In the Devil's Snare (45 page)

Sgt. Daniel Wescott, statement, Stamford, 27 May 1692, Wyllys Papers (Brown), W-19; printed with modernized spelling in Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting, 317–19.

Jonathan Selleck to Nathaniel Gold, 29 June 1692, Wyllys Papers (Brown), W-22; partially printed in Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting, 331–32. The war’s impact in the region was confined to some deaths of militiamen from disease on a failed 1690 expedition to Montreal and losses of houses, livestock, and crops in a raid by French vessels along the coast in mid-July 1690. Information on the Connecticut situation can be found in the correspondence of Fitz-John Winthrop, box 24, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS.

Thus John Demos discusses them in his
Entertaining Satan,
a book conceptualized as dealing with all New England cases other than those related to Salem.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
400. On the Hartford cases, see Hall, ed.,
Witch-Hunting,
147–63, 355–58; and Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
351–55, 509–13.

SWP
2:413, 415. Spelling in the final quotation corrected by the original, SWP/SJC/PEM 1:158. That Deliverance Hobbs was herein referred to as Abigail’s “mother” has misled some historians into thinking that theirs was a blood relationship. It was not; Abigail’s mother, her father’s first wife, was named Avis. See chapter 4, below.

SWP
2:416. The April 18 complaint against her and others: ibid., 1:239.

This and the next three paragraphs are based on ibid., 2:405–409, with minor corrections from the original in Miscellaneous Manuscripts, MHS.

When Abigail Hobbs was indicted in September 1692 for making a covenant with Satan, she was accused of doing so in 1688 at Casco Bay. Consequently, the grand jury accepted the dating of four years earlier as the appropriate timing of her encounter with the devil. I have herein accepted the grand jury’s determination (
SWP
2:414–15), but her ambiguous confession also implied either 1686 or 1689 as possibilities.

CHAPTER THREE PANNICK AT THE EASTWARD

The first quotation is from Thomas Danforth to —, 27 June 1689,
DHSM
9:23; the second, from the captivity narrative of John Gyles, who heard the story of the Cocheco raid directly from some of the Indians involved: Alden T. Vaughan and Edward E. Clark, eds.,
Puritans among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676–1724
(Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 101. Samuel G. Drake supplied one of the most detailed published descriptions of the Cocheco raid and of Waldron’s reputation in his notes to Thomas Church,
The History of Philip’s
War . . . Also, of the French and Indian Wars, at the Eastward,
ed. Samuel G. Drake (Exeter, N.H., 1839), 161n.–163n. For Waldron’s early history, see George M. Bodge,
Soldiers in King Philip’s War,
3d ed. (Boston, 1906), 293–95. On the Pennacooks: Colin G. Calloway, “Wanalancet and Kancagamus: Indian Strategy and Leadership on the New Hampshire Frontier,”
Historical New Hampshire
43 (1988): 264–90. I owe the Gyles reference to Alice Nash.

The unsuccessful attempt to warn Waldron can be traced in
DHSM
6:499 and 9:22.

Quotations from Vaughan and Clark, eds.,
Puritans among the Indians,
101. Other accounts of the raid, which shocked New Englanders, are “News from New England Concerning the Indians,” n.d. [c. early July 1689],
DHSM
5:2; A. H. Quint, ed., “Journal of the Rev. John Pike,”
MHS Procs
14 (1875–76): 124; and Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives
, 195–96.

Vaughan and Clark, eds.,
Puritans among the Indians,
183. Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney attribute the 1704 Deerfield raid in part to the Pennacooks’ continuing anger over Waldron’s betrayal; see their “Revisiting
The Redeemed Captive:
New Perspectives on the 1704 Attack on Deerfield,” in Colin G. Calloway, ed.,
After
King Philip’s War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England
(Hanover, N.H., 1997), 42. Thanks respectively to Alice Nash and Lisa Brooks for these references.

Recent works on King Philip’s War include Russell Bourne,
The Red King’s
Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675–1678
(New York, 1990); James Drake,
King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675–1676
(Amherst, Mass., 1999); and Jill Lepore,
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of
American Identity
(New York, 1998). Bourne devotes one chapter to the northern phase of the war; Drake gives it two and a half pages; and Lepore barely mentions it. Yet, as Baker (n. 6, below) points out, the war had more devastating effects in the north than in the south. See also Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, eds.,
So Dreadful a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676–1677
(Middle-town, Conn., 1978).

Emerson Woods Baker II, “Trouble to the Eastward: The Failure of Anglo-Indian Relations in Early Maine” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1986), chapter 6, is one of the best discussions of King Philip’s War in the north; he addresses its origins, 184–88.

Descriptions of these communities written in 1660 and 1677, respectively, are Henry F. Waters, ed., “Maverick’s Description of New England,”
NEHGR
39 (1885): 33–47; and William Hubbard,
A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in
New-England . . .
[part 2]
From Pascataqua to Pemmaquid
(Boston, 1677), 1–4. Falmouth is now Portland.

Quotation: unnamed Boston merchant to London friend, 16 May 1690, CO 5/855, f 3. For Maine residents’ conflicted attitudes toward the Bay Colony: Maine General Assembly, petition to King Charles II, n.d. [summer 1680],
DHSM
4:394–96. See, on the fisheries: Daniel Vickers,
Farmers & Fishermen: Two Cen
turies of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630–1850 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), chapter 3 passim, esp. 100; on timber: Charles F. Carroll,
The Timber Economy of
Puritan New England
(Providence, R.I., 1973), chapter 6 passim, esp. 110; and on the struggle to control Maine: Mary Beth Norton,
Founding Mothers & Fathers:
Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society
(New York, 1996), 308–12; and Carroll,
Timber Economy,
115–19. For the New England economy as a whole: see Bernard Bailyn,
The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge, Mass., 1955). Population estimate from Baker, “Trouble to Eastward,” 179.

My understanding of the Wabanakis derives largely from the excellent work of Emerson Baker, Alice Nash, and Jenny Pulsipher. See Nash’s succinct description of Wabanaki social structure in her “The Abiding Frontier: Family, Gender, and Religion in Wabanaki History, 1600–1763” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1997), 17–18. I also thank Baker, Nash, and Pulsipher for generously sharing unpublished essays with me.

For a brief discussion of Acadia, see John Mack Faragher, “ ‘Without these compromises it would be impossible to exist in this country’: Acadian ‘Neutrality’ in the Age of Empire, 1604–1755,” paper delivered at the conference on Greater American Histories, HL, March 2001. My thanks to Johnny Faragher for sharing this unpublished essay with me. On Madockawando and Castine, see also Alvin Morrison, “Dawnland Directors’ Decisions: 17th-Century Encounter Dynamics on the Wabanaki Frontier,” in William Cowan, ed.,
Papers of the Twenty-second
Algonquian Conference
(Ottawa, Canada, 1991), passim, esp. 232–34, 238–39. I owe this reference to Maria Lepowsky.

This analysis of the origins of King Philip’s War in the north largely concurs with Nash, “Abiding Frontier,” 5–6. For the assessment of the 1678 Treaty of Casco, see Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
184.

Ingersoll to Alger, 10 September 1675,
DHSM
6:89–90. On the problems along the Kennebec, see Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 13–15; on the death of Squando’s child, ibid., 29
.

Ingersoll to Alger, 10 September 1675,
DHSM
6:89–90; Daniel Denison to [Governor Leverett?], n.d. [after 16 October 1675], ibid., 84; Gardner to Leverett, 22 September 1675, ibid., 91–93. Gardner’s cautionary message served only to arouse “more then Ordinary Suspition” that he was himself “tradeing with the french & Indians” and encouraging “the barbarous natives now in Hostillity.” The council ordered his arrest a few weeks later. (Massachusetts Council to Brian Pendleton et al., 16 October 1675, ibid., 96.) Bourne,
Red King’s Rebellion,
225, states that Gardner was subsequently tried for treason, but acquitted. On the raids that fall: Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 16–26.

For the controversies surrounding the troops in Black Point, see Richard Foxwell, et al., petition to Mass. General Court, n.d. [c. 15 July 1676],
NEHGR
43 (1889): 71. Many of the depositions in Suffolk Court Files #1526 and #1828, JA, MSA, criticize Scottow’s use of the soldiers during the winter of 1675–1676.

Leverett to [Sir Joseph Williamson], 15 June 1676, CO 1/37, f 16. One of the captives “freely” brought into Cocheco was Elizabeth Wakely, captured when her parents and grandparents were killed outside Falmouth on 9 September 1675. See
York Deeds
16:145.

The fullest description of the 1676 attack on Falmouth is Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 30–34. Burroughs wrote to Black Point from the island to obtain help. His letter has not survived, but it was mentioned both in Brian Pendleton to Massachusetts Governor and Council [hereafter MG&C], 13 August 1676, reprinted in William Willis,
The History of Portland, from 1632 to 1864
(Portland, 1865), 206n, and in a council order the next day (
DHSM
6:116).

Quotations: Gardner et al. to MG&C, 21 [August] 1676, DHSM 6:118–19; John Laverdure, deposition, 23 August 1676, box 2/32, Collection 77, MeHS; Edward Rawson to [Daniel Denison?], 23 August 1676,
DHSM
6:119. See also two other depositions in box 2/32, Collection 77, MeHS; and Edward Pateshall, deposition, 3 April 1677, CO 1/40, f 49, on how the kidnappings aroused Indian hostility. Estimates of the size of the group seized ranged as high as thirty. See also Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 29–30, 35–44; and Faragher, “ ‘Without these compromises,’ ” 14–15. “The humble Address of the Saggamores of Kennibeck & Andross Coggan Rivers and Easterne Side of Cascoa Bay in New England,” received 4 December 1684, CO 1/56, f 133, attributed their entry into the war primarily to the kidnappings. Some Wabanakis in mid-1677 also referred to the problems caused in the winter of 1675–1676 by their lack of guns and powder (
DHSM
6:178).

Richard Waldron et al. to [MG&C], 10 September 1676, NEHGR 42 (1888): 287. On the treaty of July 1676, see Baker, “Trouble to Eastward,” 194.

Waldron did not send “about 10 young men” and their families to Boston, deeming them “very necessary” and “safe” to employ in the war. Richard Waldron to MG&C, 6 September 1676, box 2/42, Collection 77, MeHS; Waldron et al. to same, 10 September 1676,
NEHGR
42 (1888): 287–88; Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 27–28. Hubbard’s account, which is the standard version of the incident, varies in two ways from what can be pieced together from Waldron’s correspondence cited in this footnote. First, Hubbard claimed that Waldron, Hathorne, and the other commanders “mutually agreed” to capture the Indians, whereas the correspondence makes clear that they acted in response to orders from Boston. Second, Hubbard stated that about half the Wabanakis were not sent south, whereas Waldron specifically refers to having obeyed “yor Pleasures . . . to have all sent down to determine their Case at Boston” (
NEHGR
42 [1888]: 288). Both alterations of the historical record worked to reduce the responsibility of the Boston authorities for the unwarranted seizure of the peaceful group and at the same time tended to increase the culpability of local leaders for that reprehensible act. Yet Waldron’s subordinates expressed disquiet about what they had been directed to do, anticipating violent retaliation.

Quotations: Nicholas Shapleigh and Thomas Daniel to MG&C, 6 September 1676, box 2/42, Collection 77, MeHS (this letter and that of Waldron of the same date to the same recipients, cited n. 19 above, are on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper); Pendleton to MG&C, n.d. [c. early November 1676],
DHSM
6:141. See also Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 46; and Hathorne’s reports of his lack of progress in
DHSM
6:123–24, 128–30. There are numerous firsthand accounts of the surrender of Black Point in Suffolk Court File #1828, JA, MSA. One of the few registers of names of Maine refugees entering an Essex County town is the list of people from Casco (including George Ingersoll) admitted to residency in Salem in January 1675/6: “Salem Town Records,”
EIHC
48 (1912): 21. See also the council order of 4 December 1676 requesting information about the “many necessitous persons in the severall Townes brought in distresse by the Indian warr,”
DHSM
4:144.

Hubbard,
Narrative
[part 2], 64–71 (quotation 70); Baker, “Trouble to Eastward,” 207–10. Waldron’s orders and commission are printed in
DHSM
6:153–55.

Deogenes et al. to “governor of Boston,” 1 July 1677,
DHSM
6:178.

Quotation: Waldron to —, 18 April 1677, ibid., 163. A report from the leader of the men at the Kennebec, 23 April 1677, is ibid., 164–65. See Baker, “Trouble to Eastward,” 211–12, on the battles around Black Point.

Quotation: motion of “Eastern Deputies,” 6 June 1677,
DHSM
6:170. On Andros’s intervention, see ibid., 185–86; Baker, “Trouble to Eastward,” 212–13; Andros’s instructions to Lt. Anthony Brockholst, 13 June 1677, CO 1/40, ff 239–40; and Sir Edmund Andros, “A Short Account of New Yorks Assistance to New England, 18 April 1678,” CO 1/42, f 118. The council detailed its suspicions of Andros (and of possible French encouragement of the Indians) in a letter to English officials, 5 April 1676,
DHSM
6:112. For more about fears of the French: ibid., 150; and Henry Jocelyn and Joshua Scottow to Governor Leverett, 15 September 1676, box 33/21, Collection S-888, MeHS.