The First Frontier

by Scott Weidensaul

  “dull weather”: Gyles 1736, 6n.

  [>] “Brother Waldron”: Ibid.

  [>] “I cross out”: R. H. Howard and Henry E. Crocker, eds., A History of New England (Boston: Crocker, 1881), 2:217.

  “Our Enimies are”: Quoted in Baxter 1897, 5:2.

  [>] “one watch coate”: Quoted in Baxter 1907, 9:29.

  “Tow hwendred musquitt”: Ibid.

  “Briches”: Ibid., 9:30.

  “the air of that place”: Gyles 1736, i.

  “considerable Difficulties”: Ibid., ii.

  [>] several hundred Abenakis: Estimates on the size of the war party vary from about one hundred (Parkman 1911) to three hundred to four hundred in seventy canoes, according to English captives and contemporary accounts (Paltsits 1905).

  [>] led by Madockawando: As with many of the Indians—both individuals and groups—living on the Maritime Peninsula in the seventeenth century, Madockawando’s precise ethnicity is debatable. Though usually described as a Penobscot, he is also referred to by French sources as a Maliseet (Bourque 1989). Moxus is usually described as a Canibas from the Kennebec River. That tribal name is now considered synonymous with Penobscot and Kennebec.

  [>] “The Baron of Saint Castiens”: Lahontan’s New Voyages to North-America, ed. Ruben Thwaites (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1905), 1:328.

  “The Yelling”: Gyles 1736, 2.

  “glittering in his Hand”: Ibid.

  [>] “offered me no abuse”: Ibid.

  “strange Indians”: Ibid., 3. Moxus, who lived along the mid-coast of Maine and had many encounters with the English settlers, may have been genuinely upset that Maliseets in the war party had wounded Thomas Gyles, although John Gyles gives no hint of a special relationship between Moxus and his father. Human nature being what it is, Moxus may simply have been passing the responsibility to the Maliseets, the “strange Indians” in the war party, for what would have been a bloody attack regardless. It’s unlikely, after all, that Moxus and other local Wapánahkis would have participated in the raid but not attacked the English personally.

  “My Father replied”: Ibid.

  “He parted with”: Ibid.

  “She asked me”: Ibid., 4.

  [>] “I . . . dare not”: Ibid., 5.

  “I had rather follow”: Ibid.

  Mrs. Williams was killed: Age and gender played a remarkably consistent role in determining which captives were likely to survive after a raid. Of the 112 English settlers taken from Deerfield, for example, 20 died on the march north, notes John Demos in The Unredeemed Captive (1994), his highly readable account of the attack and its aftermath. Three out of 4 infants taken were killed, while 31 of the 35 children ages three to twelve survived. All 21 teenagers made it to Canada, while 10 of the 26 women died (including one killed after suffering a miscarriage). Only 4 of the 26 adult men died, I by murder, I from wounds suffered in the attack, and 2 from starvation. “The moral of all this seems clear. If you are living at Deerfield in 1704, and if capture is your fate, it’s better by far to be a grown man than a woman, and best of all to be a teenager” (Demos 1994, 39).

  “scattered sheep”: John Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion (1795; repr., Springfield, MA: H. R. Hunting, 1908), 61.

  [>] her Mohawk name: Williams’s Mohawk name is spelled in various ways in Kahnawake mission records, including 8aongot and Gonoangote; see Demos 1994.

  she remained firmly: Williams was married to a Mohawk by 1713, when she was sixteen. Her husband, François Xavier Arosen, was probably a decade older. A New York trader who met Eunice that year, in hopes of negotiating her release, reported that she had a fierce desire to remain in Kahnawake. In the trader’s opinion, the marriage was a love match. In fact, the couple remained together until his death in 1765. She died twenty years later, at age eighty-nine. That year, one of their grandsons began regular visits to Deerfield, and in 1800 two of his sons—Eunice’s great-grandchildren—started studies at a nearby school.

  “At Home I had”: Gyles 1736, 5.

  “where the other Squaws”: Ibid.

  “laid down a Pledge”: Ibid.

  “A Captive among”: Ibid.

  [>] “By and by”: Ibid., 6.

  wolastoqiyik, “the people of wolastokuk”: These and other Maliseet words are from Francis and Leavitt 2008. In Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, the name for the cultural group as a whole is waponahkiyik, and the name for their homeland is waponahkik. I have retained the Penobscot form used earlier in the book to avoid confusion.

  [>] Meductic, the chief village: Like many place names of Native origin, there are multiple spellings of the name of this fort, including Medoctec. Gyles rendered it as “Medoctack-Fort.” Although it was the primary Maliseet settlement in the 1680s, it was abandoned less than a century later.

  “I comforted myself”: Gyles 1736, 6.

  [>] “seiz’d by each Hand”: Ibid., 7.

  “’till one would think”: Ibid.

  “’till the Blood”: Ibid.

  “and if he cry out”: Ibid.

  “got his head”: John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England & the Summer Isles (1624; repr., Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons, 1907), 1:101.

  “I look’d on one”: Gyles 1736, 7.

  [>] “I met with no Abuse”: Ibid., 8.

  “It is not really accurate”: Haviland and Power 1994, 162.

  [>] “shaking their Hands”: Gyles 1736, 10.

  “GOD wonderfully provides”: Ibid., 9.

  [>] “This was occasioned”: Ibid., 12.

  “a stout, ill-natur’d”: Ibid., 19.

  “I told him”: Ibid.

  [>] “I . . . follow’d him”: Ibid.

  “And I don’t remember”: Ibid.

  “expecting every Minute”: Ibid., 18.

  “I went to him”: Ibid.

  [>] “a most ambitious”: Ibid., 14.

  “puffing & blowing”: Ibid.

  “At every turn”: Ibid., 15.

  “the heat of the Weather”: Ibid.

  “not brought over”: Ibid., 21.

  “Were it not”: Ibid., 20.

  [>] “He said, that I”: Ibid., 36.

  “Malicious persons”: Ibid., 32.

  “I . . . went into the Woods”: Ibid., 33.

  “Monsieur Decbouffour”: Ibid.

  [>] “I had not liv’d”: Ibid., 34.

  “Little English”: Ibid., 37.

  “‘Little English,’ we have”: Ibid.

  [>] “that he would do”: Ibid., 39.

  “I made him”: Ibid., 34.

  [>] “a gross Mistake”: Ibid., 10n.

  “part horror story”: Vaughan and Clark 1981, 94.

  the story of Hannah Duston: The family’s last name is spelled several ways in historical documents, including Durtson, Dunstan, Dustin, and Dustan. “Duston” is how the name appears in Haverhill town records from the time, although the only extant signature by Thomas is “Dustan.”

  [>] “go back into the woods”: George Wingate Chase, The History of Haverhill, Massachusetts (Haverhill, MA: G. W. Chase, 1861), 86.

  “his cruel and excessive”: Ibid., 122.

  “that wicked house”: Quoted in Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 1683–1686, ed. George F. Dow (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1975), 9:603.

  [>] heavy winter clothes: In part because concealing a winter pregnancy was fairly easy, April and May were the most common months for neonaticide—the murder of a newborn—by desperate mothers bearing children no one knew about. During the moralistic hysteria whipped up around the Salem witch trials, however, it appears that innocent mothers of stillborn infants may have been prosecuted for murder, since even today it can be difficult to determine whether a newborn was killed or died naturally.

  [>] “I was always”: Cotton Mather (1693), Warnings from the Dead, or Solemn Admonitions unto All People, quoted in Melvin Yazawa, ed., The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 39.<
br />
  “Disobedience to my Parents”: Ibid.

  “one of the greatest”: Cotton Mather, “Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1708,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th ser. (Boston: Plimpton Press, 1911), 7:165.

  “greedily bought up”: Ibid.

  On March 15: The date has been given variously as March 5 (most notably by Mather), 10, 15, and 16. Mirick 1832 consulted original town records, which he said listed March 15 as the date.

  [>] Jonathan Haynes and his: As was often the case, the captors split the hostages among several bands. Haynes and his sixteen-year-old son, Thomas, were taken to Maine, where they escaped. The other three children were sold to the French in Canada. Mary, age nineteen, was ransomed for a hundred pounds of tobacco, but her two brothers Jonathan and Joseph, ages twelve and seven when captured, remained in Canada for the rest of their lives, marrying into French families and becoming successful farmers. Their father, having once escaped Indian raiders, was not as lucky the second time. He was tomahawked in the winter of 1698 during an ambush in which another of his sons was captured.

  “Tawney”: Cotton Mather (1692), “A Brand Pluck’d out of the Burning,” in Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648–1706, ed. Lincoln Burr (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 16:261.

  “Indian Sagamores”: Ibid., 282.

  [>] he couldn’t risk: According to some accounts, including Cotton Mather’s retelling based on his interview of Hannah, and Mirick’s 1832 history of Haverhill, Thomas fired on their pursuers. Family tradition contends that he held off the attackers by bluff alone, which, given the limitations of reloading a musket, seems likely.

  [>] about forty-five miles: Mather’s account states that Duston and the others were marched “a long travel of an hundred and fifty miles, more or less, within a few days ensuing” (Magnalia Christi Americana, with an introduction and occasional notes by Thomas Robbins [1702; repr., Hartford: Silas Andrus & Son, 1853], 2:635). Doubtless it felt that far, and most retellings since then have repeated the distance, but a straight-line measurement from Haverhill to Penacook, New Hampshire, is forty-five miles.

  the end of March: Mather’s account places these events on April 30, while most other accounts say March 30, which, given the distance covered, seems more likely. Because of the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the modern date would be around April 8, when there was a new moon.

  mol8demak: Laurent 1884 rendered this as “Morôdemak,” meaning “deep river” (p. 215).

  nikn tekw ok: Like most Indian place names, this is descriptive and not necessarily specific to one location. Laurent 1884 rendered it as nikattegw or nikôntegw, meaning “first branch, or outrunning stream or river . . . a channel” (p. 216).

  iglizmôniskwak: Spelling per Day 1994, 236.

  [>] “Not one of them”: Mary Rowlandson (1682), quoted in Salisbury 1997, 107.

  rape of Indian women: Perhaps because of different underlying cultural norms, sexual assaults against white female captives on the Great Plains were more common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though by no means the rule. There was no one, universal “Indian” behavior, just as there was no universal “white” or “European” behavior.

  [>] “sore and heavy blows”: Abigail Willy [Willey] (1683), quoted in Collections of the New-Hampshire Historical Society, ed. Nathaniel Bouton (Concord, NH: McFarland & Jenks, 1866), 8:147.

  [>] “pray’d the English way”: Quoted in Sewall 1927, 453. Sewall spoke with Duston, as did Mather, during her visit to Boston shortly after her escape.

  “If your God shall”: Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 2:635.

  “Strike ’em dere”: This quote, passed down through Duston family tradition, does not appear in either Mather’s or Sewall’s account.

  “heartened the nurse”: Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 2:635.

  [>] “[lay] Hold”: Mather, “Decennium Luctuosum,” 209.

  “he heard him Cry”: Ibid.

  an additional twenty acres: Based on “the old and generally received tradition” in Haverhill that the land “was bought with scalp money” (Chase, History of Haverhill, 195).

  [>] “[cut] off the scalps”: Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 2:636.

  “raging tigress”: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1836), “The Duston Family,” quoted in Lucy Maddox, Removals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 117.

  “a bloody old hag”: Ibid.

  “nothing ever seen”: Ibid.

  “These tired women”: Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, ed. Odell Shapard (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 239.

  “shifted into a dangerous”: Bruchac 2006.

  “mercy-killed”: Ibid.

  [>] “What, was Lizzy”: Shawn Regan, “Hannah Duston: Heroine or Villainess?” Haverhill (MA) Eagle-Tribune, August 18, 2006.

  “a psychotic murderer”: Constantine A. Valhouli, “Duston Is an Appropriate Symbol for Haverhill,” Haverhill (MA) Eagle-Tribune, August 25, 2006.

  “More than being”: Quoted in Brad Perriello, “Duston Tribute Appalls Abenaki,” Haverhill (MA) Eagle-Tribune, August 27, 2006.

  [>] “Must we be haunted”: Bruchac 2006.

  Chapter 7: “Oppressions, Grievances & Provocacons”

  [>] “Apalatchia”: James Moore (April 16, 1704), “An Account of What the Army from Thence Had Done, Under the Command of Colonel Moore,” Boston News-Letter, April 24–May 1, 1704, 2. The letter appeared in the second issue of what is generally credited with being the first successful newspaper in the English colonies.

  [>] “I now have”: Ibid.

  “the entire population”: José de Zúñiga y la Cerda to Philip V (1704), quoted in Mark F. Boyd, Hale G. Smith, and John W. Griffin, Here They Once Stood (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1951), 50.

  [>] up to 51,000 Indians: Estimates range from 24,000 to 51,000 Indians enslaved by the Carolinians, but historians admit that even the upper range is a conservative figure and the real total may have been much higher. Because the Carolinians were carrying on much of the slave trade under the bureaucratic radar—selling them off the books to buyers in the Caribbean, Middle Colonies, and New England to avoid paying taxes—records were probably intentionally misleading.

  [>] “gain [by] all”: Commons House of Assembly, September 17, 1703, in Journals of the Commons House of Assembly, quoted in Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1956), 79.

  [>] holahtas: The term holahta seems to have been used for a chief (possibly a paramount chief) only among the Apalachee and Timucua, while the Yamasee, Guale, and Tama to the north used mico. See Hann 1992 for a detailed discussion. Moore, for his part, referred to Don Patricio Hinachuba as “the cassik” (“An Account,” 2), cacique being a Spanish term of Caribbean origin applied to American Indian leaders.

  [>] “the crown of my king”: Don Patricio Hinachuba to José de Zúñiga y la Cerda, May 29, 1705, translated in Mark F. Boyd, “Further Consideration of the Apalachee Missions,” Americas 9 (April 1953): 474.

  [>] “having already almost”: Daniel Defoe (1705), “Party-Tyranny, or An Occasional Bill in Miniature, as Practiced in Carolina,” in Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650–1708, ed. Alexander S. Salley Jr. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 240.

  “a dark kingdom”: Peter Silver, “The Older South?” Reviews in American History 31 (2003): 193.

  [>] “the vilest race”: Gideon Johnson, quoted in William Stevens Perry, The History of the American Episcopal Church, 1587–1883 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885), 1:379.

  [>] “Deareskinnes dressed”: Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, introduction by Luther S. Livingston (1588; facs. ed., New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903), B2v.

  “such infinite Herds”: Thomas Ashe (1682), “Carolina, or A Description of the Present State of That Country,” in Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650–1708, ed. Al
exander S. Salley Jr. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 150.

  [>] haunting, blood-soaked: One example is recounted in Richard White’s excellent The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Seneca warriors raiding deep into what today would be Indiana came upon a Miami village while its fighting men were away. The Senecas killed or captured virtually everyone. Each night when they camped, the Senecas—who, like a number of northeastern tribes, practiced ritualized cannibalism—killed and cooked a child. “And every morning, they took a small child, thrust a stick through its head and sat it up on the path with its face toward the Miami town they had left. Behind the Senecas came the pursuing Miamis, and at every Seneca campsite, brokenhearted parents recognized their child” (pp. 4–5). According to Miami tradition, the bereaved pursuers ambushed the Senecas just shy of their own town somewhere in western New York, killing all but six of them.

  Yamasis, or Yamasee: The origin of the name is unclear. English spelling varied widely, and even today scholars use both Yamasee and Yamassee. I have followed Worth, “Yamasee,” 2004.

  [>] “We have been intirely”: Thomas Nairne to Edward Marston, August 20, 1705, quoted in Frank J. Klingberg, “Early Attempts at Indian Education in South Carolina: A Documentary,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 61 (January 1960): 2.

  “are now obliged”: Thomas Nairne to Charles Spencer, July 10, 1708, in Nairne’s Muskhogean Journals, ed. Alexander Moore (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), 75.

  [>] “assur’d me that”: John Lawson, History of North Carolina (1831; repr., Charlotte, NC: Observer Printing House, 1903), xiii.

  “the meaner sort”: Ibid., xi.

  five-hundred- to six-hundred-mile arc: Lawson put the distance at a thousand miles, which is an understandable exaggeration for a man laboriously following waterways.

  “which are so numerous”: Lawson, History of North Carolina, 22.

  [>] “Tuskeraro”: Ibid., 31.

  “Tho’ this be called”: John Barnwell, February 4, 1712, in “The Tuscarora Expedition: Letters of John Barnwell,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 9 (January 1908): 32.