DEATH OF FATHER SEBASTIAN RALE OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.

Killed by the English and Mohawks at Norridgewock, Aug 23.1724.

PREFACE.

THE Tribes of the Abnakis, or, more properly, Wanbanakki (people of the Aurora borealis, from Wanbànban), existing in the State of Maine, transmit the truths of the Catholic religion from parents to children, only by oral tradition. Rev. Edmund Demillier left a handwriting, containing a small prayer-book, which was a correction of the prayerbook printed by Rev. Mr. Romagnè, with other additions. I have made use of them both, and I have spared no labor to correct them. But I found that this com

pilation was not sufficient to leave amongst the Indians a standing form of prayers and instructions in their own native language. They needed a book to which they could have reference at this time, in which the spirit of infidelity, so widely prevailing among the white men, is endeavoring to find an access even to the red race. Many attempts made in old times to pervert them, have been renewed in these last years, even in this very year, not only by white people, but also by some Protestant Ministers-apostates from the Catholic religion, belonging to the tribes of the Iroquois. However, they had no success, having not been able to make a single

convert.

The arrangement of this book is quite different from that made by Rev. E. De

millier; the prayers have been distributed under certain fixed heads, and new additions have been inserted, in order to render this volume more proportionate to the object.

But, taking under consideration the want of proper words and phraseology to express the revealed mysteries of the holy religion; the condition of the language destitute of grammar and dictionary-and the want of the substantive verb to be, by which (as Rev. John Eliot long ago observed in his grammar of the Massachusetts Indians), many words under a composition become substantive verbs; it is not to be expected that this book should be exempt from mistakes and inaccuracies.

There exists at Harvard College a manuscript dictionary of the 'Abnakis (pub