1694.] MASSACRE. 367 



horrible. A hundred and four persons, chiefly 

 women and children half naked from their beds, 

 were tomahawked, shot, or killed by slower and 

 more painful methods. Some escaped to the forti- 

 fied houses, and others hid in the woods. Twenty- 

 seven were kept alive as prisoners. Twenty or 

 more houses were burned ; but, what is remark- 

 able, the church was spared. Father Thury entered 

 it during the massacre, and wrote with chalk on 

 the pulpit some sentences, of which the purport is 

 not preserved, as they were no doubt in French or 

 Latin. 



Thury said mass, and then the victors retreated 

 in a body to the place where they had hidden their 

 canoes. Here Taxous, dissatisfied with the scalps 

 that he and his band had taken, resolved to have 

 more ; and with fifty of his own warriors, joined by 

 others from the Kennebec, set out on a new enter- 

 prise. " They mean," writes Villieu in his diary, 

 " to divide into bands of four or fi.Ye, and knock 

 people in the head by surprise, which cannot fail 

 to produce a good effect." 1 They did in fact fall 

 a few days after on the settlements near Groton, 

 and killed some forty persons. 



Having heard from one of the prisoners a rumor 

 of ships on the way from England to attack Quebec, 

 Villieu thought it necessary to inform Frontenac 

 at once. Attended by a few Indians, he travelled 

 four days and nights, till he found Bigot at an 



1 " Casser des testes a la surprise apres s'estre divises en plusieurs 

 bandes de quatre au cinq, ce qui ne peut manquer de faire un bon effect." 

 Villieu, Relation. 



