DEO
Optimo Maximo
In honorem Divi Ioannis Baptistae
Hoc Templum posuerunt Anno Domin
(MDCCXVII).
Malecitae
Missionis Procurator Ioanne Loyard Societatis Iesu
Sacerdote.
The translation reads:—“To God, most excellent, most high, in honor of Saint John Baptist, the Maliseets erected this church A. D. 1717, while Jean Loyard, a priest of the Society of Jesus, was superintendent of the mission.”
The inscription is clearly cut, but not with sufficient skill to suggest the hand of a practised stone engraver. It was in all probability the hand of Loyard himself that executed it. The name of Danielou, his successor, faintly scratched in the lower left-hand corner, is evidently of later date; but its presence there is of historic interest.
The Indian church of St. John Baptist at Medoctec, erected in 1717, was the first on the River St. John—probably the first in New Brunswick. It received among other royal gifts a small bell which now hangs in the belfry of the Indian chapel at Central Kingsclear, a few miles above Fredericton. The church seems to have been such as would impress by its beauty and adornments the little flock over which Loyard exercised his kindly ministry. It is mentioned by one of the Jesuit fathers as a beautiful church (belle eglise), suitably adorned and furnished abundantly with holy vessels and ornaments of sufficient richness.
The chapel stood for fifty years and its clear toned bell rang out the call to prayer in the depths of the forest; but by and by priest and people passed away till, in 1767, the missionary Bailly records in his register that the Indians having abandoned the Medoctec village he had caused the ornaments and furnishings of the chapel, together with the bell, to be transported to Aukpaque, and had caused the chapel itself to be demolished since it served merely as a refuge for travellers and was put to the most profane uses.
The Marquis de Vaudreuil in 1718 wrote to the English authorities at Port Royal protesting against English vessels entering the River St. John, which he claimed to be entirely within the French dominion. He encouraged the French to withdraw from the peninsula of Nova Scotia, promising them lands on the St. John river on application to the missionary Loyard, who was empowered to grant them and in the course of time a number of families resorted thither.
When Loyard went to France in 1722 he represented to the home government that the English were making encroachments on the “rivers of the savages”—meaning the St. John, Penobscot and Kennebec. “Why is this?” he asks, “if not for the purpose of continually advancing on Canada?” He points out that France has not cared for the savages except when she has had need of them. The English will not fail to remind them of this fact, and will perhaps by presents more valuable than the missionaries can offer soon succeed in winning them. Loyard recommends the court 76 to increase the annual gratuity and to provide for each village a royal medal to serve as a reminder of the king’s favor and protection. His advice seems to have been followed, and for some years an annual appropriation of 4,000 livres was made to provide presents for the savages, the distribution being left to the missionaries.
