Sébastien Rasles

Traditional Eastern Abenaki residential areas and Norridgewock locality

Sébastien Rasles , also Sebastian Rale or Sebastian Rasle (born January 4, 1657 in Pontarlier , † August 23, 1724 in Maine ) was a Jesuit missionary and lexicographer who lived with the Eastern Abenaki and lost his life in the colonial war between France and Great Britain .

Early years

Sébastien Rasles was born in Pontarlier in France and studied in Dijon . In 1675 he entered the Jesuit order in Dole against the wishes of his parents to become a priest. He studied first in Carpentras , later in Nîmes and finished his theology studies in Lyon in 1688 . He volunteered for missionary work in the American colony of New France and in 1689 sailed from La Rochelle to America together with Governor Frontenac . His first missionary work began in an Abenaki village near Québec . Here he learned the Abenaki language and began writing an Abenaki-French dictionary . In 1691 he was transferred to the Illinois in Kaskaskia , where he proselytized for two years.

Mission to Norridgewock

Rasles then went to the Abenaki in Norridgewock on the Kennebec River in what is now Maine , then called Acadia , and founded a mission here in 1694. The British colonists in New England viewed the arrival of the French priest with suspicion because the French Rasles lived among the "savages". The Abenaki traded with the British due to better and cheaper British goods trade, but felt with the French far more connected, as most of them to the Catholic faith converts were. In Queen Anne's War (1703–1714), the second of four colonial wars, the French and British fought again for supremacy in North America. Joseph Dudley, the governor of Massachusetts, invited the Abenaki to a meeting in Casco Bay in 1703 to commit them to neutrality in this conflict. Father Rasles was also present and promised to support the neutral stance of the Indians: My religion and my priesthood give you the security that I urge them (the Abenaki) only to keep the peace .

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  Memorial plaque for Sebastien Racle in the church of Pontarlier

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  Depiction of the missionary's dead

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  Monument in Madison (Maine)

A part of the Abenaki did not remain neutral, however, but joined the troops of Alexander Leneuf de Beaubassin. They raided Wells, Maine, killing 39 residents. British forces made several counterattacks on Norridgewock. In the winter of 1705, a British unit of 275 soldiers under Colonel Winthrop Hilton marched on Norridgewock to seize Father Rasles and burn the place down. Father Rasles escaped, but Norridgewock and the new church went up in flames. After a stay in Bécancour , Canada, Rasles returned to Norridgewock in 1710.

Treaty of Utrecht

In the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended the War of the Spanish Succession , France ceded most of Acadia to Great Britain. However, the exact limits were not defined in the contract, a cause for renewed conflicts. The British took control of the Abenaki Territory in what is now Maine. The Abenaki refused to recognize British law, an attitude that was supported by the French.

The British offered the Abenaki to rebuild the church in Norridgewock if they accepted a Protestant pastor and sent Father Rasles back to Quebec. No agreement was reached and eventually Father Rasles rebuilt the church with French financial support.

British expansion

More and more British traders came to Abenakiland and they were followed by hundreds of white families who in turn were protected by forts and military. The growing number of conflicts between Indians and colonists led to the 1717 Arrowsic Island Conference between Governor Shute of Massachusetts and chiefs of the Eastern Abenaki. It turned out that the Abenaki had a pro-French and a pro-British faction. Eventually the supporters of the British prevailed and the presence of the British colonists in their country was accepted.

Father Rasles continued to support the anti-British forces and in October 1719 sent chiefs from Norridgewock to Quebec who assured Governor General Vaudreuil that they would oppose the British conquest. Governor Shute wanted to get rid of Father Rasles and urged Vaudreuil to recall the priest because the activity of a Jesuit or Roman Catholic priest was illegal in British territory. In July 1720, Massachusetts offered £ 100 as a reward for capturing Rasle.

In late January 1722, Norridgewock was trapped by 100 British people under the command of Colonel Westbrock in order to capture Rasles. However, he was warned in good time and was able to escape into the surrounding forests. The British soldiers burned down the church and his house. In addition to suspicious correspondence with the government in Québec, Rasle's attackers found a manuscript of a three-volume Abenaki-French dictionary, which was later given to the library of Harvard University .

In July of the same year, Abenaki warriors raided the settlements of the colonists around Merrymeeting Bay in retaliation . This action prompted Governor Shute to declare the Dummer's War on July 25, 1722.

Rasles' death

In August of the year after next, the British attacked Norridgewock again. A troop led by Captain Johnson Harmon and Captain Jeremiah Moulton went whale boats up the Kennebec River and reached the village unobserved on August 23, 1724, killed Father Rasles and 26 Abenaki, mutilated his body and brought his scalp to Boston as evidence. Abenaki who had fled brought the news of their death to Quebec and spoke of around 200 British attackers. The French and British sources differ significantly about the way in which Father Rasles was killed. The French claim that Rasles was shot dead as he approached the attackers unarmed in the middle of the village. The British sources, however, say that Rasles was killed in a hut in an exchange of fire, but against the express orders of Moulton, who wanted to bring the priest alive to Boston .

Although the French did not participate directly in the war, their sympathies were clearly with the Abenaki, and the reaction to the circumstances of Rasle's death almost caused open rebellion among the French people. Only 150 refugees from Norridgewock managed to escape to Wôlinak in safe New France .

In 1833, Bishop Fenwick of Boston erected a memorial in Norridgewock in honor of Father Rasles. The approximately 3.5 meter high obelisk stands near the place where he was believed to have died.

Father Rasles left his contemporaries with conflicting feelings. Some saw him as a martyr , others called him a dangerous agitator. With the French he was an important ally, for the British he was an implacable enemy. Writers mostly adopted one of these two perspectives and made it almost impossible to paint a truly objective picture of Sebastién Rasles today.

Rasles' dictionary

The manuscript of Rasle's Abenaki-French Dictionary, kept at Harvard University, has no front page. The first entry is: 1691. I've been with the “wild ones” for a year now. I start a dictionary in the order in which I learn the words. The dictionary was first published in 1833 by John Pickering under the title Abnaki Language in North America by Father Sebastian Rasles .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sebastian Rale (Rasle)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Canadian Biographies

Web links

• Sebastien Rale (or Rasle) biography, Canada Library & Archives
• Biography of Sebastian Rale (or Rasle), Catholic Encyclopedia
• Norridgewock, Native American Village and Memorial