Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/176

 Indians very well, and there was no danger whatever." According to the common practice, during times of peace, the Indians, who traded with the inhabitants, used to seek for and obtain a night's lodging. On this evening two squaws applied for leave to sleep by the hearth, which was readily granted at Waldron's and all the other houses save one. When the household was sunk in sleep, they arose, opened the doors, and giving an appointed signal, the Indians quietly stole in, set a guard at the door, and rushed into an inner room in which the major slept. The old man, now aged eighty, aroused by the noise, started up, and seizing his sword bravely drove his assailants back through one or two apartments, until stunned by a blow from a hatchet, he was secured and dragged out, and seated in an arm chair upon the hall table. "Judge Indians now!" insultingly exclaimed his captors ; and then each man drawing his knife, and scoring deep gashes across his naked breast, exclaimed—"Thus I cross out my account." Cruelly mangled, and spent with loss of blood, he rolled heavily from the table, and one of his tormentors held his own sword under him as he fell which terminated his bitter agony. Twenty others were killed; twenty-nine were carried off prisoners; and the village was burned. This was in the latter part of June, 1689. In August and September, several attacks were made on different points, as Pemaquid and Casco, which latter was repulsed by Church, the famous partisan in King Philip's war. All the settlements further east were broken up.

About the middle of October, Count Frontenac arrived in Canada, having been reappointed governor, and bringing: with him the Indians who had been carried to France as prisoners, and also abundant supplies of galleys and troops. Though a man now sixty-eight years old, Count Frontenac was full of vigor and energy, and he determined to invade New York by land and sea; and accordingly he fitted out three war parties to visit upon the English the same misery and suffering which Canada had recently experienced at the hands of the Iroquois, those firm allies of the Frenchman's enemies.

Schenectady was the point first devoted to destruction. An expedition, consisting of a hundred and ten men, set out in the bitter month of January, from Cagnawaga, nearly opposite Montreal on the St. Lawrence : they were mostly converted Mohawks, under the command of French officers. For twenty-two days they toiled through the heavy snows, enduring every species of hardship, intent only on blood, until, on the 8th of February, they reached the neighborhood of Schenectady. This was a small Dutch village on the Mohawk; consisting of some forty houses, and though protected by a palisade the gates were unguarded, and at midnight the people slept profoundly. Distance from, the French frontier and the severity of the winter had rendered them, as they thought, secure from attack; but they were most fearfully roused to a sense of their fatal neglect. The savage war-whoop thrilled every heart. There was no time to think of