ndian tribes of the North and Northwest, urged on by their
French instigators and allies. For the experience of the last seventy
years, from the time of the Pequot War, and during the subsequent
troubles with the tribes in southwestern Connecticut, and on Long
Island, and during King Philip's War, had fully taught them the craft,
treachery and pitiless cruelty of the savages, as well as their capacity
for extensive combination among widely separated tribes.

When Major DeRouville, in 1704, with his band of civilized and
uncivilized savages, committed the atrocities at Deerfield, Mass., the
suspicion of the Colonists that the French had instigated the former
Indian outrages became a certainty, for in this instance they openly
shared in them. Their object was, as I have said, to drive the English
Colonists from North America, and substitute in their place their own
colonial system. For this purpose they fitted out hundreds of parties of
savages to proceed to other portions of the English settlements, shoot
down the settlers when at work at their crops, seize their wives and
children, load them with packs of plunder from their own homes, and
drive them before them into the wilderness. When no longer able to
stagger under their burdens, they were murdered, and their scalps torn
off, and exhibited to their masters, and for such trophies bounties were
paid. The French government in Paris paid bounties for the scalps of
women and children, as Connecticut did for those of wolves, and it not
only fitted out other savage expeditions, but sent its own soldiers to
assist in the murderous work. Detailed reports of each case were
regularly made to the government at Paris by its agents in Canada which
can now be read. This is true of every French and Indian war until 1763,
and the fact was as well known to the settlers here in 1707, as it is to
the historical investigator of to-day.

In the beginning of 1707, reports of an expedition by the French and
Indians against some part of New England gave alarm to the Colony, and
on the 6th of February of that year a council of war was convened at
Hartford, consisting of the Governor, most of the Council, and many of
the chief military officers of the colony. Suspicions were entertained
that the attack would fall upon western Connecticut, and that the
Indians in this vicinity intended to join the French and Indians. The
Council of War determined that the then western frontier towns, Danbury,