Not Bar Harbor, Maine, but Saint Sauveur, Maine
Excerpt from "The Jesuit Relations"
The enterprise of New France, on the other hand, was the outgrowth of interests more or less conflicting. Doubtless the court had deepest at heart the kingly passion for territorial aggrandizement; next uppermost, was the pious
wish to convert heathen nations to the catholic faith, explorers like Cartier being authorized to discover new lands "in order the better to do what is pleasing to God, our Creator
and Redeemer, and what may be for the increase of his holy and sacred name, and of our holy mother, the Church;" the desire for pelf, through the agency of the fur trade and the possibility of the discovery of precious metals, gave commercial zest to the undertaking, and to many
was the raison d'être of the colony; and lastly, was the almost universal yearning for adventure, among a people who in the seventeenth century were still imbued with that chivalric temper which among Englishmen is assigned to the Middle
Ages.
The inner life of New France, throughout its century and a half of existence, was largely a warring between these several interests.
Missionaries came early upon the scene. With the Calvinist De Monts were Huguenot ministers for the benefit of the settlers, and Catholic priests to open a mission among the savages, or the court had stipulated with him that the latter were to be instructed only in the faith of Rome. But no missionary work was done, for the colony was through several years on the verge of dissolution, and the priests became victims of scurvy. Poutrincourt, who held under De
Monts the patent for Port Royal, did nothing to further the purposes of the court in this regard, until 1610, when, admonished for his neglect, he brought out with him a secular priest, Messire Jesse Fléché, of Langres, who on June 24, " apparently in some haste," baptized twenty-one Abenakis, including the district sagamore, or chief. The account of this affair, which Poutrincourt sent in triumph to France, is the initial document in the present series.
On the twelfth of June, 1611 there arrived at Port Royal, at the instance of King Henry IV, two Jesuit fathers, Pierre Biard and Ennemond Massé. They were, however, not favorably received by Poutrincourt and his followers; they found great practical difficulties in acquiring the Indian languages, and made slight progress in the Herculean task to which they hod been set. To them came, the following year, a lay brother, Gilbert du Thet, who was soon dispatched to the head of the order, in France, with an account of the situation.
In the spring of 1613, he returned, in company with Father Quentin. The little band of missionaries had no sooner established themselves at the new French colony on Mt. Desert Island, than the latter was attacked and dispersed by the Virginian Argall. Du Thet was killed in the fight, Massé was, with other colonists, set adrift in a boat, and Biard and Quentin were taken to Virginia, to be eventually shipped to England, and thence allowed to return into France. Several of the earlier documents of our series have to do with this first: and apparently unfruitful mission of the Jesuits to Acadia.
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Camping while Catholic used to be illegal on Mt Desert Island.
ABS often thinks of Fr. Baird and Fr. Masse when he is at the top of Valley Peak or Flying Mountain and looking down at Fernald Point beside Sommes Sound for that is where the French Jebbies settled and named their settlement, Saint Sauveur, Holy Saviour.
Bar Harbor, is evocative of many splendid things - such as, well, the sand and gravel bar that forms part of the harbor and from which the town took its popular name - but ABS prefers Bar Harbor’s original name, Saint Sauveur, because it is evocative our beautiful Holy Saviour.
Interesting backgrounder at this blog;
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