They once held sway over Norridgewock

from 2023 Western Lakes & Mountains Region

Chansonetta Stanley Emmons Part of the talented Kingfield family

by Jeffrey Bradley

Before 1763 England and France warred constantly over possession of North America. A welter of royally confusing alphabet wars — King William’s, Queen Anne’s, King Philip’s to name just a few — involving New France, New England, and the Abenaki homelands kept all frontier Maine in a turmoil. Battles, skirmishes, raids, and reprisals, with brief outbreaks of peace, waged between the English colonists and their Iroquois allies and the French colonists and their Abenaki allies in a decades-long cycle of mayhem and strife. Lasting from 1688 to 1725, the carnage left settlements smoldering, captives taken, massacres per- petuated, and misery the lot of famished survivors. At times it seemed the whole region was ablaze, and before it was done the Abenaki nation had been torn to tatters.

The settlements of Norridgewock Village especially experienced this chaos. Tribes in Somerset County had previously coexisted, barring the occasional foray by warlike Iroquois. But all that changed with the Europeans, for the French proceeded to marry them, while the English pushed them away; and both had disastrous results for the Indians.

After first contact in 1524 epidemics, ill-treatment and warfare had by the early 1600s already decimated indigenous populations. An Eastern Algonquian tribe and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy, the Abenakis occupied interior Maine near present-day Norridgewock, Starks and Madison. Warfare drew them in on the side of the French. And while there is some speculation over the origins of the term “Norridgewock” there is none whatsoever concerning the Native response to the English.

Having staked the Kennebec River as the western border of Acadia, the French had to contend with English claims that the line lay 40 miles east on the St. George River. What stood in between was contested territory containing the three Abenaki strongholds that at various times and places were considered Norridgewock settlements. In Madison the site at Old Point was the last. Collectively they are designated the Norridgewock Archaeological District, a National Historic Landmark. New France especially desired the boundary fixed on the Kennebec because from Quebec that river led straight to the heart of the disputed area in Norridgewock. Alarmed at English advances on what they considered their preeminent village, the French were precluded from hostile adventure by a state of peace that existed; instead, Jesuit missionaries were inserted into Abenaki encampments to counter the ominous threat. In 1694 Father Sébastien Rale arrived in Norridgewock Village expecting to end this unnerving Protestant presence.

A contemporary describes the village as a square fort with 9-foot palisades surrounding sturdy log cabins, with each wall running 160 feet and containing a centered gate. Connecting streets formed a large central square where a prominent cross was erected. With dozens of canoes beached on the riverbank, and the spacious fields cleared for planting, this site, by any standards, was substantial.

Jesuits then were a militant arm of the Catholic Church, and with his matted beard, piercing eyes and black robes flapping in the wintry wind Father Rale had more than a touch of the zealot about him. Educated, charismatic, endowed with prodigious energy, the tireless priest took the mission promptly in hand, converted droves of adherents, established the first school in Maine, and built a church described as “a large handsome log building adorned with many pictures and toys to please the Indians.” He spoke fluent Abenaki, start- ed an Indian alphabet, and immersed himself in their affairs. Rightly suspicious, the English would later accuse him of using “astonishing influence” to foment resentment against them.

Initially Abenakis became involved in the fighting due to their friendship with a French military officer who was also oddly an Indian chief. In 1703, tactics of strike and counterstrike were adopted when some 500 braves including the Abenakis under command of a French officer launched a successful attack against Wells. In reprisal, during the winter of 1705, the English governor dispatched 300 English colonial militia to seize Father Rale and sack the village. Forewarned, the good Father fled with his papers into the woods, leaving the frustrated raiders to settle for setting the torch. An uneasy peace ensued that left the Acadian boundary muddled, but the Abenakis willing to accept English trading posts on their (cont. on page 26)

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(cont. from page 25) land. Goodwill faded however, as their fortified blockhouses began to go up. Father Rale resumed his instigating by preaching on the evils of giving away ancestral land so freely while railing against the perfidious English heresy. In 1721, 250 warriors in 90 canoes delivered an ultimatum to the English governor at Georgetown demanding the total cessation of English encroachment and complete removal of every vestige of influence from all Native grounds under pain of severest penalty.

What happened next became known as Father Rale’s War, and it ended badly.

With a price put on Rale’s head, English militia in 1722 again descended on Norridgewock with orders to capture that elusive priest, pillage the town, and burn the church to the ground. Yet, once more, they came away empty-handed. The outraged tribe in response moved south to attack, overrun and lay waste the town of Brunswick. In turn, the governor declared all-out war and on a hot afternoon in August of 1724 the final Battle of Norridgewock got underway. The English colonials attacked, taking the now stockadeless village by surprise; they shot the place up, caused the women and children to flee in a panic, and chased and dispatched the Norridgewock sachem. Another sixty braves were killed or wounded, with Father Rale himself shot in the head during the melee. Scalps were taken, the village plundered, and everything else was burned or destroyed. A few stragglers lingered on, but most other survivors simply buried their dead and dispersed away north to Canada.

Like two chess grandmasters locked in titanic battle, England and France used the Native Americans like tactical pieces to further an overall strategy. In the end, the Abenakis were simply pawns to be played, sacrificed, then removed from the board and dropped in the box.