MARCH TO THE VILLAGE—THE RETREAT

We landed at Missisquoi Bay and pulled our boats up into the woods. Near them we hid the provisions for our return. We distributed the rest of the food among us, put it on our backs in sacks, and started off to the northeast.

We left behind us a couple of Stockbridge Indians to watch the boats and give us notice if they were discovered. We had only marched two days when these two Indians caught up with us.

"Frenchmen and Indians find boats. Heap big party follow us. Three hundred men."

Rogers said: "Boys, we are out to punish some Indians, and the only course for us is to outmarch the enemy, do our work, and get out of the way."

We plodded along day after day, from daybreak to dark, most of the time through spruce bogs where the water was sometimes ankle-deep, and at times up to our thighs. We were wet all the time, and our shoes began to rot and go to pieces.

At night we cut down trees, laid boughs from one tree to another, and slept on them to keep out of the water. Nine days we marched and slept in this manner. It was a terrible strain even to hardy men such as we were, accustomed to forest life.

Amos said: "We're just like a procession of cold, miserable frogs, h-hopping along through the water. This is the biggest fool trip I ever heard of."

"Think of the glory, Amos, of going into the heart of the enemy's country and punishing these Indians."

"Glory be h-hanged! I wish I was with Davy, hunting foxes and listening to his big stories of what he did do, or would have done if something hadn't happened."

"But when you get back, Amos, you can crush him by telling of this trip."

"Yes, when I g-get back. When I get back! I should rather be b-back without the story. L-Looks to me as if Davy's chance of hearing it is rather slim."

On the tenth day after we left Missisquoi Bay we reached a river.

Rogers said: "Boys, this is the St. Francis River. You have of course guessed by this time that we are going to punish the St. Francis Indians for making Captain Kennedy and his companions prisoners when they went to them with a flag of truce. I did not tell you before, because it was not safe to do so. If any of you had been waylaid, it was better he should not know where the party was going, for the Indians would torture him to make him tell all he knew, and then the French and Indians would be warned. Now they can only guess where we are to strike. The village of St. Francis is on the St. Lawrence River, at the mouth of this river, and on the further side. It is some fifteen miles from here. We shall attack them in the night. You need have no feelings of pity for them or mercy. They are the tribe who have been harassing our frontier for the past ninety years. I know that they have killed four or five hundred good New England men, beside the women and children they have slain and carried off. This river has a swift current, and we must put our packs on our shoulders and join arms, with the tallest and strongest up the river, so as to help each other. Come, Martin, and you, Comee, let's see how you can keep your legs to-day."

Rogers put me near the head of the line, as I was considered a strong man. We went into the water with arms locked, and struggled against the current. Though the river was over four feet deep, we got across with few accidents.

Several men were swept off their feet, and some guns were lost, but we arrived safely at the further shore.

We made a small raft, put our powder-horns on it, and pulled it to and fro across the stream till all were carried over.

Scouts were sent ahead, and flanking parties were thrown out. We advanced cautiously in three files. I did not like this kind of an expedition, and said so to Martin, who was next to me."I can't bear this sneaking up on the Indians, and jumping on them in the dead of night when they are sound asleep. I like a good square fight of give and take."

"Don't be a fool, Ben. Those Indians have killed and scalped two of your family. If you had lived on the frontier all your life as I have, you would be glad to pay them back in their own coin, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, scalp for scalp. I have had so many friends killed by them, good quiet people, who never harmed any one. Almost every year, and sometimes several times a year, I have gone with others to help drive these devils away from some fort or town. And the sights that I have seen make me hate the redskins worse than poison. And, Ben, you know enough of them yourself. How many Rangers have been tormented by them and scalped? Remember John McKeen! How he was stripped and tied to a tree; then the red devils danced around him, howled at him, taunted him, and threw their knives at him till he was full of holes from head to foot. Have you forgotten what they did then? Put a pine splinter in every wound he had, set them on fire and made a living torch of him."

"Yes, Martin, one does not forget such things, nor how they tortured others, and then made them run the gauntlet, hacked at them with knives and tomahawks till they fell, and then scalped them. They deserve to be killed like snakes, but I don't like to do it. No matter how mean or treacherous my enemy, I want a good stand-up fair fight. I am a soldier. I am under orders, and I shall do the work; but I hate it."

"You needn't be squeamish, Ben. They are double our number, and if we don't kill them by a surprise, they will kill us."

McKinstry had been listening, and said: "It's plain, Ben, that you have never lived where there were Injuns. Your injuries are too far off. They don't touch you. I have a score to pay that I have been wiping off for the past thirty years. Here's my tally-stick. Look at the notches."

He pulled at a string that was round his neck, and showed me a little stick with seventeen notches in it."I have killed that number of Indians. Every notch I have added made my heart feel lighter. Every chance I have to kill a St. Francis Indian, awake or asleep, makes me happy. I want to see the whole tribe wiped off the earth."

The land on this side of the river was higher than the region through which we had been travelling, and we were not so much troubled by mosquitoes, which had nearly driven us crazy in the swamps.

The clear, crisp air dried our clothes before nightfall, and we slept sound, breathing in the clean smell of the fir balsams.

On the next day, the twenty-second, after we left Crown Point, we made a cautious advance. Rogers halted us and climbed a tree. He said that he could see the village about three miles off.

Rogers went ahead with Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery to inspect the village, and we lay down and waited. The moon was about three-quarters full. He returned at two in the morning, and said:—

"We crawled up close to their village. The Indians are having a great frolic. They have a keg of rum and are drinking it, and are dancing round the fires. I think there must be a wedding going on. They will sleep sound."

At three o'clock we crept up to within five hundred yards of the village, and laid aside our packs and prepared for the fight. We had one hundred and forty-two men, all told.

We lay concealed in the forest till the Indians were asleep. Rogers divided us into three parties, and about an hour before daylight ordered us to attack the village on three sides. The St. Lawrence River was on the fourth side. We rushed into the village, through its lanes, kicking the yelping dogs aside, and stationed ourselves before the huts. Above the doors were poles, from which dangled rows of scalps, as if they were garlands of flowers.

I stood by the door of a hut, and as an Indian came out I shot him; and when the next appeared, with a dazed, frightened look on his face, I brained him with the butt of my gun, and then pulled out my hatchet and chopped away at them as they ran by. Martin, Edmund, and Amos were near me. Sometimes several Indians made a rush, and we closed up and fought them.

It was cruel, bloody butchery. But the sight of the poles with the scalps of English men, women, and children hanging from them made us mad with rage, and we killed the Indians like rats as they dashed out of their huts. Some reached the canoes, but were followed and cut down. Few escaped. Some squaws were killed too. We were all mixed up. It was impossible to spare them. They fought like wildcats with knives and hatchets, and we had to kill them or be killed ourselves.

By sunrise the bloody work was over. Almost all the Indians had been slain. As we looked round and saw nearly six hundred English scalps dangling in front of the huts, we felt no sorrow for what we had done.

Still, it was a grim, dreadful piece of work. The dead Indians lay around in the lanes between the huts, in some places in heaps, stiffening in death, smeared with blood, and the Stockbridge Indians were already at work scalping them.

We ourselves were covered with blood, and looked like butchers from the shambles. It was not all Indian blood. They were not lambs, and gave us many a wound before we got the better of them. Edmund and Amos came to me.

"How did you get through it, Ben?"

"All right, but a few cuts. I hope I don't look as villanous as you or Amos."

"I d-don't know how I look. B-But if I saw you or Edmund round my place looking as you d-do now, I'd shoot you at sight."

Rogers ordered us to set fire to all the houses except those which were storehouses for corn. One house was a mass-house with pictures hanging up inside. We found some silver cups and plates in it, and a silver image some ten inches high. In the other houses we found many things which they had carried off from the settlements.

Most of the Rangers had lost relatives and friends in these Indian fights, and were examining the scalps carefully. McKinstry was looking them over with an intense, eager air. Seeing me, he said: "It's a foolish search. Thirty years have passed since they killed my sweetheart and ruined my life. I was looking for a lock of hair like this."

He pulled a little pouch from his breast, opened it, and unfolding some fine cloth, showed me a lock of golden hair.

"The Indians surprised the garrison house where she lived and killed all but her. We got word of it soon. We started out with a large party and pursued them. We followed them day and night, and as they were being overtaken they killed and scalped her. I found her dead body on the ground, and from that day to this I have sought revenge. Last night was the happiest I have had for years. The tribe that killed her is wiped out, and I killed six of them myself."

Rogers had been questioning some of the prisoners. He turned to us and said:—

"Hurry up, boys; we must get out of this place quick. There's no time to go back after our packs. There's a party of three hundred French and Indians four miles below, on the St. Lawrence, looking for us, and two hundred Frenchmen and sixteen Indians went to Wigwam Martinac a few days ago, expecting we would attack that place. They will all be after us soon. Load yourselves up with corn from the corn houses. Take all you can, for we shall have little else to live upon, as the game is scanty in the country through which we shall pass."

We put the corn in our pockets and in any sacks that we could find, placed them on our backs, and left the village a mass of flames.

"We must strike through the woods to the head waters of the Connecticut River, and follow it down to Fort No. 4. We can't go back by the way we came, for the French and Indians could easily collect a force that would overpower us. I sent word to Amherst to have plenty of provisions for us at the mouth of the Ammonusuc River, and we can get there all right."

We released all our prisoners but a couple of boys, and started off, taking with us six Englishmen whom we found in captivity. Edmund said:—"I'm glad to leave this place. It's too much like a slaughter-house. Orders are orders, and we have to execute them. But faith! I can't see but that we have been doing just what these Indians have done for the last ninety years."

"The work had to be done, and we did it. I can't say I feel proud of it either. I wonder how we are going to get out of this scrape."

"At the l-little end of the h-horn. It seems that we shall starve in the region th-through which we shall travel; and we should all be killed if we w-went in any other direction; and I guess these Indians will follow us p-pretty sharp, whichever way we go."

We marched in a body to the southeast at the top of our speed. At night we stopped, parched our corn and ate it. In the morning at daybreak we started on again.

In eight days we reached Lake Memphremagog. The corn was giving out, and Rogers separated us into small parties, each with a guide who had been up the Connecticut River. He told the different parties to keep away from one another, that they might the more readily find sufficient game to support them, and to meet at the Coos Intervale land at the mouth of the Ammonusuc River. That was the place to which he had requested Amherst to send the supplies.

Our Mohegan Indians left us, and went south toward their home, for they thought the hunting would be better in that direction and the risk no greater. They reached home without losing a man.

Edmund, McKinstry, Amos, and I were with Rogers's party. The Indians pursued us closely. We came to a narrow valley, and Rogers said:—

"We'll try an ambuscade on them, and see how they like it. After you enter the valley, get up into the woods on either side. Don't fire till they are well in the valley."

The rear portion of our party were exchanging shots with the Indians, dodging from tree to tree. They came down the valley followed by the redskins. When they were well in the trap, we opened fire on the Indians and killed a number. They began to run back. We reloaded hastily, and, after pouring a second volley into them, rushed on them. McKinstry knocked an Indian down, but was shot by another, whom I killed with my hatchet. I turned to McKinstry. He lay on the ground gasping for breath, shot through the body.

"It's all up with me, Ben."

I tried to staunch the blood.

"It's no use; I feel I'm dying. I always liked you, Ben. May your life be happy. Good-by."

He closed his eyes, and his breast heaved hard as he drew short, quick breaths. Presently he opened his eyes again. He did not notice me, but seemed to see something above him. A smile came over his face, and he said:—

"Yes, Mary, I'm coming, dear."

Then his breathing ceased. We buried him in the valley, levelled the grave, threw wood on it, and burnt the brush around that the ashes might conceal the spot where he was laid. Then we hurried on again.

Three days later two of Ensign Avery's men joined us, and reported that some of them had been captured by the Indians, and that several had been tortured and burnt at the stake. These two had escaped in the night, while the Indians were dancing round their companions. The next day the few who were left of Avery's party met us.

We marched along, keeping a sharp lookout for squirrels, chipmunks, or any kind of animal that might serve as food. Thus we travelled over rocky mountains and through wet swamps, pursued by Indians, faint from hunger, worn out with fatigue and exposure, hardly able to walk. We had no blankets or shelter. The nights were cold and frosty, and when it rained we were soaked and chilled to the bone.

We found almost no game. Edmund had the luck to shoot a big white owl. We plucked it, cut it up, and drew lots for the different portions. I got a leg. It was tough—almost as tough as our fate. But after one has been chewing leather straps for sustenance, an old owl's leg tastes good. I would not have sold it for its weight in the most precious stones.I shall not tell all the horrors of that march,—the pangs of hunger that we suffered, the greed for food, the sights that I saw, nor what men did in their despair. Some things had better remain unwritten.