The murder of Father Sebastian Rasle.

by Roland D. Hallee

Continued from last week

Those were anxious days at Teconnet. The Indians carefully abstained from acts of violence but the situation grew worse and worse. At last they sent a swift runner through the woods to Pemaquid to invite Magistrate Shurte to a council at Teconnet. Immediately, he set out in his small boat, was joined at Arrowsic by Capt. Davis and arrived safely at Teconnet. The council was held in a great wigwam where five chiefs sat in state while a throng of warriors stood by the door.

Assiminasqua, the Prince and orator of Waterville, opened the council. As Shurte and Davis proceeded to lay aside their arms he said, “Brothers keep your arms as honorable men. Be without apprehension. We do not, like the Mohawks seize messengers who come to us. Nay we never do as you people once did with 14 of our Indians sent to treat with you, taking away their arms and putting them under guard. We have been in deep waters. You told us to come down and give up our arms and powder or you would kill us, so we were forced to part with our hunting guns, or to leave both our fort and our corn. What we did was a great loss, we feel its weight.” Shurte responded with professions of friendship. Tarumkin answered: “I love the clear streams of friendship that meet and unite. Certainly, I myself choose the shades of peace. My heart is true and I give you my hand in pledge of the truth.”

But the differences between the parties in council were hard to meet. The Indians must have guns and ammunition or they would starve. If the whites sold them these they were providing means for their own destruction. At last, Madockawando, adopted son of Assiminasqua and son-in-law of Baron Castine cried out: “Do we not meet here on equal ground? We ask where shall we buy powder and shot for our winter’s hunting? Shall we leave the English and apply to the French for it, or shall we let our Indians die. We have waited long to hear you tell us. Now we want yes or no.” Shurte was not able to give a satisfactory answer. A little more confidence would have averted much bloodshed.

On August 13, 1676, the first blow was struck in which the Teconnet Indians had part. Richard Hammond, the trader, had a bad reputation at Teconnet. The Indians declared he cheated them, filled them with strong drink and robbed them of their furs. In revenge they burned Hammond’s place at Woolwich, killed him and two others and took 16 persons captive who were conveyed to Teconnet and kept under guard.

The next night, August 14, the mansion and large establishment of Capt. Lake, at Arrowsic, was destroyed. Capt. Lake was killed and Capt. Davis of the Teconnet Council severely wounded. Thirty-five prisoners were taken.

In a few weeks the whole county was desolated, the inhabitants killed, captured or driven away.

Then Madockawando saw it would be a good time to arrange for peace. On April 12, 1678, the Kennebec and other Sagamores signed a treaty of peace. The treaty provided for the release of prisoners. Ten years of peace and rapid progress on the part of the English, were followed by the King Williams’ War.

Prisoners were brought and Waterville became the central station on the prisoners’ sad march to slavery, death or long delayed ransom. In 1692, Col. Church on his third Eastern expedition, burned the fort and settlement at Teconnet and the history of earliest Waterville, the metropolis of the Cannibas Indians, was ended. The white men claimed the Indians set it on fire at their approach. The Indians said the white men burned the place. On August 12, 1692, 18 of the Maine Sagamores met at Pemaquid and agreed to a treaty of peace. The peace, however, was not observed. Later in the same year Chief Bomaseen was supposed to be concerned in the destruction of Dover, NH. In November 1694, Bomaseen visited Pemaquid, was recognized, arrested, and sent to prison in Boston. This enraged the Kennebec warriors and led to the destruction of Fort William Henry, at Pemaquid, in 1696. They only agreed to peace with the release of Bomaseen. The captives were confined to Norridgewock, which became the prison station following the burning of Teconnet.

Meanwhile, the man who for 30 years was to exercise the most potent influence on the Kennebec had arrived. It was Father Sebastian Rasle, a native of France with an excellent education and of high rank. He was sent to Norridgewock from Québec and revived the mission founded half a century before by Druillette. With utter devotion, Rasle gave himself to his work. He shared the Indian’s lot, sought to guard his rights and naturally shared his country’s hatred of the English.

Soon he became an object of suspicion and hatred to the English. They charged him with hindering the formation of treaties and with preventing the execution of them, and with encouraging the Indians in their deeds of bloodshed. In 1717, when Gov. Shurte, of Massachusetts, visited the Kennebec in order to make a treaty with the Indians, Father Rasle championed both the Indians and France in the effort to prevent alienation of lands and the erection of forts.

On August 19, 1724, an expedition numbering 208 men led by captains Harmon and Moulton, left Richmond Fort. They arrived at Taconnet on August 20, where they left 40 men to guard their boats while the rest marched silently and swiftly through the woods toward Norridgewock. On the way they came upon an Indian with his wife and daughter. Afraid they would warn Norridgewock of their plan, they fired upon them. The man was killed trying to escape across the river. It was the noted Chief Bomaseen.

Norridgewock was taken totally by surprise and the inhabitants fled panic stricken. Among those shot and killed was Father Rasle. The romantic story that Rasle came forth boldly to his death while seven heroic Indians covered him with their own bodies until all were shot down was disposed by the testimony of Lieutenant Jaques, who claimed that he himself shot the priest in a cabin while he was in the act of loading a gun.

On August 22, 1724, Capt. Johnson Harmon appeared before the governor and council at Boston with 27 Indian scalps and the scalp of Father Rasle. “In consideration of extraordinary service,” he was promoted and rewarded with cash.

The destruction of Norridgewock, terrible though it was, was in reprisal for the destruction of hundreds of homes and many village of the English settlers, and it was practically the end of trouble with the Indians on the Kennebec.

Father Rasle was a remarkable man. His love for his Indian converts and his self sacrificing devotion to what he believed to be their interest were beyond question, but as a loyal citizen of France he felt called upon to do everything in his power to prevent the English from getting control of the country. He was the victim on the banks of the Kennebec, of strifes, which had their origin on the banks of the Thames and of the Seine, strifes which destroyed both him and his followers, but among all the pictures of early Maine is none more beautiful than that of the priest and the reverent Indian worshippers as they gathered morning and evening in the chapel at Norridgewock. After the death of Rasle, the Indians fled in despair to Canada. For 25 years there was little to record. The half century of war had nearly destroyed both the Indians and the English settlers and as late as 1749 there were only two white families left above Merrymeeting Bay.