Raid on Groton

In 1693 the English at Boston had entered into peace and trade negotiations with the Abenaki tribes in eastern Massachusetts. The French at Quebec under Governor Frontenac wished to disrupt the negotiations and sent Claude-Sébastien de Villieu in the fall of 1693 into present-day Maine, with orders to "place himself at the head of the Acadian Indians and lead them against the English."[1]

Villieu spent the winter at Fort Nashwaak. The Indian bands of the region were in general disagreement as to whether to attack the English or not, but after discussions by Villieu and the support of Father Louis-Pierre Thury and Father Vincent Bigot (at Pentagouet), they went on the offensive.

The English settlement of Oyster River was attacked by Villieu with about 250 Abenaki Indians, composed of two main groups from the Penobscot and Norridgewock under command of their sagamore Bomazeen (or Bomoseen). A number of Maliseet from Medoctec, led by Assacumbuit, took part in the attack, but Fr. Simon-Gérard had dissuaded most of his followers from participating. Following the raid on Oyster River, "the savages of Pentagoet under Taxous and Madockawando, piqued at the little booty, and the few captives taken," took 40 warriors and marched a roundabout route to Groton, Massachusetts, which they raided on the morning of July 27, 1694.[2] There they killed some 20 people and took captive some 13 others.[3]

After the successful raid on Oyster River and Groton, Claude-Sébastien de Villieu joined Acadian Governor de Villebon as the commander of Fort Nashwaak, capital of Acadia.

• Military history of the Maliseet people

Endnotes

Sources:

• The address of C. Alice Baker – History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Volume 4, p. 401
• Jeremy Belknap, The History of New Hampshire, ed. John Farmer (Dover, N.H.: S.C. Stevens and Ela & Wadleigh, 1831)
• Samuel Adams Drake, The Border Wars of New England Commonly called King William's and Queen Anne's Wars (Williamstown, Mass: Corner House, 1973), 96.
• Montague Chamberlain, "A French Account of the Raid upon the New England Frontier in 1694", Acadiensis: A Journal of the Maritime Provinces, 1901, pp. 249-266
• Jan K. Herman, "Massacre at Oyster River," New Hampshire Profiles, October 1976, 50.
• Jan K. Herman, Massacre on the Northern New England Frontier, 1689–1694 (master's thesis, University of New Hampshire, 1966), 43.
• Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (originally published 1764–1828; reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 2:55.
• Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum (Boston, 1699); reprinted in Magnalia Christi Americana (London, 1702), 86.
• Kenneth M. Morrison, The Embattled Northeast (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 128.
• Francis Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, vol. 2 of France and England in North America (1877; reprint, New York: The Library of America, 1983)
• Rev. John Pike, Journal of the Rev. John Pike, of Dover, N.H., ed. Rev. A.H. Quint (Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1876)
• Everett S. Stackpole, History of New Hampshire (New York: The American Historical Society, 1926), 1:182.
• John Clarence Webster, Acadia at the End of the 17th Century: Letters, Journals and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Villebon, Commandant in Acadia, 1690–1700, and Other Contemporary Documents, Saint John, N.B.: New Brunswick Museum, 1934/1979, p. 56, at Our Roots/Nos Racines, Canada's Local Histories Online
• William L. Wolkovich – Valkavicius, “The Groton Indian Raid of 1694 and Lydia Longley”, Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Volume 30, No. 2 (Summer 2002).

• Samuel Abbott Green, M.D., Groton during the Indian Wars, 1883, full text online about period of King Philip's War, at US GenWebArchives