Book excerpt: "The Abenaki Indians called him "patlihoz," meaning Black Robe. The French in Quebec thought of him as a saintly man, possessed of great learning and dedication. The English in Boston called him a bloody incendiary, and were convinced that he was inciting Indian attacks on their frontier settlements in Maine. The controversy continues today: What was Sebastian Rale really like? In this volume Mary Calvert gathers together the complete story of Father Rale. Starting with his birth in 1652 and his upbringing near the border of Switzerland, she follows the trail of evidence leading through his Jesuit education and years of teaching in France; his assignment to the New World; his first meeting with Abenakis in Canada; and his perilous journey to far-off Illinois. Upon his return from the Illinois mission, Father Rale was assigned to the village of the Norridgewock Indians on the Kennebec River in Maine. Here he would live for most of the remaining thirty years of his life, preaching and teaching, corresponding with his family in France and his superiors in Quebec, and compiling a massive dictionary of the Abenaki language for which he is best known today. Death came suddenly August 23, 1724, when Rale was killed along with scores of his beloved Abenakis in an English raid. The story in largely told by Father Rale himself, in excerpts from his published and unpublished letters, and passages from his dictionary. The English point of view is shown through excerpts from colonial documents, and the author has sketched in the background of the French and English settlement of North America. The story is a dramatic one, set against the backdrop of bloody Indian wars and brave pioneer families, heartbreaking tales of captivity, religious clashes, tragic misunderstandings, adventures and narrow escapes that seem stranger than fiction. Above all, there is the intimate picture she draws of the proud Maine Abenakis of the colonial era, and the educated man who shared his life and soul with them. The story of Sebastian Rale is truly a Maine epic." -- Publisher's description