John Aldrich were allowed to use
two of them. Rarely, indeed, in these dismal border-raids were prisoners
treated so humanely; and the credit seems chiefly due to the efforts of
Rigaud and his officers. The hardships of the march were shared by the
victors, some of whom were sorely wounded; and four Indians died within a
few days.

"I divided my army between the two sides of the Kaskékouké" (Hoosac), says
Rigaud, "and ordered them to do what I had not permitted to be done before
we reached Fort Massachusetts. Every house was set on fire, and numbers of
domestic animals of all sorts were killed. French and Indians vied with
each other in pillage, and I made them enter the [valleys of all the]
little streams that flow into the Kaskékouké and lay waste everything
there.... Wherever we went we made the same havoc, laid waste both sides of
the river, through twelve leagues of fertile country, burned houses, barns,
stables, and even a meeting-house,--in all, above two hundred
establishments,--killed all the cattle, and ruined all the crops. Such,
Monseigneur, was the damage I did our enemies during the eight or nine days
I was in their country." [Footnote: _Journal de Riguad._] As the Dutch
settlers had escaped, there was no resistance.

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