French Missions in Maine

1611-1613

Jesuit missionaries established the first French missions in North America in Maine between 1611 and 1613. The French missionaries wanted to convert the Wabanaki people to Catholicism. To do that, they established mission villages where the Natives could settle, grow crops and attend mass. Some of the mission villages became places of refuge for the Wabanaki when they were forced to flee their homelands.

 

The French government encouraged missionaries because it believed that having religious power in the New World would strengthen New France during their struggles with England. The English were less interested in converting Native people to Christianity than in gaining control of lands that could be settled by English colonists. Therefore, the English saw the activities of French missionaries as a sneaky way for the French to win the loyalty of Native people and turn them against the English.

 

British Attacks on French Missions

Father Pierre Biard came to Acadia and established St. Sauveur mission somewhere on the coast of Frenchman Bay in 1613. The English destroyed that mission after only 13 weeks. Father Biard was taken hostage and Brother du Thet was killed in the skirmish. This began nearly 150 years of warfare between the French and English in North America. The Wabanaki were often caught in the middle of many wars between the French in Acadia and English colonists in New England as these European powers fought for control of territories in North America.

 

In 1646, Jesuit priest Father Sebastian Rale arrived in Maine and established the mission village at Norridgewock. The Norridgewock village became very important as a Wabanaki - French settlement on the eastern edge of English territory. The English accused Rale of inciting the Wabanaki to wage war against them. The English attacked and burned the village in 1705 and again in 1722, when a warrant for Rale’s arrest was issued. During that same war, the English burned the mission fort at Panawamske (Indian Island, the Penobscot Nation’s home).

 

Finally, in August of 1724, an English, Massachusetts and Mohawk raiding party attacked Norridgwock. Father Rale and 26 Wabanaki were killed and scalped. Many other Wabanaki were killed and the survivors fled to French missions in Quebec.