Battle of Pequawket

On May 9, 1725, by the old style calendar, fighting broke out at Pequawket in what would later become Fryeburg, Maine, during the conflict known as Dummer's War. Captain John Lovewell headed a band of scalp hunters he had assembled on his own initiative, shaped into an improvised ranger unit, while Chief Paugus commanded the Abenaki defending their home ground. This clash grew out of tensions surrounding New England's push to settle areas along the Kennebec River in what is now Maine.

Within the broader struggle between New England and the Wabanaki Confederacy, this encounter stands as the concluding major engagement of Governor Dummer's War. Songs and tales kept its memory alive across several generations, cementing its place in the folklore of the region. It even left a mark on the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and other authors writing in the early nineteenth century. That said, local histories tend to inflate its true weight in shaping the war's outcome. Many would argue that the raid New England forces carried out against Norridgewock in August 1724 played a far greater role, both in steering the conflict's course and in pushing the Abenaki toward eventual treaty negotiations.

Lovewell's expeditions

Early in September of 1724, a band of Indians descended on Dunstable and seized two men working nearby. Their failure to come back that evening prompted a group of at least ten townsmen to set out after them. Josiah Farwell cautioned the party's leader that they might be walking into a trap, but his warning went unheeded, and the men pressed forward while Farwell trailed behind them. The Indians struck first, killing eight of the pursuers outright. Nearly everyone else was taken prisoner, with Farwell alone managing to escape the trap.

This incident convinced authorities that a more aggressive approach to the conflict was needed. To that end, the provincial government reinstated bounties paid for enemy scalps, hoping this incentive would draw volunteers into service without forcing the colony to bear the cost and delay of raising formal troops. John Lovewell moved swiftly to assemble a band of amateur fighters drawn from the Dunstable region, men eager to hunt scalps for profit. Although the provincial assembly granted this group its backing, the company operated outside the structure of the Massachusetts military, functioning instead as an independently formed raiding party. Lovewell himself held no official commission within the provincial ranks. His motivation may have run deeper than most, since Indians had killed and scalped both of his grandparents on his mother's side. He gathered thirty men willing to join him, and they in turn named him their captain. Farwell, valued for his practical judgment, was chosen by Lovewell to serve as lieutenant and second-in-command. Together the two men led their company on three separate scalp hunting ventures stretching from December through May.

Battle

Only 47 men made up Lovewell's third venture into the wilderness, and a good many of them had never before served as rangers. This party, smaller and greener than those of his previous outings, set out from Dunstable, the settlement now known as Nashua, New Hampshire, on April 16, 1725. Before long the native scout accompanying them found himself unable to press on, and he turned back toward Dunstable along with a second man and a kinsman of one of the wounded colonists. Illness struck yet another member of the group, prompting the party to raise a fort at Ossipee. There they left behind ten men to hold the post, among them the sick man, the physician, and John Goffe, while the remaining force pushed onward to strike at the Abenaki settlement of Pequawket near the Saco River.

On the morning of May 9, with the thirty-four remaining militiamen gathered for prayers led by their chaplain Jonathan Frye, someone spotted a solitary Abenaki hunter along the shore of the lake. The rangers grew wary, guessing that this figure might be bait meant to draw them toward a larger native force lying in wait, yet they chose to stash their packs and creep forward regardless. They let the man draw near before opening fire, though which side fired the opening shot remains disputed by different tellings. Regardless, the warrior managed to loose a blast of beavershot from his fowling piece at close range, striking both Lovewell and a companion before the rangers' return fire brought him down. Frye, so the story goes, took the fallen man's scalp.

Unbeknownst to the rangers, their abandoned packs had already been found by a party of Abenaki fighters (some sources claim there were actually two such parties), who, recognizing their numerical advantage, settled into ambush positions instead of revealing themselves. The colonials, marching back single file to retrieve their gear, walked straight into the trap as the natives opened fire from both ahead and behind before charging. Lovewell fell dead in that first exchange, and eight of his men died alongside him. His officers Josiah Farwell and Jonathan Robbins both took wounds in this same assault, injuries that would prove grave. Command then passed to Ensign Seth Wyman, who rallied the survivors and led them through the remainder of the engagement.

What followed the opening bursts of gunfire became a scattered exchange, each side taking cover behind the pines dotting the plain. Knowing themselves outnumbered, the rangers had to guard constantly against being encircled. Because the trees offered no protection against attacks from the flanks or behind, the colonial fighters gradually retreated toward the lake, using its shore to shield their backs. From there they moved further east, back to a spot they had already crossed twice that day, a position bounded by the lake to the south, a swollen waterway to the east that would later bear the name Fight Brook, submerged ground to the north, and a barrier of downed timber to the west. Even hemmed in on all sides, they managed to keep their more numerous foes at a distance too great for effective aim.

At some point in the fighting, the native war leader Paugus met his death by gunfire, though accounts conflict over whose bullet struck him down. Some credit John Chamberlaine, remembered in some tellings as "the Indian fighter at Pigwacket," while other versions credit Seth Wyman with finishing him off moments later. Once Paugus lay dead, the remaining warriors melted away into the woods before long.

Aftermath

Of the militiamen who fought that day, a mere 20 lived through it, and three more perished during the journey back home. As for the Abenaki, no record exists of their casualties beyond the death of Paugus himself. In the wake of the fighting, the Abenaki abandoned Pequawket entirely, making their way north to Canada, then still part of New France.