The invaders
had no time to lose. The two towns were a quarter of a league apart.
They surrounded them both on the night of the sixteenth of February,
waited in silence till the voices within were hushed, and then
captured them without resistance, as most of the inmates were absent.
After burning one of them, and leaving the prisoners well guarded in
the other, they marched eight leagues to the third town, reached it at
evening, and hid in the neighboring woods. Through all the early
night, they heard the whoops and songs of the warriors within, who
were dancing the war-dance for an intended expedition. About
midnight, all was still. The Mohawks had posted no sentinels; and one
of the French Indians, scaling the palisade, opened the gate to his
comrades. There was a short but bloody fight. Twenty or thirty Mohawks
were killed, and nearly three hundred captured, chiefly women and
children. The French commanders now required their allies, the mission
Indians, to make good a promise which, at the instance of Frontenac,
had been exacted from them by the governor of Montreal. It was that
they should kill all their male captives, a proceeding which would
have averted every danger of future reconciliation between the
Christian and heathen Mohawks.
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