The most prominent among the apostles of carnage,
at this time, are the Jesuit Bigot on the Kennebec, and the seminary
priest Thury on the Penobscot. There is little doubt that the latter
instigated attacks on the English frontier before the war, and there
is conclusive evidence that he had a hand in repeated forays after it
began. Whether acting from fanaticism, policy, or an odious compound
of both, he was found so useful, that the minister Ponchartrain twice
wrote him letters of commendation, praising him in the same breath for
his care of the souls of the Indians and his zeal in exciting them to
war. "There is no better man," says an Acadian official, "to prompt
the savages to any enterprise." [Footnote: Tibierge, _Memoire sur
l'Acadie_, 1695.] The king was begged to reward him with money; and
Ponchartrain wrote to the bishop of Quebec to increase his pay out of
the allowance furnished by the government to the Acadian clergy,
because he, Thury, had persuaded the Abenakis to begin the war anew. [1]
The French missionaries are said to have made use of singular methods
to excite their flocks against the heretics. The Abenaki chief
Bomaseen, when a prisoner at Boston in 1696, declared that they told
the Indians that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and his mother, the
Virgin, a French lady; that the English had murdered him, and that the
best way to gain his favor was to revenge his death.
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