n
June of the next year Dudley, governor of Massachusetts, called the
chiefs of the various bands to a council at Casco. Here presently
appeared the Norridgewocks from the Kennebec, the Penobscots and
Androscoggins from the rivers that bear their names, the Penacooks from
the Merrimac, and the Pequawkets from the Saco, all well armed, and
daubed with ceremonial paint. The principal among them, gathered under a
large tent, were addressed by Dudley in a conciliatory speech. Their
orator replied that they wanted nothing but peace, and that their
thoughts were as far from war as the sun was from the earth,--words
which they duly confirmed by a belt of wampum.[42] Presents were
distributed among them and received with apparent satisfaction, while
two of their principal chiefs, known as Captain Samuel and Captain
Bomazeen, declared that several French missionaries had lately come
among them to excite them against the English, but that they were "firm
as mountains," and would remain so "as long as the sun and moon
endured." They ended the meeting with dancing, singing, and whoops of
joy, followed by a volley of musketry, answered by another from the
English. It was discovered, however, that the Indians had loaded their
guns with ball, intending, as the English believed, to murder Dudley and
his attendants if they could have done so without danger to their
chiefs, whom the governor had prudently kept about him. It was
afterwards found, if we may believe a highly respectable member of the
party, that two hundred French and Indians were on their way, "resolved
to seize the governor, council, and gentlemen, and then to sacrifice the
inhabitants at pleasure;" but when they arrived, the English officials
had been gone three days.[43]

The French governor, Vaudreuil, says that about this time some of the
Abenakis were killed or maltreated by Englishmen. It may have been so:
desperadoes, drunk or sober, were not rare along the frontier; but
Vaudreuil gives no particulars, and the only English outrage that
appears on record at the time was the act of a gang of vagabonds who
plundered the house of the younger Saint-Castin, where the town of
Castine now stands. He was Abenaki by his mother; but he was absent when
the attack took place, and the marauders seem to have shed no blood.
Nevertheless, within six weeks after the Treaty of Casco, every
unprotected farmhouse in Maine was in a blaze.

The settlements of Maine, confined to the sou