Radio Script #1287

Little Talks on Common Things
November 1, 1981

In the long conflict between French and English in North America an important part was played by the Jesuit missions to the Indian tribes all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes.

Settlements in Maine would have been much more rapid if the French missionaries had not won the allegiance of the tribes on the Saco, the Kennebec and the Penobscot rivers. The conflict was just a part of the centuries-long warfare between the two nations on the European continent. In early colonial days it naturally spilled over onto American soil.

In the 1630’s French Jesuits had set up a mission at Sillery on the St. Lawrence. In 1640 one of the Indian converts there left the mission with his wife and children and made his way south to the Abnaki village at Old Point on the Kennebec. A few months later he was killed in a drunken brawl.

Knowing that the slain man had influential relatives among the Quebec Indians, who were likely to seek revenge, two Abnakis from Old Point went to Quebec to explain matters and offer atonement. Under the influence of two Christian Indians there they were kindly received and the deceased’s relatives were satisfied. That was the start of a long-lasting alliance between the St. Lawrence and the Kennebec Indians. Those Indians on the Kennebec were the most powerful of all Abnaki groups in Maine in the middle of the 17th Century. Jesuit attention, previously focused on the tribes around the

Great Lakes, now turned to the Kennebec. Between Quebec and the Maine river there was a formidable barrier of mountains, where in this century has been developed the state’s largest ski area. All streams north of those mountains flowed into the St. Lawrence, streams to the south flowed into the Kennebec. The early missionaries found difficulty crossing those mountains, just as did Benedict Arnold’s army a century later.

In 1643 a converted Indian from Sillery appeared at Old Point in Norridgewock, intent on showing those Indians the way to Christianity. As he proceeded down the river, he stopped at all of the few existing English settlements. Since he had never seen any white men except French, he at first took those settlers for Frenchmen, but he soon learned the difference. He found the Kennebec Indians woefully addicted to liquor, supplied them by the English. That Indian persuaded one of the Kennebec chiefs to return with him to Quebec, where the chief was baptized.

In the same year, 1643, at the Feast of the Assumption in Quebec, a messenger announced that sails had been spotted about a mile down the river. From one of those ships, when it reached the town, there landed four Jesuit priests. One of them was a Father Gabriel Druillettes, destined to play a conspicuous part in Kennebec history.

Under those missionaries the mission at Sillery had a rapid growth, and a number of Abnakis joined that mission. In 1646 four of those Indians went down to Norridgewock, talked with their people to see if they would welcome a French missionary. They were successful, and that autumn arrangements were made for Father Druillettes to go to Old Point.

So, in September 1646, that Jesuit priest, accompanied by an Indian escort, came to Old Point by the reverse route that would be pursued by Arnold’s army in 1775. He went up the Chaudiere to Lake Megantic then over the Height of Land to the headquarters of the Dead River. In his short time at Sillery, Father Druillettes had gained some familiarity with the Abnaki dialect, and he was soon able to converse intelligently with the Indians at Old Point. He did not remain there all the time, but took trips down the river and up the Sebasticook, to visit other Indian villages. Down the river he went as far as the old Pilgrim trading post at Augusta.

In 1647 Druillettes went down the Kennebec to its mouth, then travelled along the coast east as far as Castine, where there was already a French settlement. Then he returned to Norridgewock. having made the whole journey in a birch bark canoe. At Castine the French presiding official gave Druillettes a letter addressed to Edward Winslow at the Augusta trading post. In that letter the Castine officer said he had seen nothing in the priest that was not admirable that the Jesuit father was not interested in trade and would not interfere with Plymouth business on the Kennebec. The letter said that the Father was interested only in spiritual things and would risk his life to convert the Indians.

Winslow received the priest courteously and gave him provisions to complete his journey back to Old Point. There, according to the words of an old account, the Jesuit father “tended them by day, and watched over them by night.” He had to deal with ancient deep-seated beliefs and superstitions. Magic and sorcery played a large part in the Abnaki religion. Their medicine men were really their priests, and were naturally opposed to the Christian teaching of the missionary. Druillettes confronted all medicine men boldly, and openly accused them of being concerned chiefly with their own welfare and influence. Thus he won many converts.

In the winter of 1648 the priest accompanied the Norridgewocks on their annual hunting expedition along the shores of Moosehead Lake. In the spring he again visited the trading post at Augusta, where Winslow told him that, if the French wanted also to set up a trading post on the river, the English would not object, and the priest could continue his
spiritual functions undisturbed. Regarding this interview with Winslow, the Jesuit Relations record: “So they parted, priest and Puritan, Jesuit from Canada and Separatist from Plymouth, bound to each other by a warmth of affection that lasted for life.”

In the middle of that summer Father Druillettes returned to Quebec. The Indians who accompanied him begged urgently for his early return to Old Point, but the Jesuit officials at Quebec refused. They said that Old Point was on English, not French soil, as defined by the latest treaty made in Europe. The Norridgewock Indians were informed that henceforth the nearest Jesuit mission would be on the Penobscot at what later came to be called Indian Island near Old Town. So the Abnaki group returned to Old Point without their beloved priest.

The next year a larger group of Norridgewocks came to Quebec and persuaded the Jesuit officials to change their minds. The result was a declaration by the Jesuit Superior at Quebec that said: “It is true that the district is not within our jurisdiction yet how can we abandon a people of such good dispositions and left with no teachers but themselves.”

Before they agreed to reestablish the Old Point mission, the Jesuits were taking no chances. They first sent Druillettes to Boston to get official permission to return to Norridgewock. That was important because only a year earlier the Massachusetts government had decreed the death penalty for any captured priest of the Jesuit order. Druillettes’ friend, Edward Winslow, accompanied him to Boston where he vouched for the priest’s avowal to refrain from all activities
concerned with trade or politics, and perform only spiritual functions.

The desired approval was given. It was recorded later by the historian Francis Parkman in these words: “Here was a Jesuit priest in the very heart of Puritanism, the guest of Puritan magistrates and honored and respected in both Boston and Plymouth, winning even the heart of the Catholic hating John Eliot, and getting Puritan approval for his Catholic
mission on the Kennebec.”

One reason for this good feeling, despite religious differences, was that while the Abnakis were not under Massachusetts control, the old colonies, both at Plymouth and Boston, sought alliance with those Indians against devastating raids by the Iroquois from the west.

When Druillettes returned to Old Point to resume the mission, the Indian Chief said: “Now we know that the Great Spirit who rules in Heaven looks on us with a good eye, for he has sent our father back again.” Druillettes indeed found that his former work all along the river and the coast to Permaquid had not been forgotten and he reported to his superior: “I have the deepest sense of gratitude that the seeds of the gospel that I sowed here four years ago in a soil which for centuries had yielded nothing but brambles and thorns is now bearing fruit worthy of the table of God. I have learned that, if the years have their winters, they have their spring times as well. While these missions have their bitterness, they have also their joys and consolations.”

Father Druillettes’ cordial reception in Boston caused the Quebec authorities to send a delegation to Massachusetts, urging the New Englanders to form a coalition with the French to enable the Abnakis to make effective resistance against the Iroquois. But they found the attitude in Boston decidedly changed. They returned without success, and the Kennebec Indians became convinced that their hope of survival depended upon their loyalty to the French.

When Father Druillettes left Old Point again in 1656, he promised soon to return, but he never did so. That winter proved to be very severe, and spring came late. Instead of finding open water and warm days, when he started to go back to Old Point, he encountered snow, ice and freezing temperatures. His battered and starving party had to turn back, and after great privations did reach Quebec. Father Druillettes himself was so affected by the experience that he died a few days later.

Father Druillettes had been a man who was able to have friendly relations with the British Puritans, but after his death the already corroding relations became more strained. The result was that his Norridgewock Indians became firm allies of the French, and the bitter French and Indian war of the 1750’s was a direct result.

And with that story of the French Jesuits’ first work on the Kennebec, half a century before the coming of Father Rasle, we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1981