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TOWN-BURNING.

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the first year of this war, accused by his enemy, Uncas, of aiding the Pokonokets. He said, "We will die to the last man, but we will not be slaves to the English."

They were

This was a time of trial to the settlers. at all hours subject to attack by an enemy who fought from hidden shelters, rushing out to burn or scalp those who were unprotected, but seldom daring to meet an enemy in open battle. Towns were burned. Brookfield, Deerfield, Northfield, Hadley, Warwick, Providence, were among the places that suffered, but it was the settlers outside of the hamlets and towns who bore the greatest hardships. It is related that Hadley was attacked on the first of September, 1675, when the inhabitants were engaged in the religious. services of a fast day, and that a panic which followed, was quieted by the dramatic appearance of a venerable and mysterious stranger, afterwards said to have been William Goffe, one of the judges who voted for the execution of Charles I., who had, in 1660, sought safety in America.*

When he left home at any time, it was with the well-grounded feeling that he might not see his wife and children again, and they knew not but he or they might be the victim of the savage tomahawk, or be ere night, carried off to a barbaric slavery. Few

The appearance of Goffe at this time is not supported by contemporary testimony. Palfrey, the careful historian of New England, was unable to find any earlier authority than Hutchinson's history of Massachusetts, written nearly a century after the alleged event. The attack on Hadley is not even mentioned by William Hubbard, the historian of the time, who was then living. The story made so deep an impression on Sir Walter Scott, that he put it into the mouth of the Roundhead Bridgenorth, in "Peveril of the Peak." (Chap. xiv.)

families were without some loss. Over six hundred men had been killed; many more had been disabled; thirteen towns and hundreds of houses had been burned, and horses and cattle had been destroyed in great numbers. With the death of Philip war came to an end, though there still remained some Indians who for a time kept up a show of opposition to the conquerors. The Mohegans had remained faithful to the whites, and no settlers in Connecticut had been molested. The people of that colony now sent generous gifts of corn to supply the wants of their less fortunate friends. Ireland, too, sent over a contribution to relieve the distress of Plymouth.

In Maine the Indians had been incited in 1675 to rise against the whites, either by accounts that they had received from the South, or by the outrages, sometimes of a malignant nature, that had been inflicted upon them by the settlers. The country east of the Piscataqua was ravaged for more than two years by the relentless savages, who burned almost every settlement, shot down travellers on the roads, murdered women and infants in their homes, and carried off many men, women and children as prisoners. In the autumn of 1675, depredations were committed at Wells, Kittery, and other places, and the settlements at Oyster River, Berwick, Salmon Falls, Dover and Exeter, suffered from fire and the knife. Winter with its snows caused a cessation of Indian atrocities, but the next season the treacherous work began again. Aid was sent from Massachusetts, but the leader of the expedition, Major Waldron, entrapped a body of Indians by means of a stratagem not authorized by any code of war, and gave grounds for terrible retaliation by

WALDRON'S PERFIDIOUS STRATAGEM.

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the red men. Waldron proposed a sham fight, to Indians who had come to him for protection, and when they had emptied their guns, caused them to be surrounded by his men and taken prisoners. In April, 1678, peace was concluded, but the Abenakis (Abnakis, or Abenaquais) rose again, and it was not until 1670 that they were really subdued. They did

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not forget the trick of Major Waldron, and after thirteen years, in June, 1689, attacked the garrison house at Dover, and killed him and twenty-two others, carrying a larger number to Canada to be sold to the French.

In the year 1689, a series of wars began that did

not end until 1663; the dispute was essentially the same all the time, though it bore at different periods various names. It was a struggle between France and England for supremacy on the American Continent. The English Revolution of 1688 had resulted in the escape of James II. to France, and the accession of his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, to the English crown, as William III. Indirectly, it brought about the war with France, which lasted from 1689 to 1697, involving the American Colonies. It was known as King William's War, and ended with the peace of Ryswick, signed in 1697. Queen Anne's war was in Europe the war of the Spanish Succession, and ended with the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. King George's war was the war of the Austrian Succession in Europe, and closed with the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748. Our French and Indian war was the Seven Years' War in Europe, which was closed by the treaty of Paris, in 1763.

During King William's War, the French were aided by the Indians, who carried on their warfare in the usual manner, skulking and springing from ambushes, burning and butchering and carrying away captives. Schenectady, N. Y., was burned February 8th, and all but sixty of the inhabitants massacred. Salmon Falls was burned March 27th, and Casco and York, Me., and Exeter, N. H., suffered in the same way that year. Sir William Phips, a native of Pemaquid, was sent to attack the French settlements in Nova Scotia, then called Acadie, and he not only ravaged them and took Port Royal (afterwards called Annapolis, in compliment to Queen Anne), but also seized the eastern part of

QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.

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Maine, where a fort was erected in 1692, at Pemaquid.

In 1684, the English in New York made a treaty of peace with the "Five Nations" (the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas) who inhabited the central portion of their State, but in 1696, the French had won them over, and planned a general invasion of New England, in connection with the Abenakis, who still kept up a desultory warfare on the eastern frontier. The unfruitful war was brought to a close by the treaty of Ryswick, in time to restrain this horror.

In the year 1700, Charles II., of Spain, died,* leaving a will by which he appointed Phillip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., of France, his successor on the throne. The union of the crowns of Spain and France in one family was detrimental to the peace of Europe, and William III. determined to oppose it. Complications were increased by the death of James II., at St. Germain, in 1701, and by the recognition of his son as King of Great Britain, by Louis XIV. This enabled William to revive the "Grand Alliance," and Austria, England, and the States General (Netherlands) prepared for war against France; but before hostilities actually began, William died, March 8, 1702. War was, however, declared May 15, and operations began immediately. The colonies in America affected were those which bordered the possessions of France and Spain, New England and Florida. South Carolina sent an expedition against St. Augustine, and reduced it, but the force was obliged to retreat on the appearance of Spanish vessels of war. Other expeditions * With him the Spanish House of Habsburg became extinct.

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