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In her company also came the worthy minister and doctor of medicine, Mr. Russ, formerly of Wells, but now settled at a plantation near Cocheco. He is to make some little tarry in this town, where at this present time many complain of sickness.
It was a part of the bungling inefficiency which marked the military management of the New England governments from the close of Philip's war to the peace of Utrecht. When spring opened, the Indians turned with redoubled fury against the defenceless frontier, seized the abandoned stockades, and butchered the helpless settlers. Now occurred the memorable catastrophe at Cocheco, or Dover.
"Tom," said his father, pointing to a gun in the corner, "I traded some corn for a gun for you, in Dover yesterday. They say that wild ducks are now found on the Cocheco. Thought you might like to try for them." Tom picked up the gun, looked it over, and said, "All right," but the look of pleasure on his face told that it was the first gun he had ever owned.
Soon assistance came from one of the neighboring islands, and the Indians were driven to their canoes, after having killed two of the inhabitants and taken five captives. In this state of things, Massachusetts sent two hundred men, with forty Natick Indians, to Dover, then called Cocheco, from whence they were to march into Maine and New Hampshire, wherever they could be most serviceable.
Besides these various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco.
Uncle Rawson being at the jail to-day, a messenger, who had been sent to the daughter of Goody Morse, who is the wife of one Hate Evil Nutter, on the Cocheco, to tell her that her mother did greatly desire to see her once more before she was hanged, coming in, told the condemned woman that her daughter bade him say to her, that inasmuch as she had sold herself to the Devil, she did owe her no further love or service, and that she could not complain of this, for as she had made her bed, so she must lie.
Elizabeth Heard opened the door of her house on the Cocheco River, in Dover, and first looking cautiously about, a habit bred by fear of lurking Indians, stepped out with a bowl of hot broth, which she was about to carry to a neighbor who was ill. The Heard house was a garrison with a protecting wall built about it, the gate of which, Mrs.
Two hundred of these "were found to have been perfidious," and were sent to Boston, to be sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an Indian Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to be his executioners."
The other plantation, called Cocheco, was established by two brothers, Edward and William Hilton, fish-mongers of London, and some Bristol merchants, and was situated on the south side of the Piscataqua about eight miles from the mouth of the river.
The principal value of his work lies in this, and in his reprint of original documents like the "General Rules of the Lowell Manufacturing Company," and "The Conditions on which Help is hired by the Cocheco Manufacturing Company, Dover, N.H." These conditions were so oppressive that in several cases revolt took place, usually unsuccessful, as no organization existed among the women, and they were powerless to effect any marked change for the better.
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