Background
Sébastien Racle was born on January 4, 1657, or January 20, 1654, at Pontarlier in the former province of Franche Comté.
Sébastien Racle was born on January 4, 1657, or January 20, 1654, at Pontarlier in the former province of Franche Comté.
In early life he entered the Jesuit order, his novitiate dating from 1675. From 1677 to 1684 he was an instructor at Carpentras and Nîmes, and finished his studies in theology at Lyons. From the latter place he volunteered for the Canadian mission.
He sailed, July 23, 1689, from La Rochelle on the same ship with the Count de Frontenac, who was returning to Canada for his second term as governor.
Râle's first experiences in New France were among the settled Indian villages near Quebec, especially those of the Abnaki and Hurons. He devoted himself to the acquisition of the Indian languages, in which he soon became adept.
In 1691 he was transferred to the Illinois mission to succeed Marquette and Allouez. He made the long journey to the upper country by way of the Ottawa River, arrived too late to proceed that season to Illinois, and passed the winter at Michilimackinac. In a letter to his brother he gave a very good account of the customs and beliefs of the Ottawa Indians. The next spring he continued his journey to the Indian villages on the Illinois River, but in 1693 was recalled to Canada and sent to the Abnaki mission in what is now the state of Maine. The Abnaki had early come under Christian influences and the branch of the tribe that lived on the Kennebec River received Râle with joy, helped him to build a chapel, and devoutly attended services and performed the offices of the faith.
The missionary was the most popular man in the village. When a kindred tribe of the Malecites visited Narantsouac (Norridgewock), his village on the Kennebec, he had the happiness of converting the whole tribe. All the while, however, the Abnaki Indians were sending out parties to ravage the Massachusetts frontier, killing pioneer women and children, in the war then existing between the French and British colonies.
In the interval between the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) and the outbreak of Queen Anne's War (1702), Râle endeavored to keep the Indians quiet and made a brief visit to France (1700) to collect funds for his mission. He beautified the chapel, trained a choir of boys as choristers, and made candles of the wax of the bayberry for the altar. But with the outbreak of war again, trouble began. The governor of Massachusetts came to the mouth of the Kennebec and had a council with the Abnaki, urging them to send the French Missionary away. They refused, whereupon in 1705 an English expedition made its way up the Kennebec and burned the Abnaki village and its chapel, while the missionary fled to the woods.
After the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) the trouble was intensified. The British claimed sovereignty over all the region, while the governor of New France attempted to retain the allegiance of the Indians and employed the missionaries as secret political agents. Vaudreuil ordered Râle to encourage the Indians in acts of hostility against the English frontier.
In 1717 Governor Shute of Massachusetts held a council with the Abnaki, offering them an English missionary in place of the French priest. Again they refused and a state of petite guerre ensued, in time of peace. The English were highly incensed against Râle and, according to his own report, placed a price upon his head.
In 1721 Norridgewock was again raided by the British, the missionary's Abnaki dictionary and other treasures carried off, and the chapel once more burned, but Râle was warned and escaped. In August 1724, however, he was shot down at the door of his house by a British party, and his scalp taken and carried to Boston, to "the great joy and exultation of the people of Massachusetts".
Râle perished, not as a martyr to the faith but as a victim of the political policy of Canada's officials, who used the missionaries as agents to maintain their hold on the Indian tribes in the district that had been ceded to the British by treaty.
Râle was a very able missionary, a fine linguist, and a bold, courageous champion of the policy of the French. Had he been less successful he would have been less dangerous to the New England colonists and less hated by them. His Abnaki dictionary is in the Harvard library; it was published in 1833 in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His prayers are yet in use among the Indians of Maine. The bell of his chapel and other relics are in the Maine Historical Society. A monument to his memory was erected at Norridgewock in 1833 by Bishop Fenwick of Boston.
Quotations: "Any treaty with the governor… is null and void if I do not approve it, for I give them so many reasons against it that they absolutely condemn what they have done. "
Quotes from others about the person
Francis Parkman describes him as:
"Fearless, resolute, enduring; boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating; a vehement partisan; apt to see things not as they are, but as he wished them to be… yet no doubt sincere in his 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 an active agent of the Canadian government. "
