FullReads

“Clauditur hoc tumulo corpus Reverendi pii doctique viri D. Benjamin Rolfe, ecclesiae Christi quae est in Haverhill pastoris fidelissimi; qui domi suae ab hostibus barbare trucidatus. A laboribus suis requievit mane diei sacrae quietis, Aug. XXIX, anno Dom. MDCCVIII. AEtatis suae XLVI.”

Of the prisoners taken, some escaped during the skirmish, and two or three were sent back by the French officers, with a message to the English soldiers, that, if they pursued the party on their retreat to Canada, the other prisoners should be put to death. One of them, a soldier stationed in Captain Wainwright’s garrison, on his return four years after, published an account of his captivity. He was compelled to carry a heavy pack, and was led by an Indian by a cord round his neck. The whole party suffered terribly from hunger. On reaching Canada the Indians shaved one side of his head, and greased the other, and painted his face. At a fort nine miles from Montreal a council was held in order to decide his fate; and he had the unenviable privilege of listening to a protracted discussion upon the expediency of burning him. The fire was already kindled, and the poor fellow was preparing to meet his doom with firmness, when it was announced to him that his life was spared. This result of the council by no means satisfied the women and boys, who had anticipated rare sport in the roasting of a white man and a heretic. One squaw assailed him with a knife and cut off one of his fingers; another beat him with a pole. The Indians spent the night in dancing and singing, compelling their prisoner to go round the ring with them. In the morning one of their orators made a long speech to him, and formally delivered him over to an old squaw, who took him to her wigwam and treated him kindly. Two or three of the young women who were carried away captive married Frenchmen in Canada and never returned. Instances of this kind were by no means rare during the Indian wars. The simple manners, gayety, and social habits of the French colonists among whom the captives were dispersed seem to have been peculiarly fascinating to the daughters of the grave and severe Puritans.

At the beginning of the present century, Judith Whiting was the solitary survivor of all who witnessed the inroad of the French and Indians in 1708. She was eight years of age at the time of the attack, and her memory of it to the last was distinct and vivid. Upon her old brain, from whence a great portion of the records of the intervening years had been obliterated, that terrible picture, traced with fire and blood, retained its sharp outlines and baleful colors.