1713-1724.
SEBASTIEN RALE.
Boundary Disputes.--Outposts of Canada.--The Earlier and Later
Jesuits.--Religion and Politics.--The Norridgewocks and their
Missionary.--A Hollow Peace.--Disputed Land Claims.--Council at
Georgetown.--Attitude of Rale.--Minister and Jesuit.--The Indians
waver.--An Outbreak.--Covert War.--Indignation against Rale.--War
declared.--Governor and Assembly.--Speech of Samuel Sewall.--Penobscots
attack Fort St. George.--Reprisal.--Attack on Norridgewock.--Death of
Rale.
Before the Treaty of Utrecht, the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
and a part of Maine were collectively called Acadia by the French; but
after the treaty gave Acadia to England, they insisted that the name
meant only Nova Scotia. The English on their part claimed that the
cession of Acadia made them owners, not only of the Nova Scotian
peninsula, but of all the country north of it to the St. Lawrence, or at
least to the dividing ridge or height of land.
This and other disputed questions of boundary were to be settled by
commissioners of the two powers; but their meeting was put off for forty
years, and then their discussions ended in the Seven Years' War. The
claims of the rival nations were in fact so discordant that any attempt
to reconcile them must needs produce a fresh quarrel. The treaty had
left a choice of evils. To discuss the boundary question meant to renew
the war; to leave it unsettled was a source of constant irritation; and
while delay staved off a great war, it quickly produced a small one.
The river Kennebec, which was generally admitted by the French to be the
dividing line between their possessions and New England,[228] was
regarded by them with the most watchful jealousy. Its headwaters
approached those of the Canadian river Chaudière, the mouth of which is
near Quebec; and by ascending the former stream and crossing to the
headwaters of the latter, through an intricacy of forests, hills, ponds,
and marshes, it was possible for a small band of hardy men, unencumbered
by cannon, to reach the Canadian capital,--as was done long after by the
followers of Benedict Arnold. Hence it was thought a matter of the last
importance to close the Kennebec against such an attempt. The
Norridgewock band of the Abenakis, who lived on the banks of that river,
were used to serve this purpose and to form a sort of advance-guard to
the French colony, while other kindred bands on the Penobscot, the St.
Croix, and the St. John were expected to aid in opposing a living
barrier to English intrusion. Missionaries were stationed among all
these Indians to keep them true to Church and King. The most important
station, that of the Norridgewocks, was in charge of Father Sebastien
Rale, the most conspicuous and interesting figure among the later
French-American Jesuits.
Since the middle of the seventeenth century a change had come over the
Jesuit missions of New France. Nothing is more striking or more
admirable than the self-devoted apostleship of the earlier period.[229]
The movement in Western Europe known as the Renaissance was far more
than a revival of arts and letters,--it was an awakening of
intellectual, moral, and religious life; the offspring of causes long in
action, and the parent of other movements in action to this day. The
Protestant Reformation was a part of it. That revolt against Rome
produced a counter Renaissance in the bosom of the ancient Church
herself. In presence of that peril she woke from sloth and corruption,
and girded herself to beat back the invading heresies, by force or by
craft, by inquisitorial fires, by the arms of princely and imperial
allies, and by the self-sacrificing enthusiasm of her saints and
martyrs. That time of danger produced the exalted zeal of Xavier and the
intense, thoughtful, organizing zeal of Loyola. After a century had
passed, the flame still burned, and it never shone with a purer or
brighter radiance than in the early missions of New France.
Such ardors cannot be permanent; they must subside, from the law of
their nature. If the great Western mission had been a success, the
enthusiasm of its founders might have maintained itself for some time
longer; but that mission was extinguished in blood. Its martyrs died in
vain, and the burning faith that had created it was rudely tried. Canada
ceased to be a mission. The civil and military powers grew strong, and
the Church no longer ruled with undivided sway. The times changed, and
the men changed with them. It is a characteristic of the Jesuit Order,
and one of the sources of its strength, that it chooses the workman for
his work, studies the qualities of its members, and gives to each the
task for which he is fitted best. When its aim was to convert savage
hordes and build up another Paraguay in the Northern wilderness, it sent
a Jogues, a Brébeuf, a Charles Garnier, and a Gabriel Lalemant, like a
forlorn hope, to storm the stronghold of heathendom. In later times it
sent other men to meet other needs and accomplish other purposes.
Before the end of the seventeenth century the functions of the Canadian
Jesuit had become as much political as religious; but if the fires of
his apostolic zeal burned less high, his devotion to the Order in which
he had merged his personality was as intense as before. While in
constant friction with the civil and military powers, he tried to make
himself necessary to them, and in good measure he succeeded. Nobody was
so able to manage the Indian tribes and keep them in the interest of
France. "Religion," says Charlevoix, "is the chief bond by which the
savages are attached to us;" and it was the Jesuit above all others who
was charged to keep this bond firm.
The Christianity that was made to serve this useful end did not strike a
deep root. While humanity is in the savage state, it can only be
Christianized on the surface; and the convert of the Jesuits remained a
savage still. They did not even try to civilize him. They taught him to
repeat a catechism which he could not understand, and practise rites of
which the spiritual significance was incomprehensible to him. He saw the
symbols of his new faith in much the same light as the superstitions
that had once enchained him. To his eyes the crucifix was a fetich of
surpassing power, and the mass a beneficent "medicine," or occult
influence, of supreme efficacy. Yet he would not forget his old rooted
beliefs, and it needed the constant presence of the missionary to
prevent him from returning to them.
Since the Iroquois had ceased to be a danger to Canada, the active
alliance of the Western Indians had become less important to the colony.
Hence the missions among them had received less attention, and most of
these tribes had relapsed into heathenism. The chief danger had shifted
eastward, and was, or was supposed to be, in the direction of New
England. Therefore the Eastern missions were cultivated with
diligence,--whether those within or adjoining the settled limits of
Canada, like the Iroquois mission of Caughnawaga, the Abenaki missions
of St. Francis and Becancour, and the Huron mission of Lorette, or those
that served as outposts and advance-guards of the colony, like the
Norridgewock Abenakis of the Kennebec, or the Penobscot Abenakis of the
Penobscot. The priests at all these stations were in close
correspondence with the government, to which their influence over their
converts was invaluable. In the wilderness dens of the Hurons or the
Iroquois, the early Jesuit was a marvel of self-sacrificing zeal; his
successor, half missionary and half agent of the King, had thought for
this world as well as the next.
Sebastien Rale,[230] born in Franche-Comté in 1657, was sent to the
American missions in 1689 at the age of thirty-two. After spending two
years among the Abenakis of Canada, then settled near the mouth of the
Chaudière, he was sent for two years more to the Illinois, and thence to
the Abenakis of the Kennebec, where he was to end his days.
Near where the town of Norridgewock now stands, the Kennebec curved
round a broad tongue of meadow land, in the midst of a picturesque
wilderness of hills and forests. On this tongue of land, on ground a few
feet above the general level, stood the village of the Norridgewocks,
fenced with a stockade of round 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 much
after the English manner," though probably of logs. The church was
outside the enclosure, about twenty paces from the east gate.[231]
Such was the mission village of Norridgewock in 1716. It had risen from
its ashes since Colonel Hilton destroyed it in 1705, and the church had
been rebuilt by New England workmen hired for the purpose.[232] A small
bell, which is still preserved at Brunswick, rang for mass at early
morning, and for vespers at sunset. Rale's leisure hours were few. He
preached, exhorted, catechised the young converts, counselled their
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,
worked at his Abenaki vocabulary, and, being expert at handicraft, made
ornaments for the church, or moulded candles from the fruit of the
bayberry, or wax-myrtle.[233] Twice a year, summer and winter, he
followed his flock to the sea-shore and the islands, where they lived at
their ease on fish and seals, clams, oysters, and seafowl.
This Kennebec mission had been begun more than half a century before;
yet the conjurers, or "medicine men,"--natural enemies of the
missionary,--still remained obdurate and looked on the father askance,
though the body of the tribe were constant at mass and confession, and
regarded him with loving reverence. He always attended their councils,
and, as he tells us, his advice always prevailed; but he was less
fortunate when he told them to practise no needless cruelty in their
wars, on which point they were often disobedient children.[234]
Rale was of a strong, enduring frame, and a keen, vehement, caustic
spirit. He had the gift of tongues, and was as familiar with the Abenaki
and several other Indian languages as he was with Latin.[235] Of the
genuineness of his zeal there is no doubt, nor of his earnest and lively
interest in the fortunes of the wilderness flock of which he was the
shepherd for half his life. The situation was critical for them and for
him. The English settlements were but a short distance below, while
those of the French could be reached only by a hard journey of twelve or
fourteen days.
With two intervals of uneasy peace, the borders of Maine had been
harried by war-parties for thirty-eight years; and since 1689 these
raids had been prompted and aided by the French. Thus it happened that
extensive tracts, which before Philip's War were dotted with farmhouses
and fishing hamlets, had been abandoned, and cultivated fields were
turning again to forests. The village of Wells had become the eastern
frontier. But now the Treaty of Utrecht gave promise of lasting
tranquillity. The Abenakis, hearing that they were to be backed no
longer by the French, became alarmed, sent messengers to Casco, and
asked for peace. In July there was a convention at Portsmouth, when
delegates of the Norridgewocks, Penobscots, Malicites, and other Abenaki
bands met Governor Dudley and the councillors of Massachusetts and New
Hampshire. A paper was read to them by sworn interpreters, in which they
confessed that they had broken former treaties, begged pardon for "past
rebellions, hostilities, and violations of promises," declared
themselves subjects of Queen Anne, pledged firm friendship with the
English, and promised them that they might re-enter without molestation
on all their former possessions. Eight of the principal Abenaki chiefs
signed this document with their totemic marks, and the rest did so,
after similar interpretation, at another convention in the next
year.[236] Indians when in trouble can waive their pride, and lavish
professions and promises; but when they called themselves subjects of
Queen Anne, it is safe to say that they did not know what the words
meant.
Peace with the Indians was no sooner concluded than a stream of settlers
began to move eastward to reoccupy the lands that they owned or claimed
in the region of the lower Kennebec. Much of this country was held in
extensive tracts, under old grants of the last century, and the
proprietors offered great inducements to attract emigrants. The
government of Massachusetts, though impoverished by three wars, of
which it had borne the chief burden, added what encouragements it could.
The hamlets of Saco, Scarborough, Falmouth, and Georgetown rose from
their ashes; mills were built on the streams, old farms were retilled,
and new ones cleared. A certain Dr. Noyes, who had established a
sturgeon fishery on the Kennebec, built at his own charge a stone fort
at Cushnoc, or Augusta; and it is said that as early as 1714 a
blockhouse was built many miles above, near the mouth of the
Sebasticook.[237] In the next year Fort George was built at the lower
falls of the Androscoggin, and some years later Fort Richmond, on the
Kennebec, at the site of the present town of Richmond.[238]
Some of the claims to these Kennebec lands were based on old Crown
patents, some on mere prescription, some on Indian titles, good or bad.
Rale says that an Englishman would give an Indian a bottle of rum, and
get from him in return a large tract of land.[239] Something like this
may have happened; though in other cases the titles were as good as
Indian titles usually are, the deeds being in regular form and signed by
the principal chiefs for a consideration which they thought sufficient.
The lands of Indians, however, are owned, so far as owned at all, by the
whole community; and in the case of the Algonquin tribes the chiefs had
no real authority to alienate them without the consent of the tribesmen.
Even supposing this consent to have been given, the Norridgewocks would
not have been satisfied; for Rale taught them that they could not part
with their lands, because they held them in trust for their children, to
whom their country belonged as much as to themselves.
Long years of war and mutual wrong had embittered the Norridgewocks
against their English neighbors, with whom, nevertheless, they wished to
be at peace, because they feared them, and because their trade was
necessary to them.
The English borderers, on their part, regarded the Indians less as men
than as vicious and dangerous wild animals. In fact, the benevolent and
philanthropic view of the American savage is for those who are beyond
his reach: it has never yet been held by any whose wives and children
have lived in danger of his scalping-knife. In Boston and other of the
older and safer settlements, the Indians had found devoted friends
before Philip's War; and even now they had apologists and defenders,
prominent among whom was that relic of antique Puritanism, old Samuel
Sewall, who was as conscientious and humane as he was prosy, narrow, and
sometimes absurd, and whose benevolence towards the former owners of the
soil was trebly reinforced by his notion that they were descendants of
the ten lost tribes of Israel.[240]
The intrusion of settlers, and the building of forts and blockhouses on
lands which they still called their own, irritated and alarmed the
Norridgewocks, and their growing resentment was fomented by Rale, both
because he shared it himself, and because he was prompted by Vaudreuil.
Yet, dreading another war with the English, the Indians kept quiet for a
year or two, till at length the more reckless among them began to
threaten and pilfer the settlers.
In 1716 Colonel Samuel Shute came out to succeed Dudley as governor; and
in the next summer he called the Indians to a council at Georgetown, a
settlement on Arrowsick Island, at the mouth of the Kennebec. Thither he
went in the frigate "Squirrel," with the councillors of Massachusetts
and New Hampshire; while the deputies of the Norridgewocks, Penobscots,
Pequawkets, or Abenakis of the Saco, and Assagunticooks, or Abenakis of
the Androscoggin, came in canoes to meet him, and set up their wigwams
on a neighboring island. The council opened on the ninth of August,
under a large tent, over which waved the British flag. The oath was
administered to the interpreters by the aged Judge Sewall, and Shute
then made the Indians a speech in which he told them that the English
and they were subjects of the great, good, and wise King George; that
as both peoples were under the same King, he would gladly see them also
of the same religion, since it was the only true one; and to this end he
gave them a Bible and a minister to teach them,--pointing to Rev. Joseph
Baxter, who stood near by. And he further assured them that if any wrong
should be done them, he would set it right. He then condescended to give
his hand to the chiefs, telling them, through the interpreter, that it
was to show his affection.
The Indians, after their usual custom, deferred their answer to the next
day, when the council again met, and the Norridgewock chief, Wiwurna,
addressed the governor as spokesman for his people. In defiance of every
Indian idea of propriety, Shute soon began to interrupt him with
questions and remarks. Wiwurna remonstrated civilly; but Shute continued
his interruptions, and the speech turned to a dialogue, which may be
abridged thus, Shute always addressing himself, not to the Indian
orator, but to the interpreter.
The orator expressed satisfaction at the arrival of the governor, and
hoped that peace and friendship would now prevail.
GOVERNOR (_to the interpreter_). Tell them that if they behave
themselves, I shall use them kindly.
ORATOR (_as rendered by the interpreter_). Your Excellency was pleased
to say that we must obey King George. We will if we like his way of
treating us.
GOVERNOR. They must obey him.
ORATOR. We will if we are not disturbed on our lands.
GOVERNOR. Nor must they disturb the English on theirs.
ORATOR. We are pleased that your Excellency is ready to hear our
complaints when wrong is done us.
GOVERNOR. They must not pretend to lands that belong to the English.
ORATOR. We beg leave to go on in order with our answer.
GOVERNOR. Tell him to go on.
ORATOR. If there should be any quarrel and bloodshed, we will not avenge
ourselves, but apply to your Excellency. We will embrace in our bosoms
the English that have come to settle on our land.
GOVERNOR. They must not call it their land, for the English have bought
it of them and their ancestors.
ORATOR. We pray leave to proceed with our answer, and talk about the
land afterwards.
Wiwurna, then, with much civility, begged to be excused from receiving
the Bible and the minister, and ended by wishing the governor good wind
and weather for his homeward voyage.
There was another meeting in the afternoon, in which the orator declared
that his people were willing that the English should settle on the west
side of the Kennebec as far up the river as a certain mill; on which the
governor said to the interpreter: "Tell them we want nothing but our
own, and that that we will have;" and he ordered an old deed of sale,
signed by six of their chiefs, to be shown and explained to them.
Wiwurna returned that though his tribe were uneasy about their lands,
they were willing that the English should keep what they had got,
excepting the forts. On this point there was a sharp dialogue, and Shute
said bluntly that if he saw fit, he should build a fort at every new
settlement. At this all the Indians rose abruptly and went back to their
camp, leaving behind an English flag that had been given them.
Rale was at the Indian camp, and some of them came back in the evening
with a letter from him, in which he told Shute that the governor of
Canada had asked the King of France whether he had ever given the
Indians' land to the English, to which the King replied that he had not,
and would help the Indians to repel any encroachment upon them. This
cool assumption on the part of France of paramount right to the Abenaki
country incensed Shute, who rejected the letter with contempt.
As between the governor and the Indian orator, the savage had shown
himself by far the more mannerly; yet so unwilling were the Indians to
break with the English that on the next morning, seeing Shute about to
re-embark, they sent messengers to him to apologize for what they called
their rudeness, beg that the English flag might be returned to them, and
ask for another interview, saying that they would appoint another
spokesman instead of Wiwurna, who had given so much offence. Shute
consented, and the meeting was held. The new orator presented a wampum
belt, expressed a wish for peace, and said that his people wished the
English to extend their settlements as far as they had formerly done.
Shute, on his part, promised that trading-houses should be established
for supplying their needs, and that they should have a smith to mend
their guns, and an interpreter of their own choice. Twenty chiefs and
elders then affixed their totemic marks to a paper, renewing the pledges
made four years before at Portsmouth, and the meeting closed with a
dance in honor of the governor.[241]
The Indians, as we have seen, had shown no eagerness to accept the
ministrations of Rev. Joseph Baxter. The Massachusetts Assembly had
absurdly tried to counteract the influence of Rale by offering £150 a
year in their depreciated currency to any one of their ministers who
would teach Calvinism to the Indians. Baxter, whom Rale, with
characteristic exaggeration, calls the ablest of the Boston ministers,
but who was far from being so, as he was the pastor of the small country
village of Medfield, took up the task, and, with no experience of Indian
life or knowledge of any Indian language, entered the lists against an
adversary who had spent half his days among savages, had gained the love
and admiration of the Norridgewocks, and spoke their language fluently.
Baxter, with the confidence of a novice, got an interpreter and began to
preach, exhort, and launch sarcasms against the doctrines and practices
of the Roman Church. Rale excommunicated such of his flock as listened
to him;[242] yet some persisted in doing so, and three of these
petitioned the English governor to order "a small praying-house" to be
built for their use.[243]
Rale, greatly exasperated, opened a correspondence with Baxter, and
wrote a treatise for his benefit, in which, through a hundred pages of
polemical Latin, he proved that the Church of Rome was founded on a
rock. This he sent to Baxter, and challenged him to overthrow his
reasons. Baxter sent an answer for which Rale expresses great scorn as
to both manner and matter. He made a rejoinder, directed not only
against his opponent's arguments, but against his Latin, in which he
picked flaws with great apparent satisfaction. He says that he heard no
more from Baxter for a long time, but at last got another letter, in
which there was nothing to the purpose, the minister merely charging him
with an irascible and censorious spirit. This letter is still preserved,
and it does not answer to Rale's account of it. Baxter replies to his
correspondent vigorously, defends his own Latin, attacks that of Rale,
and charges him with losing temper.[244]
Rale's correspondence with the New England ministers seems not to have
been confined to Baxter. A paper is preserved, translated apparently
from a Latin original, and entitled, "Remarks out of the Fryar Sebastian
Rale's Letter from Norridgewock, February 7, 1720." This letter appears
to have been addressed to some Boston minister, and is of a scornful and
defiant character, using language ill fitted to conciliate, as thus:
"You must know that a missionary is not a cipher, like a minister;" or
thus: "A Jesuit is not a Baxter or a Boston minister." The tone is one
of exasperation dashed with contempt, and the chief theme is English
encroachment and the inalienability of Indian lands.[245] Rale says that
Baxter gave up his mission after receiving the treatise on the
infallible supremacy of the true Church; but this is a mistake, as the
minister made three successive visits to the Eastern country before he
tired of his hopeless mission.
In the letter just quoted, Rale seems to have done his best to rasp the
temper of his New England correspondent. He boasts of his power over the
Indians, who, as he declares, always do as he advises them. "Any treaty
with the governor," he goes on to say, "and especially that of
Arrowsick, is null and void if I do not approve it, for I give them so
many reasons against it that they absolutely condemn what they have
done." He says further that if they do not drive the English from the
Kennebec, he will leave them, and that they will then lose both their
lands and their souls; and he adds that, if necessary, he will tell them
that they may make war.[246] Rale wrote also to Shute; and though the
letter is lost, the governor's answer shows that it was sufficiently
aggressive.
The wild Indian is unstable as water. At Arrowsick, the Norridgewocks
were all for peace; but when they returned to their village their mood
changed, and, on the representations of Rale, they began to kill the
cattle of the English settlers on the river below, burn their haystacks,
and otherwise annoy them.[247] The English suspected that the Jesuit
was the source of their trouble; and as they had always regarded the
lands in question as theirs, by virtue of the charter of the Plymouth
Company in 1620, and the various grants under it, as well as by purchase
from the Indians, their ire against him burned high. Yet afraid as the
Indians were of another war, even Rale could scarcely have stirred them
to violence but for the indignities put upon them by Indian-hating
ruffians of the border, vicious rum-selling traders, and hungry
land-thieves. They had still another cause of complaint. Shute had
promised to build trading-houses where their wants should be supplied
without fraud and extortion; but he had not kept his word, and could not
keep it, for reasons that will soon appear.
In spite of such provocations, Norridgewock was divided in opinion. Not
only were the Indians in great dread of war, but they had received
English presents to a considerable amount, chiefly from private persons
interested in keeping them quiet. Hence, to Rale's great chagrin, there
was an English party in the village so strong that when the English
authorities demanded reparation for the mischief done to the settlers,
the Norridgewocks promised two hundred beaver-skins as damages, and gave
four hostages as security that they would pay for misdeeds in the past,
and commit no more in the future.[248]
Rale now feared that his Indians would all go over to the English and
tamely do their bidding; for though most of them, when he was present,
would denounce the heretics and boast of the brave deeds they would do
against them, yet after a meeting with English officials, they would
change their minds and accuse their spiritual father of lying. It was
clear that something must be done to end these waverings, lest the lands
in dispute should be lost to France forever.
The Norridgewocks had been invited to another interview with the English
at Georgetown; and Rale resolved, in modern American phrase, to "capture
the meeting." Vaudreuil and the Jesuit La Chasse, superior of the
mission, lent their aid. Messengers were sent to the converted Indians
of Canada, whose attachment to France and the Church was past all doubt,
and who had been taught to abhor the English as children of the Devil.
The object of the message was to induce them to go to the meeting at
Georgetown armed and equipped for any contingency.
They went accordingly,--Abenakis from Becancour and St. Francis, Hurons
from Lorette, and Iroquois from Caughnawaga, besides others, all stanch
foes of heresy and England. Rale and La Chasse directed their movements
and led them first to Norridgewock, where their arrival made a
revolution. The peace party changed color like a chameleon, and was all
for war. The united bands, two hundred and fifty warriors in all,
paddled down the Kennebec along with the two Jesuits and two French
officers, Saint-Castin and Croisil. In a few days the English at
Georgetown saw them parading before the fort, well armed, displaying
French flags,--feathers dangling from their scalp-locks, and faces
fantastically patterned in vermilion, ochre, white clay, soot, and such
other pigments as they could find or buy.
They were met by Captain Penhallow and other militia officers of the
fort, to whom they gave the promised two hundred beaver-skins, and
demanded the four hostages in return; but the hostages had been given as
security, not only for the beaver-skins, but also for the future good
behavior of the Indians, and Penhallow replied that he had no authority
to surrender them. On this they gave him a letter to the governor,
written for them by Père de la Chasse, and signed by their totems. It
summoned the English to leave the country at once, and threatened to rob
and burn their houses in case of refusal.[249] The threat was not
executed, and they presently disappeared, but returned in September in
increased numbers, burned twenty-six houses and attacked the fort, in
which the inhabitants had sought refuge. The garrison consisted of forty
men, who, being reinforced by the timely arrival of several whale-boats
bringing thirty more, made a sortie. A skirmish followed; but being
outnumbered and outflanked, the English fell back behind their
defences.[250]
The French authorities were in a difficult position. They thought it
necessary to stop the progress of English settlement along the Kennebec;
and yet, as there was peace between the two Crowns, they could not use
open force. There was nothing for it but to set on the Abenakis to fight
for them. "I am well pleased," wrote Vaudreuil to Rale, "that you and
Père de la Chasse have prompted the Indians to treat the English as they
have done. My orders are to let them want for nothing, and I send them
plenty of ammunition." Rale says that the King allowed him a pension of
six thousand livres a year, and that he spent it all "in good works." As
his statements are not remarkable for precision, this may mean that he
was charged with distributing the six thousand livres which the King
gave every year in equal shares to the three Abenaki missions of
Medoctec, Norridgewock, and Panawamské, or Penobscot, and which
generally took the form of presents of arms, gunpowder, bullets, and
other munitions of war, or of food and clothing to support the squaws
and children while the warriors were making raids on the English.[251]
Vaudreuil had long felt the delicacy of his position, and even before
the crisis seemed near he tried to provide against it, and wrote to the
minister that he had never called the Abenakis subjects of France, but
only allies, in order to avoid responsibility for anything they might
do.[252] "The English," he says elsewhere, "must be prevented from
settling on Abenaki lands; and to this end we must let the Indians act
for us (_laisser agir les sauvages_)."[253]
Yet while urging the need of precaution, he was too zealous to be always
prudent; and once, at least, he went so far as to suggest that French
soldiers should be sent to help the Abenakis,--which, he thought, would
frighten the English into retreating from their settlements; whereas if
such help were refused, the Indians would go over to the enemy.[254] The
court was too anxious to avoid a rupture to permit the use of open
force, and would only promise plenty of ammunition to Indians who would
fight the English, directing at the same time that neither favors nor
attentions should be given to those who would not.[255]
The half-breed officer, Saint-Castin, son of Baron Vincent de
Saint-Castin by his wife, a Penobscot squaw, bore the double character
of a French lieutenant and an Abenaki chief, and had joined with the
Indians in their hostile demonstration at Arrowsick Island. Therefore,
as chief of a tribe styled subjects of King George, the English seized
him, charged him with rebellion, and brought him to Boston, where he was
examined by a legislative committee. He showed both tact and temper,
parried the charges against him, and was at last set at liberty. His
arrest, however, exasperated his tribesmen, who soon began to burn
houses, kill settlers, and commit various acts of violence, for all of
which Rale was believed to be mainly answerable. There was great
indignation against him. He himself says that a reward of a thousand
pounds sterling was offered for his head, but that the English should
not get it for all their sterling money. It does not appear that such a
reward was offered, though it is true that the Massachusetts House of
Representatives once voted five hundred pounds in their currency--then
equal to about a hundred and eighty pounds sterling--for the same
purpose; but as the governor and Council refused their concurrence, the
Act was of no effect.
All the branches of the government, however, presently 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. Colonel Westbrook was put in command
of the party. Rale, being warned of their approach by some of his
Indians, swallowed the consecrated wafers, hid the sacred vessels, and
made for the woods, where, as he thinks, he was saved from discovery by
a special intervention of Providence. His papers fell into the hands of
Westbrook, including letters that proved beyond all doubt that he had
acted as agent of the Canadian authorities in exciting his flock against
the English.[256]
Incensed by Westbrook's invasion, the Indians came down the Kennebec in
large numbers, burned the village of Brunswick, and captured nine
families at Merry-meeting Bay; though they soon set them free, except
five men whom they kept to exchange for the four hostages still detained
at Boston.[257] At the same time they seized several small vessels in
the harbors along the coast. On this the governor and Council declared
war against the Eastern Indians, meaning the Abenakis and their allies,
whom they styled traitors and robbers.
In Massachusetts many persons thought that war could not be justified,
and were little disposed to push it with vigor. The direction of it
belonged to the governor in his capacity of Captain-General of the
Province. Shute was an old soldier who had served with credit as
lieutenant-colonel under Marlborough; but he was hampered by one of
those disputes which in times of crisis were sure to occur in every
British province whose governor was appointed by the Crown. The
Assembly, jealous of the representative of royalty, and looking back
mournfully to their virtual independence under the lamented old charter,
had from the first let slip no opportunity to increase its own powers
and abridge those of the governor, refused him the means of establishing
the promised trading-houses in the Indian country, and would grant no
money for presents to conciliate the Norridgewocks. The House now
wanted, not only to control supplies for the war, but to direct the war
itself and conduct operations by committees of its own. Shute made his
plans of campaign, and proceeded to appoint officers from among the
frontier inhabitants, who had at least the qualification of being
accustomed to the woods. One of them, Colonel Walton, was obnoxious to
some of the representatives, who brought charges against him, and the
House demanded that he should be recalled from the field to answer to
them for his conduct. The governor objected to this as an encroachment
on his province as commander-in-chief. Walton was now accused of obeying
orders of the governor in contravention of those of the representatives,
who thereupon passed a vote requiring him to lay his journal before
them. This was more than Shute could bear. He had the character of a
good-natured man; but the difficulties and mortifications of his
position had long galled him, and he had got leave to return to England
and lay his case before the King and Council. The crisis had now come.
The Assembly were for usurping all authority, civil and military.
Accordingly, on the first of January, 1723, the governor sailed in a
merchant ship, for London, without giving notice of his intention to
anybody except two or three servants.[258]
The burden of his difficult and vexatious office fell upon the
lieutenant-governor, William Dummer. When he first met the Council in
his new capacity, a whimsical scene took place. Here, among the rest,
was the aged, matronly countenance of the worthy Samuel Sewall, deeply
impressed with the dignity and importance of his position as senior
member of the Board. At his best he never had the faintest sense of
humor or perception of the ludicrous, and being now perhaps touched with
dotage, he thought it incumbent upon him to address a few words of
exhortation and encouragement to the incoming chief magistrate. He rose
from his seat with long locks, limp and white, drooping from under his
black skullcap,--for he abhorred a wig as a sign of backsliding,--and in
a voice of quavering solemnity spoke thus:--
"If your Honour and this Honourable Board please to give me leave,
I would speak a Word or two upon this solemn Occasion. Altho the
unerring Providence of God has brought you to the Chair of
Government in a cloudy and tempestuous season, yet you have this
for your Encouragement, that the people you Have to do with are a
part of the Israel of God, and you may expect to have of the
Prudence and Patience of Moses communicated to you for your
Conduct. It is evident that our Almighty Saviour counselled the
first planters to remove hither and Settle here, and they dutifully
followed his Advice, and therefore He will never leave nor forsake
them nor Theirs; so that your Honour must needs be happy in
sincerely seeking their Interest and Welfare, which your Birth and
Education will incline you to do. _Difficilia quæ pulchra_. I
promise myself that they who sit at this Board will yield their
Faithful Advice to your Honour according to the Duty of their
Place."
Having thus delivered himself to an audience not much more susceptible
of the ludicrous than he was, the old man went home well pleased, and
recorded in his diary that the lieutenant-governor and councillors rose
and remained standing while he was speaking, "and they expressed a
handsom Acceptance of what I had said; _Laus Deo_."[259]
Dummer was born in New England, and might, therefore, expect to find
more favor than had fallen to his predecessor; but he was the
representative of royalty, and could not escape the consequences of
being so. In earnest of what was in store for him, the Assembly would
not pay his salary, because he had sided with the governor in the late
quarrel. The House voted to dismiss Colonel Walton and Major Moody, the
chief officers appointed by Shute; and when Dummer reminded it that this
was a matter belonging to him as commander-in-chief, it withheld the pay
of the obnoxious officers and refused all supplies for the war till they
should be removed. Dummer was forced to yield.[260] The House would
probably have pushed him still farther, if the members had not dreaded
the effect of Shute's representations at court, and feared lest
persistent encroachment on the functions of the governor might cost
them their charter, to which, insufficient as they thought it, and far
inferior to the one they had lost, they clung tenaciously as the
palladium of their liberties. Yet Dummer needed the patience of Job; for
his Assembly seemed more bent on victories over him than over the
Indians.
There was another election, which did not improve the situation. The new
House was worse than the old, being made up largely of narrow-minded
rustics, who tried to relieve the governor of all conduct of the war by
assigning it to a committee chosen from among themselves; but the
Council would not concur with them.
Meanwhile the usual ravages went on. Farmhouses were burned, and the
inmates waylaid and killed, while the Indians generally avoided
encounters with armed bodies of whites. Near the village of Oxford four
of them climbed upon the roof of a house, cut a hole in it with their
hatchets, and tried to enter. A woman who was alone in the building, and
who had two loaded guns and two pistols, seeing the first savage
struggling to shove himself through the hole, ran to him in desperation
and shot him; on which the others dragged the body back and
disappeared.[261]
There were several attempts of a more serious kind. The small wooden
fort at the river St. George, the most easterly English outpost, was
attacked, but the assailants were driven off. A few weeks later it was
attacked again by the Penobscots under their missionary, Father
Lauverjat. Other means failing, they tried to undermine the stockade;
but their sap caved in from the effect of rains, and they retreated,
with severe loss. The warlike contagion spread to the Indians of Nova
Scotia. In July the Micmacs seized sixteen or seventeen fishing-smacks
at Canseau; on which John Eliot, of Boston, and John Robinson, of Cape
Ann, chased the marauders in two sloops, retook most of the vessels, and
killed a good number of the Indians. In the autumn a war-party, under
the noted chief Grey Lock, prowled about the village of Rutland, met the
minister, Joseph Willard, and attacked him. He killed one savage and
wounded another, but was at last shot and scalped.[262]
The representatives had long been bent on destroying the mission village
of the Penobscots on the river of that name; and one cause of their
grudge against Colonel Walton was that, by order of the governor, he had
deferred a projected attack upon it. His successor, Colonel Westbrook,
now took the work in hand, went up the Penobscot in February with two
hundred and thirty men in sloops and whale-boats, left these at the head
of navigation, and pushed through the forest to the Indian town called
Panawamské by the French. It stood apparently above Bangor, at or near
Passadumkeag. Here the party found a stockade enclosure fourteen feet
high, seventy yards long, and fifty yards wide, containing twenty-three
houses, which Westbrook, a better woodsman than grammarian, reports to
have been "built regular." Outside the stockade stood the chapel, "well
and handsomely furnished within and without, and on the south side of
that the Fryer's dwelling-house."[263] This "Fryer" was Father
Lauverjat, who had led his flock to the attack of the fort at the St.
George. Both Indians and missionary were gone. Westbrook's men burned
the village and chapel, and sailed back to the St. George. In the next
year, 1724, there was a more noteworthy stroke; for Dummer, more pliant
than Shute, had so far soothed his Assembly that it no longer refused
money for the war. It was resolved to strike at the root of the evil,
seize Rale, and destroy Norridgewock. Two hundred and eight men in four
companies, under Captains Harmon, Moulton, and Brown, and Lieutenant
Bean, set out from Fort Richmond in seventeen whaleboats on the eighth
of August. They left the boats at Taconic Falls in charge of a
lieutenant and forty men, and on the morning of the tenth the main body,
accompanied by three Mohawk Indians, 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 state of the
village, which they approached early in the afternoon of the twelfth.
In the belief that some of the Indians would be in their cornfields on
the river above, Harmon, who was in command, divided the force, and
moved up the river with about eighty men, while Moulton, with as many
more, made for the village, advancing through the forest with all
possible silence. About three o'clock he and his men emerged from a
tangle of trees and bushes, and saw the Norridgewock cabins before them,
no longer enclosed with a stockade, but open and unprotected. Not an
Indian was stirring, till at length a warrior came out from one of the
huts, saw the English, gave a startled war-whoop, and ran back for his
gun. Then all was dismay and confusion. Squaws and children ran
screaming for the river, while the warriors, fifty or sixty in number,
came to meet the enemy. Moulton ordered his men to reserve their fire
till the Indians had emptied their guns. As he had foreseen, the excited
savages fired wildly, and did little or no harm. The English, still
keeping their ranks, returned a volley with deadly effect. The Indians
gave one more fire, and then ran for the river. Some tried to wade to
the farther side, the water being low; others swam across, while many
jumped into their canoes, but could not use them, having left the
paddles in their houses. Moulton's men followed close, shooting the
fugitives in the water or as they climbed the farther bank.
When they returned to the village they found Rale in one of the houses,
firing upon some of their comrades who had not joined in the pursuit.
He presently wounded one of them, on which a lieutenant named Benjamin
Jaques burst open the door of the house, and, as he declared, found the
priest loading his gun for another shot. The lieutenant said further
that he called on him to surrender, and that Rale replied that he would
neither give quarter nor take it; on which Jaques shot him through the
head.[264] Moulton, who had given orders that Rale should not be killed,
doubted this report of his subordinate so far as concerned the language
used by Rale, though believing that he had exasperated the lieutenant by
provoking expressions of some kind. The old chief Mogg had shut himself
up in another house, from which he fired and killed one of Moulton's
three Mohawks, whose brother then beat in the door and shot the chief
dead. Several of the English followed, and brutally murdered Mogg's
squaw and his two children. Such plunder as the village afforded,
consisting of three barrels of gunpowder, with a few guns, blankets, and
kettles, was then seized; and the Puritan militia thought it a
meritorious act to break what they called the "idols" in the church, and
carry off the sacred vessels.
Harmon and his party returned towards night from their useless excursion
to the cornfields, where they found nobody. In the morning a search was
made for the dead, and twenty-six Indians were found and scalped,
including the principal chiefs and warriors of the place. Then, being
anxious for the safety of their boats, the party marched for Taconic
Falls. They had scarcely left the village when one of the two surviving
Mohawks, named Christian, secretly turned back, set fire to the church
and the houses, and then rejoined the party. The boats were found safe,
and embarking, they rowed down to Richmond with their trophies.[265]
The news of the fate of the Jesuit and his mission spread joy among the
border settlers, who saw in it the end of their troubles. In their eyes
Rale was an incendiary, setting on a horde of bloody savages to pillage
and murder. While they thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for a
martyred saint. He was neither the one nor the other, but a man with the
qualities and faults of a man,--fearless, resolute, enduring; boastful,
sarcastic, often bitter and irritating; a vehement partisan; apt to see
things, not as they were, but as he wished them to be; given to
inaccuracy and exaggeration, yet no doubt sincere in opinions and
genuine in zeal; hating the English more than he loved the Indians;
calling himself their friend, yet using them as instruments of worldly
policy, to their danger and final ruin. In considering the ascription of
martyrdom, it is to be remembered that he did not die because he was an
apostle of the faith, but because he was the active agent of the
Canadian government.
There is reason to believe that he sometimes exercised a humanizing
influence over his flock. The war which he helped to kindle was marked
by fewer barbarities--fewer tortures, mutilations of the dead, and
butcheries of women and infants--than either of the preceding wars. It
is fair to assume that this was due in part to him, though it was
chiefly the result of an order given, at the outset, by Shute that
non-combatants in exposed positions should be sent to places of safety
in the older settlements.[266]
FOOTNOTES:
[228] In 1700, however, there was an agreement, under the treaty of
Ryswick, which extended the English limits as far as the river St.
George, a little west of the Penobscot.
[229] See "Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century."
[230] So written by himself in an autograph letter of 18 November, 1712.
It is also spelled Rasle, Rasles, Ralle, and, very incorrectly, Rallé,
or Rallee.
[231] The above particulars are taken from an inscription on a
manuscript map in the library of the Maine Historical Society, made in
1716 by Joseph Heath, one of the principal English settlers on the
Kennebec, and for a time commandant of the fort at Brunswick.
[232] When Colonel Westbrook and his men came to Norridgewock in 1722,
they found a paper pinned to the church door, containing, among others,
the following words, in the handwriting of Rale, meant as a fling at the
English invaders: "It [the church] is ill built, because the English
don't work well. It is not finished, although five or six Englishmen
have wrought here during four years, and the Undertaker [contractor],
who is a great Cheat, hath been paid in advance for to finish it." The
money came from the Canadian government.
[233] _Myrica cerifera._
[234] The site of the Indian village is still called Indian Old Point.
Norridgewock is the Naurantsouak, or Narantsouak, of the French. For
Rale's mission life, see two letters of his, 15 October, 1722, and 12
October, 1722, and a letter of Père La Chasse, Superior of the Missions,
29 October, 1724. These are printed in the _Lettres Édifiantes_, xvii.
xxiii.
[235] Père La Chasse, in his eulogy of Rale, says that there was not a
language on the continent with which he had not some acquaintance. This
is of course absurd. Besides a full knowledge of the Norridgewock
Abenaki, he had more or less acquaintance with two other Algonquin
languages,--the Ottawa and the Illinois,--and also with the Huron; which
is enough for one man.
[236] This treaty is given in full by Penhallow. It is also printed from
the original draft by Mr. Frederic Kidder, in his _Abenaki Indians:
their Treaties of 1713 and 1717_. The two impressions are substantially
the same, but with verbal variations. The version of Kidder is the more
complete, in giving not only the Indian totemic marks, but also the
autographs in facsimile of all the English officials. Rale gives a
dramatic account of the treaty, which he may have got from the Indians,
and which omits their submission and their promises.
[237] It was standing in 1852, and a sketch of it is given by Winsor,
_Narrative and Critical History_, v. 185. I have some doubts as to the
date of erection.
[238] Williamson, _History of Maine_, ii. 88, 97. Compare Penhallow.
[239] _Remarks out of the Fryar Sebastian Rale's Letter from
Norridgewock, 7 February, 1720_, in the _Common Place Book_ of Rev.
Henry Flynt.
[240] Sewall's _Memorial relating to the Kennebec Indians_ is an
argument against war with them.
[241] A full report of this conference was printed at the time in
Boston. It is reprinted in _N. H. Historical Collections_, ii. 242, and
_N. H. Provincial Papers_, iii. 693. Penhallow was present at the
meeting, but his account of it is short. The accounts of Williamson and
Hutchinson are drawn from the above-mentioned report.
[242] _Shute to Rale, 21 February, 1718._
[243] This petition is still in the Massachusetts Archives, and is
printed by Dr. Francis in _Sparks's American Biography_, New Series,
xvii. 259.
[244] This letter was given by Mr. Adams, of Medfield, a connection of
the Baxter family, to the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose
possession it now is, in a worn condition. It was either captured with
the rest of Rale's papers and returned to the writer, or else is a
duplicate kept by Baxter.
[245] This curious paper is in the _Common Place Book_ of Rev. Henry
Flynt, of which the original is in the library of the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
[246] See Francis, _Life of Rale_, where the entire passage is given.
[247] Rale wrote to the governor of Canada that it was "sur Les
Représentations qu'Il Avoit fait aux Sauvages de Sa Mission" that they
had killed "un grand nombre de Bestiaux apartenant aux Anglois," and
threatened them with attack if they did not retire. (_Réponse fait par
MM. Vaudreuil et Bégon au Mémoire du Roy du 8 Juin, 1721._) Rale told
the governor of Massachusetts, on another occasion, that his character
as a priest permitted him to give the Indians nothing but counsels of
peace. Yet as early as 1703 he wrote to Vaudreuil that the Abenakis were
ready, at a word from him, to lift the hatchet against the English.
_Beauharnois et Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Novembre, 1703._
[248] _Joseph Heath and John Minot to Shute, 1 May, 1719._ Rale says
that these hostages were seized by surprise and violence; but Vaudreuil
complains bitterly of the faintness of heart which caused the Indians to
give them (_Vaudreuil à Rale, 15 Juin, 1721_), and both he and the
intendant lay the blame on the English party at Norridgewock, who, "with
the consent of all the Indians of that mission, had the weakness to give
four hostages." _Réponse de Vaudreuil et Bégon au Mémoire du Roy du 8
Juin, 1721._
[249] _Eastern Indians' Letter to the Governour, 27 July, 1721_, in
_Mass., Hist. Coll., Second Series_, viii. 259. This is the original
French. It is signed with totems of all the Abenaki bands, and also of
the Caughnawagas, Iroquois of the Mountain, Hurons, Micmacs, Montagnais,
and several other tribes. On this interview, Penhallow; Belknap, ii. 51;
_Shute to Vaudreuil_, 21 July, 1721 (O. S.); _Ibid., 23 April, 1722_;
Rale in _Lettres Édifiantes_, xvii. 285. Rale blames Shute for not being
present at the meeting, but a letter of the governor shows that he had
never undertaken to be there. He could not have come in any case, from
the effects of a fall, which disabled him for some months even from
going to Portsmouth to meet the Legislature. _Provincial Papers of New
Hampshire_, iii. 822.
[250] Williamson, _Hist. of Maine_, ii. 119; Penhallow. Rale's account
of the affair, found among his papers at Norridgewock, is curiously
exaggerated. He says that he himself was with the Indians, and "to
pleasure the English" showed himself to them several times,--a point
which the English writers do not mention, though it is one which they
would be most likely to seize upon. He says that fifty houses were
burned, and that there were five forts, two of which were of stone, and
that in one of these six hundred armed men, besides women and children,
had sought refuge, though there was not such a number of men in the
whole region of the Kennebec.
[251] Vaudreuil, _Mémoire adressé au Roy, 5 Juin, 1723_.
[252] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 6 Septembre, 1716._
[253] _Extrait d'une Liasse de Papiers concernant le Canada_, 1720.
(Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères.)
[254] _Réponse de Vaudreuil et Bégon au Mémoire du Roy, 8 Juin, 1721._
[255] _Bégon à Rale, 14 Juin, 1721._
[256] Some of the papers found in Rale's "strong box" are still
preserved in the Archives of Massachusetts, including a letter to him
from Vaudreuil, dated at Quebec, 25 September, 1721, in which the French
governor expresses great satisfaction at the missionary's success in
uniting the Indians against the English, and promises military aid, if
necessary.
[257] Wheeler, _History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell_, 54.
[258] Hutchinson, ii. 261. On these dissensions compare Palfrey, _Hist.
of New England_, iv. 406-428.
[259] _Sewall Papers_, iii. 317, 318.
[260] Palfrey, iv. 432, 433.
[261] Penhallow. Hutchinson, ii. 279.
[262] Penhallow. Temple and Sheldon, _History of Northfield_, 195.
[263] _Westbrook to Dummer, 23 March, 1723_, in _Collections Mass. Hist.
Soc., Second Series_, viii. 264.
[264] Hutchinson, ii. 283 (ed. 1795). Hutchinson had the story from
Moulton. Compare the tradition in the family of Jaques, as told by his
great-grandson, in _Historical Magazine_, viii. 177.
[265] The above rests on the account of Hutchinson, which was taken from
the official Journal of Harmon, the commander of the expedition, and
from the oral statements of Moulton, whom Hutchinson examined on the
subject. Charlevoix, following a letter of La Chasse in the Jesuit
_Lettres Édifiantes_, gives a widely different story. According to him,
Norridgewock was surprised by eleven hundred men, who first announced
their presence by a general volley, riddling all the houses with
bullets. Rale, says La Chasse, Tan out to save his flock by drawing the
rage of the enemy on himself; on which they raised a great shout and
shot him dead at the foot of the cross in the middle of the village. La
Chasse does not tell us where he got the story; but as there were no
French witnesses, the story must have come from the Indians, who are
notorious liars where their interest and self-love are concerned. Nobody
competent to judge of evidence can doubt which of the two statements is
the more trustworthy.
[266] It is also said that Rale taught some of his Indians to read and
write,--which was unusual in the Jesuit missions. On his character,
compare the judicial and candid _Life of Rale_, by Dr. Convers Francis,
in Sparks's _American Biography, New Series_, vii.