Raid on Dover

Raid on Dover
Part of King William's War
Major Waldron defending garrison
Date June 27, 1689 Location Dover, New Hampshire Result French and Wabanaki Confederacy victory
Belligerents
New France Abenaki (Pennacook)	English colonists
Commanders and leaders
St. Castin; Father Louis-Pierre Thury; Kancamagus (also known as John Hogkin or Hawkins)[1][2]	Major Richard Waldron
Strength
unknown	unknown
Casualties and losses
unknown	23 killed, 29 captured

The Raid on Dover (also known as the Cocheco Massacre) happened in Dover, New Hampshire, during King William's War on June 27, 1689. Chief Kancamagus led a raid and sought revenge against Major Richard Waldron.

Background

At the end of King Philip's War, a number of aboriginal natives fleeing from the Massachusetts Bay Colony militia took refuge with the Abenaki tribe living in Dover. The Massachusetts militia ordered Richard Waldron to attack the natives and turn the refugee combatants over to them. Waldron believed he could capture the natives without a pitched battle and so on September 7, 1676 invited the natives—about 400 in total, half local and half refugees—to participate in a mock battle against the militia. It was a trick; after the natives had fired their guns, Waldron took them prisoner. He sent both the refugee combatants and those locals who violently objected to this forced breach of hospitality to Boston, where seven or eight were convicted of insurrection and executed. The rest were sold into slavery in "foreign parts",^{[citation needed]} mostly Barbados. The local Indians were released, but never forgave Waldron for the deception, which violated all the rules of honor and hospitality valued by the natives at that time. Richard Waldron would be appointed Chief Justice for New Hampshire in 1683.

Raid

Major Richard Waldron's torture

The war began by a series of Indian massacres orchestrated by St. Castin and Father Louis-Pierre Thury. The first of these was the destruction of Dover, a town of fifty inhabitants. Major Richard Waldron allowed two local native women into the garrisoned homes of the settlers when they requested to stay the night of 27 June 1689. After all was still, the women stealthily opened the doors to waiting armed native warriors. "In one bloody afternoon, a quarter of the colonists in what is now downtown Dover, NH were gone – 23 killed, 29 captured in a revenge attack by native warriors. In one afternoon, 50 years of peaceful co-existence between the Pennacook tribe and European colonists ended. The massacre of 1689 entered the history books ...."^[3] The sword-wielding elderly Waldron, once disarmed, was singled out for special torture and mutilation.^[4][5]

In the following month Pemaquid, Maine, met a similar fate.^[6]

References

• The history of the great Indian war of 1675 and 1676, commonly called Philip ... By Benjamin Church, Thomas Church, Samuel Gardner Drake. p. 187 Church's book