Glimpses of the Past: History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784Raymond, W. O. (William Odber)
History
Glimpses of the Past: History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784
Raymond, W. O. (William Odber)
New Brunswick -- History; Saint John River Valley (Me. and N.B.)
The effect of the capture of Pemaquid by d'Iberville and the
repulse of the English by Villebon greatly encouraged the savages of
Acadia in their hostility and the following summer another raid on
the English settlements was planned. A large number of Micmacs came
from the eastward, some of them from the Basin of Minas, with St.
Cosme, their priest, at their head. They were entertained by
Villebon, furnished with ammunition and supplies and sent on to the
rendezvous at Penobscot. Father Simon and 72 Maliseets were sent in
the same direction soon afterwards with instructions to pick up the
Passamaquoddies on their way; they departed in high spirits with
the intention of giving no quarter to the enemy and Villebon
encouraged their animosity, exhorting them "to burn and to destroy."
This advice they followed to the letter for the Governor wrote in
his journal shortly afterwards, "the missionary, M. de Thury,
confirms the report I already had received of four small parties of
our Indians having killed fifteen or sixteen English and burnt one of
them alive on account of one of their chiefs being slain." The
vindictiveness of the Indians is further illustrated by an incident
that happened at the Medoctic village in the time of King William's
war, in which John Gyles and James Alexander, two English captives,
were cruelly abused. A party of Indians from Cape Sable, having
had some of their relatives killed by English fishermen, travelled
all the way to Medoctec in order to wreak their vengeance upon any
English captives they might find. They rushed upon their unfortunate
victims like bears bereaved of their whelps, saying, "Shall we, who
have lost our relations by the English, suffer an English voice to be
heard among us?" The two captives were brutally beaten and ill used
and made to go through a variety of performances for the amusement of
their tormenters. Gyles says: "They put a tomahawk into my hands
and ordered me to get up, sing and dance Indian, which I performed
with the greatest reluctance and while in the act seemed determined to
purchase my death by killing two or three of these monsters of
cruelty, thinking it impossible to survive the bloody treatment....
Not one of them showed the least compassion, but I saw the tears run
down plentifully on the cheeks of a Frenchman who sat behind." The
tortures were continued until the evening of what Gyles might well
call "a very tedious day." Finally a couple of Indians threw the
two wretched men out of the big wigwam, where they had been
tormented; they crawled away on their hands and knees and were
scarcely able to walk for several days.
The experience of Gyles was, however, nothing in comparison with that
of his brother and another captive taken by the Indians at the same
time as himself. This unfortunate pair attempted to desert, but failed
and were subjected to the most horrible tortures and finally burned
alive by the savages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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