[5] White's Incidents in the Early History of New England. See The Redeemed Captive returning to Zion, by Rev. John Williams, who was one of the Deerfield captives.
[6] In Summary, Historical and Political, by William Douglass, M. D., this is said to have been yellow fever.
CHAPTER II.
THE WILDERNESS DURING THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
By the easiest path, in summer and winter, of the larger streams, the English settlements were pushed into the wilderness, and where the alluvial land gave most promise of fertility the sunlight fell upon the virgin soil of new clearings, the log-houses of the pioneers arose, and families were gathered about new hearthstones. They were soon confronted by the old danger, for the Indians, jealous of their encroachments and covertly incited by the governor of Canada, presently began hostilities, and the gun again was as necessary an equipment of the husbandman afield as his axe or hoe or scythe, and his wife and children lived in a besetting fear of death, or a captivity almost as dreadful. Though England and France were at peace during the time for the five years beginning with 1720, a savage war was waged between the eastern Canadian Indians and the provinces of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
It was in these troublous times that the first permanent occupation was made in the unnamed region which is now Vermont. In 1723 it was voted by the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, that "it will be of great service to all the western frontiers, both in this and in the neighboring governments of Connecticut, to build a block-house above Northfield, in the most convenient place on the lands called the 'equivalent lands,'[7] and to post in it forty able men, English and western Indians, to be employed in scouting at a good distance up the Connecticut River, West River, Otter Creek, and sometime eastwardly above great Monadnock, for the discovery of the enemy coming toward any of the frontier towns, and so much of the said equivalent lands as shall be necessary for a block-house be taken up with the consent of the owners of the said land, together with five or six acres of their interval land to be broken up or ploughed for the present use of the western Indians, in case any of them shall think fit to bring their families hither."
Accordingly a site was chosen in the southeastern part of the present town of Brattleboro, and in February, 1724, the work was begun under the superintendence of Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton, by Lieutenant Timothy Dwight, with a force of "four carpenters, twelve soldiers with narrow axes, and two teams." At the beginning of summer the fort was ready for occupancy, and was named Fort Dummer, in honor of the lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. The fort was built of hewn logs laid horizontally in a square, whose sides were one hundred and eighty feet in length, and outside this was a stockade of square timbers twelve feet in length set upright in the ground. Within the inner inclosure, built against the walls, were the "province houses," the habitation of the garrison and other inmates, and themselves capable of stout defense, should its assailants gain entrance to the interior of the fort. In addition to the small-arms of the garrison, Fort Dummer was furnished with four patereros.[8] There was also a "Great Gun," used only as a signal, when its sudden thunder rolled through leagues of forest to summon aid or announce good tidings. On the 11th of October following its completion, the fort was attacked by seventy hostile Indians, and four or five of its occupants were killed or wounded.
Scouting parties frequently went out to watch for the enemy, sometimes up the Connecticut to the Great Falls, sometimes up West River, and thence across the Wilderness to the same point. Sometimes they were sent to the mountains at West River and the Great Falls, "to lodge on ye top," and from these lofty watch-towers the keen eyes of the rangers scanned the mapped expanse of forest, when it was green with summer leafage, or gorgeous as a parterre with innumerable autumnal hues, or veiled in the soft haze of Indian summer, or gray with the snows of winter and the ramage of naked branches, "viewing for smoaks" of hostile camp-fires. In July, 1725, Captain Wright, with a volunteer force of sixty men, scouted up the Connecticut to Wells River, and some distance up that stream, thence to the Winooski, which they followed till they came within sight of Lake Champlain, when, having penetrated the heart of the Wilderness farther than any English force had previously done, the scantiness of their provisions compelled a return.