BULL. 30] 



MISSIONS 



881 



done work among the Chippewa. Dencke 

 died in retirement in 1839, after more than 

 40 years of missionary service, leaving as 

 his monnment a manuscript dictionary of 

 the Delaware language and minor printed 

 works, including one in Chippewa. The 

 Moravian mission at New Fairfield was 

 kept up for a number of years after his 

 death, but was at last discontinued, and 

 both the "Moravians" and the "Mun- 

 sees" of the Thames are now credited 

 officially either to the Methodist or to the 

 Episcopal (Anglican) church (see Canada, 

 East). 



TheMunsee who had removed with the 

 Delawares to Kansas were followed a few 

 years later l)y Moravian workers from 

 Canada, who, before 1840, had a success- 

 ful mission among them, whii-h continued 

 until the diminishing band ceased to he 

 of importance. Among the workers of 

 this later period may be named Rev. 

 Abraham Luckenbach, "the last of the 

 Moravian Lenapists," who ministered to 

 his flock during a 3 years' sojourn in 

 Indiana, and later in Canada, from 1800 

 to his death in 1854, and was the author 

 of several religious w^orks in the language. 

 Dencke, founder of the Thames r. colony, 

 was also the author of a considerable 

 manuscript religious work in the language 

 and probably also of a grammar and dic- 

 tionary. 



Another Moravian missionary, Rev. 

 John C. Pyrljeus, labored among the Mo- 

 hawk from 1744 to 1751, and has left sev- 

 eral manuscript grammatic and devotional 

 works in that and the cognate dialects, as 

 also in Mahican and Delaware. For sev- 

 eral years he acted as instructor in lan- 

 guages to the candidates for the mission 

 service. Rev. Johannes Roth, who ac- 

 companied the removal to Ohio in 1772, 

 before that time had devoted a number 

 of years to the work in Pennsylvania, 

 and is the author of a unique and impor- 

 tant religious treatise in the Unami dia- 

 lect of the Delaware. 



A remarkable testimony to the value of 

 the simple life consistently followed by 

 the Moravians is afforded in the age at- 

 tained by many of their missionaries in 

 spite of all the privations of the wilder- 

 ness, and almost without impairment of 

 their mental faculties, viz: Pyrlfeus, 72 

 years; Heckewelder, 80; Ettwein, 82; 

 Zeisberger, 87, and Grube, 92. 



New England.— The earliest New Eng- 

 land mission was attempted by the French 

 Jesuit Father Peter Biard among the 

 Abnaki on Mt Desert id., Maine, in 1613, 

 in connection with a French post, but 

 both were destroyed by an English fleet 

 almost before the buildings were com- 

 pleted. In the next 70 years other 

 Jesuits, chief among whom was Father 

 Gabriel Druillettes (1646-57), spent much 



time in the Abnaki villages and drew off 

 so many converts to the Algonkin mis- 

 sion of Sillery (see Caiiada, East) as to 

 make it practically an Abnaki mission. 

 In 1683 the mission of St Francis de Sales 

 (q. V. ) was founded at the Falls of the 

 Chaudiere, Quebec, and two years later 

 Sillery was finally abandoned for the 

 new site. Among those gathered at St 

 Francis were many refugees from the 

 southern New England tribes, driven out 

 by King Philip's war, the Pennacook and 

 southern Abnaki being especially numer- 

 ous. In 1700 the mission was removed 

 to its present location, and during the 

 colonial period continued to l)e recruited 

 by refugees from the New England tribes. 

 About 1685 missions were established 

 among the Penobscot and the Passama- 

 quoddy, and in 1695 the celebrated Jesuit 

 Father Sebastian Rale (Rasle, Rasles) 

 began at the Almaki mission at Norridge- 

 wock on the Kennebec (the present In- 

 dian Old Point, Me. ) the work which is 

 so inseparably connected with his name. 

 He was not, however, the founder of the 

 mission, as the churi'h was already built 

 and nearly the whole tribe Christian. In 

 1705 the church and village were burned 

 by the New Englanders, but rebuilt by the 

 Indians. In 1713 a small band removed 

 to the St Lawrence and settled at Becan- 

 cour, Quebec, where their descendants 

 still remain. In 1722 the mission was 

 again attacked and pillaged by a force of 

 more than 200 men, but the alarm was 

 given in time and the village was found 

 deserted. As a part of the plunder the 

 raiders carried off the manuscript Abnaki 

 dictionary to which Riile had devoted 

 nearly 30 years of study, and which ranks 

 as one of the great monuments of our 

 aboriginal languages. On Aug. 23, 1724, 

 a third attack was made by the New 

 England men, with a party of Mohawk 

 allies, and the congregation scattered after 

 a defense in which seven chiefs fell, the 

 missionary was killed, scalped, and hacked 

 to pieces, and the church plundered and 

 burned. Rale was then 66 years of age. 

 His dictionary, preserved at Harvard 

 University, was published in 1833. and 

 in the same year a monument was erected 

 on the spot where he met his death. 

 The mission site remained desolate, a 

 large part of the Indians joining their 

 kindred at St Francis. The minor sta- 

 tions on the Penobscot and St John con- 

 tinued for a tinje, but steadily declined 

 under the constant colonial warfare. In 

 1759 the Canadian Abnaki mission of St 

 Francis, then a large and flourishing vil- 

 lage, was attacked by a New England 

 force under Col. Rogers and destroyed, 

 200 Indians being killed. It was after- 

 ward rebuilt, the present site being best 

 known as Pierre ville, Quebec. The Ab- 



Bull. 30-05- 



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