February 22, 2020 • 20 mins
This 2015 episode revisits an event that was half performance for the British troops, and half actual sham. It led to an attack on Dover by the Pennacook tribe in 1689.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday everyone. On the show. Recently we talked about
King Phillip's War and how it had ongoing ramifications within
New England, and that includes places that we did not
discuss at all in the King Phillips War episode, and
that includes New Hampshire. Today, we are going to go
back to our April episode on the Sham Battle in
the Cohico Massacre, which happened a few years later think
(00:24):
King Phillips War and involved refugees from that war. So
here we go. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy B. Wilson
(00:47):
and I'm Holly fry So. Last fall I took a
trip to Dover, New Hampshire, and this was mostly just
to be a little personal adventure that sounded like something
fun to do and a chance to look at some
really amazing autumn leaves. But one of the things that
led me need to pick Dover specifically for my adventure
was the Woodman Institute Museum. So this museum opened in
nineteen sixteen and it's mostly dedicated to local and natural history,
(01:10):
although it has other exhibits as well. One of the
town's original garrisons is there. That building was built in
sixteen seventy five and then moved to the Woodman Institute
property later after it was donated to the museum. It's
actually pretty cool because there is an entire structure built
around the garrison to protect it from the elements because
it's so old. There's a lot of really fascinating stuff
(01:33):
in the Woodman Institute Museum. Natural history and taxon Army
displays are really arranged and curated a lot like they
were when the museum originally opened. But one of the
things that really caught my eye was inside the garrison,
which is full of colonial era artifacts, and on the
wall was a map that traced the progression of a
conflict between British colonists and the Native Americans from the area.
(01:57):
And the docent told me the basic story of what
had happened, and the part that made me think, this
needs to be an episode hinged on a sham battle.
So today sham basically means trick or hoax um, but
at the time, and maybe also regionally, i'm not quite sure,
the term sham battle was used to describe a lot
of different mock battles, so re enactments were sham battles
(02:20):
or UH battles that were done as part of a
ritual where sham battles, so it wasn't necessarily meant to
be deceptive in this case, however, it was from a
couple of different angles, So that is what we were
going to talk about today. UH. This sham led to
what came to be known as the Cohico Massacre or
(02:42):
the Raid on Dover. The Raid on Dover took place
during one of the many times in history which Britain
has been at war with France. In this case, wars
were happening both in North America and in Europe concurrently,
with each of the wars having a different name depending
on exactly when it happened and which side the historian
was on. Specifically, these were the French and Indian Wars,
which in North America were between Britain and its Native
(03:05):
American allies on one side, and France and its Native
American allies on the other. So each of the French
and Indian Wars ran alongside a related conflict that was
happening in Europe, and we could easily spend an entire
episode outlining all of the various nuances of who is it, were,
with whom and why If you look at UH timelines
(03:27):
of all of this, different historians group them together differently
and define them differently, and different nations give them different names.
So for the sake of simplicity, France and England were
at war with one another off and on for almost
a hundred years, with part of the conflict focused on
their territories in North America and who should control those territories.
So it was part of like the greater history of
(03:48):
Britain being at war with France UH, and this part
had a specifically American component to it, and as far
as where the theater of the war was happening, and
today's subject kind of took place in a time that
it overlapped a bit with King William's War, which ran
from six nine to sixteen ninety seven. It was the
(04:08):
first of the French and Indian Wars, and in the
European theater, it was the War of the Grand Alliance
or the War of the League of Augsburg, along with
other names that it's sometimes called King Williams War was
named after King William the Third, also known as William
of Orange, who ruled Britain and other places at the time.
I know this may sound like a soup of many
(04:28):
different wars, and one of the things I am holly
as I was working on this was I find uh
the progression of all of these battles on each side
of the Atlantic Ocean to be very confusing. It is
because there is battle soup. It really becomes that way
when you try to sort it all out. Yeah, So,
during King William's War, battles ranged all over what's now
(04:49):
Nova Scotia, New Hampshire, Maine, and New York. The colonies
of New Hampshire and New York already existed this at
this point, but Maine was founded much later, and at
the time Nova Scotia was Acadia and us. We have
heard your many requests for an episode on the expulsion
of the Acadians. We will do that at some point.
I'm not sure when, but lots of people ask for that.
(05:11):
The French also tried and failed to conquer Boston during
King William's War. But before we get into this particular
event in King William's War, we're gonna have to talk
a little bit about where it happened. And before we
jump into that. Uh, it's a little early, but let's
go ahead and do a sponsor break now so that
we can keep some continuity later. So to get back
(05:40):
to the setting of where this event happened, Dover, New
Hampshire was founded in sixteen twenty three on the Cohico River.
The colonists and Dover overall maintained generally good relationships with
the Native American tribes in the area, which were primarily
the Pennacook, and as was common with many tribes in
the area, the Pennacook tended to move from place to
(06:01):
place seasonally, depending on where food was most available. And
although they hunted, gathered, and fished, they did also cultivate corn,
and they taught these skills to the colonists in and
around Dover, while trading with the colonists for tools and supplies.
There were, of course, sometimes disputes, and to be quite clear,
nearly half of the Pennacook had died of disease after
(06:24):
the arrival of Europeans and the Americans. But in general,
at this point in history, the Pennacook tried to maintain
positive diplomatic relations with their neighbors from Europe while also
defending themselves from the Mohawk, which had been their enemies
for quite a long time. Pennacook Chief pass Conaway formed
(06:45):
a confederation among other neighboring tribes to this end of
having positive relations with the colonists from Europe as well
as defending themselves from the Mohawk. His son want A Lancet,
also maintained this confederation and the ties to the colony
at Dover after he uh succeeded his father as becoming
the chief. The first industry and Dover came via a
(07:08):
sawmill which was founded by Richard Waldron in sixteen forty two,
and depending on what records you're looking at, you're going
to see different spellings. Sometimes it comes up as waldern
d e r n E or Waldron uh d r
y n E in the various records. But by sixteen
sixty four more than forty families had settled near the sawmill.
(07:29):
Today that's actually downtown Dover, but at this point people
called it Cohico after the sawmill. Waldron himself was put
in command of the militia and given the rank of major.
The colonists in the Dover area also constructed garrisons that
could be used for both defense of the town and
to shelter people in case there was an attack. So
families would gather up their food and their betting, and
(07:50):
they would go to the garrison, which could be defended
thanks to being constructed out of immensely thick logs. I
mean they are enormous. Having stood in one of these things,
they are almost in comprehensibly huge logs, and there would
be little slits in them for firearms to be able
to shoot through. And the protection of the garrison was
not just for the European colonists. Native peoples in the
(08:12):
area also frequently asked for and were granted shelter in
the garrisons for the night. The population in this area
really increased significantly in sixteen seventy six when Native Americans
from Massachusetts fled to Dover and other settlements in the
wake of King Philip's War. So, in spite of the
similarity in the name to King William's War came, King
(08:34):
Philip's War was not one of the French and Indian Wars,
and the early sixteen hundreds colonists and what's now Massachusetts
had gradually become independent from needing Native American help for
their own survival, and as the colonists began moving farther
and farther into territory that Native people's were already living on,
the tribes started to resist to this encroachment. Relationships between
(08:56):
the Native peoples and the colonists in the areas Pretty
Clee soured. Medicom, also known as King Philip, had become
the leader of the Wampanoaggs after the death of his father,
and in sixteen seventy five, Medicom led most of the
Native American tribes in the area in an uprising against
the British. It went on for more than a year.
The Native peoples were generally holding their own in these battles,
(09:19):
or even winning, until the spring of sixteen seventy six,
when they faced starvation due to the destruction of their crops.
The uprising also lost its leader when medicalm was beheaded.
King Philip's war ended not long after. This was an
extremely bloody, extremely destructive war, especially considering the population of
the area at the time. It wound up killing almost
(09:42):
three thousand of the Native people and six hundred Europeans,
and it destroyed settlements all over the New England Frontier.
The area around Dover had been less affected, largely because
the Pennacook had retreated to more remote areas to try
to avoid the fighting. And in the wake of y
Phillip's War, Native American refugees fled both north and west.
(10:04):
About four hundred wound up at the Cohico settlement at Dover.
So that's where we get to the sham battle that
led me to want to do this episode. It's sixteen
seventy six, so King William's War has not started yet.
That's gonna play a part in the next chapter of
this Uh. The area around Dover, New Hampshire at this
point is home to us a sawmill, some garrisons, fewer
(10:26):
than fifty families of colonists from Europe, its own local
Native American population, and also about four hundred Native American
refugees who had fled the terror and destruction of King
Philip's War. And we will go on to talk about
how this turned into a problem after another reef word
from a sponsor. So, because the Native American refugees in
(10:57):
Dover had fled from around Boston, Boston actually sent two
companies of soldiers to capture them and bring them back
by force. Now, Major Waldron thought it might be possible
to make this problem go away without bloodshed. He did
think that the Boston area Native Americans should be returned
back to Boston, but he didn't want the Native peoples
(11:18):
from around Dover to be harmed. I mean, after all,
especially from the colonists point of view, relationships with the
Pannica had been pretty good. They didn't really want to
mess that up. There was a productive trade relationship going on,
there was cooperation between the people's and my overall a
lot of fighting at that point. So he proposed that
(11:39):
they have a sham battle. He would arm the Native
Americans with muskets and they would have a mock fight
against the Dover militia to make a good show for
the Boston troops. The Boston troops would see this battle,
be satisfied that things were being taken care of, and
go back home. Waldron reportedly armed them, although with only
enough for the armed men to fire one single shot
(12:01):
and not reload. So the part about putting on a
good show for the Boston troops and making them go
away seems to have been how he sold the refugees
on this whole plant. But here's what he did not
tell them. He had actually arranged for the Dover area
militia to be present. And what's the Native fighters had
all fired their one shot from their muskets, surround them
(12:22):
and weed out the ones who were from Dover from
the ones who were from Boston, and then send the
Boston group back with the Massachusetts soldiers. The Massachusetts soldiers
took more than two hundred Native Americans back to Boston,
where some of them were executed and others were sold
into slavery. So this whole sham battle had done what
(12:43):
it was supposed to do. From Waldern's point of view.
It had gotten the Boston area Native population back to Boston,
and it had left the Dover Native population unharmed. However, unsurprisingly,
this was not good for the relationship between the Dover
colonists and the Native Americans from the area. There's productive
(13:03):
trading relationships and diplomatic ties quickly started to crumble. Things
remained tense for more than a decade, during which Dover
added to its collection of garrisons, and the newer garrisons
had a second floor that was larger than the first floor,
which created an overhang that could be used to pour
hot oil on people who were trying to set the
structure on fire or break their way into it. Each
(13:25):
neighborhood had its own garrison and five houses. Those that
were at the highest vantage points around Dover were converted
into garrisons at public expense and surrounded by a palisade.
Some accounts actually say there were a total of six
heavily fortified garrisons, so there's a little bit of lack
of clarity around those specifics. So Major Wildren, possibly in
(13:48):
an effort to try to keep things under control, also
started putting a number of restrictions on the native people
around Dover. He started restricting their like their rights to
travel in the woods, and he started quote trading with
them for land. But these trades always happened under Durest
and they always worked strongly in the colonists favor, So
(14:09):
things were going south pretty quickly. Eventually, Chief one A
Lancet died and he was succeeded by conk Omegus. While
one A Lancet had followed his father's example in maintaining
cooperative relationships with the Dover colonists, Concamegus had no intention
of doing any such thing. While his father and his
grandfather had tried to maintain these diplomatic ties with colonists,
(14:32):
he had seen one injustice after another following in the
wake of the Sham Battle. Also running concurrently with all
of this escalation was, as we mentioned at the top
of the podcast, King William's War. So things are becoming
increasingly tense all over the area. Small scale attacks against
colonial homes and settlements were happening all over New England,
(14:53):
and it was clear to the colonists at Dover that
more serious hostility was eminent. People started to taking refuge
in the garrisons every single night. Governor Edward Cranfield decided
to enlist the aid of the Mohawk, who remember had
long been enemies of the Pennacook, for support. So cock
Omegus at first moved as many of his people as
(15:15):
he could into a more remote area to try to
keep them safe, and he sent a series of letters
to Governor Cranfield to try to reach some kind of agreement.
The Governor apparently didn't enter into serious negotiations with Conchamegus
at any point, so Concamegus eventually started planning a more
coordinated attack against the colonists and Dover. Although Major Waldron
(15:38):
insisted that everyone's fears were overblown, some of the Pennacook
who were loyal to the colonists tried to warn them
that there was an incoming attack. Word made it to
the governor, who wrote to Waldron warning him of a
large gathering of Native Americans in the area who seemed
to have hostile intentions. He sent this letter on the
twenty seven of June nine. Unfortunately, that same night, before
(16:02):
the letter reached its destination, two or three Native American
women asked for shelter at the garrisons around Dover and
were allowed in it all but one of them. While
everyone was asleep, these women unbarred the doors and opened
the gates so that the UH warriors who were waiting
outside could come in. At Major Waldron's garrison, the Major
(16:24):
himself was tied to a chair and slashed with his
own sword, with his attacker reportedly saying quote, I cross
out my account. He was dismembered and killed, and his
family was killed or taken captive before his house was
burned down. Similar scenes played out at Dover's other garrisons,
as the colonists within were killed and captured before the
(16:45):
garrison itself was set on fire. Some of the garrisons
were ultimately left standing, but their contents were looted and
their inhabitants killed or captured before the raiders moved on.
The only garrison that was left untouched was one where
a bar working dog had alerted the family who were there.
Most of them were actually away Uh, and someone who
(17:05):
was there had woken up, closed the gate and mounted
a defense. Twenty three people were killed in twenty nine
were taken captive, and this was about a quarter of
Dover's population. Some of the captives were reportedly also sold
into slavery. As had happened after the Sham battle, Conca
Vegas and the Pennacook retreated quickly before the militia could
(17:26):
be raised or before any kind of real resistance could
be mounted and Uh. Coca Vegas eventually relocated the Pennacook
and then joined his people with the Abenaki people, which
was a closely related tribe that was native to the area.
Many of Concho Vegas family was killed or captured in
a raid later on by Captain Benjamin Church that took
(17:47):
place in sixteen nine. He and the Pennacook continued to
attack other settlements in the area after the raid on Cahico,
and this stopped only when he learned that the British
were holding his his surviving family members hostage. Because such
a large proportion of the population of Dover had been lost,
it took quite a while for the town to recover.
(18:08):
It continued to be the target of similar attacks and raids,
but there was never anything on the scale of this massacre.
When you look into information about the Pennacook and the
Abenaki today, a lot of times they're written about as
one tribe or as like different parts of the same
tribe or the same people. So Um, there are still
members of those tribes who are alive today. They're not
(18:31):
a group that has disappeared. So that is what I
learned when I delved more deeply into something that I
had heard the very brief um Museum docent version of
while on a weekend trip. Museums are very inspiring places.
They are I tend even when I am deliberately like, Okay,
(18:52):
I am on vacation and I am not going to
think about the podcast, because we like to work on
the podcast, but it is still our jobs. It is work,
and sometimes we need to break from work. Um So,
even when I am conscientiously like I'm at this museum
for myself and my own edification, I still wind up
writing down things the new episodes about later on me
to thank you so much for joining us today for
(19:20):
this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of
email address or maybe a Facebook you are l during
the course of the episode, that might be obsolete. It
might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email
address again. You can now reach us at History podcast
at i heart radio dot com, and we're all over
social media at missed in History, and you can subscribe
(19:40):
to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I
heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite show. I was
Happy Saturday everyone. On the show. Recently we talked about
King Phillip's War and how it had ongoing ramifications within
New England, and that includes places that we did not
discuss at all in the King Phillips War episode, and
that includes New Hampshire. Today, we are going to go
back to our April episode on the Sham Battle in
the Cohico Massacre, which happened a few years later think
(00:24):
King Phillips War and involved refugees from that war. So
here we go. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy B. Wilson
(00:47):
and I'm Holly fry So. Last fall I took a
trip to Dover, New Hampshire, and this was mostly just
to be a little personal adventure that sounded like something
fun to do and a chance to look at some
really amazing autumn leaves. But one of the things that
led me need to pick Dover specifically for my adventure
was the Woodman Institute Museum. So this museum opened in
nineteen sixteen and it's mostly dedicated to local and natural history,
(01:10):
although it has other exhibits as well. One of the
town's original garrisons is there. That building was built in
sixteen seventy five and then moved to the Woodman Institute
property later after it was donated to the museum. It's
actually pretty cool because there is an entire structure built
around the garrison to protect it from the elements because
it's so old. There's a lot of really fascinating stuff
(01:33):
in the Woodman Institute Museum. Natural history and taxon Army
displays are really arranged and curated a lot like they
were when the museum originally opened. But one of the
things that really caught my eye was inside the garrison,
which is full of colonial era artifacts, and on the
wall was a map that traced the progression of a
conflict between British colonists and the Native Americans from the area.
(01:57):
And the docent told me the basic story of what
had happened, and the part that made me think, this
needs to be an episode hinged on a sham battle.
So today sham basically means trick or hoax um, but
at the time, and maybe also regionally, i'm not quite sure,
the term sham battle was used to describe a lot
of different mock battles, so re enactments were sham battles
(02:20):
or UH battles that were done as part of a
ritual where sham battles, so it wasn't necessarily meant to
be deceptive in this case, however, it was from a
couple of different angles, So that is what we were
going to talk about today. UH. This sham led to
what came to be known as the Cohico Massacre or
(02:42):
the Raid on Dover. The Raid on Dover took place
during one of the many times in history which Britain
has been at war with France. In this case, wars
were happening both in North America and in Europe concurrently,
with each of the wars having a different name depending
on exactly when it happened and which side the historian
was on. Specifically, these were the French and Indian Wars,
which in North America were between Britain and its Native
(03:05):
American allies on one side, and France and its Native
American allies on the other. So each of the French
and Indian Wars ran alongside a related conflict that was
happening in Europe, and we could easily spend an entire
episode outlining all of the various nuances of who is it, were,
with whom and why If you look at UH timelines
(03:27):
of all of this, different historians group them together differently
and define them differently, and different nations give them different names.
So for the sake of simplicity, France and England were
at war with one another off and on for almost
a hundred years, with part of the conflict focused on
their territories in North America and who should control those territories.
So it was part of like the greater history of
(03:48):
Britain being at war with France UH, and this part
had a specifically American component to it, and as far
as where the theater of the war was happening, and
today's subject kind of took place in a time that
it overlapped a bit with King William's War, which ran
from six nine to sixteen ninety seven. It was the
(04:08):
first of the French and Indian Wars, and in the
European theater, it was the War of the Grand Alliance
or the War of the League of Augsburg, along with
other names that it's sometimes called King Williams War was
named after King William the Third, also known as William
of Orange, who ruled Britain and other places at the time.
I know this may sound like a soup of many
(04:28):
different wars, and one of the things I am holly
as I was working on this was I find uh
the progression of all of these battles on each side
of the Atlantic Ocean to be very confusing. It is
because there is battle soup. It really becomes that way
when you try to sort it all out. Yeah, So,
during King William's War, battles ranged all over what's now
(04:49):
Nova Scotia, New Hampshire, Maine, and New York. The colonies
of New Hampshire and New York already existed this at
this point, but Maine was founded much later, and at
the time Nova Scotia was Acadia and us. We have
heard your many requests for an episode on the expulsion
of the Acadians. We will do that at some point.
I'm not sure when, but lots of people ask for that.
(05:11):
The French also tried and failed to conquer Boston during
King William's War. But before we get into this particular
event in King William's War, we're gonna have to talk
a little bit about where it happened. And before we
jump into that. Uh, it's a little early, but let's
go ahead and do a sponsor break now so that
we can keep some continuity later. So to get back
(05:40):
to the setting of where this event happened, Dover, New
Hampshire was founded in sixteen twenty three on the Cohico River.
The colonists and Dover overall maintained generally good relationships with
the Native American tribes in the area, which were primarily
the Pennacook, and as was common with many tribes in
the area, the Pennacook tended to move from place to
(06:01):
place seasonally, depending on where food was most available. And
although they hunted, gathered, and fished, they did also cultivate corn,
and they taught these skills to the colonists in and
around Dover, while trading with the colonists for tools and supplies.
There were, of course, sometimes disputes, and to be quite clear,
nearly half of the Pennacook had died of disease after
(06:24):
the arrival of Europeans and the Americans. But in general,
at this point in history, the Pennacook tried to maintain
positive diplomatic relations with their neighbors from Europe while also
defending themselves from the Mohawk, which had been their enemies
for quite a long time. Pennacook Chief pass Conaway formed
(06:45):
a confederation among other neighboring tribes to this end of
having positive relations with the colonists from Europe as well
as defending themselves from the Mohawk. His son want A Lancet,
also maintained this confederation and the ties to the colony
at Dover after he uh succeeded his father as becoming
the chief. The first industry and Dover came via a
(07:08):
sawmill which was founded by Richard Waldron in sixteen forty two,
and depending on what records you're looking at, you're going
to see different spellings. Sometimes it comes up as waldern
d e r n E or Waldron uh d r
y n E in the various records. But by sixteen
sixty four more than forty families had settled near the sawmill.
(07:29):
Today that's actually downtown Dover, but at this point people
called it Cohico after the sawmill. Waldron himself was put
in command of the militia and given the rank of major.
The colonists in the Dover area also constructed garrisons that
could be used for both defense of the town and
to shelter people in case there was an attack. So
families would gather up their food and their betting, and
(07:50):
they would go to the garrison, which could be defended
thanks to being constructed out of immensely thick logs. I
mean they are enormous. Having stood in one of these things,
they are almost in comprehensibly huge logs, and there would
be little slits in them for firearms to be able
to shoot through. And the protection of the garrison was
not just for the European colonists. Native peoples in the
(08:12):
area also frequently asked for and were granted shelter in
the garrisons for the night. The population in this area
really increased significantly in sixteen seventy six when Native Americans
from Massachusetts fled to Dover and other settlements in the
wake of King Philip's War. So, in spite of the
similarity in the name to King William's War came, King
(08:34):
Philip's War was not one of the French and Indian Wars,
and the early sixteen hundreds colonists and what's now Massachusetts
had gradually become independent from needing Native American help for
their own survival, and as the colonists began moving farther
and farther into territory that Native people's were already living on,
the tribes started to resist to this encroachment. Relationships between
(08:56):
the Native peoples and the colonists in the areas Pretty
Clee soured. Medicom, also known as King Philip, had become
the leader of the Wampanoaggs after the death of his father,
and in sixteen seventy five, Medicom led most of the
Native American tribes in the area in an uprising against
the British. It went on for more than a year.
The Native peoples were generally holding their own in these battles,
(09:19):
or even winning, until the spring of sixteen seventy six,
when they faced starvation due to the destruction of their crops.
The uprising also lost its leader when medicalm was beheaded.
King Philip's war ended not long after. This was an
extremely bloody, extremely destructive war, especially considering the population of
the area at the time. It wound up killing almost
(09:42):
three thousand of the Native people and six hundred Europeans,
and it destroyed settlements all over the New England Frontier.
The area around Dover had been less affected, largely because
the Pennacook had retreated to more remote areas to try
to avoid the fighting. And in the wake of y
Phillip's War, Native American refugees fled both north and west.
(10:04):
About four hundred wound up at the Cohico settlement at Dover.
So that's where we get to the sham battle that
led me to want to do this episode. It's sixteen
seventy six, so King William's War has not started yet.
That's gonna play a part in the next chapter of
this Uh. The area around Dover, New Hampshire at this
point is home to us a sawmill, some garrisons, fewer
(10:26):
than fifty families of colonists from Europe, its own local
Native American population, and also about four hundred Native American
refugees who had fled the terror and destruction of King
Philip's War. And we will go on to talk about
how this turned into a problem after another reef word
from a sponsor. So, because the Native American refugees in
(10:57):
Dover had fled from around Boston, Boston actually sent two
companies of soldiers to capture them and bring them back
by force. Now, Major Waldron thought it might be possible
to make this problem go away without bloodshed. He did
think that the Boston area Native Americans should be returned
back to Boston, but he didn't want the Native peoples
(11:18):
from around Dover to be harmed. I mean, after all,
especially from the colonists point of view, relationships with the
Pannica had been pretty good. They didn't really want to
mess that up. There was a productive trade relationship going on,
there was cooperation between the people's and my overall a
lot of fighting at that point. So he proposed that
(11:39):
they have a sham battle. He would arm the Native
Americans with muskets and they would have a mock fight
against the Dover militia to make a good show for
the Boston troops. The Boston troops would see this battle,
be satisfied that things were being taken care of, and
go back home. Waldron reportedly armed them, although with only
enough for the armed men to fire one single shot
(12:01):
and not reload. So the part about putting on a
good show for the Boston troops and making them go
away seems to have been how he sold the refugees
on this whole plant. But here's what he did not
tell them. He had actually arranged for the Dover area
militia to be present. And what's the Native fighters had
all fired their one shot from their muskets, surround them
(12:22):
and weed out the ones who were from Dover from
the ones who were from Boston, and then send the
Boston group back with the Massachusetts soldiers. The Massachusetts soldiers
took more than two hundred Native Americans back to Boston,
where some of them were executed and others were sold
into slavery. So this whole sham battle had done what
(12:43):
it was supposed to do. From Waldern's point of view.
It had gotten the Boston area Native population back to Boston,
and it had left the Dover Native population unharmed. However, unsurprisingly,
this was not good for the relationship between the Dover
colonists and the Native Americans from the area. There's productive
(13:03):
trading relationships and diplomatic ties quickly started to crumble. Things
remained tense for more than a decade, during which Dover
added to its collection of garrisons, and the newer garrisons
had a second floor that was larger than the first floor,
which created an overhang that could be used to pour
hot oil on people who were trying to set the
structure on fire or break their way into it. Each
(13:25):
neighborhood had its own garrison and five houses. Those that
were at the highest vantage points around Dover were converted
into garrisons at public expense and surrounded by a palisade.
Some accounts actually say there were a total of six
heavily fortified garrisons, so there's a little bit of lack
of clarity around those specifics. So Major Wildren, possibly in
(13:48):
an effort to try to keep things under control, also
started putting a number of restrictions on the native people
around Dover. He started restricting their like their rights to
travel in the woods, and he started quote trading with
them for land. But these trades always happened under Durest
and they always worked strongly in the colonists favor, So
(14:09):
things were going south pretty quickly. Eventually, Chief one A
Lancet died and he was succeeded by conk Omegus. While
one A Lancet had followed his father's example in maintaining
cooperative relationships with the Dover colonists, Concamegus had no intention
of doing any such thing. While his father and his
grandfather had tried to maintain these diplomatic ties with colonists,
(14:32):
he had seen one injustice after another following in the
wake of the Sham Battle. Also running concurrently with all
of this escalation was, as we mentioned at the top
of the podcast, King William's War. So things are becoming
increasingly tense all over the area. Small scale attacks against
colonial homes and settlements were happening all over New England,
(14:53):
and it was clear to the colonists at Dover that
more serious hostility was eminent. People started to taking refuge
in the garrisons every single night. Governor Edward Cranfield decided
to enlist the aid of the Mohawk, who remember had
long been enemies of the Pennacook, for support. So cock
Omegus at first moved as many of his people as
(15:15):
he could into a more remote area to try to
keep them safe, and he sent a series of letters
to Governor Cranfield to try to reach some kind of agreement.
The Governor apparently didn't enter into serious negotiations with Conchamegus
at any point, so Concamegus eventually started planning a more
coordinated attack against the colonists and Dover. Although Major Waldron
(15:38):
insisted that everyone's fears were overblown, some of the Pennacook
who were loyal to the colonists tried to warn them
that there was an incoming attack. Word made it to
the governor, who wrote to Waldron warning him of a
large gathering of Native Americans in the area who seemed
to have hostile intentions. He sent this letter on the
twenty seven of June nine. Unfortunately, that same night, before
(16:02):
the letter reached its destination, two or three Native American
women asked for shelter at the garrisons around Dover and
were allowed in it all but one of them. While
everyone was asleep, these women unbarred the doors and opened
the gates so that the UH warriors who were waiting
outside could come in. At Major Waldron's garrison, the Major
(16:24):
himself was tied to a chair and slashed with his
own sword, with his attacker reportedly saying quote, I cross
out my account. He was dismembered and killed, and his
family was killed or taken captive before his house was
burned down. Similar scenes played out at Dover's other garrisons,
as the colonists within were killed and captured before the
(16:45):
garrison itself was set on fire. Some of the garrisons
were ultimately left standing, but their contents were looted and
their inhabitants killed or captured before the raiders moved on.
The only garrison that was left untouched was one where
a bar working dog had alerted the family who were there.
Most of them were actually away Uh, and someone who
(17:05):
was there had woken up, closed the gate and mounted
a defense. Twenty three people were killed in twenty nine
were taken captive, and this was about a quarter of
Dover's population. Some of the captives were reportedly also sold
into slavery. As had happened after the Sham battle, Conca
Vegas and the Pennacook retreated quickly before the militia could
(17:26):
be raised or before any kind of real resistance could
be mounted and Uh. Coca Vegas eventually relocated the Pennacook
and then joined his people with the Abenaki people, which
was a closely related tribe that was native to the area.
Many of Concho Vegas family was killed or captured in
a raid later on by Captain Benjamin Church that took
(17:47):
place in sixteen nine. He and the Pennacook continued to
attack other settlements in the area after the raid on Cahico,
and this stopped only when he learned that the British
were holding his his surviving family members hostage. Because such
a large proportion of the population of Dover had been lost,
it took quite a while for the town to recover.
(18:08):
It continued to be the target of similar attacks and raids,
but there was never anything on the scale of this massacre.
When you look into information about the Pennacook and the
Abenaki today, a lot of times they're written about as
one tribe or as like different parts of the same
tribe or the same people. So Um, there are still
members of those tribes who are alive today. They're not
(18:31):
a group that has disappeared. So that is what I
learned when I delved more deeply into something that I
had heard the very brief um Museum docent version of
while on a weekend trip. Museums are very inspiring places.
They are I tend even when I am deliberately like, Okay,
(18:52):
I am on vacation and I am not going to
think about the podcast, because we like to work on
the podcast, but it is still our jobs. It is work,
and sometimes we need to break from work. Um So,
even when I am conscientiously like I'm at this museum
for myself and my own edification, I still wind up
writing down things the new episodes about later on me
to thank you so much for joining us today for
(19:20):
this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of
email address or maybe a Facebook you are l during
the course of the episode, that might be obsolete. It
might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email
address again. You can now reach us at History podcast
at i heart radio dot com, and we're all over
social media at missed in History, and you can subscribe
(19:40):
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heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
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