re, but that they had considered that their settlements were
established and that they were still inclined to tolerate them; but they
demanded as an express condition of peace that the English should
abandon the country from one league beyond Saco River to Port Royal,
which was the line separating the lands of the Abenakis from those of
the Micmaks."[5]

[4] Undoubtedly the Connecticut.

[5] N. Y. Colonial Documents, vol. ix.

The Abenakis denied that they had ever sold any land to the English, and
when the latter claimed that much of it was theirs by a possession of
more than eighty years, and that this possession gave them a title, the
Indians replied, "We were in possession before you, for we have held it
from time immemorial." The English delegates conceded that they did not
claim beyond the west bank of the Narantsouak (Kennebec), and that the
fort at St. George was built not by them, but by the government of Port
Royal.

The meeting seems to have been unsatisfactory to the delegation, and no
treaty or arrangement was made. The French governor denied that they had
furnished the Indians with arms, or instigated them to attack the
English, although Vaudreuil's letters to his government in France bear
abundant evidence that this was his constant policy.

In the treaty with many of the tribes, held at Deerfield in 1735, the
St. Francis Indians were represented, and agreed to the arrangement for
perpetual peace; but a few years elapsed before they were again engaged
in their bloody pastime. War was declared against France in 1744, and
the Abenakis were soon hovering on the frontiers. In 1746, Keene and
Concord, in New Hampshire, felt their power, and many captives were
carried to Canada. In 1752 Capt. Phineas Stevens proceeded to Canada, as
a delegate from the governor of Massachusetts, to confer with the
Abenakis, and to redeem some prisoners they had in their possession. At
a conference had with them in the presence of the governor of Canada,
Atewaneto, the chief speaker, made an eloquent reply, in which he
charged the English with trespassing on their lands: he said, "We
acknowledge no other land of yours than your settlements, wherever you
have built, and we will not consent, under any pretext, that you pass
beyond them. The lands we possess have been given us by the Great Master
of Life, we acknowledge to hold only from him."

In 1755 they were again in the field, and followed the French armies to
the he