Battle of Pequawket

The Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended Queen Anne's War, had facilitated the expansion of New England settlement. The treaty, however, had been signed in Europe and had not involved any tribes of the Natives' Wabanaki Confederacy. Since they had not been consulted, they protested this incursion into their lands by conducting raids on British fishermen and settlements. For the first and only time, Wabanaki would fight New Englanders and the British on their own terms and for their own reasons and not principally to defend French imperial interests. In response to Wabanaki hostilities toward the expansion, the Governor of Nova Scotia, Richard Philipps, built a fort in traditional Mi'kmaq territory at Canso, Nova Scotia, in 1720, and Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute built forts on traditional Abenaki territory at the mouth of the Kennebec River. The French claimed the same territory on the Kennebec River by building churches in the Abenaki villages of Norridgewock and Medoctec further upriver. These fortifications escalated the conflict. == Lovewell's expeditions ==

In early September 1724 some Indians came to Dunstable and captured two men. When they did not return from work, a party of ten or more men started in pursuit. One man, Josiah Farwell, warned the leader of the possibility of running into an ambush. Despite this the posse rushed ahead, with Farwell following behind. They were ambushed and eight of the men were killed; the others, excepting Farwell who barely escaped, were captured. Because of these attacks it was thought best to carry on the war more vigorously. Bounties for scalps were once again offered by the provincial government in order to encourage volunteer companies to form (and save the colony the time and expense of raising troops). John Lovewell quickly organized a company of amateur scalp-hunters from the Dunstable area. While they were favored by a grant from the provincial assembly, these troops were not part of the Massachusetts military establishment, but rather a privately organized group of raiders. Lovewell was not a commissioned officer in the provincial forces. Lovewell, whose maternal grandparents had been killed and scalped by Indians, raised the company of thirty men and was appointed by them as captain. In part because of Farwell's common sense Lovewell selected him as his second-in-command and made him lieutenant. Lovewell and Farwell went on three scalp hunting expeditions from December to May. == Battle ==

Lovewell's third expedition consisted of only 47 men, many of whom were unfamiliar with ranging. With men who were more inexperienced and far fewer in number than in the earlier expeditions, they left from Dunstable (present day Nashua, New Hampshire) on April 16, 1725. The Indian guide and another were unable to continue and returned to Dunstable, along with a relative of the injured colonial. When another fell ill they built a fort at Ossipee and left 10 men, including the ill man, the doctor and John Goffe, to garrison the fort while the rest left to raid the Abenaki village of Pequawket, located near the Saco River. On May 9, as the 34 militiamen were being led in morning prayer by chaplain Jonathan Frye, a lone Abenaki warrior was spotted hunting at the lakeshore. Suspecting that this man was a decoy and that there was an Indian force in front of them, nonetheless the rangers decided to hide their packs and proceed cautiously. ("John Chamberlain, the Indian fighter at Pigwacket"), while others report that it was Seth Wyman who killed the warrior with the next shot. With the death of Paugus, the rest of the Indians soon vanished into the forest. == Abenaki account of the battle ==

The story of the Battle of Pequawket recounted below was originally told by a daughter of Powack, a chief of the Penobscot people, allied with the Abenaki in the Wabanaki Confederacy. It was retold through generations until it was written down. It appears, as written, in . Powack wanted peace with New England. He called a council, which then sent him as an envoy to the Pequawkets. Powack took his daughter and Little Elk, her betrothed. While they were staying with the Pequawkets, Paugus, a non-Pequawket, came to the village to recruit for a raiding party against New England. He led all the warriors down the Saco River to English settlements in Maine. The remaining villagers fished at the south end of Saco (Lovewell) Pond until the raiding party finally returned to be the vanguard back to the village. On the way back to the village, the Penobscots heard gunfire from the battle. Powack and Little Elk remained at the battle, and all non-combatant Abenaki skirted the battle to return to the village. The remaining Pequawkets moved to Canada, and Powack's daughter went with them until she found someone to take her back home. == Aftermath ==

Only 20 of the militiamen survived the battle; three died on the retreat home. The Abenaki losses except for Paugus are unknown. The Abenaki deserted the town of Pequawket after the battle and fled to Canada (New France). == Legacy ==

• More than one hundred years later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (poem, "The Battle of Lovells Pond"), Nathaniel Hawthorne (story, "Roger Malvin's Burial") and Henry David Thoreau (passage in the book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers) all wrote about Lovewell's Fight. (The town of Fryeburg was named not after the ranger's chaplain, Jonathan Frye, but after Joseph Frye, who was awarded a land grant in the area much later.) • At the north end of Lovewell Pond in Fryeburg is a small monument to the New England rangers near where the battle took place. It is on Lovewell Pond Road near its junction with Battleground Road and Island Road. ==Notes==