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Oral 8
Oral 8
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chiefly destroyed except some few of them who took to the water.
About forty of my people pursued them, who destroyed such as
attempted to make their escape that way, and sunk both them and their
boats. A little after sunrise I set fire to all their houses except three in
which there was corn that I reserved for the use of the party.
The fire consumed many of the Indians who had concealed themselves
in the cellars and lofts of their houses.
About seven o'clock in the morning the affair was completely over, in
which time we had killed at least two hundred Indians, and taken
twenty of their women and children prisoners, fifteen of whom I let go
their own way and five I brought with me, viz. two Indian boys and
three Indian girls. I likewise retook five English captives which I also
took under my care.
When I had paraded my detachment, I found I had Capt. Ogden badly
wounded in his body, but not so as to hinder him from doing his duty.
I had also six men slightly wounded and one Stockbridge Indian killed.
This seems to be an unemotional, factual report of what happened at
St. Francis on the morning of October 4, 1759, and we might assume that,
even if they were still available, Indian accounts could do little more than
embellish it or add personal anecdotes. It contains one curious discrepancy
with the French accounts, however. Rogers reported that the Rangers had
killed "at least two hundred Indians." This was the gauge of the effectiveness
of the expedition and must have been the item of most significance to
General Amherst. The French documents consistently reported only 30
Indians dead, 20 of these being women and children. These documents
include a report to Colonel Bourlamaque written two days after the raid; the
statement of Father Roubaud, the missionary, who arrived on the scene only
about six hours after the attack; and the report of Archibishop Pontbriand to
the King. A note in Marshall Levis' Journal is in the same vein (Charland
1964:117-118). The French observers should have had much better information than Rogers, and they would hardly be falsifying the figures in their
internal correspondence.
How should we resolve this inconsistency? Was Rogers exaggerating the
damage he did to offset criticism for his own considerable losses on the
expedition? Was he reporting honestly, but mistakenly, a much too large
Indian casualty figure? If so, how had he made such an error, having
reconnoitered the village the evening before the attack and having been right
on the spot during and after it? It is precisely at this point that Abenaki
traditions make their contribution.
During my first years at St. Francis I had heard some traditions about
this raid but they were either unreliable or irrelevant to the narrow period we
are considering here. At the time I stumbled onto the first substantial
tradition in January, 1959, there were no Abenaki traditions about the raid in
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woman. Now my aunt, the one who raised us, ... she was the one that
tells us about her grandmother at the time of that fight. My aunt was
about 60 years old [at the time of telling the story]. Her grandmother
was young at the time of the fight. And some Indians at once hurried
home. They stopped dancing and went home, and they went to see
about their people, their children, in order to run away as soon as
possible, so they could hide. And my aunt was the one who told us,
who passed it on to us from her grandmother. Our aunt's great- father
gathered everyone - it was dark, of course - in the dark no one
kindled a light. They gathered their children in the dark, you can be
sure. And they left to hide somewhere where they could not find them.
Of course it was night at that time and they hid - in a big ravine where
they could not find them. And that man, the old man, they counted
their children to see if they were all there - there where it was deep.
And one had been left! My aunt's grandmother was the one who was
missing! And she did not know that she was alone in the house, but
already she was awake, and she was sitting at the foot of the bed and
she was looking out of the window leaning on the window sill. She was
singing, she was calmly singing [to herself]. She did not even know that
the others were gone. Suddenly then her father quickly entered in the
dark, entering quickly, and he took her - he found her singing, this
one.
Right away he took her and left as quickly as he possibly could to the
ravine - the big ravine that is where Eli Nolet's house [now] is, that's
where the ravine is, At the Pines, that's what they call it at Odanak, At
the Pines. And there they hid, the Indians, the Abenakis. And my
grandfather, the Great Obomsawin, the Great Simon, he crossed the
river, just as the sun was rising. Just as the sun is seen first. He didn't
arrive soon enough, and just at that time he is almost across the river
when the sun showed. And his hat - something shone on his hat,
something [bright] that he wore. And there he was shot down on the
other side - he was the only one [to get across]. All that were with the
houses - well, that was when they burned the village - the others,
surely many were killed of the others, all that were with the houses.
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least 200 Indians when the French apparentlyknew that he had killed only
30, and for explaining how Rogers could believe that he had surprisedthe
village if he had not; namely, that those who remainedin the houses were
surprised. Rogers did not count the dead; he could not, because some
perished in the burninghouses. He probably estimatedthe population of the
village on his eveningreconnaissance,subtractedthe 20 captives,and assumed
the rest to be dead. But the idea of one of Rogers' Stockbridge Indians
warning the Abenakis appears,on the face of it, unlikely. The Stockbridges
had suffered at the hands of the French and were fierce partisansof the
English throughout the war. Five of them had been capturedby the Abenakis
a short time before.
If, however, we take into account the so-called Mahican village of
Schaghticoke located on the Hudson River above Albany, everything falls
into place. This may have been a Mahicanvillage at one time, but after 1676
it became a village of New Englandrefugees from King Philip'sWar,mostly
Connecticut River Indians. Some of them were Sokokis, and we should note
that other Sokokis had alreadyfled to St. Franciswhere they were among the
founders of the village and always made up one of the moieties of the
so-called St. Francis Abenakis. About 1700, groups began to drift northward
from Schaghticoke, settling on Lake Champlainand minglingwith Abenakis
at Missisquoi.Finally, in 1754, just before the outbreakof war, the remainder
suddenly abandoned Schaghticoke in the night, even leaving behind a few
families which were out hunting(Charland1964:81). Withwar imminentand
unable to make a safe getaway, these families most probably had to join the
neighboringStockbridges.If they did this, they must of necessity havejoined
them in war, and if some of them were with Rogers'Stockbridgecompanies,
one might well have taken an opportunity to warn the village where his
friends and relativeswere. If he took the long chance of warningthe Abenakis
at the very time when Rogers had the village under surveillance,it is small
wonder that he refused to come out of the dark shadows when talkingwith
the young woman, as my informant told me after the recorder had been
switched off.
The second tradition was obtained from an elderly man3 who had it
from his grandmother,who was born in 1830 and had known persons who
were alive at the time of the raid. This contains elements which greatly
increase the likelihood that there was a warningand that the warnerwas a
Schaghticoke. First, the exact words of the warner are recalled, and while
they are not modern Abenaki, they are near enough to be intelligible, and
they are not at all close to Stockbridge. Perhapsthe oddness of the words
helped to make them memorable. He said, "My friends, I am telling you.
ndapsizak, kedbdemokawleba(Abenaki: nidobak, ked6dokawleba).I would
warn you. kwawimleba (Abenaki: kwawimkawleba). They are going to
exterminateyou. kedatsowiwakwatahogaba(Abenaki: same)."
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bush in the path that the children were going to the bush in and he
would meet the children. So the Indian went down on one knee and
shot his gun at the man.
What is the point of this? The location of Gabriel Annance'shouse is still
known. Just behind it, there was until recent years a year-roundlittle pond or
mud puddle. The path from Annance'shouse to the woods would skirt this
little pond and is the same path which became gravelledand is known today
as Louis Paul Road. Again there is harmony between history and tradition
and between one tradition and another: Rogers'one casualty,the man felled
by the snap shot of the anonymousIndianby the path aroundthe end of the
little pond, andSamadagwis,who was found on Louis Paul Road and baptized
with a hatchet, look most suspiciouslylike one and the same person.
The Abenakis have numerous historical traditions. The oldest one
which I can date concernsan event which took place in 1637. There are some
about the Iroquois wars in the latter half of the 17th century and others
about the period of the French and Indian wars, the AmericanRevolution,
and down to the present.
If there be a scholarly deduction to be made from this little
demonstration, I think it is this: when traditions show good internal
coherence and congruencewith such historicaldata as we have, it seems to be
a fair presumptionthat (1) the traditionsare trustworthyand (2) they should
be taken into account in our reconstructionsof the past. But I am even more
interestedin a programmaticdeduction which can be made, namely, that if so
much really old oral tradition can be obtained from a superficiallyextinct
culture such as the Abenaki, how much more there must be lying about in
North America waiting to be collected. I come to much the same conclusion
that Alan Dundes did in his recent overview of North American Indian
folklore studies (Dundes 1967:69-70). I suggest that the time for obtaining
oral tradition is not yet over, but we all know it is coming to a close. Field
workers who already know a tribe and its culture and who have rapportwith
its traditionalistscould salvage much valuable tradition in the next ten or
fifteen years.
NOTES
1. Presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the American Society for
Ethnohistory at San Diego, California, October 10-12, 1968.
2. Olivine Obomsawin.
3. Theophile Panadis.
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REFERENCES
Charland, Thomas M.
1964 Histoire des A bnakis d'Odanak. Montreal, Editions du Levrier.
Day, Catherine M.
1869 History of the eastern townships. Montreal, J. Lovell.
Day, Gordon M.
1962 Rogers' raid in Indian tradition. Historical New Hampshire, Vol. 17, (June),
pp. 3-17. Concord, New Hampshire Historical Society.
Dundes, Alan
1967 North American Indian folklore studies. Journal de la Societe des Americanistes de Paris, Vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 53-79. Paris.
Harrington, E.
1869 [Notes taken at St. Francis, Quebec.] Unpublished ms., 23 pages. Copy on file
with the author.
Rogers, Robert
1765 Journals of Major Robert Rogers. London, J. Millan.