Sanctions for Slaughter: Peacetime Violence on the Maine Frontier, 1749-1772

DAVID L. GHERE and ALVIN H. MORRISON University of Minnesota SUNY-Fredonia (Emeritus)

INTRODUCTION In Europe, the War of the Austrian Succession was decreed to be ended by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in October 1748. For the baroque jubilee of London's official celebration, George Frederick Handel was commissioned to compose "Music for the Royal Fireworks". But in Britain's North American colonies the mood was hardly that festive. Along the northeastern frontier, this conflict (which was known there as King George's War) was no less than the fifth de facto war between New Englanders and the Abenaki. Thus, by 1748, these old adversaries had learned from long, sad experience at least to mistrust each other. Many New Englanders went much further: they thoroughly hated the Abenaki, and that hatred was reciprocated by many Abenaki who had been driven off their ancestral lands by the English. Not all Abenaki had actively sided with the French in attacking New England's frontier settlements, and killing and capturing English settlers, but more than enough of them had been "French Indians" to taint the reputation of all Abenaki people as being a dangerous threat to all New Englanders. To those of the latter who still sought revenge against the Abenaki, learning that King George's War officially should cease could evoke little if any cheer. Furthermore, since disputed frontier issues were unresolved and no Anglo-Abenaki truce had been negotiated, some Abenaki frontier raids continued after the Anglo-French treaty had been signed. Instead of recognizing these as acts of autonomy (contradicting their basic assumptions about "French Indians"), New Englanders generally believed that the raids were evidence supporting their assump­ tion that the Indians were innately savage and treacherous. These Abenaki raids and the attitudes generated by them made it easier for New Englanders to justify acts of retaliation. 106 GHERE AND MORRISON

Those who actually sought revenge against the Abenaki grew more adamant and, even if relatively few in number, had both direct and indirect supporters galore. Virtually all New Englanders must have felt at least let down if not actually betrayed by the Old English diplomats who signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1745, during their finest hour in King George's War, New England militiamen under William Pepperell had very proudly captured the great French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Yet their pride was short-lived, for the 1748 Treaty gave Louisbourg back to France, prompting consternation and anger throughout New England. After that insult, many New Englanders showed little respect when English governments, Old or New, ordered a cease-fire — especially those on the Maine frontier, and in the settled towns north of Boston who long had experienced or expected French and Indian raids (Rawlyk 1967:158-9). With the treaty putting French and Canadian soldiers well out of range, the only targets left near at hand for New Englanders to vent their frustrations upon were the Abenaki. And, of course, nearest of all were those individual Abenaki who had the most interaction (and usually the friendliest relations) with English settlements. Thus the stage was set for the long series of killings with which this paper is concerned. All of them stem from New Englanders' doing violence to Abenaki during periods of supposed peace on the Maine frontier, starting in 1749. We will summarize the first case, assess the worst case, generalize about other cases, and consider an ironic sequel in the early 1800s.

FIRST CASE: WISCASSET (2 DECEMBER 1749) Sporadic frontier raids continued until the summer of 1749, and Abenaki factionalism complicated efforts to negotiate peace (BM 23:303-323). It took Massachusetts leaders several months to get enough Abenaki bands to agree to attend a peace conference at Falmouth, Maine (MeHSC 4:145-167). Eventually, the lead item in the 2 November 1749 issue of the Boston Weekly News-Letter officially announced the signing of a peace treaty with the "Eastern Indians". Therein, Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Spencer Phipps proclaimed, in part, "I do hereby strictly command and require all his Majesty's good Subjects to live in Peace with the Indians...And not to commit any Acts of Violence or Hostility against the SANCTIONS FOR SLAUGHTER 107 said Indians, or give them any Trouble or Molestation." Yet exactly one month later, on 2 December, the "Wiscasset Incident" occurred. Wiscasset, Maine, on the Sheepscot River, was a rustic seaport village. Seven Massachusetts men, all apparently relatives or friends of Obadiah Albee, Sr., a recent settler from Massachusetts, appeared in Wiscasset, apparently as crewmen or passengers on a Massachusetts vessel in port. While there, they went out hunting — what for is unclear — and encountered a hunting encampment of peaceful Abenaki families, who were slowly heading back home from the Falmouth treaty confer­ ence. The whites fired on the Indians without provocation, killing one Indian man and wounding two others; they then tried to hide the dead man's body. Later, back in town, they bragged about their exploit (MA 31:666-685; Thayer 1899). Days went by before two Indian women were able to contact a magistrate in a nearby town. When law enforcement officers eventually got to Wiscasset, they were met by a mob and assaulted. Nonetheless, some of the accused men were arrested. Four soon were released officially. The apparent ringleader, Obadiah Albee, Jr., escaped on a schooner outbound for Marblehead, Massachusetts. Mob and escape problems would continue to dog this case. But let us now return to the Abenaki victims — all of them leaders at one level or another (BM 23:325-354). The dead man was Saccary Harry, also known as Hegen. He was a Norridgewock (Kennebec) who also had resided at Wawenock (Wol- inak/Becancour). The wounded men were Capt. Job, a Norridgewock, and Andrew, an Arosagunticook (Odanak/St. Francis). Thus, they were from three separate but related Abenaki bands. This greatly worried the Massachusetts governor and council, once they learned about the Wiscasset Incident, because it could cause a pan-Abenaki uprising, endangering the entire New England frontier, in this time of supposed peace (BM 23:366). For our analytical purposes, the Wiscasset case shows both Abenaki unity-in-separation (Kidder 1867:307-9) and Abenaki diaspora-and-retum (Haefeli and Sweeney 1994). Through connections of both descent and marriage, Abenaki bands were thoroughly interrelated, adaptively allowing their members shifting residence options. Since at least the 108 GHERE AND MORRISON early 1600s, first under Iroquois raids, then under English pressures, the Abenaki had survived by individuals, families, or entire villages vacating and regrouping in other places. This pattern included eventual reoccupa- tion of formerly abandoned sites, if and when this was feasible. The victims of the Wiscasset attack were back hunting in former Abenaki territory — the original Wawenock region in particular. Such flexibility and fluidity as this was difficult for the sedentary English to comprehend, and lack of understanding enhanced suspicions (Ghere 1993). Yet, if all Abenaki were one people, they were not all of one mind. In response to the Wiscasset incident, the Canadian Abenaki of Wolinak and Odanak were in favor of immediately exacting revenge upon the English settlers of the Wiscasset area. The confrontational factions of the Penobscot and Kennebec demanded swift and severe punishment for the men responsible for the death, but did not yet propose attacks on English settlers to avenge the atrocity. The conciliatory factions urged Massachu­ setts to "cover the blood" with compensatory presents. Consequently, along with expressions of their regret and condolences, Massachusetts officials distributed presents to each tribe, to the wounded, and to the deceased man's widow shortly after the incident. Furthermore, the officials gave well-intentioned promises of justice through the court system, and made impressive efforts to achieve that end, but the flood- tide of strong anti-Indian sentiment throughout the frontier prevented it (BM 23:363-8). Enroute to the far-off gaol in York (Maine), the two men arrested — Samuel Ball and Benjamin Ledite (both of whom had been soldiers in King George's War) — were freed by a mob in the Falmouth (Maine) area, and, despite a reward offered for them, were hidden away for weeks before being retaken. Meanwhile, Obadiah Albee, Jr. (also with a reward on his head) was at large in the Marblehead (Mass.) area until a justice of the peace personally arrested him, after a constable refused to do so. When Albee was placed in Salem gaol, the Essex County sheriff feared that a mob would release him. A February 1750 special court session at York was scheduled, but then called off when a judge became ill. When the regular court session was held at York in June 1750, the jury found Albee not guilty, and he was released (BM 12:34-35). SANCTIONS FOR SLAUGHTER 109

The Massachusetts governor and council were as embarrassed by the jury's verdict as the Abenaki were furious. To lessen the chances of Ball's and Ledite's trials being equally hollow, attempts were started to change their venues to the Boston area. However, the legislative body eventually killed that idea, further embarrassing the governor and council, who had invited Abenaki leaders to Boston to see justice done. In March 1751, Samuel Ball escaped from York gaol, thereby avoiding trial. Finally, at the June 1751 annual session of superior court at York — 18 months after the crime and 12 months after the acquittal of Albee — the jury found Benjamin Ledite not guilty of abetting Hegen's murder, and guilty only of assaulting Capt. Job and Andrew, for which he was sentenced to a whipping (Thayer 1899:100-1). Officials in New France took full advantage of these English flounderings to encourage the Abenaki to vengeance, promising them whatever support the 1748 peace treaty could tolerate. Many Abenaki needed no encouragement at all. Raids against the New England frontier began in September 1750 following the Albee acquital, and continued, albeit spasmodically, until July 1751. Sometimes persons were the target, sometimes only property, especially livestock. However, some Abenaki kept the peace, encouraged others to do so, and even warned English friends of impending attacks. There was no unity of Abenaki reaction to the Wiscasset murder, and New England government officials became increasingly perplexed about an effective policy regarding the Abenaki. Following the cessation of frontier raids, these colonial officials held a conference with those Abenaki seeking peace, in August 1751 (BM 23:410-423). After another year of frontier peace, a treaty was signed with representatives of all the Abenaki bands in October 1752 (MeHSC 4:168-184).

WORST CASE: OWL'S HEAD (2 JULY 1755) Peaceful relations on the Maine frontier were short-lived. The expansion of English settlements along the Kennebec River in 1753 violated the Abenakis' understanding of the peace treaty and they protested vehemently. Then, erroneous reports of a French fort on the Kennebec prompted a Massachusetts militia expedition up the river in the summer of 1754 and the construction of a fort near the Abenaki village 110 GHERE AND MORRISON of Norridgewock. A large force of Abenaki responded to these events by attacking the new fort in October 1754, but those Abenaki living along the Penobscot River repeatedly professed their desire for peace. Massachusetts officials believed that the Penobscot could be used to restrain (and perhaps even fight) their fellow Abenaki. Accordingly, a war-and-bounties declaration was voted by the legislature on 10 June 1755, against all the Abenaki except the Penobscot. Simultaneously, however, news of Abenaki raids on the Maine frontier near Penobscot territory raised suspicions of Penobscot involvement (BM 24:29-36). Indeed, Massachusetts had forged a fragile policy, too dependent upon the goodwill of the inevitable dissenters on both sides to maintain peace. So, when Indian-hatred, lust for bounties, mistrust of govern­ ments, and self-righteousness all combined in the one person of James Cargill of Newcastle (Maine), the Massachusetts government's Penobscot policy easily cracked apart with no help needed from the Penobscot. James Cargill had officially registered his intent to lead a voluntary scalp-bounty posse — i.e., an authorized head-hunting expedition — against the proclaimed Abenaki enemies. However, instead of heading north to find those Indians, Cargill led his men 40 miles eastward to Penobscot territory. There, on 2 July 1755, the scalp posse encountered two groups of friendly Penobscot. First, they killed and scalped a family of three — father, mother, and child — who were going home from the truckhouse-fort at St. George's (near Thomaston, Maine). There the woman, Margaret Moxa, had just reported to the post commander, Capt Jabez Bradbury, her latest installment of military information about impending raids against the English. Second, near Owl's Head (near Rockland, Maine), on the western shore of Penobscot Bay, Cargill and his men unprovokedly opened fire on an encampment of Penobscot who were returning from a peace conference at St. George's Fort, killing and scalping nine of them. That brought the total to twelve risk-freescalp s in a single day's patrol (BM 24:36-37; Cushman 1882:140-2). Next, Cargill and his posse themselves went to St. George's Fort, seeking supplies for further exploits. There they got a cold reception. Margaret Moxa had been a favorite at the fort, not just for her military information, but as a cultural mediator between the races. The neighbor­ hood Englishwomen particularly mourned her loss, because she had SANCTIONS FOR SLAUGHTER 111 shared with them her extensive nature-wisdom, with all the adaptive advantages which that entailed for living more comfortably in the Maine woods. Margaret Moxa personified the very best of frontier interaction, just as surely as James Cargill did its very worst. Captain Bradbury refused to resupply Cargill, thereby forcing the posse to break up and go home. Furthermore, Bradbury promply notified Boston about the twelve scalped Penobscot — which we collectively call the Owl's Head Massacre — and then started to prepare for the seemingly inevitable hostility of perhaps the majority of the Penobscot (BM 24:43^44; Eaton 1877:101-3). Even in the aftermath of the slaughter, both the Massachusetts government and the conciliatory faction of the Penobscot still tried to keep the peace. Lt. Gov. Phipps condolently apologized, sent gifts, and promised justice, offering to pay expenses for any Penobscot who wished to testify in court. Cargill was arrested and jailed. Yet the summer of 1755 passed by with neither whites nor Indians fulfilling the expectations of the others. The English first suggested, then demanded, that their Penobscot "allies" relocate to the vicinity of St. George's Fort — for both Penobscot safety and English surveillance. However, the Owl's Head massacre clearly indicated to the Penobscot the danger of living near the fort. Conferences were desired and proposed, yet did not occur — the last such attempt thwarted by new violence (BM 24:40-61). On 24 September, Abenaki raids caused considerable damage to several English settlements near St. George's. Thereafter, instead of relocating to St. George's, the Penobscot departed from the area, and contact was lost. Undoubtedly even conciliatory Penobscot expected English retaliation. By 24 October, Captain Bradbury concluded both that they had gone to Canada, and that "Penobscots were concerned in the Late mischief done here" (i.e., the 24 September raids). Upon learning this in Boston, the legislature voted for war with the Penobscot, and Lt. Gov. Phipps proclaimed war-and-bounties on them, on 3 November 1755. Now it was officially a pan-Abenaki war. Cargill then was released from jail, but was not given scalp-bounties — not immediately, at least. But before continuing the Cargill saga, some perspectives are needed. First, consider the Massachusetts government's program of paying scalp bounties. The intent was to rid the realm of its enemies. Live 112 GHERE AND MORRISON captives brought slightly higher bounties than dead Indians represented by their scalps, but the latter were far less troublesome. In 1675, during King Philip's War, which triggered the firstmilitar y conflict between the Abenaki and English, the bounty paid for adult male Indian scalps was £3. By June 1756, during the sixth such conflict, called the French and Indian War by New Englanders, that bounty had increased 100-fold, to £300 (BM 24:64-65). Women's and children's scalps brought slightly lower bounties, but were equally fair game. It was a staple English policy of the time to make all "traitorous enemies" public targets, and to stimulate the public to aim at them for both community service and private reward. These scalp-bounty incentives also stirred raoncombatants' politico- economic self-interests. One did not need to risk physical danger to oneself, but instead could show public spirit, and seek private financial profit too, merely by investing in the sponsorship of a member or two of a scalp posse. Such was the case with the Rev. Thomas Smith, the diary- keeping parson of Falmouth (now Portland), Maine. In June 1757 he noted two financial items: "13. My salary fixed at £800" and "18. I received £165 and [£]33..., my part of scalp money." That amounts to £198 of extra income, or almost a quarter of his salary. Clearly, he had supported a profitable public service venture. Unfortunately, we are not told what amount he had invested in these war bonds of his day (Willis 1849:173). Second, consider the staple English beliefs of the time in white supremacy and English superiority. In their quest for worldwide empire, the English discovered just about everything except their own ethnocen- trism. Some non-English, white, Protestant ethnic groups easily assimilated and even exaggerated the key values and attitudes of their English overlords. A noteworthy case was the Scotch-Irish — the people who became Great Britain's Head-Start students in colonialism, early on, by taking over northern Ireland from the native Irish. When the Scotch- Irish came to the New World, it was to their second colonial experience with potentially hostile natives. James Cargill came from this heritage, and was himself a steeple of the staple beliefs just described (Cushman 1882:137-140). SANCTIONS FOR SLAUGHTER 113

Cargill was both a man of strong principles and a strong principal man in his community of Newcastle. Indeed, in 1753 he had initiated and led the petitioning of the Massachusetts government to elevate the political status of the old, nonvoting, Sheepscot Plantation to become the new, voting, Newcastle District. And in his petition, which was granted, Cargill was named Newcastle's elections officer (AR 3:673, 741). When he returned home from being jailed in 1755, Cargill was made a militia captain. At least by August 1756, if not earlier, he was leading a scouting party/bounty posse again (BM 24:67-68). In time he would scalp several more Abenaki. Eventually he would become a militia colonel. In June of 1757, almost two years after the massacre, Cargill's trial was held in York, Maine. Cargill claimed that Maliseet or other hostile Indians had been with the Penobscot he had fired upon. Without the personal ties that the English of St. George's Fort had with Margaret Moxa, and with anti-Indian prejudice then high, the jury acquitted Cargill — to nobody's great surprise (MA 32:650-1, 661). The self-righteous Cargill then brought charges of illegal and treasonable transactions with Indians against Captain Bradbury and Lieutenant Fletcher (the comman­ ders of St. George's Fort), who had brought the strongest massacre charges against him. Both houses of the Massachusetts legislature debated these charges, but completely exonerated both Bradbury and Fletcher — with Cargill censured by implication (MA 77:366-7, AR 16:98). Cargill's failure to punish his accusers was accompanied by a more tangible frustration. He had kept the twelve Penobscot scalps from 2 July 1755 _ described as "including two small ones" (implying another child in addition to Margaret's). When he belatedly submitted these scalps to the Massachusetts government for bounty payments, the governor and council debated the matter. Council Records for the 7 January 1758 meeting state: "And it passed in the negative, inasmuch as it does not appear that the said Indians were such with whom this Government was then at War" (CR 1755-59:318-9, 321; Whiting 1947:189). These two setbacks — legislative exoneration of his accusers, and executive denial of his bounty request — seem to be the only negative sanctions that the government could and did set against Cargill, and both 114 GHERE AND MORRISON took place in Boston, far from his supportive frontier companions. In addition, there are later implications that further scalp transactions with Cargill were handled directly by the governor and council, because of his difficult reputation. Both Cargill and the government used each other, when advantageous, but with mutual mistrust (Whiting 1947:191). We can only speculate about James Cargill's reactions to news of the Paxton Riots in Pennsylvania, in December 1763. The "Paxton Boys" were Scotch-Irish frontiersmen, who slaughtered 20 peaceful Conestoga Indians in revenge for hostile Indian raids, then marched on Philadelphia to protest government protection of any Indians during Pontiac's Uprising. It is quite likely that Cargill felt both vindicated and deja vu.

OTHER CASES AND GENERALIZATIONS At the current stage of our research, the Wiscasset tragedy of 1749 and the Owl's Head massacre of 1755 are the only two cases of killings for which we know the aftermaths. Other known incidents resulted in two Abenaki murders in 1751 (BM 23:451-2), two in 1765 (BM 24: 130-140), four in 1767 (BM 24:144-6, 153-6), and three in 1772 (BM 24: 160-3), but these cases seem to have generated very few records. The reasons for this situation may be many and varied. Out-of-court settle­ ments seem to be one practical possibility, despite the theoretical impropriety thereof. The British Crown claimed court jurisdiction over Indians, so English conceptions of justice should theoretically have prevailed. The Massachusetts government both had to, and usually tried to, respond to an Indian tribal government's pressure for justice whenever an Indian was killed by a white. The Abenaki usually preferred quick compensatory payments to long-term court trials for capital punishment. The practical logic behind this preference was that a defendent's execution did nothing to feed a victim's family. Therefore, a scarcity of records may mean that an English court case was deemed unnecessary because the tribal pressure had ended early — the matter having been settled already, Indian-style. London might not approve, but Boston perhaps could be practical about it. The flow of historic events also may account for a scarcity of records about some killings. English court cases were slow-starting anyway, and might have been called off before starting, if hostilities were reopened SANCTIONS FOR SLAUGHTER 115 with the Abenaki band in question. Cargill's case probably was an exception to this because of the pressure from Bradbury and Fletcher to avenge Margaret Moxa. And that, in turn, may account for Cargill's animosity toward his accusers. Other killings may have few records because the English perpetrators were never clearly identified, or the defendents disappeared, or escaped jail like Samuel Ball. Essentially all of these cases had a basis in English racism, mani­ fested by belief in English superiority and Abenaki inferiority. If cultural, political, and religious differences between them were considered at all, they were mere wedges to separate even further the overs from the unders. Extermination and/or exploitation were the common denomi­ nators: the Wiscasset tragedy represented the former; the Owl's Head massacre both — as also did some other cases in which Abenaki people were killed to steal their furs or their hunting equipment.

AN IRONIC SEQUEL (EARLY 1800S) After the Indian Wars, the Maine frontier's back country began to be opened up by waves of new English settlers, soon to be independent Americans. Younger former Indian fighters, or the sons of older ones, led this advance. The first-bestowedname s of new townships, frequently only temporary, were not necessarily remembrances of the most honorable citizens of the past. Samuel Ball, who had escaped justice in the 1749 Wiscasset tragedy by escaping jail, had apparently by then become a frontier legend, because he was the honoree of the name Ballstown (now Jefferson and Whitefield, Maine). This gesture set the tone for much of what followed there. Ballstown became the largest and most important center of a new type of frontier warfare in the early 1800s (Taylor 1990:190). As economic pressures worsened, land proprietors and their agents, and the surveyors and sheriff's deputies who acted for them, squeezed the masses of financially broke tenants and squatters on their lands to pay up or be evicted. The targeted tenants organized fierce para-military resistance, but hid their identities by an elaborate ruse, adopted from the Boston Tea Party. They devised costumes, lingo, and rituals in caricature of Indians. After making their commando raids as Indians, they returned, metamorphosed, to be white tenants again, blaming "Indians" for the 116 GHERE AND MORRISON mayhem. This so called "White Indian Movement" camouflaged identities but fooled no one. No Abenaki people were officially blamed. Most interesting for us, one White Indian was David Cargill, son of James Cargill of the Owl's Head massacre of 1755. The irony, of course, is that imitation indeed may be the highest form of praise and respect (Taylor 1990:189-190).

REFERENCES Cushman, David Q. 1882. The history of ancient Sheepscot and Newcastle. Bath, Maine: E. Upton Printers. Eaton, Cyrus. 1877. Annals of the town of Warren in Knox County, Maine (second edition). Hallowell, Maine: Masters & Livermore. Ghere, David L. 1993. The "disappearance" of the Abenaki in western Maine. American Indian Quarterly 17:193-207. Haefeli, Evan, and Kevin Sweeney. 1994. Wattanummon's world: personal and tribal identity in the Algonquian diaspora c. 1660-1712. Papers of the 25th Algonquian Conference, ed. by William Cowan (Ottawa: Carleton University), 212-224. Kidder, Frederic. 1867. Military operations in eastern Maine and Nova Scotia during the Revolution... journals and letters of Colonel John Allan. Albany, N.Y.: loel Munsell. Maine Historical Society Collections (MeHSC),first series , 4 (1856). Portland. . Second series, documentary history, Baxter Manuscripts (BM), 12 (1908), 23 (1916), 24 (1916). Portland. Massachusetts Colony. Acts and resolves (AR), 3 (1878), 16 (1909). Boston. . Council records (CR), 1755-59 (microfilmed). Boston. . Massachusetts archives collection (MA), 31, 32, 77 (microfilmed). Boston. Rawlyk, G. A. 1967. Yankees at Louisbourg. Orono, Maine: University of Maine Press (University of Maine Studies, series 2, no. 85). Taylor, Alan. 1990. Liberty Men and the great proprietors: the Revolutionary settlement on the Maine frontier, 1760-1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (published for Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg). Thayer, Henry O. 1899. A page of Indian history: the Wiscasset tragedy. Collections and Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society, second series, 10:81-103. Whiting, B. J. 1947. Incident at Quantabacook, March 1764. New England Quarterly 20:169-196. Willis, William, ed. 1849. Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith and the Rev. Samuel Deane. Portland, Maine: Joseph S. Bailey.