in my arms one joyful night. Again we shifted our quarters, and when we had travelled eight or ten miles upon the snow and ice, came to a place where the Indians manufactured sugar, which they extracted from the maple trees. Here an Indian came to visit us, whom I knew, and could speak English. He asked me why I did not go to see my son Squire. I replied that I had lately been informed that he was dead. He assured me that he was yet alive, and but two or three miles off, on the opposite side of the lake. At my request he gave me the best directions he could to the place of his abode. I resolved to embrace the first opportunity that offered of endeavoring to search it out. While I was busy in contemplating this affair, the Indians obtained a little bread, of which they gave me a small share. I did not taste a morsel of it myself, but saved it all for my poor child, if I should be so lucky as to find him. At length, having obtained of my keepers leave to be absent for one day, I set off early in the morning, and steering, as well as I could, according to the directions which the frendly Indian had given me, I quickly found the place which he had so accurately marked out. I beheld, as I drew nigh, my little son without the camp; but he looked, thought I, like a starved and mangy puppy, that had been wallowing in the ashes. I took him in my arms, and he spoke to me these words, in the Indian tongue: "Mother, are you come?" I took him into the wigwam with me, and observing a number of Indian children in it, I distributed all the bread which I had reserved for my own child, among them all, otherwise I should have given great offence. My little boy appeared to be very fond of his new mother, kept as near me as possible while I staid, and when I told him I must go, he fell as though he had been knocked down with a club. But having recommended him to the care of Him that made him, when the day was far spent, and the time would permit me to stay no longer, I departed, you may well suppose with a heavy load at my heart. The tidings I had received of the death of my youngest child had, a little before, been confirmed to me beyond a doubt, but I could not mourn so heartily for the deceased as for the living child.

When the winter broke up, we removed to St. Johns; and through the ensuing summer, our principal residence was at no great distance from the fort at that place. In the mean time, however, my sister's husband, having been out with a scouting party to some of the English settlements, had a drunken frolic at the fort, when he returned. His wife, who never got drunk, but had often experienced the ill effects of her husband's intemperance, fearing what the consequence might

prove if he should come home in a morose and turbulent humor, to avoid his insolence, proposed that we should both retire, and keep out of the reach of it until the storm abated. We absconded accordingly, but so it happened that I returned and ventured into his presence, before his wife had presumed to come nigh him. I found him in his wigwam, and in a surly mood; and not being able to revenge upon his wife, because she was not at home, he laid hold of me, and hurried me to the fort, and, for a trifling consideration, sold me to a French gentleman whose name was Saccapee. 'Tis an ill wind certainly that blows nobody any good. I had been with the Indians a year lacking fourteen days; and, if not for my sister, yet for me, 'twas a lucky circumstance indeed, which thus at last, in an unexpected moment, snatched me out of their cruel hands, and placed me beyond the reach of their insolent power.

After my Indian master had disposed of me in the manner related above, and the moment of sober reflection had arrived, perceiving that the man who bought me had taken the advantage of him in an unguarded hour, his resentments began to kindle, and his indignation rose so high, that he threatened to kill me if he should meet me alone, or if he could not revenge himself thus that he would set fire to the fort. I was therefore secreted in an upper chamber, and the fort carefully guarded, until his wrath had time to cool. My service in the family to which I was now advanced, was perfect freedom in comparison of what it had been among the barbarous Indians. My new master and mistress were both as kind and generous towards me as I could anyways expect. I seldom asked a favor of either of them but it was readily granted; in consequence of which I had it in my power, in many instances, to administer aid and refreshment to the poor prisoners of my own nation, who were brought into St. Johns during my abode in the family of the above-mentioned benevolent and hospitable Saccapee. even in this family such trials awaited me as I had little reason to expect, but stood in need of a large stock of prudence, to enable me to encounter them. Must I tell you then, that even the good old man himself, who considered me as his property, and likewise a warm and resolute son of his, at that same time, and under the same roof, became both excessively fond of my company; so that between these two rivals, the father and the son, I found myself in a very critical situation indeed, and was greatly embarrassed and perplexed, hardly knowing many times how to behave in such a manner as at once to secure my own virtue, and the good esteem of the family in which I resided, and upon which I was wholly dependent for my daily support. At length, however, through the tender compassion

Yet

of a certain English gentleman,* the Governor de Vaudreuil being made acquainted with the condition I had fallen into, immediately ordered the young and amorous Saccapee, then an officer in the French army, from the field of Venus to the field of Mars, and at the same time also wrote a letter to his father, enjoining it upon him by no means to suffer me to be abused, but to make my situation and service in his family as easy and delightful as possible. I was moreover under unspeakable obligations to the governor upon another account. I had received intelligence from my daughter Mary, the purport of which was, that there was a prospect of her being shortly married to a young Indian of the tribe of St. Francois, with which tribe she had continued from the beginning of her captivity. These were heavy tidings, and added greatly to the poignancy of my other afflictions. However, not long after I had heard this melancholy news, an opportunity presented of acquainting that humane and generous gentleman, the commander-in-chief, and my illustrious benefactor, with this affair also, who, in compassion for my sufferings, and to mitigate my sorrows, issued his orders in good time, and had my daughter taken away from the Indians, and conveyed to the same nunnery where her sister was then lodged, with his express injunction that they should both of them together be well looked after, and carefully educated, as his adopted children. In this school of superstition and bigotry they continued while the war in those days between France and Great Britain lasted. At the conclusion of which war, the governor went home to France, took my oldest daughter along with him, and married her then to a French gentleman, whose name is Cron Lewis. He was at Boston with the fleet under Count de Estaing, [1778] and one of his clerks. My other daughter still continuing in the nunnery, a considerable time had elapsed after my return from captivity, when I made a journey to Canada, resolving to use my best endeavors not to return without her. I arrived just in time to prevent her being sent to France. She was to have gone in the next vessel that sailed for that place. And I found it extremely difficult to prevail with her to quit the nunnery and go home with me; yea, she absolutely refused, and all the persuasions and arguments I could use with her were to no effect, until after I had been to the governor, and obtained a letter from him to the superintendent of the nuns, in which he threatened, if my daughter should not be immediately delivered into my hands, or could not be prevailed with to submit to my paternal author

* Col. Peter Schuyler, then a prisoner.

ity, that he would send a band of soldiers to assist me in bringing her away. Upon hearing this she made no farther resistance. But so extremely bigoted was she to the customs and religion of the place, that, after all, she left it with the greatest reluctance, and the most bitter lamentations, which she continued as we passed the streets, and wholly refused to be comforted. My good friend, Major Small, whom we met with on the tried all he could to console her; and was so way, very kind and obliging as to bear us company, and carry my daughter behind him on horseback.

But I have run on a little before my story, for I have not yet informed you of the means and manner of my own redemption, to the accomplishing of which, the recovery of my daughter just mentioned, and the ransoming of some of my other children, several gentlemen of note contributed not a little; to whose goodness therefore I am greatly indebted, and sincerely hope I shall never be so ungrateful as to forget. Col. Schuyler in particular was so very kind and generous as to advance 2700 livres to procure a ransom for myself and three of my children. He accompanied and conducted us from Montreal to Albany, and entertained us in the most friendly and hospitable manner a considerable time, at his own house, and I believe entirely at his own expense.

I have spun out the above narrative to a much greater length than I at first intended, and shall conclude it with referring you, for a more ample and brilliant account of the captive heroine who is the subject of it, to Col. Humphrey's History of the Life of Gen. Israel Putnam, together with some remarks upon a few clauses in it. I never indeed had the pleasure of perusing the whole of said history, but remember to have seen some time ago an extract from it in one of the Boston newspapers, in which the colonel has extolled the beauty and good sense, and rare accomplishments of Mrs. Howe, the person whom he endeavors to paint in the most lively and engaging colors, perhaps a little too highly, and in a style that may appear to those who are acquainted with her to this day romantic and extravagant. And the colonel must needs have been misinformed with respect to some particulars that he has mentioned in her history. Indeed, when I read the extract from his history to Mrs. Tute, (which name she has derived from a third husband, whose widow she now remains,) she seemed to be well pleased, and said at first it was all true, but soon after contradicted the circumstance of her lover's being so bereft of his senses, when he saw her moving off in a boat at some distance from the shore, as to plunge into the water after her, in consequence of which he was seen no more. It is true, she

said, that as she was returning from Montreal to Albany, she met with young Saccapee on the way; that she was in a boat with Colonel Schuyler; that the French officer came on board the boat, made her some handsome presents, took his final leave of her, and departed, to outward appearance in tolerable good humor.

She moreover says, that when she went to Canada for her daughter, she met with him again, that he showed her a lock of her hair, and her name likewise, printed with vermillion on his arm. As to her being chosen agent to go to Europe, in behalf of the people of Hinsdale, when Colonel Howard obtained from the government of New York a patent of their lands on the west side of Connecticut river, it was never once thought of by Hinsdale people until the above-mentioned extract arrived among them, in which the author has inserted it as a matter of undoubted fact.

NARRATIVE

OF THE CAPTIVITY OF FRANCES NOBLE, WHO WAS, AMONG OTHERS, TAKEN BY THE INDIANS FROM SWAN ISLAND, IN MAINE, ABOUT THE YEAR 1755; COMPILED BY JOHN KELLY, ESQ. OF CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM THE MINUTES AND MEMORANDA OF PHINEHAS MERRILL, ESQ. OF STRATHAM, IN THE SAME STATE; AND BY THE FORMER GENTLEMAN COMMUNICATED FOR PUBLICATION TO THE ED1TORS OF THE HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.

JAMES WHIDDEN, the maternal grandfather of Mrs. Shute, was a captain in the army at the taking of Cape Breton in 1745. He owned a tract of land on Swan Island, in the river Kennebec, where he lived with his family. One of his daughters married Lazarus Noble, of Portsmouth, who lived on the island with her father. The Indians had been accustomed to

visit Capt. Whidden for the purposes of trade. There was a garrison on the island to secure the inhabitants from the attacks of the enemy in time of war.

One morning, a little after daybreak, two boys went out of the garrison and left the gate open. The Indians were on the watch, and availing themselves of the opportunity, about ninety entered the garrison. The inhabitants immediately discovered