220 THE THREE WAR-PARTIES. [1688-89, 



Hertel. It consisted of twenty-four Frenchmen, 

 twenty Abenakis of the Sokoki band, and five 

 Algonquins. After three months of excessive hard- 

 ship in the vast and rugged wilderness that inter- 

 vened, they approached the little settlement of 

 Salmon Falls on the stream which separates New 

 Hampshire from Maine ; and here for a moment 

 we leave them, to observe the state of this unhappy 

 frontier. 



It was twelve years and more since the great 

 Indian outbreak, called King Philip's War, had 

 carried havoc through all the borders of New Eng- 

 land. After months of stubborn fighting, the fire 

 was quenched in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and 

 Connecticut; but in New Hampshire and Maine it 

 continued to burn fiercely till the treaty of Casco, 

 in 1678. The principal Indians of this region were 

 the tribes known collectively as the Abenakis. 

 The French had established relations with them 

 through the missionaries ; and now, seizing the op- 

 portunity, they persuaded many of these distressed 

 and exasperated savages to leave the neighborhood 

 of the English, migrate to Canada, and settle first 

 at Sillery near Quebec and then at the falls of the 

 Chaudiere. Here the two Jesuits, Jacques and 

 Vincent Bigot, prime agents in their removal, took 

 them in charge ; and the missions of St. Francis 

 became villages of Abenaki Christians, like the 

 village of Iroquois Christians at Saut St. Louis. 

 In both cases, the emigrants were sheltered under 

 the wing of Canada; and they and their tomahawks 

 were always at her service. The two Bigots spared 



