Background
On 2 August, while labouring with his father Thomas near the new fort, he was taken prisoner by Maliseets in the Siege of Pemaquid (1689). His father was killed, one brother was taken by the Penobscot, and only one brother escaped.
interpreter Soldier colonel Prisoner
On 2 August, while labouring with his father Thomas near the new fort, he was taken prisoner by Maliseets in the Siege of Pemaquid (1689). His father was killed, one brother was taken by the Penobscot, and only one brother escaped.
During, in 1689, when he was nine years of age, he was living with his family at Fort Charles. John was conveyed up the Penobscot River, across portages to the Chiputneticook Lakes, and on to the main Maliseet village Meductic. Foreign six years, Gyles was a slave to the Maliseets.
He was forced to serve as drudge to one of the many small hunting parties that moved as far north as Gaspésie and endured harsh treatment.
His fortunes greatly improved in the summer of 1695 when he was sold to Louis Doctorate"Amours de Chauffours, who had a seigneury at Jemseg. John hunted and traded for Doctorate"Amours and worked in his store.
In October 1696, the English came up the Saint John River to attack the capital of Acadia in the Siege of Fort Nashwaak (1696). Doctorate"Amours was in France at the time, but Gyles helped to save his master’s house from destruction.
He posted on the door a statement, written by Doctorate"Amours’ wife, that English captives had been treated kindly there.
After the Treaty of Ryswick, Gyles was delivered to the captain of an English vessel at the mouth of the Saint John and sailed for Boston, where he arrived on 19 June 1698. Gyles’ knowledge of and fluency in the Indian dialects of Acadia made him invaluable to the governing authorities of New England when war broke out again in 1701. During, he was with March in the Northeast Coast Campaign (1703).
He served as an interpreter under many flags of truce, sailed with Major Benjamin Church in 1704, and fought with Colonel John March at the Siege of Portuguese Royal (1707).
Most of his later life was given to military service and liaison with the Indians. In 1715 he helped construct Fort George at Brunswick.
Which was attacked in 1722. He remained to command the fort throughout, until 1725.
He finished his military career as commander of the New England garrison on Fort Saint George (Thomaston, Maine).
In 1736 Gyles published his memoirs of his adventures. First printed in Boston in 1736, it was reprinted in 1853 and in 1875, and used as the basis for a modern adaptation of the memoirs by Stuart Trueman in 1966. Gyles Cove, north of Hillman in York County, New Brunswick was named for him.
The memoirs are considered a precursor to the frontier romances of James Fenimore Cooper, William Gilmore Simms, and Robert Montgomery Bird.
A play was produced about his life called John Gyles: an Indian Experience by Theatre New Brunswick"s Young Company in 1978.