Grey Lock's War was a Colonial and Pre-Columbian engagement fought in Vermont, 1723. It was a Wabanaki victory.
On July 25, 1722, Samuel Shute, then governor of Massachusetts, formally proclaimed hostilities against the Abenaki. His tenure was already strained by clashes with the colonial assembly, and by January 1, 1723 he had quit the province altogether, boarding a ship for England and leaving the war effort in the hands of Lieutenant Governor William Dummer.
Gray Lock's first strike came on August 13, 1723, when he descended upon Northfield, Massachusetts; four of his warriors took the lives of two townspeople nearby. The following day brought another assault, this time against Joseph Stevens and his four boys in Rutland. Though Stevens himself got away, two of his sons died in the fighting and the remaining two were taken prisoner.
Weeks later, on October 9, 1723, Gray Lock hit a pair of modest fortifications close to Northfield, leaving casualties behind and dragging off a captive. Dummer answered by commissioning a new stronghold at the site of what is now Brattleboro, Vermont: Fort Dummer, which would serve as the principal staging ground for reconnaissance and retaliatory strikes deep into Abenaki territory. Under Lieutenant Timothy Dwight's command, this outpost stands as the earliest lasting European settlement in present day Vermont.
The following June 18, in 1724, Grey Lock fell upon laborers working a meadow near Hatfield, Massachusetts, before pulling back and continuing his campaign that summer with further killings at Deerfield and Northfield. Dummer reinforced Northfield, Brookfield, Deerfield, and Sunderland with additional troops as a result. Notably, Woronoke, Grey Lock's own home settlement, which today encompasses Westfield and part of Russell, bears no documented record of ever being struck.
Then, on October 11, 1724, a force of seventy Abenakis descended upon Fort Dummer itself, leaving three or four soldiers dead.
The following autumn, in September 1725, six men departed the fort on a scouting mission. Grey Lock, leading fourteen companions, sprang an ambush on them just to the west of the Connecticut River. Two of the scouting party were killed outright, three more were wounded and seized, and only one managed to flee to safety. The clash cost the attackers two of their own as well.
Approximate area near Fort Dummer (Brattleboro). Approximate location. The nearest recorded settlement is shown; the exact site is unrecorded.
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