Sebastian Rale-A Maine Tragedy of the Eighteenth Century: How much Condone? How much Condemn? page 67-76 John Francis Sprague Boston, Mass. Printed by the Heintzemann Press 1906 In undertaking to determine the truth re- garding Sebastian Rale, now that we have passed the times of sectarian bitterness, we find really no charges against him which in any degree constitute a valid excuse for the English colonists in transcending the methods of war as conducted by civilized nations, by wantonly murdering him instead of making him a pris- oner of war. The improbable tale related by Lieutenant Jaques, that he killed him contrary to orders and in self-defence, has probably not been taken seriously by any of the writers, and without any further evidence to sustain it than has yet ap- peared, it should be disregarded. Other than this mythical story, the two rea- sons which have been assigned by the advocates of his enemies as an apology for the course which they pursued, are (a), that he was a trai- tor and an inciter of rebellion against the Eng- lish Government; and (b), that in aiding and abetting the French in their warfare against the New England colonies, regarding this question of territorial rights, he encouraged the Indians to join the French and commit acts of cruelty upon the innocent English in that part of Maine that was in dispute. To arrive at any reasonable conclusion as to the charge that he was a traitor, it is well to consider the claims of the French to Acadia. Reference has already been made to the fact that there was an attempt between the English and French governments to settle the controversy regarding its ancient limits. The result of these efforts is found in " The Memorials of the Eng- lish and French Commissioners concerning the limits of Nova Scotia and Acadia from 1750 to 1753," an exhaustive work ' which was published in London (1754), and comprises 777 pages. It contains what might be called the "briefs" of the advocates of the two governments. In the twenty-third memorial on the British side, it was asserted that both nations having thus agreed that Pen- tagoet was within the western limits of Acadia, the French from this period omitted no oppor- tunity of endeavoring to extend by claim the limits of that side even as far as the River Ken- nebec." The twenty-fourth memorial states that, in 1685, upon a complaint that some English ves- sels had fished upon the coast of Acadia, the French Ambassador presented a memorial to the King of England, on the 16th day of Jan- uary, wherein he claims that the western line of Acadia extended as far west as " St. George's Island, which lies at the mouth of the river St. George "; that this was possessed by the French until the year 16 S4, when it was taken by the English, and in 1667 again restored to the French, pursuant to the treaty of Breda. In the twenty-ninth memorial they say: " It results from these negotiations, as well as from the alternatives proposed by the Ambassador of France, in the year 1700, that the Court of France judged that they had a right to extend the western limits of Acadia as far as the river of Kennebequi." The French contended that the construction of the twelfth and thirteenth articles of the treaty of Utrecht is very clear and precise; that the design of Great Britain in those articles was to secure to the English exclusive fishery, and that the English Commissioners, being unable to support the claim of their government upon the words in this treaty, " have reasoned upon evi- dence and argument foreign to the question." To demonstrate that the English themselves acknowledged that there was great doubt as to what were the ancient bounds of Acadia, and that the French possessions east of the Kenne- bec River were at least established and held un- der what lawyers would denominate " a color of right," I also quote the following statement of the case from the English arguments made to support their claims : " To show that these evidences by which the English Commissaries have endeavored to en- force the true meaning of the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, from which the dispute has taken its rise, and what is the nature of the treaty of Utrecht, having ceded to Great Britain all Nova Scotia or Acadia with its ancient boundaries, etc. "Clear and precise as the French Commis- sionaries now think the words of the treaty, a difference of construction has by them been raised upon them, and different limits are as- signed by the two crowns as the ancient limits." The French in these memorials based their claims upon ancient maps, charts, records of French historians, and the terms of the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, made March 29, 1632, when the English ceded this same territory to the French. As bearing upon the subject in hand, all this is not important unless it tends to absolve Father Rale from the charge of being a traitor to the English crown, for he had a right to assume that he was never its subject, but owed his loyalty to the French government, so long as it asserted sovereignty over the territory east of the Kennebec, as certainly as did any of the Protestant missionaries owe theirs to the English. The fact that ancient Acadia, by treaty and conquest, passed nine times between England and France in the period Of 127 years, and that none of these events conclusively decided what were its actual boundary lines, would seem to clearly demonstrate the general confusion and misunderstanding that existed during all of Rale's time regarding the whereabouts of these lines. Neither is it surprisingly strange that a mis- sionary whose post chanced to be upon territory the title to which was involved in such contro- versy between two great nations, should not have possessed profound legal knowledge re- garding questions of such character, but naturally gave his own government, by whose prerogative he was placed there, the benefit of the doubt. The Norridgewock mission was established long before the treaty of Utrecht, when the en- tire world acknowledged Acadia as belonging to the French. The Mission was in a territory between the Kennebec and the St. Croix, which the French from the first to the last contended did not pass to the English under this treaty. Rale was then a subject of the king of France and had been installed at his mission at Norridgewock by his government and his church, Did he not have a moral right to be loyal to the French in their contentions with the Eng- lish about the territory where he was ? Did he not have the right to sympathize with the French and do whatever he could that was con- sistent with his priestly office to aid them in holding, by force even, what he believed to be theirs, against the encroachments of the Eng- lish ? That he may, in his zeal as a patriot, have exceeded his duties as a priest, is very likely, and there is more or less evidence in the accounts of those times to substantiate this. He was under no obligation of fealty to Eng- land, unless a fair construction of the twelfth Article of the treaty of Utrecht transferred the territory upon which he dwelt from France to England. The French government and the governor of Canada were, during the storms of his life, contending that this was not the fact. Was he a traitor in not adopting the views of the English in regard to this question? Would he not have been a greater traitor if he had turned against France and become an adherent to England? As to his alleged cruelty, it must be admit- ted that he espoused the cause of the French, and it is strongly urged that he exerted his in- fluence with the Indians to fight the English colonists whom he believed unlawfully encroach- ing upon territory that rightfully belonged to the Indians and over which France had control. In this did he differ from the customs of those dark days? Were not the English and French for a century fierce rivals in their efforts to se- cure the aid of the Indians in fighting each other? And was it not well known to each of the contending forces and to the home govern- ment, and to the entire civilized world as well, that whenever or for whichever side the Indians fought, their methods were the very height of barbarous cruelty? When either side was able, by threats, cajol- ery, bribery or kindness, to win over to them- selves the help of the Indian warriors, it meant burning, pillage, scalping, murder and fiendish torture to the other side. In his designs, in this respect, Sebastian Rale' was no better and no worse than his com- peers in that time of religious fanaticism and devilish intolerance. That he was an intense and most strenuous partisan of his church and the government to which he believed his alle- giance belonged, can never be truthfully denied, and I believe that he was a natural, although perhaps a ripely developed product of the times of blood and bigotry, cruelty and tyranny in which he lived. Some writer has well said that "the age and times in which men live must be taken into consideration when we judge their character "; and this is true, and the fact should be fully realized before passing judgment upon one whose sincerity cannot be doubted and who has been condemned for acts which were mani- festly the result of an excessive zeal for the cause to which he gave his life. Then it seems very evident that the colonists broke faith with the Indians and violated the solemn agreements made with them at Ports- mouth and Arrowsic on many occasions and in ways which provoked the antagonism of the Indians and aroused their barbarous natures to commit acts of torture which might easily have been averted. It is also undoubtedly true that many of the cruelties and barbarities of the Indians were caused by the brandy and rum sold to them by the English, and about which Rale so often bitterly complained. Rale was their friend and counsellor and, it would seem, properly espoused their cause. One of the curious episodes in the life of Rale at Norridgewock was his controversy with a minister of Boston, James Baxter, which, be- ginning about theology, finally ended in a quar- rel between them as to which was the most learned in Latin. The correspondence discloses only an absurd vein of vanity in both. In closing this part of the subject I desire only to add that, from the time of the landing of the iron-hearted Northmen on our shores a thousand years ago or more, until the last of the cruel Indian wars were forever ended, the early history of our grand old State of Maine is replete with perilous adventures by sea and land, of struggles against misery and hardships of which we have no comprehension, of terrible conflicts, devastation and disaster. Our past is a wonderful one, rich in momentous historic events and full of material for song and romance; but it seems to me that whatever view the reader may take of his merits, his errors, his virtues or his faults, there is no event in all this lore more interesting and fascinating than the career of Sebastian Rale at Norridgewock, one of the bravest in the advance-guard in the forward movement of Christian civilization on the American continent. 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