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They all marched out without arms; and Iberville, true to his pledge, sent them to an island in the bay, beyond the reach of his red allies. Villieu took possession of the fort, where an Indian prisoner was found in irons, half dead from long confinement. This so enraged his countrymen that a massacre would infallibly have taken place but for the precaution of Iberville.
They were feasted and gifted to their hearts' content; and then the indefatigable officer led them back by the same long and weary routes which he had passed and repassed before, rocky and shallow streams, chains of wilderness lakes, threads of water writhing through swamps where the canoes could scarcely glide among the water-weeds and alders. Villieu was the only white man.
The governor, however, piqued by the dismissal of Portneuf, contented himself with entertaining the delegates. He declined to furnish provisions or supplies, and kept his soldiers from joining the expedition. Father Simon, the Recollet missionary on the St. John, also displayed little sympathy with Villieu and kept many of the Indians from joining him.
After engaging in some minor depredations Villieu proceeded to Montreal accompanied by several of the chiefs where they presented a string of English scalps to Count Frontenac as a token of their success and received his hearty congratulations.
It was the end of June when Villieu and Thury, with one Frenchman and a hundred and five Indians, began their long canoe voyage to the English border. On the ninth of July, they neared Pemaquid; but it was no part of their plan to attack a garrisoned post.
Charlevoix claims two hundred and thirty, and Villieu himself but a hundred and thirty-one. Champigny, Frontenac, and Callieres, in their reports to the court, adopt Villieu's statements. Frontenac says that the success was due to the assurances of safety which Phips had given the settlers. In the Massachusetts archives is a letter to Phips, written just after the attack.
The main body passed on at a safe distance; while Villieu approached the fort, dressed and painted like an Indian, and accompanied by two or three genuine savages, carrying a packet of furs, as if on a peaceful errand of trade.
In consequence of the charges preferred against him Portneuf was superseded by Villieu, an officer of reputation whom Count Frontenac sent to Acadia in October, 1693, to lead the savages against the English. This new lieutenant spent the winter at the Nashwaak fort and as soon as the ice was out of the river went in a canoe to Medoctec, where he assembled the chiefs who promised to assist him.
Villieu and his band waited till night, and then made their approach. There was a small village; a church; a mill; twelve fortified houses, occupied in most cases only by families; and many unprotected farm-houses, extending several miles along the stream.
Villieu thus summed up the results of the campaign: "Two small forts and fifty or sixty houses captured and burnt, and one hundred and thirty English killed or made prisoners." He had done his work all too well and had sown such seeds of distrust between the English and the Indians as to render it almost impossible to re-establish peace between them.
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