Groton Indian raid of 1964 and Lydia longley, The

Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Summer 2002 by Wolkovich-Valkavicius, William L

Abenakis struck the first target on July 18, 1694. The Jesuit Jacques Bigot and Sulpician Louis Thury accompanied the Indians. Some ninety inhabitants were killed or captured. The attackers then continued overland directly southwest to Groton spanning some seventy miles. One surmises that the raiding party engaged in a three-day march for the forty fleet-footed Abenaki, led by their Chief Taxous. Very likely the Abenakis paddled along the Merrimac River for a stretch of the expedition. The party numbered braves from the Penobscot and Kennebec tribes. Evidently they reached the outskirts of Groton in the waning hours of 25 July in that ill-fated year of 1694. The brief but bloody assault took place early dawn the next day.

Oral tradition relates that the attackers released the Longley cattle from their enclosure into a cornfield, setting up an ambush. The unarmed father raced out to retrieve the straying cows. William and Deliverance Longley were slain, as were several adult children -- five according to tradition. Hastily excavated graves on the property swallowed up their mutilated corpses.

Taken as captives were an infant Betty, twelve-year-old John, and twenty-year-old, Lydia. During the flight, the baby died of exposure. Her remains lie buried in an unmarked grave somewhere north of Groton, in either Massachusetts or New Hampshire."11

As to the fate of Lydia and John, an Oyster River captive, Ann Jenkins, offers a clue. In her statement on June 11, 1695, the Jenkins woman testified that she, along with nine others, were confined to the village of Penacook to be kept under guard. The raiding party proceeded to Groton, returning after nine days with twelve Groton hostages, including siblings Lydia and John. The Indians then took all twenty-one by canoe and overland northward to Norridgewock, fifteen days journey. Jenkins further gave witness that the prisoners remained captive several months, split into small units, constantly on the move until the Indians finally delivered their captives to Captain March at Fort Pemaquid, except for Lydia and her brother John. From this account, it appears that they were singled out and taken to Canada.

From Norridgewock the Longleys had trekked on foot under guard. During this long ordeal, Lydia suffered horribly. In the words of John Demos, this radically new experience would have been a kind of "initiation" in a "set of cultural lessons." He further ruminates:

Certainly the captives knew pain: the assault on their homes, and the loss of their loved ones, and the rigors of the "march" that followed. The march, indeed, was a kind of torture, which they must somehow endure or die. And if they endured, they saw vivid instances of the Indians' commitment to equality and sharing. Food was scrupulously divided, even in periods of extreme scarcity.12

At the end of the trail, the Longleys found themselves at an exchange mart in Ville Marie (Montreal). Evidently there was a committee (vaguely described as "les Francais de Montreal") that facilitated such exchanges, recruiting suitable recipients. In the case of Lydia, "...placee sous la protection de la famine Le Ber." While John was whisked away to an Indian village, Lydia's captors traded their booty for ransom from her benefactor, Jacques Le Ber. This wealthy fur merchant then took the weary captive to his home in Montreal.