Bad Men

Dutch Island, named for a Dutch sailor named Chris Herschdorfer, who was briefly shipwrecked there toward the end of the seventeenth century, was a different matter. It was farther from the mainland, and the distance made the crossing difficult for the Indians, who had only birch-bark canoes in which to travel. Furthermore, they regarded the island with suspicion, and seemed content to leave it unexplored.

Shortly after the Indian raid on Peaks, Major Benjamin Church, whose soldiers had been present on Peaks during the course of the main attack, led an expedition to the island and found it to be heavily forested, with only a handful of suitable landings for boats. Yet it was to Dutch that a man named Thomas Lunt led a group of settlers in 1691, weary of the running battles he was forced to fight with the natives. In total, thirty settlers joined him in the first two weeks on the island that he renamed Sanctuary, among them survivors of the attacks on Jewell and Peaks, and their numbers continued to increase over the following months. They opted to settle away from the shore, hoping that the higher ground might make them less vulnerable to a surprise attack.

At this point, Amerling’s history of the island became less detailed and more speculative, but it seemed that the behavior of one of the settlers, a man named Buer, grew increasingly unpredictable. He became estranged from his family, spending more and more time alone in the thick forest at the center of the island. He was accused of attempted rape by the wife of one of his fellow settlers, and when her husband and three other men attempted to hunt him down as he tried to flee, he killed one of them with a musket shot and then sought shelter with his wife, begging her to hide him, claiming that he had done nothing wrong. But she, fearful for her own life (for she was as disturbed as anyone by the change in her husband), betrayed him to his accusers. He was chained to a post in a barn, but somehow he escaped from the island, stealing a boat and disappearing to the mainland.

He returned some months later, in the winter of 1693, at the head of a party of armed men and renegade Indians, and led the slaughter of the settlers on Sanctuary, including his own wife. One of the settlers, a woman, survived her wounds long enough to tell of what had occurred. Even now, three hundred years later, Macy found herself wincing at the details. There was rape and torture. Many of the women were assaulted, then bound and thrown alive into a patch of bog, where they drowned. No distinction was made between adults and children.

The search for the killers was led by three hunters from the island who had traveled to the mainland to trade on behalf of the settlement and were therefore absent when the massacre occurred. It was said that they tracked down a number of those involved in the attack and dispensed swift justice upon them. Years later, the son of one of those hunters would be among those who resettled Sanctuary. His name was Jerome Dupree.

Crow had stolen away from the group almost as soon as the canoes touched land, grateful only that he had survived the voyage. He had positioned himself behind the White Leader in the second canoe, his hand upon his knife throughout the journey, hidden beneath a rough, woven cloak. If they tried to take him, he would place his knife upon the throat of the White Leader and hold him hostage until they reached the mainland. He suspected that the White Leader knew what he was planning, for he could see the knowledge in his eyes, and his lieutenant, the man named Barone, remained seated in the bow of the boat with his back to the coast, a musket on his lap as he watched Crow.