The Killing of Sebastian Rale.
The world's highway over which civilization has advanced his ever beenmarked by blood and has ever been the scene of carnage and suffering.
It is always the strong against the weak, who are all unconscious participators in the eternal struggle of the fittest for supremacy. In all history no better illustration of this fact may be found than in the story of the Anglo-Saxon and the French pioneers in New England, Acadia and New France in North America.
Their brave endurance of hardship and privation, their fierce battle with the elements in a boundless wilderness, their continual war with savages, their constant conflict with each other, and the ultimate triumph of the Anglo-Saxon, read like the tales of romance.
That hardy mariner, Jacques Cartier, sailed from the home of his nativity in St. Malo on the twentieth day of April, 1534, steered for Newfoundland, advanced up the St. Lawrence, and upon his return to France infused that nation with a new spirit of discovery and aggrandizement, a desire to compete with the Spaniard and the conquering and gold-seeking Englishman ; and on the seventeenth day of September, 1759, Quebec was surrendered to Wolfe, the Anglo-Saxon possessed himself of New France, and the history of the world was changed.
At the time of Cartier, the opposing forces to the Catholic church set in motion by Luther had convulsed Germany, and John Calvin, a worse heretic than Luther, was infecting France, so that devout Catholics under Francis the first aspired not only to build up a new France across the Atlantic but to convert the infidels of the New World as well.
From Cartier to Wolfe covered a period of a little more than two centuries, but for about fifty years after his time, France was so engaged that New France was practically abandoned by that government.
The religious and political ambition of the French people revived about 1605, under Lescarbot, Champlain, and other leaders, and New France was born again.
From that time until the fall of Quebec, the spiritual and temporal interests of France were united, and the conversion of the Indians was undertaken with a zeal that has never been surpassed in the annals of religious movements.
That the scheme to Christianize the red men embraced commercial and political as well as religious interests, is undoubtedly a fact.
The Recollet friars were the first to enter upon the stupendous undertaking of rescuing from the bondage of Satan a people living, as they averred, "like brute beasts, without faith, without law, without religion, without God." But this order not succeeding, the plan was supplemented by the Jesuits in 1634, just a century
after Jacques Cartier had sailed up the St. Lawrence.
Thus the religious destinies of this part of the New Continent passed into the hands of the powerful Society of Jesus, the followers of Ignatius de Loyola, who was born in 1491 under the Spanish flag. He is among the immortals of history, as he was the founder of the strongest and most potent religious order ever known in the world. First embracing the profession of
arms, he was wounded in battle in the defense of Pampeluna. While convalescing in the cave of Mouresua he first indulged in reading romance, but when these books were exhausted he was thrown upon the only other available reading, -that of the lives of the saints. This inspired and fired an ardent spirit, and the result was that he, alone in that cave, evolved the outlines for a plan that formed this mighty society.
Parkman says, "In the forge of his great intellect, heated but not disturbed by the intense fires of his zeal) was wrought the prodigious enginery whose power has been felt to the uttermost confines of civilization."
It was one of the bravest and most famous of this great organization, Paul la Jeune, that was selected to lead the hosts of Jesus against a continent of savages, some of whom were cannibals.* Father la Jeune wrote to his superior when he first arrived at Quebec: "The harvest is plentiful and the laborers few."
Parkman in his fascinating work, "The Jesuits of North America" (page 6), observes: -"These men aimed at the conversion of a continent. From their hovel on the St. Charles they surveyed a field of labor whose vastness might tire the wings of thought itself; a scene repellant and appalling, darkened with omens of peril and woe. They were an advance-guard of the great army of Loyola, strong in discipline that controlled not alone the body and the will, but the intellect, the heart, the soul and the in-most consciousness. The lives of these early Canadian Jesuits attest the earnestness of their
faith and the intensity of their zeal."
Before the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, which resulted in the cession of all of Acadia by the French Government to England, the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and at least all of that part of Maine that was east of the Kennebec River were collectively called Acadia.
Article XII of this treaty declared that the most Christian King of France -ceded to the Queen of England in perpetuity Acadia or Nova Scotia entire, CC according to its ancient boundaries," etc.
No one concerned in the making of this treaty appears to have had any intelligent conception of what the 11 ancient boundaries of Acadia were, and from the indefiniteness regarding them disputed questions of boundary immediately arose. The two governments once agreed to settle the contentions by commissioners of the two powers, but their meetings were delayed from time to time for forty years, and then their discussion ended in the Seven Years' War.
Parkman alleges that the claims of the rival nations were so discordant that any attempt to reconcile them 11 must needs produce a fresh quarrel.
Thus it appeared that neither the treaty of Utrecht or of Ryswick (1697) resulted in any permanent adjustment of what was to the Bourborn world of manifest insignificance, and yet what was to both the subjects of England and of France in Acadia of the utmost importance, namely, where upon the face of the earth was really the boundary line between the English and French possessions under these treaties.
There was absolute certainty as to one fact only, and that was that Acadia had passed to the English. But what constituted Acadia? The whole question turned upon what were its "ancient boundaries."
It would have been difficult to have conceived of a description more obscure or more pregnant with causes for strife and misunderstanding.
Under the treaty of Ryswick the courts of both governments had claimed all of the territory between the Sagadahoc and the St. Croix.
Charles C. D. Roberts, in his "History of Canada" (1897), in speaking of this period says: "Amid the icy desolation of Hudson Bay and about the austere coasts of Newfoundland, France and England were at each other's throats; while along between New England and Acadia was a line of blood and fire. The French claimed the line of the Kennebec as the western line of
Acadia; " and that - The New Englanders claimed that Acadia's western border was the St. Croix, which now divides New Brunswick from Maine."
New England writers have generally conceded that the English made many promises to the Indians which were ruthlessly broken, and when news came to the red men that the Governor of New France had, by treaty with the English, surrendered his right to protection over them,
the Indians of Norridgewock having heard of these rumors and also beholding the English building forts and encroaching upon their lands, despatched deputies to the Marquis de Vau- dreuil, Governor of Canada, to ascertain from him whether it was true that the King of France had disposed in favor of the Queen of England
of a country of which they claimed to be the sole masters.
The Governor-General's reply was that the treaty of Utrecht did not mention their countrv, and this satisfied them.
Williamson and other English writers are in accord with Charlevoix regarding the fact that these representatives from the Norridgewock tribe made this visit to Vaudreuil for this purpose.
After the treaty of Utrecht the Kennebec River was generally claimed by the French to be the dividing line between their possessions and New England, and they were guarded by the French and their adherents with watchful care and jealousy; so during much of the half-
century of conflict so comprehensively treated in Parkman's history of this period, and what Julian Hawthorne in his "History of the United States" describes as "fifty years of fools and heroes," a large part of what is now the State of Maine was territory about which there was great strife and contention as to title and ownership. Besides these larger contentions
there were many minor ones of a local nature between the settlers and the Indians which related to the titles of the home possessions of some of the white men, the Indians often claiming that they were cheated and defrauded by the English, who obtained some of their alleged holdings from their chiefs when they were in a state of intoxication caused by the purchasers themselves ; that they frequently acquired these titles
for mere trifles, such as a bottle of brandy, etc.
One of the complaints the Indians made against the English, Charlevoix says, was the wanton killing of their dogs, " dearer to them than the oxen of the English."
One of the most important Jesuit outposts was the Kennebec mission, which was established about the middle of the seventeenth century and which was destined to be the storm-centre of warring factions and the scene of a bloody and cruel tragedy.
In 1694, Sebastian Rale was recalled from a station among the Illinois Indians to take full charge of this mission, which for a long time had been located at Naurontsouk, now the town of Norridgewock. Rale was born in Pontarlier-Doubs (formerly a part of Franche-Compte') January 4, 1657. He was educated by the Jesuits and entered the order at Dole, september
24, 1675.
In 1689 he was sent to the American Mission, and arrived at Quebec on the thirteenth day of October of that year. His first mission was among the Abenaki Indians, that is, "men of the east," a name once applied to all of the Indians of the eastern coast of the American continent, but later restricted to the tribes inhabiting a part of Canada, Nova Scotia and Acadia.
He had been nearly two years among the Abenakis when he was ordered to the Illinois River. The journey was a perilous and cheerless one, but he met it with a fortitude characteristic of the Jesuit fathers. Before starting upon the journey he spent three months at Quebec, studying the language of the Algonquins. In about two years he was ordered back, as before stated, to the Abenaki country and the Norridgewock mission assigned to him, where he remained continuously until the time of his death. We may indulge in feelings of
pride that the Anglo-Saxon has for many centuries been at the head of the procession in the march of civilization; yet his errors have not been few, and one of his gravest has been his dealings with the American Indian. With a few exceptions, notably that of William Penn, the Quaker founder of the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and John Eliot, a Protestant minister in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, who was known as "Apostle of the Indians," Jonathan Edwards, and possibly a few others, the Anglo-Saxon's record in this respect is generally one of failure and too often one of selfish greed, treachery and cruelty.
My admiration for the stanch and noble qualities of the settlers of New England and for the grand foundation which they laid for the erection of a great empire of intelligence and liberty is exceeded by none. I would not detract one atom from all that the world owes them. But when one studies their relations with the Indians of North America he can but appreciate the facetious remark once made by a noted son of Massachusetts, William M. Evarts, when he said, " The Pilgrim Fathers were good men, and when they landed at Plymouth Rock they praised God, - that is, they fell on their knees,
then they fell on the aborigines."
That the Jesuits were far more successful in securing and holding the confidence of the Indians, and by their methods making them loyal and faithful friends, cannot be denied by the candid student of history.
Among all the devoted followers of Loyola in North America no one has achieved greater fame in this respect than has Father Rale.
He became familiar with several Indian dialects and understood the language as well as he did French or Latin. It was only by the most persistent effort that he acquired this accomplishment.
During the years when he was learning the Indian language he spent a part of each year in the wigwams of the Indians in order to catch from their lips the peculiarities of their speech. It necessarily required the closest attention to distinguish the combinations of sound and to perceive their meaning. This knowledge of their language gave him an advantage with the
savage which but few other teachers or missionaries possessed.
He lived with them as a tribesman and became one of them in all of their interests, wants and sympathies. He was brother, counsellor and friend and won their sincere confidence. As a result they loved him warmly, and amidst all of the violent caprice of the savage character, their affection for him seems never to have
wavered. just as the people of Canada in our day magnified the contentions, now happily settled for all time, between themselves and the government at Washington regarding the Alaskan and other controversies, and viewed them much more seriously than did the Crown authorities ; so in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the people of New England naturally made more fuss over, and regarded as much
more momentous, all of the questions of boundary lines between New England and Acadia than did the English government itself. The local strifes between the inhabitants of New France and New England, which were ever alive, and the continual outbreaks of hostilities between the parent countries, which would always involve the respective colonies, made it a period of tragedy and atrocious scenes which sickens
the heart to contemplate.
Maine's geographical situation, as has been observed, was such as to make it the dark and bloody ground of these struggles. From 1700 to 1713, the war, called by some writers " Queen Anne's war," but what was really the War of the Spanish Succession, raged and was one of the most inhuman and devastating of all of these contests between the pioneers of France and England in Maine; and we,in our comfortable environments of to-day, cannot imagine the sufferings, privations and hardships endured by the inhabitants of the District
of Maine at that time, which were caused by these wars.
One of the causes of this war was, that, in 1701, James II, the exiled king of Great Britain,died at the court of Louis, and the king of France had, in violation of the treaty of Ryswick, recognized the son of James as the rightful sovereign of England.
Another, and probably the greater one, was that, in the year 1700, Charles 11 of Spain died,having named as his successor Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. This aroused the jealousy of all Europe, as it pointed to a union of France and Spain. The result was that an
alliance was formed between England, Holland and Austria. The war soon extended to the colonies, although none were greatly affected, outside of New England, except South Carolina.
The English made an attempt to enter into a compact with all of the Indian tribes to hold aloof and maintain neutrality between the contending forces. This was generally successful except with the Abenakis of Maine. The Jesuit missionaries, of course, favored the French
and succeeded in preventing the Indians from either remaining neutral or espousing the English cause.
In 1698, Rale and his converted Indians, by the assistance of his superior in Quebec, had built a chapel at Norridgewock, and had erected simple and comfortable houses, and a settlement of civilization was well under way. Religious bigotry and intolerance, however, ran riot under the banners of both Loyola and John Calvin. Three expeditions, as will be seen, were made against Norridgewock, the first two proving unsuccessful.
There is quite conclusive evidence that both the French and the English, in their efforts to advance their respective religious and political interests, sometimes resorted to means which were crafty, if not dishonorable. After the treaty of Pemaquid, the Massachusetts people, by executing a plan that was disgraceful, succeeded in capturing a Kennebec or Norridgewock sachem named Bomazeen, who was sent to Boston and held in captivity there for some time. According to Cotton Mather, one of the clergymen at
Boston interviewed him while in prison, and some of the information which the sachem imparted to him intensified the New England sentiment against the French. The accuracy of this information can probably never be known.
One of his alleged statements was that the French teachers had instructed the Indians that Jesus Christ was of the French nation; that his mother, the Virgin Mary, was a French woman; that the English had been his murderers ; that he rose and went to heaven, and that all who would gain his favor must revenge his quarrel
upon the English as far as possible. Professing to believe that the French friars had been active in inciting the Indians to commit depredations upon the English settlers, the General Court of Massachusetts, on the 15th day of June, 1700, passed an act to eject them entirely from the colony.
The following is the preamble to this act:
" Whereas, divers Jesuit priests and Popish missionaries, by their subtle insinuations, industriously labor to debauch, seduce and withdraw the Indians from their obedience to His Majesty and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion and open hostility against His Majesty's government," etc. It then proceeds to enact
that "they shall depart from and out of the same province on or before the tenth day of September, 1700-"
Perpetual imprisonment was the penalty for being found within the province after that date. As one of the results of all these fomentation's on both sides and an incident of the war above referred to, Colonel Hilton was sent from Massachusetts with two hundred and seventy men and provisions for twenty days to Norridgewock for the purpose of destroying the village and either killing or taking prisoners all its inhabitants. This expedition was made in the winter of 1705, when the snow was very deep, and "the country appeared like a frozen lake."
When Hilton and his troops arrived at Norridgewock they found only a " deserted village."
These soldiers set fire to "the large chapel with a vestry at the end of it," and the wigwams and homes of the Indians were utterly destroyed. Whether they had received warning of the approach of the Hilton party, which seems very probable, or whether, as Rale afterwards asserted, they happened to go there cc when the Indians were absent from the village," has never been fully settled.
The Priest returned to mourn over the smoking ruins of the sanctuary, and soon entered upon the task of rebuilding the church and village.
Rale's account is, that for this purpose some of his chiefs went to Boston, it being much nearer than Quebec, to procure workmen ; that the governor received them with a great show of friendship and offered to rebuild at the expense of Massachusetts, if they would dismiss their French priest and take an English minister in his place ; that the Indians rejected this offer with scorn and said : " Keep your workmen, your money and your minister; we will go to our father, the French governor, for what we want."
Francis, in his life of Rale, does not find any other authority than Rale's for this application to the Governor of Massachusetts.
Rale's statement is that the church was erected by the aid of the French governor; yet Hutchinson, in 1724, asserted that it " had been built a few years before by carpenters from New England."
But, however obscure the fact may be in relation to who rendered assistance in restoring the mission, a new church was erected and a beautiful village sprang up upon the ruins of what was burned by Colonel Hilton. Within the limits of the present peaceful town of Norridgewock, the Kennebec curved around a piece
of meadow land surrounded by picturesque hills of forestry. On this meadow, on ground a few feet above the common level, stood the village of Norridgewock, fenced with a stockade of logs nine feet high. The enclosure was square, each of its four sides measured one hundred and sixty feet, and each had its gate.
From the four gates ran two streets or lanes which crossed each other in the middle of the village.
There were twenty-six Indian houses or cabins within the stockade, described as " built after the English manner," though constructed of logs, round and hewn. The church was outside the enclosure, about twenty paces from the east gate.
A small bell, now preserved by the Maine Historical Society at Portland, rang for mass in the early dawn, and for vespers when the sun was sinking among the wilderness hills.
Rale had but little time for leisure or recreation. His hours were mostly spent in the duties of his priestly office.
Parkman says of him: " He preached, exhorted, catechised the young converts, counselled the seniors for this world and the next, nursed them in sickness, composed their quarrels, tilled his own garden, cut his own firewood, cooked his own food, which was of Indian corn, or, at a pinch, of roots and acorns." When not thus occupied he worked on his Abenaki Vocabulary and was preparing an Indian Dictionary at the time of his death. Twice a year, summer and winter, he followed his flock to the seashore, where they lived at their ease during short vacations, on fish and seals, clams, oysters
and sea-fowl. He was a skilful worker of wood, and with his own hands carved many ornaments for his church and chapels. He also found in the woods a species of laurel, called bayberry, from which he made a wax, which, mixed with tallow, made excellent candles for his altars.
He organized among the young men of the tribe a company of assisting clergy. About forty of his young converts, arrayed in cassocks and surplices, officiated at the sacrifice of the mass, at the chants and in the processions on holy days. At short distances from the village, the Indians built two small chapels, one dedicated to the Virgin, the other to the Guardian Angel.
The chapels were near the paths by which they went to the woods or the fields, and Francis says, " They never passed them without offering devotions."
Whittier, in Mogg Megone, has immortalized this scene of worship in " God's first temples," as follows:
"On the brow of a hill which slopes to meet The flowing river and bathe its feet - The bare-washed and drooping grass, And the creeping vine, as the waters pass A rude, unshapely chapel stands, Built up in that wild by unskillful hands Yet the traveller knows it's a place of prayer, For the holy sign of the cross is there ; And should he chance at that place to be, Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed day, When prayers are made and masses said, Some for the living and some for the dead, Well might that traveller start to see The tall dark forms that take their way From the birch canoe on the river shore,And the forest paths to that chapel door; And marvel to mark the naked knees And the dusky foreheads bending there, And, stretching his long, thin arms over these In blessing and in prayer, Like a shrouded spectre, pale and tall, In his coarse white vesture, Father Rale."
Rale claims that in 1721, the government of Massachusetts offered a reward of a thousand pounds sterling for his head. Parkman denies this, but there is ample proof that a sum was thus offered. In the records of the General Court of Massachusetts appears a resolve that was passed July 13, 1720, as follows:
Resolved, that a premium of one hundred pounds be allowed and paid out of the Public Treasury to any person that shall apprehend the said Jesuit within any part of this Province and bring him to Boston and render him to justice."
All branches of the government joined in sending three hundred men to Norridgewock, with a demand that the Indians should give up Rale "and the other heads and:, fomenters of their rebellion." In case of refusal they were to seize the Jesuit and the principal chiefs and bring them prisoners to Boston. In obedience to these orders, Colonel Westbrook made an expedition; but Rale had timely warning of it, and, swallowing the consecrated wafers and hiding the sacred vessels, fled to the woods and was thus again saved from discovery.
Westbrook found papers in Rale's strong box which proved that Rale had acted more or less under the orders of the Canadian authorities, and which subsequent writers have denominated as " treason " on his part.
Finally, in 1724, under Governor Dummer the Massachusetts government was united in a determination to seize or kill Rale and exterminate Norridgewock. Without considering the immediate causes which led up to the last and fatal expedition against Rale and his brave and faithful followers, suffice it to say that a body of men under Captains Harmon, Moulton and Brown and Lieutenant Bean, set out from Fort Richmond in whaleboats on the eighth day of August of that year. They left the boats at Ticonic Falls in charge of a Lieutenant and a squad of men, and, accompanied by three Mohawk Indians as guides, marched through the forest for Norridgewock. Towards evening they saw two squaws, one of whom they brutally shot and captured the other, who proved to be the wife of the noted chief Bomazeen. She gave
them a full account of the condition of the village, which they approached early in the afternoon of the !23d. As to the number of men under Captain Harmon and his associates, there seems to be much doubt. Chasse and Charlevoix placed it at eleven hundred white men and Indians,* while the English authorities have stated that there were only two hundred and
eighty men under Harmon, Moulton, Brown and Bean. Charlevoix says that the English stealthily crept through the thick woods surrounding the village, and the inhabitants knew nothing of their approach until it was announced by a general discharge of fire-arms which sent their shot through the wigwams.
It was a complete surprise to the dusky inhabitants of the little forest village and they easily fell into the awful death-trap ruthlessly set for them by the English there among the pines and birches, under the evergreens' dark shade, and within sound of the joyous rhythm of
the waters of the river Kennebec.
Only fifty warriors were in the village at the time. They seized their arms, rushed out, without preparation, for a fight, not hoping to defend the place against a foe already in possession, but to protect the flight of their wives, children and old men. Father Rale, who, as Charlevoix says, was apprized of the peril of his people by the shouts and tumult, hastened forth fearlessly to present his person to the assailants, in the hope of attracting their attention to himself and thus securing his flock at the risk of his own life. La Chasse adds another motive, which was the hope of delaying by his presence their first attack. His expectation was realized. No sooner had he appeared than the English sent
up a great shout which was followed by a shower of musket-shot. He fell dead, as some writers say, near a cross which he had planted in the central part of the village. Several Indians who had gathered about him to protect him with their bodies were slain by his side. Francis says: " Thus died this affectionate pastor, giving his life for the sheep, after a life of thirty- seven years of suffering."
This is substantially the French version of this terrible tragedy. Francis also gives the English account of the affair, quoting Hutchinson, who gathered his information from the journal of one, and from the oral statements of another, of the officers who led the forces against Rale; also the statements of Penhallow, who was living at the time, and a brief notice in the " New England Courant," a newspaper printed in Boston, a few days after the news of his death and the destruction of his followers arrived there. Summed up, the English account does not differ materially from that of the French, except in regard to the killing of Rale. These witnes- ses aver that Captain Moulton gave orders not
to kill the priest. But a wound inflicted upon one of the soldiers by Rale, while firing from a wigwam where he was, so exasperated Jaques, a lieutenant, that he burst open a door and shot Rale through the head. Jaques' explanation of this deed was, that when he broke into the wigwam, Rale was loading his gun, and declared
that he would not give or take quarter."Francis, in speaking of this, observes: "How little confidence can be placed in this statement of the lieutenant we learn from the fact that, according to Hutchinson, Moulton himself doubted its truth at the time."
The following is Charlevoix's description of the death of Rale: "They found him pierced with a thousand shots, his scalp torn off, his skull crushed by hatchets, his mouth and eyes full of mud, his leg-bone broken and all of his members mutilated in a hundred different ways. Thus was a priest treated in his mission at the
foot of the cross, by those very men who on all occasions exaggerate so greatly the pretended inhumanities of our Indians, who have never been seen to use violence to the dead bodies of their enemies. After the neophytes had raised up and repeatedly kissed the precious remains of the Father, tenderly and so justly beloved, they buried him on the very spot where, the day before, he had celebrated the holy mysteries; that is to say, on the spot where the altar
stood before the church was burned."
Some of the New England writers have raised doubts as to the truth of the statements regarding the mutilation of Rale's body. Their contention has been that Charlevoix must necessarily have obtained his information from the surviving Indians, and that, as a rule, their statements were unreliable. There cannot, however, be any doubt but what his murderers took
his scalp and carried it in triumph to Boston.
In the first place they had a great incentive to do this. The Massachusetts government paid liberal rewards for the scalps of their enemies in the French and Indian wars.
Penhallow (page 48) says: " The Colonial rewards for scalps made it too rich a trophy to leave. A volunteer without pay got fifty pounds for a scalp ; if in service, twenty ; while regulars got ten."
William Allen's History of Norridgewock, page 41, quoting from a manuscript in the handwriting of Rev. William Holmes, under date of August 30, 1724, says, in describing the " battle," but what was really a massacre, when Norridgewock was overwhelmed and Rale killed: " The scalps of twenty-eight of them were brought to Boston ; of which number their priest's and Bomazeen's were two."
Williamson also refers to this as follows: "Harmon, who was senior in command, proceeded to Boston with the scalps, and received in reward for the achievement the commission of Lieutenant Colonel."
When Captain Harmon returned to Boston he made " solemn oath " that one of the twenty-eight scalps which he produced at a council, held at the Council Chamber in Boston, was that of " Sebastian Ralle, a Jesuit." And that twenty-seven other scalps came from the heads of "rebel or enemy Indians, which were slain at Norridgewock."
After killing Rale and as many of the inhabitants of the little village as possible, the victorious party at once commenced their march toward the sea. The Puritan militia thought it a meritorious act to destroy what they called the "idols" in the church and carry off the sacred
vessels; but the church itself and all of the buildings within the village were not fired until after the march homeward was begun, when, Francis says, 11 one of the Mohawks was sent, Rale acted so far as he was capable in the interest of his own government as well as of his church, believing that he was fully justified in
so doing. Even after the treaty of Utrecht, the French claimed all that part of Maine which was east of the Kennebec River, and that was during a long time debated territory; and this treaty left the whole question of bounds and ancient limits entirely indefinite and open to contention. The plan was, when this treaty was
ratified, to settle the matter of bounds by commissioners of the two powers, as has already been stated, but it was never done. This disputed territory was therefore a bone of contention between the inhabitants of the two provinces until the God of battles, on the Plains of Abraham, wrested the whole of Acadia from the French
and delivered it over to the English. A century later a part of the same controversy arose between Canada and the State of Maine in relation to our northeastern boundary, and the English government and the United States settled it forever by the famous Ashburton treaty.
The writers who have espoused the cause of the English in the assassination of Father Rale, for I cannot see how it can be truthfully described by any other term, have seemed to overlook the fact that his settlement and mission were on territory claimed by the French; that it was his duty as a subject of the king of
France to be loyal to that side of the contention ; that he was no more intensely partisan in striving to promote the interests of his country than were Baxter, Mather, and many ministers of the Puritan faith who were equally as steadfast to the English cause as he was to that of the French. That he was ever loyal to the interests of his government and his church, that he watched their welfare with vigilance and faithfulness seldom equalled, is undisputed by any; that some of his methods of supporting the cause to which his life was pledged were sometimes questionable and even deceptive, Ibelieve is in evidence which cannot be fully contradicted; but I also believe that they were in harmony with the spirit of the times in which he lived, when men regarded a human life of less value than a dogma, and that he was no worse than many of his contemporaries within the ranks of both of the contending forces. That nearly three hundred soldiers acting under the least semblance of military discipline could not have made him a prisoner and taken him a
captive to Boston is incredible. If this could have been accomplished, then this act of our forefathers was a travesty upon civilized warfare and a black spot in the history of New England. The fate of the Jesuit was undoubtedly glad news to many of the Maine settlers,
who believed that it would end all of their troubles. That he had for a long time prior to his death been feared and hated by the New Englanders is a fact. Parkman says that while the latter "thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for a martyred saint" ; and he further adds that "he was neither the one nor the other, but a man with qualities and faults of a man - fearless, resolute, enduring, boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating, and a vehement partisan."
Even James Phinney Baxter said of him, We can but admire the calm reliance of Rale upon the protection of a higher power, and his entire devotion to what he considered his duty."
Dr. Convers Francis, to whose " Life of Rale " I have made reference, was a Unitarian clergyman of renown in his day and a graduate of Harvard. He was born in 179S and died in 1863- In 1842 he was appointed to the Parkman professorship of theology in Harvard College, which he held during the remainder of his life. He was the author of several other historical and biographical works. When he wrote of Rale he had canvassed carefully all the sources of information relating to his career, and had before him substantially what Parkman, Baxter and subsequent writers have had. Documents and papers which have been discovered since Francis wrote, have not changed materially the
facts. Yet Francis, in his conclusion as to the character and sincerity of purpose of Sebastian Rale says:
But, whatever abatements from indiscriminate praise his faults or frailties may require, cannot review his history without receiving a deep impression that he was a pious, devoted and extraordinary man. He was a scholar nurtured amidst European learning, and accustomed to the refinements of the Old World, who banished himself from the pleasures of home and
from the attractions of his native land, and passed much of his life in the forest of an unbroken wilderness, on a distant shore, amidst the squalid rudeness of savage life, and with no companions, during those long years, but the wild men of the woods. With them he lived as a friend, as a benefactor, as a brother. So far as the patient toils of missionary and love for the darkened soul of the Indian are concerned, we may place the names of Eliot and Rale in a fellowship, which they indeed would both have rejected, but which we may regard as hallowed and true."
The spot where the Jesuit of Norridgewock fell was first marked by a plain cross which, years afterwards destroyed by hunters. The place was designated in various ways until 1833, when a movement was set on foot to erect a permanent monument over his grave. The first suggestion to do this, it is said, came from Dr.
Jonathan Sibley of Union, Me. The project was supported by both Protestants and Catholics, Mr. William Allen of Norridgewock and Edward Kavanagh, afterwards governor of Maine, being prominent in the matter. On the 23d day of August, 1833, which was the anniversary of the Norridgewock fight, a monument was erected which stands there to-day. Bishop Fenwick of
Boston had charge of the ceremonies and delivered an address. Delegations from the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Canada tribes were present.
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The world's highway over which civilization has advanced his ever beenmarked by blood and has ever been the scene of carnage and suffering.
It is always the strong against the weak, who are all unconscious participators in the eternal struggle of the fittest for supremacy. In all history no better illustration of this fact may be found than in the story of the Anglo-Saxon and the French pioneers in New England, Acadia and New France in North America.
Their brave endurance of hardship and privation, their fierce battle with the elements in a boundless wilderness, their continual war with savages, their constant conflict with each other, and the ultimate triumph of the Anglo-Saxon, read like the tales of romance.
That hardy mariner, Jacques Cartier, sailed from the home of his nativity in St. Malo on the twentieth day of April, 1534, steered for Newfoundland, advanced up the St. Lawrence, and upon his return to France infused that nation with a new spirit of discovery and aggrandizement, a desire to compete with the Spaniard and the conquering and gold-seeking Englishman ; and on the seventeenth day of September, 1759, Quebec was surrendered to Wolfe, the Anglo-Saxon possessed himself of New France, and the history of the world was changed.
At the time of Cartier, the opposing forces to the Catholic church set in motion by Luther had convulsed Germany, and John Calvin, a worse heretic than Luther, was infecting France, so that devout Catholics under Francis the first aspired not only to build up a new France across the Atlantic but to convert the infidels of the New World as well.
From Cartier to Wolfe covered a period of a little more than two centuries, but for about fifty years after his time, France was so engaged that New France was practically abandoned by that government.
The religious and political ambition of the French people revived about 1605, under Lescarbot, Champlain, and other leaders, and New France was born again.
From that time until the fall of Quebec, the spiritual and temporal interests of France were united, and the conversion of the Indians was undertaken with a zeal that has never been surpassed in the annals of religious movements.
That the scheme to Christianize the red men embraced commercial and political as well as religious interests, is undoubtedly a fact.
The Recollet friars were the first to enter upon the stupendous undertaking of rescuing from the bondage of Satan a people living, as they averred, "like brute beasts, without faith, without law, without religion, without God." But this order not succeeding, the plan was supplemented by the Jesuits in 1634, just a century
after Jacques Cartier had sailed up the St. Lawrence.
Thus the religious destinies of this part of the New Continent passed into the hands of the powerful Society of Jesus, the followers of Ignatius de Loyola, who was born in 1491 under the Spanish flag. He is among the immortals of history, as he was the founder of the strongest and most potent religious order ever known in the world. First embracing the profession of
arms, he was wounded in battle in the defense of Pampeluna. While convalescing in the cave of Mouresua he first indulged in reading romance, but when these books were exhausted he was thrown upon the only other available reading, -that of the lives of the saints. This inspired and fired an ardent spirit, and the result was that he, alone in that cave, evolved the outlines for a plan that formed this mighty society.
Parkman says, "In the forge of his great intellect, heated but not disturbed by the intense fires of his zeal) was wrought the prodigious enginery whose power has been felt to the uttermost confines of civilization."
It was one of the bravest and most famous of this great organization, Paul la Jeune, that was selected to lead the hosts of Jesus against a continent of savages, some of whom were cannibals.* Father la Jeune wrote to his superior when he first arrived at Quebec: "The harvest is plentiful and the laborers few."
Parkman in his fascinating work, "The Jesuits of North America" (page 6), observes: -"These men aimed at the conversion of a continent. From their hovel on the St. Charles they surveyed a field of labor whose vastness might tire the wings of thought itself; a scene repellant and appalling, darkened with omens of peril and woe. They were an advance-guard of the great army of Loyola, strong in discipline that controlled not alone the body and the will, but the intellect, the heart, the soul and the in-most consciousness. The lives of these early Canadian Jesuits attest the earnestness of their
faith and the intensity of their zeal."
Before the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, which resulted in the cession of all of Acadia by the French Government to England, the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and at least all of that part of Maine that was east of the Kennebec River were collectively called Acadia.
Article XII of this treaty declared that the most Christian King of France -ceded to the Queen of England in perpetuity Acadia or Nova Scotia entire, CC according to its ancient boundaries," etc.
No one concerned in the making of this treaty appears to have had any intelligent conception of what the 11 ancient boundaries of Acadia were, and from the indefiniteness regarding them disputed questions of boundary immediately arose. The two governments once agreed to settle the contentions by commissioners of the two powers, but their meetings were delayed from time to time for forty years, and then their discussion ended in the Seven Years' War.
Parkman alleges that the claims of the rival nations were so discordant that any attempt to reconcile them 11 must needs produce a fresh quarrel.
Thus it appeared that neither the treaty of Utrecht or of Ryswick (1697) resulted in any permanent adjustment of what was to the Bourborn world of manifest insignificance, and yet what was to both the subjects of England and of France in Acadia of the utmost importance, namely, where upon the face of the earth was really the boundary line between the English and French possessions under these treaties.
There was absolute certainty as to one fact only, and that was that Acadia had passed to the English. But what constituted Acadia? The whole question turned upon what were its "ancient boundaries."
It would have been difficult to have conceived of a description more obscure or more pregnant with causes for strife and misunderstanding.
Under the treaty of Ryswick the courts of both governments had claimed all of the territory between the Sagadahoc and the St. Croix.
Charles C. D. Roberts, in his "History of Canada" (1897), in speaking of this period says: "Amid the icy desolation of Hudson Bay and about the austere coasts of Newfoundland, France and England were at each other's throats; while along between New England and Acadia was a line of blood and fire. The French claimed the line of the Kennebec as the western line of
Acadia; " and that - The New Englanders claimed that Acadia's western border was the St. Croix, which now divides New Brunswick from Maine."
New England writers have generally conceded that the English made many promises to the Indians which were ruthlessly broken, and when news came to the red men that the Governor of New France had, by treaty with the English, surrendered his right to protection over them,
the Indians of Norridgewock having heard of these rumors and also beholding the English building forts and encroaching upon their lands, despatched deputies to the Marquis de Vau- dreuil, Governor of Canada, to ascertain from him whether it was true that the King of France had disposed in favor of the Queen of England
of a country of which they claimed to be the sole masters.
The Governor-General's reply was that the treaty of Utrecht did not mention their countrv, and this satisfied them.
Williamson and other English writers are in accord with Charlevoix regarding the fact that these representatives from the Norridgewock tribe made this visit to Vaudreuil for this purpose.
After the treaty of Utrecht the Kennebec River was generally claimed by the French to be the dividing line between their possessions and New England, and they were guarded by the French and their adherents with watchful care and jealousy; so during much of the half-
century of conflict so comprehensively treated in Parkman's history of this period, and what Julian Hawthorne in his "History of the United States" describes as "fifty years of fools and heroes," a large part of what is now the State of Maine was territory about which there was great strife and contention as to title and ownership. Besides these larger contentions
there were many minor ones of a local nature between the settlers and the Indians which related to the titles of the home possessions of some of the white men, the Indians often claiming that they were cheated and defrauded by the English, who obtained some of their alleged holdings from their chiefs when they were in a state of intoxication caused by the purchasers themselves ; that they frequently acquired these titles
for mere trifles, such as a bottle of brandy, etc.
One of the complaints the Indians made against the English, Charlevoix says, was the wanton killing of their dogs, " dearer to them than the oxen of the English."
One of the most important Jesuit outposts was the Kennebec mission, which was established about the middle of the seventeenth century and which was destined to be the storm-centre of warring factions and the scene of a bloody and cruel tragedy.
In 1694, Sebastian Rale was recalled from a station among the Illinois Indians to take full charge of this mission, which for a long time had been located at Naurontsouk, now the town of Norridgewock. Rale was born in Pontarlier-Doubs (formerly a part of Franche-Compte') January 4, 1657. He was educated by the Jesuits and entered the order at Dole, september
24, 1675.
In 1689 he was sent to the American Mission, and arrived at Quebec on the thirteenth day of October of that year. His first mission was among the Abenaki Indians, that is, "men of the east," a name once applied to all of the Indians of the eastern coast of the American continent, but later restricted to the tribes inhabiting a part of Canada, Nova Scotia and Acadia.
He had been nearly two years among the Abenakis when he was ordered to the Illinois River. The journey was a perilous and cheerless one, but he met it with a fortitude characteristic of the Jesuit fathers. Before starting upon the journey he spent three months at Quebec, studying the language of the Algonquins. In about two years he was ordered back, as before stated, to the Abenaki country and the Norridgewock mission assigned to him, where he remained continuously until the time of his death. We may indulge in feelings of
pride that the Anglo-Saxon has for many centuries been at the head of the procession in the march of civilization; yet his errors have not been few, and one of his gravest has been his dealings with the American Indian. With a few exceptions, notably that of William Penn, the Quaker founder of the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and John Eliot, a Protestant minister in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, who was known as "Apostle of the Indians," Jonathan Edwards, and possibly a few others, the Anglo-Saxon's record in this respect is generally one of failure and too often one of selfish greed, treachery and cruelty.
My admiration for the stanch and noble qualities of the settlers of New England and for the grand foundation which they laid for the erection of a great empire of intelligence and liberty is exceeded by none. I would not detract one atom from all that the world owes them. But when one studies their relations with the Indians of North America he can but appreciate the facetious remark once made by a noted son of Massachusetts, William M. Evarts, when he said, " The Pilgrim Fathers were good men, and when they landed at Plymouth Rock they praised God, - that is, they fell on their knees,
then they fell on the aborigines."
That the Jesuits were far more successful in securing and holding the confidence of the Indians, and by their methods making them loyal and faithful friends, cannot be denied by the candid student of history.
Among all the devoted followers of Loyola in North America no one has achieved greater fame in this respect than has Father Rale.
He became familiar with several Indian dialects and understood the language as well as he did French or Latin. It was only by the most persistent effort that he acquired this accomplishment.
During the years when he was learning the Indian language he spent a part of each year in the wigwams of the Indians in order to catch from their lips the peculiarities of their speech. It necessarily required the closest attention to distinguish the combinations of sound and to perceive their meaning. This knowledge of their language gave him an advantage with the
savage which but few other teachers or missionaries possessed.
He lived with them as a tribesman and became one of them in all of their interests, wants and sympathies. He was brother, counsellor and friend and won their sincere confidence. As a result they loved him warmly, and amidst all of the violent caprice of the savage character, their affection for him seems never to have
wavered. just as the people of Canada in our day magnified the contentions, now happily settled for all time, between themselves and the government at Washington regarding the Alaskan and other controversies, and viewed them much more seriously than did the Crown authorities ; so in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the people of New England naturally made more fuss over, and regarded as much
more momentous, all of the questions of boundary lines between New England and Acadia than did the English government itself. The local strifes between the inhabitants of New France and New England, which were ever alive, and the continual outbreaks of hostilities between the parent countries, which would always involve the respective colonies, made it a period of tragedy and atrocious scenes which sickens
the heart to contemplate.
Maine's geographical situation, as has been observed, was such as to make it the dark and bloody ground of these struggles. From 1700 to 1713, the war, called by some writers " Queen Anne's war," but what was really the War of the Spanish Succession, raged and was one of the most inhuman and devastating of all of these contests between the pioneers of France and England in Maine; and we,in our comfortable environments of to-day, cannot imagine the sufferings, privations and hardships endured by the inhabitants of the District
of Maine at that time, which were caused by these wars.
One of the causes of this war was, that, in 1701, James II, the exiled king of Great Britain,died at the court of Louis, and the king of France had, in violation of the treaty of Ryswick, recognized the son of James as the rightful sovereign of England.
Another, and probably the greater one, was that, in the year 1700, Charles 11 of Spain died,having named as his successor Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. This aroused the jealousy of all Europe, as it pointed to a union of France and Spain. The result was that an
alliance was formed between England, Holland and Austria. The war soon extended to the colonies, although none were greatly affected, outside of New England, except South Carolina.
The English made an attempt to enter into a compact with all of the Indian tribes to hold aloof and maintain neutrality between the contending forces. This was generally successful except with the Abenakis of Maine. The Jesuit missionaries, of course, favored the French
and succeeded in preventing the Indians from either remaining neutral or espousing the English cause.
In 1698, Rale and his converted Indians, by the assistance of his superior in Quebec, had built a chapel at Norridgewock, and had erected simple and comfortable houses, and a settlement of civilization was well under way. Religious bigotry and intolerance, however, ran riot under the banners of both Loyola and John Calvin. Three expeditions, as will be seen, were made against Norridgewock, the first two proving unsuccessful.
There is quite conclusive evidence that both the French and the English, in their efforts to advance their respective religious and political interests, sometimes resorted to means which were crafty, if not dishonorable. After the treaty of Pemaquid, the Massachusetts people, by executing a plan that was disgraceful, succeeded in capturing a Kennebec or Norridgewock sachem named Bomazeen, who was sent to Boston and held in captivity there for some time. According to Cotton Mather, one of the clergymen at
Boston interviewed him while in prison, and some of the information which the sachem imparted to him intensified the New England sentiment against the French. The accuracy of this information can probably never be known.
One of his alleged statements was that the French teachers had instructed the Indians that Jesus Christ was of the French nation; that his mother, the Virgin Mary, was a French woman; that the English had been his murderers ; that he rose and went to heaven, and that all who would gain his favor must revenge his quarrel
upon the English as far as possible. Professing to believe that the French friars had been active in inciting the Indians to commit depredations upon the English settlers, the General Court of Massachusetts, on the 15th day of June, 1700, passed an act to eject them entirely from the colony.
The following is the preamble to this act:
" Whereas, divers Jesuit priests and Popish missionaries, by their subtle insinuations, industriously labor to debauch, seduce and withdraw the Indians from their obedience to His Majesty and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion and open hostility against His Majesty's government," etc. It then proceeds to enact
that "they shall depart from and out of the same province on or before the tenth day of September, 1700-"
Perpetual imprisonment was the penalty for being found within the province after that date. As one of the results of all these fomentation's on both sides and an incident of the war above referred to, Colonel Hilton was sent from Massachusetts with two hundred and seventy men and provisions for twenty days to Norridgewock for the purpose of destroying the village and either killing or taking prisoners all its inhabitants. This expedition was made in the winter of 1705, when the snow was very deep, and "the country appeared like a frozen lake."
When Hilton and his troops arrived at Norridgewock they found only a " deserted village."
These soldiers set fire to "the large chapel with a vestry at the end of it," and the wigwams and homes of the Indians were utterly destroyed. Whether they had received warning of the approach of the Hilton party, which seems very probable, or whether, as Rale afterwards asserted, they happened to go there cc when the Indians were absent from the village," has never been fully settled.
The Priest returned to mourn over the smoking ruins of the sanctuary, and soon entered upon the task of rebuilding the church and village.
Rale's account is, that for this purpose some of his chiefs went to Boston, it being much nearer than Quebec, to procure workmen ; that the governor received them with a great show of friendship and offered to rebuild at the expense of Massachusetts, if they would dismiss their French priest and take an English minister in his place ; that the Indians rejected this offer with scorn and said : " Keep your workmen, your money and your minister; we will go to our father, the French governor, for what we want."
Francis, in his life of Rale, does not find any other authority than Rale's for this application to the Governor of Massachusetts.
Rale's statement is that the church was erected by the aid of the French governor; yet Hutchinson, in 1724, asserted that it " had been built a few years before by carpenters from New England."
But, however obscure the fact may be in relation to who rendered assistance in restoring the mission, a new church was erected and a beautiful village sprang up upon the ruins of what was burned by Colonel Hilton. Within the limits of the present peaceful town of Norridgewock, the Kennebec curved around a piece
of meadow land surrounded by picturesque hills of forestry. On this meadow, on ground a few feet above the common level, stood the village of Norridgewock, fenced with a stockade of logs nine feet high. The enclosure was square, each of its four sides measured one hundred and sixty feet, and each had its gate.
From the four gates ran two streets or lanes which crossed each other in the middle of the village.
There were twenty-six Indian houses or cabins within the stockade, described as " built after the English manner," though constructed of logs, round and hewn. The church was outside the enclosure, about twenty paces from the east gate.
A small bell, now preserved by the Maine Historical Society at Portland, rang for mass in the early dawn, and for vespers when the sun was sinking among the wilderness hills.
Rale had but little time for leisure or recreation. His hours were mostly spent in the duties of his priestly office.
Parkman says of him: " He preached, exhorted, catechised the young converts, counselled the seniors for this world and the next, nursed them in sickness, composed their quarrels, tilled his own garden, cut his own firewood, cooked his own food, which was of Indian corn, or, at a pinch, of roots and acorns." When not thus occupied he worked on his Abenaki Vocabulary and was preparing an Indian Dictionary at the time of his death. Twice a year, summer and winter, he followed his flock to the seashore, where they lived at their ease during short vacations, on fish and seals, clams, oysters
and sea-fowl. He was a skilful worker of wood, and with his own hands carved many ornaments for his church and chapels. He also found in the woods a species of laurel, called bayberry, from which he made a wax, which, mixed with tallow, made excellent candles for his altars.
He organized among the young men of the tribe a company of assisting clergy. About forty of his young converts, arrayed in cassocks and surplices, officiated at the sacrifice of the mass, at the chants and in the processions on holy days. At short distances from the village, the Indians built two small chapels, one dedicated to the Virgin, the other to the Guardian Angel.
The chapels were near the paths by which they went to the woods or the fields, and Francis says, " They never passed them without offering devotions."
Whittier, in Mogg Megone, has immortalized this scene of worship in " God's first temples," as follows:
"On the brow of a hill which slopes to meet The flowing river and bathe its feet - The bare-washed and drooping grass, And the creeping vine, as the waters pass A rude, unshapely chapel stands, Built up in that wild by unskillful hands Yet the traveller knows it's a place of prayer, For the holy sign of the cross is there ; And should he chance at that place to be, Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed day, When prayers are made and masses said, Some for the living and some for the dead, Well might that traveller start to see The tall dark forms that take their way From the birch canoe on the river shore,And the forest paths to that chapel door; And marvel to mark the naked knees And the dusky foreheads bending there, And, stretching his long, thin arms over these In blessing and in prayer, Like a shrouded spectre, pale and tall, In his coarse white vesture, Father Rale."
Rale claims that in 1721, the government of Massachusetts offered a reward of a thousand pounds sterling for his head. Parkman denies this, but there is ample proof that a sum was thus offered. In the records of the General Court of Massachusetts appears a resolve that was passed July 13, 1720, as follows:
Resolved, that a premium of one hundred pounds be allowed and paid out of the Public Treasury to any person that shall apprehend the said Jesuit within any part of this Province and bring him to Boston and render him to justice."
All branches of the government joined in sending three hundred men to Norridgewock, with a demand that the Indians should give up Rale "and the other heads and:, fomenters of their rebellion." In case of refusal they were to seize the Jesuit and the principal chiefs and bring them prisoners to Boston. In obedience to these orders, Colonel Westbrook made an expedition; but Rale had timely warning of it, and, swallowing the consecrated wafers and hiding the sacred vessels, fled to the woods and was thus again saved from discovery.
Westbrook found papers in Rale's strong box which proved that Rale had acted more or less under the orders of the Canadian authorities, and which subsequent writers have denominated as " treason " on his part.
Finally, in 1724, under Governor Dummer the Massachusetts government was united in a determination to seize or kill Rale and exterminate Norridgewock. Without considering the immediate causes which led up to the last and fatal expedition against Rale and his brave and faithful followers, suffice it to say that a body of men under Captains Harmon, Moulton and Brown and Lieutenant Bean, set out from Fort Richmond in whaleboats on the eighth day of August of that year. They left the boats at Ticonic Falls in charge of a Lieutenant and a squad of men, and, accompanied by three Mohawk Indians as guides, marched through the forest for Norridgewock. Towards evening they saw two squaws, one of whom they brutally shot and captured the other, who proved to be the wife of the noted chief Bomazeen. She gave
them a full account of the condition of the village, which they approached early in the afternoon of the !23d. As to the number of men under Captain Harmon and his associates, there seems to be much doubt. Chasse and Charlevoix placed it at eleven hundred white men and Indians,* while the English authorities have stated that there were only two hundred and
eighty men under Harmon, Moulton, Brown and Bean. Charlevoix says that the English stealthily crept through the thick woods surrounding the village, and the inhabitants knew nothing of their approach until it was announced by a general discharge of fire-arms which sent their shot through the wigwams.
It was a complete surprise to the dusky inhabitants of the little forest village and they easily fell into the awful death-trap ruthlessly set for them by the English there among the pines and birches, under the evergreens' dark shade, and within sound of the joyous rhythm of
the waters of the river Kennebec.
Only fifty warriors were in the village at the time. They seized their arms, rushed out, without preparation, for a fight, not hoping to defend the place against a foe already in possession, but to protect the flight of their wives, children and old men. Father Rale, who, as Charlevoix says, was apprized of the peril of his people by the shouts and tumult, hastened forth fearlessly to present his person to the assailants, in the hope of attracting their attention to himself and thus securing his flock at the risk of his own life. La Chasse adds another motive, which was the hope of delaying by his presence their first attack. His expectation was realized. No sooner had he appeared than the English sent
up a great shout which was followed by a shower of musket-shot. He fell dead, as some writers say, near a cross which he had planted in the central part of the village. Several Indians who had gathered about him to protect him with their bodies were slain by his side. Francis says: " Thus died this affectionate pastor, giving his life for the sheep, after a life of thirty- seven years of suffering."
This is substantially the French version of this terrible tragedy. Francis also gives the English account of the affair, quoting Hutchinson, who gathered his information from the journal of one, and from the oral statements of another, of the officers who led the forces against Rale; also the statements of Penhallow, who was living at the time, and a brief notice in the " New England Courant," a newspaper printed in Boston, a few days after the news of his death and the destruction of his followers arrived there. Summed up, the English account does not differ materially from that of the French, except in regard to the killing of Rale. These witnes- ses aver that Captain Moulton gave orders not
to kill the priest. But a wound inflicted upon one of the soldiers by Rale, while firing from a wigwam where he was, so exasperated Jaques, a lieutenant, that he burst open a door and shot Rale through the head. Jaques' explanation of this deed was, that when he broke into the wigwam, Rale was loading his gun, and declared
that he would not give or take quarter."Francis, in speaking of this, observes: "How little confidence can be placed in this statement of the lieutenant we learn from the fact that, according to Hutchinson, Moulton himself doubted its truth at the time."
The following is Charlevoix's description of the death of Rale: "They found him pierced with a thousand shots, his scalp torn off, his skull crushed by hatchets, his mouth and eyes full of mud, his leg-bone broken and all of his members mutilated in a hundred different ways. Thus was a priest treated in his mission at the
foot of the cross, by those very men who on all occasions exaggerate so greatly the pretended inhumanities of our Indians, who have never been seen to use violence to the dead bodies of their enemies. After the neophytes had raised up and repeatedly kissed the precious remains of the Father, tenderly and so justly beloved, they buried him on the very spot where, the day before, he had celebrated the holy mysteries; that is to say, on the spot where the altar
stood before the church was burned."
Some of the New England writers have raised doubts as to the truth of the statements regarding the mutilation of Rale's body. Their contention has been that Charlevoix must necessarily have obtained his information from the surviving Indians, and that, as a rule, their statements were unreliable. There cannot, however, be any doubt but what his murderers took
his scalp and carried it in triumph to Boston.
In the first place they had a great incentive to do this. The Massachusetts government paid liberal rewards for the scalps of their enemies in the French and Indian wars.
Penhallow (page 48) says: " The Colonial rewards for scalps made it too rich a trophy to leave. A volunteer without pay got fifty pounds for a scalp ; if in service, twenty ; while regulars got ten."
William Allen's History of Norridgewock, page 41, quoting from a manuscript in the handwriting of Rev. William Holmes, under date of August 30, 1724, says, in describing the " battle," but what was really a massacre, when Norridgewock was overwhelmed and Rale killed: " The scalps of twenty-eight of them were brought to Boston ; of which number their priest's and Bomazeen's were two."
Williamson also refers to this as follows: "Harmon, who was senior in command, proceeded to Boston with the scalps, and received in reward for the achievement the commission of Lieutenant Colonel."
When Captain Harmon returned to Boston he made " solemn oath " that one of the twenty-eight scalps which he produced at a council, held at the Council Chamber in Boston, was that of " Sebastian Ralle, a Jesuit." And that twenty-seven other scalps came from the heads of "rebel or enemy Indians, which were slain at Norridgewock."
After killing Rale and as many of the inhabitants of the little village as possible, the victorious party at once commenced their march toward the sea. The Puritan militia thought it a meritorious act to destroy what they called the "idols" in the church and carry off the sacred
vessels; but the church itself and all of the buildings within the village were not fired until after the march homeward was begun, when, Francis says, 11 one of the Mohawks was sent, Rale acted so far as he was capable in the interest of his own government as well as of his church, believing that he was fully justified in
so doing. Even after the treaty of Utrecht, the French claimed all that part of Maine which was east of the Kennebec River, and that was during a long time debated territory; and this treaty left the whole question of bounds and ancient limits entirely indefinite and open to contention. The plan was, when this treaty was
ratified, to settle the matter of bounds by commissioners of the two powers, as has already been stated, but it was never done. This disputed territory was therefore a bone of contention between the inhabitants of the two provinces until the God of battles, on the Plains of Abraham, wrested the whole of Acadia from the French
and delivered it over to the English. A century later a part of the same controversy arose between Canada and the State of Maine in relation to our northeastern boundary, and the English government and the United States settled it forever by the famous Ashburton treaty.
The writers who have espoused the cause of the English in the assassination of Father Rale, for I cannot see how it can be truthfully described by any other term, have seemed to overlook the fact that his settlement and mission were on territory claimed by the French; that it was his duty as a subject of the king of
France to be loyal to that side of the contention ; that he was no more intensely partisan in striving to promote the interests of his country than were Baxter, Mather, and many ministers of the Puritan faith who were equally as steadfast to the English cause as he was to that of the French. That he was ever loyal to the interests of his government and his church, that he watched their welfare with vigilance and faithfulness seldom equalled, is undisputed by any; that some of his methods of supporting the cause to which his life was pledged were sometimes questionable and even deceptive, Ibelieve is in evidence which cannot be fully contradicted; but I also believe that they were in harmony with the spirit of the times in which he lived, when men regarded a human life of less value than a dogma, and that he was no worse than many of his contemporaries within the ranks of both of the contending forces. That nearly three hundred soldiers acting under the least semblance of military discipline could not have made him a prisoner and taken him a
captive to Boston is incredible. If this could have been accomplished, then this act of our forefathers was a travesty upon civilized warfare and a black spot in the history of New England. The fate of the Jesuit was undoubtedly glad news to many of the Maine settlers,
who believed that it would end all of their troubles. That he had for a long time prior to his death been feared and hated by the New Englanders is a fact. Parkman says that while the latter "thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for a martyred saint" ; and he further adds that "he was neither the one nor the other, but a man with qualities and faults of a man - fearless, resolute, enduring, boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating, and a vehement partisan."
Even James Phinney Baxter said of him, We can but admire the calm reliance of Rale upon the protection of a higher power, and his entire devotion to what he considered his duty."
Dr. Convers Francis, to whose " Life of Rale " I have made reference, was a Unitarian clergyman of renown in his day and a graduate of Harvard. He was born in 179S and died in 1863- In 1842 he was appointed to the Parkman professorship of theology in Harvard College, which he held during the remainder of his life. He was the author of several other historical and biographical works. When he wrote of Rale he had canvassed carefully all the sources of information relating to his career, and had before him substantially what Parkman, Baxter and subsequent writers have had. Documents and papers which have been discovered since Francis wrote, have not changed materially the
facts. Yet Francis, in his conclusion as to the character and sincerity of purpose of Sebastian Rale says:
But, whatever abatements from indiscriminate praise his faults or frailties may require, cannot review his history without receiving a deep impression that he was a pious, devoted and extraordinary man. He was a scholar nurtured amidst European learning, and accustomed to the refinements of the Old World, who banished himself from the pleasures of home and
from the attractions of his native land, and passed much of his life in the forest of an unbroken wilderness, on a distant shore, amidst the squalid rudeness of savage life, and with no companions, during those long years, but the wild men of the woods. With them he lived as a friend, as a benefactor, as a brother. So far as the patient toils of missionary and love for the darkened soul of the Indian are concerned, we may place the names of Eliot and Rale in a fellowship, which they indeed would both have rejected, but which we may regard as hallowed and true."
The spot where the Jesuit of Norridgewock fell was first marked by a plain cross which, years afterwards destroyed by hunters. The place was designated in various ways until 1833, when a movement was set on foot to erect a permanent monument over his grave. The first suggestion to do this, it is said, came from Dr.
Jonathan Sibley of Union, Me. The project was supported by both Protestants and Catholics, Mr. William Allen of Norridgewock and Edward Kavanagh, afterwards governor of Maine, being prominent in the matter. On the 23d day of August, 1833, which was the anniversary of the Norridgewock fight, a monument was erected which stands there to-day. Bishop Fenwick of
Boston had charge of the ceremonies and delivered an address. Delegations from the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Canada tribes were present.
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VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
If you don't mind hanging out with a guy temporarily, you can be my older woman.
Olivia's code has some arithmetic "issues" it seems.
AGE: 743 (Jan 01, 1914)