The mid-1720s conflict known as
Dummer's War (also known as Greylock's War, Three Years War, Lovewell's War, Father Rale's War, or the 4th Indian War) was a series of battles and raids between the region's English colonists and groups of the
Wabanaki Confederacy. Chief Gray Lock rose to prominence during this period, marshaling and organizing Native resistance based along the lower
Otter Creek and, further to the northwest, on the
Missisquoi near today's
Swanton, Vermont, both in what is now
Vermont. French colonists and traders are recorded as the first Europeans to explore the
Kennebec River area, in what is now
Maine, with
Samuel Champlain arriving in 1604 and claiming the area for France. Soon afterward, however, English colonists began to
homestead lands along the Kennebec long occupied by the
Abenaki people, who regarded them as their own. As the pattern of English colonial settlements in the area continued, the French and Abenaki formed an alliance against them. The rising tensions erupted into open conflict in 1722. With the French, English colonists of the
Province of New York, and the
Iroquois looking on, Abenaki war parties commenced
raiding the expanding English northern-tier colonial settlements of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, all the way from coastal
Maine to
Lake Champlain. Gray Lock rapidly distinguished himself as the pre-eminent Abenaki military leader, conducting frequent and successful
guerrilla raids in areas of what are now southern Vermont and western Massachusetts. He consistently eluded his pursuers, acquiring among his peers the warrior's name of Wawanolet (v. Wawanolewat, Wawanotewat), which means roughly "he who fools the others, or puts someone off the track." In August 1723, he led a war party which descended upon the English colonial settlements at
Northfield and
Rutland in Massachusetts escaping with captive settlers. The English colonial militia were mustered and put on high alert, but in October, Gray Lock once again attacked Northfield, escaping safely. With additional settler troops being raised and deployed as a result, early in 1724, by
Massachusetts Bay Colony decree, a blockhouse known as
Fort Dummer was erected by the colonists on the west bank of the
Connecticut River about ten miles north of Northfield, immediately south of today's
Brattleboro, Vermont, to help guard against future attacks. The colonial garrisons already established at Northfield, displacing the Abenaki from their traditional winter hunting grounds and camps, were strengthened as well. The last of these settler parties withdrew from the field in March and April 1725, whereupon Gray Lock's contingent left their winter quarters, again throwing the settlements into a state of alarm. Intending reprisals, Captain Benjamin Wright set out in July for Missisquoi with a body of recruits, but having provisioned inadequately, aborted their mission and returned south. Gray Lock dogged Wright all the way to Northfield, with alarms and skirmishes continuing in and around Fort Dummer and Deerfield for the remainder of the summer months. Eastern Abenaki groups made peace with Massachusetts in 1725 and 1726, and Abenaki bands in Canada agreed to peace terms in 1727, but Gray Lock refused, mounting sporadic raids on the colonies over the next two decades or so. The best available accounts indicate that Gray Lock died a free man around 1750, his name already a legend even among his enemies, and with family and stalwart followers around him. ==Legacy==