Sébastien Rale

However, a party of the Norridgewock tribe joined a larger force of French and Indians commanded by Alexandre Leneuf de Beaubassin to attack Wells, Maine in the Northeast Coast Campaign.

[1] Rale wrote to his nephew: It is needful to control the imagination of the savages, too easily distracted, I pass few working days without making them a short exhortation for the purpose of inspiring a horror of the vices to which their tendency is strongest, and for strengthening them in the practice of some virtue.… My advice always shapes their resolutions.The French induced in the local Indians a deep distrust of British intentions—and they accomplished this despite Abenaki dependence on British trading posts to exchange furs for other necessities.

The Peace of Utrecht brought an end to ongoing conflicts in North America in 1713, and the Indians swore allegiance to the British Crown at the Treaty of Portsmouth.

In August 1717, Governor Samuel Shute met with tribal representatives of Norridgewock and other Abenaki bands in Georgetown, Maine on a coastal island, warning that cooperation with the French would bring them "utter ruin and destruction".

[5] Governor-general of New France Vaudreuil wrote in 1720: "Father Rale continues to incite Indians of the mission at [Norridgewock] not to allow the English to spread over their lands.

Chief Taxous died, and his successor was Wissememet who advocated peace with the Colonists, offering beaver skins as reparation for past damages, and four hostages to guarantee none in the future.

Then 300 soldiers under the command of Colonel Thomas Westbrook surrounded Norridgewock to capture Rale in January 1722, while most of the tribe were away hunting, but he was forewarned and escaped into the forest.

His strongbox was found among the possessions that he left behind,[8] however, with a hidden compartment containing letters implicating him as an agent of the French government and promising Indians enough ammunition to drive the Colonists from their settlements.

[9] Father Rale showed compassion for the Abenaki people, in a letter to his brother which consisted of a long poem he said, "My throat is white and it bleeds" and "I shook the chapel bell in tears/ And cried revenge!

Father Rale was present at the meeting on behalf of the native people and stated that the Abenaki would be "ready to take up the hatchet against the English whenever he gave them the order".

[14] In a 1722 letter sent to a nephew from Norridgewock, Rale said that "my nourishment is nothing but Indian corn, which is pounded and of which I make every day a kind of porridge that I cook with water.

The only relish (adoncissement) that I add to it is in mingling a little (maple) sugar.”[15] Rale's confessed avoidance of the meat and fish eaten by the members of his Abenaki flock places him among the tradition of ascetic Christian vegetarians.

[16][17] In response to the raid on Norridgewock, on June 13, 1722, the Abenaki tribe and its auxiliaries burned Fort George at the mouth of the Kennebec, taking hostages, most of whom were later released,[18] to exchange for those held in Boston.

The French and Indians claiming he died "a martyr" at the foot of a large cross set in the central square, drawing the soldiers' attention to himself to save his parishioners.

In 1833, Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick dedicated an 11-foot tall obelisk monument inscribed and erected by subscription over his grave in St. Sebastian's Cemetery at Old Point in Madison, Maine.

Francis Parkman describes him as: Fearless, resolute, enduring; boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating; a vehement partisan; apt to see things not as they are, but as he wished them to be… yet no doubt sincere in his 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 an active agent of the Canadian government.On the other hand, historian W. J. Eccles says that, since 1945, some Canadian historians have discarded Parkman's view of the history of New France, as characterized by "prejudice in favor of Anglo-American values, institutions, myths, and aspirations," and the corresponding denigration of Catholic, French, and American Indian elements.