ing; but we thought it better to go on than to tarry there on cost, there being no house for entertainment there. Soon after we sat out from thence into the woods we perceived that Lewis grew uneasy, and wanted to travel faster than we were able to go; and after having travelled two days in the woods, the weather proving very wet and uncomfortable, we had got but twenty-four miles, when we camped by a small river, where unfortunately there happened to meet us a couple of St. Franceway Indians who had been hunting in these parts, and were about to go down the river to St. John's.

"We soon found that meeting them made those Indians that went with us more uneasy and a mind to part from us, though we treated them with the utmost friendship and tenderness; but after all there appeared in them many things very disagreeable, in particular, a proud and haughty disposition, so that sometimes they would hardly answer directly to a question asked them. We used what arguments we thought proper to persuade them to keep with us, or make two bark canoes, that we might go with them; but nothing would avail, and seeing how matters worked, we thought it best to proceed without them.

"Accordingly we left them next morning, intending to make the best of our way alone. After having travelled about five miles, we came to a river called Masisque, which we found to be eight or nine rods wide. The water was very deep, and the current so swift that we could find no possible way to pass it. Lieutenant Stow told us of that river when we inquired of him about the way, but he sayed there would be no difficulty in passing it, for the water was not so deep but that it might be waded; but it's being so much raised by reason of the abundance of rain, we thought it not prudent to attempt to cross it, which we might easily have done, if they had kept with us, by making a canoe; but neither of us understood anything of such business. We were very loath to return back, having then got near half through the woods, and the worst of the way, so that we expected to have reached Lake Champlain in two days more; but finding that we could not proceed any farther on our journey, we thought it advisable to return back again as fast as possible, something expecting to find the Indians at the camp where we left them that morning, as they told us they intended to stay there that day to make a bark canoe to go down the river. When we returned, they were gone, and we thought, by the appearance of things, that they withdrew soon after we left them, which gave us the more reason to suspect they intended to leave us at all adventures. . . They gave us no reason why they had a mind to leave us, only that they had not provision to last them through the woods. We offered them part of ours while it lasted, and although they pretended to be so short on it for provisions, they gave away part they had the night before to those other Indians."

...

Upon their return, May 20th, the boys were informed by the other Indians that Lewis and Basteen started with the intention of shaking them off. They expressed a willingness to make another trial, desiring, however, to go by way of Crown Point, to which place they could ride, and thence by water. They did

accordingly set out anew on the 8th of June. On the 15th three others Porter and Kendal, of the junior class, and Judson, a Sophomore, with Verrieul as interpreter-set out also for Montreal with similar purposes. Kendal, under patronage of Mr. Stacy, gathered a school at Caghnawaga and made himself very popular. Toward the last of September, Lewis1 and Basteen returned alone, the opposition of the priests having been effectual to prevent their bringing any recruits.

In June, 1773, while Wheelock was at Portsmouth, Messrs. Stacy and Phillips came from Caghnawaga to visit their sons, and with them the father of one of the other Indian boys. Mr. Stacy brought his Indian wife, and Mr. Phillips another son, about fourteen years of age, who had been lately elected king of the tribe, and whom he promised to send to the School at a future time. They went away pleased with the situation and with the condition of the children.

Wheelock notes in his Diary, November 25th, the arrival of ten Indians from Canada, - no doubt on a similar errand.

In May, 1774, Dean and Kendal set out once more for Montreal; Kendal to revive his Indian school at Caghnawaga, and Dean designing, with suitable companions, to make an attempt upon the tribes farther west, as far as Detroit and Lake Superior. Frisbie and Thomas Walcott followed on the 18th of June, going on foot to Crown Point, and on the eleventh day reached Montreal, where they overtook Dean and Kendal. Dean being deterred from his mission to the westward by failing to procure an acceptable interpreter, and by the lateness of the season and the rumor of war among the tribes, joined Frisbie in canvassing near Montreal, and in a visit to Quebec and Lorette. They held a council at Canasadage, thirty miles up the river from Montreal, where they tried to establish relations with the "Rodiroondacks," but were repulsed through the influence

1 Lewis, after all, turned out very well. He rendered eminent services to the patriot cause during the war, and graduating from the College in 1781, was for many years a useful teacher in his tribe at Lorette, where he died in 1825, æt. sixty-five. The following anecdote illustrates his quickness of body and mind. While in college, playing ball one day near the middle of the common, he heard cries, and observed a commotion about the well near the President's house. Divining instantly that some one had fallen in, he ran at the top of his speed, shouting to the others to clear the way, and without slackening pace, leaped upon the bucket, and grasping the pole of the sweep, plunged with it into the well, some thirty feet, where he found and rescued the little daughter of Dr. Gates.

of the priests.1 They then went down to the St. Francis village and were cordially received, the priest, Père German, showing a friendly spirit. Here they left Walcott,2 who was sixteen years of age, to remain through the winter and acquire the language.

The chief sachem of St. Francis was Joseph Lewis Gill, Indian by nurture, but of English blood, being descended from two white captives who about the year 1700 were brought there as prisoners in childhood, and afterward married. The sachem's first wife, an Indian woman, had been killed by Major Rogers when he destroyed the town in 1759. He was now married to a Frenchwoman, by whom he had a son, that, in spite of her opposition, he determined to send to Dr. Wheelock, together with three other little boys, his nephews. They accordingly set out, September 17, with Messrs. Frisbie and Dean, and reached Hanover on the 6th of October. Kendal returned from Caghnawaga, the next week, with another boy of about the same age; and still another arrived from Stockbridge.

Wheelock had now ten Indian children between ten and fourteen years of age, and was greatly perplexed to provide suitable care for so youthful a class. Providentially, some five days before the boys arrived, Mrs. Elizabeth Walcott, the mother of his pupil Thomas, came with her little daughter to Hanover, after an eight days' journey, from Boston, in

1 See their journal, in an Appendix to the Narrative of 1775

2 Thomas Walcott came to Hanover with Mr. Woodward in August, 1770. He was then twelve years old. His mother had been for more than a year begging Wheelock to receive him. He remained in Canada till after hostilities commenced, and was sent down to Hanover under a pass from Governor Carlton. Returning to Boston with his mother in March, 1776, after the evacuation of the city, he remained there in business. He devoted himself largely to antiquarian labors, took a prominent part in the foundation of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and by degrees gathered for himself a large and valuable collection. In 1817 he made a handsome donation to the library of Dartmouth University." He died in Boston, June 5th, 1840, at. eighty-two. See biographical sketch in the Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc., ii. 193; also his portrait, in vol. i. p. 4.

8 They were named Francis Joseph Gill (afterward known as Annance), Francis Joseph Gill, Jr., Anthony Gill, and Benedict Gill. The last three left with the other boys in 1777, but the first, "Great Francis," as he was called, remained till March, 1780. In 1778 he was a member of College. In 1803 he was sachem of the tribe, and sent to the School his son Louis, together with a boy of the Gills', and kept them there about six years (Memoirs of Wheelock, p. 98).

expectation of engaging in trade, having been driven out of business there by the British. Disappointed in her hope of finding an opening for trade at Hanover, she undertook, at Wheelock's solicitation, the care of these ten little boys, "to perform the office of a Christian mother to them."

Through an interpreter, Wheelock told them "that she was mother to the lad who was left among their relations, and that she would be their mother." The children appeared to be much pleased and comforted by it, " and it was," he says, "not a little affecting to see the natural and undissembled expressions of their filial fondness toward her."1

With equal good fortune it happened that Jacob Fowler, a former Indian pupil of Wheelock at Lebanon, who had fallen into debt and been obliged to leave his employment in Connecticut, came with his wife, at Wheelock's invitation, to Han

He arrived but a few days after the boys, and was at once employed, for £36 a year, to take charge of their instruction. He found, to his surprise, that he could converse with them easily in the Indian tongue, so similar were their dialects. The house which had been prepared for the farmer chanced to be vacant, and Mrs. Walcott and Fowler both moved into it with the little flock. Fowler remained a year, until the ensuing October, and Mrs. Walcott till the evacuation of Boston, in March, 1776. There were at the same time ten or eleven other Indians, - part of them members of the College, and the remainder attending the School, or preparatory department, under the superintendence of Dean. The outbreak of the war and the cessation of English remittances prevented any further missionary expeditions or increase of the Indian scholars. But the connection already established proved of priceless value to the College and the community in the troublous times that followed.

1 Narrative of 1775. p. 13 She remarked in them, though so young, the Indian fondness for drink that had snap in it, for "big beer," as they called it. See an account of her experience with them in Gould's Notes and Queries, Manchester, November, 1884, p. 461.

CHAPTER VI.

1774-1782.

THE TOWN AND THE COLLEGE IN THE REVOLUTION.

THE

HE year 1775 began a new epoch alike for town and College. At the very moment when the English funds were exhausted, the gathering storm that darkened the political horizon cut off all hope of further help from England, and involved College, town, and Province in common dangers and difficulties. But the most serious blow that the College suffered by the change was the loss of its powerful and disinterested friend, Governor Wentworth, who was deprived of his power and influence as early as May, and took his final leave of the country in September. The College was thus with little warning cut away in all directions from its former attachments, and driven to seek new patrons and new means of support. From the enjoyment of resources that had been during four years practically unlimited, except by the prudence of Wheelock, all its multifarious interests were on the instant reduced to self-maintenance or a precarious dependence on charity, in a new and half peopled country, doubly impoverished by the charges of the war and by the ever-present necessity of selfprotection from the savages, who ranged unhindered to a frontier but thirty miles distant from the College itself, and kept the whole valley in a condition of chronic alarm. It was essentially a greater change than the removal from Connecticut, and the shock was tremendous. It is true that by expenditures which remittances from England had made possible, a foothold had by this time been obtained in the wilderness which could have been gained in no other way. To this it was doubtless largely owing that the College enjoyed the proud distinction of pursuing through every vicissitude its regular