men.

habits of friendship. The plan was arranged with great secrecy. Some hints of his danger were given to Waldron, but he paid no attention to them. In the middle of the night several Indian women, who had been imprudently allowed to remain within the fort, opened the gates, and admitted their countryAfter some resistance, they seized their victim, then eighty years of age, and, seating him in an elbow-chair upon a table, asked him, "Who shall judge the Indian now?" They then stabbed and mangled him with their knives; each of them, as he struck him, saying, "Thus I cross out my account." Having at length, with much cruelty, put him to death, they likewise killed twenty-three of his people, and carried off twenty-nine captives. The Indians then set fire to the houses, mills, &c. and escaped without molestation.*

While narrating this case of Indian revenge, we should not omit an instance recorded as having occurred, at the same time, of an opposite description, and which has been attributed by some of the New England historians to Indian good faith and gratitude. A Mrs. Heard, one of Major Waldron's neighbours, was returning home in the night time with her children, when some noise alarming her, she ran to Waldron's house for protection.

*

Belknap's History of New Hampshire, vol. i. chap. 5 and 10.

She

While waiting at the door for admittance, the Indians were perceived in the inside, having just put Waldron to death. Mrs. Heard was struck with such terror that she was unable to move, but had presence of mind enough to desire her children to run away and take care of themselves. recovered so far, as to be able to creep among some bushes to conceal herself. At break of day, and while the Indians were still occupied throughout the village in their work of destruction, one of them perceived her, and went up to her with a pistol in his hand. After looking at her earnestly, he went away; he once more came back, looked at her, and again returned to the house. When the Indians were gone, she ventured from her place of concealment, and went to her house, where, amid the general destruction, she found her children safe, and her property untouched. "At the time when the four hundred Indians were seized in 1676," says Dr. Belknap, a young Indian escaped, and took refuge in Mrs. Heard's house, where she concealed him; in return for which kindness he promised her that he should never kill her, nor any of her family, in any future war, and that he should use his influence with the other Indians to the same

purpose.

It is unnecessary to enter into the details of several Indian wars which took place with the

*

Belknap's History of New Hampshire, vol. i. chap. 10.

English subsequent to that with Philip. These hostilities were chiefly carried on towards the eastward, and the causes of most of them will probably be found in the imprudence, the wantonness, or injustice of the Europeans. In the History of New Hampshire, we read of a celebrated Indian chief, Squando, who had much influence over some of these eastern tribes. His wife one day passing along a river in a canoe with her infant child, attracted the notice of some English sailors, who resolved to see whether it was true, as they had heard, that the Indian children could swim as naturally as the young of brute animals. To try the experiment, they overset the canoe: the child sank, but the mother instantly diving, brought it up alive. It however died soon after, and its death was imputed to the treatment it had received from the seamen. Squando," says the History,

was

so provoked, that he conceived a bitter antipathy to the English, and employed his great art and influence to excite the Indians against them. Some other injuries were alleged as the ground of the quarrel; and, considering the interested views and irregular lives of many of the eastern settlers, their distance from the seat of government, and the want of due subordination among them, it is not improbable that a great part of the blame of the eastern war belonged to them."*

Belknap's History of New Hampshire, vol. i. chap. 5.

.

The hostilities which commenced in the eastern parts of the country in 1676 lasted about three years. They were renewed in 1688, and continued till 1698. In the year 1702 they recommenced; and ought to have terminated at the time of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, when Acadia (or Nova Scotia) was ceded to the English. But although peace then took place between France and England (and it was the hostility of these two nations that brought the North American Indians in general to share in the contests), the war still continued between the English and their Indian neighbours who were under the influence or instigation of the Canadian government. Hostilities, however, ended in the year 1725, but broke out again in the year 1744, war having again commenced between England and France, when the Indian allies of each of these powers came as usual to be employed in the conflict. Peace being at length restored in 1763, Canada was ceded to Great Britain, and no longer retained the name of New France.

During all these sanguinary contests between the English and the Indians, the utmost barbarity appears to have prevailed on both sides. The latter were actuated by that strong spirit of revenge to which the conduct of the former so often gave rise. The settlers, in many cases, had defrauded them of their lands, circumscribed them in their

M

hunting grounds, neglected to pay them the regular quantity of corn stipulated by treaty; and, by the erection of mills and dams upon the great Indian rivers, had put a total stop to the supply, in the interior, of the fish which had formerly contributed so materially to their subsistence. These, and many other vexations, together with the spirit of arrogance with which they were generally treated, made them always willing to rise up against their oppressors, who seemed determined upon the extirpation of the Indian race. Can we wonder, therefore, at those cases of retaliation which the early New England authors have painted in terms of such rancour and intolerance? To these, however, we may contrast the mild and charitable sentiments of a more modern writer of the same

country: "Our historians," says Dr. Belknap, "have generally represented the Indians in a most odious light; especially when recounting the effects of their ferocity. Dogs, caitiffs, miscreants and hell-hounds, are the politest names which have been given them by some writers; who seem to be in a passion at the very mentioning of their cruelties, and at other times speak of them with contempt. Whatever indulgence may be allowed to those who wrote in times when the mind was vexed with their recent depredations and inhumanities, it ill becomes us to cherish an inveterate hatred of the unhappy natives." And in another part of the same