ruary, the bush-rovers reached a hut where there
chanced to be several Mohawk squaws. Crowding round the chimney place
to dry their clothes now stiff with ice, the bushrangers learned from
the Indian women that Schenectady lay completely unguarded. There had
been some village festival that day among the Dutch settlers. The
gates at both ends of the town lay wide open, and as if in derision of
danger from the far distant French, a snow man had been mockingly
rolled up to the western gate as sentry, with a sham pipe stuck in his
mouth. The Indian rangers harangued their braves, urging them to wash
out all wrongs in the blood of the enemy, and the Le Moyne brothers
moved from man to man, giving orders for utter silence. At eleven that
night, shrouded by the snowfall, the bushrovers reached the palisades
of Schenectady. They had intended to defer the assault till dawn, but
the cold hastened action, and, uncasing their muskets, they filed
silently past the snow man in the middle of the open gate and encircled
the little village of fifty houses. When the lines met at the far
gate, completely investing the town, a wild yell rent the air! Doors
were hacked down. Indians with tomahawks stood guard outside the
windows, and the dastardly work began,--as gratuitous a butchery of
innocent people as ever the Iroquois perpetrated in their worst raids.
Two hours the massacre lasted, and when it was over the French had, to
their everlasting discredit, murdered in cold blood thirty-eight men
(among them the poor inoffensive dominie), ten women, {174} twelve
children; and the victors held ninety captives. To the credit of
Iberville he offered life to one Glenn and his family, who had aided in
ransoming many French from the Iroquois, and he permitted this man to
name so many friends that the bloodthirsty Indians wanted to know if
all Schenectady were related to this white man. One other house in the
town was spared,--that of a widow with five children, under whose roof
a wounded Frenchman lay. For the rest, Schenectady was reduced to
ashes, the victors harnessing the Dutch farmers' horses to carry off
the plunder. Of the captives, twenty-seven men and boys were carried
back to Quebec. The other captives, mainly women and children, were
given to the Indians. Forty livres for every human scalp were paid by
the Sovereign Council of Quebec to the raiders.

[Illustration: FRENCH SOLDIER OF THE PERIOD]

The record of the raiders