The incursions of the Indians on our frontiers in early times were usually the result of Spanish influence in the South, or French influence in the North. The French reduced the incitement of Indian hostilities to a complete system, and their officers and soldiers were not ashamed to accompany the savages in their murdering and marauding expeditions into New England and New York. Among all the recorded instances of this kind, none appears to have been attended with more atrocious circumstances of cruelty and rapine, than the burning of Schenectady. This affair is marked by many traits of the very worst description. The inhumanity of murdering in their beds the very people who had formerly relieved their wants, is, perhaps, without a parallel.

In 1690, Count de Frontignac, governor general of Canada, sent out three expeditions against the American colonies. The first of these proceeded against Schenectady, then a small village, situated on the Mohawk river. This party, after wandering for twenty-two days through deserts rendered trackless by snow, approached the village of Schenectady in so exhausted a condition, that they had determined to surrender themselves to the inhabitants as prisoners of war. But, arriving at a late hour on an inclement night, and hearing from the messengers they had sent forward that the inhabitants were all in bed, without even the precaution of a public watch, they exchanged their intention of imploring mercy to themselves, for a plan of nocturnal attack and massacre of the defenceless people, to whose charity their own countrymen had once been so highly indebted. This detestable requital of good with evil was executed with a barbarity which, of itself, must be acknowledged to form one of the most revolting and terrific pictures that has ever been exhibited of human cruelty and ferocity. Dividing themselves into a number of parties, they set fire to the village in various places, and attacked the inhabitants with fatal advantage when, alarmed by the conflagration, they endeavoured to escape from their burning houses. The exhausted strength of the Frenchmen appeared to revive with the work of destruction, and to gather energy from the animated horror of the scene. Not only were all the male inhabitants they could reach put to death, but women were murdered, and their infants dashed on the walls of the houses. But either the delay caused by this elaborate cruelty, or the more merciful haste of the flames to announce the calamity to those who might still fly from the assassins, enabled many of the inhabitants to escape. The efforts of the assailants were also somewhat impeded by a sagacious discrimination which they thought it expedient to exercise. Though unmindful of benefits, they were not regardless of policy; and of a number of Mohawk Indians who were in the village, not one sustained an injury. Sixty persons perished in the massacre, and twenty-seven were taken prisoners. Of the fugitives who escaped half naked, and made their way through a storm of snow to Albany, twenty-five lost their limbs from the intensity of the frost. The French, having totally destroyed Schenectady, retired loaded with plunder from a place where, we think, it must be acknowledged that even the accustomed atrocities of Indian warfare had been outdone.