ow at the
settlement of Oyster River, twelve miles from Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. The English settlers, having been informed that peace had
been made with the Indians and that they could now work with safety on
their farms, were totally unprepared for an attack. Among their
unprotected houses the carnage was horrible. One hundred persons,
chiefly women and children, half naked from their beds, were
tomahawked, shot, or killed by slower and more cruel methods, twenty
seven were kept as prisoners.

After engaging in some minor depredations Villieu proceeded to
Montreal accompanied by several of the chiefs where they presented a
string of English scalps to Count Frontenac as a token of their
success and received his hearty congratulations. Villieu thus summed
up the results of the campaign: "Two small forts and fifty or sixty
houses captured and burnt, and one hundred and thirty English killed
or made prisoners." He had done his work all too well and had sown
such seeds of distrust between the English and the Indians as to
render it almost impossible to re-establish peace between them. The
enmity lasted for generations and almost every year witnessed some act
of hostility even though the crowns of France and England were
themselves at peace.

In the midst of their triumphs an appalling pestilence swept away
great numbers of the Indians. On the River St. John more than one
hundred and twenty persons died, including some of the most noted
warriors and their chief. The pestilence scattered the savages in all
directions and for a time their town of Medoctec was abandoned. A
party of warriors who went with Montigny, an officer of Villebon's
garrison, to assist their brethren to the westward was sent back to
Medoctec on account of the contagion that had broken out among them.
The nature of the disease it is impossible at this distance of time to
determine. It could scarcely have been smallpox, according to the
description of John Gyles, who says: "A person seeming in perfect
health would bleed at the mouth and nose, turn blue in spots and die
in two or three hours." The first outbreak of the pestilence was in
the autumn of 1694. A year later Mon. Tibierge, agent of the company
of Acadia, writes that "the plague (la maladie) had broken out afresh:
there had died on the river more than 120 persons of every age and
sex."

The pestilence, however, did not put a stop to the Indian warfare.
In June, 1695, Villebon assembled at h