XII.

SOME EARLY RELIGIOUS TEACHERS ON THE RIVER ST. JOHN.

Our knowledge of affairs on the River Saint John down to the period of
English occupation is largely derived from the correspondence of the
Jesuit missionaries, the last of whom was Charles Germain. After his
retirement the Acadians and Indians remained for several years without
any spiritual guide, a circumstance that did not please them and was
also a matter of concern to the Governor of Nova Scotia, who in
December, 1764, informed the Secretary of State that a promise had
been made the Indians of the River St. John to send them a priest,
which the Lords of Trade had now forbidden. The governor regrets this
as likely to confirm the Indians in their notion that the English "are
a people of dissimulation and artifice, who will deceive them and
deprive them of their salvation." He thinks it best to use gentle
treatment in dealing with the Indians, and mentions the fact of their
having lately burned their church[90] by command of their priest
detained at Quebec, as a proof of their zealous devotion to their
missionaries.

[90] This statement is corroborated by Charles Morris, who writes in
1765, "Aughpack is about seven miles above St. Anns, and at
this place was the Indian church and the Residence of the
French missionary; the church and other buildings about it are
all demolished by the Indians themselves."

In the summer of 1767, Father Charles Francois Bailly came to the
River St. John and established himself at Aukpaque, or, as he calls
it, "la mission d'Ekouipahag en la Riviere St. Jean." The register of
baptisms, marriages and burials at which he officiated during his
year's residence at Aukpaque is still to be seen at French Village in
the Parish of Kingsclear, York county. The records of his predecessor,
Germain, however, were lost during the war period or while the mission
was vacant. That there was a field for the missionary's labor is shewn
by the fact that in the course of his year's residence on the River
St. John he officiated at 29 marriages, 79 baptisms and 14 burials.
His presence served to draw the Indians to Aukpaque, where there were
also some Acadian families who seem to have been refugees of the
expulsion of 1755. The older Indian village of Medoctec was now
deserted and the missionary ordered the chapel there to be destroyed,
seeing that it served merely as a shelter for travellers and "was put
to