1755 -- START OF THE
              FRENCH & INDIAN WAR

The month of September saw the curtailment of credit-based transactions at Dupui's General Store.  Inititial rumblings pertaining to the immediate prospect of war were soon to be confirmed by the notable September 8, 1755 Battle of Lake George, one of the first major engagements in the northern theater of the conflict.  As too much risk precluded the continuance of credit arrangements, all of Dupui's customers going forward would necessarily have to make their purchases on a Day Book basis, in cash or equivalents.

While the reasonably quiet lead-up to this War had seen the very first recorded sale of a gun at Dupui's store (purchased by Joseph Haynie on July 2nd, 1755), none of the months that preceded the War's outbreak had signalled any undue concerns.  In fact, one representative transaction details "an order by Charles to an Indian for 20 lbs. of Flour."  Commerce, up until the onset of the War, had been reasonably normative with even horses and wagons routinely being purchased.  So too were the remittances tendered to Dupui totally normative; payments during this time frame were made by way of the manufacture of new sleds, new harrows, new horse yolks, by the laying of floors, by raking oats, by making candles and by the pasturing of hogs.

...and then all Hell broke loose.   

on the Upper Parts of Northampton . . . The barbarous and bloody Scene which is now opened in the above Place, is the most lamentable that perhaps ever appeared; – there is no Person who is possessed of any Humanity, but would commiserate the deplorable Fate of those unhappy People:  There may be seen Horror and Desolation; – populous Settlements deserted; – Villages laid in Ashes; – Men, Women and Children, cruelly mangled and massacred – some found in the Woods, very nauseous for want of Interment:  Some just reeking from the Hands of their Savage Slaughterers, and some hacked and covered all over with Wounds.

The war had come home with a vengeance.  Delaware Indian war chief Teedyuscung had "taken up the hatchet," had massacred Moravian missionary settlements, and had burnt settler homes and barns to the ground.  Assuredly, life on the frontier would never be the same again.  Everyone's all-consuming issue:  survival.

So how did Dupui survive this onslaught?  While he could take a measure of comfort in being deemed a friend to the Delaware Indians, mercantile pragmatism had early-on dictated that he prepare for all contingencies.  Accordingly, Dupui chose to guard his establishment with nothing less than the finest artillery that money could buy, with an expensive array of four swivel guns positioned to dispense as much battlefield horror as the moment required.  Dupui was ready.