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.