In Nov., 1724, Capt. John Lovewell and two others had petitioned to be equipped to scour the woods to the eastward after Indians, and, the legislature acceding (Nov. 17) to their request, Lovewell enrolled his men and made three campaigns in quick succession. The journal of his second expedition (Jan.-Feb., 1724-5) is in the Mass. Archives, vol. lxxxvi., and is printed by Kidder in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1853, and in his Expeditions of Capt. John Lovewell. It was on the third of these expeditions, May 9, 1725, that Lovewell encountered the Indians near a pond in Fryeburg, Maine, now known as Lovewell’s pond, upon whose wood-girt surface the summer tourist to-day looks down from the summit of the Jockey-Cap. Their leader was killed early in the action, which lasted all day, and only nine of the English who remained alive were unwounded when the savages drew off.
The news reached Boston on the 13th of May. Kidder gives the despatches received by the governor, with the action of the council upon them. On the 17th an account was printed in the Boston Gazette, which is also in Kidder. The day before (May 16) the Rev. Thomas Symmes, of Bradford, who had gathered his information from some of those who had escaped, delivered a sermon in that town, which, when printed with an “historical preface or memoirs of the battle at Piggwacket,” became popular, and two editions were printed at Boston during the same year. Both editions are of the greatest rarity. The first is called: Lovewell lamented, or a Sermon occasion’d by the fall of the brave Capt. John Lovewell and several of his valiant company in the late heroic action at Piggwacket. Boston, 1725.[939] The other edition was entitled: Historical memoirs of the late fight at Piggwacket; with a sermon occasion’d by the fall of the brave Capt. John Lovewell and several of his valiant company.... The second edition, corrected. Boston, 1725.[940] A third edition was printed at Fryeburg, with some additions, in 1799. The narrative, but not the sermon, was later printed in Farmer and Moore’s Historical Collections, i. 25. At Concord (N. H.), in 1861, it was again issued by Nathaniel Bouton, as The original account of Capt. John Lovewell’s Great Fight with the Indians at Pequawket, May 8, 1725.[941] Mr. Frederic Kidder, in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg.,[942] Jan., 1853 (p. 61), printed an account of Lovewell’s various expeditions, with sundry documents from the Massachusetts Archives, which, together with the second edition of Symmes, were later, in 1865, embodied in his Expeditions of Capt. John Lovewell and his encounters with the Indians, including a particular account of the Pequauket battle.[943] This is a faithful reprint of the Symmes tract, while those of Farmer and Moore, and of Bouton, introduce matters from other sources. The bibliography of Symmes’s sermon is traced in Dr. S. A. Green’s Groton during the Indian Wars, p. 134.
The relations of the French to the Abenaki war during 1724-25 are shown in various documents printed in the N. Y. Coll. Docs., vol. ix., as when the French ministry prompts the governor of Canada to sustain the savages in their struggle with the English (p. 935); a memoir is registered upon their condition (p. 939); Intendant Begon reports on the war (p. 941); other letters are written (p. 945); and the ministry again counsel the governor to instigate further hostilities (p. 956).
A journal of a scout by Westbrook, beginning June 23, 1725, is among the Belknap Papers (MSS.).
Four eastern sagamores came to Boston, Nov. 10, 1725 (Mass. Archives, xxix. 191; Murdoch’s Nova Scotia, i. 429), and a treaty with them was signed Dec. 15, 1725, known as “Dummer’s treaty” (Mass. Archives, xxxiv.), which was ratified at Falmouth, Aug. 6, 1726. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 230; xxxiv. See also Penhallow, 117; N. H. Hist. Coll., i. 123; N. H. Prov. Papers, iv. 188; Niles in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxv. 360; Williamson, ii. 145, 147; Palfrey, iv. 443.)
This treaty was separately printed under the title of Conference with the Indians at the ratification of peace held at Falmouth, Casco Bay, by Governour Dummer, in July and August, 1726. Boston, 1726, pp. 24. It was reprinted in 1754. (Cf. Brinley, i. 432, 434; Harvard College library, 5325.32.)
There was another Indian treaty at Casco Bay, July 25, 1727. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 256.) In Akins’s Pub. Doc. of Nova Scotia is a fac-simile of a copy of this treaty, attested by Dummer, evidently made to be used by Cornwallis in 1749, in negotiating another treaty. (Cf. N. H. Hist. Coll., ii. 260, where the treaty is printed; and the explanation of the Indians in N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 966.)
This treaty of 1727 was separately printed as Conference with the Eastern Indians at the further ratification of the peace, held at Falmouth, in Casco Bay, in July, 1727. Boston, 1727, pp. 31. It was reprinted in 1754. (Cf. Brinley, i. 433, 434.)
Cf. also Conferences of Lieut.-Gov. Dummer with the Eastern Indians in 1726 and 1727. Boston, 1754. For the treaties of 1726-27, see also Maine Hist. Coll., iii. 377, 407; N. H. Prov. Papers, iv. 255-258; Palfrey, iv. 444.
There is in the Mass. Archives (xxix. 283) the document which resulted from a conference with the Eastern Indians in the council chamber in Boston, Dec. 9-Jan. 15, 1727-28.