At last the poor woman announced the gradual failure of her strength, and during the short time she was allowed to remain with her husband, expressed good wishes and prayers for him and her children. The narrative proceeds: "She never spake any discontented word as to what had befallen her, but with suitable expressions justified God in what had happened.... We soon made a halt, in which time my chief surviving master came up, upon which I was put into marching with the foremost, and so made my last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my eyes, and companion in many mercies and afflictions. Upon our separation from each other, we asked for each other grace sufficient for what God should call us to."
For a short time Mrs. Williams remained where her husband had left her, occupying her leisure in reading her Bible. He, as was necessary, went on, and soon had to ford a small and rapid stream, and climb a high mountain on its other side. Reaching the top very much exhausted, he was unburdened of his pack. Then his heart went down the steep after his wife. He entreated his master to let him go down and help her, but his desire was refused. As the prisoners one after another came up he inquired for her, and at length the news of her death was told to him. In wading the river she had been thrown down by the water and entirely submerged. Yet after great difficulty she had succeeded in reaching the bank, and had penetrated to the foot of the mountain. Here, however, her master had become discouraged with the idea of her maintaining the march, and burying his tomahawk in her head he left her dead. Mrs. Williams was the daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, the first minister of Northampton—an educated, refined, and noble woman. It is pleasant, while musing upon her sad fate, to recall that her body was found and brought back to Deerfield, where, long years after, her husband was laid by her side. And there to-day sleeps the dust of the pair beneath stones which inform the stranger of the interesting spot.
Others of the captives were killed upon the journey as convenience required. A journal kept by Stephen Williams, the pastor's son, who was only eleven years old when captured, reflects in an artless way every stage of the terrible journey: "They travelled," he writes, "as if they meant to kill us all, for they travelled thirty-five or forty miles a day.... Their manner was, if any loitered, to kill them. My feet were very sore, so I thought they would kill me also."
When the first Sabbath arrived, Mr. Williams was allowed to preach. His text was taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the verse in which occurs the passage, "My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity."
Thus they progressed, the life of the captives dependent in every case upon their ability to keep up with the party. Here an innocent child would be knocked upon the head and left in the snow, and there some poor woman dropped by the way and killed by the tomahawk. Arriving at White River, De Rouville divided his forces, and the parties took separate routes to Canada. The group to which Mr. Williams was attached went up White River, and proceeded, with various adventures, to Sorel in Canada, to which place some of the captives had preceded him. In Canada, all who arrived were treated by the French with great humanity, and Mr. Williams with marked courtesy. He proceeded to Chambly, thence to St. Francis on the St. Lawrence, afterward to Quebec, and at last to Montreal, where Governor Vaudreuil accorded him much kindness, and eventually redeemed him from savage hands.
Mr. Williams's religious experiences in Canada were characteristic of the times. He was there thrown among Romanists, a sect against which he entertained the most profound dislike—profound to the degree of inflammatory conscientiousness, not to say bigotry. His Indian master was determined he should go to church, but he would not, and was once dragged there, where, he says, he "saw a great confusion instead of any Gospel order." The Jesuits assailed him on every hand, and gave him but little peace. His master at one time tried to make him kiss a crucifix, under the threat that he would dash out his brains with a hatchet if he should refuse. But he did refuse, and had the good fortune to save his head as well as his conscience. Mr. Williams's own account of his stay in Canada is chiefly devoted to anecdotes of the temptations to Romanism with which he was beset by the Jesuits. His son Samuel was almost persuaded to embrace the faith of Rome, and his daughter Eunice was, to his great chagrin, forced to say prayers in Latin. But, for the most, the Deerfield captives proved intractable, and were still aggressively Protestant when, in 1706, Mr. Williams and all his children (except Eunice, of whom we shall say more anon), together with the other captives up to the number of fifty-seven, embarked on board a ship sent to Quebec by Governor Dudley, and sailed for Boston.
A committee of the pastor's people met their old clergyman upon his landing at Boston, and invited him to return to the charge from which he had, nearly three years before, been torn. And Mr. Williams had the courage to accept their offer, notwithstanding the fact that the war continued with unabated bitterness. In 1707 the town voted to build him a house "as big as Ensign Sheldon's, and a back room as big as may be thought convenient." This house is still standing (1902), though Ensign Sheldon's, the "Old Indian House in Deerfield," as it has been popularly called, was destroyed more than half a century ago. The Indian House stood at the northern end of Deerfield Common, and exhibited to its latest day the marks of the tomahawk left upon its front door in the attack of 1704, and the perforations made by the balls inside. The door is still preserved, and is one of the most interesting relics now to be seen in Memorial Hall, Deerfield.
For more than twenty years after his return from captivity, Mr. Williams served his parish faithfully. He took into his new house a new wife, by whom he had several children; and in this same house he passed peacefully away June 12, 1729, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the forty-fifth of his ministry.
Stephen Williams, who had been taken captive when a lad of eleven, was redeemed in 1705 with his father. In spite of the hardships to which he had been so early exposed, he was a fine strong boy when he returned to Deerfield, and he went on with his rudely interrupted education to such good effect that he graduated from Harvard in 1713 at the age of twenty. In 1716 he settled as minister at Longmeadow, in which place he died in 1772. Yet his manhood was not passed without share in the wars of the time, for he was chaplain in the Louisburg expedition in 1745, and in the regiment of Colonel Ephraim Williams in his fatal campaign in 1755, and again in the Canadian campaign of 1756. The portrait of him which is here given was painted about 1748, and is now to be seen in the hall of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, within four-score rods of the place where the boy captive was born, and from which he was carried as a tender child into captivity.