This brilliant success, as it was then termed, encouraged Lovewell to his last and fatal undertaking. Early in March, he again took the field, intending to attack the Indian villages of Piguacket, on the upper part of the Saco, where a formidable tribe had anciently a settled habitation, though at this period they only paid occasional visits there. His company consisted of forty-six men, including a chaplain and a surgeon. Two of them became lame, and returned. Another falling sick, they halted, and built a stockade fort on the west side of Great Ossipee Lake, partly for the accommodation of the sick man, and partly for a stronghold in case of any reverse. Here the surgeon was left with the invalid man, and eight of the company for a guard. Lovewell, with his thirty-four men, advanced to the northward about twenty-two miles, and encamped on the shore of a pond in the evening of the 7th of May. Early the next morning, while the men were at prayer, they heard the report of a gun, and discovered an Indian about a mile distant, standing on a point of land jutting out into the water. They had been alarmed during the night by noises round their camp, which they imagined were made by Indians, and now suspected that the one whom they saw was placed there to decoy them, and that a body of the enemy was in their front. A council of war was held, and they decided to go forward, and, by marching round the pond, to gain the spot where the Indian stood. That they might be ready for action, they disencumbered themselves of their packs, and left them, without any guard, in a pine plain, where the trees were too thinly set to hide them.
Lovewell, on his march, had crossed a carrying-place, by which two parties of Indians, consisting of forty-one warriors, commanded by the noted chiefs Paugus and Wahwa, who had been on a scout down the Saco, were returning to the lower village of Piguacket, about a mile and a half from the pond. Having fallen on Lovewell’s track, they followed it, and came at last to the baggage, which they carried off. On counting the packs, they found the number of the English to be less than that of their own force. They therefore placed themselves in ambush to attack them on their return. The Indian who had stood on the point, and was returning to the village by another path, met the English and received their fire, which he returned, and wounded Lovewell and another person with small shot. By a second fire the Indian was killed, and they took his scalp. Seeing no other enemy, the company returned toward their packs, and, while they were searching for them, the Indians sprang from their ambush and ran towards them with a horrid yell. A smart firing commenced on both sides, and Lovewell was speedily slain, with eight others. Several of the Indians fell, but, being superior in numbers, they were by no means daunted, and endeavoured to surround the English, who, perceiving their design, retreated, hoping to gain a shelter behind a point of rocks and some large pine-trees on the shore of the pond. Here they took their station, having on their right the mouth of a brook, and on their left the rocky point,--their front being partly covered by a deep bog, with the pond in their rear.