English. Under the influence of their priests, threatening them with ecclesiastical penalties, they were warned not to transfer their allegiance, but to keep their loyalty to France, and to refuse the required oath. The priests in Acadia were under the pay of the French Government, and received secret counsels from the authorities in Canada. Of course there was a state of restlessness, insubordination, and not even concealed lawlessness and rebellion, — waiting for another cast of the dice of warfare or diplomacy. There was a continual series of aggressions, inroads, assaults, and slaughters upon the English settlers on the outskirts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. These were instigated from Canada, and the Acadian priests were believed to be engaging their flocks in open or secret connivance.
The Indians claimed as theirs the lands on the Kennebec, on which the English were steadily intruding. In reprisal the latter enlisted and sent their war-parties for punishment and vengeance. On a second attack, made in 1724, by the English and some Mohawk allies, upon the Indian village of Norridgewok, during the sack and burning of the houses and the church Father Ralle was killed and scalped. He was then sixty-seven years old, enfeebled by twenty-six years of hard service in the woods, and much beloved by his red disciples. He was a devoted missionary and a scholar. His dictionary of the language of his Indians is preserved in the Library of Harvard College. The English rejoiced over his violent end, as they regarded him as a crafty enemy, and believed from his papers which they rifled that the evidence was complete of his evil machinations from instructions received from Canada. In an ambush in one of the raids of the savages Captain Josiah Winslow was killed. He was a brother of General John Winslow, who on this account might have thrown warm will into his charge of removing the Neutrals from Acadia.
