The Jesuit priest Father Sébastian Rale (1657-1724) is a well-known yet polarizing figure from Maine’s colonial past. He’s been called an enemy of England, a beloved village priest, a Black Robe, a political operative, a “gifted linguist,” and “the apostle of the Abenakis.” Curiously, no one has called him a vegetarian.
The omission persists, despite Rale’s 1722 account of the simple vegan foods he ate in the early 18th-century in the Abenaki agricultural town of Nanrantsouak, along the Kennebec River. This August marks 300 years since Rale was killed in 1724 during the colonial massacre at Nanrantsouak (today referred to as Norridgewock and located at Old Point in Madison), where the British militia also shot and killed Chief Bomoseen, Chief Mog, a powerful clan mother, and dozens of townspeople, including women and children. Several events are planned for August 23 to 25 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Norridgewock Massacre and the death of Father Rale, including a mass, a talk on his life, readings from his letters, and a pilgrimage.
Find event details at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland or contact Joseph Moreshead at [email protected] .
In 1722, Rale (whose French name has many alternative spellings) wrote a long letter to his nephew, translated into English in 1892, where he reveals, “my nourishment is nothing but Indian corn, which is pounded and of which I make every day a kind of porridge that I cook with wate.
