[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.