Bellamont Governor of Massachusetts

WE have observed that the Earl of Bellamont found public affairs in pleasant shape in Massachusetts, on his arrival in Boston in 1699. He was the only English-born nobleman who ever governed a New England province. His conduct won for him the profound respect of the rigid Puritan republicans, for he fairly estimated the mutual dependence of ruler and people, and acted accordingly. One day at his table, at which sat many representatives of the people of the commonwealth, he said to his wife: "Dame, we should treat these gentlemen well: they give us our bread."

Nothing disturbed the serenity of Bellamont's administration excepting the encroachments of the French, who had outgeneraled the English in securing the control of the mouth of the Mississippi River, and were then preparing to extend their territorial jurisdiction in the East as far westward as the Kennebec River.

According to the interpretation of the English court, the St. Croix River, now the eastern boundary of the United States, was to be the western boundary of the French dominion in that quarter. The French king chose to interpret it otherwise; and his representatives in Nova Scotia gave notice to the authorities of Massachusetts that it was their intention to assert jurisdiction as far westward as the Kennebec. Bellamont informed the British ministry of the threatened invasion, but his communication received little notice. No doubt the invasion would have been successfully carried out had not the war between England and France began soon afterward.

In May, 1702, Queen Anne and her allies the Emperor of Germany and the States-General of Holland declared war against France and Spain. When hostilities began in Europe, they were the signal for the English colonists in America to prepare for another fierce struggle with the French and Indians. Governor Dudley and some magistrates of Massachusetts held a conference with the Eastern Indians at Casco, in June, 1703. The savages, with well-feigned friendship, readily renewed former treaties. They declared that the French had asked them to take up the hatchet against the English, but they had refused because the friendship for the people of Massachusetts was "as firm as the mountains, and as enduring as the sun and moon."

Some believed in the sincerity of the Indians. Wise men shook their heads in doubt, and others declared their belief that the savages, under the tutelage of the French, were playing a treacherous part. Circumstances soon settled the question. Only a few weeks after the conference these same Indians fell, with remorseless fury, upon the frontier settlers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The solemn treaties were scattered to the winds. The tribes from the Merrimac to the Penobscot desolated the border settlements, murdering the innocent, plundering the thrifty, and laying in ashes cabins, mansions, and villages. Not even the benefactors of the Indians, the Friends or Quakers, were spared. They respected "neither the milk-white brows of the grave ancient," nor "the mournful cries of tender infants."

This treachery greatly exasperated the English against the French Jesuits, to whose counsels they professed to trace the cause of the dire calamity. Already this Order had incurred the intense hatred of the New Englanders, because many circumstances pointed to Jesuit influence inciting the Indians to make war on the English. The revelation of Bomaseen, a sachem who visited Boston, intensified that hatred. He declared that the Jesuits had told the Indians that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman; that his mother, the Virgin Mary, was a French woman; that the English had murdered him; that he had gone up to heaven to plead for mankind, and that he who would receive his favor must espouse the cause of his countrymen, the French, in the pending quarrel. Bomaseen was a crafty Indian, and may have invented this story; but it was believed by the colonists. The Legislatures of both New York and Massachusetts had already passed laws for the expulsion of the Jesuits from their respective provinces; but nothing could diminish their secret influence over the Indians. Warriors from Canada joined those south of the St. Lawrence, and in their murderous forays they were often accompanied by French troops and ecclesiastics.

The white men and Indians all confessed their sins to the priests and received pardon for them, before engaging in their bloody work. A day was appointed for such confession and pardon. "I exhorted them," [the Indians], says Father Rale, of Norridgewock, "to maintain the same interest in religion as if they were at home; to observe carefully the laws of war; to practice no cruelty; to kill no one except in the heat of battle; and to treat their prisoners humanely." What a ghastly commentary on their merciful instructions were the savage cruelties of these absolved men, as they swept along the frontier from Casco to Wells immediately after leaving the presence of the priest, staining the fields with the blood of the innocent, and lighting up the heavens at night with the flames of burning dwellings! Twenty years afterward, Rale fell a victim to the fiery indignation of the English against him and his fellow Jesuits for their alleged complicity in the atrocious acts of the Indians for more than a quarter of a century. Norridgewock, where he had labored as a missionary more than thirty years, was attacked by the English in 1723. Rale was shot dead, it is said, at the foot of a cross, where his flock, with wild cries, bewailed his death. On that spot, in 1833, a monument was erected to his memory. With Rale, Bomaseen and some of his kindred also fell.