View Of Meredith New Hampshire

 

View Of Meredith New Hampshire

Page  125 Print 60 of 66 Vol I

 Reproduced from a 7" x 4¾" Steel Engraving

from a Drawing by W.H. Bartlett

 View Of  Meredith, New Hampshire is Print # 60 of 66 from Volume I "AMERICAN SCENERY" or LAND,LAKE, AND RIVER Published in 1839 by George Virtue, 26 Ivy Lane, London

NOTE:This is a exact copy of the original 1839 text describing the above Print, from
"AMERICAN SCENERY" Volume I  

 THIS beautiful town stands between the two lakes Winipiseogee and Sullivan and is deeply surrounded on every side with the most luxuriant rural beauty. The neighbourhood of these exquisite lakes, studded throughout with small green islands, burdened with foliage,—the lofty mountains, near and distant,—the fertility of the soil, and the healthiness of the spot, form a nucleus of attraction which gives Meredith great preference over other towns in New Hampshire. The Winipiseogee communicates, by the river of the same name, with the Merrimack River, and is near five hundred feet above the level of the sea.

This is the only part of New England, as far as we are aware, in which Indians were regularly hunted by parties who went out for the purpose, and received a bounty for their scalps. We have alluded elsewhere to Captain Lovewell, who surprised and killed a large party of sleeping Indians, and was killed himself after­wards, in the famous " Lovewell fight." The following tragedy, which took place on the Merrimack, in what was, in those days, the neighbourhood of Meredith, shows the provocation to this apparent inhumanity.

In the year 1697, a party of Indians, arrayed in their war dresses, approached the house of Mr. Dustan. This man was abroad at his usual labour. Upon the first alarm, he flew to the house, with a hope of hurrying to a place of safety his family, consisting of his wife, who had been confined a week only in child-bed; her nurse, a Mrs. Mary Jeff, a widow from the neighbourhood; and eight children. Seven of his children he ordered to flee, with the utmost expedition, in the course opposite to that in which the danger was approaching; and went himself to assist his wife. Before she could leave her bed, the savages were upon them. Her hus­band, despairing of rendering her any service, flew to the door, mounted his horse, and determined to snatch up the child with which he was unable to part, when he should overtake the little flock. When he came up to them, about two hundred yards from his house, he was unable to make a choice, or to leave any one of the number. He therefore determined to take his lot with them, and to defend them from their murderers, or die by their side. A body of the Indians pursued, and came up with him; and from near distances fired at him and his little company. He returned the fire, and retreated, alternately. For more than a mile he kept so resolute a face to his enemy, retiring in the rear of his charge, returned the fire of the savages so often, and with so good success, and sheltered so effectually his terrified companions, that he finally lodged them all safe from the pursuing butchers, in a distant house. When it is remembered how numerous his assail­ants were, how bold when an overmatch for their enemies, how active, and what excellent marksmen, a devout mind will consider the hand of Providence as unusually visible in the preservation of this family. Another party of the Indians entered the house, immediately after Mr. Dustan had quitted it, and found Mrs. Dustan, and her nurse, who was attempting to fly with the infant in her arms. Mrs. Dustan they ordered to rise instantly ; and before she could completely dress herself, obliged her and her companion to quit the house, after they had plun­dered it and set it on fire. In company with several other captives, they began their march into the wilderness; she feeble, sick, terrified beyond measure, partially clad, one of her feet bare, and the season utterly unfit for comfortable tra­velling. The air was chilly and keen, and the earth covered, alternately, with snow and deep mud. Her conductors were unfeeling, insolent, and revengeful: murder was their glory, and torture their sport. Her infant was in her nurse's arms; and infants were the customary victims of savage barbarity. The company had proceeded but a short distance, when an Indian, thinking it an incumbrance, took the child out of the nurse's arms, and dashed its head against a tree. Such of the other captives as began to be weary, and lag, the Indians tomahawked. The slaughter was not an act of revenge or of cruelty; it was a mere convenience ; an effort so familiar as not even to excite an emotion. Feeble as Mrs. Dustan was, both she and her nurse sustained, without yielding, the fatigue of the journey. Their intense distress for the death of the child, and of their companions, anxiety for those whom they had left behind, and unceasing terror for themselves, raised these unhappy women to such a degree of vigour, that notwithstanding their fatigue, their exposure to cold, their sufferance from hunger, and their sleeping on damp ground, under an inclement sky, they finished an expedition of about one hundred and fifty miles, without losing their spirits, or injuring their health. The weekwarm to which they were conducted, and which belonged to the savage who had claimed them as his property, was inhabited by twelve persons. In the month of April this family set out, with their captives, for an Indian settlement still more remote; and informed them, that when they arrived at the settlement, they must be stripped, scourged, and run the gauntlet, naked, between two files of Indians, containing the whole number found in the settlement; for such, they declared, was the standing custom of their nation. This information made a deep im­pression on the minds of the captive women, and led them irresistibly to devise all the possible means of escape. On the 31st of the same month, very early in the morning, Mrs. Dustan, while the Indians were asleep, having awaked her nurse, and a fellow-prisoner (a youth taken some time before, from Worcester), despatched, with the assistance of her companions, ten of the twelve Indians; the other two escaped. With the scalps of these savages, they returned through the wilderness; and, having arrived safely at Haverhill, and afterwards at Boston, received a handsome reward for their intrepid conduct, from the legislature."