CHAPTER XI.
INTERCOLONIAL AND INDIAN WARS.
INTERCOLONIAL and Indian wars furnished excitement now from 1689 into the early part of the eighteenth century. War broke out in Europe between the French and English, and the Colonies had to take sides, as did also the Indians.
Canadians and Indians would come down into York State or New England, burn a town, tomahawk quite a number of people, then go back on snow-shoes, having entered the town on rubbers, like a decayed show with no printing.
There was an attack on Haverhill in March, 1697, and a Mr. Dustin was at work in the field. He ran to his house and got his seven children ahead of him, while with his gun he protected their rear till he got them away safely. Mrs. Dustin, however, who ran back into the house to remove a pie from the oven as she feared it was burning, was captured, and, with a boy of the neighborhood, taken to an island in the Merrimac, where the Indians camped. At night she woke the boy, told him how to hit an Indian with a toma-
