Norridgewock - Norridgewock Village

Norridgewock Village

Norridgewock is a corruption of the word Nanrantsouak, meaning "people of the still water between the rapids." Their principal encampment, also called Norridgewock, was located near 44°46′01″N 69°53′00″W / 44.767°N 69.8833°W / 44.767; -69.8833Coordinates: 44°46′01″N 69°53′00″W / 44.767°N 69.8833°W / 44.767; -69.8833 on a plateau within a broad bend of the Kennebec River, opposite its confluence with the Sandy River. A 1716 account by soldier/surveyor Joseph Heath describes the Indian village as a square fort surrounded by a 9-foot (2.7 m) palisade fence, each side 160 feet (49 m) long with a gate at its center. The fort's walls faced the major points of the compass. Two streets connected the gates, forming an open square at the center marked by a large cross. The stockade enclosed 26 cabins "built much after the English manner"—probably of logs. Canoes were beached along the river, although paddles were stored in the cabins. Extensive fields were cleared nearby for cultivation of maize, wheat, beans, pumpkins and squash. Twice a year, summer and winter, the tribe spent a few months at the seashore catching fish, seals, clams, oysters and seafowl.

The French claimed the Kennebec River because it provided a potential route to invade Quebec (as Benedict Arnold would demonstrate in 1775). The English claimed the St. George River because they held deeds, regardless of the fact that the sachems who signed them often believed they were only granting rights to use the land for hunting, fishing or safe passage. Sachems were not empowered to sell, the French argued, because Abenaki territory belonged to the entire tribe. But since France and England had pledged peace, New France could not take overt action against the settlements (and particularly their alarming blockhouses) in the contested regions. Instead, the French government found it expedient to secretly engage the Indians, guided by their French Jesuit missionaries, to hinder expansion of English sovereignty. Missionaries with dual loyalty to church and king were embedded within Abenaki bands on the Penobscot, St. Croix and Saint John rivers, but Norridgewock Village was considered Quebec's predominant advance guard.

Father Sébastien Rale (also spelled Rasle) had arrived in 1694 at Norridgewock to establish a Jesuit mission. His mission school is believed to be the first school in Maine. He built a chapel of bark in 1698, and despite reservations from medicine men, converted most inhabitants to the Roman Catholic religion. Burned in 1705, the chapel was replaced with a church finished in the autumn of 1720. It stood 20 paces outside the east gate, and measured 60 feet (18 m) long by 25 feet (7.6 m) wide, with an 18-foot (5.5 m) ceiling. Forty Abenaki youths in cassocks and surplices served as acolytes. In a 1722 letter written to John Goffe, the church was described by Johnson Harmon and Joseph Heath as:

"...a large handsome log building adorned with many pictures and toys to please the Indians..."

Able to speak the Abenaki language fluently, Father Rale immersed himself in Indian affairs. His "astonishing influence over their minds" raised suspicions that he was inciting their hostility toward the Protestant British, whom he considered heretics.