THE AGREEMENT that England and France had concluded at Ryswick in 1697 was more an armistice than a treaty. Both the actual fighting of the war and the settlement proved inconclusive. The reason for this was clear: Charles II of Spain, an aged, crippled, impotent, pathetic product of generations of royal inbreeding, was about to die without an heir. By 1697 Europe anxiously awaited his death and the determination of the fate of the Spanish empire. When it finally came in 1700, Charles's death interrupted negotiations between Louis XIV of France and William of Orange over the control of Spain and the dispensation of her overseas trade. When it was surprisingly announced that Charles had left a will, the negotiations broke down entirely. The will shook Europe and drove it once again into war.
In essence, Charles had ceded the Spanish throne to Louis XIV via his grandson, duc d'Anjou, and further stipulated that if Louis did not take the crown it would go to the son of the Hapsburg emperor. Although Louis was not anxious to plunge into another war, he could hardly forgo the chance to gain control over the Spanish empire, much less let such power slip from his hands to the rival Hapsburgs. Therefore, though he knew that accepting the will's terms would likely bring a resumption of war, he took the risk and accepted Spain for his grandson.
England quickly responded. To oppose France and Spain, William brought together the "Grand Alliance," composed of much the same forces as he had led in 1689: England, Holland, Rome, Brandenburg, Portugal, and Savoy. Thus began what became known in Europe as the War of the Spanish Succession.
When war broke out in Europe in 1702, prospects for renewed war in North America rose quickly. In the lull between storms--the five years of peace between New England and New France from 1697 to 1702--both sides had moved to strengthen Indian alliances. By 1701 the French had succeeded. The English never wholly did.
French success turned on their ability to establish neutrality with the Iroquois. They did not need a full-blown alliance with the Iroquois to shift the balance of power in North America. Simply to be spared more fighting with those Indians, plus gaining a buffer zone between New France and the English, represented huge gains. For their part, the Iroquois had been more than willing to agree. With Iroquois power at its nadir, neutrality and the chance to rebuild economic, political, and military strength were ideal.
While the French were shoring up support in the upper New York and Great Lakes region, the English moved to improve relations with the.Abenaki of northern New England. In fact, the English made covenants with the Abenaki in January 1699, September 1699, and June 1701, and Massachusetts governor Joseph Dudley negotiated with these Indians at Casco Bay in Maine in the summers of 1702 and 1703. These bonds of peace were but loosely tied, however--and even if they had not been, the French quickly moved to loosen them.
The English negotiations with the Abenaki drove the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the
new governor general of New France, into action. As a military man who had first
come to Canada in the 1680s, Vaudreuil knew well the importance of keeping the
Abenaki on the French side, for they were essential in keeping the English enclosed
in New England and defensive in posture. Thus Vaudreuil rushed to shore up the
French-Abenaki alliance by promising them a war. Within six weeks of Dudley's.
June 30, 1703, conference at Casco Bay, the Maine towns of Wells and Saco were
assaulted by French-inspired and clearly unconverted Indians. Queen Anne' s
War, as the conflict was to be known in North America, had begun.
The attacks on Wells and Saco in 1703 alarmed all of New England, particularly those settlers living along the two-hundred mile frontier that stretched from the Maine coast in the east to Deerfield in the west. In Deerfield, as in the other frontier outposts, townspeople once again tightened up their defenses. Following Massachusetts law, local officers trained the town militia. The town was also required to have a "sufficient Watch house" and to maintain a "watch," a vigil of sentinels for the town. As of 1702, Deerfield did not have as many fortified houses as many other frontier towns--only three versus as many as ten or twelve--but the town did have its palisade, or fort, enclosing the center of town. This "good and sufficient fortification" had been built in 1689, at the beginning of King William's War, and improved in 1697. In June, with the threat of war building, the town agreed that the fort needed to "be righted up" and petitioned the governor for help.
Within two weeks the Massachusetts Council responded to this plea. Acknowledging Deerfield as "the most westerly frontier of the Province" and that "a considerable part of the Line of Fortification about their Plantation is decayed and faln down," the Council ordered John Pynchon to send ten men from neighboring towns to provide support. The work proved fruitful. The fort was not only repaired but expanded significantly, from roughly 200 rods in circumference to 320 rods.
Deerfield prepared in other ways as well. The house of John Wells, just outside the fort on the south end of town, was heavily fortified. The town selectmen were imp owe red to build up the "town stock of Amunition." As in the 1690s the town also secured places inside the fort for all townspeople where they could sleep each night. Those with houses inside were required to shelter fellow townsmen, receiving a tax break for their pains. The town even gave "little pieces of land" inside the fort to at least two townsmen on which to build their own small houses.
Deerfield was wise to take these precautions, for by the middle of 1703 there were ominous signs that war might soon strike the town. As early as May of 1703, even before the attacks on Wells and Saco, New York governor Cornbury sent notice to Massachusetts governor Dudley that "a party of French and Indians, . . . near one hundred, may be expected every day at Deerfield. " Dudley quickly alerted the town to "be in readiness and to scout and range for a discovery." Dudley also communicated the information to Connecticut governor Fitz-John Winthrop, both as a precaution for his colony and because Massachusetts again expected Connecticut to help defend the upper valley. Winthrop felt that such an attack would be "a bold attempt at this tyme," with war still only smoldering, and especially at Deerfield, a place "soe remote & hazardous" from Quebec. Still, counseling "tis best to have an eye upon them," he urged preparedness in all frontier towns.
Two months later the tension in the valley rose higher. In early August Colonel Samuel Partridge of Hadley, the region's military commander, reported to Governor Dudley that he had "intelligence of a party of French & Indians from Canada who are expected every hour to make some attaque on ye towns upon Connecticut River." This warning coincided almost to the day with the actual outbreak of war in Maine-the burning and destruction of Wells and other small posts, and the assaults on the forts at Saco, Blackpoint, and Casco.13 Warnings also went to Connecticut governor Winthrop when Major John Pynchon relayed word that "scoutes from Deerfield saw the enimies tracks" only five miles from town "& expected to be attacked presently." Immediately Connecticut sent fifty-three soldiers up north. Stopping at Northampton, they learned that "the scouts were misstaken in the tracks they found." Still, the threat remained. The company went up to Deerfield for two days while scouts patrolling from there journeyed over thirty miles farther north. They found nothing.
The rest of the summer passed quietly but uneasily. New York governor Cornbury shared his fears with the English Lords of Trade in both June and September, warning of the French and Indian threat which his spies had uncovered. Even with the summer over he feared enemy attacks, claiming that the Indians were "ready to attempt something upon our Frontiers this Winter." Yet by the end of September Connecticut officials were preparing to draw off their men from Deerfield, despite a message from Albany that "some hundreds of Indians" were gathering to raid the Connecticut valley.
Finally, on the evening of October 8 the first blow of Queen Anne's War struck the valley--at Deerfield. While they were watching after the town's animals in the pasture outside the fort, Indians ambushed Zebediah Williams and John Nims. After firing but missing, the Indians quickly seized Williams. Nims ran away toward a pond nearby, but then, afraid he would be shot, he gave himself up. The Indians quickly marched the men off into captivity.
Deerfield redoubled its defense efforts. One week after the attack, at an unusual mid-October meeting, the town agreed upon their "nesasaty of fortifying," and set up a committee to "joyn with Colonell Partrigg to consult agree and determin" how to shore up local defenses still further. After meeting with the committee, Partridge asked the General Court for financial support, either out of the "publique Rates" or by an abatement of those "Rates now to be collected" in Deerfield.
No one doubted Deerfield's willingness to fight; in fact, Connecticut governor Winthrop commented that the Hampshire County people had "allwaies fallen to their post in all tymes of difficulty. " Yet Deerfield's poverty certainly complicated the town's ability to defend itself. At this point Deerfield was as poor as any town in Massachusetts. Two steps taken by the General Court reveal this. On November 20, 1703, the Court, "Considering the Extraordinary Impoverishing Circumstances" of Deerfield, granted the town £20 to support the ministry. Even more dramatic, however, is the tax rate that the General Court levied for the province in late October of that year. To raise the money needed to run the colony, each town was taxed an average of roughly £200. Yet Deerfield's share was zero: It was the only town in all of Massachusetts not taxed at all.
Deerfield's poverty made defending the town more problematical. In a dangerous situation the town could expect provincial authorities to send soldiers--as few as two or three, as many as forty or fifty--to help defend it. That town was expected to house and feed those soldiers, however. Thus Deerfield had a dilemma born of its poverty: either to bring in soldiers it could not afford to care for, or to try to defend without needed military support.
In late October of 1703, the town's plight spurred its minister, the Reverend John Williams, to write a poignant appeal for aid to Governor Dudley. Williams thanked the governor for his "care and concernment for our safety," both in helping rebuild the fort and in supplying soldiers the previous year. Yet, Williams explained, now "we have been driven from our houses & home lots into the fort, (where there are but 10 house lots in the fort)." With some settlers moving "a mile some two miles" to live in the fort, the town had
suffered much loss . . . we have in the alarms several times been wholly taken off from any business, the whole town kept in, our children of twelve or thirteen years and under we have been afraid to improve in the field in fear of the enemy. . . we have been crowded together into houses to the preventing of indoor affairs being carryed on to any advantage . . . so that our losses are far more than would have paid our taxes.
Seeking any kind of assistance from the colony, Williams continued:
Strangers tell us they would not live where we do for twenty times as much as we do. . . several say they would freely leave all they have & go away were it not that it would be disobedience to authority &. . . discouraging [to] their brethren. The frontier difficulties of a place so remote from others and so exposed as ours, are more than be known, if not felt.
Solomon Stoddard, Northampton's prominent minister, also pleaded Deerfield's case to Governor Dudley. He asked that Deerfield "be freed from the Country Rates during the time of the war." Like Williams, Stoddard recited Deerfield's dire circumstances: alarms in the fields, inability to improve outlying lands due to the danger, crowded houses--"sometimes with souldiers"--making home life difficult. Further, Stoddard claimed, the townspeople's" spirits are so taken up about their Dangers, that they have little heart to undertake what is needful for advancing their estates."
Massachusetts heard Deerfield's cry. Not only did the General Court exempt the town from taxes for 1703 and send money to support the ministry, but in late October it sent sixteen more soldiers as well. As the snows of early winter came to the valley, however, these soldiers went home. Winter was not a time of fighting, certainly not a time of invasion by forces coming from three hundred miles away. As military leader John Pynchon had written on an early December day during King William's War, "ye approaching winter gives hope of some respit & allowance of some Ease. . . . The entring upon Winter wil give som security, for in Reson noe attempt can be fro[m] Canida now at this season. " Then he added one eerily prophetic line: "tho when winter is setled al Rivers strong [frozen], Passage good, days lengthen and warmer weather"--"then may be ye Enemys motion."
The early winter of 1703 passed without incident. The notes from the December 27 town meeting suggest it was an ordinary year-end session: mostly establishing local apprizements, tax rates, and methods of tax payments. By February 20 news of "bloody & misschevious" attacks on Haverill and Exeter near Boston reminded Deerfielders of their danger. The next day regional commander Samuel Partridge wrote to Connecticut governor Winthrop, telling of the rising danger at Deerfield and requesting soldiers. At this same time, Massachusetts governor Dudley sent twenty soldiers to the town, and they were in place by about February 24. Partridge's letter contained both hope and anxiety: "through the goodness of God we are prserved yet and hope for respitt till ye rivers break up. . . but as soon as there be passing, we look for troubles."
Winter did not give Partridge, or Deerfield, their desired "respitt." Even as the twenty-man garrison was arriving at Deerfield, an army of two hundred to three hundred French and Indians was moving south toward Deerfield.
The Frenchmen included both regular army men and coureurs de bois. The Indians came from two groups: the Caughnawagas, or French Mohawks, and a larger group of Abenaki, formerly of Maine and now living--like the Caughnawaga--under French protection near Montreal.
Leaving Canada in the depths of winter, the party made its way south on snowshoes, walking atop frozen lakes and rivers, up the Sorel River to Lake Champlain, from the eastern side of Champlain up the Winooski River, and eventually onto the upper Connecticut. As the French and Indians neared the end of their three-hundred-mile journey, they left a few of their party, plus sleds and provisions, some twenty-five miles above Deerfield. From there they moved overland toward the frontier village.
Leading the war party was Sieur Hertel de Rouville, a regular French officer of the line. De Rouville's father, François Hertel, had been a great military leader, a hero in early New France particularly for leading a successful French and Indian raid on Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, in 1690. Now his son was about to launch a similar strike.
As daylight waned on Monday, February 28, 1704, the French and Indians moved into position two miles north and across the river from Deerfield. From there they observed the activities of the town and planned their attack. As night fell, the villagers of Deerfield moved as usual into the fort. Roughly three-quarters of the townspeople had homes outside the palisade, but all took the precaution that night of sleeping within the ten- or twelve-foot-high wall. With fortifications recently rebuilt and twenty garrison soldiers newly arrived, the town seemed well protected. Living conditions were extremely cramped and uncomfortable, though. With the addition of the twenty soldiers, Deerfield now held 291 people, all packed into ten or twelve houses inside the fort plus the one fortified house of Captain Jonathan Wells just to the south. Still, it was better to be cramped and safe inside the fort than left outside to the mercies of the enemy. As the town went to bed, a watch regularly patrolled, protecting Deerfield's people as they slept.
Through the night, as the town slept, the French and Indians waited. And as they waited, what they observed gave them promise of aid. First, they saw that heavy snows of winter, some three feet deep, still blanketed the area. That snow had made their travel to Deerfield difficult. Yet here it had drifted up against the palisade, and they now saw that they could easily mount the drifts and climb over that wall. Toward morning, they saw something even more important: There was no watch.
Local legends about the failed watch vary. Some have him propped up against the door of a house in town, listening to a mother's lullaby for a crying infant. Others have him simply inside and asleep. Recalling the incident three months later, New York's Lord Cornbury harshly accorded it to "the negligence of the people, who did not keep guard soe carefully as they should have done'." A military report filed within the week claimed that the watch "shot of a gun & cryed Arm," but "very few heard." John Williams, Deerfield's minister, chose the richest, if ambiguous, description: The watch was "unfaithful."
Two hours before daybreak the French and Indians struck. They moved the final miles across the frozen fields toward town, stopping and starting every so often, it was said, so that if any sentinels heard the crunch of snowshoes on the snow they might mistake it for rising and falling gusts of wind. To the palisade the warriors moved, past the silent, darkened empty houses north of the fort. Over the palisade a handful went, still unseen. Opening the gates at the north end of the fort, they let in the rest of their force. Then, "with horrid shouting and yelling," they swept over the town, as John Williams recalled it, "like a flood upon us."
As the settlers opened their eyes to the terrifying scene, the French and Indians
seemed everywhere. Some of the attackers seized the watch and others who got
outside first. Quickly they took them to different members of the war party
whose job it was to secure and lead away captives. Others broke open doors and
windows of the houses and, rushing in, seized or slew the still groggy occupants.
Still others broke into the empty houses outside the palisade, rifling them
of "provisions, money, cloathing, drinks." The "greatest part"
of the attackers, though, battled with those townspeople able to fight back,
while also "fireing houses, killing all they could yt made any resistance:
alsoe killing cattle, hogs, sheep."
One of the first houses attacked was that of the Reverend John Williams:
They came to my house in the beginning of the onset, and by their violent endeavors to break open doors and windows, with axes and hatchets, awakened me out of sleep; on which I leapt out of bed, and running towards the door perceived the enemy making their entrance into the house; I called to awaken two soldiers in the chamber, and returned to my bedside for my arms; the enemy immediately brake into the room, I judge to the number of twenty, with painted faces and hideous exclamations. I reached up my hands to the bed-tester for my pistol, uttering a short petition to God for everlasting mercies for me and mine. . . expecting a present passage through the valley of death. . . . Taking down my pistol, I cocked it, and put it to the breast of the first Indian that came up; but my pistol missing fire, I was seized by three Indians who disarmed me, and bound me naked, as I was in my shirt, and so I stood for near the space of an hour.
While Williams stood shivering he watched the enemy ransack his house, "entering in great numbers into every room." Some Indians threatened Williams, "holding up hatchets over my head, threatening to burn all I had." More horrible, Williams stood bound while some "cruel and barbarous" Indians murdered two of his children, six-year-old John and six-weekold Jerusha, as well as one of his two black servants, the children's nursemaid Parthena.
About an hour after sunup, Williams and his surviving family members were "carried
out of the house for a march, and saw many of the houses of my neighbors in
flames, perceiving the whole fort, one house excepted, to be taken." Then,
even as the Indians set fire to his house and barn, Williams and his family
were taken from town. Carried over the Deerfield River to a spot a mile or so
northwest of town, they met "a great number" of their "Christian
neighbors, men, women, and children."
The fighting and pillaging went on for perhaps three hours. Although Deerfield's settlers had been horribly surprised, once aroused--to use Governor Dudley's appraisal--they "defended themselves tolerably." As the fighting continued and the number of dead and captured rose, one Deerfield house held fast. It was the home of Benoni Stebbins, located just north of Heverend Williams's home in the middle of the fort. Although not "fortified" in the classic sense of having heavy doors and slots for shooting, the house had walls "filled up with brick" which repulsed Indian rifle fire. Since the house was "attaqued later than some others," those inside were "well awakened": seven men, plus the women and children of their families. Standing "stoutly to their Armes, firing upon ye Enemy & ye Enemy upon them," "with more than ordinary Couridge" they kept fighting, ultimately discouraging the enemy so that they "be-took themselves to the next house & ye Meeting house."
At the "next house," in the northwest corner of the fort, the attackers were again frustrated. Now they were trying to break into Ensign John Sheldon's fortified house, but its small windows and overhanging second floor made this difficult. Eventually the Indians chopped a small hole in the heavily reinforced, nail-studded front door. Aiming a gun inside, one of the Indians shot and killed Mrs. Sheldon in her bedroom. Still, the Indians could not break in, nor did they succeed in setting the house on fire.
Meanwhile, after the mass of French and Indian attackers had moved on from the Stebbins house, its defenders kept fighting. In fact, the small band inside battled with "no Respite" for over two hours, from "about an hour before day till ye Sun about one hour & halfhigh." Firing as many as forty times each, the seven men made the enemy pay. One Indian captain was shot, as well as "one Frentchman, a Gentile man to appearance" (an ensign), plus many others. Finally, though, their ammunition and their energy were "almost spent."
"At that very pintch, ready to yield," thirty men from Hadley and Hatfield "rushed in upon ye Enemy & made a shot upon them, at wch time they Quitted their Assaileing ye house & ye fort alsoe." At the very beginning of the attack, one lad from the fort had escaped. Leaping out a back window and then clambering over the palisade, young John Sheldon had rushed through the darkness toward the valley towns below, tearing his shirt into strips of cloth to bind up his bare feet. Even before he reached the settlements below, the light of the burning town had given notice of the attack on Deerfield. Quickly a party of thirty men had raced north toward the town.
It was roughly nine o'clock in the morning when the soldiers from Hadley and Hatfield burst into town through the south gate. Seeing them, the Indians still fighting in town (many had already left with the prisoners) quickly fled. Others who had continued looting the empty houses also raced away; some panicked, leaving behind guns, hatchets, pistols, blankets, and other supplies. As soon as the Indians were outside the town's north gate, the women and children from the Stebbins house ran to Captain Wells's fortified house south of the fort. Meanwhile, roughly fifteen surviving Deerfield men and six garrison soliders joined the troop of thirty. Now the English--"whose courage was more worthy of applaus than their conduct, " as one contemporary later noted--chased the fleeing Indians north across the meadows toward the river. At first they had great success, "killing and wounding many of them. "But they rushed on headlong, as they later claimed, "with utmost earnestness and resolution," yet mindlessly and "imprudently" according to a different witness. Many even cast off their bulky coats and gloves during the chase. Captain Wells called for a retreat, but the men paid him no heed.
They soon paid a price for their wild chase. A mile from the fort the soldiers dashed into an ambush, sprung by the larger number of Indians who had already left the village and were by now rested and ready. Overpowered, the band of fifty retreated to the fort, but not before nine of their party were killed and several others wounded.
Once the soldiers got back inside and secured the garrison, the Indians drew off. Soon they were all across the river, and by day's end they were six miles away. With them the Indians had taken 109 prisoners-almost two-fifths of the townspeople of Deerfield.
Back in town, even as houses and barns continued to burn, the exhausted, numbed survivors bound up their wounded and counted their losses. They were staggering. Of the 291 people who had gone to sleep in Deerfield just hours before only 133 remained alive in town. Beyond the 109 captured, 44 residents of Deerfield had been killed: 10 men, 9 women, and 25 children. Five of the garrison soldiers also died, as did seven Hadley and Hatfield men who fell in the meadows fight, for a total death toll of fifty-six. Seventeen out of forty-one houses in town, both within and without the fort, were burned. Personal possessions were lost not only in those houses that burned but in many more that were rifled.
The destruction and death were not spread evenly over the town. As might be
expected, the houses to the north took the heavier blows, while the south end
of town below the fort remained largely intact. Some men and their families
escaped entirely; others were obliterated. John Hawks, Jr., his wife, and three
children smothered to death in a cellar while fire raged above them. Godfrey
Nims endured a day of hell: four children slain, his wife and three other children
captured, his house, barn, and all within burned. John Williams, too, bore terrible
losses. Although one son, Eleazer, was spared by his absence that day in Hadley,
two of Williams's children were slain on the first day and his wife on the second;
his two black servants were also killed; and the minister himself and his other
five children were all captured.
The French and Indians were not without their losses. Although Canadian governor Vaudreuil later boasted that his forces lost but eleven men, John Williams learned through French soldiers in Canada that the attackers had lost over forty French and Indians, including a prominent "Macqua" Indian and a French officer.
News of the English disaster spread quickly. By midnight of the day of the attack, close to eighty men had gathered in Deerfield. With the snow so deep and without snowshoes, however, an attack on the retreating party seemed impossible. Besides, the more the colonists contemplated such an attack, the more difficult it sounded. It was
doubtfull whether we could ataque ym before day, being in a capacitie to follow ym but in their path, they in a Capacitie to flank us on both sides, being fitted with snow shoes, & with treble our Numbr, if not more, & some were much concerned for the Captives, Mr Wm's famyly Especially, whome ye enemy would kill, if we come on, & it was concluded we should too much Expose our men.
By two o'clock the next afternoon Connecticut men began to come into town, and by nightfall there were 250 men in Deerfield. Again, though, plans to pursue the enemy fell through:
the aforesd Objections, & the weather verry Warme, & like to be so, (& so it was with Raine) we judge it impossible to travill, but as aforesd to uttermost disadvantage, Especially when we came up to ym to an attaque, (Providence put a bar in our way) we Judge we should Expose o'rselves to ye Loss of men and not be able, as the case was circumstanced, to offend the Enemy or Rescue our Captives, which was ye End we aimed at in all, therefore desisted, & haveing buried the dead, saved what we Could of Cattll, hogg, & sheep, & other Estate, out of ye spoyles of ye Remayneing Inhabitants.
There was to be no third marshaling of forces. Some Hampshire County men remained in town and "settled a Garrisson of 30 men or upwards, undr Capt Wells." The rest "drew off to other places." Deerfield was left alone, barely alive.
The French and their allied Indians had achieved an enormously successful raid. In this, fortune surely had smiled on them. They could not have expected to gain such total surprise; they could not count on an "unfaithful" watch; they could not predict that the deep snows would drift up against the palisade, making their entry into town so easy. In fact, they may even have expected to split up their forces and send small raiding parties throughout the valley, as they had done in previous wars, but found Deerfield too vulnerable to pass up.
Yet beyond good fortune lay plans and tactics which explain a great deal about why the French and Indians struck where, when, and as they did. The attack on Deerfield was far more than a random assault on some" unoffending hamlet." Overall military strategy for Queen Anne's War dictated such a strike. As of 1703, when the war was still in its infancy, the French wanted to establish the "ground rules" for the conflict. By making strong thrusts along the two-hundred-mile New England frontier, they could--and did--force the colonists onto the defensive. The 1703 summer raids on Wells and Saco began the process. By then attacking Deerfield, at the extreme other end of the frontier, the French served notice that all of New England was in jeopardy. As in 1689, at the beginning of King William's War, the French had dictated the war's battleground.
French and Indian tactics were equally effective. By attacking in late winter, "out of season," they added a new level of terror to New England. The blow to Deerfield meant that the English could never let down their guard. Through the two previous wars fought in the valley, fifty-five of fifty-seven enemy attacks had taken place between March and November. As it turned out, twenty-eight of twenty-nine blows during Queen Anne's War also fell during that period. Yet the fateful twenty-ninth attack, on February 29, 1704, was the strike at Deerfield. In planning this winter raid, Governor Vaudreuil may well have recalled the great success of a similarly "aberrant" assault, the surprise attack on Schenectady in early February of 1690. That raid, near the start of King William's War, had resulted in sixty English dead and twenty-seven captured.
The actual type of assault--a well-planned, pre-dawn sneak attack--was nothing new. Over three wars now, the colonists of New England had become accustomed to this style of fighting. Even when the Indians sent a large war party, attacks invariably came without warning. The surprise attack on Deerfield may have been larger and bloodier than most, but it was different in degree, not in kind.
The size of the force that struck Deerfield was unusual, though not unique. During these wars the Indians usually sent out parties of fewer than fifty men. Still, the two-hundred- to three-hundred-man force that shattered Deerfield in 1704 was not without precedent. Schenectady and Salmon Falls in 1690, York in 1692, Oyster Bay in 1694, Wells and Saco in 1703, Haverhill in 1708--all were raids of roughly the same scale.
The identity of the French-allied Indians in this raid was distinctive, however. In fact, the identity and goals of the Indians that attacked Deerfield make the incident emblematic of the complexity of these wars. As noted above, French strategy in this war depended on keeping New England on the defensive, and the Abenaki Indians were the key to control. Since 1701 the French had worked hard to maintain good relations with these allies and seemed to be successful. At a meeting in 1701, after the peace pipe was passed, the Abenaki representative had reassured the French that his tribe would be "always attached" to them. Nevertheless, when Massachusetts governor Dudley engineered his series of meetings with the Abenaki, Vaudreuil had every reason to be alarmed. Although he successfully urged the Abenaki into raids on Wells and Saco in the summer of 1703, the Canadian governor remained apprehensive. Writing to French minister Pontchartrain about these Eastern Indians, he reminded his Minister of Marine of "the absolute necessity which we [are] under to embroil them with the English. . . not only for their safety but even for our proper advantage." If the French could convince the Abenaki to continue fighting for them, those Indians would "be a cover to the entire Southern frontier of the government of Montreal." In essence, Vaudreuil commented, "English and Abenaki must be kept irreconcilable enemies."
By late 1703 Deerfield had become an explicit part of French Abenaki relations. According to a report from Vaudreuil to Pontchartrain, after the French-inspired Abenaki raids in Maine the previous summer, "the English having killed some of these Indians, they [the Indians] . . . demanded assistance. This obliged us . . . to send thither Sieur de Rouville, . . . who attacked a fort"--Deerfield. The raid on Deerfield proved of great consequence, Vaudreuil later claimed. It "accomplished everything expected of it, for independent of the capture of a fort, it showed the Abenakis that they could truly rely on our promises; and this is what they told me at Montreal. . . when they came to thank me. " Vaudreuil acknowledged that bringing in the Abenaki would "not fail to cost his Majesty something, but the advantage we derive from it will richly compensate us in the end." The Abenaki, too, were pleased. When they met in council with Vaudreuil, the tribe's representative thanked the Canadian governor for "the pleasure you have made [given] me to send me this winter a party to avenge me against the English . . . I knew in this more than ever that you regarded me as your true child."
The French had another motive for bringing the Abenaki to their side. It centered, predictably, on the Iroquois. Although the French and Iroquois had agreed to neutrality in 1701, the previous half century of strife kept the French nervous. The Iroquois might be weakened, but their residual strength and strategic importance remained critical. Thus, at a conference on October 24, 1703, Vaudreuil promised the Iroquois that the French would stay away from them and would "not wage war against the English except in the direction of Boston." This the Iroquois approved, for they now wanted no part of the English-French conflict; in fact, they even urged the French to seek peace with the English. At the same time, the French realized that the Iroquois might still rejoin their traditional ally. For this reason, Abenaki support was crucial, for if those Eastern Indians could provide protection for the French frontier along the St. Lawrence, that "would enable us," in Vaudreuil's words, "in case of a rupture, to resist the Iroquois." Even well after the assault on Deerfield, Vaudreuil continued to regard "the continuance of the peace with the Iroquois as the principal affair of this country [emphasis added]."
From the Indian standpoint as well as from the French, the raid on Deerfield proved important. No mere pawns in a European game, the Indians involved in the attack had their own goals. First, French and Abenaki aims coincided in the attack on Deerfield because each side wanted to make sure it could trust the other. Apart from their relationship with the French, though, the Abenaki had their own reasons for wanting to strike at New England. Until the 1670s the Abenaki had lived throughout Maine. When King Philip's War broke out in 1675, they had not joined the fighting. The English failed to appreciate this, however. This soon proved "very disastrous to the English," for by attacking "without exception all the. . . tribes who Surround them," they only added to the ranks of their enemies.
Among these new enemies were the Abenaki. Late in the war the Abenaki took in Indians from some of the shattered tribes of southern New England, apparently including some from the Connecticut valley. At this same time, many of the Abenaki decided "to take Refuge in the country inhabited by the French." Those Abenaki "found shelter at . . . Sillery"--the place from which the French and Indians launched their raid on Deerfield some twenty-seven years later. It is likely, then, that some Abenaki were anxious to strike at Deerfield because it stood on native land, land from which they had been driven a generation before.
One other force that motivated the Indians to attack Deerfield was money. By 1704 Europeans had profoundly altered the economies of many if not all of the tribes of eastern North America. It is doubtful that there were Indians by then who did not seek European guns, knives, tools, and clothing. Thus, the idea of exchanging English prisoners for money appealed to the Abenaki; it also helps explain why so many Deerfielders were captured and not killed. That this kind of exchange took place is clear. The Indians holding young Stephen Williams, the minister's son, got £40 for selling him to the French, and Stephen's father reportedly brought even more. Even more crucial for understanding initial Indian motives for the attack on Deerfield, though, was Governor Vaudreuil's standing offer for English prisoners: As he recalled for the Abenaki in 1706, "since the beginning of this war I declared to you that this manner of paying for scalps seemed too inhuman, but that I would give you ten Spanish crowns for each prisoner [emphasis added]."
Thus, general French military strategy, French concern for Indian alliances, Indian concern for French support, possibly Indian desire to avenge earlier English destruction, even the Indian economy--all played parts in bringing about the devastation at Deerfield. Vastly more complex than simply some wanton act, the raid made sense--at least from the French and Indian points of view.
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