Vermont: A Study of Independence. Rowland Evans Robinson
destroyed one bastion and set the barracks on fire. They presently abandoned Crown Point and retired to the Isle aux Noix, while Amherst was repairing and strengthening the fortifications of Ticonderoga.
So at last, with but slight resistance to the tide of conquest that was now overwhelming their northern possessions in America, the French abandoned the strongholds that guarded the "Gate of the Country."
For more than a quarter of a century Fort St. Frederic had been the point from which marauding bands of Indians and their scarcely less ferocious white associates had set forth on errands of rapine and murder, which had made as dangerous and insecure as a crater's brink every frontier settlement of a wide region. Here had been plotted their forays; here they had returned from them with captives, scalps, and plunder; here found safety from pursuit. The two forts had held civilization at bay on the border of this land of "beautiful valleys and fields fertile in corn," and to all the inhabitants of the New England frontier their fall was a deliverance from an ever-threatening danger.
The French held the Isle aux Noix, their last remaining post on Lake Champlain, with a force of 3,500 regular troops and Canadian militia, and had also on the lake four large armed vessels, commanded by experienced officers of the French navy. The presence of this naval force made it necessary for Amherst to build vessels that might successfully oppose it, and while this work was in progress the British general dispatched a body of rangers against the Indians of St. Francis, who for fifty years had been active and relentless foes of the New England colonies.
Early in the century many members of the different tribes of Waubanakees in the eastern part of New England had been induced by the governor of Canada to remove to that province, and since then had lived on the St. Francis River, and were commonly known as the St. Francis tribe, though they gave themselves the name of "Zooquagese," the people who withdrew from the others, or literally "the Little People."[16]
Their intimate knowledge of the region, which had been the home of many generations of their people, and their familiarity with every waterway and mountain pass that gave easiest access to the English frontiers, made them as valuable instruments, as their hatred of the English made them willing ones for the hostile purposes of the French. From none of their enemies had the frontier settlements suffered more, and toward none did they bear greater enmity.
The wrongs which these tribes had suffered from the English, since their earliest contact with them, gave cause for vengeful retaliation, and its atrocities were such as might be expected of savages accustomed by usage and tradition to inflict on their enemies and receive from them the cruelest tortures that could be devised, and whose religion taught no precept of mercy; but for those Christians, boasting the highest civilization of the world, the French, who encouraged the barbarous warfare and seldom attempted to check its horrors, there can be no excuse.
Amherst chose Major Robert Rogers to lead the expedition against St. Francis, and he could not have chosen one better fitted to carry out the scheme of vengeance than this wary, intrepid, and unscrupulous ranger. To him it was a light achievement to creep within the lines of a French camp, and he could slay and scalp an enemy with as little compunction as would an Indian,[17] while the men whom he led had seen or suffered enough of Indian barbarity to make them as unrelenting as he in the infliction of any measure of punishment on these scourges of the border.
Rogers left Crown Point on the night of the 12th of September with a detachment of 200, embarked in batteaux, and went cautiously down the lake. His force was reduced by one fourth on the fifth day out by the explosion of a keg of powder, which wounded several of his men and made it necessary to send them with an escort back to Crown Point.
Arrived at the head of Missisco Bay, the boats and sufficient provisions for the return voyage were concealed, and left in charge of two trusty Indians, when the little army began its march across the country through the wilderness toward the Indian town. Two days later it was overtaken by the boat guard, bringing to Rogers the alarming news of the discovery of the boats by a force of French and Indians, four hundred strong, fifty of whom had been sent away with the batteaux, while the others, still doubly outnumbering his force, were following him in hot pursuit. Rogers kept his own counsel, and alone formed the plans that he at once acted upon. He dispatched a lieutenant with eight men to Crown Point to acquaint General Amherst with the turn of affairs, and ask him to send provisions to Coos, on the Connecticut, to which place it now seemed that soon or late he must make his way. The only question was, whether he should do so now, or attempt to strike the contemplated blow before his pursuers could overtake him. It was characteristic of the man to decide upon the bolder course, and he marched his men, as enduring as the enemy and as accustomed to such difficult marching, with such celerity that the pursuing force was left well behind when, on the evening of the 4th of October, the neighborhood of the town was reached.
While his men halted for rest and refreshment, he, disguised as an Indian and accompanied by two of his officers, went forward and entered the village. The Indians, unsuspicious of danger, were celebrating some rite with a grand dance, which quite engrossed their attention while Rogers and his companions thoroughly reconnoitred the place. Returning to his troops some hours before daylight, he marched them within a few hundred yards of the town, and at daybreak, the dance being over and the Indians asleep, the onslaught was made.
Amherst's orders to Rogers, after reminding him of the "barbarities committed by the enemy's Indian scoundrels," and bidding him to "take his revenge," had enjoined that "no women or children shall be killed or hurt;" but if this command was heeded at first, it was presently disregarded. If there was any touch of mercy in the hearts of the rangers when the assault began, the last vestige of it was swept away when daylight revealed hundreds of scalps of their own people displayed on poles, silvered locks of age, tresses of women's hair, golden ringlets of childhood, all ghastly trophies of New England raids.
Old and young, warrior, squaw, and pappoose, alike suffered their vengeance, till of the three hundred inhabitants two thirds were killed and twenty taken prisoners, fifteen of whom were soon "let go their way." The church, adorned with plate and an image of silver, and the well-furnished dwellings, were plundered and burned, and the morning sun shone upon a scene of desolation as complete as these savages themselves had ever wrought.
When the work of destruction was finished, Rogers assembled his men, of whom only one had been killed and six slightly wounded, and after an hour's rest began the return march with the prisoners, five recaptured English captives, and what provisions and booty could be carried.
The route taken was up the St. Francis and to the eastward of Lake Memphremagog, the objective point being the Coos Meadows, where it was expected that the relief party with provisions would be met. They were followed by the enemy, and had lost seven men by their attacks, when Rogers formed an ambuscade upon his own track, into which they fell and suffered so severely that they desisted from further pursuit.
When ten days had elapsed, and Rogers and his men had come some distance within the bounds of what is now Vermont, they began to suffer much from lack of food, and it was thought best to divide the force into small parties, each to make its way as best it could to the expected succor at Coos, or to the English settlements farther down the Connecticut.
While its autumnal glories faded and the primeval forest grew bare and bleak, the little bands struggled bravely on over rugged mountains, through tangled windfalls, and swamps whose miry pools were treacherously hidden beneath the fallen leaves, fighting hour after hour and day after day against fatigue and famine, foes more persistent, insidious, and unrelenting than Awahnock[18] and Waubanakee. Such small game as they could kill, and the few edible roots that they found, were their only subsistence; and they would gladly have bartered the silver image and the golden candlesticks brought from the church, and all their booty, for one day's supply of the coarsest food. They buried the treasure, with scant hope that they might ever unearth it, and cast away unheeded the useless burdens of less valuable plunder.
At night they cowered around their camp-fires and shivered