1755
Dawn Potter
Down by the crick the Dogs again are barking
Trouble I fear John Thank God has ceased
Dragging Stumps from the far Patch he names
A Meadow how I long To see Home.
Clover grows thick in the Bottom the girls
Have gone to pick for Stone-Coal it burns hot
In the Winter months we hear. Down by the crick
The Dogs bark and Bark.
John sallies from the lean-to with his Gun
And Were I not slowed by this eight-months
Burden I would Run to him Run O my girls
Have gone away to pick for Stone-Coal.
The Dogs are barking barking the Dogs
Howl now Yelp Yelp John grips his Gun.
The Dogs fall silent. Clover in Flower pink
And white. The girls did walk by the Crick.
A hush. Bees mutter in the Garden. Then
In says John. In says he and Bar the door.
The Trees Cut out the Sun My girls
My Two girls. I Fear the Worst.
[first published in The Fourth River, issue 9 (2012)]
from The War That Made America by Fred Anderson
The frontiers of the central colonies collapsed when the first parties of Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo warriors left their Ohio village in the company of troupes de la marine and French-allied Indians from the Great Lakes who had gathered at Fort Duquesne. Their descent on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia reflected a cold calculus of terror, for the goal was to bring anarchy to the backwoods communities that even in time of peace were were fragile, unstable, and intensely localist in orientation. The fifteen hundred frontier farmers whom the raiders killed and the additional thousand whom they took captive during the last months of 1755 served the strategic purpose of terrorizing hundreds of thousands of settlers and creating a massive refugee crisis to which colonial governments were utterly unprepared to respond. . . .
According to careful modern estimates, the frontier counties of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania lost between one-third to one-half of their populations between 1755 and 1758. During that time approximately 4 percent of the area's prewar inhabitants were either killed or taken captive.
from The War That Made America by Fred Anderson
The frontiers of the central colonies collapsed when the first parties of Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo warriors left their Ohio village in the company of troupes de la marine and French-allied Indians from the Great Lakes who had gathered at Fort Duquesne. Their descent on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia reflected a cold calculus of terror, for the goal was to bring anarchy to the backwoods communities that even in time of peace were were fragile, unstable, and intensely localist in orientation. The fifteen hundred frontier farmers whom the raiders killed and the additional thousand whom they took captive during the last months of 1755 served the strategic purpose of terrorizing hundreds of thousands of settlers and creating a massive refugee crisis to which colonial governments were utterly unprepared to respond. . . .
According to careful modern estimates, the frontier counties of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania lost between one-third to one-half of their populations between 1755 and 1758. During that time approximately 4 percent of the area's prewar inhabitants were either killed or taken captive.
1 comment:
Kind of reminds me of a talk I went to by Ernest Hebert, which was essentially the forward to his novel The Old American...the area around Keene, NH was volatile during the times surrounding the French and Indian War. Have you read it? I think you'd like it.
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