\nTwo weeks ago on this program I talked about Percival Baxter’s paper on Father Rasle. delivered in Waterville in September 1890. Today I want to add to that information by citing a few contemporary accounts including several letters by Father Rasle himself.<\/p>\n
But first let us review the bloody events that led to Father Rasle’s death. The Indian village at Norridgewock was not located at the present site of Norridgewock Village. but further up the river nearer Madison Village, on a point of land jutting into the Kennebec, called by the English Old Point. There to this day stands a granite monument commemorating the death of Father Rasle.<\/p>\n
The large Indian nation of Abanaki was divided into several tribes and subtribes. One such group was called the Norrigewocks. with their chief settlement at Old Point, but during the 17th century they seem to have been subjects to the Canabas or Kennebecs, with headquarters on Swan Island near Richmond.<\/p>\n
When the Jesuits came to Quebec early in the 17th century. they at once proceeded to Christianize the Indians and one of their most successful missions was with the Norridgewocks at Old Point. Instead of rude temporary tepees, the Indians, under Jesuit guidance, had built permanent huts. a chapel. and other buildings so that Old Point had become the year-round home of the tribe, from which they made seasonal pilgrimages to the coast and from which the men went out on extended hunting parties.<\/p>\n
In 1694 Sebastian Rasle was recalled from a mission to the Illinois Indians to take over the post at Norridgewock, and he soon became a leader greatly loved by the Indians, honored by his French compatriots, and bitterly hated by the English colonists, with their governmental center at Boston. What the English thought of Father Rasle is well shown in a letter written by the Massachusetts provincial governor in 1725, a few months after the priest’s death. The letter said: “Father Rasle was ranked among the most infamous villains and his scalp would have been worth a hundred of Indian scalps. His zeal to promote the religion he professed was only one reason for this feeling. He was not only a Jesuit; he was also a Frenchman and his successful turning the Indians against our English people marked him as an enemy who must be eliminated.”<\/p>\n
The governor admitted that the Indians adored Father Rasle, that he had taught some of them to read and write, had made the entire tribe devoutly Christian, and had greatly improved their economic status. But the governor, as well as many English colonists in Maine, was sure that it was Father Rasle who was the greatest stimulator of Indian raids of English settlements.<\/p>\n
Now let us see what Rasle himself had to say about his work. In a long letter written in 1722 to a nephew in France, the Jesuit father said:”The valley in which I live is called Norridgewock and is situated on the banks of a river which empties into the sea at a distance of thirty leagues below. I have erected a church, which is neat and elegantly ornamented. Vestments, chasubles, copes and holy vessels are highly appropriate, and would be so esteemed even in our churches in Europe. I have formed a little choir of about forty young Indians. who assist at divine service in cassocks and surplices.<\/p>\n
“My people here have built two chapels three hundred paces from the village. As they are both on roads that lead either into the ‘woods or into the fields, the Indians can never pass without offering their prayers.<\/p>\n
“In church and chapels there are plenty of candles. It is not necessary for me to be saving the wax, for the country furnishes it abundantly. The islands of the sea produce a kind of wild laurel (this today we call bayberry). The Indians fill kettles with the berries of this plant and boil them in water. As the water thickens, the green wax rises to the surface. From about three bushels of berries can be made four pounds of wax.<\/p>\n
“After the mass I teach the catechism to the children and young persons. The rest of the morning is set apart for seeing all who wish to see me. They come to me in crowds, to consult me on all manner of personal problems. I must therefore instruct some, console others, re-establish peace in families at variance, calm troubled consciences, correct and reprimand others. After midday I visit the sick and go around among the cabins. If they hold a council, they deport one of their principal men to ask me to assist in their deliberations. If I think they are pursuing a wise course, I approve it; if on the contrary, I must oppose, I declare my sentiments and the reasons for them. My advice always determines their decision.<\/p>\n
“When the Indians go for several weeks to the seashore, where they hunt ducks and gather shellfish, I go with them and set up a temporary church.<\/p>\n
“Dear nephew, I would add that I never hear nor see anyone but Indians. My food is very simple. My only luxury is a little sugar, made in the spring from the liquor of maple trees, and is very similar to that from the sugarcane of the southern islands.<\/p>\n
“The whole Abnaki nation is now Christian and is very zealous to preserve that religion. That attachment to the Catholic faith has indeed induced them to prefer alliance with us rather than with their English neighbors. Despite the inconvenience of long journeys to Quebec. they prefer to deal with the French in both trade and religion.”<\/p>\n
The letter ends with a statement of Father Rasle’s explanation of why the Indians preferred the French to the English. He told his nephew: “The Indians believe, if they should detach themselves from our alliance, they would shortly find themselves without a missionary, without a sacrifice, with scarcely any exercise of their religion. and in manifest danger of being plunged into their former heathenism. This is the bond that unites them to the French.”<\/p>\n
A year before he wrote that letter, Father Rasle had become such a marked man that the Boston government had sent from Portland an expedition to capture him and bring him a prisoner to Boston. How that expedition, under Col. Thomas Westbrook, failed is told from Father Rasle’s viewpoint in a letter which Father wrote to his superiors in Quebec shortly after the event. In that letter he said: “I had remained in the village with only a small number of the old and infirmed men, while all the able-bodied were at the hunting grounds. This opportunity seemed to the English a favorable one to surprise me, and to take me they sent a detachment of 200 men. Two young Abnakis, chasing a moose along the seashore, learned that the English party had entered the river, and the two Indians watched their progress upstream. Then they raced ahead through the forest to warn me. I had barely time to swallow the consecrated wafers, to crowd the sacred vessels into a little chest, and save myself in the woods. All the old people, women and children did likewise.<\/p>\n
“In the evening the English arrived, and not finding me, started the next morning to search a wide area. All I could do was to hide in the depths of the forest. As I had no snowshoes and was still weak from a fall of a few years before, I could not go far. All I could do was to conceal myself behind a tree. The invaders examined the different paths worn by the Indians, and they came to within eight paces of my toe. Without spotting me, they returned to the village. Thus, through the particular protection of God, I escaped their hands. They pillaged my church and humble dwelling, and thus reduced me almost to death by famine. Finally provisions reached me from Quebec.”<\/p>\n
The little chest that Father Rasle mentioned in that letter can be seen today at the Maine Historical Society in Portland. It was seized by Col. Westbrook, and it contained Father Rasle’s correspondence with the French governor at Quebec; a manuscript dictionary of the Abnaki language, which Rasle had spent years in preparing; and a Latin handbook of Catholic worship entitled “Medulla Theologia Moralis”. That little chest, into which before his swift flight, Rasle crowded what he regarded as his most precious treasures, remains our best means of understanding the man who met his death when Col. Moulton’s army raided the village, burned it to the ground, killed most of its inhabitants, and contrary to explicit instructions from Boston to take Rasle prisoner, killed the priest himself.<\/p>\n
The little chest measures 10 x 15 inches and is 8 inches deep. It is divided into ten compartments, two of which contain an inkstand and sandbox. The outer surface is covered with embossed sheets of brass. Along the edges are riveted iron straps, and on top is an iron handle. There is a double lock with two keyholes. The chest was probably made in France and carried everywhere on his wanderings by Father Rasle.<\/p>\n
Another Norridgewock relic preserved at the Maine Historical Society is Father Rasle’s chapel bell. The difficulty of bringing a heavy bell from Quebec to Norridgewock is shown by a statement in one of Father Rasle’s letters. He said: “In going to Quebec it is necessary to take more than a fortnight. The Indians have to take provisions for the journey, have to pass different rivers with frequent portages. The bell is 13 inches high, 11 inches across the mouth, and weighs 32 pounds.”<\/p>\n
It is interesting to know that somehow the old bell came into the possession of John Ware of Norridgewock, the same John Ware who later moved to Athens and whose relatives founded the well known Ware family of Waterville. In 1822 Mr. Ware presented the bell to the Maine Historical Society, and placed in the society’s records the following description: “An ancient bell found at Norridgewock in 1808. It was found about a mile from the Indian chapel, and on the west side of the Kennebec. Here are falls around which canoes were carried, and beside the path under a decayed hemlock the bell was found. The tree was so decayed that the bell was discovered in the midst of rotten wood, and sunk eight inches into the ground.”<\/p>\n
It is supposed that the Indians who survived the Moulton raid carried the bell across the river and hid it by the hemlock tree, probably intending to convey it later to Quebec. But after their dispersal in 1724, the Abnaki never returned in force to Old Point.<\/p>\n
Our time is now up, and for today at least we must forego further expansion of the familiar story of Father Rasle at Norridgewock.<\/p>\n
Year: 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #816, Broadcast on October 19, 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42949,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}