The Empire Reformed. Owen Stanwood

through the land to spy it out,” Danckaerts noted, “others, that we were Jesuits travelling over the country for the same purpose; some that we were Recollets, designating the places where we had held mass and confession.” Only with some difficulty—and a lot of explanation—were the two men able to find lodging in the town.²⁶

      These fears came out of several recent incidents. The most distant was in 1673, when a similar European stranger appeared in Boston during a more innocent time. The man proved to be an astute scholar, and he charmed New England’s clerical elite with his wit and learning. In time he began to raise suspicions, however, because “although he was disguised,” New Englanders believed the man might be a Jesuit. In fact, he was a priest named Jean Pierron, a member of the Society of Jesus stationed in Acadia who had spent the winter exploring the English colonies. In particular, he had sought to create ties between French and Maryland Jesuits, perhaps inspiring the fears of coordination expressed by Marylanders in the 1676 “hue and crye.” Only after his departure from Boston did the townspeople realize that an inveterate enemy had been among them; Pierron boasted on his return he had converted several “heretics” to the Catholic faith.²⁷

      Several years after this unwelcome visit a major Indian war convulsed the region. The paramount Wampanoag sachem in the region, known to the English as King Philip, led a coalition of Algonquians who threatened the colony’s very existence in 1675 and 1676. The region’s leaders agonized over the causes of the war, and most came to blame sin and backsliding. God was angry, the ministers said, and they demanded a return to the zealousness of the colony’s founding years. For some people, however, there was another explanation: it was priests like Pierron who inspired the bloodshed. Just after his arrival in Boston the royal agent Edward Randolph heard that “vagrant and Jesuitical priests” had worked for years “to exasperate the Indians against the English, and to bring them into a confederacy, and that they were promised supplies from France, and other parts, to extirpate the English Nation out of the Continent of America.” This alternate explanation for the war seemed more persuasive after the General Court voiced its suspicions that the French had supplied arms to the enemy, several of whom had taken refuge in New France. Indeed, charges of French collusion became common both during and after the war, in spite of the lack of any real evidence.²⁸

      The next evidence of a plot against America came in 1679, when a fire raged through Boston, destroying much of the town’s North End. Such conflagrations were not uncommon in early modern towns and cities, but New Englanders naturally suspected that papists had a hand in the disaster, since they were known to favor such tactics: many people continued to believe that the London fire of 1666 was a Catholic affair. Suspicion came to rest on a Frenchman named Peter Lorphelin, and though investigators could find no sufficient evidence to tie him to the crime, word of the fire traveled through Protestant networks as far as Ireland and the Netherlands. It appeared to many that the papists were beginning to pay attention to America, and some people at least were inclined to think of Indians as partners in the design.²⁹

      In 1680, nonetheless, most American colonists continued to view Catholics and Indians as two distinct threats. When Indians captured a young New Englander named Quentin Stockwell in 1677 and carried him to Canada, for instance, he never made any connection between the two groups, and praised the French for providing food and care for him during a sickness. He even related an argument between the French and Indians regarding his treatment, after which the natives charged that the French “loved the English better than the Indians.” For Stockwell, the civility and Christianity of the French was enough to place them above the Indians, whom he perceived as cruel pagans. But if he could separate the two groups in 1677, other New Englanders began to view them as partners in the same cause. Two broad changes began to occur: first, the English saw Indians as turning French, especially in their increasing adherence to the Catholic faith; and second, the French began to look more like Indians, due to their tolerance for miscegenation and ability to adapt to backcountry life.³⁰

      During the 1680s periodic violence continued to plague the New England frontier. But more damaging than actual attacks were the rumors, usually bringing reports of a new Indian conspiracy. In 1682 at the Cape Porpoise River Falls Mill in Maine, for instance, reports circulated that nearby Abenaki Indians “doe Intend to Rise again this Summer,” gathering at the head of the Merrimack River “so to destroy so far as thay Can.” Around the same time New Hampshire’s Governor Edward Cranfield claimed that the “Indiens … are well Armed by the French which makes them verry Insolent.” Two years later an Indian boasted to an Englishman in Pemaquid “that he would Burne the English houses and make the English Slaves to them as they ware Before,” and others added “that they would go to Canada and fetch some strength to fall on the English and some of the Chefe of them is gon to Canada all Ready to fetch guns and amanition and they said they would make the greatest armie that ever was yet among them.”³¹