He knew the language and the customs of
the Indians, attended their councils, and dominated them by his
influence. He was a model missionary, earnest and scholarly. But
the Jesuit of that age was prone to be half spiritual zealot,
half political intriguer. There is no doubt that the Indians had
a genuine fear that the English, with danger from France
apparently removed by the Treaty of Utrecht, would press claims
to lands about the Kennebec River in what is now the State of
Maine, and that they would ignore the claims of the Indians and
drive them out. The Governor at Quebec helped to arouse the
savages against the arrogant intruders. English border ruffians
stirred the Indians by their drunken outrages and gave them real
cause for anger. The savages knew only one way of expressing
political unrest. They began murdering women and children in
raids on lonely log cabins on the frontier. The inevitable result
was that in 1721 Massachusetts began a war on them which dragged
on for years. Rale, inspired from Quebec, was believed to control
the Indians and, indeed, boasted that he did so.
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