Peace Returns, for a Time

Model of Montréal in 1745
(Source)

It was a cold, overcast day in mid-September as the brothers Gaudry, with their Abenaki companion Little Wolf arrived at the small settlement of Sainte-Catherine, just across the Saint-Laurent¹ from Montréal. Alain noticed that that there were snowflakes occasionally drifting down. It was good to be nearly home. He smiled as he listened to his brother Jacques and Little Wolf chattering away in their odd mix of French and Abenaki. The two had become fast friends over the last few months.

Which had been helpful to say the least as the brothers left the valley of the Cannitticutt to follow a tributary² of that river deep into Verd Mont. While the peoples they met along the way were not naturally ill-disposed towards Europeans, though they were learning quickly not to trust them, the presence of Little Wolf and the brotherly affection he and Jacques shared helped keep the peace along the way.

Eventually they had emerged from the forests onto the plain which stretched to the lake which Little Wolf knew as Pitawbagok, but to the French was known as Lac Champlain for the man who "discovered" it. (No doubt the Indians would have found that concept amusing, they knew where it was. When they had told Little Wolf this, the man had indeed laughed and then told the brothers that they were beginning to think like Abenaki.)

That lake was the boundary between the Abenaki and the Iroquois League, friends of the English, to the west. Though technically the Abenaki and the French were not at war with the tribes which constituted that league, relations were growing uneasy as France and Britain were again drifting towards war. The Iroquois were no friends of either the French or the Abenaki in the best of times, so the small party decided to stay to the east of the lake and travel on foot.

Once they reached the river known to the Abenaki as the Masoliantekw, which the French knew as the Richelieu, it was a comparatively easy hike north to Fort Saint-Jean, then northwest to Sainte-Catherine. Easy compared to the earlier portions of their trip. During the last 33,000 toise³ of the trip, no one had tried to kill them, they saw no burned villages or corpses, nor did they have to hide from any marauding war parties.

Autumn had arrived and the Gaudry brothers were home.

Guards Lieutenant Will Jefferson was thrilled to see his friend Standing Wolf able to get around without much of a limp. It had been nearly two months since his Mohicans had been ambushed by the Abenaki and most of them slain. Only Standing Wolf and five others had survived out of the original band which had numbered thirty to forty at any given time.

Standing Wolf had been seriously injured by an Abenaki arrow and the resulting infection had nearly killed him. The English were amazed at his eventual recovery and were very interested in the herbs and poultices the Mohican had used to heal the wound.

Losses serious enough had been inflicted on the Abenaki by the New Hampshire Provincials commanded by Captain Samuel Jenkins to have dissuaded them from further attacks on the fort or on the settlements along the Cannitticutt near the fort. Which would have given the garrison in the fort some comfort had they not been so far from home.

Captain Jenkins had tried to convince Molly Henderson to return to Rumford when he felt it was safe enough to do so with only a small escort. Lieutenant Jefferson had offered himself and his Mohicans as scouts for the twenty man party Jenkins felt would be sufficient to protect her on the journey. She had refused.

"My dear Captain, I am not some child who needs to be protected and coddled. Surely you should know that by now?" She had protested when Jenkins had broached the subject of her return to civilization.

"No Ma'am, that's not what I meant, surely you realize how dangerous it is out here on the frontier, you've experienced that first hand. It would be much safer for you to..." Jenkins had tried to convince her but she had interrupted him before he could continue.

"Captain, I am not returning to what you call 'civilization.' There are far too many rules, far too many people, and frankly, life back there is intensely dull. If you wish to be rid of me, I can move to one of the small settlements nearby but I will not return to Rumford or Portsmouth. My family is all dead, what is there for me to go back to?"

After a bit more back and forth, Jenkins resigned himself to the fact that Molly Henderson was not going anywhere. He found it somewhat irksome to have a woman in the fort, though she had made herself most useful in many ways. If she left he knew for a fact that the men would miss her cooking skills. He also suspected that Lieutenant Jefferson had a certain affection for the young lady. Not that that was all that surprising. She was quite attractive.

Bull Elk sighed as he looked around his home. His eldest son Sleeping Panther was in the spirit world, slain by the red soldiers near the Great River that summer. Many other Abenaki families had lost sons, which was why Bull Elk had convinced his sachem that the path of war was not the way his people should follow for the moment. At least not until they heard from their allies, les français, in the Canadas.

Word had come to the Abenaki that les anglais and les français were fighting each other once more in their homelands across the Great Sea. He knew all too well that war would soon come here as well. The whites seemed unable to separate their affairs at home from their affairs here in what they called the New World.

He had sent messengers to other bands in the Abenaki Confederation, if there was to be war, the tribes should unite as a whole and not fight in small separate bands. The summer had shown that to be a mistake. Until he heard otherwise, his band would keep the peace. Winter was coming, already the forests blazed with color, the harvest was gathered in, the cold and the snow would be upon them soon.

Spring would come again, then he would see whether the warpath was the way his people should take. For now they would keep the peace as best they could.

¹ The Richelieu River, a major tributary of the Saint Lawrence River

² White River which one can follow west to just south of Bread Loaf Mountain. From there to the Champlain Valley and Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) is 25 miles as the crow flies.

³ Roughly 40 miles

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