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hand out, and to y° Maquase Castles; but y e Messenger being so timorous did not proceed; so y t itwas 3 days before we could get y e Maquase downe to pursue them, who being joyned with our men,follow’d them to the Great Lake, where y e Yse being good and y e French haveing robb’d sundreyhorses, put ther plunder upon sleds and so over y® Lake ; however y e Indians pursued and gott 10,and afterwards 5, and killed 3. Who being examined relate, y‘ y e French design to attacke Albanyearly in y e Spring, haveing 120 batoes 100 birch canoes and 12 light morter peeces and severall other
engines ready, and are to come with 1500 men.Poor Sharpe is
lame being wounded with a great gunn y‘ split when y® alarm came [to Albany] of Skinnechtady.
[From Vol. endorsed, Letters in Leislers time &c.]
Ao 1690: 17 May in fort William.
Honorable Sir—The French of Cannada with their Indianes committed six bloody masacres inthis province three, & in New England three, they have destroyed Skanectady a vilage 20 millesfromAlbany, murdered sixty three men women and children, carried captive 27: & have committed thegreatest tyranny imaginable, rypt up women with chyld throwed children alive into the flame, dashtothers ag l door post till their brains stuck to it, another murder of eleaven people, and one or twocommitted since last fall, we send fifty men up to guard that place, but a certaine number of peoplethere maintaining the comissions from Sir Edmond Andross & Coll. Dongan deryving from the au-thority of the late King James would not accept them there, but keept the fort by virtue of the s dCommission & would not suffer any of them to goe & guard s d Village being the frontier but send oftheir people there, by which meanes from treachery cowardice and carelesnes that too unfortunateand to be lamented accident hes hapened there, the river being frozen that noe forces could be sentup the winter, the well meaned people, lodged our souldiers who kept guard in the City whereof thefrench & Indian (in number of 200 men) had advise the Indianes would not goe there & so alteredthe designe, and that place was by that meanes spared our Indians pursued them kild & took 25frenchmen who gave us an account of severall troops out in a designe in the Spring with 2500 frenchbesides their Indianes.
MR. VAN CORTLANDT TO S R ED. ANDROSS.
[ Lond. Doc. VII. ]
19 May, 1690.
May it please your Excellency,
* * * The French and Indians have againe, since your Excell 0 ?’ 8 departure, de-
stroyed some people to the Eastward of Boston , have also burned Scheneghtade killed 60 people andtooke 28 young men and boys prisoners: About 150 Indians and 50 young men off Albany followedthe French overtooke them upon the lake killed some and tooke 15 Frenchmen , which the Indianshave killed in their castles; the french Indians have killed eight or ten people att Conestagione, which