The Boy Captives | Page 4

Indian inside of the paling
which surrounded the building, and apparently seeking to gain an
entrance. He promptly raised his musket and fired at the intruder,
alarming thereby the entire garrison. The women and children left their
beds, and the men seized their guns and commenced firing on the
suspicious object; but it seemed to bear a charmed life, and remained
unharmed. As the morning dawned, however, the mystery was solved
by the discovery of a black quilted petticoat hanging on the clothes-line
completely riddled with balls.
As a matter of course, under circumstances of perpetual alarm and
frequent peril, the duty of cultivating their fields, and gathering their
harvests, and working at their mechanical avocations, was dangerous
and difficult to the settlers. One instance will serve as an illustration. At
the garrison-house of Thomas Dustin, the husband of the far-famed
Mary Dustin (who, while a captive of the Indians, and maddened by the
murder of her infant child, killed and scalped, wit the assistance of a
young boy, the entire band of her captors, ten in number), the business
of brick-making was carried on. The pits where the clay was found
were only a few rods from the house; yet no man ventured to bring the
clay to the yard within the inclosure, without the attendance of a file of
soldiers. An anecdote relating to this garrison has been handed down to
the present time. Among its inmates were two young cousins, Joseph
and Mary Whittaker; the latter a merry, handsome girl, relieving the
tedium of garrison-duty with her light-hearted mirthfulness and--
"Making a sunshine in that shady place."(1)

(1) "Her angel's face As the great eye of heaven shyned bright And
made a sunshine in the shadie place; Did never mortal eye behold such
heavenly grace."
Spenser: *The Faerie Queene,* bk. I. canto iii. st. 4.
Joseph, in the intervals of his labors in the double capacity of
brick-maker and man-at-arms, was assiduous in his attentions to his fair
cousin, who was not inclined to encourage him. Growing desperate, he
threatened one evening to throw himself into the garrison well. His
threat only called forth the laughter of his mistress; and, bidding her
farewell, he proceeded to put it in execution. On reaching the well he
stumbled over a log; whereupon, animated by a happy idea, he dropped
the wood into the water instead of himself, and, hiding behind the curb,
awaited the result. Mary, who had been listening at the door, and who
had not believed her lover capable of so rash an act, heard the sudden
plunge of the wooden Joseph. She ran to the well, and, leaning over the
curb and peering down the dark opening, cried out, in tones of anguish
and remorse, "O Joseph, if you're in the land of the living, I 'll have
you!" "I 'll take ye at your word," answered Joseph, springing up from
his hiding-place and avenging himself for her coyness and coldness by
a hearty embrace.
Our own paternal ancestor, owing to religious scruples in the matter of
taking arms even for defence of life and property, refused to leave his
undefended house and enter the garrison. The Indians frequently came
to his house; and the family more than once in the night heard them
whispering under the windows, and saw them put their copper faces to
the glass to take a view of the apartments. Strange as it may seem, they
never offered any injury or insult to the inmates.
In 1695 the township was many times molested by Indians, and several
persons were killed and wounded. Early in the fall a small party made
their appearance in the northerly part of the town, where, finding two
boys at work in an open field, they managed to surprise and capture
them, and, without committing further violence, retreated through the
woods to their homes on the shore of Lake Winnipiseogee. Isaac
Bradley, aged fifteen, was a small but active and vigorous boy; his

companion in captivity, Joseph Whittaker, was only eleven, yet quite as
large in size, and heavier in his movements. After a hard and painful
journey they arrived at the lake, and were placed in an Indian family,
consisting of a man and squaw and two or three children. Here they
soon acquired a sufficient knowledge of the Indian tongue to enable
them to learn from the conversation carried on in their presence that it
was designed to take them to Canada in the spring. This discovery was
a painful one. Canada, the land of Papist priests and bloody Indians,
was the especial terror of the New England settlers, and the anathema
maranatha(1) of Puritan pulpits. Thither the Indians usually hurried
their captives, where they compelled them to work in their villages or
sold them to the