lancets, obviously intended to be used by the war riors upon receipt of their full pay. He immediately seized up a lancet, and, springing towards them, charged falschood and treachery upon them, at which guilt was seen in every countenance. One or two advanced towards him as if to get the weapon; but he, brandishing it, threatened death to any one that approached him, and passing his hand upward, raised his hat, which was a signal of distress to all his men in the ship, at which they rallied around him in full force. The Indians seized some of their weapons, but were put to flight. The soldiers fought valiantly many of the tribe, before they could get away, as they took to their boats, were slain.

The remainder of the captives the major was left to seek elsewhere; and after establishing garrisons in the East, as we have noticed, and after visiting Sheepscot, from which they obtained plunder in which there were forty bushels of wheat, and at Arrowsick in the Kennebeck, after obtaining a hundred thousand feet of lumber, they returned home to Boston.

WAR IN WALDRON'S NEIGHBORHOOD.

This was in 1676. Previously, in 1675, while the war was going on westerly and in the remote East, Squando at Saco, and his tribes, were fruitful of con

SLAUGHTER IN VARIOUS PLACES.

315

flicts in the country in which Dover and Major Waldron were the great centre. Men at Durham, at Exeter, at Hampton, at Newichewannock, at Concord, N.H., and many other places, had been slain, and many dwelling-houses consumed. Twenty young men, by leave of the major, had scattered themselves in the woods, discovered five Indians, and killed two of them. The people fled from their homes and from business to their garrisons. Fasting and prayer had become more common. At Salmon Falls, Lieut. Roger Plaisted sent out seven men from his garrison: they fell into an ambuscade, and three of them were killed. Two days after the taking of the four hundred Indians at Cocheco, of which we have spoken, Waldron's and Frost's men, with Blind Will, a sagamore of the Indians, as pilot, marched off to the eastward, and thence to the Ossipee Ponds, where the Indians had a strong fort of timber fourteen feet high with flanker; but, as we have seen, the tribes were somewhere else.

ENGLISH ALLIANCE WITH THE MOHAWKS. Hitherto there had been conflicts between the eastern Indians and the Mohawks at New York; and at this crisis two messengers, Major Pynchon of Springfield and Richards of Hartford, repaired to that country, and made an alliance with the Mo

hawks. The Mohawks were valiant for a fight as against their enemics of old; and in March, 1677, they came down upon Amoskeag Falls. Wonalancet in the woods discovered fifteen Indians, who called to him in language not understood. He fled: they fired their guns at him; he escaped. Thence they appeared at Cocheco, against whom Waldron, not knowing them to be allies, sent out eight of his Indians led by Blind Will against them, or at least to obtain information; and the Mohawks fell upon them, and but two or three escaped. Will was dragged away by his hair, and perished in the woods at the confluence of the Isinglass and Cocheco Rivers. This place still bears the name of Blind Will's Neck. Hence it appeared that the Mohawks were intent upon the destruction of the friends of the English as well as their foes; and, in fact, they threatened the destruction of all the Indians in these parts without distinction. They thus proved fruitful of many calamities to the English. Then the garrisons at Wells and Blackpoint were beset: at the latter place the tribes lost Mugg, their leader and treacherous negotiator.

On a sabbath morning Simon, with twenty other Indians, surprised and took six of our Indians in the woods near Portsmouth. At night they crossed the river at Long Beach, killed some sheep at

TREATY AT CASCO.

317

Kittery, and turned off towards Wells; but in fear of the Mohawks they let their prisoners go. Four. men were soon after killed at North Hill.

In 1678 Shapleigh of Kittery, Campernoon and Fryer of Portsmouth, as commissioners, entered into a treaty with Squando and other chiefs at Casco, and there obtained the remainder of the captives in the East; and here an end was put to this terrible war of three years.

We have said that Philip's war was ended; but this is to be taken at least with some allowance, as it is a very difficult matter to ascertain when an Indian war did end, their nationalities being numerous, and their impetuous notions various and uncertain.

At Cocheco (Dover), Major Waldron had a strong garrison-house; and near him were four others.

Rankamagus, a Pennacook chief, had, in league with others, on the 27th of June, 1679, contrived to surprise and destroy the town: accordingly squaws were sent, two to each garrison-house, to obtain lodgings for the night; and Massandowet, their chief sachem, that same evening took supper with the major, and, among other things, told him they were coming the next day to trade with him; but said, "Brother Waldron, what would you do if the strange Indians should come?" To which he forcibly replied, “I could assemble an hundred men by lifting up my finger."

In the utmost quietude and security they retired to rest; but at midnight the gates were opened by the squaws, and death and consternation prevailed throughout the town. One garrison, having refused to admit the squaws, escaped: all the others fell.

They crowded Waldron's house, some guarding the doors, while others advanced upon their business of blood and death. Waldron, then eighty years of age, seizing his sword, defending himself, drove the savages from room to room, until, from behind him, he was knocked down with a hatchet, and then, being dragged away and placed upon a table, was stripped, and gashed, burned, and otherwise tortured, until death relieved him.

While gashing him, they would say thus, "I cross out my account." While cutting off his fingers, they would say, "Now will your fist weigh a pound?"

While this was being done, other savages were compelling the women of the garrison to prepare supper for them.

In the garrison-houses and elsewhere, the inhabitants of Dover, to the number of twenty-three, were killed; and twenty-nine were carried away captive through the wilderness to Canada, where the most of them were sold to the French.

Previously, an Englishman at Chelmsford, Mass., had learned of some Indians of their proposed