Nothing now was left of them but
their deserted fort. The neighboring Indians were Abenakis, one of the
tribes included by the French under the general name of Armouchiquois.
Their disposition was doubtful, and it needed all the coolness of young
Biencourt to avoid a fatal collision. On one occasion a curious incident
took place. The French met six canoes full of warriors descending the
Kennebec, and, as neither party trusted the other, the two encamped on
opposite banks of the river. In the evening the Indians began to sing
and dance. Biard suspected these proceedings to be an invocation of the
Devil, and "in order," he says, "to thwart this accursed tyrant, I made
our people sing a few church hymns, such as the Salve, the Ave Mans
Stella, and others. But being once in train, and getting to the end of
their spiritual songs, they fell to singing such others as they knew,
and when these gave out they took to mimicking the dancing and singing
of the Armouchiquois on the other side of the water; and as Frenchmen
are naturally good mimics, they did it so well that the Armouchiquols
stopped to listen; at which our people stopped too; and then the Indians
began again. You would have laughed to hear them, for they were like two
choirs answering each other in concert, and you would hardly have known
the real Armouchiquois from the sham ones.
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