[49] Charlevoix, ii. 289, 290 (quarto edition).
[50] Penhallow, _Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians_.
[51] Doddridge, _Notes on Western Virginia and Pennsylvania_.
[52] On this affair, see the note of Elisha Plaisted in Massachusetts Archives; _Richard Waldron to Governor Dudley, Portsmouth, 19 September, 1712_; Bourne, _Wells and Kennebunk_, 278.
Hertel de Rouville.--A Frontier Village.--Rev. John Williams.--The Surprise.--Defence of the Stebbins House.--Attempted Rescue.--The Meadow Fight.--The Captives.--The Northward March.--Mrs. Williams killed.--The Minister's Journey.--Kindness of Canadians.--A Stubborn Heretic.--Eunice Williams.--Converted Captives.--John Sheldon's Mission.--Exchange of Prisoners.--An English Squaw.--The Gill Family.
About midwinter the governor of Canada sent another large war-party against the New England border. The object of attack was an unoffending hamlet, that from its position could never be a menace to the French, and the destruction of which could profit them nothing. The aim of the enterprise was not military, but political. "I have sent no war-party towards Albany," writes Vaudreuil, "because we must do nothing that might cause a rupture between us and the Iroquois; but we must keep things astir in the direction of Boston, or else the Abenakis will declare for the English." In short, the object was fully to commit these savages to hostility against New England, and convince them at the same time that the French would back their quarrel.[53]
The party consisted, according to French accounts, of fifty Canadians and two hundred Abenakis and Caughnawagas,--the latter of whom, while trading constantly with Albany, were rarely averse to a raid against Massachusetts or New Hampshire.[54] The command was given to the younger Hertel de Rouville, who was accompanied by four of his brothers. They began their march in the depth of winter, journeyed nearly three hundred miles on snow-shoes through the forest, and approached their destination on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of February, 1704. It was the village of Deerfield, which then formed the extreme northwestern frontier of Massachusetts,--its feeble neighbor, the infant settlement of Northfield, a little higher up the Connecticut, having been abandoned during the last war. Rouville halted his followers at a place now called Petty's Plain, two miles from the village; and here, under the shelter of a pine forest, they all lay hidden, shivering with cold,--for they dared not make fires,--and hungry as wolves, for their provisions were spent. Though their numbers, by the lowest account, were nearly equal to the whole population of Deerfield,--men, women, and children,--they had no thought of an open attack, but trusted to darkness and surprise for an easy victory.