Except in the destruction of the Pequots, the native tribes of New England had, in 1673, undergone no very material diminution. The Pocanokets, or Wampanoags, though somewhat curtailed in their limits, still occupied the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. The Narragansets still possessed the western shore. There were several scattered tribes in various parts of Connecticut; though, with the exception of some small reservations, they had already ceded all their lands. Uncas, the Mohegan chief, was now an old man. The Pawtucket, or Penacook, confederacy continued to occupy the falls of the Merrimac and the heads of the Piscataqua. Their old sachem, Passaconaway, regarded the colonists with awe and veneration. In the interior of Massachusetts and along the Connecticut were several other less noted tribes. The Indians of Maine and the region eastward possessed their ancient haunts undisturbed; but their intercourse was principally with the French, to whom, since the late peace with France, Acadie had been again yielded up. The New England Indians were occasionally annoyed by war parties of Mohawks; but, by the intervention of Massachusetts, a peace had recently been concluded.

Efforts for the conversion and civilization of the Indians were still continued by Eliot and his coadjutors, supported by the funds of the English society. In Massachusetts there were fourteen feeble villages of these praying Indians, and a few more in Plymouth colony. The whole number in New England was about thirty-six hundred, but of these near one-half inhabited the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

Massachusetts held a strict hand over the Narragansets and other subject tribes, and their limits had been contracted by repeated cessions, not always entirely voluntary. The Wampanoags, within the jurisdiction of Plymouth, experienced similar treatment. By successive sales of parts of their territory, they were now shut up, as it were, in the necks or peninsulas formed by the northern and eastern branches of Narragansett Bay, the same territory now constituting the continental eastern portion of Rhode Island. Though always at peace with the colonists, the Wampanoags had not always escaped suspicion. The increase of the settlements around them, and the progressive curtailment of their limits, aroused their jealousy. They were galled, also, by the feudal superiority, similar to that of Massachusetts over her dependent tribes, claimed by Plymouth on the strength of certain alleged former submissions. None felt this assumption more keenly than Pometacom, head chief of the Wampanoags, better known among the colonists as King Philip of Mount Hope, nephew and successor of that Massasoit who had welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth. Suspected of hostile designs, he had been compelled to deliver up his firearms, and to enter into certain stipulations. These stipulations he was accused of not fulfilling; and nothing but the interposition of the Massachusetts magistrates, to whom Philip appealed, prevented Plymouth from making war upon him. He was sentenced instead to pay a heavy fine, and to acknowledge the unconditional supremacy of that colony.

A praying Indian, who had been educated at Cambridge and employed as a teacher, upon some misdemeanor had fled to Philip, who took him into service as a sort of secretary. Being persuaded to return again to his former employment, this Indian accused Philip anew of being engaged in a secret hostile plot. In accordance with Indian ideas, the treacherous informer was waylaid and killed. Three of Philip’s men, suspected of having killed him, were arrested by the Plymouth authorities, and, in accordance with English ideas, were tried for murder by a jury half English, half Indians, convicted upon very slender evidence, and hanged. Philip retaliated by plundering the houses nearest Mount Hope. Presently he attacked Swanzey, and killed several of the inhabitants. Plymouth took measures for raising a military force. The neighboring colonies were sent to for assistance. Thus, by the impulse of suspicion on the one side and passion on the other, New England became suddenly engaged in a war very disastrous to the colonists, and utterly ruinous to the native tribes. The lust of gain, in spite of all laws to prevent it, had partially furnished the Indians with firearms, and they were now far more formidable enemies than they had been in the days of the Pequots. Of this the colonists hardly seem to have thought. Now, as then, confident of their superiority, and comparing themselves to the Lord’s chosen people driving the heathen out of the land, they rushed eagerly into the contest, without a single effort at the preservation of peace. Indeed, their pretensions hardly admitted of it. Philip was denounced as a rebel in arms against his lawful superiors, with whom it would be folly and weakness to treat on any terms short of absolute submission.

A body of volunteers, horse and foot, raised in Massachusetts, marched under Major Savage, in June, 1675, four days after the attack on Swanzey, to join the Plymouth forces. After one or two slight skirmishes, they penetrated to the Wampanoag villages at Mount Hope, but found them empty and deserted. Philip and his warriors, conscious of their inferiority, had abandoned their homes. If the Narragansets, on the opposite side of the bay, did not openly join the Wampanoags, they would, at least, be likely to afford shelter to their women and children. The troops were therefore ordered into the Narraganset country, accompanied by commissioners to demand assurances of peaceful intentions, and a promise to deliver up all fugitive enemies of the colonists—pledges which the Narragansets felt themselves constrained to give.

Arrived at Taunton on their return from the Narraganset country, news came that Philip and his warriors had been discovered by Church, of Plymouth colony, collected in a great swamp at Pocasset, now Tiverton, the southern district of the Wampanoag country, whence small parties sallied forth to burn and plunder the neighboring settlements. After a march of eighteen miles, having reached the designated spot, the soldiers found there a hundred wigwams lately built, but empty and deserted, the Indians having retired deep into the swamp. The colonists followed; but the ground was soft; the thicket was difficult to penetrate; the companies were soon thrown into disorder. Each man fired at every bush he saw shake, thinking an Indian might lay concealed behind it, and several were thus wounded by their own friends. When night came on, the assailants retired with the loss of sixteen men. The swamp continued to be watched and guarded, but Philip broke through, not without some loss, and escaped into the country of the Nipmucks, in the interior of Massachusetts. That tribe had already commenced hostilities by attacking Mendon. They waylaid and killed Captain Hutchinson, a son of the famous Mrs. Hutchinson, and sixteen out of a party of twenty sent from Boston to Brookfield to parley with them. Attacking Brookfield itself, they burned it, except one fortified house. The inhabitants were saved by Major Willard, who, on information of their danger, came with a troop of horse from Lancaster, thirty miles through the woods, to their rescue. A body of troops presently arrived from the eastward, and were stationed for some time at Brookfield. The colonists now found that by driving Philip to extremity they had roused a host of unexpected enemies. The River Indians, anticipating an intended attack upon them, joined the assailants. Deerfield and Northfield, the northernmost towns on the Connecticut River, settled within a few years past, were attacked, and several of the inhabitants killed and wounded. Captain Beers, sent from Hadley to their relief with a convoy of provisions, was surprised near Northfield in September, and slain, with twenty of his men. Northfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians.

“The English at first,” says Gookin, “thought easily to chastise the insolent doings and murderous practice of the heathen; but it was found another manner of thing than was expected; for our men could see no enemy to shoot at, but yet felt their bullets out of the thick bushes where they lay in ambush. The English wanted not courage or resolution, but could not discover nor find an enemy to fight with, yet were galled by the enemy.” In the arts of ambush and surprise, with which the Indians were so familiar, the colonists were without practice. It is to the want of this experience, purchased at a very dear rate in the course of the war, that we must ascribe the numerous surprises and defeats from which the colonists suffered at its commencement.

Driven to the necessity of defensive warfare, those in command on the river determined to establish a magazine and garrison at Hadley. Captain Lathrop, who had been dispatched from the eastward to the assistance of the river towns, was sent with eighty men, the flower of the youth of Essex County, to guard the wagons intended to convey to Hadley three thousand bushels of unthreshed wheat, the produce of the fertile Deerfield meadows. Just before arriving at Deerfield, near a small stream still known as Bloody Brook, under the shadow of the abrupt conical Sugar Loaf, the southern termination of the Deerfield mountain, Lathrop, on September 18, fell into an ambush, and, after a brave resistance, perished there with all his company. Captain Moseley, stationed at Deerfield, marched to his assistance, but arrived too late to help him. Deerfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians. Springfield, about the same time, was set on fire, but was partially saved by the arrival, with troops from Connecticut, of Major Treat, successor to the lately deceased Mason in the chief command of the Connecticut forces. An attack on Hatfield was vigorously repelled by the garrison.

Meanwhile, hostilities were spreading; the Indians on the Merrimac began to attack the towns in their vicinity, and the whole of Massachusetts was soon in the utmost alarm. Except in the immediate neighborhood of Boston, the country still remained an immense forest dotted by a few openings. The frontier settlements could not be defended against a foe familiar with localities, scattered in small parties, skilful in concealment, and watching with patience for some unguarded or favorable moment. Those settlements were mostly broken up, and the inhabitants, retiring toward Boston, spread everywhere dread and intense hatred of “the bloody heathen.” Even the praying Indians, and the small dependent and tributary tribes, became objects of suspicion and terror. They had been employed at first as scouts and auxiliaries, and to good advantage; but some few, less confirmed in the faith, having deserted to the enemy, the whole body of them were denounced as traitors. Eliot the apostle, and Gookin, superintendent of the subject Indians, exposed themselves to insults, and even to danger, by their efforts to stem this headlong fury, to which several of the magistrates opposed but a feeble resistance. Troops were sent to break up the praying villages at Mendon, Grafton, and others in that quarter. The Natick Indians, “those poor despised sheep of Christ,” as Gookin affectionately calls them, were hurried off to Deer Island, in Boston harbor, where they suffered excessively from a severe winter. A part of the praying Indians of Plymouth colony were confined, in like manner, on the islands in Plymouth harbor.

Not content with realities sufficiently frightful, superstition, as usual, added bugbears of her own. Indian bows were seen in the sky, and scalps in the moon. The northern lights became an object of terror. Phantom horsemen careered among the clouds or were heard to gallop invisible through the air. The howling of wolves was turned into a terrible omen. The war was regarded as a special judgment in punishment of prevailing sins. Among these sins, the General Court of Massachusetts, after consultation with the elders, enumerated neglect in the training of the children of church-members; pride, in men’s wearing long and curled hair; excess in apparel; naked breasts and arms, and superfluous ribbons; the toleration of Quakers; hurry to leave meeting before blessing asked; profane cursing and swearing; tippling-houses; want of respect for parents; idleness; extortion in shopkeepers and mechanics; and the riding from town to town of unmarried men and women, under pretence of attending lectures—“a sinful custom, tending to lewdness.” Penalties were denounced against all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the smallpox, with which she threatened the colony, in punishment for its sins.

About the time of the first collision with Philip, the Tarenteens, or Eastern Indians, had attacked the settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, plundering and burning the houses, and massacring such of the inhabitants as fell into their hands. This sudden diffusion of hostilities and vigor of attack from opposite quarters made the colonists believe that Philip had long been plotting and had gradually matured an extensive conspiracy, into which most of the tribes had deliberately entered, for the extermination of the whites. This belief infuriated the colonists, and suggested some very questionable proceedings. It seems, however, to have originated, like the war itself, from mere suspicions. The same griefs pressed upon all the tribes; and the struggle once commenced, the awe which the colonists inspired thrown off, the greater part were ready to join in the contest. But there is no evidence of any deliberate concert; nor, in fact, were the Indians united. Had they been so, the war would have been far more serious. The Connecticut tribes proved faithful, and that colony remained untouched. Uncas and Ninigret continued friendly; even the Narragansets, in spite of so many former provocations, had not yet taken up arms. But they were strongly suspected of intention to do so, and were accused by Uncas of giving, notwithstanding their recent assurances, aid and shelter to the hostile tribes.

An attempt had lately been made to revive the union of the New England colonies. At a meeting of commissioners, on September 9, 1675, those from Plymouth presented a narrative of the origin and progress of the present hostilities. Upon the strength of this narrative the war was pronounced “just and necessary,” and a resolution was passed to carry it on at the joint expense, and to raise for that purpose a thousand men, one-half to be mounted dragoons. If the Narragansets were not crushed during the winter, it was feared they might break out openly hostile in the spring; and at a subsequent meeting a thousand men were ordered to be levied to co-operate in an expedition specially against them.

The winter was unfavorable to the Indians; the leafless woods no longer concealed their lurking attacks. The frozen surface of the swamps made the Indian fastnesses accessible to the colonists. The forces destined to act against the Narragansets—six companies from Massachusetts, under Major Appleton; two from Plymouth, under Major Bradford; and five from Connecticut, under Major Treat—were placed under the command of Josiah Winslow, Governor of Plymouth since Prince’s death—son of that Edward Winslow so conspicuous in the earlier history of the colony. In December the Massachusetts and Plymouth forces marched to Petasquamscot, on the west shore of Narragansett Bay, where they made some forty prisoners. Being joined by the troops from Connecticut, and guided by an Indian deserter, after a march of fifteen miles through a deep snow, they approached a swamp in what is now the town of South Kingston, one of the ancient strongholds of the Narragansets. Driving the Indian scouts before them, and penetrating the swamp, the colonial soldiers soon came in sight of the Indian fort, built on a rising ground in the morass, a sort of island of two or three acres, fortified by a palisade, and surrounded by a close hedge a rod thick. There was but one entrance, quite narrow, defended by a tree thrown across it, with a block-house of logs in front and another on the flank. It was the “Lord’s day,” but that did not hinder the attack. As the captains advanced at the heads of their companies, the Indians opened a galling fire, under which many fell. But the assailants pressed on, and forced the entrance. A desperate struggle ensued. The colonists were once driven back, but they rallied and returned to the charge, and, after a two hours’ fight, became masters of the fort. Fire was put to the wigwams, near six hundred in number, and all the horrors of the Pequot massacre were renewed. The corn and other winter stores of the Indians were consumed, and not a few of the old men, women, and children perished in the flames. In this bloody contest, long remembered as the “Swamp Fight,” the colonial loss was terribly severe. Six captains, with two hundred and thirty men, were killed or wounded; and at night, in the midst of a snow-storm; with a fifteen miles’ march before them, the colonial soldiers abandoned the fort, of which the Indians resumed possession. But their wigwams were burned; their provisions destroyed; they had no supplies for the winter; their loss was irreparable. Of those who survived the fight, many perished of hunger.

Even as a question of policy, this attack on the Narragansets was more than doubtful. The starving and infuriated warriors, scattered through the woods, revenged themselves by attacks on the frontier settlements. On February 10, 1676, Lancaster was burned, and forty of the inhabitants killed or taken; among the rest, Mrs. Rolandson, wife of the minister, the narrative of whose captivity is still preserved. Groton, Chelmsford, and other towns in that vicinity were repeatedly attacked. Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, was furiously assaulted, and, though defended by three hundred men, half the houses were burned. Weymouth, within eighteen miles of Boston, was attacked a few days after. These were the nearest approaches which the Indians made to that capital. For a time the neighborhood of the Narraganset country was abandoned. The Rhode Island towns, though they had no part in undertaking the war, yet suffered the consequences of it. In March, Warwick was burned, and Providence was partially destroyed. Most of the inhabitants sought refuge in the islands, but the aged Roger Williams accepted a commission as captain for the defence of the town he had founded. Walter Clarke was presently chosen governor in Coddington’s place, the times not suiting a Quaker chief magistrate.

The whole colony of Plymouth was overrun. Houses were burned in almost every town, but the inhabitants, for the most part, saved themselves in their garrisons, a shelter with which all the towns now found it necessary to be provided. On March 26 Captain Pierce, with fifty men and some friendly Indians, while endeavoring to cover the Plymouth towns, fell into an ambush and was cut off. That same day, Marlborough was set on fire; two days after Rehoboth was burned. The Indians seemed to be everywhere. On April 18 Captain Wadsworth, marching to the relief of Sudbury, fell into an ambush, and perished with fifty men. The alarm and terror of the colonists reached again a great height. But affairs were about to take a turn. The resources of the Indians were exhausted; they were now making their last efforts.

A body of Connecticut volunteers, under Captain Denison, and of Mohegan and other friendly Indians, Pequots and Niantics, swept the entire country of the Narragansets, who suffered, as spring advanced, the last extremities of famine. Canonchet, the chief sachem, said to have been a son of Miantonimoh, but probably his nephew, had ventured to his old haunts to procure seed-corn with which to plant the rich intervals on the Connecticut, abandoned by the colonists. Taken prisoner, he conducted himself with all that haughty firmness esteemed by the Indians the height of magnanimity. Being offered his life on condition of bringing about a peace, he scorned the proposal. His tribe would perish to the last man rather than become servants to the English. When ordered to prepare for death, he replied, “I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft, or I shall have spoken anything unworthy of myself.” Two Indians were appointed to shoot him, and his head was cut off and sent to Hartford.

The colonists had suffered severely. Men, women, and children had perished by the bullets of the Indians, or fled naked through the wintry woods by the light of their blazing houses, leaving their goods and cattle a spoil to the assailants. Several settlements had been destroyed, and many more had been abandoned; but the oldest and wealthiest remained untouched. The Indians, on the other hand, had neither provisions nor ammunition. On May 12, while attempting to plant corn and catch fish at Montague Falls, on the Connecticut River, they were attacked with great slaughter by the garrison of the lower towns, led by Captain Turner, a Boston Baptist, and at first refused a commission on that account, but as danger increased, pressed to accept it. Yet this enterprise was not without its drawbacks. As the troops returned, Captain Turner fell into an ambush and was slain, with thirty-eight men. Hadley was attacked on a lecture day, June 12, while the people were at meeting; but the Indians were repulsed by the bravery of Goffe, one of the fugitive regicides, long concealed in that town. Seeing this venerable unknown man come to their rescue, and then suddenly disappear, the inhabitants took him for an angel.

Major Church, at the head of a body of two hundred volunteers, English and Indians, energetically hunted down the hostile bands in Plymouth colony. The interior tribes about Mount Wachusett were invaded and subdued by a force of six hundred men, raised for that purpose. Many fled to the north to find refuge in Canada—guides and leaders, in after years, of those French and Indian war parties by which the frontiers of New England were so terribly harassed. Just a year after the fast at the commencement of the war, a thanksgiving was observed for success in it.

No longer sheltered by the River Indians, who now began to make their peace, and even attacked by bands of the Mohawks, Philip returned to his own country, about Mount Hope, where he was still faithfully supported by his female confederate and relative, Witamo, squaw sachem of Pocasset. Punham, also, the Shawomet vassal of Massachusetts, still zealously carried on the war, but was presently killed. Philip was watched and followed by Church, who surprised his camp on August 1st, killed upward of a hundred of his people, and took prisoners his wife and boy. The disposal of this child was a subject of much deliberation. Several of the elders were urgent for putting him to death. It was finally resolved to send him to Bermuda, to be sold into slavery—a fate to which many other of the Indian captives were subjected. Witamo shared the disasters of Philip. Most of her people were killed or taken. She herself was drowned while crossing a river in her flight; but her body was recovered, and the head, cut off, was stuck upon a pole at Taunton, amid the jeers and scoffs of the colonial soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indian prisoners.

Philip still lurked in the swamps, but was now reduced to extremity. Again attacked by Church, he was killed by one of his own people, a deserter to the colonists. His dead body was beheaded and quartered, the sentence of the English law upon traitors. One of his hands was given to the Indian who had shot him, and on August 17, the day appointed for a public thanksgiving, his head was carried in triumph to Plymouth.

The popular rage against the Indians was excessive. Death or slavery was the penalty for all known or suspected to have been concerned in shedding English blood. Merely having been present at the “Swamp Fight” was adjudged by the authorities of Rhode Island sufficient foundation for sentence of death, and that, too, notwithstanding they had intimated an opinion that the origin of the war would not bear examination. The other captives who fell into the hands of the colonists were distributed among them as ten-year servants. Roger Williams received a boy for his share. Many chiefs were executed at Boston and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion; among others, Captain Tom, chief of the Christian Indians at Natick, and Tispiquin, a noted warrior, reputed to be invulnerable, who had surrendered to Church on an implied promise of safety. A large body of Indians, assembled at Dover to treat of peace, were treacherously made prisoners by Major Waldron, who commanded there. Some two hundred of these Indians, claimed as fugitives from Massachusetts, were sent by water to Boston, where some were hanged, and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves. Some fishermen of Marblehead having been killed by the Indians at the eastward, the women of that town, as they came out of meeting on a Sunday, fell upon two Indian prisoners who had just been brought in, and murdered them on the spot. The same ferocious spirit of revenge which governed the contemporaneous conduct of Berkeley in Virginia toward those concerned in Bacon’s rebellion, swayed the authorities of New England in their treatment of the conquered Indians. By the end of the year the contest was over in the South, upward of two thousand Indians having been killed or taken. But some time elapsed before a peace could be arranged with the Eastern tribes, whose haunts it was not so easy to reach.

In this short war of hardly a year’s duration the Wampanoags and Narragansets had suffered the fate of the Pequots. The Niantics alone, under the guidance of their aged sachem, Ninigret, had escaped destruction. Philip’s country was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty years afterward, under a royal order in council, it was transferred to Rhode Island. The Narraganset territory remained as before, under the name of King’s Province, a bone of contention between Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Atherton claimants. The Niantics still retained their ancient seats along the southern shores of Narragansett Bay. Most of the surviving Narragansets, the Nipmucks, and the River Indians, abandoned their country, and migrated to the North and West. Such as remained, along with the Mohegans and other subject tribes, became more than ever abject and subservient.

The work of conversion was now again renewed, and, after such overwhelming proofs of Christian superiority, with somewhat greater success. A second edition of the Indian Old Testament, which seems to have been more in demand than the New, was published in 1683, revised by Eliot, with the assistance of John Cotton, son of the “great Cotton,” and minister of Plymouth. But not an individual exists in our day by whom it can be understood. The fragments of the subject tribes, broken in spirit, lost the savage freedom and rude virtues of their fathers, without acquiring the laborious industry of the whites. Lands were assigned them in various places, which they were prohibited by law from alienating. But this very provision, though humanely intended, operated to perpetuate their indolence and incapacity. Some sought a more congenial occupation in the whale fishery, which presently began to be carried on from the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Many perished by enlisting in the military expeditions undertaken in future years against Acadie and the West Indies. The Indians intermarried with the blacks, and thus confirmed their degradation by associating themselves with another oppressed and unfortunate race. Gradually they dwindled away. A few sailors and petty farmers, of mixed blood, as much African as Indian, are now the sole surviving representatives of the aboriginal possessors of southern New England.

On the side of the colonists the contest had also been very disastrous. Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined, and many others partially destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in New England. Twelve captains and more than six hundred men in the prime of life had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at near a million of dollars. Massachusetts was burdened with a heavy debt. No aid nor relief seems to have come from abroad, except a contribution from Ireland of £500 for the benefit of the sufferers by the war, chiefly collected by the efforts of Nathaniel Mather, lately successor to his brother Samuel as minister of the non-conformist congregation at Dublin.

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY
MILITARY, BETWEEN THE DEFEAT OF KING
PHILIP, 1676, AND THE CAPTURE
OF QUEBEC, 1759

1676. Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia against the government of Sir William Berkeley.

1679. The Scottish Covenanters are defeated by the Duke of Monmouth at Bothwell Bridge.

1681. William Penn obtains his patent from the English Crown.

1682. Purchase of East Jersey by William Penn. He takes possession of New Castle (Delaware) and founds the Colony of Pennsylvania. La Salle descends the Mississippi to its mouth.

1684. The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company is declared forfeited to the English Crown.

1685. James II. succeeds his brother, Charles II., as King of England. Insurrection of the Earl of Argyll and the Duke of Monmouth. Defeat of Monmouth at Sedgemoor; his execution.

1686. Sir Edmund Andros is made Governor of New England.

1688. William of Orange lands in England; flight of James II.

1689. William and Mary are proclaimed King and Queen of England. England declares war against France. Victory of the Scottish Jacobites at Killiecrankie. Overthrow of Andros in New England. Beginning of King William’s War in America.

1690. The Orangemen in Ireland win the battle of the Boyne. Destruction of Schenectady by the French and Indians. Sir William Phips, commanding a New England expedition, captures Port Royal, and later makes a fruitless demonstration against Quebec.

1691. The Jacobites are overcome in Scotland. Surrender of Limerick, the last stronghold of James II. in Ireland.

1692. Union of the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies. Witchcraft delusion at Salem.

1693. The French Admiral Tourville defeats the English fleet off Cape St. Vincent.

1697. France makes peace at Ryswick with Holland, Spain, and England. Close of King William’s War in America.

1699. The French begin the settlement of Louisiana.

1701. Beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession.

1702. Death of William III. and accession of Queen Anne. Successful campaign of Churchill (Marlborough) in the Netherlands. Naval triumph of the English and Dutch over the Spanish and French at Vigo. Queen Anne’s War in America. French settlement in Alabama.

1704. The English are victorious over the French at the battle of Blenheim. Capture of Gibraltar by the English. Massacre of white settlers by the Indians at Deerfield, Massachusetts.

1706. Marlborough defeats the French and Bavarians at the battle of Ramillies.

1708. Victory of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, at Oudenarde, over the Dukes of Burgundy and VendÔme.

1711. Unsuccessful expedition of the English and New England forces under Walker against Canada.

1713. Treaty of Utrecht. Close of Queen Anne’s War in America. Acadia (Nova Scotia, etc.) ceded to England by France, which also restores the Hudson Bay region. The power of the Tuscarora Indians broken by the Carolinians.

1714. George I., Elector of Hanover, succeeds to the English Crown.

1715. Rebellion in Scotland and in the North of England in favor of James Edward Stuart, the Jacobite pretender.

1718. French settlement of New Orleans.

1720. Failure of Law’s Mississippi scheme in France. 1722. Establishment of the Moravian settlement in Pennsylvania under Count Zinzendorf.

1727. Accession of George II.

1728. Discovery of Behring’s Strait.

1729. Carolina, purchased by the English Crown, is divided into the royal provinces of North and South Carolina.

1730. Baltimore is laid out.

1732. Oglethorpe embarks from England to establish a settlement in Georgia.

1733. Founding of Savannah.

1741. New Hampshire is finally separated from Massachusetts.

1744. Beginning of King George’s War in America. The French capture Canseau (afterward Canso), and are repulsed at Annapolis.

1745. Jacobite rising in Scotland. Charles Edward, the young Pretender, is victorious at Prestonpans. The New England troops, under Sir William Pepperell, reduce the French fortress of Louisburg.

1746. Jacobite defeat at Culloden.

1748. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminates the War of the Austrian Succession and King George’s War in America. Louisburg restored to France.

1749. The Ohio Company receives its grant from George II.

1753. Friction between French and Americans on tributaries of the Alleghany, along American western frontier. Washington’s vain protest against the French seizure of Venango.

1754. Beginning of the French and Indian War in America. Washington’s attack upon Jumonville, near Great Meadows, the first action. The French compel Washington to capitulate at Fort Necessity.

1755. Braddock’s expedition against Fort Duquesne and his disastrous defeat. Abortive expeditions by the English against Niagara and Crown Point. 1756. Formal declaration of hostilities between France and England, and beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Capture of Oswego by the French.

1757. Montcalm takes Fort William Henry on Lake George.

1758. Victory of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. Reduction of Louisburg, and capture of Forts Frontenac and Duquesne by the English.