BAKER'S RIVER.
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��were forks and this might turn them back.
The Indian's counsel was followed to the letter, and the company moved on with fresh speed. But before they were out of hearing and while the fires they had left were still burning, the pursuing Indians with additional reinforcements, canie up and counting the fires and the forks, the warriors whooped a retreat, for they were alarmed at the numbers of the English. Baker and his men were no longer?annoyed by these troublesome attendents but were allowed peacefully to return to their homes, owing their preservation, no doubt, to the counsel of the friendly Indian who acted as their
guide. Baker's River is supposed to have been so named to perpetuate the remem- brance of this brilliant affair of Lieut. Baker at its mouth.
This is the first party of whites that we have any authentic account of having passed along the course of this winding river, which was from that time forth to take the name of then- illustrious leader. The date of this expedition of Baker is stated by Whiton in his history of New Hampshire to have been 1724, but this is evidently an error, as the journal of the Massachusetts Legislature shows that Lieutenant Thomas Baker, as commander of a company in a late expedition to Coos and over to Merrimack River and so to Dunstable, brought in his claim, for Indian scalps, which was allowed and paid, in May, 1712 and an additional allowance made for the same, June 11, 1712, which would seem to fix the time beyond question. In addition to other pay, Baker was promoted to the rank of Captain, by which title he is generally known.
The next time that Baker's River was explored above Plymouth by the whites, that I find any account of, was just forty years after Baker's expedition, viz: in the spring of 1752. That spring, John Stark, afterwards General Stark of New Hampshire, the hero of Bunker Hill and Bennington,in company with his brother, William Stark, Amos Eastman, then of Rumford (now Concord), but afterwards of Hollis, N. H., and David Stinson of
��Londonderry were upon a hunting expe- dition upon the Pemigewassett and so passed up Baker's River into Rumney. ' Here just below Rumney meeting house near the mouth of the brook that flows in to Baker's River from the north, this party was surprised by a party of ten Indians under the command of Francis Titigaw, who is supposed to have be- longed to the St. Francis tribe in Canada. John Stark and Eastman were taken pris- oners ; Stinson and Win. Stark attempt- ing to escape were fired upon by the In- dians and Stinson was shot, killed, scalped and stripped of his wearing ap- parel. Wm. Stark escaped. This event and the death of Stinson, as connected with it, Avill long be perpetuated by the mountain, pond and brook in Rumney, which bear his name and at the union of which brook with Baker's River, he was slain. This event is said to have taken place April 28, 1752.
From the mouth of Stinson's Brook, John Stark and Eastman were led as cap- tives, up Baker's River through Went- worth, and so through the Ifeadoics at Haverhill, (then so much talked of in Massachusetts and New Hampshire) to the headquarters of the St. Francis tribe in Canada. These men being ransomed, returned from their captivity in the au- tumuofthe same year, by the way of Lake Champlain and Charlestown, No. 4.
At that time, the Indians were masters, — the whites were captives. Then the forests were unbroken and silence and solitude reigned, where now the peaceful farm house is seen, dotting the cleared and cultivated soil, and where the din of business and machinery is now constant- ly heard. How little could the gallant Stark, then foresee or conjecture the changes that a hundred years and more would produce in the face of the country ; the relative position and power of the races; of the march of civilization and of improvement in the arts of peace and of war. The idea of railroads, cars and tel- egraphic lines was not then conceived.
And who can predict that the changes produced in the next century, shall be less astonishing than those that have oc- curred since John Stark first wandered a captive, along the banks of the red man's
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