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. Two squaws came at evening and begged lodging in
the palisaded house of Major Waldron. At night, when all was still,
they opened the gates and let in their savage countrymen. Waldron was
eighty years old. He leaped from his bed, seized his sword, and drove
back the assailants through two rooms; but, as he turned to snatch his
pistols, they stunned him by the blow of a hatchet, bound him in an
arm-chair, and placed him on a table, where after torturing him they
killed him with his own sword. The crowning event of the war was the
capture of Pemaquid, a stockade work, mounted with seven or eight
cannon. Andros had placed in it a garrison of a hundred and fifty-six
men, under an officer devoted to him. Most of them had been withdrawn
by the council of safety; and the entire force of the defenders
consisted of Lieutenant James Weems and thirty soldiers, nearly half
of whom appear to have been absent at the time of the attack. [4]
The Indian assailants were about a hundred in number, all Christian
converts from mission villages.
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