obeying the kingcraft of a royal
master, who would use Indian warfare to add to his domain.

"The English have sent us presents to drive the Black Gowns away,"
declared the Iroquois in 1702 regarding the French Jesuits. "You did
well," writes the King of France to his Viceroy in Quebec, "to urge the
Abenakis of Acadia to raid the English of Boston." The Treaty of
Ryswick became {193} known at Quebec towards the end of 1698. The
border warfare of ravage and butchery had begun by 1701, the English
giving presents to the Iroquois to attack the French of the Illinois,
the French giving presents to the Abenakis to raid the New England
borders. Quebec offers a reward of twenty crowns for the scalp of
every white man brought from the English settlements. New England
retaliates by offering 20 pounds for every Indian prisoner under ten
years of age, 40 pounds for every scalp of full-grown Indian.
Presently the young _noblesse_ of New France are off to the woods,
painted like Indians, leading crews of wild bushrovers on ambuscade and
midnight raid and border foray.

[Illustration: HERTEL DE ROUVILLE]

"We must keep things stirring towards Boston," declared Vaudreuil, the
French governor. Midwinter of 1704 Hertel de Rouville and his four
brothers set out on snowshoes with fifty-one bushrovers and two hundred
Indians for Massachusetts. Dressed in buckskin, with musket over
shoulder and dagger in belt, the forest rangers course up the frozen
river beds southward of the St. Lawrence, and on over the height of
land towards the Hudson, two hundred and fifty miles through pine woods
snow padded and silent as death. Two miles from Deerfield the marchers
run short of food. It is the last day of February, and the sun goes
down over rolling snowdrifts high as the slab stockades of the little
frontier town whose hearth-fire smoke hangs low in the frosty air,
curling and clouding and lighting to rainbow colors as the ambushed
{194} raiders watch from their forest lairs. Snowshoes are laid aside,
packs unstrapped, muskets uncased and primed, belts reefed tighter.
Twilight gives place to starlight. Candles on the supper tables of the
settlement send long gleams across the snow. Then the villagers hold
their family prayers, all unconscious that out there in the woods are
the bushrovers on bended knees, uttering prayers of another sort.
Lights are put out. The village lies wrapped in sleep. Still
Rouville's raiders lie waiting