Capture of Pemaquid

During Stoughton's administration, internal feuds disturbed, and border wars distressed the province continually. The French and Indians now prosecuted their peculiar warfare with relentless vigor. They spread death and desolation over the frontier. The French, by conquest, extended their colonial dominion. Nova Scotia submitted to the rule of France again; and in the summer of 1696, a strong force of French and Indians, under Colonel Iberville, attacked and captured Fort William Henry, at Pemaquid. They were accompanied by the Baron de Castin, a colonel of the French army, who came to America with his regiment, remained, and in 1687, set up a trading-post at the mouth of the Penobscot River, which spot yet bears his name. There he married a daughter of a powerful Indian chief, and exercised great influence over the dusky tribes. With two hundred of such followers, he joined Iberville, assisted in the capture of the fort and with his own hands helped to level it with the ground. So Castin was avenged for the burning of his house by the English.

This severe blow mortified and alarmed the New Englanders and excited the victors to a more distressing warfare. The French and Indians penetrated New England further than they had ever done before, destroying villages, and dispersing settlements, and carrying away people into captivity. Among the places that felt the severest blasts of the storm was Haverhill, within thirty miles of Boston, which was attacked by Indians in March, 1697, when forty persons were killed or made captives. Among the latter was a part of the family of Thomas Dustin, who was in his field when the savages suddenly appeared with horrid yells and gleaming knives and tomahawks. Seizing his gun and mounting his horse, he hastened to his house to bear away his wife, eight young children and a nurse to a place of safety. His youngest child was only a week old. He ordered the other seven to fly in a direction opposite to the approach of the savages, and was lifting his wife from the bed when the Indians attacked his house. "Leave me," cried the mother, "and fly to the protection of the other children." Seeing no chance to save his wife, Dustin again mounted his horse and soon overtook his precious flock, who were filled with joy when they saw their father. The Indians had pursued. Placing himself between the savages and his precious charge, he defended his children so valiantly as the foe pressed him back, that the savages gave up the pursuit, and the children were saved in an unoccupied house.

Meanwhile the scenes at Mr. Dustin's house were most distressing. The savages found Mrs. Dustin in bed, and the nurse attempting to fly with the infant. They ordered the feeble mother to rise instantly, while one of the savages, taking the infant cut of doors, dashed out its brains against an apple-tree. Then they plundered and set fire to the house; and before the terrified mother was dressed, they compelled her to follow them in a hasty retreat. She was forced to walk twelve miles the first day, in the March slush of snow and mud, without shoes, encounter the chilling winds half-clad, and lie upon the ground, when resting, with no covering but the cold gray sky. This was repeated day after day until, by a circuitous route, they reached the island in the Merrimac River, at the mouth of the Contotook Creek, six miles above Concord, New Hampshire, now known as Dustin's Island. There was the home of the chief, who claimed Mrs. Dustin and her nurse as his captives. They were lodged with his family, which consisted of two men, three women, seven children and a captive English lad, who had been with them more than a year. The savage pretended to be a Christian. "When I prayed the English way," he said, "I thought it was good; but I think the French way better."

A few days after their arrival at the island, the prisoners were told that they were soon to start for a distant Indian village, when they would be compelled to "run the gauntlet"--that is, to be stripped naked and run for their lives between two files of Indian men, women and children, who would have the privilege of scoffing at them, beating them, and wounding them with sharp hatchets. The two women resolved not to endure the indignity and danger, preferring death. Mrs. Dustin planned a means for escape, and her nurse and the lad leagued with her in the execution of it. The Indians believed the lad to be faithful to them, and did not suppose the women would have courage to attempt to escape. So they did not keep watch.