This stone marks the grave of the victims of the Deerfield massacre on February 29, 1704.
GENERAL MONTCALM’S HEADQUARTERS AT QUEBEC
The French were better wood fighters than the English, and throughout these struggles had a disagreeable habit of raiding English settlements. Twice they captured villages within a day’s march of sacred Boston. Their most spectacular achievement was the raid upon Deerfield in 1704, upon which an epic poem might be written. Depict the French and Indians stealing two hundred miles through the frozen wilderness; the Puritans in Deerfield trusting to their stockade; the sudden dash at dawn; the shots, cries, screams; the Indians chopping away with their hatchets at Parson Williams’ front door, till they made a loophole through which to fire at the family; the file of captives quickly marshaled for the terrible northward trail; the valiant little band from Hatfield pursuing the Indians, many times their number, and getting a bad licking; the wrath and fear of all New England at this appearance of the fearful enemy!
QUEBEC IN COLONIAL DAYS
From an old print.
The people of Haverhill, Massachusetts, have put up a statue to a militant woman named Hannah Dustin, who, when carried away a captive, had the sweet thought to brain half a dozen of her captors, and so get home again with her children. Had there been more Hannah Dustins, there would have been fewer French raids!
In all these wars the English colonists excelled as fighting seamen. We may still be proud of William Phipps and his levy of colonial forces, who took Port Royal in 1690. Who shall envy him his well earned title of Sir William, and his fair brick house on Green Lane, Boston? Think of the New England men, aided by a small British fleet, sallying out in 1745 to attack Louisburg, the proudest fortress in the western world,—laying siege to it, digging trenches before it, complimenting it with bombshells, and compelling it to surrender! That was worth a score of Deerfields!
