On the mainland, French policy was the same as in the Acadian peninsula, nominally to keep the peace, secretly to incite the natives to war. For generations the Abenaki Indians had raided at frequent intervals the New England frontier; yet fear and the necessities of trade might at length have kept them quiet, had it not been for the instigation of the Canadian Government and its priestly agents. In 1713, and again in 1717, Abenaki chiefs had come to terms with Massachusetts; but there could be no peace as long as the savages were carefully instructed that the English were the enemies of their religion and the robbers of their lands. The savages were in truth in a hard case. Peace meant the aggressive growth of the white men's settlements, inevitable encroachment on the red men's heritage. War {195} meant cutting off the New England trade, and inadequate support from France. They sent to Quebec to ask what aid they might expect from Canada. 'I will send you in secret,' said the Governor Vaudreuil, 'tomahawks, powder, and shot.' It was such a reply as the English Governors of New York had been wont to give to the Iroquois; and the Abenakis, like the Iroquois, were little satisfied with it. To fight the battles of France while the French looked on, was not what the Indians wished or understood. Yet their priests taught them to do it, and the Canadian Government stiffened their resolution by sending in mission Indians from Canada. [Sidenote: _Sebastian Rasle._] [Sidenote: _His mission destroyed and himself killed._] [Sidenote: _Peace between the Indians and New Englanders._] The foremost French emissary among the Abenaki Indians at this time was a Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rasle, keen in controversy, uncompromising in zeal, a bitter foe of the English, but not so utterly inhuman as were some of his colleagues. His mission was among the Norridgewocks, high up on the Kennebec river, where the head waters of that river flowing down to the Atlantic are at no very great distance from the Chaudière river which runs into the St. Lawrence. Against this place, in August, 1724, a strong body of men was sent from Massachusetts. They rowed up the Kennebec in whaleboats, and, landing at some distance below the Indian village, marched on it, and took it by surprise. Rasle was shot dead, the Indians were killed or dispersed, their homes were burnt to the ground; and the expedition returned in safety, having struck a strong and relentless blow at a centre of French and Indian hostility to the English colonists. War went on for some little time longer, and the English raided the tribes of the Penobscot. At length, in 1726, the Indians came to terms; and a peace was concluded which lasted for many years, dépôts being established at various points, where the natives could to their advantage barter furs with the traders of New England. [Sidenote: _The Indians were the tools of the French Government and its agents._]