Father Rale's War - Historical Context

Historical Context

The war occurred as a result of an expansion of New England settlements along the Kennebec River (in present-day Maine) and of the movement of more New England fishermen into Nova Scotia waters. The establishment of a permanent British settlement at Canso was particular sore spot with the local Mi'kmaq. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended Queen Anne's War and included the cession of peninsular Nova Scotia to Great Britain, had facilitated this expansion. The treaty, however, had been signed in Europe and had not involved any member of the Wabanaki tribes. None had been consulted about the expansion of British settlements, and they protested through raids on British fishermen and settlements. For the first and only time, Wabanaki would fight New Englanders and the British on their own terms and for their own reasons and not principally to defend French imperial interests. In response to Wabanaki hostilities toward the expansion, the governor of Nova Scotia, Richard Philipps, built a fort in traditional Mi'kmaq territory at Canso in 1720, and Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute built forts on traditional Abenaki territory around the mouth of the Kennebec River: Fort George at Brunswick (1715), St. George's Fort at Thomaston (1720), and Fort Richmond (1721) at Richmond. The Jesuits helped the Abanaki to their land claims by building a church in the Abenaki village of Norridgewock (present-day Madison, Maine) on the Kennebec River, maintaining a mission at Penobscot on the Penobscot River, and building a church in the Maliseet village of Medoctec on the St. John River.

These fortifications and Catholic missions escalated the conflict. In Nova Scotia, the Mi'kmaq raided the new fort at Canso in 1720. A Jesuit missionary named Sébastien Rale (also spelled Rasles) was stationed at Norridgewock, while an Abenaki named Gray Lock led raids against the encroaching New England settlements. In the fall of 1721, the Abenakis burned the farms and killed livestock in the settlements around Casco Bay.