360 THE WAR IN ACADIA. [1693. 



terror seized them when, in the spring of 1693, 

 Convers, the defender of Wells, ranged the fron- 

 tier with a strong party of militia, and built another 

 stone fort at the falls of the Saco. In July, they 

 opened a conference at Pemaquid ; and, in August, 

 thirteen of their chiefs, representing, or pretending 

 to represent, all the tribes from the Merrimac to 

 the St. Croix, came again to the same place to con- 

 clude a final treaty of peace with the commissioners 

 of Massachusetts. They renounced the French 

 alliance, buried the hatchet, declared themselves 

 British subjects, promised to give up all prisoners, 

 and left five of their chief men as hostages. 1 The 

 frontier breathed again. Security and hope re- 

 turned to secluded dwellings buried in a treacher- 

 ous forest, where life had been a nightmare of 

 horror and fear; and the settler could go to his 

 work without dreading to find at evening his cabin 

 burned and his wife and children murdered. He 

 was fatally deceived, for the danger was not past. 

 It is true that some of the Abenakis were sin- 

 cere in their pledges of peace. A party among 

 them, headed by Madockawando, were dissatisfied 

 w r ith the French, anxious to recover their captive 

 countrymen, and eager to reopen trade with the 

 English. But there was an opposing party, led 

 by the chief Taxous, who still breathed war ; while 

 between the two was an unstable mob of warriors, 

 guided by the impulse of the hour. 2 The French 



1 For the treaty in full, Mather, Magnolia, II. 625. 



2 The state of feeling among the Abenakis is shown in a letter of 

 Thury to Frontenac, 11 Sept., 1694, and in the journal of Villebon for 

 1693. 



