Two families
lived at Freneuse and three at the mouth of the river.

The story of the old Medoctec village in later times will be told
incidentally in the chapters that are to follow.

CHAPTER IX.

INCIDENTS IN KING GEORGES WAR.

After a long interval of peace from the time of the treaty of Utrecht
in 1713, war was declared between France and England in 1744. The
Indians of the St. John river, who had been fairly quiet for some
years, took the warpath with great alacrity. The war that ensued is
known as "King George's," or the "Five Years" war. At its commencement
the Maliseets played rather a sharp trick upon the English which Paul
Mascarene and Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, remembered
against them when peace was proclaimed five years later. On that
occasion Count de la Galissonniere wrote to Mascarene to inquire if
the Maliseets were included in the peace, "in which case," he says, "I
entreat you to have the goodness to induce Mr. Shirley to allow them
to settle again in their villages, and to leave their missionaries
undisturbed as they were before the war." The French governor
suggested that a reply might be sent through the missionary by whom he
had sent his own letter. Both Mascarene and Shirley replied at some
length to the letter of de la Galissonniere. They stated that when a
renewal of the war with France was daily expected, a deputation of the
St. John river Indians came to Annapolis professedly to make an
agreement to remain on friendly terms with the English in the event of
war with France. They were well received in consequence. But they had
come in reality as spies, and three weeks afterwards returned with
others of their tribe, the missionary le Loutre at their head,
surprised and killed as many of the English as they caught outside the
fort, destroyed their cattle, burnt their houses and continued their
acts of hostility against the garrison till the arrival of troops from
New England to check them. "For this perfidious behaviour," Shirley
says, "I caused war to be declared in his majesty's name against these
Indians in November, 1744, and so far as it depends upon me, they
shall not be admitted to terms of peace till they have made a proper
submission for their treachery."

During King George's war the Maliseet warriors did not, as in former
Indian wars, assemble at Medoctec and turn their faces westward to
devastate the settlements of New England, the scene of hostilities was