# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Bell of Caughnawaga

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THE BELL OF CAUGHNAWAGA
STUDENTS, of our history are familiar with the incidents of the raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, on a winter night in 1704, wherein forty-seven of the Puritans were killed, very few got away, and one hundred and twelve were captured, to be transported to Canada. Only one house escaped burning and pillage, and that was defended by seven Englishmen, whose wives cast bullets while the men picked off the French and Indians through the windows and loop-holes. In the march to Canada several of the captives, who showed signs of illness and weakness, were promptly slaughtered. For the brutality exhibited in this "war" the French leader, Major de Rouville, has been greatly blamed, but it is likely that he was unable to control his savage allies after they had tasted blood. Rev. John Williams, pastor of the Puritan flock, lost his wife and two of his children by murder on the long walk, yet when his freedom, his children, and a pension were offered to him if he would join the Roman Church, he refused. All the captives were obliged to attend mass, however, and twenty-eight of the Puritans chose conversion in preference to continued suffering, and, as the chronicler quaintly puts it, this "kindred blood now rattles bad French in Canada, or spotters Indian in the North and Northwest." The French treated their prisoners with kindness, allowing sixty ​of them to return on payment of ransom. The little daughter of Mr. Williams was kept by the Indians and adopted into their tribe. When de Rouville returned, five years later, to repeat the raid on Deerfield, he was soundly beaten.
But this old story is only preface to another, less well known. Father Nicholas, of Caughnawaga, had secured from his barbarian congregation enough skins of beaver, foxes, otters, and the like to send to France and with them buy a bell for his church. The ship that brought it was captured by the English in 1703, and the bell, after being landed in Salem, was sent to Deerfield meeting-house, where it solemnly tolled to sermons and to prayers, gave note of death, and sounded alarms when fire broke out or hostiles threatened. The "popish" legend on its side was chopped and filed away. To have their bell thus fall into the hands of enemies of their Church was more than the Indians could endure, and it was the thought of this sacrilege rather than race hatred which lent fury to the arms that wielded the knife and axe. Father Nicholas accompanied the raiders and secured his treasure after Deerfield had been laid in ashes. It was carried as far as Lake Champlain and buried. Then, when spring had released the land, a company of young communicants dug it up and carried it to its destination, the Saut St. Louis Church of Caughnawaga, opposite Montreal. As they emerged from the wood bearing this burden on a pole, its clapper pounding ​joyously, the people in the village, who had never heard such a sound before, sprang up, crossed themselves, and cried, in solemn exultation, "It is the bell!" They went forth in glad procession, wreathed it in flowers, and took it to the church, where for long years it called the faithful Indians to mass and vespers.