The uneasy disposition of the times upon the conclusion of the peace may be followed in Gov. Shute’s letter to the Jesuit Father Rasle, Feb. 21, 1718 (Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 112); in the conference with the Penobscots[935] and Norridgewocks, at Georgetown, Oct. 12, 1720 (Mass. Archives, xxix. 68); and in the letter of the eastern Indians (in French) to the governor, July 27, 1721 (Mass. Hist. Coll., xviii. 259).
C. Lovewell’s or Gov. Dummer’s War.—There are documents from the Penhallow Papers relative to the Indian depredations at the eastward in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, 1878, p. 21. Some of them antedate the outbreak of the war. Charlevoix (Shea’s ed., vol. v. 268) tells the story of the counter-missions of the French and English; and the Indians, incited by the French, made demands on the English, who held some of their chiefs as hostages in Boston. (Mass. Hist. Coll., 2d ser., viii. 259; N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 903; Kip, Jesuit Missions, 13.) The seeming truce with the Abenakis was further jeopardized by the act of seizing (Dec., 1721) the younger Baron de St. Castin, when he was taken to Boston for examination. After a detention of five months he was set at liberty.[936] A more serious source of complaints with the Indians before the war was the attempt to seize Father Rasle in Jan., 1722, by an expedition sent to Norridgewock under Col. Westbrook, but in the immediate charge of Capt. Harmon. (N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 910; Rasle in Kip, 15.) Rasle was warned and escaped, but the party found letters from Vaudreuil in his cabin, implicating the Quebec governor as having incited the increasing depredations of the Indians.[937]
The war began in the summer of 1722. Gov. Shute made his declaration, July 25, 1722 (Mass. Archives, xxxi. 106), and the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, at the Thursday lecture, Aug. 16, made it the subject of his discourse. (Brinley, i. no. 429.)
In March, 1723, Col. Thos. Westbrook made a raid along the Penobscot. (Mass. Hist. Coll., xxii. 264; N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 933.)
Capt. Jeremiah Moulton, under orders of Col. Westbrook, made a scouting expedition in the early summer of 1723, and dated at York, July, 4, his report to Lieut.-Gov. William Dummer, which is printed in the Maine Hist. and Genealog. Recorder, i. p. 204. (Cf. Penhallow, 96; Niles in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxv. 345; Williamson, ii. 120.) In 1723 there was an Indian raid on Rutland, in which the Rev. Joseph Willard and two children were killed, and two others were carried off. (Cf. Israel Loring’s Two Sermons, Boston, 1724, cited in Brinley, i. no. 1,928.)
A conference was held at Boston, August 22, 1723, of which there is a printed account among the Belknap Papers (MSS.), in the Mass. Hist. Soc. library.
On the 21st July, 1724, there was another conference with the Indians held at St. Georges fort. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 154.)
In Aug., 1724, Moulton and Harmon were sent to make an end of Rasle’s influence. They surprised the Norridgewock settlement, and Rasle was killed in the general slaughter. The opposing chroniclers do not agree as to the manner of his death. Charlevoix (Shea’s ed., v. 279) says he was shot and mutilated at the foot of the village cross. The English say they had intended to spare him, but he refused quarter, and had even killed a captive English boy in the confusion. His scalp and those of other slain were taken to Boston.[938]
