Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/178

 tomahawk from his side, and with this instrument of death killed and scalped him. When I beheld this second scene of inhuman butchery, I fell to the ground senseless, with my infant in my arms, it being under, and its little hands in the hair of my head. How long I remained in this state of insensibility I know not.

"The first thing I remember was my raising my head from the ground, and my feeling myself exceedingly overcome with sleep. I cast my eyes around, and saw the scalp of my dear little boy, fresh bleeding from his head, in the hand of one of the savages, and sunk down to the earth again, upon my infant child. The first thing I remember, after witnessing this spectacle of woe, was the severe blows I was receiving from the hands of the savages, though at this time I was unconscious of the injury I was sustaining. After a severe castigation, they assisted me in getting up, and supported me when up.

"In the morning one of them left us, to watch the trail or path we had come, to see if any white people were pursuing us. During the absence of the Indian who was the one that claimed me, the other, who remained with me, and who was the murderer of my last boy, took from his bosom his scalp and prepared a hoop, and stretched the scalp upon it. Those mothers who have not seen the like done by one of the scalps of their own children—and few, if any, ever had so much misery to endure—will be able to form but faint ideas of the feelings which then harrowed up my soul !"

While returning from this expedition, they fell in with the third war party from Quebec, and joining forces an attack was made on Casco. A part of the garrison having been destroyed, the remainder surrendered as prisoners of war.

The terror produced by these attacks on the colonies not only helped to confirm the rumors and accounts of the implacable hatred of the French Roman Catholics against all whom they esteemed as heretics, but also roused up a determined spirit of vengeance. Accordingly delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, met in New York, in May, 1690; and, following Leisler's suggestion, a plan for the conquest of Canada was resolved upon. A fleet and army were to sail from Boston to attack Quebec, and nine hundred men were to be raised in Connecticut and New York, to march by land against Montreal.

Sir William Phipps, a man of little competency but considerable previous success, having visited and plundered Acadie with a small fleet and some seven or eight hundred men, was placed in command of the expedition by sea. It consisted of thirty-two vessels and two thousand men, the larger part of which were pressed into the service. Three ships sent by Leisler from New York joined this enterprise. The land forces were commanded by Winthrop, son of the late governor of Connecticut, Milbourne acting as commissary.

The result of both expeditions was singularly mortifying. Schuyler and the Iroquois who had pressed forward to Montreal were repulsed by the