Sébastien Rale, (or Sebastian), (January 4, 1657 – August 23, 1724), was a Jesuit missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 and lexicographer who worked among the eastern Abenaki people, but became caught up in political and military struggles between New France

New France

New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...

, New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 and the natives, which would claim his life during Dummer's War

Dummer's War

Dummer's War , also known as Lovewell's War, Father Rale's War, Greylock's War, the Three Years War, the 4th Indian War or the Wabanaki-New England War of 1722–1725, was a series of battles between British settlers of the three northernmost British colonies of North America of the time and the...

.

Early years

Born in Pontarlier

Pontarlier

Pontarlier is a commune and one of the two sub-prefectures of the Doubs department in the Franche-Comté region in eastern France.-History:...

, France, Sébastien Rale studied in Dijon

Dijon

Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....

. Despite parental disapproval, in 1675 he joined the Society of Jesus

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 at Dole to become a priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

. He would teach Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 and rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

 at Nîmes

Nîmes

Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...

 until, full of Counter-Reformation

Counter-Reformation

The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...

 zeal, he volunteered for the American missions. He came to the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

 in a party led by Governor-general Frontenac

Louis de Buade de Frontenac

Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac et de Palluau was a French soldier, courtier, and Governor General of New France from 1672 to 1682 and from 1689 to his death in 1698...

 of New France in 1689, and his first missionary work was at an Abenaki village near Quebec

Quebec City

Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

. He then spent two years ministering the Illinois

Illiniwek

The Illinois Confederation, sometimes referred to as the Illiniwek or Illini, were a group of twelve to thirteen Native American tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley of North America...

 Indians at Kaskaskia

Kaskaskia

The Kaskaskia were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation or Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in the Great Lakes region...

. The former teacher of Greek would learn and speak the Abenaki language, and in 1691 began compiling an Abenaki-French dictionary.

Mission at Norridgewock

During King William's War

King William's War

The first of the French and Indian Wars, King William's War was the name used in the English colonies in America to refer to the North American theater of the Nine Years' War...

, Rale was sent in 1694 to what is now Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

, where he directed the Abenaki mission at Norridgewock

Norridgewock

The Norridgewock were a band of the Abenaki Native Americans/First Nations, an Eastern Algonquian tribe of the United States and Canada. The tribe occupied an area in Maine to the west and northwest of the Penawapskewi tribe, which was located on the western bank of the Penobscot River...

 on the Kennebec River

Kennebec River

The Kennebec River is a river that is entirely within the U.S. state of Maine. It rises in Moosehead Lake in west-central Maine. The East and West Outlets join at Indian Pond and the river then flows southward...

. In 1698, he built a church. When Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War , as the North American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession was known in the British colonies, was the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought between France and England, later Great Britain, in North America for control of the continent. The War of the...

 broke out, with New France and New England again fighting to control the region, Abenaki tribes found themselves stuck in the middle. Massachusetts

Province of Massachusetts Bay

The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a crown colony in North America. It was chartered on October 7, 1691 by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England and Scotland...

 Governor Joseph Dudley

Joseph Dudley

Joseph Dudley was an English colonial administrator. A native of Roxbury, Massachusetts and son of one of its founders, he had a leading role in the administration of the unpopular Dominion of New England , and served briefly on the council of the Province of New York, where he oversaw the trial...

 arranged a conference with tribal representatives in 1703 to propose that they remain neutral. On the contrary, however, the Norridgewock tribe in August joined a larger force of French and Indians

French and Indian Wars

The French and Indian Wars is a name used in the United States for a series of conflicts lasting 74 years in North America that represented colonial events related to the European dynastic wars...

, commanded by Alexandre Leneuf de Beaubassin, to attack Wells

Wells, Maine

Wells is a town in York County, Maine, United States. Founded in 1643, it is the third-oldest town in Maine. The population was 9,400 at the 2000 census. Wells Beach is a popular summer destination.-History:...

. Father Rale was widely suspected of inciting the tribe against the English because their settlements and blockhouse

Blockhouse

In military science, a blockhouse is a small, isolated fort in the form of a single building. It serves as a defensive strong point against any enemy that does not possess siege equipment or, in modern times, artillery...

s encroached on Abenaki land (and so uncomfortably close to Quebec

Quebec City

Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

), but also because they were Protestant and therefore heretic

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

s. Governor Dudley put a price on his head. In the winter of 1705, 275 British soldiers under the command of Colonel Winthrop Hilton were dispatched to seize Rale and sack the village. Warned in time, the priest escaped into the woods with his papers, but the militia burned the village and church.

By 1710, however, Rale had returned to the mission which called him "Black Robe." The Jesuit's indoctrination of the tribe into the Roman Catholic religion succeeded, with Mass

Mass (liturgy)

"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...

 in the Abenaki tongue each morning and Vespers

Vespers

Vespers is the evening prayer service in the Western Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran liturgies of the canonical hours...

 each evening. He would write to his nephew that:

"...as it is needful to control the imagination of the savages, too easily distracted, I pass few working days without making them a short exhortation for the purpose of inspiring a horror of the vices to which their tendency is strongest, and for strengthening them in the practice of some virtue.

My advice always shapes their resolutions."

Rale also succeeded in attaching the tribe to the New France cause. Combined with years of rough treatment by British border settlers who acted as if Indians were "vicious and dangerous wild animals", the French induced in the tribe a deep distrust of English intentions, despite Abenaki dependence on English trading post

Trading post

A trading post was a place or establishment in historic Northern America where the trading of goods took place. The preferred travel route to a trading post or between trading posts, was known as a trade route....

s to exchange furs for other necessities.

Treaty of Utrecht

The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht

Treaty of Utrecht

The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...

 brought some peace, and at the Treaty of Portsmouth

Treaty of Portsmouth (1713)

The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on July 13, 1713, ended hostilities between Eastern Abenakis with the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The agreement renewed a treaty of 1693 the Indians had made with Governor William Phips, two in a series of attempts to establish peace between Indians and...

 the Indians ostensibly swore allegiance to Britain. But as historian Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as history and especially as literature, although the biases of his...

 remarks, "...it is safe to say they did not know what the words meant." Meanwhile, the boundary between New France and New England remained contested. England claimed all lands extending to the St. George River, but most Abenakis inhabiting them were sympathetic to the French, and through their missionaries, to the Roman Catholic Church. In August 1717, Governor Samuel Shute

Samuel Shute

Samuel Shute was a military officer and royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. After serving in the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, he was appointed by King George I as governor of Massachusetts in 1716...

 met with tribal representatives of Norridgewock and other Abenaki bands in Georgetown

Georgetown, Maine

Georgetown is a town in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,020 at the 2000 census. Home to Reid State Park, the town is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 on a coastal island, warning that cooperation with the French would bring them "utter ruin and destruction". Nevertheless, in 1720 Governor-general of New France Vaudreuil

Philippe de Rigaud Vaudreuil

Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil was a French politician, who was Governor-general of New France from 1703 to 1725....

writes that:

"Father Rale continues to incite Indians of the mission at [Norridgewock] not to allow the English to spread over their lands."