Battle of Norridgewock

A militia force drawn from the New England Colonies descended upon Norridgewock, an Abenaki settlement, in an assault later remembered as the Norridgewock Massacre. This clash took place on disputed ground at the fringes of the American frontier, and the outcome was the slaughter of the village's Abenaki residents at the hands of the attacking militiamen.

Several goals drove the colonists toward this attack. They sought to curb the influence Abenaki communities held in the region, to halt Catholic missionary work among them and thereby diminish what colonists saw as French sway, and to open a path for New England settlers to push into both Abenaki lands and Acadia. According to New France's own boundaries, this territory began at the Kennebec River in what is now southern Maine. Beyond these strategic aims, financial incentives played a role too: the Massachusetts provincial assembly had placed a bounty of £100 specifically on the scalp of Râle, and the colony more broadly offered rewards for Abenaki scalps during the course of the conflict.

Leading roughly two hundred New England militiamen into battle were Captains Johnson Harmon, Jeremiah Moulton, and Richard Bourne, also recorded as Brown. Their target was Narantsouak, called Norridgewock, situated along the Kennebec River near where the modern town of the same name would later rise. Among the leaders guiding the village at that time were the sachems Bomazeen and Welákwansit, the latter known to English colonists as Mog. Overseeing the settlement's Catholic mission was a Jesuit priest from France named Sébastien Râle.

Sources differ somewhat on the death toll, though the majority place the number of Abenaki killed at around eighty. In the aftermath, New Englanders poured into the lower Kennebec area, planting new settlements there once the fighting had ended.

Background

When the Treaty of Utrecht concluded Queen Anne's War in 1713, it opened the door for New England's settlers to push further into contested lands. Signed across the ocean in Europe, this agreement had never included any Wabanaki voice or representative. Because no one had sought their consent, the Wabanaki answered this territorial encroachment with raids against fishing vessels and settlements belonging to the British. This marked a unique moment: the only occasion when Wabanaki warriors clashed with New Englanders and British forces purely on their own terms, driven by their own grievances rather than serving French colonial ambitions.

Nova Scotia's governor, Richard Phillips, responded to this Wabanaki resistance by constructing a fort within Mi'kmaq homeland at Canso in 1720. Around the same period, Massachusetts governor Samuel Shute erected fortifications on Abenaki land near where the Kennebec River meets the sea. The French asserted their own claim to this same Kennebec territory, establishing a church within the Abenaki settlement of Norridgewock and another among the Maliseet at Medoctec along the Saint John River. Rather than easing tensions, these forts and religious missions only deepened the conflict. Massachusetts had already placed a price on the head of Râle by 1720.

During the winter months of 1722, a company of New England rangers descended upon Norridgewock hoping to seize Râle himself. Though he managed to slip away, his pursuers left the church and mission house in ruins. The Mi'kmaq retaliated for this assault by besieging Annapolis Royal in May 1722, targeting Nova Scotia's lieutenant governor, John Doucett. Then, on June 13 of that year, in territory now known as Maine, the Wabanaki and their allies set fire to Brunswick near the Kennebec's mouth, seizing captives whom they hoped to trade for their own people held prisoner in Boston. This prompted Shute to formally declare war against the eastern tribes on July 25.

Yet Shute's tenure would end abruptly. On January 1, 1723, he sailed for London, worn down by constant friction with an uncooperative Assembly, the body holding the colony's purse strings, which had been locked in dispute with the Governor's Council over authority to direct the war effort. Governance then fell to Lieutenant-governor William Dummer. As Abenaki attacks continued, the Assembly finally found itself compelled to take action, launching what history would remember as Father Rale

Raid

In August 1724, a company of 208 soldiers set out from Fort Richmond, now Richmond, Maine, traveling up the Kennebec in seventeen whaleboats. The force was divided into two units, one under Captain Johnson Harmon and the other under Captain Jeremiah Moulton. Upon reaching Taconic Falls, now Winslow, Maine, forty men stayed behind to watch over the boats while the remaining troops pressed onward on foot. On August 21, this body of rangers struck down Chief Bomoseen, wounded his daughter fatally, and seized his wife as a prisoner.

The following day, August 22, Moulton and Harmon guided 200 rangers toward Norridgewock, the principal Abenaki settlement along the Kennebec, with the aim of slaying Father Sébastien Râle and razing the town. When the assault came on the 23rd, some 160 Abenaki were present, and a great many fell as they attempted flight. Canoes loaded with entire families were fired upon by the advancing rangers. Harmon later remarked that no fewer than fifty bodies were swept downstream before his men could pull them back for scalping. Roughly thirty-one Abenaki stood their ground to fight, buying time for others to get away, though nearly all who resisted were slain. Lieutenant Richard Jacques struck down Râle within the first moments of the clash, Chief Mog also fell, and close to two dozen women and children were slaughtered by the rangers. On the English side, the toll came to two militiamen and a single Nauset. Harmon went on to burn the Abenaki fields, forcing the survivors to give up their homeland and resettle farther north at the Abenaki town of St Francois, now Odanak, Quebec. In the aftermath, twenty-six warriors lay dead and fourteen more wounded among the scattered Indians. It was Jacques,

Aftermath

After the fighting ended, the 150 Abenaki who lived through it made their way back to lay their dead to rest, then left Norridgewock behind for good, settling in St. Francis and Becancour in Quebec. A number of them eventually made their way back to the region in later years. As for Râle, his remains were placed beneath the very altar where he had once led his converts in worship. Decades passed before Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick honored him properly, dedicating an obelisk eleven feet high above his burial site in 1833, funded through public subscription. That monument still stands today at St. Sebastian's Cemetery, located at Old Point in Madison, Maine.