Kennebec Martyr Father Rasle and the Norridgewock tribe

by Charles Francis T he upper reaches of the Kennebec River are a mecca for white water enthusiasts. Every spring and summer canoeists, kayakers and rafters travel here to challenge the many rapids and falls. There are, however, stretches of smooth quiet water. One of these is at Old Point near where the Sandy River joins the Kennebec in the town of Madison. Here, close to a picnic area surrounded by tall pines stands the tall shaft of a monument bearing an iron cross. The monument is a memorial to Sabastian Rasle, a Jesuit priest who was killed here more than 250 years ago. The monument also stands on the site of Narantsouak, the last stronghold of the Norridgwog (Norridgewock) tribe of the Kennebec Indians, the Indians to which Father Rasle ministered to for almost thirty-five years.

Sebastian Rasle was a symbol and a victim of the times in which he lived. The Indians that he served from 1691 to 1724 considered him a saint. The Indians respected him, and he respected them. He worked beside them in the fields, in the forest, and on the river. He made bayberry candles for their chapel, led a choir of over forty of their young people, and compiled a dictionary of their language. For the English settlers of Maine, however, Father Rasle was a devil. He was French. He was Catholic, and he consorted with the Indians.

The Indians Father Rasle served

at Narantsouak were a semi-agricultural people. They grew corn, squash, and what was to become known as Jerusalem artichokes. They netted and speared alewives, salmon, and sturgeon from the Kennebec. They planted in the spring, traveled to the coast in the summer to gather shellfish and to fish, and in the winter they hunted. They were a peaceful people. Unfortunately, however, their village of Narantsouak was situated on a major travel route of both the French and the English.

The French were the first Europeans to frequent the lands of the Kennebec. They canoed and portaged down from Quebec on the Chaudiere River and sailed up from Castine on the Kenne-

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bec. The French treated the Indians they encountered well, quickly making them friends and allies. In turn the Indians asked the French for missionaries. By the time the English had established trading posts at the mouth of the Kennebec and at Cushnoc (Augusta) the French were already well established, and the French practiced a policy of cultivating the Indians, which the English did not.

The first English settlers in Maine had for the most part maintained an uneasy peace with the native inhabitants of the territory. This relationship was to change, however, as the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony began what was to become a systematic eradication of the Indian. In 1675 King Philip’s War broke out in Massachusetts and quickly spread to Maine. From this time on Maine became the scene for some of the bloodiest fighting of the colonial period. Worsening the situation

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All the English settlements in Maine were attacked. Some several times. Over 500 settlers were killed and almost 2000 taken prisoner. Women and children were taken by force and made to march to Quebec. By 1713 only York, Kittery, and Wells were inhabited. It was during this period that Governor Shute of Massachusetts declared all-out war on the French and their Indian allies. The Indians at Narantsouak

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received special attention, as did Father Rasle.

In 1705 Colonel Winthrop Hilton led an expedition to Narantsouak and burned much of the village including Father Rasle’s church. Rasle, though, was undaunted. He quickly had a new temporary chapel built out of tree bark, and by 1718 a new and permanent church was completed. However, during the construction the aging priest broke both his legs and had to be taken by canoe to Quebec. By the time he returned the English had put a price on his head.

In 1722 Captain John Harmon led a force of 200 men against Narantsouak. Unfortunately for the of the village and for Father Rasle, most of the warriors were away hunting. The now crippled priest was forced to flee to the woods where he again had to watch his church burn along with most of the village. In addition, his dictionary of the Abnaki (cont. on page 56)

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language, a labor of some thirty years, was lost.

Finally, in 1724 the last attack on Narantsouak took place. This attack was led by Captain Jeremiah Moulton, who had a personal interest in wreaking violence on the Indians and their French confederates. A year or so earlier Moulton had returned to his home in York to find it in ruins from an Indian raid. He swore vengeance and was to achieve it with a sneak attack on Sabastian Rasle and his congregation. By the time he was done the village of Narantsouak was annihilated.

Father Rasle was leading a worship service when Moulton and his men swept down on the village. As the worshippers watched in horror, the priest was shot as he stood in the doorway of his little chapel. By the time the raid was over the Norridgwogs were so de- (cont. from page 55) moralized that they abandoned forever their home on the Kennebec. The surviving members of the tribe either journeyed to Quebec or joined with the Penobscots. As for Father Rasle’s records of the Kennebec, little remains but lists of local plants and animals and a few fragments of the work of a lifetime.

On the hundredth anniversary of the death of Father Rasle, Bishop Fenwick of Boston erected the monument that now stands on Old Point. In the 1920s land was acquired within sight of the iron cross on the monument for a Catholic cemetery. Nothing, however, remains of the village of Narantsouak, whose name ironically meant in Abnaki “smooth water between rapids.”

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