The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-18

prevent AOulS ITOIn D6COIllDS lue dp- solute master of Europe.
 The year before, 17Oe, had witnessed the humbling of the pride and ambi- ton of Louis by the defeat of his ar- mics at Families by the Duke of Marlborough. In Piedmont by Prince Eugene, and in Spain by Lord Galway. Charles XII of Sweden had advanced to Dresden in Saxony, an English and Portuguese army had occupied Madrid and an attack of the combined fleets of Spain and France upon Charleston, s. C., then claimed by Spain as a part of Florida, had been repulsed by the vlgor and martial skill of the Colonial authorities.
 At that time. the valley of the St. Lawrence was occupied by about 50,0OO French settlers, imbued with bitter hostility towards the settlers in New England and New York. Already the vast design of La Sale to acquire for the King of France the whole interior of the continent seemed to have been accomplished. While as yet the Eng fish were struggling to secure foot hold upon the Atlantic seaboard, the French had explored the Mississippi and it's tributaries to it's mouth, ard the whole vast region drained by them, between the Alleghanies and the Rockies, had been taken possession of by the French under the name of Louisiana. and chain of military and trading posts from New Orleans to the St. Lawrence, admirably chosen for the purpose, had been established to hold 1t, and another chain was al- ready planned to extend southward along the west side of the Alleghanies, to forever keep out the English The French had been for fifty years bounding on the numerous tribes of Canada and northern New England to attack and exterminate the settlers of New England. The conquest of Canada by the English was therefore an ob- ject of the greatest political import ance, and necessary for the peace and safety of the colonies, and their future growth, and 1t continued to engross the efforts and exhaust the means of the colonists, until their purpose was finally accomplished in H6S.
 The people who settled here were en- tirely familiar with the hardships, dangers and horrors of Indian warfare to which they were liable in taking up their abode on this frontier. The hor- rible incidents which attended the massacre of the inhabitants of Schen- ectady, in 1890, seventeen years before, during the previous war, and of the inhabitants of Deerheld, Mass, and other places in 1704 during the war still raging, were household words throughout Connecticut, and had left an abiding imprint in the minds of the people on the border. Though the Iuidans, right about them here, seem to have been few in number and com paratively harmless, they know from their own and their fathers experi- ences, that their position was one of extreme danger, and that at all times their scanty and hard won possessions and their lives were liable to instant destruction, from unheralded irrup- tions by the more distant Indian tribes of the North and Northwest, urged on by their French instigators and allies. For the experiences of the last seventy years, from the time of the Pequot war and during the subsequent troubles with the tribes in southwestern Con- necticut, and on Long Island, and dur ing King Philips war, had fully taught them the craft, treachery and pitiless cruelty of the savages, as well as their capacity for extensive combination among the widely separated tribes.
 When Major DeRouville in 1704. with his band of civilized and uncivllized savages, committed the atrocities at Deerfield Mass, the suspicious of the Colonsts that the French had instigat- cd tho former Indian outrages became a certainty, for in this instance they openly shared in them.
 Their object was, as I have said, to drive the English colonists from North America, and substitute in their place their own colonial system. For this purpose they fitted out hundreds of parties of savages to proceed to other portions of the English settlements shoot down the settlers when at work at their crops, seize their wives and children, load them with packs of plum der from their own homes, and drive them before them into the wilderness. When no longer able to stagger under their burdens, they were murdered, and their scalps torn off, and exhibited to their masters. and for such trophies bounties were paid. The French gov ernment in Paris paid bounties for the scalps of women and children, as Con- necticut did for those of wolves, and it not only fitted out other savage expedi- tions, but sent it's own soldiers to as- reports of each case were regularly made to the government at Paris by it's agents in Canada which can now be read. This Is true of every French and Indian war until 17SS, and the fact was as well known to the settlers here in 170T, as it Is to the historical investi- gator of today
 In the beginning of 1707, reports of an expedition by the French and Tn- dians against some part of New Eng land gave alarm to the colony, and on the 9th of February of that year council of war was convened at Hart ford, consisting of the governor, most of the council, and many of the chief military officers of the colony. Suspi- cions were entertained that the attack would fall upon western Connecticut, and that the Indians in this vicinity intended to join the French and In- dians The council of war determined that the then western frontier towns of