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A French Account of the Raid Upon the New England Frontier in 1694.
N the Parliamentary Library at Ottawa is a MS. bearing the title "Relation du Voyage fait par le Sieur De Yillieu, Captaine d'un detachment de la Marine, a la tete des Sauvages Kanibats et Malecizite (sic) de l'Arcadie pour faire la guerre aux Anglais, au printemps del' au 1694."
This document bears internal evidence of having been prepared by Villieu, or copied from his journal, and is interesting for the evidence it yields of the means through which the French gained the assistance of the Wapanaki[1] Indians, in the effort to drive the English from the eastern frontier of New England and regain the territory for the French crown. (The English claimed the country to the St. Croix, while the French placed the boundary of Acadia at the Kennebec.) The document proves also that the major share of the responsibility for breaking the treaty of 1693 should be taken from the Indians and cast upon their French leaders.
To understand the question clearly it will be necessary to recall some of the events of the preceding years. In 1689 the Count de Frontenac, then in his seventieth year, yet vigorous and alert, was despatched to Canada to fill for the second time the dual post of Governor and Commander in Chief, and charged by Louis XIV with a scheme for the reduction of New York and the subsequent conquest of New England.
- ↑ Spelled also Abenaki.
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