Over Labor Day we decided to take a ride out to find the cemetery with Father Rale’s monument was located. Having found it, I felt I wanted to share this spot with others, thus I placed a cache here. There are signs all over the place to remind you to please respect the sanctity of this site. Also on this location is a marker to indicate the school he started for the Wabanaki’s.
Some background on Father Rale:
Born in Pontarlier, France, Sébastien Rale studied in Dijon. In 1675 he joined the Society of Jesus at Dole and taught Greek and rhetoric at Nîmes. He volunteered for the American missions and came to the New World in a party led by Governor-general Frontenac of New France in 1689.[1] His first missionary work was at an Wabanaki village Saint Francois, near Quebec. (Upon the eventual defeat of Rale and the Wabanaki at Norridgewock, Maine, the Wabanaki retreated to St. Francois). He then spent two years ministering to the Illinois Indians at Kaskaskia. The former teacher of Greek would learn and speak the Wabanaki language, and in 1691 began compiling an Wabanaki-French dictionary.
In 1694 Râle was sent to direct the Wabanaki mission at Norridgewock (now in Maine) on the Kennebec River. (He had been preceded in the area by other priests, the first in 1646.[2] Râle made his headquarters at Norridgewock, where in 1698 he built a church.[3]
The New England colonists regarded with suspicion the arrival of a Catholic French missionary in the midst of a tribe for the most part hostile to the English. They presumed that the Frenchman would do his best to stoke this hostility. Hence the attacks perpetrated on the eastern frontier of New England during Râle's long residence amongst the Abenaki were for the most part attributed, either directly or indirectly, to him.[1]
Queen Anne's War
When Queen Anne's War broke out, with New France and New England again fighting to control the region, Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley arranged a conference with tribal representatives at Casco Bay in 1703 to propose that they remain neutral. However, in August, a party of the Norridgewock tribe joined a larger force of French and Indians, commanded by Alexandre Leneuf de Beaubassin, to attack Wells in the Northeast Coast Campaign. While the English suspected Father Rale of inciting the tribe against them, the French minister, Pontchartrain, wrote to the Jesuit superior Pierre de La Chasse to have Father Rale recalled, as he was suspected of being lukewarm about the war.[3]
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.[3]
By 1710, however, Rale had returned to the mission whose members called him "Black Robe." The Jesuit's instruction of the tribe in Catholicism was accomplished, and Mass was celebrated in the Abenaki tongue each morning and Vespers each evening. Rale wrote 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 Battle of Norridgewock
Main article: Battle of Norridgewock
In August 1724, a force of 208 soldiers (which would split into 2 units under the commands of captains Johnson Harmon and Jeremiah Moulton) left Fort Richmond (now Richmond, Maine) in 17 whaleboats up the Kennebec.[4] At Taconic Falls (now Winslow), 40 men were left to guard the boats as the troops continued on foot. On August 23, 1724 (N. S.), the expedition came upon the village of Norridgewock unexpectedly. Many of the Indians were routed, leaving 26 warriors dead and 14 wounded. Among the casualties was Sébastien Rale. Harmon's son-in-law, Lt. Jacques, scalped Fr. Rale.
Rale's body was mutilated, and his scalp redeemed in Boston with those of the other dead. The Boston authorities gave a reward for the scalps, and Harmon was promoted. Thereafter, the French and Indians claimed that the missionary died "a martyr" at the foot of a large cross set in the central square, drawing the soldiers' attention to himself to save his parishioners. The English militia claimed that he was "a bloody incendiary" shot in a cabin while reloading his flintlock. A Mohawk named Christian, who accompanied the troops, slipped back after they had departed and set the village and church ablaze.
The 150 Abenaki survivors returned to bury the fallen before abandoning Norridgewock for Canada. Rale was interred beneath the altar at which he had ministered his converts. In 1833, Bishop Fenwick dedicated an 11 foot tall obelisk monument, erected by subscription, over his grave at what is today St. Sebastian's Cemetery at Old Point in Madison.
Rale remains a polarizing figure. Francis Parkman described 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; given to inaccuracy and exaggeration, 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."[citation needed]
Just down the road from this cemetery, there is a picnic area with more information on Fr. Rales and the Norridgewock Indian Village. This is protected land as you will be walking on the same grounds where the fighting happened.
Near Father Rale's momument you will find a smaller monument noting the first Native American school in the region, now known as the State of Maine. To find the final for this cache you will need to solve the following equations:
Subtract 1100 from the first year notated on this plaque.This value will be XXX.
You will also need to subtract 1335 from the year the plaque was placed. This value will be YYY.
The cache may be found at N44 45.XXX; W069 51.YYY