This attack had
weighty influence, as occasioning the first American congress. Seven
delegates from various colonies assembled at New York on May 1, 1690, to
devise defence against the northern invaders.

The eastern Indians were hardly at rest from Philip's War when roused by
the French to engage in this. An attack was made upon Haverhill, Mass.,
and Hannah Dustin, with a child only a few days old, another woman, and
a boy, was led captive to an Indian camp up the Merrimac. The savages
killed the infant, but thereby steeled the mother's heart for revenge.
One night the three prisoners slew their sleeping guards and, seizing a
canoe, floated down to their home. Dover was attacked June 27, 1689,
twenty-three persons killed, and twenty-nine sold to the French in
Canada. Indescribable horrors occurred at Oyster River, at Salmon Falls,
at Casco, at Exeter, and elsewhere.

[Illustration: Hannah Dustin's Escape.]

[1702]

In 1702 Queen Anne's War began, and in this again New England was the
chief sufferer. The barbarities which marked it were worse than those of
Philip's War. De Rouville, with a party of French and savages, proceeded
from Canada to Deerfield, Mass. Fearing an attack, the villagers meant
to be vigilant, but early on a February morning, 1704, the wily enemy,
skulking till the sentinels retired at daylight, managed to effect a
surprise. Fifty were killed and one hundred hurried off to Canada. Among
these were the minister, Mr. Williams, and his family. Twenty years
later a white woman in Indian dress entered Deerfield. It was one of the
Williams daughters. She had married an Indian in Canada, and now refused
to desert him. Cases like this, of which there were many in the course
of these frightful wars, seemed to the settlers harder to bear than
death. Massachusetts came so to dread the atrocious foe, that fifteen
pounds were offered by public authority for an Indian man's scalp, eight
for a child's or a woman's.

[1705]

[Illustration: Plan of Port Royal, Nova Scotia.]

Governor Spotswood urged aggression on the French to the west; Governor
Hunter of New York had equal zeal for a movement northward. New York
raised 600 men and the same number of Iroquois, voting 10,000 pounds of
paper money for their sustenance. Connecticut and New Jersey sent 1,600
men. A force of 4,000 in all mustered at Albany under Nicholson of New
York. They were to co-operate against Montreal with the naval expedition
of 1711, com