The following account of F. Rale's daily life cannot but prove interesting: "He rose at four, and, after meditation, said Mass at daybreak, which all the Indians heard, and during it chanted their prayers aloud; at its close he generally, on week-days, made a short exhortation, to inspire them with good thoughts, then dismissing them to the labors of the day. He then began to catechise the children and the young; the aged, too, were there, all answering with the docility of children. Then, after a slight meal, he sat in his chamber to despatch the various matters laid before him—their plans, their troubles, domestic disquiets, or intended marriages—in a word, to direct them all. Towards noon he would go to work in his garden, and then split his wood to cook his little mess of hominy; for this may be said to have been his only food. Wine he never tasted, even when among the French.
"After this frugal repast, he visited the sick, and went to particular cabins to give instruction where it was more needed; and if a public council or feast was to take place, he must be present; for they never proceeded to the one without first hearing his advice, nor to the other without his blessing on the food, which was ready to be placed on the bark plates, which each one brought, and with which he immediately retired to his cabin.
"The evening was left him to say his Breviary and give some time to prayer and reading; but this was so often intrenched upon that at last he made it a rule never to speak from before evening prayer till after Mass on the following day, unless he was called to a sick-bed."[172]
In the course of a few years, the free spirit of the Indians began to grow impatient under the encroachments of the whites. Not only their hunting-grounds, but even their fields for cultivation, were circumscribed. A conference with Gov. Shute was held at Georgetown in August, 1717, but it was evident that redress for the Indians formed no part of the governor's designs. He refused to treat with them otherwise than as subjects; he would not acknowledge their natural liberty nor their hereditary title to their hunting-grounds; nor would he fix a boundary beyond which the encroachments of the white men should not extend. They were told, however, that the English wished them to become of one religion with themselves; an English Bible was given to them, and the governor told them that the Rev. Mr. Baxter, who accompanied him, would become their teacher and pastor. Thus it seems that the governor with one hand presented them a Bible, and with the other grasped their lands. When a letter from F. Rale, pleading in behalf of his children, was handed to the governor, he treated it with great contempt. "He let them know," says Hutchinson, "that he highly resented the insolence of the Jesuit."[173] Another mock treaty was now entered into by the aid of interpreters. F. Rale always protested against it as fraudulent, and announced to the New Englanders that the Norridgewocks did not recognize it. He never ceased his paternal efforts in behalf of his Indians, and repeatedly addressed letters to the governor and other leading men of New England, demanding justice for them.[174]
Having tried every means of gaining over the Indians to their cause in vain, the New Englanders next attacked them in the point which seemed to attach them more than any other to the French; this was their religion. The Rev. Mr. Baxter, a minister of ability and education, as well as of an ardent zeal against Popery, undertook to evangelize the Abnakis. "Thus," says Bancroft, "Calvin and Loyola met in the woods of Maine." The Protestant minister established at Georgetown a school, which was supported by the government, and, by means of every attraction and inducement which he could present to them, endeavored first to gain the children. But their hearts had already been too deeply impressed with religion by the Catholic missionaries to receive the Prayer from any person other than the Black Gown. He then endeavored, but with the same result, to gain his point by addresses and harangues to the parents, the chiefs, and braves of the tribe. "He next assailed the religion of the Indians. He put various questions concerning their faith, and, as they answered, he turned into ridicule the sacraments, purgatory, the invocation of saints, beads, Masses, images, and the other parts of the Catholic creed and ritual."[175]
F. Rale saw at once that he must meet the danger thus threatened to the faith of his flock. He addressed a respectful letter to Mr. Baxter, covering an essay of one hundred pages, in which he undertook to defend and prove, "by Scripture, by tradition, and by theological arguments," those tenets and practices of the Catholic Church which the minister had endeavored to ridicule. In the letter enclosing the essay he remarked that the Indians knew how to believe, but not how to dispute, and the missionary felt it to be his duty to take up the controversy in behalf of his neophytes. Mr. Baxter's reply treated F. Rale's arguments as puerile and ridiculous. Finding, however, that his mission was a fruitless one, Mr. Baxter returned to Boston. The correspondence did not cease here; but, after Mr. Baxter's return to Boston, the letters turned upon the purity of their Latinity, rather than the theology of the respective controversialists. F. Rale remained at his post, the faithful guardian of his flock.
The grievances of which the Indians had been long complaining still remained unredressed. In 1719 another conference was held, but with no better result than the previous one at Georgetown. Fresh causes of resentment were added. Some Indians entered an English house to trade, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded by a force ten times stronger than their own. When about to cut their way through, their arms were arrested by a request on the part of the English for a parley, and they were told that the English only wished to invite some of their number to visit the governor at Boston. Four chiefs consented to go, and, when they arrived, they were detained as hostages, to secure the payment of a large ransom demanded by the English for damages sustained by them from depredations committed by the tribe. The prisoners appealed to their countrymen for relief, and the ransom was accordingly paid; but even then the English refused to release them. A conference was invited by the governor, but this was done merely to prevent an immediate rupture. At the designated time, July, 1721, the chiefs, accompanied by F. Rale; La Chasse, the superior of the missions; Croisel, and the young Castine, repaired to Georgetown, but the governor did not meet them there. La Chasse then drew up a letter in Indian, French, and English, setting forth the claims of the Indians, and sent it to Gov. Shute. No notice was ever taken of it.
In December, 1721, the English seized the young Castine, son of the Baron de Castine by an Indian wife, and a great favorite with the Abnakis. "The ungenerous and unjust arrest of this young man," says Dr. Francis, "incensed to the highest degree the countrymen of his mother, among whom he had always lived."
Still, the Indians refrained from retaliation. Another act of aggression soon followed; a detachment of two hundred and thirty men, towards the end of 1721, or early in 1722, were sent to seize the Catholic missionary. As this party entered the Kennebec, two young braves, hunting near the shore, saw them, and, after following them for some distance unobserved, struck into the woods and gave the alarm at Norridgewock, which was then nearly deserted. Scarcely had F. Rale time to consume the consecrated host on the altar to save it from sacrilege, and secure the sacred vessels. He fled precipitately to the woods, impeded as he was by the painful condition of the wounds received in the severe fall he had received as related above. The English arrived in the evening, and, having waited till morning, pursued him to the woods. They carefully scoured every place, and at one time came within eight steps of their intended victim, and yet passed away without seeing him, though only half concealed behind a small tree. The pursuers then returned disappointed to Norridgewock, where they pillaged the house of God and the missionary's residence, and then retired, carrying away with them everything belonging to F. Rale—his desk, papers, inkstand, and the Abnaki Dictionary, which he had commenced at St. Francis in 1691. He suffered the extremes of hunger while thus in the woods, flying from the pursuit of his enemies; yet his courage and resolution remained firm and cheerful. So great were the dangers that threatened him at every moment that his affectionate neophytes, and even his superior, advised him to retire for the present to Quebec. He always answered: "God has committed this flock to my care, and I will share its lot, being too happy, if permitted, to sacrifice my life for it." In a letter to his nephew he asks: "What will become of the flock, if it be deprived of its shepherd? I do not in the least fear the threats of those who hate me without cause. 'I count not my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy,' and the ministry I have received of the Lord Jesus."
While thus the object of deadly pursuit on the part of the English colonists, F. Rale enjoyed the purest consolation in the love and affection of his devoted flock. On one occasion, while he was accompanying them on a hunting party, they suddenly perceived that he was missing, and the report was started that the English had broken into his cabin and carried him off. Their grief was only equalled by their fury, and at once the braves began to prepare for an effort to rescue their pastor at the hazard of their lives. Two of their number, however, afterwards went to his cabin, and there they found him, writing the life of a saint in their own language. Transported with joy, they exclaimed: "We were told that the English had carried you off, and our warriors were going to attack the fort, where we thought they had doubtlessly imprisoned you!" "You see, my children," replied the father, "that your fears were unfounded; but your affectionate care of me fills my heart with joy; it shows you love the Prayer." But as some of the warriors were starting, he added: "Set out, immediately after Mass, to overtake the others, and undeceive them."