Parkman Part 6 v1, Chapter 11

Mr. Atkinson, envoy on the part of New Hampshire, joined Thaxter and Dudley, and the three set out for Montreal, over the ice of Lake Champlain.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 1. Continuing Chapter 10.

When they returned to the village, they found Rale in one of the houses, firing upon some of their comrades who had not joined in the pursuit. He presently wounded one of them, on which a lieutenant named Benjamin Jaques burst open the door of the house, and, as he declared, found the priest loading his gun for another shot. The lieutenant said further that he called on him to surrender, and that Rale replied that he would neither give quarter nor take it; on which Jaques shot him through the head.[1] Moulton, who had given orders that Rale should not be killed, doubted this report of his subordinate so far as concerned the language used by Rale, though believing that he had exasperated the lieutenant by provoking expressions of some kind. The old chief Mogg had shut himself up in another house, from which he fired and killed one of Moulton’s three Mohawks, whose brother then beat in the door and shot the chief dead. Several of the English followed, and brutally murdered Mogg’s squaw and his two children. Such plunder as the village afforded, consisting of three barrels of gunpowder, with a few guns, blankets, and kettles, was then seized; and the Puritan militia thought it a meritorious act to break what they called the “idols” in the church, and carry off the sacred vessels.

[1: Hutchinson, ii. 283 (ed. 1795). Hutchinson had the story from Moulton. Compare the tradition in the family of Jaques, as told by his great-grandson, in Historical Magazine, viii. 177.]

Harmon and his party returned towards night from their useless excursion to the cornfields, where they found nobody. In the morning a search was made for the dead, and twenty-six Indians were found and scalped, including the principal chiefs and warriors of the place. Then, being anxious for the safety of their boats, the party marched for Taconic Falls. They had scarcely left the village when one of the two surviving Mohawks, named Christian, secretly turned back, set fire to the church and the houses, and then rejoined the party. The boats were found safe, and embarking, they rowed down to Richmond with their trophies.

[The above rests on the account of Hutchinson, which was taken from the official Journal of Harmon, the commander of the expedition, and from the oral statements of Moulton, whom Hutchinson examined on the subject. Charlevoix, following a letter of La Chasse in the Jesuit Lettres Édifiantes, gives a widely different story. According to him, Norridgewock was surprised by eleven hundred men, who first announced their presence by a general volley, riddling all the houses with bullets. Rale, says La Chasse, Tan out to save his flock by drawing the rage of the enemy on himself; on which they raised a great shout and shot him dead at the foot of the cross in the middle of the village. La Chasse does not tell us where he got the story; but as there were no French witnesses, the story must have come from the Indians, who are notorious liars where their interest and self-love are concerned. Nobody competent to judge of evidence can doubt which of the two statements is the more trustworthy.]

The news of the fate of the Jesuit and his mission spread joy among the border settlers, who saw in it the end of their troubles. In their eyes Rale was an incendiary, setting on a horde of bloody savages to pillage and murder. While they thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for a martyred saint. He was neither the one nor the other, but a man with the qualities and faults of a man, — fearless, resolute, enduring; boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating; a vehement partisan; apt to see things, not as they were, but as he wished them to be; given to inaccuracy and exaggeration, yet no doubt sincere in opinions and genuine in zeal; hating the English more than he loved the Indians; calling himself their friend, yet using them as instruments of worldly policy, to their danger and final ruin. In considering the ascription of martyrdom, it is to be remembered that he did not die because he was an apostle of the faith, but because he was the active agent of the Canadian government.

There is reason to believe that he sometimes exercised a humanizing influence over his flock. The war which he helped to kindle was marked by fewer barbarities — fewer tortures, mutilations of the dead, and butcheries of women and infants — than either of the preceding wars. It is fair to assume that this was due in part to him, though it was chiefly the result of an order given, at the outset, by Shute that non-combatants in exposed positions should be sent to places of safety in the older settlements.

[It is also said that Rale taught some of his Indians to read and write, — which was unusual in the Jesuit missions. On his character, compare the judicial and candid Life of Rale, by Dr. Convers Francis, in Sparks’s American Biography, New Series, vii.]

Chapter 11

The death of Rale and the destruction of Norridgewock did not at once end the war. Vaudreuil turned all the savages of the Canadian missions against the borders, not only of Maine, but of western Massachusetts, whose peaceful settlers had given no offence. Soon after the Norridgewock expedition, Dummer wrote to the French governor, who had lately proclaimed the Abenakis his allies: “As they are subjects of his Britannic Majesty, they cannot be your allies, except through me, his representative. You have instigated them to fall on our people in the most outrageous manner. I have seen your commission to Sebastien Rale. But for your protection and incitements they would have made peace long ago.”

[Dummer to Vaudreuil, 15 September, 1724.]

In reply, Vaudreuil admitted that he had given a safe-conduct and a commission to Rale, which he could not deny, as the Jesuit’s papers were in the hands of the English governor. “You will have to answer to your king for his murder,” he tells Dummer. “It would have been strange if I had abandoned our Indians to please you. I cannot help taking the part of our allies. You have brought your troubles upon yourself. I advise you to pull down all the forts you have built on the Abenaki lands since the Peace of Utrecht. If you do so, I will be your mediator with the Norridgewocks. As to the murder of Rale, I leave that to be settled between the two Crowns.”

[Vaudreuil à Dummer, 29 Octobre, 1724.]

Apparently, the French court thought it wise to let the question rest and make no complaint. Dummer, however, gave his views on the subject to Vaudreuil. “Instead of preaching peace, love, and friendship, agreeably to the Christian religion, Rale was an incendiary, as appears by many letters I have by me. He has once and again appeared at the head of a great many Indians, threatening and insulting us. If such a disturber of the peace has been killed in the heat of action, nobody is to blame but himself. I have much more cause to complain that Mr. Willard, minister of Rutland, who is innocent of all that is charged against Rale, and always confined himself to preaching the Gospel, was slain and scalped by your Indians, and his scalp carried in triumph to Quebec.”

Dummer then denies that France has any claim to the Abenakis and declares that the war between them and the English is due to the instigations of Rale and the encouragements given them by Vaudreuil. But he adds that in his wish to promote peace he sends two prominent gentlemen, Colonel Samuel Thaxter and Colonel William Dudley, as bearers of his letter.

[Dummer to Vaudreuil, 19 January, 1725. This, with many other papers relating to these matters, is in the Massachusetts Archives.]

Mr. Atkinson, envoy on the part of New Hampshire, joined Thaxter and Dudley, and the three set out for Montreal, over the ice of Lake Champlain. Vaudreuil received them with courtesy. As required by their instructions, they demanded the release of the English prisoners in Canada and protested against the action of the French governor in setting on the Indians to attack English settlements when there was peace between the two Crowns. Vaudreuil denied that he had done so, till they showed him his own letters to Rale, captured at Norridgewock. These were unanswerable; but Vaudreuil insisted that the supplies sent to the Indians were only the presents which they received every year from the King. As to the English prisoners, he said that those in the hands of the Indians were beyond his power; but that the envoys could have those whom the French had bought from their captors, on paying back the price they had cost. The demands were exorbitant, but sixteen prisoners were ransomed, and bargains were made for ten more. Vaudreuil proposed to Thaxter and his colleagues to have an interview with the Indians, which they at first declined, saying that they had no powers to treat with them, though, if the Indians wished to ask for peace, they were ready to hear them. At length a meeting was arranged. The French governor writes: “Being satisfied that nothing was more opposed to our interests than a peace between the Abenakis and the English, I thought that I would sound the chiefs before they spoke to the English envoys, and insinuate to them everything that I had to say.”[2] This he did with such success that, instead of asking for peace, the Indians demanded the demolition of the English forts, and heavy damages for burning their church and killing their missionary. In short, to Vaudreuil’s great satisfaction, they talked nothing but war. The French dispatch reporting this interview has the following marginal note: “Nothing better can be done than to foment this war, which at least retards the settlements of the English;” and against this is written, in the hand of the colonial minister, the word “Approved.”[3] This was, in fact, the policy pursued from the first, and Rale had been an instrument of it. The Jesuit La Chasse, who spoke both English and Abenaki, had acted as interpreter, and so had had the meeting in his power, as he could make both parties say what he pleased. The envoys thought him more anti-English than Vaudreuil himself, and ascribed the intractable mood of the Indians to his devices. Under the circumstances, they made a mistake in consenting to the interview at all. The governor, who had treated them with civility throughout, gave them an escort of soldiers for the homeward journey, and they and the redeemed prisoners returned safely to Albany.

[2: Dépêche de Vaudreuil, 7 Août, 1725. “Comme j’ai toujours été persuadé que rien n’est plus opposé à nos intérêts que la paix des Abenakis avec les Anglais (la sureté de cette colonie du côté de l’est ayant été l’unique objet de cette guerre), je songeai à pressentir ces sauvages avant qu’ils parlassant aux Anglais et à leur insinuer tout ce que j’avais à leur dire.” — Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Mai, 1725.]

[3: N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 949.]

The war went on as before, but the Indians were fast growing tired of it. The Penobscots had made themselves obnoxious by their attacks on Fort St. George, and Captain Heath marched across country from the Kennebec to punish them. He found their village empty. It was built, since Westbrook’s attack, at or near the site of Bangor, a little below Indian Old Town, — the present abode of the tribe, — and consisted of fifty wigwams, which Heath’s men burned to the ground.

One of the four hostages still detained at Boston, together with another Indian captured in the war, was allowed to visit his people, under a promise to return. Strange to say, the promise was kept. They came back bringing a request for peace from their tribesmen. On this, commissioners were sent to the St. George, where a conference was held with some of the Penobscot chiefs, and it was arranged that deputies of that people should be sent to Boston to conclude a solid peace. After long delay, four chiefs appeared, fully empowered, as they said, to make peace, not for the Penobscots only, but for the other Abenaki tribes, their allies. The speeches and ceremonies being at last ended, the four deputies affixed their marks to a paper in which, for themselves and those they represented, they made submission “unto his most excellent Majesty George, by the grace of God king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the Faith,” etc., promising to “cease and forbear all acts of hostility, injuries, and discord towards all his subjects, and never confederate or combine with any other nation to their prejudice.” Here was a curious anomaly. The English claimed the Abenakis as subjects of the British Crown, and at the same time treated with them as a foreign power. Each of the four deputies signed the above-mentioned paper, one with the likeness of a turtle, the next with that of a bird, the third with the untutored portrait of a beaver, and the fourth with an extraordinary scrawl, meant, it seems, for a lobster, — such being their respective totems. To these the lieutenant-governor added the seal of the province of Massachusetts, coupled with his own autograph.

From A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 1, Chapter 11 by Francis Parkman

Volume 6 of Parkman’s History of France in North America titled “A Half-Century of Conflict” was itself published in two volumes. This means that “Volume 6” (consistent with how past books published on this website were called) must be called “Part 6”, instead – to avoid confusion. This book is Volume 1 of “A Half-Century of Conflict”. The next book in the series will be called “Part 6, A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 2”.

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Preface to this book.

This book, forming Part VI. of the series called France and England in North America, fills the gap between Part V., “Count Frontenac,” and Part VII., “Montcalm and Wolfe;” so that the series now forms a continuous history of the efforts of France to occupy and control this continent.

In the present volumes the nature of the subject does not permit an unbroken thread of narrative, and the unity of the book lies in its being throughout, in one form or another, an illustration of the singularly contrasted characters and methods of the rival claimants to North America.

Like the rest of the series, this work is founded on original documents. The statements of secondary writers have been accepted only when found to conform to the evidence of contemporaries, whose writings have been sifted and collated with the greatest care. As extremists on each side have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I have been unfair to neither.

The manuscript material collected for the preparation of the series now complete forms about seventy volumes, most of them folios. These have been given by me from time to time to the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose library they now are, open to the examination of those interested in the subjects of which they treat. The collection was begun forty-five years ago, and its formation has been exceedingly slow, having been retarded by difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and for years were so in fact. Hence the completion of the series has required twice the time that would have sufficed under less unfavorable conditions.

BOSTON, March 26, 1892

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