Bellamont Governor of Massachusetts: Port Royal and Deerfield

During the winter of 1703-4, the people along the New England frontier lived in perpetual dread of the foe. At length, late in February, a party of French and Indians, who had traveled with snow-shoes all the way from Canada, approached the pretty village of Deerfield on the Connecticut River, in Massachusetts. The snow lay four feet deep in that region, and was covered with a crust that bore the invaders. The drifts around the town were almost as high as its encircling palisades. Over these Major Hertel de Rouville, the commander of the motley party, and his followers, easily crept into the village while the inhabitants were slumbering before the dawn of the first day of March. The first intimation the villagers had of danger was the bursting open of their doors and the sound of the horrid war-whoop of the savages. The people were dragged from their beds and murdered or carried into captivity. The village was set on fire, and every building excepting the chapel and one dwelling-house was laid in ashes. Forty of the inhabitants were killed, and one hundred and twelve were borne to the wilderness an hour after sunrise.

Among the victims was the Rev. John Williams, the village pastor, and his family. Two of his children and a black servant were murdered at his door. With his wife and five children he began the toilsome journey. Mrs. Williams fainted with fatigue on the second day. The tomahawk of an Indian cleft her skull, and so they were relieved of the burden. Her husband and children were taken to Canada, and after a captivity among the Caughnawagas, near Montreal, for nearly two years, they were ransomed and returned home. Only a daughter, ten years old, was kept. The Indians would not part with her. She grew up to womanhood in Indian habits and tastes, became a Roman Catholic, married a young Mohawk brave and bore children; and when she visited her relations in Deerfield in after years, she could not be induced to abandon her Indian mode of life, nor leave the church to which she was attached.

The chief object of this expedition was to procure the little bell in the meeting-house in Deerfield. It had been bought in France for the church of St. Louis, at Caughnawaga. The vessel that bore it to America was captured by a New England privateer and taken into Boston. The bell was purchased by the congregation at Deerfield, and hung in the belfry of the meeting-house. The invaders carried it away, under the charge of Father Nicolas, of the church at Caughnawaga, who accompanied the expedition. It was borne in triumph to its original destination, and it now summons the people to worship from the belfry of the church of St. Louis at Caughnawaga.

For years these tales of horror were the true narratives of the experience of New Englanders on the border. Remote settlements were abandoned. The tillers of the soil gathered in palisaded villages and labored in the fields in groups, and well-armed. There was no semblance of civilized warfare in the methods of the French and Indians, and their cruelties inspired good men everywhere with horror. "I hold it to be my duty towards God and my neighbor," wrote the good Peter Schuyler, Mayor of Albany, to Vau dreuil, the French governor of Canada, "to prevent, if possible, these barbarous and heathen cruelties. My heart swells with indignation when I think that a war between Christian princes, bound to the exactest laws of honor and generosity, which their noble ancestors have illustrated by brilliant examples, is degenerated into savage and boundless butchery. These are not the methods for terminating the war. Would that all the world thought with me on this subject."

Such protests were uttered in vain. The savages were unrestrained by their Christian allies. The power of the church and state encouraged them in their bloody deeds. At length the New Englanders determined to make aggressive movements. In 1707, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, resolved to carry war into the French domain on the East. Early in June a thousand men under Colonel Marsh sailed for Nantucket, under convoy of a British war-ship, to attempt the conquest of Acadie. The French at Port Royal were prepared for them, and the expedition was a failure.

In 1710, another expedition, fitted out at the joint expense of the New England colonies and New York and New Jersey, sailed from Boston, with a fleet from England under the command of Colonel Nicholson. There were thirty-six vessels in all. They sailed in September, and six days after-ward the fleet was anchored before the fort at Port Royal. The place was surrendered to the English on the thirteenth of October, and the name and fortress of Port Royal were changed to Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne. Acadie was annexed to the realm of Great Britain, under the title of Nova Scotia or New Scotland. The British flag has waved perpetually over that fortress from that day to this.