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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79004 ***
+Transcriber’s Note: There are two Chapter VIIs.
+
+
+
+
+                                   LIVES
+                                  OF THE
+                       CHIEF FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND.
+
+    The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: let
+    him not leave us, nor forsake us.
+
+                                                       1 Kings 8:57.
+
+                                 VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+                                 THE LIFE
+                                    OF
+                                JOHN ELIOT:
+
+                              WITH AN ACCOUNT
+                      OF THE EARLY MISSIONARY EFFORTS
+                                   AMONG
+                        THE INDIANS OF NEW ENGLAND.
+
+                            BY NEHEMIAH ADAMS,
+                  PASTOR OF ESSEX STREET CHURCH, BOSTON.
+
+        _Written for the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, and
+                approved by the Committee of Publication._
+
+                                  BOSTON:
+                   MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY,
+                       Depository, No. 13 Cornhill.
+                                   1847.
+
+         Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847,
+                          BY CHRISTOPHER C. DEAN,
+       In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT BY THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.
+
+
+The substance of this book is a Lecture delivered in 1842, before
+the Young Men’s Missionary Association of Boston. On application of
+the Publishing Committee, the author has consented to enlarge it for
+publication, as one of the Series of the Lives of the New England Fathers.
+
+
+
+
+SEAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS (OR SALEM) COLONY.
+
+
+[Illustration: SIGILLVM:GVB:ET:SOCIET:DE:MATTACHVSETS:BAY:IN:NOVA:ANGLIA]
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+Seal of the Governor and Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
+
+    Missionary object of the Pilgrims. Seal of Massachusetts
+    Colony. Reasons with the Pilgrims for leaving Holland. Extract
+    from the Royal Charter of the Plymouth Colony. Charter of
+    the Salem Company. Thoughts on this Continent as a field for
+    Missionary efforts. Account of the landing at Plymouth, and the
+    first meeting with the Indians. First Missionary efforts among
+    them. Manners and habits of the New England Indians. Numbers in
+    the various tribes. Reflections on the Missionary character and
+    efforts of the Pilgrims. The May-flower.
+
+
+A prominent object with the Pilgrim fathers in coming hither, was, to
+preach the Gospel to the Indians of this Continent.
+
+Many popular orators and writers represent them, as it were, following
+and worshiping a goddess of liberty. But it was not for the mere liberty
+of believing and doing what they pleased that they braved the ocean and
+the perils of this wilderness. Two great motives influenced them. For the
+liberty of worshiping God according to their own consciences, they “went
+out not knowing,” as the event proved, “whither they went.” But this was
+not all; they had a missionary object in coming here.
+
+It is an interesting fact that the original seal of the Colony of
+Massachusetts Bay, who arrived and settled at Salem in 1628, had on it a
+North American Indian, with these words proceeding from his mouth, “Come
+over and help us.” This device on the seal of their colony published to
+the world the fact that they regarded themselves as foreign missionaries
+to North America. This was also the case with their brethren of the
+Plymouth Colony, who arrived eight years before.
+
+The Pilgrims had fled to Holland, from the persecutions of the English
+Church. In the account of their residence in Holland we find some records
+which establish beyond a doubt the fact of their missionary intentions in
+coming to these shores. Governor Bradford, in his History of Plymouth,
+speaking of the Pilgrims while yet in Holland, says, “This year, (1617,)
+Mr. Robinson and his Church begin to think of a remove to America, for
+several weighty reasons, as (1.) The difficulties in Holland discouraged
+many from coming to them out of England, and obliged many to return. (2.)
+By reason of these difficulties with the licentiousness of the youth,
+and temptations of the place, many of their children left their parents,
+some of them becoming soldiers, others taking to foreign voyages, and
+some to dissoluteness and the danger of their souls, to the great grief
+of their parents, and fear lest their posterity through these temptations
+and examples should degenerate, and religion die among them. (3.) From an
+inward zeal and great hope of laying some foundation or making way for
+propagating the kingdom of Christ to the remote ends of the earth, though
+they should be but as stepping stones to others.”
+
+They obtained letters patent from the crown authorizing them to settle
+in North Virginia. The following is an extract from the Royal Charter,
+and is of the same purport with the third reason assigned by Governor
+Bradford for their removal to America. The Royal Charter says,—“We have
+thought it fit, according to our kingly duty—to second and follow God’s
+holy will, by which means we may with boldness go on to the settling of
+so hopeful a work which tendeth to the reducing and conversion of such
+savages as remain wandering in desolation and distress, to civil society
+and Christian religion.”
+
+It is well known that the Colonists who received this Charter, and sailed
+for North Virginia, were driven into the waters of Cape Cod, and thus
+unintentionally landed and settled at Plymouth.
+
+The Charter of “the Colony of Massachusetts Bay,” who settled a few years
+after at Salem, says, “To win and incite the natives of that country to
+the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind
+and the Christian faith, is, in our royal intention and the adventurer’s
+free profession, the principal end of the plantation.”
+
+The Committee of the “Massachusetts” Company, in their letter dated
+at Gravesend, and addressed to Mr. Endicott, the leader, and afterward
+the Governor, of the Massachusetts or Salem Colony, say, “For that the
+propagating the Gospel is the thing we profess above all in settling this
+plantation, we have been careful to make plentiful provision of good
+ministers.”[1]
+
+It is interesting to think of this Continent as having been the object
+of missionary zeal and efforts with the pilgrim fathers. The place which
+this continent occupies on the globe is peculiar and interesting. The
+numerous nations of the old world are crowded together in one hemisphere,
+and this continent is the prominent object of the other. It did not seem
+presumption to the pilgrims to believe that God laid its deep foundations
+by itself, in the midst of the oceans rolling between it and the rest of
+the globe, for some purpose as singular as its position. In the writings
+of ancient poets there are remarkable allusions to this continent, when
+as yet it was undiscovered. Seneca, a Latin writer, who lived at the
+beginning of the Christian era, has in his “Medea” this declaration:
+“The time will come in remote years when the ocean will unloose the
+present boundaries of nature, and a great country will appear. Another
+Typhis will discover new worlds, and Thule will no longer be the limit
+of the earth.”[2] Homer and Horace had sung of Islands west of Africa,
+the Atlantides, which were “the Elysian fields.” Hanno, the Carthaginian
+general and great navigator, had sailed from the pillars of Hercules,
+(the straits of Gibraltar,) westward, thirty days. Some suppose that he
+must have seen America, or some of the neighboring islands.[3] Columbus
+verified the dreams and surmises of the world; the Cabots pursued his
+sublime discoveries, and they, with their Bristol crews, long accustomed
+to Icelandic fisheries, found this continent. New adventurers carried
+home some of the native Indians; and, at length, a new Continent,
+inhabited by wild men, became the subject of intense interest to the
+civilized world. Our pious forefathers, while yet in the old world,
+fancied that they heard the Macedonian cry from the Indians here, and
+it quickened their flight, as they say, “to follow Christ into a waste
+howling wilderness.”
+
+Having been driven into the waters of Cape Cod, instead of North
+Virginia, and making a safe harbor on Saturday, the Pilgrims fell
+on their knees and blessed the God of heaven. The Sabbath came; the
+Mayflower riding at anchor, and the exploring party in the shallop, kept
+the first Sabbath of the Lord which, perhaps, had ever been recognized in
+this region, since God rested from his works.
+
+“Monday,” says Prince, in his New England Chronology, “the people go
+ashore to refresh themselves;—the whales play round about them, and the
+greatest store of fowl they ever saw. But the earth here a company of
+sand hills, and the water so shallow near the shore, they were forced
+to wade a bow-shot or two to get to land, which being freezing weather,
+affecteth them with grievous coughs and colds, which after proves the
+death of many. When they had marched a mile southward, they see five
+or six savages whom they follow ten miles till night, but could not
+overtake them, and lodge in the woods. The next day they come to a place
+of graves, then to some heaps of sand, when they dig into them, and
+find several baskets full of Indian corn, and take some, for which they
+purpose to give the natives full satisfaction as soon as they could meet
+with any of them.” Two days after, they returned to borrow more corn; the
+ground had frozen a foot deep, but they made up their corn, says Governor
+Morton, to ten bushels; the next day some of the party, having spent the
+night there, dug again into some little hillocks, but they found that
+instead of being cornhills they were graves. By the overruling providence
+of God, the corn which they had thus borrowed with such good intent to
+repay, furnished them with seed for the ensuing spring. Here we have the
+first scene of their approach to the wild objects of their pious and
+benevolent endeavors.
+
+During the month of February, after their arrival, the colony were
+afterwards informed that the Indians assembled all their Powwaws, or the
+conjurers of the country, to curse them with their horrid ceremonies and
+incantations. They held their assembly for this purpose in a dark and
+dismal swamp.
+
+On the morning of March 16th, however, they say a savage boldly came
+alone along the houses straight to the rendezvous, and surprised them
+with calling out, “Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome, Englishmen!” It seems
+that he had learned some broken English from the fishermen of Nova
+Scotia. He said that his name was Samoset, that he was sagamore or lord
+of a country “a day’s sail thence with a great wind,” or five days land
+travel. He told them that four years ago all the inhabitants of the place
+where they then were, (now Plymouth,) died of an extraordinary plague;
+that there was neither man, woman, nor child remaining. At night they
+lodged and watched him. A few days after he returned with an Indian
+named Squanto, whom a man by the name of Hunt had carried to Spain with
+nineteen others, and who by some means went to England, and lived in
+Cornhill, London, with Mr. John Slanie, merchant. He could speak a little
+English, and thus he was extremely useful to the colonists in assisting
+them to trade and make treaties with the surrounding Indians. They
+endeavored to conciliate the natives, but wisely mingled intimations that
+they were prepared to resist them if attacked.
+
+The treacherous tribe of Narragansett Indians, with five thousand
+fighting men, who at first made a treaty with the settlers, showed signs
+on one occasion of hostility. Canonicus, their chief Sachem, sent a
+bundle of arrows, tied with a snake’s skin, which Squanto told them meant
+a challenge. Governor Bradford and his Council sent them word that if
+they had rather have war than peace, they might begin when they would;
+they had done the Indians no wrong, nor did they fear them; nor would
+the Indians find them unprepared. Then, with some wit, the Governor sent
+them, by another messenger, the snake’s skin filled with powder and
+bullets; but they refused to receive it, and sent it back.
+
+Thus, after various alarms, and treaties, the pilgrims had fortified
+themselves in the country, and individuals among them had begun the pious
+work of instructing some of the young Indians in the Christian religion.
+
+In 1621, one year after the arrival at Plymouth, Elder Robert Cushman
+sent word to his friends in England that many of the Indians, especially
+the younger of them, were teachable; that if the Colony had means they
+would bring up hundreds of them to labor, and learning, and that young
+men in England who desired to further the Gospel among these poor
+heathen, would do well to come over and spend their estates, time, and
+labor, in so doing.
+
+During the few first years after the settlement at Plymouth, several of
+the natives gave evidence of conversion, and instances of happy death
+occurred among them. But the hardships and trials incident to a removal
+into this wilderness delayed the systematic and general efforts of the
+settlers to convert the Indians. Individuals, however, were laboring
+among them with success. In 1636, the Plymouth Colony enacted laws to
+provide for the preaching of the Gospel among the Indians, and ten years
+after, the Massachusetts Colony passed a similar act.
+
+In 1675, it was ascertained that the whole number of Indians in New
+England, beginning as far east as the St. Croix River, was about fifty
+thousand. Of these, about twelve thousand were in the neighborhood of the
+Massachusetts and the Plymouth Colonies.
+
+At the settlement of this country there were five principal nations,
+or sachemships, of Indians, in this part of New England, viz, 1. The
+Pequots; 2. The Narragansetts; 3. The Pawkunnawkuts; 4. The Pawtucketts;
+5. The Massachusetts. Each of these nations included several tribes,
+governed by sagamores.
+
+The Pequots formerly had 4000 warriors; in 1674, 300.
+
+The Narragansetts formerly had 5000 warriors; in 1674, 1000.
+
+The Pawkunnawkuts formerly had 3000 warriors; in 1674, nearly extinct.
+
+The Pawtuckets formerly had 3000 warriors; in 1674, 250.
+
+The Massachusetts formerly had 3000 warriors; in 1674, 300.
+
+The _Pequots_ inhabited the most southerly parts of New England, their
+country for the most part fell under the Connecticut jurisdiction. Their
+principal sachem lived at or near New London, called, in their language
+Pequot.
+
+The _Narragansetts_ occupied Rhode Island, and other islands in
+Narragansett bay.
+
+The _Pawkunnawkuts_ inhabited the region of the Plymouth Colony,
+and their sachem held sway over the Sagamores of Nantucket, Martha’s
+Vineyard, and neighboring places. A few years before the arrival of the
+Pilgrims, a great number of this nation of Indians as before stated, were
+swept away by a plague, and thus the way was opened for the entrance of
+the Pilgrims.
+
+The _Pawtuckets_ lived to the north, and northeast of the Massachusetts
+Indians. They were almost wholly destroyed by the plague just mentioned.
+
+The _Massachusetts_ Indians dwelt principally about the parts of
+Massachusetts bay which were first settled by the English, and bordering,
+some of them, on the region of the Pawkunnawkuts. They were very numerous
+and powerful. Their chief sachem held rule over many petty chiefs. This
+people was also visited by the plague in 1612-13, which destroyed the
+most of them, and prepared the way for the English settlers.
+
+This fact has often brought to mind these words of David: “We have heard
+with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work thou didst in
+their day, in the times of old. How thou didst drive out the heathen with
+thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people and cast
+them out. For they got not the land in possession by their own sword,
+neither did their own arm save them; but thy right hand, and thine arm,
+and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favor unto them.”
+
+An early New England writer[4] says, that he had not been able to learn
+accurately the nature of the disease or plague which depopulated the
+Indian tribes in the remarkable manner already described; but that he had
+“discoursed” with some old Indians, who told him that the patients were
+“all over exceedingly yellow,” and this they described by showing him a
+yellow garment which the bodies of the victims resembled in color, both
+before and after death. There is a tradition that a Frenchman, who not
+long before this plague, had fallen into their hands by shipwreck, told
+them, as some of the surviving shipmates reported, just before he died
+by their hands, that “God was angry with them for their wickedness, and
+would not only destroy them all, but would also people their country with
+men who would not live after their brutish manners.” Those infidels then
+blasphemously replied, that God could not kill them; which blasphemous
+mistake was confuted by an horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were
+consumed in such vast multitudes, that our first planters found the land
+almost covered with their unburied carcases, and they that were left
+alive were smitten into awful and humbler regards of the English by the
+terrors which the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.
+
+When the Pilgrims in Holland thought of coming to this country, some of
+them hesitated for several reasons, and among others through their fear
+of the savages, who they heard were “cruel, barbarous, and treacherous,
+being most furious in their rage, and merciless where they overcome, not
+being content only to kill and take away life, but delight to torment men
+in most bloody manner that may be, flaying men alive with the shells of
+fishes, cutting off the points and members of others by piecemeals, and
+broiling them on the coals, and causing men to eat the collops of their
+flesh in their sight whilst they live; with other cruelties horrible
+to be related.”[5] Some were therefore in favor of settling in Guiana,
+in South America. But they feared the jealousy of the Spaniards, and
+finally concluded to settle within the jurisdiction of the company of
+Virginia, where the English, in 1607, had made a settlement. In this way,
+they supposed that they could also have better access to the savages,
+“to reduce them to civil society, and the Christian religion.” But God
+brought them by a way they knew not, having first in part cut off the
+heathen nations to bring them in.
+
+The May-flower sailed from Holland, September 6, 1620, for the Hudson
+River. But they were driven into the waters of Cape Cod, and it was a
+current belief that the shipmaster was bribed by the Dutch to change her
+course, because the Dutch wished to settle in the region for which the
+Pilgrims embarked. But some of the best authorities deny this, and say
+that the change of their course was accidental.
+
+There is so much connection between climate and characters that we may
+reasonably suppose it to have been the intention of Providence to plant
+the Pilgrims in this cold region, and on this hard soil, that they might
+be and do that which is proved to have been their high destiny to be and
+to accomplish. Whereas, had they settled in a warmer and more enervating
+latitude, we cannot believe that such a New England as we now behold
+would have arisen; it would have been easier for the settlers to have
+borne the imposition of slavery from the mother country, whereas here
+in Massachusetts the sturdy vigor and independence which were borne and
+nourished on this rocky and sandy soil, grew impatient of slavery, and
+soon threw it off, and hence in part the present difference between
+the North and the South, in some of the essential elements of natural
+prosperity. God brought the Pilgrims into these bays and harbors, and to
+this northern soil, because here the qualities necessary to their future
+usefulness and greatness as a nation could be most successfully developed
+and strengthened. Instead of reducing the savages to slavery as they
+might have done had the institution of slavery been fastened upon them
+in southern regions, they “reduced the savages to civil society, and the
+Christian religion.” Let us return for a moment to the landing of the
+Pilgrims.
+
+When the May-flower had cast anchor, the Pilgrims fitted up the little
+shallop which they had brought in their vessel, and coasted the Cape for
+about a month to determine on the best place for landing and settlement.
+Having at length fixed on a place, the shallop, with the exploring
+party came to anchor on Saturday, the 9th of December, corresponding to
+December 20, New Style. The Sabbath dawned upon them, but the exploring
+party remained on board, notwithstanding the inmates of the May-flower
+were still at anchor, waiting to know the result of the exploration. How
+beautiful and striking was the coincidence of their arriving at Plymouth
+on the eve of the Sabbath. What a Sabbath it must have been to them. Not
+only was their comfortless and perilous voyage in a crowded vessel, and
+their anxious search for a landing place now over, but their persecutions
+in the old world, their oppressive treatment from the Established Church
+for not conforming to rites and practices which they could not observe,
+had now come to an end. Now they had found a new world where they
+might believe and worship as they pleased. Now they would no longer be
+taxed for the support of worship in which they had no share. Now their
+ministers would no longer be ill-used or nick-named, for not conforming
+to unscriptural practices; now they would not be obliged to keep Lent,
+and Ash-Wednesday, Candlemas, Christmas, and All-Saints’-day, in a manner
+repugnant to their consciences. As they looked on this great wilderness,
+free from all corruptions of man in the worship of God, and pure in that
+respect as the virgin snows that covered the evergreens, and sheeted
+the old sand wastes, and shone on the distant hills, they could breathe
+freely, as they said in the words which indicate the essential spirit of
+their faith, God is a spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him
+in spirit and in truth. The world has never seen such a sight, before
+or since, as that shallop and the May-flower in Plymouth Bay, with the
+progenitors of this great and glorious New England; fleeing from the old
+world, arriving at this new world and keeping Sabbath at anchor in these
+waters. What has ever happened to be likened to it since the time when
+Noah and his family sailed away from the old world, which had corrupted
+itself before God, and transplanted the religion of the true God for a
+new beginning? It would have been interesting to have heard the prayers,
+and songs of praise, and words of Scripture, with which they kept the
+Sabbath in their floating Bethels. We notice here that Puritan regard for
+the Sabbath which has ever characterized New England, and on which her
+safety so much depends. How natural it would have been for the voyagers
+to have leaped ashore at the first moment of their arrival in the
+harbor which they had concluded to make their home. How many passengers
+now in similar circumstances, would deny themselves the pleasure of
+exchanging the wearisome confinement on ship-board, for the excitement
+and satisfaction of exploring their new home? But the Pilgrims would not
+begin the work of their settlement, of removing any of their effects from
+the vessel, on the Lord’s day, and since the time when God rested from
+his work on the Sabbath, there has not been a more sublime act of rest
+and of worship, than was observed by that Pilgrim band.
+
+All this was in accordance with their character and intentions as a
+missionary band, and for its relation to this view of their character we
+have dwelt at large upon this incident in their history.
+
+It cannot be impressed too deeply upon our minds that our forefathers
+did not come here merely to “enjoy their liberty,” not merely to flee
+from persecution, not to increase their worldly estate; they came here,
+among other good reasons, as they expressly declare, to extend the
+kingdom of Christ, and the Royal Charter professed that the royal object
+in granting it was that they might reduce such savages as they found
+wandering in desolation and distress to civil society and the Christian
+religion. Does any one cherish a feeling of reverence and love for
+these pilgrims in view of their sacrifices and efforts to found these
+institutions which we possess, who yet feels no interest in the work
+of propagating the gospel to the ends of the earth? Let him consider
+that a company of Christian missionaries going from this land and
+settling in India, or Africa, or Oceanica, may be the founders of just
+such institutions as we enjoy, among the people to whom they are sent.
+Let every missionary consider that in distant years he may be justly
+regarded as a pilgrim-father to some portion of the earth for whom he
+may have done as much as the New England Pilgrims have done for New
+England. The object of Christian missions is to re-produce and multiply
+our Christian institutions in heathen and pagan lands. The opportunity
+of laying foundations in heathen wilds, similar to those which the
+Pilgrims laid here, has not come to an end. Many a missionary bark may
+yet be, essentially, a May-flower to distant parts of the earth. Some
+islands which were filled with savages as barbarous as our Indians, have
+had their independence recognized by Christian nations, and have taken
+their place among the nations of the earth; and that band of American
+missionaries who left these shores for the Sandwich Islands in 1820,
+and who went round Cape Horn singing the old hymn in the tune of Melton
+Mowbray,
+
+    “Head of the church triumphant,
+      We cheerfully adore thee,” &c.,
+
+and who planted the Gospel on those islands, will no doubt in after
+times have their names enshrined by a grateful posterity in those distant
+seas. The little schooner which the Rev. John Williams, the martyr of
+Rarotonga, built with his own hand, to visit the islands of the Harvey
+group, was a real “May-flower.” Prophetic visions of the effects of the
+Gospel we see fulfilled on these shores and around the globe. Here,
+emphatically, “instead of the thorn has come up the fir-tree, and instead
+of the brier the myrtle-tree.” In what way can we cherish the memory of
+our Pilgrim fathers better than to keep alive in us and our children that
+zeal to spread the Christian religion and Christian institutions, which
+was one of the strong impulses that bore them across the flood? As the
+missionary spirit was the native air in which the pilgrim faith was born
+and nurtured, we may believe that the same spirit will most effectually
+cherish those institutions and laws which are the fruit of their wisdom.
+That spirit is a sincere desire to see the glory of God promoted in the
+world, a willingness to make efforts and sacrifices “that his way may be
+known on earth, his saving health among all nations.”
+
+“The May-flower”! That name must have been proposed by some gentle
+wife, or by some sweet child, to the man who built that favored vessel!
+She was, in her seasonableness, more than a _May-flower_; she was the
+Crocus among the eternal snows and the dreary winter of this western
+savage world. In the selection of her for the great mission which
+she accomplished, angels might have said to her, as they came to be
+ministering spirits to those in her who were to be, in more than one
+sense, “heirs of salvation,” as Gabriel said to Mary, “Hail, thou that
+art highly favored—the Lord is with thee!” The name of this vessel is one
+of those instances, of which we see so many in the word, the providence
+of God, in which “the beauty of the Lord our God” appears in connection
+with his acts of renown. To the cold eye of reason that name was only
+a mercantile accident; the eye of faith is willing to be accounted
+visionary while it sees in it that same hand which, after the deluge,
+selected the rainbow instead of a periodical tempest, or a Dead Sea, as
+the memorial of a covenant with the earth.
+
+The painting of the Landing of the Pilgrims, by Weir, justly represents
+some of the pilgrim company as of cultivated and even polished appearance
+and manners; they were not the offscouring of the earth. They were
+men and women of whom, in their day, the world was not worthy. For
+scholarship, intelligence, and moral worth, the Pilgrims and their
+associates in the old countries would have been ornaments to the land
+which chased them away. The reader will find this illustrated in a
+satisfactory manner in the Life of the Rev. John Cotton, by the Rev.
+A. W. M’Clure, in the first two volumes in this series of the Lives of
+eminent N. E. Puritans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+    Description of the Indians. Their manners, habits, mode of
+    life, &c. Efforts to convert them, previous to Eliot’s labors.
+
+
+Some account of the manners and habits of the Indians, as our forefathers
+and their successors found them, will be necessary that we may appreciate
+the labors and self-denial which were required of those who instructed
+these sons of the forest in religion and civilization. A correct
+knowledge of their original condition dispels the romantic associations
+which many have with the name of a North American Indian. The lowest
+degradation had been reached by these savages. The laws of a people are
+a true picture of the people, and some of the laws which the Indians
+enacted when they began to be civilized, reveal the misery and filthiness
+from which they began at last to be recovered. This will be illustrated
+as we proceed.
+
+We will speak first of the personal appearance of the Indian.
+
+Their skin was of a tawny color, a yellowish, dark complexion. Their
+form and limbs were well proportioned, and it was seldom that a crooked
+person was found among them. Their hair was long, black, and coarse,
+without curling; their eyes black, without lustre. In their general
+appearance they were so much like the Moors of Africa, that many have
+supposed them to have come originally from that part of the world.
+
+They had many wives, but one of them was chief in her husband’s regard.
+They put away their wives, and the wife also left her husband when
+offended with him.
+
+Their revengeful disposition is proverbial. The relatives of an injured
+or murdered Indian regarded his wrong as done to them, and they sought
+satisfaction in the death of the offender, or in the payment of wampum,
+(or shells,) which passed with them for money.
+
+They were an idle race, especially the men. Tillage was chiefly performed
+by the women, though to but little extent. The women also carried
+burdens, as in removing from place to place. They also prepared the food.
+
+Their wigwams were made with slim poles fixed in the ground, bent, and
+fastened at the top with the bark of trees. The best of them were made
+tight and warm with the whole barks of trees, pressed when green by a
+heavy weight of timber. A common sort of bulrushes woven together, made
+mats for the covering of the poorer houses. The houses varied in size,
+from twenty to forty feet square, and some were from sixty to a hundred
+feet long, and thirty feet broad. In the smaller houses a fire was
+kindled in the centre, but in the larger, several fires were made for the
+convenience of the inmates. A hole in the top of the house served the
+place of a chimney, and on the top of the house a mat was suspended, to
+serve the purpose of a ventilator to the smoke, being set to the windward
+side. Their bedsteads were made of rude boards split from the tree, and
+raised about a foot from the ground, covered with skins, or with mats of
+woven grass, or bulrushes.
+
+Their principal food was a kind of pottage in which it would be
+difficult to say what article prevailed. Indian corn, kidney beans, all
+kinds of flesh and fish, cut in small pieces with the bones, many kinds
+of roots, artichokes, ground-nuts, squashes, oak acorns, walnuts, and
+chestnuts, were boiled together. The nuts being dried, and powdered, were
+used as flour to thicken the mess. They made a cake of parched corn,
+which they called nokake. This they took with them in their travels, and
+is said to have been so hearty a kind of food, that they subsisted on it
+many days in their wanderings from place to place.
+
+Their household utensils corresponded in simplicity to their food, and
+mode of cooking. The pots were made of clay, in the shape of an egg
+without the top. They were glad to receive pots of metal, as the earth
+of which they made their brittle vessels was scarce and dear. They used
+a kind of wood which was not liable to split, for dishes, spoons, and
+ladles. Their water pails were made of birch bark, folded square, with a
+handle or bail. Some of them held two or three gallons, and they could
+make one of them in the space of an hour. They wrought pictures of birds,
+beasts, fishes and flowers of divers colors in their baskets, which were
+made of corn husks, silk grass, and wild hemp.
+
+They formerly used no drink but water, though they soon learned from the
+settlers the manufacture and use of cider. When they became acquainted
+with intoxicating drinks, they showed a violent love for them, by which
+their savage passions and propensities were fearfully excited.
+
+Their clothing was, at first, of skins, and some had mantles of birds’
+feathers, twilled together. Even the most barbarous of them were decent
+in covering their persons, and were never seen naked in public.
+
+One of their principal remedies in sickness was, to put the patient, and
+sometimes several patients together, in a rude stone house, which they
+would heat by building fires round it, and having thus put the sick into
+a violent perspiration, they would plunge them into a neighboring brook.
+
+They divided time into sleeps, and moons, and winters. It is a curious
+fact that they called the Constellation, Charles’ Wain, by the same name
+with the English, the Bear. Like the early eastern nations, they seem to
+have pondered the face of the heavens, and to have made figures of the
+stars.
+
+Their money consisted of shells, or strings of shells, the black
+being double in value to the white. The _mints_ of their money seem to
+have been at Block Island, and Long Island, upon whose sandy flats and
+shores, these welk shells were chiefly found. It was called wompompeague,
+or, wompeague, and by contraction, wompum, or, wampum. They redeemed
+captives, paid tribute, made satisfaction for wrongs, and murders, and
+purchased peace of their more powerful neighbors, with strings of this
+wampum.
+
+Their weapons were bows and arrows, clubs, tomahawks, made of wood like a
+pole axe, with a sharp stone in the head. They used targets or shields of
+bark.
+
+They formerly smeared their skin with bears’ grease, but when the English
+swine afforded them lard, they used it as a substitute, and thus having
+anointed themselves, they painted their faces with vermilion, or red,
+and powdered their heads. Sometimes they painted one half of the face
+black, and the other white, and so, with various colors, deformed their
+visages, the women, especially, doing this, and the warriors thereby
+making themselves hideous in battle. Widows, mourning for their husbands,
+painted their faces wholly black. The men preparing for war put their
+hair in a roll, and surmounted it with turkey’s or eagle’s feathers, with
+other fantastic and showy decorations.
+
+They took great pleasure in dancing, the men only dancing, and they
+singly, (except in the war dance,) with uncouth and antic gestures and
+movements of the whole body, the spectators singing or whooping. The
+dancer took off his ornaments one by one as he danced, and gave them away
+to those who looked on, and when he had given away all that he had upon
+him, and was weary, another would succeed him, and thus succeeding each
+other they would spend the nights of a whole week together, sleeping by
+day. At such dancings accompanied with revelings, chiefly held after
+harvest, they were addicted to many evil practices.
+
+They were a hospitable race. Strangers were furnished with the best food
+and lodging, and were served before themselves.
+
+Their government was for the most part monarchical, the chief sachem or
+sagamore making his will the law, though there were chief men associated
+with him as counselors. In some of the tribes the influence of the head
+men was greater than in others, making the government a mixture of
+monarchy and aristocracy.
+
+They had no idols made with hands, but being ignorant of the true God,
+they adored natural objects; the sun, the moon, the earth, fire, and
+other things. They supposed that every thing in nature has a god in it,
+or belonging to it, but fire they believed to be itself a god. They
+believed that there was one god in the southwest, who was the chief deity.
+
+The Indians had priests or powows, or, powaws, who were conjurers, who,
+with horrid rites and incantations, told their fortunes, advised them
+in their affairs, yelled over them in their sick and dying moments, and
+performed religious worship with terrific noises and actions,
+
+    “Like stabled wolves or tigers at their prey,
+    Doing abhorred rites to Hecate.”
+
+The Indians believed in the immortality of the soul, that the good are
+admitted to a splendid entertainment, and the wicked wander in agony
+forever, and that there is no resurrection of the body for good or bad.
+
+As to the origin of the Indians, Roger Williams has well expressed the
+truth on the subject, in his Key into the language of the Indians of New
+England.[6]
+
+“From Adam and Noah that they spring, it is granted on all hands. But for
+their later descent, and whence they came into these parts, it seems hard
+to find, as to find the well-head of some fresh stream which running many
+miles out of the country to the salt ocean, hath met with many mixing
+streams by the way.”
+
+Mr. Williams gives many particulars of their manners and customs; some of
+which are here added.
+
+Their nokake, or nokehick, parched meal, was carried by each man on a
+journey, or in war, in a basket, fastened to his back, or in a hollow
+belt. With a spoonful of this meal, and a spoonful of water from the
+brook, Mr. Williams says he has many a time made a good supper. This
+parched meal, boiled with water, he says, is the wholesomest diet they
+have. _Nawsaump_ was a kind of meal pottage unparched, and from this the
+English derived their _samp_, or Indian corn, broken and boiled, and
+eaten, hot or cold, with milk or butter; “which are mercies beyond the
+natives’ plain water, and which is a dish exceeding wholesome for the
+English bodies.”
+
+Tobacco was in general use among them, and was the only plant which the
+men cultivated, the women attending to the rest. The following remark, by
+Mr. Williams, is in good illustration of former views and feelings with
+regard to the use of spirituous liquors. “I never see any take tobacco
+so excessively as I have seen men in Europe; and yet excess were more
+tolerable in them, because they want the refreshing of beer and wine,
+which God had vouchsafed Europe.”[7]
+
+They made up a fire, when they were lying down to sleep, summer and
+winter. “Their fire,” says Williams, “is instead of our bed clothes. And
+so themselves, and any that have occasion to lodge with them, must be
+content to turn often to the fire, if the night be cold; and they who
+first wake must repair the fire.”
+
+Bad dreams they considered as threatenings from God; and when they
+happened to them, they would engage in prayer at all times of the night.
+An Indian once dreamed that the sun, whom they worship as a god, darted
+a beam into his breast. This he took for an admonition of his death. He
+called his friends and neighbors together, and prepared some refreshment
+for them; but himself remained awake, and fasting, for ten days and
+nights in great humiliation and distress.
+
+“The women nurse all the children themselves; yet a rich or high woman
+maintains a nurse to tend the child.”
+
+“They have amongst them natural fools, either so born, or accidentally
+deprived of reason.”
+
+“The toothache is the only pain which will force their stout hearts to
+cry. I have never heard any cries among them like those of men in the
+toothache. In this pain they use a certain root dried, not much unlike
+our ginger.”
+
+“They are most skillful in cutting off the heads of their enemies in
+fight. I know the man, yet living, who pretended to fall from his own
+camp to the enemy, proffered his service in the front with them against
+his own army. He drew them out to battle, keeping in front; but, on a
+sudden, shot their chief leader and captain, and, in a trice, fetched off
+his head, and returned immediately to his own again. His act was false
+and treacherous; yet herein appear policy, stoutness, and activity.”
+
+“Their desire of and delight in news, is great as the Athenians. A
+stranger that can relate news in their own language they will style him
+manittoo, a god.”
+
+In hearing news they sit in a circle, two, three, or four deep. “I have
+seen near a thousand in a round where English could not well near half so
+many have sitten.”
+
+They frequently inquired “Why came the Englishmen hither?” The
+explanation most commonly believed among themselves at first was, that
+the English wanted fire-wood, and so removed to these parts, as the
+Indians remove when they have used up the wood around them.
+
+They kept the time of the day and the night with great accuracy, by
+observing the sun, moon, and stars. Living abroad in the fields and
+sleeping much out of doors, even the young children were expert in
+telling the time. The Indians were punctual in their promises as to
+time. Mr. Williams says they once charged him with lying for not being
+punctual, though necessarily delayed.
+
+English travelers were struck with the paths which the bare and tough
+feet of the Indians had made in stony places. One writer says that he
+has known many of them to run between eighty and a hundred miles in a
+summer’s day, and return within two days. He says they were so thoroughly
+acquainted with the interior of the country by means of hunting, that
+they have guided travelers forty miles without any path. They coveted
+horses above other beasts, preferring the ease of riding even to the
+comfort of milk and butter from the cow. On meeting with one another in
+travel, they were very happy and joyful; and striking fire, with stones
+or sticks, took tobacco, and set down to talk. It was quite rare to
+meet an old man or a lame man with a staff, their constitutions being
+generally robust.
+
+The English settlers were greatly struck with the purity of the air
+and of the water in New England.[8] But as New England is about twelve
+degrees south of England, the greater cold of this region is explained,
+Mr. Williams thinks, by the fact that main lands and continents are
+colder than islands. “England’s winds are sea winds, which are commonly
+more thick and vapory, and warmer winds. The northwest wind, which
+occasioneth New England cold, comes over the cold, frozen land, and
+over many millions of loads of snow. And yet the pure wholesomeness of
+the land is wonderful, and the warmth of the sun such in the sharpest
+weather, that I have often seen the natives’ children run about stark
+naked in the coldest days, and the Indian men and women lie by a fire in
+the woods in the coldest nights; and I have often been out myself such
+nights without fire, mercifully and wonderfully preserved.”
+
+It is observed by many writers that the Indians had a considerable
+mixture of sadness in their disposition. Though nature here was profuse
+in wild animals for food, and fish, and fowl, and fruits, the savages
+were subject to much suffering from causes which they had no knowledge
+to understand nor skill to prevent. Their superstitions joined with
+their savage vices made them afraid. It would seem also, in noticing
+the proofs of this disposition to melancholy, that the coming event of
+their disappearance as a race had cast its shadow upon their spirits. Mr.
+Williams says that they dislike cloths inclining to white, “but preferred
+to have a sad color, without any whitish hairs, suiting with their own
+natural temper, which inclines to sadness.”[9]
+
+In the spirit with which our forefathers came hither, seeking the
+conversion of the red race, good men from time to time pursued different
+measures for their spiritual good. But while other men deserve great
+praise for their zeal and industry in this benevolent work, it was
+reserved to JOHN ELIOT to gain for himself the name of the Apostle to the
+Indians. The way in which he obtained it will now appear, and also some
+account of his life and character, with further notices respecting the
+Indians.
+
+Though individuals had incidentally labored among the Indians for their
+spiritual good before the Apostle Eliot began his efforts to give them
+the Gospel, and some useful impressions had been made on some of their
+minds, the first systematic efforts for their conversion were made by
+him. Roger Williams’ narrative was printed in London, in 1643. Eliot
+began to preach in the Indian tongue in 1646. Mr. Williams says,
+
+“Many solemn discourses I have had with all sorts of nations of them,
+from one end of the country to the other, so far as opportunity, and the
+little language I have, could reach.
+
+“I know there is no small preparation in the hearts of multitudes of
+them. I know their many solemn confessions to myself, and one to another,
+of their last wandering conditions.
+
+“I know not with how little knowledge and grace of Christ the Lord may
+save; and therefore neither will despair, nor report much.
+
+“Two days before the death of Wequash, the Pequot captain, as I passed
+up to Quunnihticut (Connecticut) river, it pleased my worthy friend,
+Mr. Fenwick, whom I visited at his house in Saybrook fort, at the mouth
+of that river, to tell me that my old friend Wequash lay very sick. I
+desired to see him, and himself was pleased to be my guide two miles
+where Wequash lay.
+
+“Amongst other discourses concerning his sickness and death, in which he
+freely bequeathed his son to Mr. Fenwick, I closed with him concerning
+his soul. He told me that some two or three years before, he had lodged
+at my house, where I acquainted him with the condition of all mankind,
+and his own in particular; how God created man and all things; how man
+fell from God, and his present enmity against God and the wrath of God
+against him till repentance. Said he, your words were never out of my
+heart to this present; and, said he, ‘Me much pray to Jesus Christ.’ I
+told him so did many English, French, and Dutch, who had never turned
+to God nor loved him. He replied in broken English: ‘Me so big naughty
+heart: me heart all one stone!’ Savoring expressions using to breathe
+from compunct and broken hearts, and a sense of inward hardness and
+unbrokenness. I had many discourses with him in this life; but this was
+the sum of our last parting, until our general meeting.”[10]
+
+We now come to the history of the man by whom the work of converting and
+civilizing the Indians was carried out with the most signal success.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+    John Eliot. Birth and Education. Associated with Rev. Thomas
+    Hooker. Arrives at Boston. Settles in Roxbury. Anecdote.
+    Discovery of Spot Pond. Marriage. Christian and Ministerial
+    character. His zeal for common School Education. Notices of his
+    personal character. His Congregational Sentiments. Remarks upon
+    them. Mr. Eliot’s children. His prayers. His preaching. Infant
+    Baptism.
+
+
+John Eliot was born in Nasing, Essex, England, in the year 1604. All that
+is known of his parents is, that they were eminently pious, to which Mr.
+Eliot bore testimony, when he wrote in after life these words: “I do see
+that it was a great favor of God unto me to season my first years with
+the fear of God, the word, and prayer.”
+
+He was educated in England at the University of Cambridge, and was
+distinguished for his love of the languages, in which he attained
+uncommon skill, especially in Hebrew and Greek. There is a connection
+between this fact and his labors in New England in acquiring the Indian
+tongue and translating the Bible and other books into it.
+
+The Rev. Thomas Hooker, afterwards the first Pastor of the Church
+in Cambridge, New England, who afterwards removed with his Church to
+Hartford, Connecticut, had been silenced for his conscientious scruples
+at certain rites and observances in the Church of England, after
+exercising the ministry four years. At the suggestion and request of
+distinguished individuals, he established a school in the town of Little
+Braddow, near Chelmsford, in the county of Essex, England. Mr. Eliot
+was an usher in this school. In this school several individuals were
+trained up who became eminently useful. Mr. Eliot wrote an account of
+this school; and says of it, and of his connection with the family of Mr.
+Hooker, “To this place was I called through the infinite riches of God’s
+mercy in Christ Jesus to my poor soul; for here the Lord said unto my
+dead soul, Live; and, through the grace of Christ, I do live, and I shall
+live forever. When I came to this blessed family, I then saw, and never
+before, the power of godliness in its lively vigor and efficacy.”
+
+By the influence of Mr. Hooker, Mr. Eliot was led to devote himself to
+the Christian ministry. Seeing the corruptions of the Church of England,
+and the oppressive spirit of those in authority towards all who would
+not conform to the ceremonies and practices of the Established Church,
+he resolved that he would go to America, that he might preach the gospel
+without restraint.
+
+He came to Boston in November, 1631, in the ship “Lyon,” with Governor
+Winthrop’s lady and children, and sixty others. There was then no
+minister at the Church in Boston, Rev. Mr. Wilson, their pastor, having
+gone to England to settle his affairs. Mr. Eliot joined the Church at
+Boston, and preached to them a part of a year, till the return of Mr.
+Wilson, when the Church wished to make him colleague and teacher with
+Mr. Wilson. But he had engaged with several individuals, in England,
+that if they should remove to America, he would be their minister. They
+came the year after his arrival, and settled at Roxbury; and having
+formed a Church there, secured the services of Mr. Eliot. He was then
+twenty-eight years old, and he continued as Pastor of the Church in
+Roxbury nearly sixty years. His meeting-house was on the hill where the
+present meeting-house of the First Church in Roxbury (unitarian) now
+stands. Cotton Mather has preserved an anecdote connected with this hill,
+illustrating the art which Mr. Eliot had at spiritualizing. Going up
+the hill to his meeting-house, in his old age, with much feebleness and
+weariness he said to the one who led him, “This is very like the way to
+heaven, ’tis up hill; the Lord by his grace fetch us up.” Spying a bush
+near him he instantly added, “And truly there are thorns and briars in
+the way too!” which instance, Mather says, “I would not have singled out
+from the many thousands of his occasional reflections, but only that I
+might suggest unto the good people of Roxbury something for them to think
+upon when they are going up to the house of the Lord.”[11]
+
+In February of the year after his arrival, Mr. Eliot is mentioned as
+one of the company who, with the governor, made an excursion into the
+vicinity of Boston, and discovered a pond to which they gave its present
+name of “Spot Pond.”[12] This pond has of late been a prominent candidate
+for the privilege of supplying this city with water.
+
+In 1632, Mr. Eliot was married to the pious young lady to whom he was
+betrothed in England, and who came to America by appointment the year
+after Mr. Eliot’s arrival. We shall have occasion to speak of her in the
+sequel of this history.
+
+In the exercise of the Christian ministry, Mr. Eliot was remarkable
+for a deep sense of the great responsibleness of his work. It made him
+humble; he seemed to have a peculiar fear of the temptations incident to
+his profession, and to be deeply impressed with the weight of its duties.
+His brethren in the ministry were struck with this characteristic of his
+ministerial deportment.
+
+He bestowed much labor and diligence upon his preparations for the
+pulpit. It is said that when he listened to a discourse which seemed
+to have had care and attention bestowed upon it, he was accustomed
+to express his approbation and thanks to the preacher. But while his
+discourses showed him to be a student, he placed a higher value on
+spiritual gifts in preaching than upon the greatest accomplishments of
+art or labor. He frequently exhorted young preachers to make Christ
+prominent in their discourses and in all their ministrations.
+
+He had an elevated sense of the meaning and privilege of
+church-membership. With affection, but also with plain and faithful
+words, he never ceased to rebuke the inconsistencies of professors of
+religion. Mather says of him, “He would sound the trumpet of God against
+all vice with a most penetrating liveliness, and make his pulpit another
+Mount Sinai, for the flashes of lightning therein displayed against the
+breaches of the law given from that burning mountain. There was usually a
+special fervor in the rebukes which he bestowed on carnality. When he was
+to brand the earthly mindedness of Church members and the allowance and
+indulgence which they often give themselves in sensual delights, he was a
+right Boanerges. He spoke as many thunderbolts as words!”
+
+He paid particular attention to the young people of his charge, gave them
+instruction in public and private with the help of catechisms composed by
+him especially for their use. It was his familiar habit, when he visited
+a family, to call the young around him and lay his hands on their heads
+with words of kindness and prayer.
+
+He showed his love of learning in his zeal for the establishment of
+common schools. The grammar School at Roxbury owed much to his care. At
+the meeting of a Synod in Boston, he made the schools of the country a
+special subject of prayer, beseeching God that he would cause them to be
+established everywhere, that schools might flourish, that every member
+of the Synod might go home to procure and encourage a good school in his
+town; and that before they should die, they might be so happy as to see a
+good school established in every part of the country.
+
+“God so blessed his endeavors that Roxbury could not live quietly
+without a free school in the town, and the issue of it has been one thing
+that has almost made me put the title of Schola Illustris upon that
+little nursery; that is, that Roxbury has afforded more scholars first
+for the College and then for the public than any town of its bigness,
+or, if I mistake not, of twice its bigness in all New England. From the
+spring of the school at Roxbury, there have run a large number of the
+streams which have made glad the whole city of God. I persuade myself
+that the good people of Roxbury will forever scorn to begrudge the cost,
+or to permit the death of a school which God has made such an honor to
+them; and thus the rather because their deceased Eliot has left them a
+fair part of his own estate for the maintaining of the school in Roxbury;
+and I hope, or at least I wish that the ministers of New England may be
+as ungainsayably importunate with their people as Mr. Eliot was with his
+for schools which may seasonably tinge the young souls of the rising
+generation. A want of education for them is the blackest and saddest of
+all the bad omens that are upon us.”[13]
+
+One result of his interest in schools was that many individuals were
+raised up under his eye who became ministers of the gospel, and some of
+them were eminently useful.
+
+He was so engrossed in the affairs of his ministry that he hardly paid
+sufficient attention to his worldly affairs, never being anxious about
+his support, depending wholly on the temporary and voluntary offerings
+of his people, which varied with the times. Dr. Dwight, in his Travels
+in New England and New York,[14] relates an anecdote to illustrate his
+generous and somewhat improvident disposition and habits. “The parish
+treasurer having paid him his salary, put it into a handkerchief, and
+tied it into as many hard knots as he could make to prevent him from
+giving it away before he reached his own house. On his way he called on a
+poor family, and told them that he had brought them some relief. He then
+began to untie the knots, but finding it a work of great difficulty, he
+gave it to the mistress of the house, saying, ‘Here, my dear, take it, I
+believe the Lord designs it all for you.’”
+
+Like many other ministers, he owed much to the care which his wife took
+of him and his worldly affairs. She of course did not commend him for
+such reckless acts of charity as the one just named. One day some cattle
+stood before their door. His wife, to try him, asked him to whom they
+belonged, and though they were his own, he did not know them.
+
+His influence upon his brethren in the ministry seems to have been
+eminently spiritual. He once said in a company of them, “The Lord Jesus
+takes much notice of what is said and done among his ministers when they
+are together. Let us pray before we depart.” His advice to some who
+complained of the conduct of Church members towards them, was, “Bear,
+forbear, forgive.” On one occasion he came into a meeting of ministers
+who had met as referees on some difficulties between two parties. A large
+bundle of papers lay on the table, containing the correspondence and
+other documents relating to the quarrel. He put them all into the fire,
+and said, “You need not be astonished at what I have done, for I did it
+on my knees before I came here.”
+
+He loved to attend upon the ministry of his brethren when they lectured
+during the week. It used to excite surprise, that, with his many labors
+and studies, he could find so much time to do this. His appearance in
+the house of God as a hearer was noticeable, being always wakeful and
+watchful, turning the pages of a Bible to find the texts referred to by
+the preacher, and on returning to his home, he would preach the sermon
+over again to those who walked with him.
+
+He is mentioned as remarkable for the value which he seemed to set on the
+Sabbath, and for the high spiritual enjoyment which its return brought
+with it. Of every Sabbath it might almost be said with regard to his
+enjoyment of the sacred hours, “That Sabbath was a high-day.”
+
+He was eminently a man of prayer, setting apart whole days for special
+supplication and communion with God, to which he frequently added
+fasting. When he had any special difficulty in his private, or in public
+affairs, he devoted himself to special, secret prayer for some time
+together, on the principle related of another, “That when we would have
+any great things to be accomplished, the best policy is to work by an
+engine which the world sees nothing of.” When he heard any special news
+he would sometimes say, “Brethren, let us turn all this into prayer.”
+When he paid a visit to a family with which he was familiar, he would
+sometimes say, “Come, let us not have a visit without a prayer; let us
+pray down the blessing of heaven on your family before we go.”
+
+A pious woman, afflicted with a wicked husband, complained to him that
+she was greatly troubled by the bad company which her husband brought
+with him into the house, and asked him what she should do. He said to
+her, “Take the holy Bible into your hands when they come, and you will
+soon drive them away.” The experiment is said to have been successful.
+
+One day walking in his garden with a friend, he began to pluck up the
+weeds. His friend pleasantly said to him, “Sir, you tell us we must be
+heavenly-minded,” as though he would draw from Mr. Eliot some remarks on
+the consistency of heavenly-mindedness with attention to things about us.
+Mr. Eliot replied, “It is true; and this is no impediment unto that; for
+were I sure to go to heaven tomorrow, I would do what I do to-day.”
+
+He went into a merchant’s counting room, where he saw his mercantile
+books on the table, and some books of devotion on the shelf. Upon which
+he said, “Sir, here is earth on the table, and Heaven on the shelf. Pray
+don’t sit so much at the table as altogether to forget the shelf.”
+
+Preaching once on holiness in all manner of conversation, he said, “In
+the morning if we ask, Where am I to be to-day? our souls must answer, In
+heaven. In the evening if we ask, Where have I been to-day, our souls may
+answer, In heaven. If thou art a believer thou art no stranger to Heaven
+while thou livest; and when thou diest, Heaven will be no strange place
+to thee: no, thou hast been there a thousand times before.”
+
+He would say to students, “I pray look to it that you be morning birds.”
+
+A few years before his death, he pressed his people to obtain another
+pastor, and said, “’Tis possible you may think the burden of maintaining
+two ministers may be two heavy for you; but I deliver you from that
+fear; I do here give back my salary to the Lord Jesus Christ, and now,
+brethren, you may fix that upon any man that God shall make a pastor
+for you.” But his Church kindly and generously told him that they
+should count his very presence worth a salary, when he should be so
+superannuated as to do no further service for them.
+
+He was an abstemious man, and yet far from being morose or censorious,
+but when invited to a large dinner, it is said that while he eat but very
+little he would indulge in pleasant and grateful remarks with respect to
+the plenty with which God had furnished his people in this wilderness.
+Having been invited at a stranger’s house to take some drink, which he
+was told was wine and water, he replied, “Wine! ’tis a noble, generous
+liquor, and we should be humbly thankful for it; but, as I remember,
+water was made before it,” and water was his drink, to a degree which was
+far from being common even in those days.
+
+He was greatly displeased with the increasing attention in his day
+among the men to the wearing of the hair, the length of it growing to
+effeminacy, and false hair frequently being added, when there was no
+necessity for it to cover the head. He finally despaired of changing or
+checking the custom, and said, “The lust is become insuperable.”
+
+It is said of him that no man ever had fewer enemies than he, but still
+there were those who privately disliked him, and he charged his wife in
+her visits among the people to do good in a special manner to any whom
+she found disposed to speak against him, or to entertain unkind feelings
+towards him. Having once displeased a hearer by something in a sermon,
+the man abused him publicly by words and by printing something to his
+injury. The man soon after was wounded. Mrs. Eliot had considerable skill
+in medicine and the treatment of wounds, and Mr. Eliot sent her to cure
+the man, which she did, and upon his recovery the man called to thank
+her, but she took no reward, and Mr. Eliot kept him to dine, and took no
+notice of his evil conduct, whereupon the man was deeply affected and
+subdued.
+
+He had much tact and wit in suiting his benedictions to the conditions
+and circumstances of different people.
+
+In the days of affliction he showed exemplary resignation to the will
+of God. He followed to the grave two or three of his sons, who were
+ministers of the Gospel. But his patience and submission under these
+trials are spoken of with great commendation.
+
+His love for the Hebrew tongue is seen in the following enthusiastic
+words: “O that the Lord would put it into the heart of some of his
+religious and learned servants to take such pains about the Hebrew
+language as to fit it for universal use! Considering that above all
+languages spoken by the lip of man, it is most capable to be enlarged,
+and fitted to express all things, and motions, and notions that our human
+intellect is capable of in this mortal life, considering also that it is
+the invention of God himself; and what one is fitter to be the universal
+language, than that which it pleased our Lord Jesus to make use of when
+he spake from heaven unto Paul!”
+
+In the government of his family, it is said that there might have been
+seen a perpetual mixture of a Spartan and a Christian discipline, and
+that whatever decay there might have been in family religion generally,
+the people ‘knew how that he would command his children and his household
+after him, that they should keep the way of the Lord.’
+
+He was remarkable for the efforts he employed to instruct the children,
+making catechisms for them having reference to any prevailing errors.
+The effect of this is certified in a remark of Cotton Mather, that it is
+a well-principled people that he has left behind him. “As when certain
+Jesuits were sent among the Waldenses to corrupt their children, they
+returned with much disappointment and confusion, because the children of
+seven years old were well-principled enough to encounter the most learned
+of them all; so, if any seducers were let loose to wolve it among the
+good people of Roxbury, I am confident they would find as little prey
+in that well instructed place as in any part of the country. No civil
+penalties would signify so much to save any people from the snares of
+busy heretics, as the unwearied catechising of our Eliot has done to
+preserve his people from the gangrene of ill opinion.”[15]
+
+It is said of Mr. Eliot that he was not only an evangelical minister, but
+a Protestant and a Puritan. “He was a modest, humble, but very reasonable
+non-conformist unto the ceremonies which have been such unhappy apples of
+strife in the Church of England; otherwise the dismal thickets of America
+had never seen such a person in them.”
+
+Mr. Eliot was strongly attached to the Congregational form of Church
+order. He spoke of it as the special gift of Christ to his people who
+followed him into the wilderness with an earnest zeal for communion with
+Him in a pure worship. He regarded Congregationalism as a happy medium
+to “rigid Presbyterianism” on the one hand, and “leveling Brownism” on
+the other, the liberties of the people not being disregarded, nor the
+authority of the elders rendered insignificant, but a due balance kept
+between them both. He regarded the Platform of Church Discipline “as
+being the nearest of what he had yet seen to the directions of heaven.”
+
+By this it is not to be understood that Mr. Eliot as a true
+Congregationalist, supposed that any form of Church government was
+imposed by Christ or the Apostles upon the Christian Church, as being
+in any way essential to the existence of a true Church of Christ. With
+regard to the appointment of any special form of Church Government, it
+would seem that there is a wise silence in the New Testament. The genius
+of Christianity forbids an adherence to any form of ecclesiastical
+order as essential to the existence of a Church of Christ. This truth
+was declared by Christ at Jacob’s well to the Samaritan woman. The Jews
+insisted on Jerusalem as the place where men ought to worship. The
+Samaritans as strenuously maintained that acceptable worship could be
+performed only in their mountain.
+
+Christ said, The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor
+yet at Jerusalem worship the Father; that is, no place in preference to
+another shall be essential to acceptable worship. God is a Spirit, and
+they that worship him need not restrict themselves to any hallowed place,
+but may worship him any where acceptably, if they worship Him in spirit
+and in truth.
+
+But if so great a change was allowed as the abolition of sacred places,
+which once were essential to acceptable worship, and notwithstanding all
+that had been done to make men feel that Jerusalem and the Temple were
+the places to which the true worshipers must of necessity resort, it
+follows that no forms, any more than places, are essential to the true
+worship of God. We may infer what form of Church government prevailed
+under the Apostles, though different readers of the New Testament will
+draw different inferences. This shows that no form is prescribed as
+being essential, otherwise we should not have been left in the dark in
+so important a subject. The body of Moses and the place of his sepulchre
+were hidden, because as we generally suppose the Israelites would have
+paid an idolatrous reverence before such a shrine as the tomb of their
+illustrious leader, and in the Jewish Church the solemn farce of a Holy
+Sepulchre would have been enacted, in anticipation and in countenance of
+the subsequent follies which have been connected with the Sepulchre of
+Christ. We may say of any supposed form of Church government as being in
+any way essential, as is said of the body of Moses, and for a similar
+reason, “The Lord buried it,” and “no man knoweth of its sepulchre to
+this day.”
+
+Our preference for the Congregational form of Church government is
+not properly founded on any prescriptions in the New Testament, but on
+our convictions that this form is most accordant with the genius of
+Christianity and of republican institutions. But so surely as we insist
+on Congregationalism as having any “divine right,” or authority, and we
+seek to propagate Congregationalism with such convictions, we are as
+surely High Churchmen and Puseyites as can any where be found. To insist
+on the absence of all forms and on the perfect simplicity of worship,
+with a sectarian spirit, shows as great an attachment to _a form of
+worship_ as though we urged the adoption of all the ceremonies of the
+Cathedral. We may be as bigoted in favor of simplicity as of any thing
+else, and a Quaker and a Congregationalist may be as much a formalist
+and a Churchman as any other. At the same time we may believe that the
+Congregational form of government is nearer to the Spirit of the New
+Testament than any other, and this is what Mr. Eliot probably meant when
+he said that Congregationalism was nearest in his view to the directions
+of heaven.
+
+The influence which was exerted upon the mind of Thomas Jefferson, and
+which he exerted in the framing of the Constitution, by observing, as he
+did, an illustration of democracy in a Congregational Baptist Church in
+Virginia, is well known.[16]
+
+We ought to carry out the true Puritan doctrine of liberty of
+conscience by not despising any who choose to worship under a different
+form and order from our own. It is an interesting illustration of the
+noble spirit in our Puritan institutions that all sects have liberty
+here to worship God with any forms or in any manner they please; and he
+who tries to hinder them any further than by convincing them, or feels
+sourly towards them in the enjoyment of their liberty of conscience
+and religious preferences, has not yet learned all that he may of the
+nature and spirit of religious liberty. But if we profess to be in the
+true succession from the Puritans and Pilgrims as to doctrine and Church
+order, let us not mix any of those things with our worship from which
+the Pilgrims fled to this wilderness, that they might be rid of them.
+We can live peaceably and freely in the midst of such corruptions and
+not be persecuted. They could not. Let us not abuse our liberty, by
+turning again to those beggarly elements of human appointments in Church
+government and worship which corrupt the religion of Christ. Let us
+not begin to do so by cultivating the spirit of bigoted attachment to
+our simple order and forms, for thereby we as truly violate the spirit
+of Christianity as though we insisted on a multitude of ceremonies and
+a hierarchy, as essential to a Church. He who says “No Church without
+simplicity in worship,” and he who says, “No Church without a Bishop,”
+are two extremes which meet. At the same time, we shall be the degenerate
+sons of men who made such sacrifices for purity in worship as did the
+Pilgrims, unless we adhere to our simple and beautiful mode of Church
+government and worship as preferable to any other.
+
+The practice of examining persons who seek admission to the Church, was
+much insisted on by Mr. Eliot. The relation of their experience he says,
+“is an ordinance of wonderful benefit. The devil knows what he does when
+he thrusts so hard to get this custom out of our churches. For my part I
+would say in this case, Get thee behind me Satan; thou givest an horrible
+offence to the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us keep up this ordinance with all
+gentleness; and where we see the least spark of grace held forth, let us
+prize it more than all the wit in the world.”
+
+Mr. Eliot had six children, a daughter and five sons. The daughter
+became exemplary for her piety and matronly deportment. His first son,
+John, was “a lively, zealous, acute preacher, not only to the English at
+New Cambridge,[17] but also to the Indians thereabout.” He died early,
+and upon his death-bed uttered many remarkable things. The third child,
+Joseph, was pastor of the Church in Guilford, Conn. The fourth child,
+Samuel, was a candidate for the ministry, but died young. The fifth
+was Aaron, who also died very young. The last was Benjamin, who became
+his father’s assistant in the ministry at Roxbury, but died before his
+father. Of these six children, Mr. Eliot said, “THEY ARE ALL EITHER WITH
+CHRIST, OR IN CHRIST.”
+
+Mather speaks of the singular and surprising successes of Mr. Eliot’s
+prayers; ‘for they were such that in our distresses we still repaired
+to him under that encouragement.’ “He is a prophet, and he shall pray
+for thee, and thou shall live.” He mentions the following fact. They
+who are displeased at David’s imprecations against his enemies, may see
+in it that a good man may pray for the destruction of the incorrigibly
+wicked, when great and good ends will be accomplished by it, leaving
+it submissively to the appointments of the all-wise God. A good man
+never ventures to pray in this manner, except when he is under a strong
+influence, drawing him very near to God with holy freedom and boldness.
+At such times his feelings are eminently pure; and it is in such times
+that good men feel impelled to pray for the removal of those who oppose
+God, and hinder others in their salvation. No doubt if there were more of
+ardent piety, there would be more of righteous indignation against the
+obstinate opposers of religion, and we should find ourselves better able
+to understand the feelings and language of David, when praying against
+the enemies of his throne and of the God who ruled by him. That language
+will come into more familiar use by the people of God, in their nearest
+approaches to him, as they go forth with their King and Saviour in his
+conflicts with his enemies.
+
+The fact to which the allusion has been made was this:
+
+There was a pious gentleman of Charlestown by the name of Foster, who,
+with his son, was taken prisoner by the Turks. The news being spread
+in this vicinity, the good people offered up many prayers for his
+deliverance. But it was reported that the prince, within whose authority
+he was a prisoner, had resolved that during his reign, no captive should
+be set free. The friends and acquaintances of this man then concluded
+that his captivity was hopeless. Soon after, Mr. Eliot on some public
+and solemn occasion, used these direct and forcible petitions. “Heavenly
+Father! work forth deliverance of thy poor servant, Foster; and if the
+prince which detains him, will not, as they say, dismiss him so long as
+himself lives, Lord, we pray thee to kill that cruel prince; kill him,
+and glorify thyself upon him.” Soon after the prisoners returned and
+brought news that in consequence of the untimely death of the prince they
+had been set at liberty.
+
+There was one thing which seems to have pressed very heavily on the mind
+and heart of Mr. Eliot in his ministerial office. It was the care of a
+Church. “He looked upon it,” says one, “as a thing no less dangerous
+than important, and attended with so many difficulties, temptations, and
+humiliations, as that nothing but a call from the Son of God could have
+encouraged him unto the susception of it. He saw that it was no easy
+thing to feed the souls of such a people, to bear their manners with
+all patience, not being by any of their infirmities discouraged from
+teaching of them, and from watching and praying over them, to value them
+highly as the flock of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood,
+notwithstanding all their miscarriages, and in all to examine the rule
+of Scripture for the warrant of whatever shall be done, and to remember
+the day of judgment wherein an account must be given of whatever shall be
+done, having in the meantime no expectation of the riches and grandeurs
+which accompany a worldly domination.” This seemed to be characteristic
+of the spirit with which Mr. Eliot discharged his duties as the pastor of
+a Church.
+
+An observation of Rev. Samuel Ward has been quoted as applicable to him:
+“In observing I have observed and found that divers great clerks have had
+but little fruit of their ministry, but hardly any truly zealous men of
+God, though of lesser gifts, but have had much comfort of their labors in
+their own and bordering parishes, being in this likened by Gregory to the
+iron on the smith’s anvil, sparkling round about.”
+
+Mather says, “The Lord Jesus Christ was the load-stone which gave a
+touch to all the sermons of our Eliot; a glorious, precious, lovely
+Christ, was the point of heaven to which they still verged unto.” It is
+said, that though he printed many books or pamphlets, his heart seemed
+to be in none of them so much, as in his ‘Harmony of the Gospels, in the
+holy History of Jesus Christ.’ It was a standing piece of advice with him
+to young ministers, “Pray let there be much of Christ in your ministry.”
+On hearing a sermon in which the Saviour had been made prominent, he
+would say, O, blessed be God, that we hear Christ so much and so well
+preached in poor New England.
+
+On coming out of the meeting-house where he had been listening to a
+sermon, he said to the preacher, “Brother, there was oil required for the
+service of the sanctuary; but it must be beaten oil; I praise God that
+I saw your oil so well beaten to-day; the Lord help us always by good
+study to beat our oil that there may be _no knots in our sermons left
+undissolved_, and that there may a clear light be thereby given in the
+house of God.” Still it is observed that he looked for something more
+than mere study in a sermon; he required those things in it which would
+make the hearer feel that the Spirit of God was in the sermon and with
+the preacher, and he was once heard to complain, “It is a sad thing when
+a sermon shall have that one thing, The Spirit of God, wanting in it.”
+
+He had eminently spiritual views of the duty and privilege of infant
+baptism. On giving the Rev. Cotton Mather the Right Hand of Fellowship
+at his ordination, he said to him, “Brother, art thou a lover of the
+Lord Jesus Christ? Then I pray, feed his lambs.” He was careful to have
+the lambs pass under the “Lord’s tything rod.” One Mr. Norcott, a truly
+pious man, published a book against the baptism of infants, which being
+circulated in Boston and the vicinity, Mr. Eliot answered it in a brief
+publication, beginning with these words: “The book speaks with the voice
+of a lamb, and I think the author is a godly though erring brother; but
+he acts the cause of a roaring lion, who by all crafty ways, seeketh to
+devour the poor lambs of the flock of Christ.” He then speaks “in the
+behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.”
+
+On one occasion, speaking of the Saviour’s directions to Peter, John
+21:15, he observed, That _the care of the lambs is one third part of the
+charge over the house of God_.
+
+The title of one of Mr. Eliot’s publications, “The Divine Management
+of Gospel Churches, by the Ordinance of Councils, constituted in order
+according to the Scriptures, which may be a means of uniting those two
+holy and eminent parties, the Presbyterians and the Congregational,”
+shows that a plan of union between these two sister denominations is not
+wholly of modern origin.
+
+But reserving many things respecting Mr. Eliot’s character and opinions
+for another place in this book, let us now look at him in that remarkable
+work to which God appointed him among the Indians of this vicinity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+    Nonantum. Mather’s description of the natives. The Lost Tribes
+    of Israel. Specimen of Indian words. Eliot’s first religious
+    exercise at Nonantum. Indian Questions. Second visit to
+    the Indians. Indian Questions. Eliot’s reflections on his
+    interviews. Anecdotes.
+
+
+The old turnpike road to Worcester, in Brighton, leaves Nonantum hill
+on the left, and a private road conducts to the summit of the hill which
+is crowned by two mansions.[18] The scenery from that hill has a rare
+combination of still life and of the busy world. The Charles River, seen
+from a distant part of the hill, meanders to the sea; the quiet, classic
+scenes of Cambridge are before the eye; soft undulations of hill and
+dale, winding roads and aboriginal woods, and the quiet waters of the
+estuary, impress the mind with sensations of repose which are pleasantly
+broken by the distant noise of travel upon the bridges, the sudden
+whistle of the locomotive, and an impressive view of the neighboring
+city. That hill, extending as far as Watertown, and Newton, was once the
+favorite residence of the Indians, in this vicinity,[19] and thither
+Eliot, the pastor of the neighboring Church in Roxbury, directed his way,
+to give the Indians the word and ordinances of the Gospel in their own
+language.
+
+Cotton Mather says, “The natives of the country now possessed by the
+New Englanders, had been forlorn and wretched heathen ever since their
+first herding here; and though we know not how these Indians first became
+inhabitants of this mighty continent, yet we may guess that probably the
+devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hopes that the gospel
+of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy
+or disturb his absolute empire over them. But our Eliot was in such
+ill-terms with the devil, as to alarm him by sounding the silver trumpets
+of heaven in his territories, and make some noble and zealous attempt
+towards ousting him of his ancient possessions here. There were, I think,
+twenty several nations, if I may call them so, of Indians, upon that spot
+of ground which fell under the influence of our Three United Colonies;
+and our Eliot was willing to rescue as many of them as he could from that
+old usurping landlord of America, who is, by the wrath of God, the prince
+of this world.”[20]
+
+Some of the interest and zeal which many of the first planters and their
+successors felt with regard to the Indians, was owing to their belief
+that they were the Ten Tribes of Israel. Cotton Mather enumerates “some
+small reasons,” as he calls them, which led the English to suspect that
+they might be Israelites. He adds, “They have, too, a great unkindness
+for our swine;”—but he does not seem to place much reliance on that
+coincidence with the Jewish antipathy to swine, for he adds, “but I
+suppose that is because our swine devour their clams, which are a great
+dainty with them.”
+
+This supposition that the North American Indians are the Ten Tribes of
+Israel, has seemed even more probable to many modern writers than it did
+to the first settlers of the country. Mr. Catlin, in his interesting and
+valuable work on the North American Indians, mentions many curious facts
+in the history, manners and customs of the present race of red men, in
+favor of this supposition. But there are so many theories on the subject
+of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and it is so easy for an ingenious mind to
+discover or invent resemblances, that neither this theory nor any other
+on the same subject has ever obtained general belief.
+
+It was to a people of rude speech and fierce countenance that Mr. Eliot
+endeavored to give a knowledge of the Gospel and the institutions of
+civilized life. His first labor of course was to acquire their language.
+It was the language of the Massachusetts Indians to which he applied
+himself. He found an old Indian who could speak English, took him into
+his family, and by finding out one word, and expression, and sentence
+after another, he soon was able to converse in that tongue, and finally
+understood it so well that he reduced it to rules, and made an Indian
+grammar. One glance at this language will show that it must have been
+no easy task for a stranger to learn it well enough to converse in it.
+Some of the words are of enormous length, one of them sometimes filling a
+whole line. The word for “our loves,” is _noowoomantammoorkanunornash_.
+“Our question” is _Kummogkodonnattootummooetiteaongannunnarash_. “One
+would think,” says Mather, “that these words had been growing ever since
+Babel unto the dimensions to which they are now extended.” Another remark
+of his on this subject, though it may seem to us to be somewhat in a
+trifling mood, was undoubtedly written with sober feelings, considering
+the prevalent superstitions of those times—superstitions with regard to
+which we greatly err if we suppose them to have been, in those times,
+peculiar to America.[21] “I know not,” this writer adds, “what thoughts
+it will produce in my reader, when I inform him that once finding that
+the demons in a possessed young woman understood the Latin and Greek
+and Hebrew languages, my curiosity led me to make trial of this Indian
+language, and the demons did seem as if they did not understand it.”
+
+The reason of the great length of these Indian words is understood to
+be, that instead of having separate words for pronouns and adjectives,
+the noun or verb expresses them by adding syllables to itself. Mather,
+who was ready at anagrams and puns, says that the name _Eliot_ read
+backwards, is _t o i l E_, and he thinks that the name corresponds well
+with the toil of reducing such a language to a grammar. At the close of
+his Grammar Eliot wrote these words: “Prayers and pains through faith in
+Christ Jesus, will do any thing.”
+
+We have from Eliot’s own pen a narrative, called “A true relation of our
+beginnings with the Indians.” It was published in London, in 1647, under
+this title, “The Day breaking, if not the Sun-rising, of the Gospel, with
+the Indians in New England.”
+
+In October, 1646, Eliot, with a few others, having sought the blessing
+of God, went to Nonantum, for the purpose, as he says, of making known to
+the Indians the things of their peace. As they approached the wigwams,
+five or six of the Chiefs met them with English salutations and bid
+them welcome. The principal wigwam had been previously prepared for the
+meeting, and many of the Indians were assembled. Eliot and his companions
+then began with prayer in the English language, not being sufficiently
+acquainted with the Indian tongue to make suitable religious impressions
+at first with it upon the minds of the Indians, and besides they wished
+to let the Indians see that they felt the duty in hand to be serious and
+sacred, and they had a desire, moreover, as missionaries to offer up a
+united supplication to God, “with the same request and heart sorrowes,”
+in that place where God was never wont to be called upon.
+
+It was an affecting sight, as we may suppose, to Eliot and his friends,
+when they ceased from prayer and looked upon the company of Indians
+sitting in silence, with a mixture of curiosity and seriousness and
+wildness in their faces. To such an audience Eliot preached in the Indian
+tongue from Ezekiel 37:9. “Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind,
+Thus saith the Lord, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon
+these slain that they may live.”
+
+It is a curious fact that the name of the man[22] in whose wigwam they
+were assembled was Waban, and Waban is the Indian name for the wind, so
+that it seemed to Waban that the message was sent to him, and it proved
+a means in his conversion. The text from which Mr. Eliot preached on
+this occasion, was not one which his hearers could at first understand,
+and therefore some have expressed surprise at the selection of it. But
+in reply to this, it may be asked, what passage of the Word of God
+would have been immediately intelligible to those ignorant hearers?
+Besides, the text seems to have been chosen by Mr. Eliot for a purpose
+which is certainly proper on special occasions, viz., as a warrant and
+encouragement to his own soul and that of his helpers, in preaching in
+that valley of dry bones. Yet, after suitable religious impressions had
+been made, and the hearers had felt their lost and wretched state, and
+their need of divine power, in reflecting upon the text it must have
+seemed to the hearers peculiarly appropriate to the occasion and to their
+condition.
+
+An hour and a quarter was occupied in the discourse. Mr. Eliot gave the
+Indians first a brief exposition of the ten commandments, showing the
+wrath and curse of God against those who break the least one of them. The
+subject was then applied, and the law having been brought to do its work
+in their hearts, and their sins being pointed out to them, as Mr. Eliot
+says, with much sweet affection, Jesus Christ was preached to them as the
+only Saviour. He told them who Christ was, and what he did, and whither
+he had gone, and how he will come again to judge the wicked and burn
+the world. The creation and fall of man, the greatness of God, heaven
+and hell, the pleasures of religion and the miseries of sin were then
+explained in language and with illustrations suited to their capacity.
+
+The sermon being finished, Mr. Eliot proposed some questions to them,
+and first inquired whether they understood what had been said, and
+whether all or only some of them understood it? A multitude of voices
+exclaimed that they all understood every thing which had been spoken.
+Leave was then granted them to put questions, and it is interesting
+to notice the first questions which these children of the wilderness
+proposed. The first questions were,
+
+“What is the cause of thunder?”
+
+“What makes the sea ebb and flow?”
+
+“What makes the wind blow?”
+
+But there were some questions proposed by them which Mr. Eliot says some
+special wisdom of God directed them to ask, as, for example,
+
+_How may we come to know Jesus Christ?_
+
+Mr. Eliot told them that if they could read the Bible they would see
+clearly who Jesus Christ is, but inasmuch as they could not then read, he
+desired them to remember what he had told them out of the Bible, and to
+think much and often upon it, when they lay down on their mats in their
+wigwams and when they rose up, and to go alone in the fields, and woods,
+and muse on it, and so God would teach them.
+
+He told them that if they would have help from God in this thing, they
+must begin to pray, and though they could not make long prayers as the
+English did, yet if they did but sigh and groan, saying, “Lord, make me
+to know Jesus Christ for I know him not,” and if with all their hearts
+they persisted in such prayers, they might hope that God would help them.
+But they were especially to remember that they must confess their sins
+and ignorance to God and mourn over them and acknowledge how just it
+would be in God to withhold from them any knowledge of Christ, on account
+of their sins.
+
+This instruction was communicated to them by Mr. Eliot through the Indian
+interpreter whom he had brought with him, but he says he was struck with
+the fact that a few words from the Preacher had much greater effect than
+many from the interpreter.
+
+One of them asked, whether Englishmen were ever at any time so ignorant
+of God and Jesus Christ as they themselves?
+
+Another put this question: Whether if the father be naught and the
+child good, will God be offended with that child? because in the second
+commandment it is said that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the
+children.
+
+They were told in reply to this that every child who is good will not be
+punished for the sins of his father, but if the child be bad, God would
+then visit his father’s sins upon him, and they were bid to notice that
+part of the second commandment which contains a promise to the thousands
+of them that love God and keep his commandments.
+
+One of them asked, How is all the world now become so full of people, if
+they were all once drowned in the flood? This led to the story of the ark
+and the preservation of Noah.
+
+Mr. Eliot then proposed some questions to them, for example, Whether they
+did not desire to see God, and were not tempted to think there is no God
+because they could not see him?
+
+Some of them answered, They did desire to see Him if it could be, but
+they had heard from Mr. Eliot that he could not be seen, and they did
+believe that though their eyes could not see him, he was to be seen with
+their soul within.
+
+Mr. Eliot endeavored to confirm them in this impression, and asked them
+if they saw a great wigwam or a great house, would they think that
+racoons or foxes built it? or would they think that it made itself? or
+that no wise builder made it, because they could not see him who made it?
+
+Knowing that the doctrine of one God was a great stumbling block to
+them, Mr. Eliot asked them if they did not think it strange that there
+should be but one God, and yet this God be in Massachusetts, and in
+Connecticut, in Old England, in this wigwam, and the next, and every
+where at the same time?
+
+One of the most sober of them replied that it was indeed strange, as
+every thing else they had heard preached was strange, and they were
+wonderful things which they never heard of before, but yet they thought
+“it might be true, and that God was so big every where.” Mr. Eliot
+illustrated the truth by the light of the sun, which, though it was but
+a creature of God, shed its light into that wigwam, and the next, in
+Massachusetts and Old England, at once.
+
+He inquired of them if they did not find something troubling them within
+after the commission of murder, theft, adultery, lying; and what would
+comfort them, and remove that trouble of conscience when they should die
+and appear before God?
+
+They replied that they were thus troubled, but they could not tell what
+they should say about it, or what would remove this trouble of mind,
+whereupon Mr. Eliot enlarged upon the evil of sin and the condition of
+the soul which is cast out of the favor of God.
+
+Having spent three hours in this interview, Mr. Eliot asked them if
+they were not weary, and they said, no. But thinking it best to leave
+them with an appetite, Mr. Eliot concluded the meeting with prayer, but
+before he departed the principal Indian expressed a desire for more land
+to build a Town upon, and Mr. Eliot promised to speak for them to the
+General Court, “that they might possess all the compass of that hill upon
+which their wigwams then stood.”
+
+In the second visit which Mr. Eliot made to the Indians at Nonantum, he
+began to catechise the younger children. He framed three questions only,
+that their memories might not be overloaded. The questions and answers
+were these:
+
+1. Who made you and all the world. Ans. God.
+
+2. Who do you think should save you and redeem you from sin and hell?
+Ans. Jesus Christ.
+
+3. How many commandments hath God given you to keep. Ans. Ten.
+
+By the time that the questions reached the smaller children, they had
+learned the answers perfectly, from hearing the others repeat them, and
+the parents had become familiar with them, and they were requested to use
+this _Shorter_ Catechism of three questions, in teaching their children,
+against the next visit.
+
+The substance of Mr. Eliot’s address to the Indians on this occasion was
+this: “We are come to bring you good news from the great God Almighty,
+Maker of Heaven and earth, and to tell you how evil and wicked men may
+come to be good, so that while they live they may be happy, and when they
+die may go to God and live in heaven.”
+
+He then endeavored to give them just impressions concerning God, his
+power, greatness, and goodness, his will, what he required of all men,
+even of the Indians, in the ten commandments, the dreadful punishment of
+all who break one of these commandments, the anger of God at sin, and
+yet his compassion for sinners in sending Christ to die for wicked men.
+He taught them that if they would repent and believe, God would love the
+poor miserable Indians, but that the wrath of God would burn against all
+who neglected so great salvation as was now offered to them by those
+whose only desire was their salvation.
+
+The power of these words was manifestly felt by one of the Indians, who
+at the thought of his sins and of the danger to which they exposed him,
+wept aloud, yet without affectation, but striving to conceal his emotions.
+
+Perhaps in no way can we communicate religious instruction in a more
+simple and effectual way to the young who may read this book, than to
+record here the questions and answers which Mr. Eliot has preserved in
+his several interviews with the Indians. Other writers who lived at that
+time have also recorded questions and answers which they heard. But it
+will not be necessary to state the times, or places, or the hand by which
+they were recorded.
+
+An old man rose up after Mr. Eliot had finished his sermon, and asked
+whether it was not too late for such an old man as he, who was near
+death, to repent or seek after God.
+
+This question affected Mr. Eliot and his companions with compassion. They
+told him what is said in the Bible about those who were hired at the
+eleventh hour, and drew a parallel to his case by describing a son who
+had for very many years been disobedient, and afterwards penitent, and
+the feelings of his father towards him.
+
+Question. How came the English to differ so much from the Indians in
+the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, seeing they all had at first one
+father?
+
+Question. How may we come to serve God?
+
+Question. How comes it to pass that the sea water is salt and the land
+water fresh?
+
+Answer. This is one of the wonderful works of God. As strawberries are
+sweet and cranberries sour, by the appointment of God, so was it in
+this case. To this was added some account of natural causes and effects
+in connection with this subject, “which they less understood, yet did
+understand somewhat, as appeared by their usual signs of approving what
+they understand.”
+
+Question. If the water is higher than the earth, how comes it to pass
+that it doth not overflow all the earth?
+
+The missionary took an apple and illustrated the shape of the earth, the
+motion on its axis, and round the sun; then showed them how God made
+a great hollow ditch for the waters, which was so deep as to hold the
+waters by the attraction of gravitation, so that notwithstanding their
+convexity, they could not overflow the earth.
+
+During a recess in this interview, the Indians were busily employed in
+discussing these several subjects among themselves, their minds being
+evidently excited by them, through the effect of new ideas upon subjects
+which were new or had always been incomprehensible to them. Being
+afterwards asked if they wished to propose any further questions, one
+asked,
+
+If a man has committed some great sins, (stolen goods, &c.,) and the
+Sachem does not punish him, and he is not punished, but he restores the
+goods, what then? is not all well now? meaning to ask whether restoration
+made sufficient amends to the law of God.
+
+He was told that though men be not offended at such sins, yet God is
+angry. The holiness of God was here illustrated. Such a sinner should
+seek forgiveness as much as any other sinner through the blood of Christ.
+
+Upon hearing this answer, the Indian who proposed the question drew back
+and hung down his head, with an appearance of great sorrow and confusion,
+and finally broke out saying, “Me little know Jesus Christ, or me should
+seek him better.” Mr. Eliot comforted him by telling him that as it is
+early dawn at first when there is but little light, but the sun rises
+to perfect day, so it would be with him and his people with regard to a
+knowledge of the favor of God if they would seek Him.
+
+One of the Indians who had received religious impressions in his
+acquaintance with the colonists, said he would propose this question. A
+little while since he said he was praying in his wigwam to God and Jesus
+Christ, that God would give him a good heart; that in his prayer another
+Indian interrupted him and told him that he prayed in vain, because that
+Jesus Christ could not understand what Indians speak in prayer; he had
+been used to hear Englishmen pray, and so could well enough understand
+them, but Indian language in prayer he was not acquainted with. His
+question therefore was, “Whether God and Jesus Christ did understand
+Indian prayers?”
+
+At the close of one interview, Mr. Eliot prayed for above fifteen minutes
+in the Indian tongue, that they might feel that Christ understood such
+prayers. The Indians stood about him in grotesque figures, some of them
+lifting up their eyes and their hands to accompany the prayer, and one of
+them holding a rag to his eyes and weeping violently, and after prayer
+retiring to a corner of the wigwam to weep in secret; which one of Mr.
+Eliot’s companions observed and spoke with him, and found him to be
+deeply affected with a sense of his guilt.
+
+Mr. Eliot makes several useful observations in view of his first two
+visits to the Indians.
+
+1. None of them slept in sermon or derided God’s messenger.
+
+2. That there is need of learning in ministers who preach to Indians
+more than to gracious Christians, in order to answer their philosophical
+questions.
+
+3. That there is no need of miraculous or extraordinary gifts in seeking
+the conversion of the most depraved of the human family.
+
+4. If Englishmen despise the preaching of faith and repentance and
+humiliation for sin, the poor heathens will be glad of it, and it shall
+do good to them.
+
+He adds to this, The Lord grant that the foundation of our English woe
+be not laid in the ruin and contempt of those fundamental doctrines
+of faith, repentance, humiliation for sin, but rather relishing the
+novelties and dreams of such men as are surfeited with the ordinary food
+of the Gospel of Christ. Indians shall weep to have faith and repentance
+preached, when Englishmen shall mourn, too late, that are weary of such
+truths.
+
+5. That the deepest estrangement of man from God is no hindrance to his
+grace, nor to the Spirit of grace. What nation or people ever so deeply
+degenerated since Adam’s fall, as these Indians, and yet the Spirit of
+God is working upon them.
+
+“It is very likely if ever the Lord convert any of these natives, they
+will mourn for sin exceedingly, and consequently love Christ dearly; for
+if by a little measure of light such heart-breakings have appeared, what
+may we think will be when more is let in?”
+
+“They are some of them very wicked, some very ingenious. These
+latter are very apt and quick of understanding, and naturally sad and
+melancholy, (a good servant to repentance) and therefore there is the
+greater hope of heart-breakings if ever God brings them effectually home,
+for which we should affectionately pray.”
+
+Mr. Eliot says, “It is wonderful to see what a little leaven and that
+small mustard-seed of the Gospel will do, and how truth will work when
+the spirit of Christ hath the setting of it on, even upon hearts and
+spirits most incapable.” The night after the Indians had heard the Gospel
+preached for the third time, an English youth lodged in Waban’s tent. He
+said that Waban instructed his companions with regard to the things which
+they had heard that day, and prayed with them, and that he awoke several
+times that night and began to pray and speak to one and another of the
+Indians of the things which they had heard. Mr. E. says, This man, being
+a man of gravity and chief prudence, a counsel among them, although no
+Sachem, is like to be a means of great good to the rest of his company,
+unless cowardice or witchery put an end, as usually they have done, to
+such hopeful beginnings.
+
+Two young Indians being at an Elder’s house one Sabbath evening, having
+been previously affected under Mr. Eliot’s preaching, one of them began
+to confess to the elder how wicked he had been, and declared that God
+could never look upon him with love. The elder opened to him in a
+familiar manner the truth of God’s love to the guilty, his willingness to
+pardon the vilest through the redemption made by Christ, and illustrated
+his instructions by the discourse of Christ to the Samaritan woman at
+Jacob’s well, and how Christ forgave her though she was living in sin at
+the moment when he began to speak to her. Whereupon the young man began
+to weep bitterly, and the other youth, his companion, disclosing his own
+guilt, burst out into loud weeping in which they both continued for half
+an hour.
+
+An old man told Mr. Eliot at one of the meetings that he was fully
+purposed to keep the Sabbath, but still he was in fear whether he should
+go to heaven or hell. This was a case in which reliance on good works
+gave as usual no peace to the conscience. It led Mr. Eliot to speak fully
+of the way of justification by Christ without works, “as the remedy
+against all fears of hell.”
+
+Mr. Eliot was interested in the fact that some of the Indians who seemed
+to receive the Gospel most readily, and feel its power, were able to use
+“gracious expressions,” as he calls them, which he was confident they had
+not heard from him, nor from his assistants. He gives a specimen of them
+with the corresponding Indian words:
+
+    Amanaomen Jehovah tabassen metagh. Checheson Jehovah kekowhogkow.
+    Take away, Lord,  my stony  heart.   Wash,    Lord,    my soul.
+
+“What are these,” he says, “but the sprinklings of the spirit and blood
+of Christ Jesus on their hearts? and ’tis no small matter that such dry,
+barren, and long accursed ground should yield such kind of increase in so
+small a time. I would not readily commend a fair day before night, nor
+promise much of such kind of beginnings, in all persons, nor yet in all
+of these, for we know how the profession of many is but a mere paint, and
+their best graces nothing but mere flashes and pangs which are suddenly
+kindled, and as soon to go out, and are extinct again; yet God doth not
+usually send his plough and seeds-men to a place but there is at least
+some little piece of good ground, although three to one be naught; and
+methinks the Lord Jesus would never have made so fit a key for their
+locks unless he had intended to open some of their doors, and so to make
+way for his coming in.”
+
+At the fourth meeting with the Indians, the children having been
+catechised, and the vision of the dry bones, which seems to have
+impressed Mr. Eliot from the first in speaking to the Indians, being
+explained, they offered all their children to the English to be educated
+by them.
+
+At this time one of them being asked, What is sin? he answered, A naughty
+heart. He did not seem to feel that sin consists only in outward acts.
+
+One of them complained that some of the Indians reviled him and the more
+serious Indians, calling them rogues, and otherwise insulting them for
+cutting off their long locks and arranging their hair in a modest manner,
+for, Mr. Eliot says, “since the word hath begun to work upon their hearts
+they have discerned the vanity and pride which they placed in their hair,
+and have therefore, of their own accord (none speaking to them that we
+know of) cut it modestly.” They said that some Indians who had heard the
+news of the great attention to religion among them, would come from a
+distance and stay with them three or four days, and one Sabbath, and then
+they would go from them, (implying that they did not like the Sabbath),
+but as for themselves, they said they were fully purposed to keep the
+Sabbath.
+
+Some of the Indians who heard the Gospel, despised and rejected it. So it
+has always been and is now, wherever the Gospel is preached. Some have
+their hearts opened to attend to the things of their peace, and others
+are hardened. Mr. Eliot’s assistant, learning that some Indians had
+discouraged and threatened others with regard to their attendance on the
+preaching, spoke to them on one occasion about the temptations of Satan.
+After sermon they proposed these questions:
+
+1. Some Indians say we must pray to the devil for all good, and some to
+God; may we pray to the devil or no?
+
+2. What does _humiliation_ mean, which we hear used so often by the
+English?
+
+3. Why do the English call us Indians, for before they came here we had
+another name?
+
+4. What is a spirit?
+
+5. May we believe in dreams?
+
+6. How did the English come to know God so much, and we so little?
+
+At the close of this interview they said that their great desire was to
+have a town and to learn to spin.
+
+They believed in the existence of an evil spirit, whom they called
+CHEPIAN, and who they thought corresponded to the devil in Scripture.
+They gave the following account of their way in which conjurers or Powows
+were made: Whenever an Indian had a strange dream in which Chepian
+appeared to him as a serpent, he would make it known to the rest, and for
+two days the Indians would dance and rejoice for what the serpent had
+told him, and he then became a Powow, or one whom the devil favored with
+his communications. The reader will notice the identity of the form in
+which they made the devil to appear to them, with the form in which he
+appeared to our first parents.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+    Nonantum granted to the Indians by the General Court. First
+    Indian Laws. Eliot’s and Shepard’s account of the progress of
+    the Gospel among the Indians. Concord Indians. Their laws.
+    Nonantum. Questions and anecdotes. Cape Cod Indians. The Synod
+    at Cambridge, 1648, examine the Christian Indians. “Who made
+    Sack?” Anecdotes and Questions. Order of the General Court,
+    1647. Regard for the Sabbath. Power of conscience. Questions.
+    Burial of a child. Settlement of Natick. Questions.
+
+
+The Indians were desirous of obtaining a grant of land for a permanent
+settlement, that they might enter upon civilized life. They had bartered
+their principal places to the English. The General Court purchased of
+some of the planters, who had bought it of the Indians, the place where
+their meeting was held, and gave it to them. The Indians inquiring what
+the name of the place should be they were told it should be Noonatomen
+(afterwards Nonantum) which signifies _rejoicing_, “because they did
+rejoice at the word of God, and God did rejoice over them as penitent
+sinners.”
+
+The following is a specimen of their first laws:
+
+1. If any man be idle a week, or at most a fortnight, he shall pay five
+shillings.
+
+3. If any man shall beat his wife, his hands shall be tied behind him,
+and he shall be carried to the place of justice to be severely punished.
+
+4. Every young man, if not another’s servant, and if unmarried, shall
+be compelled to set up a wigwam, and plant for himself, and not live
+shifting up and down to other wigwams.
+
+5. If any woman shall not have her hair tied up, but hang loose or be cut
+as men’s hair, she shall pay five shillings.
+
+7. All those men that wear long locks, shall pay five shillings.
+
+Most of the facts above narrated are contained in a piece written by Mr.
+Eliot, entitled The Day Breaking if not the Sun Rising of the Gospel with
+the Indians in New England. It was printed in London, “by Richard Cotes,
+for Fulk Clifton, and are to be sold at his shop under Saint Margaret’s
+Church, on New-fish Street Hill, 1647.”
+
+The same printer in 1648, issued another piece, written by Mr. Thomas
+Shepard, minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, at Cambridge, in New
+England, called, “The Clear sun-shine of the Gospel breaking forth
+upon the Indians of New England; or, An Historical Narrative of God’s
+Wonderful Workings upon sundry of the Indians, both Chief Governors and
+common people, in bringing them to a willing and desired submission to
+the Ordinances of the Gospel; and framing their hearts to an earnest
+inquiry after the knowledge of God the father and of Jesus Christ the
+Saviour of the world.” This piece was dedicated by Stephen Marshall,
+Jeremy Whitaker, Edmund Calamy and nine others, in England, “to the Right
+Honorable the Lords and Commons assembled in High Court of Parliament,
+That in you the Representatives of this nation, England might be stirred
+up to be Rejoycers in and advancers of these promising beginnings.” They
+looked upon the success of the Gospel among the Indians as a fulfillment
+in part of the promise of God the Father to the Son, “Ask of me, and I
+will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts
+of the earth for thy possession.” Psalm 2. They remind the Parliament
+that “God makes man’s will of sin serviceable to the advancement of the
+riches of his own grace. The most horrid act that was ever done by the
+sonnes of men, the murther of Christ, God made serviceable to the highest
+purposes of Grace and mercy that ever came upon his breast. Hee suffered
+Paul to be cast into prison to convert the Jaylor, to be shipwrackt at
+Milita to preach to the barbarous. So he suffered their (the Pilgrims’)
+way to be stopp’d up here, (in England) and their persons to be banished
+hence, that hee might open a passage for them in the wilderness, and make
+them instruments to draw soules to him, who had been so long estranged
+from Him. The end of the adversary was to suppresse, but God’s to
+propagate, the Gospel, as one saith of Paul, his _blindnesse gave light
+to whole world_. ‘Cœcitas Pauli totius orbis illuminatio.’ Acts 9:9. It
+was a long time before God let them (the Pilgrims) see any further end
+of their coming over than to preserve their consciences, cherish their
+Graces, provide for their sustenance. But hee let them know it was for
+some farther arrand that he brought them here, giving them some Bunches
+of Grapes, some clusters of Figs in earnest of the prosperous successe
+of their endeavours upon these poor out casts. If the first fruits bee
+specimens, what will the whole harvest bee? When the East and West shal
+sing together the song of the Lamb.”
+
+Mr. Shepard says that the news of what had been done for the Indians
+at Nonantum, by the preaching of the Gospel, had reached the Concord
+Indians, and their Sachem was so much affected by it, that he made
+application to have the Gospel and its ordinances made known to them.
+“They craved the assistance of one of the chiefe Indians of Noonanetum
+(Nonantum,) a very active Indian, to bring in others to the knowledge of
+God.”
+
+Mr. Eliot had already expressed his views[23] on the subject of a native
+ministry in these words,—“Nor doe I expect any great good will bee
+wrought by the English, (leaving secrets to God,—although the English
+surely begin and lay the first stones of Christ’s Kingdom and Temple
+amongst them) because God is wont ordinarily to convert Nations and
+peoples by some of their owne country men who are nearest to them, and
+can best speake, and most of all pity their brethren and countrimen.”
+
+A native ministry among the Indians began, in an informal way, much
+earlier than we have seen it begin among other heathen nations. The North
+American Indians, though sunk in superstition and wickedness, retained
+much more of intellectual strength, were more shrewd, and sooner became
+fit to teach their countrymen than has been the case elsewhere in the
+history of modern missions. No doubt the climate had much to do with the
+vigor of mind which the Indians have exhibited. They were far removed
+from the effeminateness of Eastern nations, and though indolent in their
+dispositions and habits, their minds when roused by the truth of the
+Gospel, rose to greater intellectual efforts than have been commonly seen
+in tribes exposed to the enervating influences of warmer latitudes.
+
+Some quotations from the introduction by Calamy and others, to Mr.
+Shepard’s piece above referred to, will show the spirit of those good
+men, as well as confirm the fact that the Gospel had done wonders in a
+short time among the Indians. It was published in 1648, two years after
+Mr. Eliot had begun his labors with them.
+
+They tell the readers of the effects which the Gospel had wrought among
+the Indians. “They set up prayers in their families morning and evening,
+and are in earnest in them. And with more affection they crave God’s
+blessing upon a little parched corn, and Indian stalks than many of us do
+upon our greatest plenty, and abundance. God is making good that promise,
+Zeph. 2:11. I will famish all the gods of the earth, (which he doth by
+withdrawing the worshipers, and throwing contempt upon the worship,) and
+men shall worship me alone, every one from his place, even all the isles
+of the heathens.”
+
+They call upon the people of England to read and ponder this remarkable
+narrative of the work of grace among the North American Savages. “Let
+these poor Indians stand up incentives to us, as the Apostle set up
+the Gentiles a provocation to the Jews; who knows but God gave life to
+New England to quicken Old, and hath warmed them that they might heat
+us; raised them from the dead, that they might recover us from that
+consumption, and those sad decays which are come upon us.”
+
+“This small Treatise is an Essay to that end, an Indian Sermon; though
+you will not hear us, possibly when some rise from the dead you will hear
+them. The main Doctrine it preacheth unto all is to value the Gospel,
+prize the ministry, loath not your manna, surfeit not of your plenty,
+be thankful for mercies, fruitful under means: Awake from your slumber,
+repair your decays, redeem your time, improve the seasons of your peace,
+answer to cals, open to knocks, attend to whispers, obey commands; you
+have a name you live, take heed you be not dead, you are Christians in
+shew, be so in deed: least as you have lost the power of religion, God
+take away from you the form also.”
+
+“And you that are ministers learn by this not to despond, though you see
+not present fruit of your labors; though you fish all night and catch
+nothing. God hath a fulness of time to perform all his purposes. And the
+deepest degeneracies and the widest estrangements from God shall be no
+bar or obstacle to the power and freeness of his own grace when that time
+is come.”
+
+“And you that are merchants, take incouragement from hence to scatter
+beams of light, to spread and propagate the Gospel into those dark
+corners of the earth; whither you traffick you take much from them; if
+you can carry this to them, you will make them an abundant recompense.
+And you that are Christians indeed, rejoice to see the Curtains of
+the Tabernacle inlarged, the bounds of the Sanctuary extended, Christ
+advanced, the Gospel propagated, and souls saved. And if ever the love
+of God did centre in your hearts, if ever the sense of his goodness hath
+begot bowels of compassion in you, draw them forth towards them whom God
+hath singled out to be the objects of his grace and mercy; lay out your
+prayers, lend your assistance to carry on this day of the Lord begun
+among them. The Parents also and many others being convinced of the evil
+of an idle life, desire to be employed in honest labor, but they want
+instruments and tools to set them on work, and cast garments to throw
+upon those bodies that their loins may bless you whose souls Christ hath
+cloathed. Some worthy persons have given much; and if God shall move
+the heart of others to offer willingly towards the building of Christ a
+Spiritual temple, it will certainly remain upon their account when the
+smallest rewards from God shall be better than the greatest layings out
+for God.”
+
+It will be perceived that this is an appeal in behalf of foreign
+missions. We will consider some of the facts which Mr. Shepard relates,
+and to which this appeal is an introduction.
+
+“The awakening of the Indians in our Towne,” says Mr. Shepard, “raised a
+great noyse among all the rest round about us, especially about Concord
+side, where the Sachim and one or two more of his men hearing of these
+things, and of the preaching of the Word, and how it wrought among them
+here, came therefore hither to Noonanetum, (Nonantum,) to the Indian
+Lecture, and what the Lord spake to his heart wee know not, only it
+seems he was so farre affected as that he desired to become more like to
+the English, and to cast off those Indian wild and sinfull courses they
+formerly lived in; but when divers of his men perceived their Sachim’s
+mind, they secretely opposed him herein, which opposition being known,
+he therefore called together his chief men about him, and made a speech
+to this effect unto them, viz.: That they had no reason at all to oppose
+those courses the English were now taking for their good, for saith hee,
+all the time you have lived after the Indian fashion, under the power and
+protection of higher Indian Sachims, what did they care for you? They
+onely sought their owne ends out of you, and therefore would exact upon
+you and take away your skins, and your kettles, and your wampam from you
+at their own pleasure, and this was all that they regarded: but you may
+evidently see that the English mind no such things, care for none of your
+goods, but onely seek your good and welfare, and instead of taking away
+all, are ready to give to you.”
+
+The effect of this speech seems to have been happy. The Indians sought
+the assistance of a discreet and active Indian at Nonantum, “in making
+certain lawes for their more religious and civill government, and
+behaviour.” It will interest the reader to observe the fruit of this
+half civilized legislator’s advice and labors. Mr. Shepard gives us the
+“Conclusions and Orders made and agreed upon by divers Sachims and other
+principall men amongst the Indians at Concord, in the end of the eleventh
+moneth, An. 1646.”[24] The following are a good specimen of the whole:
+
+1. Every one that shall abuse themselves with rum or strong liquors,
+shall pay for every time so abusing themselves twenty shillings.
+
+2. There shall be no more Powwowing amongst the Indians. And if any shall
+hereafter Powwow, both he that shall Powwow, and he that shall cause him
+to Powwow shall pay twenty shillings apiece.
+
+3. They do desire that they may be stirred up to seek after God.
+
+4. They desire they may understand the wiles of Satan, and grow out of
+love with his suggestions and temptations.
+
+5. That they may fall upon some better course to improve their time than
+formerly.
+
+6. That they may be brought to the sight of the sin of lying, and
+whosoever shall be found guilty herein, shall pay for the first offence
+five shillings, the second ten shillings, the third twenty shillings.
+
+7. Whosoever shall steale any thing from another, shall restore fourfold.
+
+8. They desire that no Indian hereafter shall have any more but one wife.
+
+9. They desire to prevent the falling out of Indians, one with another,
+and that they may live quietly one by another.
+
+10. That they may follow after humility, and not be proud.
+
+11. That when Indians doe wrong, they may be liable to censure by fine or
+the like, as the English are.
+
+12. That they pay their debts to the English.
+
+13. That they doe observe the Lord’s day, and whosoever shall prophane
+it, shall pay twenty shillings.
+
+14. This order refers to the disgusting practice of eating vermin
+gathered from their persons; “and whosoever shall offend in this case
+shall pay for every louse a penny.”
+
+15. They will weare their haire comely as the English do, penalty five
+shillings.
+
+16. They intend to reforme themselves in their former greasing
+themselves, penalty five shillings.
+
+17. They do all resolve to set up prayer in their wigwams, and to seek
+God both before and after meate.
+
+20. Whosoever shall play at their former games shall pay ten shillings.
+
+22. Wilful murder shall be punished by death.
+
+23. They shall not disguise themselves in their mournings, as formerly;
+nor shall they keep a great noyse by howling.
+
+25. No Indian shall take an Englishman’s canooe without leave, penalty
+five shillings.
+
+26. No Indian shall come into any Englishman’s house, except he first
+knock; and this they expect from the English.
+
+27. Whosoever beats his wife, shall pay twenty shillings.
+
+28. If any Indian shall fall out with and beate another Indian, he shall
+pay twenty shillings.
+
+29. They desire they may be a towne, and either to dwell on this side the
+Beare swamp, or at the East side of Mr. Flint’s Pond.
+
+These orders were put into form by Captain Simon Willard, of Concord,
+whom the Indians chose to be their Recorder. They were very solicitous
+that what they agreed upon might be faithfully preserved without
+alteration. The narrative of these conclusions and orders is signed by
+Thomas Flint, and Simon Willard.[25]
+
+Mr. Shepard says that on the 3d March, 1647, he and the Rev. Messrs.
+Wilson of Boston, Allen, of Dedham, and President Dunster, and many
+Christian friends, attended the Indian Lecture at Nonantum. “On which
+day,” he says, “perceiving divers of the Indian women well affected,
+and considering that their soules might stand in need of answer to
+their scruples as well as the mens, and yet because we knew how unfit
+it was for women so much as to ask questions publicly immediately by
+themselves, wee did therefore desire them to propound any questions they
+would be resolved about by first acquainting either their Husbands or the
+Interpreter privately therewith; whereupon we heard two questions orderly
+propounded; which because they are the first ever propounded by Indian
+women in such an ordinance that ever wee heard of, and because they may
+bee otherwise useful, I shall therefore set them down.”
+
+The first question was proposed by the wife of one Wampooas, a serious
+Indian, and was to this effect:
+
+“Do I pray when my husband prays, if I speak nothing as he doth, yet if
+I like what he says, and my heart goes with it?”
+
+The second was by the wife of one Totherswampe, viz., “Whether a husband
+should do well to pray with his wife, and yet continue in his passions
+and be angry with his wife?”
+
+Mr. Shepard says, he had “heard few Christians when they begin to look
+towards God, make more searching questions than these Indians.”
+
+An old Indian had an unruly, disobedient son. He asked, “What should one
+do with him, in case of obstinacy and disobedience, and that will not
+hear God’s word, though his father command him, nor will not forsake his
+drunkenness, though his father forbid him.”
+
+Rev. Mr. Wilson was much moved at this question, “and spake so terribly
+yet so graciously as might have affected a heart not quite shut up, which
+this young desperado hearing, (who well understood the English tongue,)
+instead of humbling himself before the Lord’s Word, which touched his
+conscience and condition so neare, hee was filled with the Spirit of
+Satan, and as soone as ever Mr. Wilson’s speech was ended, he brake out
+into a loud contemptuous expression. ‘So!’ saith he; which we passed by
+without speaking againe, leaving the Word with him, which wee knew would
+one day take its effect one way or other upon him.”
+
+In 1647, Messrs. Eliot, Wilson and Shepard, were sent for to Yarmouth, to
+arbitrate in some difficulties, by means of which “not only that bruised
+Church, but the whole Towne” was restored to peace. “But Mr. Eliot, as
+hee takes all other advantages of time, so hee took this, of speaking
+with, and preaching to the poore Indians in these remote places about
+Cape Cod.”
+
+The Indian dialect varied in forty or sixty miles, and on this account,
+and because the Indians at Cape Cod “were not accustomed to sacred
+language, about the holy things of God, wherein Mr. Eliot excels any
+other of the English, who in the Indian language about common matters
+excell him,” it was difficult to make them understand, yet by the help of
+one or two interpreters, they succeeded.
+
+There was a Sachem among them of a very furious spirit, whom the English
+for that reason called Jehu. He promised to attend the preaching on the
+day appointed, and to bring his men with him, but that very morning he
+sent his men to sea for fish, and although he came late to hear the
+Sermon, his men were absent. Yet he feigned that he did not understand
+what was said, though the others said that he did understand, and Mr.
+Eliot by privately questioning him found out that he did. He heard,
+however, “with a dogged look, and a discontented countenance.” How
+curious the uniform resemblance of the human heart in different classes
+of hearers in every age and place, under the preaching of the Gospel. Who
+in preaching has not seen a face answering to this Jehu’s face, and the
+heart of man to that of this man?
+
+It was found on this visit to the Indians of Cape Cod, that there
+was some tradition among them of the Gospel having been preached in
+those parts before. An aged Indian told the ministers that the very
+things which Mr. Eliot had taught them as the Commandments of God, and
+concerning God, and the making of the world by one God, they had heard
+from some old men now dead. A French ship was wrecked upon that coast
+many years before, and among the passengers and crew was the Frenchman
+who, the Indian tradition said,[26] while the Indians were putting him to
+death, told them that God was angry with them for their sins. Mr. Shepard
+speaks of “the French preacher cast upon those coasts many years since.”
+This man may have been a French Catholic Priest, on his way to the French
+possessions in Canada.[27]
+
+The presence of this preacher among them will account for a dream which
+one of the Indians related to Mr. Shepard and his companions, as having
+occurred to him some time ago. The tradition of what the preacher had
+said, and the account of his appearance was strongly impressed upon
+his imagination,[28] as we may suppose, without resorting to any other
+explanation of the dream which nevertheless is curious and interesting.
+
+He said that two years before the arrival of the English, there was a
+great mortality in that region, and one night when he was much disturbed
+and broken of his rest, he dreamed that he saw many men arrive upon the
+coast, dressed in such clothes as the English wear. Among them there was
+a man wholly in black, with a thing in his hand which he now saw was an
+Englishman’s book; that the man in black stood on a place higher than the
+rest, with the English around him, before a great number of the Indians.
+This man told the Indians that God was _moosquantum_, or angry with them,
+and would kill them for their sins. He said, that he himself then stood
+up, and asked the man in black what God would do with him and his Squaw
+and Papooses. The man would not answer him the first nor the second time,
+but the third time he proposed the question, the man smiled upon him, and
+told him that he and his papooses would be safe, and that God would give
+them victuals and other good things.
+
+Strange as it may seem, this dreamer who seemed thus to have had his
+dream fulfilled, would not come to the sermon till it was nearly
+finished, and then finding that the man in black was yet speaking, “away
+he flung,” and was seen no more by the ministers till the next day.
+Whether Satan, or fear, or guilt, or the world prevailed, Mr. Shepard
+says he could not say.
+
+The next year this writer says, he was much surprised in attending
+an Indian Lecture at Nonantum, to see so many Indian men, women, and
+children, in English apparel, so that they were scarcely known from the
+English people. Partly by gifts, and partly by their own labors, some of
+them had obtained means by which they were even handsomely dressed.
+
+June 9, 1648, was the first day of the Synod’s meeting at Cambridge.
+The forenoon was spent in hearing a sermon preparatory to the work of
+the Synod, and the afternoon was occupied in hearing an Indian Lecture.
+“There was a great gathering of Indians from all parts to hear Mr. Eliot,
+which we conceived not unseasonable at such a time; partly that the
+reports of God’s worke begun among them might be seen and believed of the
+chief who were then sent, and met from all the churches of Christ in this
+country, who could hardly believe the reports they had heard concerning
+these new stirs among the Indians, and partly hereby to raise up a
+greater spirit of prayer, for the carrying on the work begun upon the
+Indians among all the churches and servants of the Lord Jesus. The sermon
+was spent in showing them their miserable condition without Christ, out
+of Ephes. 2:1, that they were dead in trespasses and sinnes, and in
+pointing unto them the Lord Jesus who onely could quicken them.”
+
+After sermon, opportunity was given for the Indians to ask questions.
+Some of them were these:
+
+What countryman was Christ, and where was he born?
+
+How far off is that place from us here?
+
+Where is Christ now?
+
+How may we lay hold on Christ, and where, he being now absent from us?
+
+Mr. Shepard continues, “But that which I note is this, that their
+gracious attention to the Word, the affections and mournings of some
+of them under it, their sober propounding of divers and spirituall
+questions, their aptnesse to beleeve and understand what was replyed
+to them; the readiness of divers poore naked children to answer openly
+the chief questions in the Catechism, which were formerly taught them,
+and such like appearances of a great change upon them did marvellously
+affect all the wise and godly ministers, magistrates and people, and did
+raise their hearts up to great thankfulnesse to God; very many deeply and
+abundantly mourning for joy to see such a blessed day, and the Lord Jesus
+so much known and spoken of among such as never heard of him before: So
+that if any in England doubt of the truth of what was formerly writ; or
+if any malignant eye shall question and vilifie this work, they will now
+speak too late, for what was here done at _Cambridge_, was not set under
+a Bushell, but in the open Sunne; and what _Thomas_ would not beleeve by
+the reports of others, he might be forced to beleeve by seeing with his
+own eyes, and feeling Christ Jesus thus risen among them with his own
+hands.”[29]
+
+An old Indian came to Mr. Eliot’s house, as Mr. Eliot told Mr. Shepard,
+and Mr. Eliot told him that because he brought his wife and children to
+meeting so constantly, he would give him some clothes, for it was cold
+weather, and the old man was quite destitute. He did not understand this
+term which Mr. Eliot used for clothes, and enquired of Mr. Eliot’s Indian
+domestic, and when he understood that it was clothing which was promised,
+he broke out with much feeling, saying, “God is merciful:”—“a blessed,
+because a plainhearted, affectionate speech,” says Mr. Shepard, “and
+worthy of Englishmen’s thoughts when they put on their clothes; to think
+that a poor blind Indian that scarce ever heard of God before, that hee
+should see not only God in his clothes, but mercy also in a promise of a
+cast off worne sute of clothes, which were then given him, and which he
+now daily wears.”
+
+Mr. S. says that “Mr. Edward Jackson one of our Towne, constantly
+attended Mr. Eliot’s Lectures, and took down the questions and answers,
+and having sent me his notes, I shall send you a taste of some of them,”
+viz.:
+
+1. Why are some so bad that they hate those men that would teach them
+good things?
+
+2. Was the devil or man made first?
+
+3. If a father prays to God to teach his sons to know him, and he doth
+teach them himself, and they will not learn to know God, what should such
+fathers do? This question was put by an old man that had rude children.
+
+4. A Squaw asked this question: Whether she might not go and pray in some
+private place in the woods, when her husband was not at home, because she
+was ashamed to pray in the wigwam before company?
+
+5. How may one know wicked men, who are good, and who are bad?
+
+6. To what nation did Jesus Christ come first unto, and when?
+
+The following question illustrates the old saying, that a child or fool
+may ask a question which a philosopher cannot answer. It relates to the
+solemn and fearful subject of the dissolution of the body and soul. Who
+has not, at least in his earlier years, puzzled himself with questions
+about the passage of a departing spirit from the chamber of death? The
+question referred to was this:
+
+7. If a man should be inclosed in iron a foot thick, and thrown into the
+fire, what would become of the soul? Could the soul come out thence or
+not?
+
+8. Why did not God give all men good hearts, that they might be good?
+
+9. If one should be among strange Indians that know not God, and they
+should make him to fight against some whom he ought not to fight against,
+and he should refuse, and for his refusal they should kill him, what
+would become of his soul in such a case? This question was asked by a
+“stout fellow,” whose mind was interested in religion, and was connected
+with the notion of the Indians that all their valiant men have a reward
+after death. He seemed to think that his refusal to fight in the case
+supposed, might prejudice his chance of reward hereafter.
+
+10. How long is it before men believe who have the word of God made known
+unto them?
+
+11. How may we know when our faith is good, and our prayers good prayers?
+
+12. Why did not God kill the devil, that made all men so bad, God having
+all power?
+
+13. If we be made weak by sin in our hearts, how can we come before God
+to sanctify the Sabbath?
+
+An amusing incident took place at one of the public meetings. A drunken
+Indian cried out, “Mr. Eliot, who made sack? Who made sack?” This, it
+will be perceived, was a cavil about the “origin of evil.” It is said
+that “he was soon snib’d by the other Indians, who cried out that it was
+a papoose question. Mr. Eliot seriously answered him; which hath cooled
+his boldness ever since.”
+
+The man who took down these questions says that “he had some occasion to
+speak to Waban, (one of the chief men at Nonantum,) about the time of
+sun-rising, and staying about half an hour, as he came back by one of the
+wigwams, the man of that wigwam was at prayer, at which he was so much
+affected that he stopped under a tree to listen; and these passages of
+Scripture came to his mind while listening to the voice of devotion from
+the wigwam: ‘All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the
+Lord.’ ‘O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.’”
+
+He says that he had seen an Indian call his children in from the field
+where they were gathering corn, when he asked a blessing upon the food
+before them, “with much affection, having but a homely dinner to eat.”
+Mr. Shepard adds, “I wish the like hearts and wayes were seen in many
+English who professe themselves Christians, and that herein and many the
+like excellencies they were become Indians, excepting that name, as he
+did, in another case, except these bonds.”
+
+The following is the substance of an order passed by the General Court at
+Boston, May 26, 1647, concerning the Indians.
+
+“Upon information that the Indians dwelling among us, and submitted
+to our government, being by the ministry of the Word brought to some
+civility, are desirous to have a course of ordinary judicature set up
+among them:
+
+“It is ordered, therefore, by authority of this Court, that some one
+or more of the magistrates, as they shall agree among themselves,
+shall, once every quarter, keep a Court at such place where the Indians
+ordinarily assemble to hear the Word of God, and may then hear and
+determine all causes civill and criminall, not being capitall, concerning
+the Indians only; and that the Indian sachims shall have libertie to
+take order in the nature of summons or atachments, to bring any of their
+own people to the said Courts, and to keep a Court of themselves every
+moneth, if they see occasion, to determine small causes of a civill
+nature, and such smaller criminall causes, as the said magistrates shall
+refer to them: and the said sachims shall appoint officers to serve
+warrants, and to execute the orders and judgements of either of said
+Courts, which officers shall from time to time bee allowed by the said
+magistrates in the quarter Courts, or by the Governour: And that all
+fines to bee imposed upon any of the Indians, in any of the said Courts,
+shall goe and bee bestowed towards the building of some meeting-houses,
+for education of their poorer children in learning, or other publick use,
+by the advice of said magistrates, and of Master Eliot, or of such other
+elder, as shall ordinarily instruct them in the true Religion. And it is
+the desire of this court that the said magistrates, and Master Eliot,
+or such other elders as shall attend the keeping of the said Courts,
+will carefully indeavour to make the Indians understand our most usefull
+Lawes, and the principles of reason, justice, and equity, whereupon
+they are grounded; and it is desired that some care may be taken of the
+Indians on the Lord’s dayes.”
+
+Mr. Shepard speaks of his brother Eliot as a man “whom, in other
+respects, but especially for his unweariednesse in this work of God,
+going up and down among them, and doing them good, I think we can never
+love nor honor enough.” Mr. Eliot says, “That which I first aymed at was
+to declare and deliver unto them the law of God, to civilize them; which
+course the Lord took by Moses, to give the law to that rude company,
+because of transgression, Galatians 3:19, to convince, bridle, restrain,
+and civilize them, and also to humble them. But when I first attempted
+it they gave no heed unto it, but were weary, and rather despised what
+I said. A while after God stirred up in some of them a desire to come
+into the English fashions, and live after their manner, but knew not how
+to attain unto it; yea, despaired that it should ever come to passe in
+their dayes; but thought that, in 40 yeears more, some Indians would be
+all one English, and in an hundred yeears all Indians hereabout would so
+bee: which when I heard, (for some of them told me they thought so, and
+that some wise Indians said so,) my heart moved within me, abhorring that
+wee should sit still and let that work alone, and hoping that this notion
+in them was of the Lord, and that this mind in them was a preparation
+to embrace the law and Word of God; and therefore I told them that they
+and wee were all one save in two things, which make the only difference
+betwixt them and us: First, wee know, serve, and pray unto God, and they
+doe not. Secondly, we labor and work in building, planting, clothing
+ourselves, &c., and they doe not; and would they but doe as wee doe in
+these things they would bee all one with Englishmen. They said they did
+not know God, and therefore could not tell how to pray to him nor serve
+him. I told them if they would learn to know God, I would teach them;
+unto which they being very willing, I then taught them, (as I sundry
+times had indeavored afore,) but never found them so forward, attentive,
+and desirous till this time; and then I told them I would come to their
+wigwams and teach them, their wives and children, which they seemed very
+glad of; and, from that day forward, I have not failed to doe that poore
+little which you know I doe.”
+
+Mr. Eliot says that he found the usual opposition to religion among
+Indians which he found among white men. The Indians of “Dorchester Mill,”
+for example, would not, at first, regard his instructions; “but the
+better sort of them perceiving how acceptable this was to the English,
+both to magistrates, and all the good people, it pleased God to step in
+and bow their hearts, to desire to be taught to know God.” “The _Linn_
+Indians,” Mr. Eliot said, “are all naught save one.” This was owing to
+the opposition of their sachem.
+
+A sober Indian going up into the country with two of his sons, prayed
+as he used to do at home, and talked to the Indians about God and Jesus
+Christ; whereupon they mocked, and called one of his sons Jehovah, and
+the other Jesus Christ.
+
+The Nonantum Indians early began to observe the Lord’s day. They fined
+every violator of the Sabbath ten shillings. One Sabbath morning the
+sachem’s wife went to fetch water, when, meeting with other Indian
+women, she fell into worldly conversation with them, but they reproved
+her. She insisted that it was not improper, but the other women informed
+the native Indian preacher who was to address them that day, and he
+discoursed to them upon the sanctification of the Sabbath, and in his
+discourse related what he had heard about the sachem’s wife. After sermon
+they had much conversation on the subject, in which the sachem’s wife
+insisted that, inasmuch as her conversation was in private, and early
+on the Sabbath morning, there was no harm in it; and then she retorted
+upon the preacher by telling him that he had sinned much more than she
+in giving occasion to so much talk about this subject on the Sabbath.
+The whole matter was, by common consent, referred to Mr. Eliot for his
+arbitration.
+
+Towards evening, on another Sabbath, two strangers came to Waban’s tent
+(Nonantum); and when they came in, they told him that, about a mile
+off, they had chased a racoon into a hollow tree, and that if he would
+send his servants to fell the tree, they might catch him, which Waban,
+in his desire to entertain the strangers with fresh game, accordingly
+did. Whereupon the Indians were much displeased, and this case was, by
+request, made the subject of discourse on the next lecture day.
+
+Another case was this. “Upon a Lord’s day their public meeting holding
+long, and somewhat late when they came at home, in one wigwam the fire
+was almost out, and therefore the man of the house, as he sat by the
+fireside, took his hatchet and split a little dry piece of wood, which
+they reserve on purpose for such use, and so kindled his fire, which,
+being taken notice of, it was thought to bee such a worke as might not
+lawfully bee done upon the Sabbath day, and therefore the case was
+propounded the lecture following for their better information.”
+
+A great improvement was soon visible among them in their treatment of
+their wives. A man who had offended in this respect was brought before
+the assembly at a time when the governor and many of the colonists
+happened to be present. The man being publicly accused of beating his
+wife, made no defence, but confessed his sin, and being kindly admonished
+and instructed, he turned his face to the wall and wept; “and such
+was the modest, penitent, and melting behaviour of the man that it
+much affected all to see it in a barbarian, and all did forgive him;
+onely this remained, that they executed their law notwithstanding his
+repentance, and required his fine, to which he willingly submitted, and
+paid it.”
+
+The power of conscience among them is illustrated by Mr. Eliot in the two
+following anecdotes.
+
+The son of a sachem, 14 or 15 years old, had been intoxicated; and being
+reproved by his father and mother for disobedient and rebellious conduct,
+he despised their admonition. Before Mr. E. heard of it, he had observed
+that on being catechised, the fifth commandment being required of him, he
+reluctantly said, “Honor thy father,” but left out “mother.”
+
+George, the Indian, who asked, in a public meeting, “Who made sack?”
+killed a cow, and sold it at the college for a moose. President Dunster
+was unwilling that he should be directly charged with it, but wished Mr.
+Eliot to inquire of him as to the crime. But being brought before the
+assembly, he freely confessed his sin.
+
+The Indians were never weary of asking questions in the public meetings.
+An old Powaw once demanded, Why, seeing the English had been in the land
+twenty-seven years, they had never taught the Indians to know God till
+now? He added, many of us have grown old in sin, whereas had you begun
+with us earlier, we might have been good.
+
+The answer was that the English did repent that they were not more
+earnest at the first to seek their salvation, but the Indians were never
+willing to hear till now, and as God has now inclined their hearts to
+hear, the English were striving to redeem the time.
+
+Another question was of deep interest. One of them said, That before he
+knew God, he thought he was well, but since, he had found his heart to be
+full of sin, and more sinful than it ever was before; and that this had
+been a great trouble to him; that at that day his heart was but little
+better than it was at first, and _he was afraid it would be as bad as it
+was before, and therefore he sometimes wished that he might die before
+he should be so bad again_! Now, said he, my question is, Is this wish
+a sin? Mr. E. says this question was evidently the result of his own
+experience and seemed to be sincere.
+
+Another question was this:
+
+Whither do our little children go when they die, seeing they have not
+sinned?
+
+This led to an exposition of the depravity of man’s nature, and of the
+part which it is hoped dying infants have in the redemption made by
+Christ, and the covenant relation of the children of believers, which
+last doctrine Mr. Eliot says, “was exceedingly grateful unto them.”
+
+The whole assembly at one time united and sent a question to Mr. Eliot by
+his man, as their united question, viz:
+
+“Whether any of them should go to heaven, seeing they found their hearts
+full of sin, and especially full of the sin of lust?” At the next lecture
+held at “Dorchester mill,” occasion was taken to preach to them from
+Matt. 11:28, 29. “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,”
+&c., when the justifying grace of Christ to all who are weary and sick
+of sin was fully and earnestly set forth. But at this time they repeated
+their fearful apprehension that “none of them would go to heaven.”
+
+A question which uniformly troubled all who began to think of embracing
+religion was this:
+
+“If we leave off Powawing and pray to God, what shall we do when we are
+sick?” For though they had some knowledge of the medicinal qualities in
+certain roots and herbs, they of course had no knowledge of the human
+system, and hence no skill in applying their remedies, but relied on
+the antics and unearthly gestures and incantations of their Powaws to
+make the medicines take effect. Mr. Eliot expressed the desire that
+the Lord would stir up the hearts of some people in England to give
+some maintenance towards a school or academy, wherein there should be
+“Anatomies, and other instructions that way.” Mr. E. had himself showed
+them an anatomy, the only one he says the English had ever had in the
+country. By a course of instruction in medicine Mr. E. believed that he
+could most effectually, and perhaps, in the only way, “root out their
+Powaws.”
+
+The Indians proposed this question to Mr. Eliot:
+
+“What shall we say to some Indians who say to us, What do you get by
+praying to God, and believing in Jesus Christ? You go naked still,
+and are as poor as we. Our corn is as good as yours; and we take more
+pleasure than you; if we saw that you got any thing by praying to God, we
+would do so.”
+
+Mr. E. answered to them on this point as follows: “First, God gives two
+sorts of good things; 1. little things, which he showed by his little
+finger, (‘for they use and delight in demonstrations;’) 2. great things,
+(holding up his thumb). The little mercies he said are riches, clothes,
+food, sack, houses, cattle, and pleasures, all which serve the body for
+a little while, and in this life only. The great mercies are wisdom, the
+knowledge of God, Christ, eternal life, repentance and faith; these are
+for the soul, and eternity. Though God did not give them so many little
+things, through the knowledge of the Gospel, he gave them the greater
+things which are better. This he proved by an illustration: when _Foxun_,
+the Mohegan Counselor, who is counted the wisest Indian in the country,
+was in the Bay, I did on purpose bring him unto you; and when he was
+here, you saw he was a fool in comparison of you, for you could speak of
+God, and Christ, and heaven, &c.; but he sat and had not one word to say
+unless you talked of such poor things as hunting, wars, &c.”
+
+He also told them that they had some more clothes than the wicked
+Indians; and the reason why they had so few, was because they had so
+little wisdom; but if they were wise to obey God’s commands, for example,
+“Six days shalt thou labor,” they would have clothes, houses, cattle, and
+riches, as the English have.
+
+Many questions and cases of dispute arose out of their old practice of
+gaming, to which they were greatly addicted. The irreligious Indians
+demanded the old stakes of some who had been convinced of the sin of
+gaming, and had declined to pay their forfeits. The winners however,
+insisted on being payed. Mr. Eliot had no little trouble in settling the
+matters of casuistry and conscience which thus occurred. But he took this
+method in many cases. He prevailed on the creditor to accept one half of
+his demand, having first showed him the sinfulness of gaming. He then
+told the debtor in private that God requires us to fulfill our promises
+though to our hurt, and then asked him if he would pay half. In this
+way such cases were many of them settled, for the creditors refused Mr.
+Eliot’s proposition, that whoever challenged a debt incurred by gaming
+should go before the Governor with his demand.
+
+The demand upon Mr. Eliot for agricultural and other implements soon
+increased beyond his ability to supply them. The women were desirous of
+learning to spin; wheels were procured for them. The men began to supply
+the English market all the year round, in the winter with brooms, staves,
+eel-pots, baskets, and turkies; in the spring with cranberries, fish, and
+strawberries; in the summer, with whortleberries, grapes and fish; and in
+the autumn, with cranberries, fish and venison. Some of them worked with
+the English in haying time, and harvest; but it was hard work for them
+with their old habits of indolence. “Old boughs,” says Mr. Eliot, “must
+be bent a little at once; if we can set the young twigges in a better
+bent, it will bee God’s mercy.”
+
+Mr. Eliot fell in with a Narragansett Sachem, and having spoken to him
+on the subject of religion, asked him if he did not believe such things?
+The Sachem seemed averse to answer, and Mr. E. asked him why he had not
+profited more by the instructions of a Mr. Williams, their teacher? He
+answered that the Indians did not care to learn of him, because he is no
+good man, but goes out and works upon the Sabbath day. “I name it,” says
+Thomas Shepard, “not to show what glimmerings nature may have concerning
+the observation of the Sabbath, but to show what the ill example of the
+English may do, and _to show what a stumbling-block to all religion the
+loose observation of the Sabbath is_.”
+
+In a few years Mr. Eliot says a visible improvement had taken place in
+many of the domestic habits of the Indians, indicating an advancement
+in the principles and sentiments of civilization. Not only were they as
+a general thing respectably clothed, but the common wigwams at Nonantum
+equalled those of Sachems in other tribes, and instead of herding
+together in one room they made divisions and apartments in their houses
+from feelings of propriety and modesty.
+
+Questions relating to the plurality of their wives perplexed them, and
+gave occasion for the same judicious decisions on this delicate and
+trying subject which are now made by our wise and discreet missionaries
+in lands where the same practice exists. While some good men are in favor
+of driving the ploughshare at once among the roots of this and every
+other evil in the institutions and customs of corrupt society, it is
+found impracticable to do so, by those who see the complicated nature
+of these practices, without occasioning still greater evils. Remedial
+measures are in operation among the converts from heathenism and paganism
+by which caste and polygamy and other social evils will in time, but not
+in a day or year, be done away. The process of cure was more rapid among
+the Indians, than it is among the Oriental tribes, for reasons connected
+with the character of the people, the ascendency which religion soon had
+among them, and the absence of opposing influences in the government of
+the tribes.
+
+The text from which Mr. Eliot preached his first sermon at Nonantum,
+(“Prophesy to the wind,” &c.) and which made Waban, whose name
+translated, is, the wind, had produced a decided effect on him, and he
+became useful in diffusing the knowledge of the Gospel to other tribes,
+at Concord, at places on the Merrimack, and elsewhere. He remained
+steadfast in the faith, and never ceased to think that the Word of God
+was directed specially to himself in that first sermon of Mr. Eliot,
+though Mr. E. says that he had no design in the coincidence between the
+text and the Indian’s name.
+
+Mr. Eliot once preached to the Indians from these words, Ephes. 5:11,
+“Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” &c. One of
+the questions proposed after sermon was this:
+
+What do Englishmen think of Mr. Eliot, because he comes among wicked
+Indians to teach them?
+
+Another question was as follows:
+
+Suppose two men sin. The one knows he sinneth, and the other doth not
+know sin, will God punish both alike?
+
+Another asked, Suppose there should be one wise Indian that teacheth
+good things to other Indians, whether should not he be as a father or
+brother unto such Indians he so teacheth in the ways of God?
+
+One of the Indians at Nonantum had a child sick of consumption. When it
+was dead some of the Indians came to one of the English and asked him the
+proper manner of burial. Whereupon the father procured some pieces of
+board and nails, and made a decent coffin; and about forty of the tribe
+went with the body to the grave. There having laid the body in the earth,
+in a solemn and suitable manner, without any howlings, or heathenish
+rites, or savage gesticulations, they made up the mound, and then of
+their own accord, for it was not the English custom, they assembled for
+prayer near the grave, and requested one of their number, a serious
+Indian by the name of Totherswamp, to pray with them, which he did, “with
+such zeal and variety of gracious expressions, and abundance of tears,
+both of himself and most of the company, that the woods rang again with
+their sighs and prayers.”
+
+Thomas Shepard says, “I know that some will think that all this work
+among them is done and acted thus by the Indians to please the English,
+and for applause from them; and it is not unlikely but ’tis so in many,
+who doe but blaze for a time; but certainly ’tis not so in all, but that
+the power of the Word hath taken place in some, and that inwardly and
+effectually, but how far savingly time will declare. Some may say that
+if it be so, yet they are but few that are thus wrought upon. Be it so;
+yet so it hath ever been, many called, few chosen, and yet withal, I
+believe the calling in of a few Indians to Christ, is the gathering home
+of many hundreds more, considering what a vast distance there hath been
+between them and God so long, even dayes without number; considering
+also, how precious the first fruits of America will be to Jesus Christ,
+and what seeds they may be of harvests in after times; and yet if there
+was no great matter seen in those of grown years, their children,
+notwithstanding, are of great hopes, both from English and Indians
+themselves, who are therefore trained up to schoole, where many are very
+apt to learne, and who are also able readily to answer to the questions
+propounded, containing the principles and grounds of all Christian
+religion in their own tongue. I confesse it passeth my skill to tell
+how the Gospel should be generally received by these American natives,
+considering the variety of languages in small distances of places; onely
+hee that made their cares and tongues can raise up some or other to
+teach them how to heare, and what to spake; and if the Gospel must ride
+circuit, Christ can and will conquer by weake and dispicable meanes,
+though the conquest perhaps may be somewhat long.”[30]
+
+Mr. Eliot wrote an interesting letter to a friend in England, dated
+Roxbury, this 12th of Nov. 1648, and sent it _by the way of Virginia, and
+through Spain_.
+
+He says that the Indians used to abhor the remembrance of their
+dead friends, but that now they had begun to receive profit from the
+recollection of their dying counsels, and hope from their confidence in
+the safety of the pious dead. The woman who asked the question, whether,
+when her husband prayed, if she prayed in her heart, but did not speak,
+yet her heart liked what he said, it was prayer; called her two grown
+up daughters to her when she was dying and said to them: “I shall now
+die, and when I am dead, your grand-parents and uncles will send for
+you to come live among them and promise you great matters, and tell you
+what pleasant living it is among them. But do not believe them, and I
+charge you never hearken unto them, nor live among them; for they pray
+not to God, keep not the Sabbath, commit all manner of sins, and are not
+punished for it. But I charge you live here, for here they pray unto God,
+the Word of God is taught, sins are suppressed and punished by laws, and
+therefore I charge you live here all your days.” Soon after it came to
+pass as she had said, and the case was propounded to Mr. Eliot, and the
+father-in-law opposed the removal of the children, on the ground of their
+mother’s charge.
+
+The settlement of Natick took place in the following way. Many Indians
+in the country were desirous of hearing the Gospel, but they would not
+remove into the neighborhood of the English, “because they had no tools
+or skill, or heart to fence their grounds,” and so their corn was spoiled
+by the English cattle, and the English refused to pay for it, because the
+Indians would not build fences. “Therefore,” Mr. E. says, “a place must
+be found (both for this and sundry other reasons) somewhat remote from
+the English;—but I feare it will bee too chargeable, though I see that
+God delighteth in small beginnings that his name may be magnified.”
+
+There was a great fishing place at the falls of the Merrimack where
+the Indians assembled every spring, and Mr. E. visited them. They put a
+question to him after one of his sermons, which all who are interested in
+the conversion of the heathen often find occurring to them with painful
+interest. “If it be thus as you teach, then all the world of Indians are
+gone to hell, to be tormented forever, until now a few may go to heaven
+and be saved; is it so?”
+
+In the letter which went so far in getting to England, Mr. Eliot records
+some further questions from his Nonantum Indians, viz:
+
+How many good people were in Sodom when it was burnt?
+
+Doth the devil dwell in us as we dwell in a house?
+
+When God saith, Honor thy father, doth he mean three fathers, our father,
+our Sachem, and our God?
+
+When the soul goes to heaven, what doth it say when it comes there. And
+what doth a wicked soul say when it cometh into hell?
+
+If one sleep on the Sabbath at meeting, and another awaketh him, and he
+be angry at it, and say it’s because he is angry with him that he so
+doth, is not this a sin?
+
+If any talk of another man’s faults and tell others of it when he is not
+present to answer, is not that a sin?
+
+Why did Christ die in our stead?
+
+Seeing Eve was first in sin, whether she did die first?
+
+Why must we love our enemies, and how shall we do it?
+
+When every day my heart thinks I must die and go to hell for my sins,
+what shall I do in this case?
+
+May a good man sin sometimes? Or may he be a good man and yet sin
+sometimes?
+
+If a man think a prayer, doth God know it, and will he bless him?
+
+Who killed Christ?
+
+If a man be almost a good man and dieth, whither goeth his soul?
+
+How long was Adam good before he sinned?
+
+Seeing we see not God with our eyes, if a man dream that he seeth God,
+doth his soul then see him?
+
+Did Adam see God before he sinned? Shall we see God in heaven?
+
+If a wicked man pray, whether doth he make a good prayer? Or when doth a
+wicked man pray a good prayer?
+
+Whether God did make hell before Adam sinned?
+
+If two families dwell in one house, and one prayeth and the other not,
+what shall they that pray do to them that do not?
+
+Did Abimelech know Sarah was Abraham’s wife?
+
+Did not Abraham sin in saying she was my sister?
+
+Seeing God promised Abraham so many children, like the stars for
+multitude, why did he give him so few? And was it true?
+
+If God made hell in one of the six days, why did God make hell before
+Adam sinned?
+
+How shall I bring mine heart to love prayer?
+
+If one man repent and pray once in a day, another man often in a day,
+whether doth one of them go to heaven, the other not? Or what difference
+is there?
+
+I find I want wisdom, what shall I do to be wise?
+
+Why did Abraham buy a place to bury in?
+
+Why doth God make good men sick?
+
+How shall the Resurrection be, and when?
+
+Do not Englishmen spoil their souls to say a thing cost them more than it
+did? and is not all one as to steal?
+
+You say our body is made of clay; what is the sun and moon made of?
+
+If one be loved of all Indians, good and bad, another is hated of all,
+saving a few that be good, doth God love both these?
+
+I see why I must fear hell and do so every day. But why must I fear God?
+
+How is the tongue like fire, and like poison?
+
+What if false witnesses accuse me of murther, or some foul sin?
+
+What punishment is due to liars?
+
+If I reprove a man for sin, and he answer, “Why do you speak thus angrily
+to me? Mr. Eliot teacheth us to love one another?”—is this well?
+
+Why is God so angry with murtherers?
+
+If a wife put away her husband because he will pray to God and she will
+not, what is to be done in this case?
+
+If there be young women pray to God, may such as pray to God marry one
+that will not pray to God, or what is to be done in this case?
+
+Whether doth God make bad men dream good dreams?
+
+What is salvation?
+
+What is the Kingdom of Heaven?
+
+If my wife do some work in the house on the night before the Sabbath, and
+some work on the Sabbath night, whether this is a sin?
+
+If I do a sin, and do not know it is a sin, what will God say to that?
+
+Is faith set in my heart or in my mind?
+
+Why have not beasts a soul as man hath, seeing they have love, anger,
+&c., as man hath?
+
+How is the Spirit of God in us, and where is it?
+
+Why doth God punish in hell for ever? man doth not so, but after a time
+lets them out of prison again. And if they repent in hell, why will not
+God let them out again?
+
+How shall I know when God accepts my prayers?
+
+How doth Christ make peace between man and God? and what is the meaning
+of that point?
+
+Why did the Jews give the watchmen money to tell a lie?
+
+If I hear God’s word when I am young, and do not believe, but when I am
+old I believe, what will God say?
+
+In wicked dreams doth the soul sin?
+
+Doth the soul in heaven know things done here on earth?
+
+Doth the soul in heaven remember what it did here on earth before he died?
+
+If my heart be full of evil thoughts, and I repent and pray, and a few
+hours after it is full again, and I repent and pray again; and if after
+this it be full of evil thoughts again, what will God say?
+
+Why did the earth shake at Christ’s resurrection?
+
+What if a minister wear long hair, as some other men do, what will God
+say?
+
+If a man will make his daughter marry a man whom she doth not love, what
+will God say?
+
+Why doth Christ compare the kingdom of heaven to a net?
+
+Why doth God so hate them that teach others to commit sin?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+    Letters respecting the Indians, from individuals in New
+    England, to their friends in Old England. Speculations about
+    the lost tribes of Israel. Remarks. Questions. Samuel Gorton,
+    the Familist. Two Indians controvert his opinions. Interesting
+    conversation. Labors of the Mayhews on Martha’s Vineyard.
+    Covenant of the Indians of Martha’s Vineyard. Questions.
+    Merrimack Indians. Accounts by the Mayhews of their labors.
+    Questions.
+
+
+Some of Mr. Eliot’s letters respecting the Indians were published in
+London, with an appendix by Rev. “J. D.” As we are interested and
+entertained occasionally by a supposed discovery of the lost tribes of
+Israel, it may not be useless to give here some of the speculations and
+reasonings of this good man, on this subject as relating to the North
+American Indians. He begins his appendix with the following words:
+
+“The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that love them,
+saith the Psalmist; Ps. 111:3. The word which we, render _sought out_,
+hath a mighty emphasis in it: ’Tis a word used sometimes to denote the
+elaborate care of digging and searching into mines. And sometimes it’s
+made use of to expresse the accurate labors of those who comment upon
+writings. Indeed, there is a golden mine in every work of God; and the
+foregoing letters to a gracious eye, are as a discovery of a far more
+precious mine in America, than those gold and silver mines of India: For
+they bring tidings of the unsearchable riches of Christ, revealed unto
+poore soules in those parts.... I could not pass over so rich a mine
+without digging....
+
+“The general consent of many judicious and godly divines doth induce
+considering minds to believe that the conversion of the Jews is at hand.
+It’s the expectation of some of the wisest Jews now living, that about
+the year 1650, Either we shall be Mosaick or else that themselves Jews
+shall be Christians.... There may be at least a remnant of the generation
+of Jacob in America, (peradventure some of the Ten tribes dispersions.)
+And that those sometimes poor now precious Indians may be as the first
+fruits of the glorious harvest of Israel’s redemption. The observation is
+not to be slighted, (though the observer, Mr. Shepard, said it was more
+cheerful than deep) that the first Text out of which Mr. Eliot preached,
+was about the dry bones.... Why may we not at least conjecture, that
+God by a special finger pointed out that text to be first opened, which
+immediately concerned the persons to whom it was preached?”
+
+He then states the reasons why the Indian tribes may be of Jewish
+descent, viz:
+
+“1. They have at least a traditional knowledge of God, as the Maker of
+heaven and earth.
+
+2. Whatever they attribute unto others, this they peculiarly attribute
+unto God, viz: that all things, both good and evil, are managed by his
+Providence.
+
+3. Before they had received any instruction from the English, upon
+observation of a bad year, or other ill success, they did meet and
+weep as unto God, and on the other side, upon a good year, or good
+success in any business, as of War, they used to meet and make a kind of
+acknowledgement of thanks to God in it.
+
+4. They are careful to preserve the memory of their families, mentioning
+Uncles, Grandparents, &c. A thing which had a great tang of, and affinity
+to, the Jews’ care of preserving the memorial of their Tribes.
+
+5. Those of them who have been wrought upon, tell of some face of
+Religion, wisdom and manners which long agoe their ancestors had, but
+that it was lost.
+
+6. The better and more sober of them delight much to expresse themselves
+in parables, a thing peculiar to the Jews.
+
+These and the like considerations prevail with me to entertain (at least)
+a conjecture that these Indians of America may be Jews, especially of the
+Ten Tribes. And therefore to hope that the work of Christ among them may
+be as preparatory to his own appearing.”
+
+Some of these reasons appertain with equal force to other tribes of the
+earth who have been supposed by different writers to be remnants of the
+house of Israel. While we should respect the interest and zeal of those
+who study the providence of God, with a view to finding out his designs,
+and to be prepared for the fulfillment of his promises, we should not
+easily yield our confidence to any hypothesis which rests merely on
+conjecture, or depends for support in reasons which apply equally well
+to theories inconsistent with it. This is not the place to remark at
+large on the interesting subject of the Jews and their conversion, but
+the impression seems happily to be extending that the sooner we cease to
+regard them as destined to a national conversion, and look at them as
+sinners of the human family, like Mohammedans and Papists, and refrain
+from efforts and a treatment which foster their spirit of separation and
+their assumption of superior dignity and special claims to respect and
+favor, the sooner we shall employ ourselves in efforts to address them in
+a way which will be far more likely to humble their pride, and prepare
+them to submit to the Gospel, than the somewhat adulatory and flattering
+method of approaching them and speaking of them will ever be.
+
+The improvement which the writer above named makes of Mr. Eliot’s letters
+in the following exhortations is far more obviously correct than his
+speculations about the origin and destiny of the Indians. He says the
+work of grace among them should lead the people of England,
+
+“First, To study and search into the works of the Lord, to see how he
+counter plots the enemy in his designs; In making the late Bishops
+persecuting of the godly tend to the promoting of the Gospel.
+
+Secondly, To take heed of despising the day of small things.
+
+Thirdly, To be ashamed of and bewail our want of affection to and
+estimation of that glorious Gospel, and those great things of Christ,
+which these poor Heathens upon the little Glymmerings and tasts so
+exceedingly value and improve.
+
+Fourthly, Doth not the observation of the preceding reports clearly
+confirm the doctrine of the Sabbath, and the practice of prayer. O
+tremble, ye Sabbath slighters and duty despisers, Christ hath witnesses
+against you in America.... The converted Heathen in New England goe
+beyond you, O ye Apostolic Christians in England.
+
+Arise ye heads of our Tribes in Old England, and extend your help to
+further Christ’s labourers in New England.
+
+Rouse up yourselves, my Brethren! ye preachers of the Gospel, this work
+concerns you. Contrive and plot, preach for and presse the advancement
+hereof.
+
+Come forth ye masters of money, part with your gold to promote the
+Gospel. If you give any thing yearly, remember Christ will be your
+Pensioner. If you give any thing into banke, Christ will keep account
+thereof and reward it.”
+
+The reader, it is to be hoped, will not be weary of the Indian questions,
+which Mr. Eliot sent to his friends in England as often as he wrote to
+them. These questions are not only curious, but they suggest valuable
+thoughts and lead to profitable reflections.
+
+If a man know God’s Word, said one of them at the Indian lecture, but
+believe it not, and he teach others, is that good teaching? and if others
+believe that which he teacheth, is that believing or faith? Upon this
+question Mr. Eliot asked them how they could tell when a man knoweth
+God’s Word, that he doth not believe it? They answered, When he doth not
+do in his practice answerable to that which he knoweth.
+
+If I teach on the Sabbath that which you have taught us, and forget some,
+is that a sin? and some I mistake and teach wrong, is that a sin?
+
+Do all evil thoughts come from the devil, and all good ones from God?
+
+What is watchfulness?
+
+What should I pray for at night, and what at morning, and what on the
+Sabbath day?
+
+What is true Repentance? or how shall I know when this is true?
+
+How must I wait on God?
+
+Shall we see Christ at the day of judgment?
+
+When I pray for a soft heart, why is it still hard?
+
+You said, God promised to go with Moses; how doth he go with us?
+
+When such die as never heard of Christ, whither do they go?
+
+When the wicked die, do they first go to heaven to the judgment-seat of
+Christ to be judged, and then go away to hell?
+
+Why doth God say, I am the God of the Hebrews?
+
+When Christ arose, whence came his soul? When it was replied, From
+heaven; they said, How then was Christ punished in our stead? or when did
+he suffer in our stead, afore death, or after?
+
+When I pray every day, why is my heart so hard still, even as a stone?
+
+If one purposeth to pray, and yet dieth before that time, whither goeth
+his soul?
+
+Why must we be like salt?
+
+Doth God know who shall repent, and who not?—why then did God use so much
+meanes with Pharaoh?
+
+What meaneth that ‘blessed are they that mourn’?
+
+When I see a good example, and know that it is right, why do I not do the
+same?
+
+What anger is good, and what is bad?
+
+Do they dwell in separate houses in heaven, or all together, and what do
+they?
+
+If a child die before he sin, whither goeth his soul? ‘By this
+question,’ says Mr. E., ‘it did please the Lord to convince them of
+original sin, blessed be his name.’
+
+If one that prays to God sins like him that prays not, is not he worse?
+‘And while,’ says Mr. Eliot, ‘they discoursed of this point, and about
+hating wicked persons, one of them shut it up with this: They must love
+the man and do him good, but hate his sin.’
+
+Why do Englishmen so eagerly kill all snakes?
+
+May a man have good words and deeds, and a bad heart, and another have
+bad words and deeds, and yet a good heart?
+
+What is it to eate Christ’s flesh, and drink his blood; what meaneth it?
+
+What meaneth a new heaven and a new earth?
+
+If but one parent believe, what state are our children in?
+
+How doth much sinne make grace abound?
+
+What meaneth that, We cannot serve two masters?
+
+Can they in Heaven see us here on earth?
+
+Do they see and know each other? Shall I know you in heaven?
+
+If all the world be burnt up, where shall hell be?
+
+Do they know each other in Hell?
+
+What meaneth, that Christ meriteth eternal life for us?
+
+What meaneth that, The woman brought to Christ a box of oyle, and washt
+his feet with tears, &c.?
+
+What meaneth that of the two debtors, one oweth much, another but little?
+
+What meaneth God when he sayes, yee shall be my jewels?
+
+If so old a man as I repent, may I be saved?
+
+When we come to believe, how many of our children doth God take with us,
+whether all, only young ones, or at what age?
+
+What meaneth that, Let the trees of the wood rejoice?
+
+What meaneth that, The Master doth not thank his servant for waiting on
+him?
+
+When Englishmen choose magistrates and ministers, how do they know who be
+good men that they dare trust?
+
+Seeing the body sinneth, why should the soul be punished, and what
+punishment shall the body have?
+
+If a wicked man prayeth and teacheth, doth God accept, or what saith God?
+
+If a man be wise and his Sachem weak, must he yet obey him?
+
+We are commanded to honour the Sachem, but is the Sachem commanded to
+love us?
+
+When all the world is burnt up, what shall be in the room of it? (By an
+old woman.)
+
+Mr. Eliot says, in a letter containing these questions,
+
+    “You may perceive many of the questions arise out of such texts
+    as I handle, and do endeavour to communicate as much Scripture
+    as I can. The word of the Lord converteth, sanctifieth, and
+    maketh wise the simple; sometimes they aske weaker questions
+    than these, which I mention not; you have the best, and when
+    I am about writing, I am careful in keeping a remembrance of
+    them; it may be the same question may be again and again asked
+    at several places and by several persons. The Lord teach them
+    to know Christ, whom to know is eternal life. I shall entreat
+    your supplications at the throne of grace, under the tender
+    wing whereof I now leave you, being forced by the time, and
+    rest,
+
+    Your respectful and loving brother and fellow-laborer in the
+    Indian work,
+
+                                                        JOHN ELIOT.”
+
+Samuel Gorton, charged with being a Familist and Antinomian, was
+banished from Plymouth, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The Familists
+were an Anabaptist sect, founded in Holland, in 1555, by Henry Nicholas,
+a Westphalian. They held that the essence of religion consists in the
+feelings of divine love, (and hence they were called the Family of love,
+and familists), that all other religious tenets, whether relating to
+matters of faith or modes of worship, are of no consequence, and that
+it is indifferent what opinions Christians entertain concerning God,
+provided their hearts are filled with the emotions of piety and love.
+They were confuted by Dr. Henry More, and by George Fox, the Quaker. A
+proclamation was issued against them by Queen Elizabeth in 1580.
+
+This Gorton in 1650 was in Rhode Island. Two of the Nonantum Indians
+made a visit to Providence and Warwick, and spent a Sabbath and heard
+Gorton and his followers explain their views, and afterwards had some
+conversation with them.
+
+Upon their return, on a lecture day, before the people had fully
+assembled, these two Indians addressed a question to Mr. Eliot; and
+the conversation which ensued is recorded by him as illustrating the
+proficiency in Christian knowledge to which some of the Indians had
+attained, and their ability to withstand false teachers.
+
+The question was this: What is the reason that seeing those English
+people, where they had been, have the same Bible that Mr. Eliot has, yet
+do not speak the same things? Being asked the reason of his question,
+they said, They had been at Providence and Warwick, and they perceived by
+conversation with them that they differed from Mr. E.; they heard their
+public exercises, but did not understand what they meant, though they
+understood the English language well. Being asked what they said, they
+replied, they said thus:
+
+They (that is Mr. Eliot and his friends) teach you that there is a heaven
+and a hell, but there is no such matter.
+
+Mr. E. asked them what reason they gave for this assertion.
+
+Because there is no other heaven but what is in the hearts of good men,
+and no other hell but what is in the hearts of bad men.
+
+_Mr. E._ What did you say to that?
+
+_Indians._ We told them we did not believe them, because heaven is a
+place where good men go when this life is ended, and hell is a place
+where bad men go when they die, and cannot be in the hearts of man.
+
+_Mr. E._ approving this answer. What else did they say?
+
+_Indians._ They spake of Baptism, and said, they teach you that infants
+must be baptized, but that is a very foolish thing.
+
+_Mr. E._ What reason did they give?
+
+_Indians._ Because infants neither know God nor baptism, nor what they
+do, and therefore it is a foolish thing to do it.
+
+_Mr. E._ What did you say to that?
+
+_Indians._ I could not say much; but I thought it was better to baptize
+them while they be young, and then they are bound and engaged; but if you
+let them alone till they be grown up, it may be they will fly off, and
+neither care for God nor Baptism.
+
+Mr. E. commended this reply. What further did they say?
+
+_Indians._ They spake of ministers, and said, they teach you that you
+must have ministers, but that is a needless thing.
+
+_Mr. E._ Why?
+
+_Indians._ They gave these reasons: First, ministers know nothing but
+what they learn out of God’s book, and we have God’s book as well as
+they, and can tell what God saith. Again, ministers cannot change men’s
+hearts, God must do that, therefore there is no need of ministers.
+
+_Mr. E._ What did you reply?
+
+_Indians._ I told them that we must do as God commands us, and if he
+commands us to have ministers we must have them. And further, I told them
+I thought it was true that ministers cannot change men’s hearts; but when
+we do as God bids us, and hear ministers preach, then God will change our
+hearts.
+
+_Mr. E._ What else did they speak of?
+
+_Indians._ They said, they teach you that you must have magistrates, but
+that is needless.
+
+_Mr. E._ What reason did they give?
+
+_Indians._ They said, Because magistrates cannot give life, therefore
+they may not take away life; besides, when a man sinneth, he doth not sin
+against magistrates; and therefore why should they punish them? but they
+sin against God, and therefore we must leave them to God to punish them.
+
+_Mr. E._ What answer did you make?
+
+_Indians._ I said to that as to the former, we must do as God commands
+us. If God commands us to have magistrates, and commands them to punish
+sinners, then we must obey.
+
+In answer to the question, Why all who have the Bible do not speak the
+same things. Mr. E. preached on that occasion from 2 Thes. 2:10, 11.
+“Because they believed not the truth that they might be saved; for this
+cause God shall send them strong delusions that they might believe a
+lie,” &c.
+
+The Rev. Thomas Mayhew, and his son the Rev. Experience Mayhew,
+prosecuted the work of evangelizing the Indians of Martha’s Vineyard with
+signal success. As the relations which they give respecting the Indians,
+and the progress of the Gospel among them, correspond so nearly with the
+foregoing narratives, it is not thought necessary to speak of them at
+large. Some idea of the principles which were inculcated by the Mayhews,
+and of the influence which they exerted upon the natives, may be derived
+from the following covenant which Mr. Thomas Mayhew wrote for them, and
+in which they all with free consent willingly and thankfully joined.
+
+    COVENANT OF THE INDIANS OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD.
+
+    “Wee, the distressed Indians of the Vineyard, (or NOPE, the
+    Indian name of the Island,) that beyond all memory have been
+    without the true God, without a Teacher, and without a Law, the
+    very servants of sin and satan, and without peace, for God did
+    justly vex us for our sins; having lately, through his mercy,
+    heard of the name of the True God, the name of his Son Christ
+    Jesus, with the holy Ghost, the Comforter, three Persons, but
+    one most Glorious God, whose name is JEHOVAH; wee do praise
+    His Glorious Greatness, and, in sorrow of our hearts, and
+    shame of our faces, we do acknowledge and renounce our great
+    and many sins, that we and our Fathers have lived in, do run
+    unto him for mercy and pardon for Christ Jesus’ sake; and we
+    do this day, through the blessing of God upon us, and trusting
+    to his gracious help, give up ourselves in this Covenant, Wee,
+    our wives and children, to serve JEHOVAH: And we do this day
+    chuse Jehovah to be our God in Christ Jesus, our Teacher, our
+    Lawgiver in his Word, our King, our Judge, our Ruler by his
+    magistrates and ministers; to fear God Himself, and to trust in
+    Him alone for salvation, both of Soul and Body, in this present
+    Life, and the Everlasting Life to come, through his mercy in
+    Christ Jesus our Saviour and Redeemer, and by the might of his
+    Holy Spirt, to whom, with the Father and Son, be all Glory
+    everlasting, Amen.”
+
+Mr. Mayhew says, “I observed that the Indians, when they chose their
+Rulers, made choyce of such as were best approved for their godliness,
+and most likely to suppress sin, and encourage holiness. There was an
+Indian that was well approved for his Reformation, that was suspected
+to have told a plain Lye for his Gain; the business was brought to the
+public Meeting, and there it was notably sifted with zeal and good
+affection; but at length the Indian defending himself with great disdain
+and hatred of such evil, proved himself clear, and praised God for it.”
+
+He also relates the following anecdote:
+
+“My Father and I were lately talking with an Indian who had not long
+before almost lost his life by a wound his Enemies gave him in a secret
+hidden way, the mark whereof he had upon him, and will carry it to his
+grave. This man understanding of a secret Plot that was to take away his
+Enemies life, told my Father and I, That he did freely forgive him for
+the sake of God, and did tell this Plot to us that the man’s life might
+be preserved. This is a singular thing, and who among the Heathen will do
+so?”
+
+Again: “_Myoxeo_ also lately met with an Indian which came from the
+_Mayn_, (the mainland,) who was of some note among them. I heard that he
+told them of the great things of God, the sinfulness and folly of the
+Indians, the pardon of sin by Christ, and of a good life; and so they
+were both affected, that they continued this discourse two half nights
+and a day, until their strength was spent. He told him in particular how
+a Beleever did live above the world, that he did keep worldly things
+alwaies at his feet, (as he shewed him by a sign,) That when they were
+diminished or increased, it was neither the cause of his sorrow or joy,
+that he should stoop to regard them, but he stood upright with his heart
+Heavenward, and his whole desire was after God, and his joy in Him.”
+
+He says, “Within two or three weeks (1652) there came an Indian to me in
+business, and by the way he told me that some Indians had lately kept a
+day of Repentance to humble themselves before God in prayer, and that the
+word of God which one of them spake unto for their Instruction, was Psal.
+66: 7. ‘He ruleth by his Power forever, his eyes behold the nations, let
+not the rebellious exalt themselves.’ I asked him what their end was in
+keeping such a day? He told me these six things. ‘1. They desired that
+God would slay the rebellion of their hearts. 2. That they might love God
+and one another. 3. That they might withstand the evil words of wicked
+men, and not be drawn back from God. 4. That they might be obedient to
+the good words and commands of their Rulers. 5. That they might have
+their sins done away by the Redemption of Jesus Christ. And Lastly, That
+they might walk in Christ’s way.’”
+
+In 1651, thirty Indian children were at school which began in November,
+1651. “They are apt to learn,” says Mr. M., “and more and more are now
+sending in unto them.”
+
+“I was once,” says Mr. M., “down towards the further end of the Island,
+and lodged at an Indian’s house, who was accounted a great man among
+the Islanders, being the friend of the Sachem on the _Mayn_. At this
+man’s house where I sate awhile, his son being about thirty years old,
+earnestly desired me, in his Language, to relate unto him some of the
+ancient stories of God. I then spent a great part of the night (in such
+discourse as I thought fittest for them) as I usually do when I lodg in
+their houses; what he then heard did much affect him. And shortly after
+he came and desired to joyn with the praying Indians to serve Jehovah.”
+He was persecuted for this; but he told Mr. M. “That if they should stand
+with a sharp weapon against his breast, and tell him that they would kill
+him presently if he did not turn to them; but if he would, they would
+love him; yet he had rather lose his life than keep it on such terms.”
+
+A Powaw once told Mr. M. that after he had forsaken his powawing, and
+had begun to serve God, and to renounce his Imps, which he did in a
+public manner, the Imps still remained with him tormenting him, so that
+he could never be at rest, sleeping or waking. At a Lecture, sometime
+after, he asked Mr. M. this question: If a Powaw had his Imps gone from
+him, what he should have instead of them to preserve him? He was told if
+he believed in Christ “he should have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in
+him, which is a good and strong Spirit, and will so keep him safe, that
+all the Devils in Hell, and Powaws on earth, should not be able to do him
+any hurt; and that if he did set himself against his Imps by the strength
+of God, they should all flee away like muskeetooes.” He replied, That
+soon after he had believed he was not troubled with any pain as formerly
+in his bed, nor dreadful visions of the night, but lay down with ease,
+slept quietly, waked in peace, and walked in safety; “for which he is
+very glad and praises God.”
+
+Mr. Mayhew also relates a fact, like the one already given respecting the
+feelings and conduct of the Christian Indians at the death and burial
+of their children. The case already mentioned, it will be remembered,
+occurred at Nonantum; this, at Martha’s Vineyard. Mr. Mayhew says,
+
+“I have observed the wise disposing hand of God in another providence
+of his. There have not, as I know, any man, woman, or child, died, of
+the meeting-Indians, since the meeting began, until now of late the Lord
+took away Hiacoomes, his child, which was about five days old. He was
+best able to make a good use of it, and to carry himself well in it,
+and so was his wife also; and truly they gave an excellent example in
+this also as they have in other things; here were no black faces for it
+as the manner of the Indians is, nor goods buried with it, nor hellish
+howlings over the dead, but a patient resigning of it to him that gave
+it. There were some English at the burial, and many Indians to whom I
+spake something of the Resurrection; and as we were going away, one of
+the Indians told me he was much refreshed in being freed from their old
+customes, as also to hear of the Resurrection of good men and their
+children to be with God.”
+
+One of the ‘meeting-Indians’ said that ‘if all the world, the riches,
+plenty, and pleasures of it were presented without God, or God without
+all these, I would take God.’
+
+Another said, ‘If the greatest Sagamore in the land should take him in
+his arms, and proffer him his love, his riches and gifts, to turn him
+from his ways, he would not go with him from the way of God.’
+
+One of them was heard, of his own accord, in complaining against head
+knowledge and lip prayers, without heart holiness, loathing the condition
+of such a man, saying, I ‘desire my heart may taste of the word of God,
+repent of my sins, and lean upon the Redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.’
+
+The following is a letter from a good man in this country to a friend in
+England, written about the year 1650.
+
+    ‘The best News I can write you from _New-England_ is, the Lord
+    is indeed converting the _Indians_, and for the refreshing of
+    your heart, and the hearts of all the godly with you; I have
+    sent you the Relation of one _Indian_ of two yeares profession,
+    that I took from his owne mouth by an Interpreter, because he
+    cannot speak or understand one word of _English_.
+
+    THE FIRST QUESTION WAS;
+
+    _Q._ How did you come first to any sight of sinne?
+
+    _A._ His answer was, Before the Lord did ever bring any
+    _English_ to us, my Conscience was exceedingly troubled for
+    sin, but after Mr. _Mayhew_ came to preach, and had been here
+    some time, one chiefe _Sagamore_ did imbrace the Gospel, and
+    I hearing of him, I went to him, and prayed him to speake
+    something to me concerning God, and the more I did see of God,
+    the more I did see my sinne, and I went away rejoycing, that I
+    knew any thing of God, and also that I saw my sinne.
+
+    _Q._ I pray what hurt doe you see in sinne?
+
+    _A._ Sin, sayth he, is a continuall sicknesse in my heart.
+
+    _Q._ What further evill doe you see in sinne?
+
+    _A._ I see it to be a breach of all Gods Commandements.
+
+    _Q._ Doe you see any punishment due to man for sinne?
+
+    _A._ Yea, sayth he, I see a righteous punishment from God due
+    to man for sinne, which shall be by the Devills in a place like
+    unto fire (not that I speake of materiall fire, saith he) where
+    man shall be for ever dying and never dye.
+
+    _Q._ Have you any hope to escape this punishment?
+
+    _A._ While I went on in the way of _Indianisme_ I had no hope,
+    but did verily believe I should goe to that place, but now I
+    have a little hope, and hope I shall have more.
+
+    _Q._ By what meanes doe you look for any hope?
+
+    _A._ Sayth he, by the satisfaction of Christ.
+
+    I prayed the Interpreter, to tell him from mee that I would
+    have him thinke much of the satisfaction of Christ, (and so he
+    told him) I prayed him to returne mee his Answer.
+
+    _A._ I thanke him kindly for his good Counsell, it doth my
+    heart good, sayd he, to heare any man speake of Christ.
+
+    _Q._ What would you thinke if the Lord should save you from
+    misery?
+
+    _A._ If the Lord, said he, would save me from all the sinne
+    that is in my heart, and from that misery, I should exceedingly
+    love God, and, saith he, I should love a man that should doe
+    mee any good, much more the Lord, if he should doe this for mee.
+
+    _Q._ Doe you thinke that God will doe you any good for any good
+    that is in you?
+
+    _A._ Though I beleeve that God loves man that leaves his sinne,
+    yet I beleeve it is for Christ’s sake.
+
+    _Q._ Doe you see that at any time God doth answer your prayers?
+
+    _A._ Yea, sayth he, I take every thing as an Answer of prayer.
+
+    _Q._ But what speciall answer, have you taken notice of?
+
+    _A._ Once my wife being three dayes and three nights in
+    labour, I was resolved never to leave praying till she had
+    deliverance, and at last God did it, and gave her a sonne, and
+    I called his name _Returning_, because all the while I went on
+    in _Indianisme_ I was going from God, but now the Lord hath
+    brought mee to him backe againe.
+
+    By this time Captaine _Gooking_ came to us, and he asked him
+    this Question:
+
+    _Q._ What he would thinke if he should finde more affliction
+    and trouble in God’s wayes, than he did in the way of
+    Indianisme.
+
+    _A._ His answer was, when the Lord did first turne me to
+    himselfe and his wayes, he stripped mee as bare as my skinne,
+    and if the Lord should strip me as bare as my skinne againe,
+    and so big _Saggamore_ should come to mee, and say, I will
+    give you so big Wampom, so big _Beaver_, and leave this way,
+    and turne to us againe: I would say, take your riches to your
+    selfe, I would never forsake God and his wayes againe.
+
+    This is a Relation taken by my selfe,
+
+                                                    WILLIAM FRENCH.’
+
+There was a great fishing place at one of the falls of the Merrimack,
+where the Indians assembled in great numbers in the spring of the year,
+and Mr. Eliot went to meet them. He hired a Nashaway or Lancaster Indian
+to beat down a path for him from Roxbury through the woods, and to notch
+the trees that he might find his way through. His Church were concerned
+for his safety, on account of difficulties between two tribes through
+which his path lay. A Sachem with twenty men did escort for him, and the
+journey occupied three days. “It pleased God,” he says, “to exercise
+us with such tedious rain and bad weather, that we were extreme wet,
+insomuch that I was not dry night nor day from the third day of the week
+to the sixth, but so traveled, and at night pull off my boots, wring my
+stockings, and on with them again. My horse was tired, so that I was
+forced to let him go without a rider and take one of the men’s horses,
+which I took along with me. Yet God stept in and helped. I considered
+that word of God, ‘Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.’”
+
+It is not surprising that the questions proposed by the Indians should
+have excited so much interest among their English teachers, and the
+friends in England to whom they were communicated. Should similar
+questions be reported to us from a tribe of people among whom our
+missionaries had effected an entrance, we should feel that there was
+great promise of success among that people. It seems that many in England
+doubted the practicability of converting the North American savages.
+They were greatly surprised at the communications from Mr. Eliot; they
+saw that nothing was too hard for the Almighty, that Christ could save
+unto the uttermost, all who come unto God by him, that the Gospel was
+suited to the nature of man in every condition, that the story of the
+cross moved the heart of the savage as well as the civilized, and that
+Mr. Eliot’s reflection after his first efforts in preaching at Nonantum
+was true, “That there is no need of miraculous or extraordinary gifts in
+seeking the salvation of the most depraved of the human family.”
+
+The Sudbury, Concord, Lancaster, Medford, and Dedham Indians had all in a
+few years received the Gospel from Nonantum. In visiting that interesting
+spot we cannot but say, “From you sounded out the word of the Lord.”
+
+A pious Indian from Martha’s Vineyard visited the Indians of Merrimack
+weare. After he had been there, the Merrimack Indians stated this case to
+Mr. Eliot, for an explanation. ‘If a strange Indian comes among us whom
+we never saw before, yet if he pray unto God we do exceedingly love him.
+But if my own brother, dwelling a great way off, come unto us, he not
+praying to God, though we love him, yet nothing so as we love that other
+stranger who doth pray unto God.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+    Natick. The Indians build a bridge. Scenery of Charles River.
+    The Arsenal at Watertown. Indian names. Mrs. Sigourney’s Lines.
+    Gov. Endicott’s Letter. Proceedings preparatory to forming
+    an Indian Church. Confessions of several Indians. Indian
+    Catechism. Number in the Indian Church at Natick. Eliot’s
+    Indian Grammar. His Indian Bible. Remarks upon it. A copy sent
+    to Charles II. Richard Baxter’s remark. Further observations on
+    the Indian Bible. 14 places of praying Indians, in 1660. Mr.
+    Bancroft’s testimony. Indian Youths at Harvard College.
+
+
+We come now to another stage in the history of the Indian mission.
+
+It has already been said that in 1650 Mr. Eliot obtained a grant of land
+for the Indians, for the purpose of building houses and organizing a town
+government. The place selected was called NATICK, which means _a place
+of hills_. There the Indians began to build houses, each house having
+a piece of land attached to it for agriculture. One large building was
+erected to be the property of the town, the lower part to be used for a
+school-room and place of worship, the upper room to be a place of deposit
+for skins and articles of public property, with a bed for Mr. Eliot.
+
+In one of his letters to friends in England, Mr. Eliot says,
+
+“There is a great river which divideth between their planting grounds
+and dwelling place, through which they easily wade in summer, yet in
+the spring it is deep and unfit for daily passing over, especially of
+women and children.” He proposed to the Indians that they should make a
+foot bridge over it, which was accordingly built, and was ninety feet
+long and nine feet high. When it was finished, Mr. Eliot called the
+Indians together, prayed, and gave thanks to God, and taught them out of
+a portion of Scripture. He then told them that as it had been hard and
+tedious labor in the water, if any of them desired wages for their work
+he would give it to them, yet considering the work was for their own use,
+if they should do all that labor in love, he should take it well and
+remember it.
+
+They replied that they were far from desiring any wages for doing their
+own work, and on the contrary were thankful for their employment,—at
+which Mr. Eliot praised them for their readiness and ingenuity at such
+work. This bridge is said to have lasted longer than one which the
+English built about the same time at Dedham.
+
+It would be interesting if we could identify some of the favorite
+places of the Indians in this vicinity. It is pleasant to think that they
+were often grouped together at that most charming point where the Charles
+River bends round the arsenal at Watertown. No one who has stood on the
+bridge at that place on a summer morning when the mists were rising
+from the stream, or in the after part of the day, when the sun was in
+the right position over the curving parts of the stream to make their
+outlines brilliant as gold in the green meadow, can have failed to think
+that had such scenery occurred to him in Italy or Scotland, he would have
+found it celebrated in the works of the poet and painter. We have only
+to take journeys about home to find in the part of the country where we
+live, views and scenes both natural and historical of thrilling interest.
+It is easy to imagine the light canoe borne rapidly along the winding
+vales of the Charles River; we meet with Indian names in almost every
+village which is watered by that interesting stream, as well as in other
+places. Wrentham has its Nuckup hill; Norwich its Quenaboag and Shetucket
+river; Auburn its Boggachoog brook; Lancaster its Weshakum ponds; and
+Natick its Pegan plain.
+
+The following lines by Mrs. Sigourney may appropriately be introduced
+here.
+
+    INDIAN NAMES.
+
+    “How can the red man be forgotten, while so many of our states
+    and territories, bays, lakes and rivers, are indelibly stamped
+    by names of their giving?”
+
+        Ye say, that all have passed away,
+          That noble race and brave,
+        That their light canoes have vanished
+          From off the crested wave;
+        That ’mid the forests where they roamed,
+          There rings no hunter’s shout;
+        But their name is on their waters,
+          Ye may not wash it out.
+
+        ’Tis where Ontario’s billow,
+          Like Ocean’s surge is curled,
+        Where strong Niagara’s thunders wake
+          The echo of the world,
+        Where red Missouri bringeth
+          Rich tributes from the west,
+        And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps,
+          On green Virginia’s breast.
+
+        Ye say their cone-like cabins,
+          That clustered o’er the vale,
+        Have fled away like withered leaves,
+          Before the autumn gale;
+        But their memory liveth on your hills,
+          Their baptism on your shore,
+        Your everlasting rivers speak
+          Their dialect of yore.
+
+        Old Massachusetts wears it
+          Within her lordly crown,
+        And broad Ohio bean it
+          Amid her young renown;
+        Connecticut hath wreathed it,
+          Where her quiet foliage waves,
+        And bold Kentucky breathes it hoarse,
+          Through all her ancient caves.
+
+        Wachuset hides its lingering voice,
+          Within his rocky heart,
+        And Alleghany graves its tone
+          Throughout his lofty chart;
+        Monadnock on his forehead hoar,
+          Doth seal the sacred trust;
+        Your mountains build their monuments,
+          Though ye destroy their dust.
+
+The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians of North
+America, an account of which will be found in the appendix to this
+volume, published a letter addressed to them by Governor Endicott, of
+Massachusetts. It is interesting as a testimony to the advancement which
+the Indians had made in religion and civilization, and as a specimen
+of the personal interest which good rulers in former times took in the
+promotion of the kingdom of Christ in the earth. The letter is here
+printed as it is written, with the Introduction by the Society:
+
+    “The next Letter you meet withall came from the present
+    Governour of the _Massachusets_, directed to the President of
+    our Corporation, and another of the Members thereof, which
+    wee thought good to publish, that every Christian Reader may
+    partake in the same consolation, wherewith he and we are
+    comforted; and joyne with us in prayer to the Lord of the
+    Harvest, that he would provide more Labourers to enter upon
+    this soul-saving worke, and enlarge the hearts of all his
+    people in this Nation towards the same.”
+
+        “_Much honoured and beloved in the Lord Jesus_:
+
+        I Esteeme it not the least of God’s mercies that hath
+        stirred up the hearts of any of the people of God to be
+        instrumentall in the inlarging of the Kingdome of his deare
+        Sonne here amongst the Heathen _Indians_, which was one
+        end of our comming hither, and it is not frustrated. It
+        was prophesied of old, and now begins to be accomplished,
+        _Psal._ 2:8. Neither can I but acknowledge the unspeakable
+        goodnesse of God that gives us favour in the sight of our
+        Countreymen to helps on with so large a hand of bounty, so
+        glorious a work, provoked thereunto by your worthy selves,
+        the chiefs Actors of so good a designe, let me (with leave)
+        say confidently, you will never have cause to repent it;
+        For the work is Gods and he doth owne it, the labour there
+        hath been yours, and your Master will reward it. I think
+        Religion and Conscience binde me to seek unto God for you,
+        and to praise him with you, for what is already begun. The
+        Foundation is laid, and such a one that I verily beleeve
+        the gates of Hell shall never prevaile against. I doubt
+        not but the building will goe on apace, which I hope will
+        make glad the hearts of Thousands. Truly Gentlemen, had
+        you been eare and eye-witnesses of what I heard and saw on
+        a Lecture-day amongst them about three weeks since, you
+        could not but be affected therewith as I was. To speak
+        truly I could hardly refrain tears from very joy to see
+        their diligent attention to the word first taught by one
+        of the _Indians_, who before his Exercise prayed for the
+        manner devoutly and reverently (the matter I not so well
+        understanding) but it was with such reverence, zeale,
+        good affection, and distinct utterance, that I could not
+        but admire it; his Prayer was about a quarter of an houre
+        or more, as we judged it; then he took his Text, and
+        Mr. _Eliot_ their Teacher told us that were _English_,
+        the place (there were some Ministers and diverse other
+        godly men there that attended me thither) his Text was
+        in, _Matth._ 13:44, 45, 46. [The kingdom of heaven is
+        like unto treasure, &c. And to a merchant man, &c.] He
+        continued in his Exercise full halfe an houre or more, as
+        I judged it, his gravity and utterance was indeed very
+        commendable; which being done Mr. _Eliot_ taught in the
+        _Indian_ tongue about three quarters of an hour as neer
+        as I could guesse; the _Indians_ which were in number men
+        and women neer about one hundred, seemed the most of them
+        so to attend him, (the men especially) as if they would
+        loose nothing of what was taught them, which reflected much
+        upon some of our _English_ hearers. After all there was a
+        _Psalme_ sung in the _Indian_ tongue, and _Indian_ meeter,
+        but to an _English_ tune, read by one of themselves, that
+        the rest might follow, and he read it very distinctly
+        without missing a word as we could judge, and the rest
+        sang chearfully, and prettie tuneablie. I rid on purpose
+        thither being distant from my dwelling about thirty eight,
+        or forty miles, and truly I account it one of the best
+        Journeyes I made these many years. Some few dayes after I
+        desired Mr. _Eliot_ briefly to write me the substance of
+        the _Indians_ Exercise, which when he went thither again,
+        namely to _Naticke_, where the _Indians_ dwell, and where
+        the _Indian_ taught, he read what he remembered of it first
+        to their School-Master who is an _Indian_, and teacheth
+        them and their Children to write, and I saw him write also
+        in _English_, who doth it true and very legible, and asked
+        him if it were right, and he said yea, also he read it unto
+        others, and to the man himselfe, who also owned it. To tell
+        you of their industry and ingenuitie in building of an
+        house after the _English_ manner, the hewing and squaring
+        of their tymber, the sawing of the boards themselves, and
+        making of a Chimney in it, making of their ground-sells
+        and wall-plates, and mortising, and letting in the studds
+        into them artificially, there being but one _English_ man
+        a Carpenter to shew them, being but two dayes with them,
+        is remarkeable. They have also built a Fort there with
+        halfe trees cleft about eight or ten inches over, about
+        ten or twelve foot high, besides what is intrencht in the
+        ground, which is above a quarter of an acre of ground, as
+        I judge. They have also built a foot bridge over _Charles_
+        Rivers, with Groundsells and Spurres to uphold it against
+        the strength of the Flood and Ice in Winter; it stood
+        firme last Winter, and I think it will stand many Winters.
+        They have made Drummes of their owne with heads and brases
+        very neatly and artificially, all which shews they are
+        industrious and ingenuous. And they intend to build a
+        Water-Mill the next Summer, as I was told when I was with
+        them. Some of them have learnt to mow grasse very well.
+        I shall no further trouble you with any more Relation at
+        this time concerning them. But a word or two further with
+        your patience concerning other _Indians_. The work of
+        God amongst the _Indians_ at _Martins Vineyard_, is very
+        hopefull and prosperous also. I mist of Mr. _Mayhew_ their
+        Teacher, who was lately at _Boston_, and therefore cannot
+        give you a particular account thereof at this present time;
+        yet I cannot but acquaint you what other motions there
+        are touching other _Indians_. There came to us upon the
+        20th of this instant Moneth, at the Generall Court one
+        _Pummakummim_ Sachem of _Qunnubbagge_, dwelling amongst or
+        neer to the _Narragansets_, who offered himselfe and his
+        Men to worship God, and desired that some _English_ may
+        be sent from the _Massachusets_ Government to plant his
+        River, that thereby he may be partaker of Government, and
+        may be instructed by the _English_ to know God. We shall
+        I hope take some care and course about it, and I hope we
+        shall have more help to carry on that work also; For there
+        are some Schollers amongst us who addict themselves to the
+        study of the _Indian_ Tongue. The Lord in mercy recompence
+        it into your Bosomes, all that labour of love vouchsafed
+        to the poor _Indians_, which are the hearty prayers, and
+        earnest desire of, much honoured,
+
+        _Boston the 27th of the Eight. 1651._ Your loving Friend in
+        all service of Christ.
+
+                                                     JOHN ENDECOTT.”
+
+The prudence and caution of Mr. Eliot in his proceedings with regard to
+the formation of a Church among the Indians are not a little remarkable.
+He says,
+
+    “In way of preparation of them thereunto, I did this Summer
+    call forth sundry of them in the dayes of our public Assemblies
+    in Gods Worship; sometimes on the Sabbath when I could be with
+    them, and sometimes on Lecture daies, to make confession before
+    the Lord of their former sins, and of their present knowledg
+    of Christ, and experience of his Grace; which they solemnly
+    doing, I wrote down their Confessions: which having done, and
+    being in my own heart hopeful that there was among them fit
+    matter for a Church, I did request all the Elders about us to
+    hear them reade, that so they might give me advice what to
+    do in this great and solemn business; which being done on a
+    day appointed for the purpose, it pleased God to give their
+    Confessions such acceptance in their hearts, as that they saw
+    nothing to hinder their proceeding, to try how the Lord would
+    appear therein. Whereupon, after a day of Fasting and Prayer
+    among ourselves, to seek the Lord, in that behalf, there was
+    another day of Fasting and Prayer appointed, and publick notice
+    thereof, and of the names of Indians were to confess, and enter
+    into Covenant that day, was given to all the Churches about
+    us, to seek the Lord yet further herein, and to make solemn
+    Confessions of Christ his Truth and Grace, and further to try
+    whether the Lord would vouchsafe such grace unto them, as to
+    give them acceptance among the Saints, into the fellowship of
+    Church-Estate, and enjoyment of those Ordinances which the Lord
+    hath betrusted his Churches withal. That day was the thirteenth
+    of the eighth month.
+
+    When the Assembly was met, the first part of the day was
+    spent in Prayers unto God, and exercise in the Word of God;
+    in which my self first and after that two of the Indians
+    did Exercise; and so the time was spent till after ten or
+    near eleven of the clock. Then addressing our selves unto
+    the further work of the day, I first requested the reverend
+    Elders (many being present) that they would ask them Questions
+    touching the fundamental Points of Religion, that thereby
+    they might have some tryal of their knowledg, and better that
+    way, than if themselves should of themselves declare what
+    they beleeve, or than if I should ask them Questions in these
+    matters: After a little conference hereabout, it was concluded,
+    That they should first make confession of their experience
+    in the Lords Work upon their hearts, because in so doing, it
+    is like something will be discerned of their knowledg in the
+    Doctrines of Religion: and if after those Confessions there
+    should yet be cause to inquire further touching any Point
+    of Religion it might be fitly done at last. Whereupon we so
+    proceeded, and called them forth in order to make confession.
+    It was moved in the Assembly by Reverend Mr. _Wilson_, that
+    their former Confessions also, as well as these which they made
+    at present, might be read unto the Assembly, because it was
+    evident that they were daunted much, to speak before so great
+    and grave an Assembly as that was, but time did not permit it
+    so to be then: yet now in my writing of their Confessions I
+    will take that course, that so it may appear what encouragement
+    there was to proceed so far as we did; and that such as may
+    reade these their Confessions, may the better discern of the
+    reality of the Grace of Christ in them.”
+
+He afterwards says,
+
+    “In the year 52 I perceiving the grace of God in sundry of
+    them, and some poor measure of fitnesse (as I was perswaded)
+    for the enjoyment of Church-fellowship, and Ordinances of Jesus
+    Christ, I moved in that matter, according as I have in the
+    Narration thereof, briefly declared. In the year 53 I moved not
+    that way, for these Reasons.
+
+    I having sent their Confessions to be published in _England_,
+    I did much desire to hear what acceptance the Lord gave unto
+    them, in the hearts of his people there, who daily labour at
+    the Throne of grace, and by other expressions of their loves,
+    for an holy birth of this work of the Lord, to the praise of
+    Christ, and the inlargement of his Kingdome. As also my desire
+    was, that by such Books as might be sent hither, the knowledge
+    of their Confessions might be spread here, unto the better and
+    fuller satisfaction of many, then the transacting thereof in
+    the presence of some could doe. These Books came by the latter
+    Ships (as I remember) that were bound for _New England_, and
+    were but newly out when they set saile, and therefore I had not
+    that answer that year, which my soule desired, though something
+    I had which gave encouragement, and was a tast of what I have
+    more fully heard from severall this year, praised be the Lord.
+
+    Besides there fell a great damping and discouragement upon
+    us by a jealousie too deeply apprehended, though utterly
+    groundlesse, _viz._ That even these praying _Indians_ were
+    in a conspiracy with others, and with the _Dutch_, to doe
+    mischief to the _English_. In which matter, though the ruling
+    part of the People looked otherwise upon them, yet it was no
+    season for me to stir or move in this matter, when the waters
+    were so troubled. This businesse needeth a calmer season,
+    and I shall account it a favour of God when ever he shall
+    please to cause his face to shine upon us in it. Yet this I
+    did the last year, after the Books had been come a season,
+    there being a great meeting at _Boston_, from other Colonies
+    as well as our owne, and the Commissioners being there, I
+    thought it necessary to take that opportunity to prepare and
+    open the way in a readinesse against this present year, by
+    making this Proposition unto them; namely, _That they having
+    now seen their confessions, if upon further triall of them in
+    point of knowledge, they be found to have a competent measure
+    of understanding in the fundamentall points of Religion; and
+    also, if there be due testimony of their conversation, that
+    they walke in a Christian manner according to their light, so
+    that Religion is to be seen in their lives; whether then it be
+    according to God, and acceptable to his people, that they be
+    called up unto Church estate?_ Unto which I had I blesse the
+    Lord, a generall approbation.
+
+    Accordingly this year 54 I moved the Elders, that they would
+    give me advice and assistance in this great businesse, and that
+    they would at a fit season examine the _Indians_ in point of
+    their knowledge, because we found by the former triall, that a
+    day will be too little (if the Lord please to call them on to
+    Church-fellowship) to examine them in points of Knowledge, and
+    hear their Confessions, and guide them into the holy Covenant
+    of the Lord. Seeing all these things are to be transacted in a
+    strange language, and by Interpreters, and with such a people
+    as they be in these their first beginnings. But if they would
+    spend a day on purpose to examine them in their knowledge
+    there would be so much the more liberty to doe it fully and
+    throughly, (as such a work ought to be) as also when they may
+    be called to gather into Church-Communion, it may suffice that
+    some one of them should make a Doctrinall Confession before
+    the Lord and his people, as the rule of faith which they build
+    upon, the rest attesting their consent unto the same: And
+    themselves (the Elders I mean, if the Lord so far assist the
+    _Indians_, as to give them satisfaction) might testifie that
+    upon Examination they have found a competency of knowledge in
+    them to inable them unto such a work and state. And thus the
+    work might be much shortned, and more comfortably expedited in
+    one day. I found no unreadinesse in the Elders to further this
+    work.
+
+    They concluded to attend the work, and for severall Reasons
+    advised that the place should be at _Roxbury_, and not at
+    _Natick_, and that the _Indians_ should be called thither, the
+    time they left to me to appoint, in such a season as wherein
+    the Elders may be at best liberty from other publick occasions.
+    The time appointed was the 13 of the 4 moneth; meanwhile I
+    dispatched Letters unto such as had knowledge in the Tongue,
+    requesting that they would come and help in interpretation,
+    or attest unto the truth of my Interpretations. I sent also
+    for my Brother _Mayhu_, who accordingly came, and brought an
+    Interpreter with him. Others whom I had desired, came not. I
+    informed the _Indians_ of this appointment, and of the end it
+    was appointed for, which they therefore called, and still doe,
+    when they have occasion to speak of it _Natootomuhteáe kesuk, A
+    day of asking Questions, or, A day of Examination_. I advised
+    them to prepare for it, and to pray earnestly about it, that
+    they might be accepted among Gods people, if it were the will
+    of God.
+
+    It pleased God so to guide, that there was a publick Fast
+    of all the Churches, betwixt this our appointment, and the
+    accomplishment thereof: which day they kept, as the Churches
+    did, and this businesse of theirs was a Principall matter in
+    their Prayers.”
+
+It will be useful, as well as interesting, to give some of the
+“Confessions of Indians” which were made and considered in preparation
+for their entering into the Church state.
+
+
+CONFESSION OF TOTHERSWAMP.
+
+    “Before I prayed unto God, the English, when I came unto
+    their houses, often said unto me, Pray to God; but I having
+    many friends who loved me, and I loved them, and they cared
+    not for praying to God, and therefore I did not: But I thought
+    in my heart, that if my friends should die, and I live, I then
+    would pray to God; soon after, God so wrought, that they did
+    almost all die, few of them left; and then my heart feared,
+    and I thought, that now I will pray unto God, and yet I was
+    ashamed to pray; and if I eat and did not pray, I was ashamed
+    of that also; so that I had a double shame upon me: Then you
+    came unto us, and taught us, and said unto us, _Pray unto God_;
+    and after that, my heart grew strong, and I was no more ashamed
+    to pray, but I did take up praying to God; yet at first I did
+    not think of God and eternal Life, but only that the English
+    should love me and I loved them: But after I came to learn
+    what sin was, by the Commandments of God, and then I saw all
+    my sins, lust, gaming, &c. (he named more.) You taught, That
+    Christ knoweth all our hearts, and seeth what is in them, if
+    humility, or anger, or evil thoughts, Christ seeth all that
+    is in the heart; then my heart feared greatly, because God
+    was angry for all my sins; yea, now my heart is full of evil
+    thoughts, and my heart runs away from God, therefore my heart
+    feareth and mourneth. Every day I see sin in my heart; one man
+    brought sin into the World, and I am full of that sin, and I
+    break Gods Word every day. I see I deserve not pardon, for the
+    first mans sinning; I can do no good, for I am like the Devil,
+    nothing but evil thoughts, and words, and works. I have lost
+    all likeness to God, and goodness, and therefore every day I
+    sin against God, and I deserve death and damnation: The first
+    man brought sin first, and I do every day add to that sin, more
+    sins; but Christ hath done for us all righteousness, and died
+    for us because of our sins, and Christ teacheth us, That if we
+    cast away our sins, and trust in Christ, then God will pardon
+    all our sins; this I beleeve Christ hath done, I can do no
+    righteousness, but Christ hath done it for me; this I beleeve,
+    and therefore I do hope for pardon. When I first heard the
+    Commandments, I then took up praying to God and cast off sin.
+    Again, When I heard, and understood Redemption by Christ, then
+    I beleeved Jesus Christ to take away my sins: every Commandment
+    taught me sin, and my duty to God. When you ask me why do I
+    love God? I answer, Because he giveth me all outward blessings,
+    as food, clothing, children, all gifts of strength, speech,
+    hearing; especially that he giveth us a Minister to teach us,
+    and giveth us Government; and my heart feareth lest Government
+    should reprove me; but the greatest mercy of all is Christ, to
+    give us pardon and life.”
+
+
+“TOTHERSWAMP
+
+_The Confession which he made on the Fast day before the great Assembly
+was as followeth:_
+
+    I Confess in the presence of the Lord, before I prayed, many
+    were my sins, not one good word did I speak, not one good
+    thought did I think, not one good action did I doe: I did act
+    all sins, and full was my heart of evil thoughts; when the
+    English did tell me of God, I cared not for it, I thought it
+    enough if they loved me: I had many friends that loved me,
+    and I thought if they died I would pray to God: and afterward
+    it so came to pass; then was my heart ashamed, to pray I was
+    ashamed, and if I prayed not, I was ashamed; a double shame was
+    upon me: when God by you taught us, very much ashamed was my
+    heart; then you taught us that Christ knoweth all our hearts:
+    therefore truly he saw my thoughts, and I had thought, if my
+    kindred should die I would pray to God; therefore they dying,
+    I must now pray to God; and therefore my heart feared, for I
+    thought Christ knew my thoughts: then I heard you teach, _The
+    first man God made was named_ Adam, _& God made a Covenant
+    with him, Do and live, thou and thy Children; if thou do not
+    thou must die, thou and thy Children_: And we are Children of
+    _Adam_ poor sinners, therefore we all have sinned, for we have
+    broke Gods Covenant, therefore evil is my heart, therefore
+    God is very angry with me, we sin against him every day; but
+    this great mercy God hath given us, he hath given us his only
+    Son, and promiseth, That whosoever beleeveth in Christ shall
+    be saved: for Christ hath dyed for us in our stead, for our
+    sins, and he hath done for us all the words of God, for I can
+    do no good act, only Christ can, and only Christ hath done all
+    for us; Christ hath deserved pardon for us, and risen again,
+    he hath ascended to God, and doth ever pray for us; therefore
+    all Beleevers Souls shall goe to Heaven to Christ. But when I
+    heard that word of Christ, Christ said _Repent and Beleeve_,
+    and Christ seeth _who Repenteth_, then I said, dark and weak
+    is my Soul, and I am one in darkness, I am a very sinful man,
+    and now I pray to Christ for life. Hearing you teach that Word
+    that the Scribes and Pharisees said _Why do thy Disciples break
+    the Tradition of the Fathers_? Christ answered, _Why do you
+    make void the Commandments of God?_ Then my heart feared that
+    I do so, when I teach the Indians, because I cannot teach them
+    right, and thereby make the word of God vain. Again, Christ
+    said _If the blind lead the blind they will both fall into the
+    ditch_; Therefore I feared that I am one blind, and when I
+    teach other Indians I shal caus them to fall into the ditch.
+    This is the love of God to me, that he giveth me all mercy in
+    this world, and for them al I am thankfull; but I confess I
+    deserve Hell; I cannot deliver my self, but I give my Soul and
+    my Flesh to Christ, and I trust my soul with him for he is my
+    Redeemer, and I desire to call upon him while I live.
+
+    This was his Confession which ended, Mr. _Allin_ further
+    demanded of him this Question, How he found his heart, now in
+    the matter of Repentance?
+
+    His answer was; I am ashamed of all my sins, my heart is broken
+    for them and melteth in me, I am angry with my self for my
+    sins, and I pray to Christ to take away my sins, and I desire
+    that they may be pardoned.
+
+    But it was desired that further Question might be forborn, lest
+    time would be wanting to here them all speak.”
+
+The following is the Confession of Waban, (or the wind,) the man in
+whose wigwam Mr. Eliot preached to the Indians in the beginning of his
+ministry among them, and who, from Mr. Eliot’s text, “Prophesy unto the
+wind,” &c., supposed that the message of God was specially directed to
+himself.
+
+
+CONFESSION OF WABAN.
+
+    “Before I heard of God, and before the English came into this
+    Country, many evil things my heart did work, many thoughts I
+    had in my heart; I wished for riches, I wished to be a witch,
+    I wished to be a Sachem; and many such other evils were in my
+    heart: Then when the English came, still my heart did the same
+    things; when the English taught me of God (I coming to their
+    Houses) I would go out of their doors, and many years I knew
+    nothing; when the English taught me I was angry with them:
+    But a little while agoe after the great sikness, I considered
+    what the English do; and I had some desire to do as they
+    do; and after that I began to work as they work; and then I
+    wondered how the English come to be so strong to labor; then
+    I thought I shall quickly die, and I feared lest I should die
+    before I prayed to God; then I thought, if I prayed to God in
+    our Language, whether could God understand my prayers in our
+    Language; therefore I did ask Mr. _Jackson_, and Mr. _Mahu_,
+    If God understood prayers in our Language? They answered me
+    God doth understand all Languages in the World. But I do not
+    know how to confess, and little do I know of Christ; I fear I
+    shall not beleeve a great while, and very slowly; I do not know
+    what grace is in my heart, there is but little good in me; but
+    this I know, That Christ hath kept all Gods Commandements for
+    us, and that Christ doth know all our hearts; and now I desire
+    to repent of all my sins: I neither have done, nor can do the
+    Commandements of the Lord, but I am ashamed of all I do, and
+    I do repent of all my sins, even of all that I do know of: I
+    desire that I may be converted from all my sins, and that I
+    might beleeve in Christ, and I desire him; I dislike my sins,
+    yet I do not truly pray to God in my heart: no matter for good
+    words, all is the true heart; and this day I do not so much
+    desire good words, as throughly to open my heart: I confess I
+    can do nothing, but deserve damnation; only Christ can help me
+    and do for me. But I have nothing to say for my self that is
+    good; I judg that I am a sinner, and cannot repent, but Christ
+    hath deserved pardon for us.”
+
+    This Confession being not so satisfactory as was desired, Mr.
+    _Wilson_ testified, that he spake these latter expressions with
+    tears, which I observed not, because I attended to writing; but
+    I gave this testimony of him, That his conversation was without
+    offence to the English, so far as I knew, and among the Indians
+    it was exemplar: his gift is not so much in expressing himself
+    this way, but in other respects useful and eminent; it being
+    demanded in what respects, I answered to this purpose, That his
+    gift lay in Ruling, Judging of Cases, wherein he is patient,
+    constant, and prudent, insomuch that he is much respected
+    among them, for they have chosen him a Ruler of Fifty, and he
+    Ruleth well according to his measure. It was further said, they
+    thought he had been a great drawer on to Religion; I replyed,
+    so he was in his way, and did prevail with many; and so it
+    rested.
+
+
+“CONFESSION OF WILLIAM, OF SUDBURY.
+
+    I confess that before I prayed, I committed all manner of
+    sins, and served many gods: when the English came first, I
+    going to their houses, they spake to me of your God, but when I
+    heard of God, my heart hated it; but when they said the Devil
+    was my god, I was angry, because I was proud: when I came to
+    their houses I hated to hear of God, I loved lust in my own
+    house and not God, I loved to pray to many gods. Five years
+    ago, I going to English houses, and they speaking of God, I did
+    a little like of it, yet when I went again to my own house,
+    I did all manner of sins, and in my heart I did act all sins
+    though I would not be seen by man. Then going to your house, I
+    more desired to hear of God; and my heart said, I will pray to
+    God so long as I live: then I went to the Minister Mr. _Browns_
+    house, and told him I would pray as long as I lived: but he
+    said I did not say it from my heart, and I beleeve it. When
+    _Waban_ spake to me that I should pray to God, I did so. But I
+    had greatly sinned against God, and had not beleeved the Word
+    but was proud: but then I was angry with my self, and loathed
+    my self, and thought God will not forgive me my sins. For when
+    I had been abroad in the woods I would be very angry, and would
+    lye unto men, and I could not find the way how to be a good
+    man: then I beleeved your teaching, That when good men die, the
+    Angels carry their souls to God; but evil men dying, they go to
+    Hell, and perish for ever. I thought this a true saying, and
+    I promised to God, to pray to God as long as I live. I had a
+    little grief in my heart five years ago for my sins: but many
+    were my prides; sometime I was angry with my self, and pityed
+    my self; but I thought God would not pardon such a proud heart
+    as mine is: I beleeve that Christ would have me to forsake my
+    anger; I beleeve that Christ hath redeemed us, and I am glad to
+    hear those words of God; and I desire that I might do al the
+    good waies of God, and that I might truly pray unto God: I do
+    now want Graces, and these Christ only teacheth us, and only
+    Christ hath wrought our redemption, and he procureth our pardon
+    for all our sins; and I beleeve that when beleevers dy, Gods
+    Angels carry them to Heaven; but I want faith to beleeve the
+    Word of God, and to open my Eyes, and to help me to cast away
+    all sins; and Christ hath deserved for me eternall life: I have
+    deserved nothing my self: Christ hath deserved, all, and giveth
+    me faith to beleeve it.”
+
+
+“CONFESSION OF MONEQUASSUN, THE SCHOOLMASTER.
+
+    I Confess my sorrow for all my sins against God, and
+    before men: When I first heard instruction, I beleeved not,
+    but laughed at it, and scorned praying to God; afterward,
+    when we were taught at _Cohannet_ (that is the place where
+    he lived) I still hated praying, and I did think of running
+    away, because I cared not for praying to God; but afterwards,
+    because I loved to dwell at that place, I would not leave the
+    place, and therfore I thought I will pray to God, because I
+    would still stay at that place, therefore I prayed not for the
+    love of God, but for love of the place I lived in; after that I
+    desired a little to learn the Catechisme on the Lecture daies,
+    and I did learn the ten Commandements, and after that, all
+    the points in the Catechisme; yet afterwards I cast them all
+    away again, then was my heart filled with folly, and my sins
+    great sins, afterwards by hearing, I began to fear, because of
+    my many sins, lest the wise men should come to know them, and
+    punish me for them; and then again I thought of running away
+    because of my many sins: But after that I thought I would pray
+    rightly to God, and cast away my sins; then I saw my hypocricy,
+    because I did ask some questions, but did not do that which
+    I knew: afterward I considered of my question, and thought I
+    would pray to God, and would consider of some other Question,
+    and I asked this Question, _How should I get Wisdom?_ and the
+    Answer to it did a little turn my heart from sin, to seek after
+    God; and I then considered that the Word of God was good; then
+    I prayed to God because of the Word of God. The next Lecture
+    day you taught that word of God, _If any man lack Wisdom, let
+    him ask it of God, who giveth freely to them that ask him, and
+    upbraideth no man_, _James_, 1:5. Then again a little my heart
+    was turned after God, the Word also said, _Repent, mourn, and
+    beleeve in Jesus Christ_: this also helped me on. Then you
+    taught, _That he that beleeveth not Christ, and repenteth not
+    of sin, they are foolish and wicked; and because they beleeve
+    not, they shall perish_: then I thought my self a fool, because
+    I beleeved not Christ, but sinned every day, and after I heard
+    the Word greatly broke the Word. But afterward I heard this
+    promise of God, _Who ever repenteth and beleeveth in Christ,
+    God will forgive him all his sins, he shall not perish_; then I
+    thought, that as yet, I do not repent, and beleeve in Christ:
+    then I prayed to God, because of this his Promise; and then
+    I prayed to God, for God and for Christ his sake: after that
+    again I did a little break the Word of Christ. And then I
+    heard some other words of God, which shewed me my sins, and
+    my breakings of Gods word; and sometimes I thought God and
+    Christ would forgive me, because of the promise to them that
+    beleeve in Christ, and repent of sin, I thought I did that
+    which God spake in the Promise. Then being called to confess,
+    to prepare to make a Church at _Natick_, I loved _Cohannet_;
+    but after hearing this instruction, _That we should not only be
+    Hearers, but Doers of the Word_, then my heart did fear. And
+    afterward hearing that in _Matthew_, Christ saw two brethren
+    mending their Nets, he said, _Follow me and I will make you
+    Fishers of men_, presently they followed Christ; and when I
+    heard this, I feared, because I was not willing to follow
+    Christ to _Natick_; they followed Christ at his Word, but I
+    did not, for now Christ saith to us, _follow Me_: then I was
+    much troubled, and considered of this Word of God. Afterward I
+    heard another word, the blind men cried after Christ and said,
+    _Have mercy on us thou Son of David_, but after they came to
+    Christ he called them, and asked them, _What shall I do for
+    you?_ they said, _Lord open our eyes_; then Christ had pity on
+    them, and opened their eyes, and they followed Christ; when I
+    heard this, my heart was troubled, then I prayed to God and
+    Christ, to open mine eyes, and if Christ open my eyes, then
+    I shall rejoyce to follow Christ: then I considered of both
+    these Scriptures, and I a little saw that I must follow Christ.
+    And now my heart desireth to make confession of what I know
+    of God, and of my self, and of Christ: I beleeve that there
+    is only one God, and that he made and ruleth all the World,
+    and that he the Lord, giveth us al good things: I know that
+    God giveth every day all good mercies, life, and health, and
+    all; I have not one good thing, but God it is that giveth it
+    me, I beleeve that God at first made man like God, holy, wise,
+    righteous; but the first man sinned, for God promised him, _If
+    thou do my Commandements, thou shalt live, and thy Children;
+    but if thou sin, thou shalt die, thou and thy children_; this
+    Covenant God made with the first man. But the first man did
+    not do the Commandements of God he did break Gods Word, he
+    beleeved Satan; and now I am full of sin, because the first
+    man brought sin; dayly I am full of sin in my heart: I do not
+    dayly rejoyce in Repentance, because Satan worketh dayly in my
+    heart, and opposeth Repentance, and all good Works; day and
+    night my heart is full of sin. I beleeve that Jesus Christ was
+    born of the _Virgin Mary_; God promised her she should bear
+    a Son, and his Name should be _JESUS_, because he shall
+    deliver his people from their sins: And when Christ came to
+    preach, he said, _Repent, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at
+    hand_; again Christ taught, _Except ye repent and become as a
+    little child, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven_;
+    therefore humble your selves like one of these little children,
+    and great shall be your Kingdom in Heaven. Again Christ said,
+    _Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden with sin,
+    and I will give you rest: take up my Cross and Yoak, learn of
+    me for I am meek, and ye shall find rest to your souls, for my
+    yoak is easie and burden light_: these are the Words of Christ
+    and I know Christ he is good, but my works are evil: Christ his
+    words are good, but I am not humble; but if we be humble and
+    beleeving in Christ, he pardons all our sins. I now desire to
+    beleeve in Jesus Christ, because of the word of Christ, that
+    I may be converted and become as a little Child. I confess my
+    sins before God, and before Jesus Christ this day; now I desire
+    all my sins may be pardoned; I now desire repentance in my
+    heart, and ever to beleeve in Christ; now I lift up my heart to
+    Christ, and trust him with it, because I beleeve Christ died
+    for us, for all our sins, and deserved for us eternal life in
+    Heaven, and deserved pardon for all our sins. And now I give
+    my soul to Christ because he hath redeemed: I do greatly love,
+    and like repentance in my heart, and I love to beleeve in Jesus
+    Christ, and my heart is broken by repentance: al these things
+    I do like wel of, that they may be in my heart, but because
+    Christ hath all these to give, I ask them of him that he may
+    give me repentance, and faith in Christ, and therefore I pray
+    and beseech Christ dayly for repentance and faith; and other
+    good waies I beg of Christ dayly to give me: and I pray to
+    Christ for al these gifts and graces to put them in my heart:
+    and now I greatly thank Christ for all these good gifts which
+    he hath given me. I know not any thing, nor can do any thing
+    that is a good work: even my heart is dark dayly in what I
+    should do, and my soul dyeth because of my sins, and therefore
+    I give my soul to Christ, because my soul is dead in sin, and
+    dayly doth commit sin; in my heart I sin, and all the members
+    of my body are sinful. I beleeve Jesus Christ is ascended to
+    Heaven through the clouds, and he will come again from Heaven:
+    Many saw Christ go up to Heaven, and the Angels said, even
+    so he will come again to judg all the world; and therefore
+    I beleeve Gods promise, That all men shall rise again when
+    Christ cometh again, then all shall rise, and all their souls
+    comes again because Christ is trusted with them, and keeps
+    their souls, therefore I desire my sins may be pardoned; and I
+    beleeve in Christ; and ever so long as I live, I will pray to
+    God, and do all the good waies he commandeth.”
+
+
+“CONFESSIONS OF ROBIN SPEENE.
+
+    I was ashamed because you taught to pray to God, and I did not
+    take it up; I see God is angry with me for all my sins, and
+    he hath afflicted me by the death of three of my children,
+    and I fear God is still angry, because great are my sins, and
+    I fear lest my children be not gone to Heaven, because I am
+    a great sinner, yet one of my children prayed to God before
+    it died, and therefore my heart rejoyceth in that. I remember
+    my Pawwawing [for he was a _Pawwaw_] my lust, my gaming, and
+    all my sins; I know them by the Commandements of God, and God
+    heareth and seeth them all; I cannot deliver my self from sin,
+    therefore I do need Christ, because of all my sins, I desire
+    pardon, and I beleeve that God calls all to come to Christ, and
+    that he delivereth us from sin.”
+
+“_His Second Confession._
+
+    I have found out one word more: great are my sins, and I do
+    not know how to repent, nor do I know the evil of my sins; only
+    this one word, now I confess I want Christ, this day 1 want
+    him; I do not truly beleeve nor repent: I see my sin, and I
+    need Christ, but I desire now to be redeemed: and I now ask you
+    this Question _What is Redemption?_ I answered him, by shewing
+    him our estate by Nature, and desert, the price which Christ
+    paid for us, and how it is to be applied to every particular
+    person; which done, he proceeded in his confession thus: I yet
+    cannot tell whether God hath pardoned my sins, I forget the
+    word of God; but this I desire, that my sins may be pardoned,
+    but my heart is foolish, and a great part of the Word stayeth
+    not in my heart strongly. I desire to cast all my sins out of
+    my heart: but I remember my sins, that I may get them pardoned,
+    I think God doth not yet hear my prayers in this, because I
+    cannot keep the Word of God, only I desire to hear the Word,
+    and that God would hear me.”
+
+“_His Third Confession._
+
+    One word more I cal to mind, Great is my sin! this saith my
+    heart, I have found this sin, when I first heard you teach,
+    that all the world from the rising to the sitting Sun should
+    pray to God, I then wondered at it, and thought, I being a
+    great sinner, how shal I pray to God; and when I saw many come
+    to the Meeting, I wondred at it: But now I do not wonder at
+    that work of God, and therefore I think that I do now greatly
+    sin: and now I desire again to wonder at Gods Works, and I
+    desire to rejoyce in Gods good waies. Now I am much ashamed,
+    and fear because I have deserved eternal wrath by my sins:
+    my heart is evil, my heart doth contrary to God: and this I
+    desire, that I may be redeemed, for I cannot help my self,
+    but only Jesus Christ hath done al this for me, and I deserve
+    no good, but I beleeve Christ hath deserved all for us: and
+    I give my self unto Christ, that he may save me, because he
+    knoweth eternal life, and can give it; I cannot give it to my
+    self, therefore I need Jesus Christ, my heart is full of evil
+    thoughts; and Christ only can keep my soul from them, because
+    he hath paid for my deliverance from them.”
+
+
+“CONFESSION OF ANTONY.
+
+    Another who made his Confession is named _Antony_, upon whom
+    the Lord was pleased the last Winter to lay an heavy stroke;
+    for he and another Indian being at work sawing of Board, and
+    finishing the Peece, they laid it so short, and the Rowl not so
+    stedfast, insomuch that this man being in the Pit directing to
+    lay the Piece, and the other above ordering thereof, it slipped
+    down into the Pit upon this mans head, brake his neather Chap
+    in two, and cracked his Skull, insomuch that he was taken up
+    half dead, and almost strangled with blood; and being the last
+    day of the week at night I had no word until the Sabbath day,
+    then I presently sent a Chyrurgion, who took a discreet order
+    with him; and God so blessed his indeavors, as that he is now
+    well again, blessed be the Lord: and whereas I did fear that
+    such a blow in their Labor might discourage them from Labor,
+    I have found it by Gods blessing otherwise; yea this man hath
+    performed a great part of the sawing of our Meeting-House, and
+    is now sawing upon the School-house, and his recovery is an
+    establishment of them to go on; yea, and God blessed this blow,
+    to help on the Work of Grace in his soul; as you shall see in
+    his Confession, which followeth.
+
+    Before I prayed to God I alwaies committed sin, but I do
+    not know all my sins, I know but a little of the sins I have
+    committed, therefore I thought I could not pray to God, because
+    I knew not al my sins before I prayed to God, and since I heard
+    of praying to God: formerly when the English did bid me pray
+    unto God I hated it, and would go out of their houses, when
+    they spake of such things to me. I had no delight to hear any
+    thing of Gods Word, but in every thing I sinned; in my speeches
+    I sinned, and every day I broke the Commands of God. After
+    I heard of praying to God, that _Waban_ and my two brothers
+    prayed to God, yet then I desired it not, but did think of
+    running away; yet I feared if I did run away some wicked men
+    would kill me, but I did not fear God. After when you said unto
+    me, pray, my heart thought, I will pray; yet again I thought,
+    I cannot pray with my heart, and no matter for praying with
+    words only: but when I did pray, I saw more of my sins; yet I
+    did but only see them, I could not be aware of them, but still
+    I did commit them: and after I prayed to God, I was still full
+    of lust, and then a little I feared. Sometimes I was sick, and
+    then I thought God was angry, and then I saw that I did commit
+    all sins: then one of my brothers died, and then my heart was
+    broken, and after him another friend, and again my heart was
+    broken: and yet after all this I broke my praying to God, and
+    put away God, and then I thought I shall never pray to God: but
+    after this I was afraid of the Lord, because I alwaies broke
+    my praying to God and then my heart said, God doth not hear my
+    prayer. When I was sick, and recovered again, I thought then
+    that God was merciful unto me. Hearing that word of God, _If
+    you hear the Word of God, and be forgetful hearers, you sin
+    against God_; then I thought God will not pardon such a sinner
+    as I, who dayly did so, and broke my praying to God. When I
+    heard the Commandements, I desired to learn them, and other
+    points of Catechism, but my desires were but small, and I soon
+    lost it, because I did not desire to beleeve: then sometimes
+    I feared Gods anger because of al my sins; I heard the Word
+    and understood only this word, _All you that hear this day, it
+    may be you shall quickly die_, and then I quickly saw that God
+    was very angry with me. Then God brake my head, and by that I
+    saw Gods anger; and then I thought that the true God in Heaven
+    is angry with me for my sin, even for al my sins, which every
+    day I live, I do. When I was almost dead, some body bid me now
+    beleeve, because it may be I shal quickly die, and I thought I
+    did beleeve, but I did not know right beleeving in Christ: then
+    I prayed unto God to restore my health. Then I beleeved that
+    word, _That we must shortly appear before Jesus Christ_; then
+    I did greatly fear lest if I beleeved not, I should perish for
+    ever. When I was neer death, I prayed unto God, _Oh Lord give
+    me life, and I will pray to God so long as I live_, and I said,
+    _I will give my self, soul, and body to Christ_: after this,
+    God gave me health, and then I thought, truly, God in Heaven is
+    merciful; then I much grieved, that I knew so little of Gods
+    Word. And now sometimes I am angry, and then I fear because I
+    know God seeth it; and I fear, because I promised God when I
+    was almost dead, that if he giveth me life, I will pray so long
+    as I live; I fear lest I should break this promise to God. Now
+    I desire the pardon of all my sins, and I beg faith in Christ,
+    and I desire to live unto God, so long as I live; I cannot
+    myself get pardon, but I dayly commit sin, and break Gods Word,
+    but I look to Christ for pardon.”
+
+
+“CONFESSION OF EPHRAIM.
+
+    All the daies I have lived, I have been in a poor foolish
+    condition, I cannot tell all my sins, all my great sins, I do
+    not see them. When I first heard of praying to God, I could
+    not sleep quietly, I was so troubled, ever I thought I would
+    forsake the place because of praying to God, my life hath been
+    like as if I had been a mad man. Last yeer I thought I would
+    leave all my sins, yet I see I do not leave off sinning to this
+    day; I now think I shall never be able to forsake my sins. I
+    think sometimes the Word of God is false, yet I see there is
+    no giving over that I might follow sin, I must pray to God; I
+    do not truly in my heart repent, and I think that God wil not
+    forgive me my sins: every day my heart sinneth, and how will
+    Christ forgive such an one? I pray but outwardly with my mouth,
+    not with my heart; I cannot of my self obtain pardon of my
+    sins: I cannot tell all the sins that I have done if I should
+    tell you an whol day together: I do every morning desire that
+    my sins may be pardoned by Jesus Christ; this my heart saith,
+    but yet I fear I cannot forsake my sins, because I cannot see
+    all my sins: I hear, That if we repent and beleeve in Christ,
+    all our sins shall be pardoned, therefore I desire to leave off
+    my sins.
+
+    This poor Publican was the last which made his Confession before
+    I read them unto the Elders, and the last of them I shall now
+    publish. I will shut up these Confessions with the Confession
+    (if I may so call it) or rather with the Expression, and
+    manifestation of faith, by two little Infants, of two yeers
+    old, and upward, under three yeers of age when they died and
+    departed out of this world.
+
+    _The Story is this_,
+
+    This Spring, in the beginning of the yeer, 1652, the Lord was
+    pleased to afflict sundry of our praying Indians with that
+    grievous disease of the Bloody-Flux, whereof some with great
+    torments in their bowels died; among which were two little
+    Children of the age above-said, and at that time both in one
+    house, being together taken with that disease. The first of
+    these Children in the extremities of its torments, lay crying
+    to God in these words, _God and Jesus Christ, God and Jesus
+    Christ help me_; and when they gave it any thing to eat, it
+    would greedily take it (as it is usual at the approach of
+    death) but first it would cry to God, _Oh God and Jesus Christ,
+    bless it_, and then it would take it: and in this manner it lay
+    calling upon God and Jesus Christ untill it died: The mother of
+    this Child also died of that disease, at that time. The Father
+    of the Child told me this story, with great wonderment at the
+    grace of God, in teaching his Child so to call upon God. The
+    name of the Father is _Nishohkou_, whose Confession you have
+    before.
+
+    Three or four daies after, another Child in the same house,
+    sick of the same disease, was (by a divine hand doubtless)
+    sensible of the approach of death, (an unusual thing at that
+    age) and called to its Father, and said, _Father, I am going
+    to God_, several times repeating it, _I am going to God_. The
+    mother (as other mothers use to do) had made for the Child a
+    little Basket, a little Spoon, and a little Tray: these things
+    the Child was wont to be greatly delighted withal (as all
+    Children will) therefore in the extremity of the torments,
+    they set those things before it, a little to divert the mind,
+    and cheer the spirit: but now, the child takes the Basket, and
+    puts it away, and said, _I will leave my Basket behind me, for
+    I am going to God, I will leave my Spoon and Tray behind me_
+    (putting them away) _for I am going to God_: and with these
+    kind of expressions, the same night finished its course, and
+    died.
+
+    The Father of this child is named _Robin Speen_, whose
+    Confessions you have before, and in one of them he maketh
+    mention of this child that died in Faith. When he related this
+    story to me, he said, He could not tell whether the sorrow for
+    the death of his child, or the joy for its faith were greater,
+    when it died.
+
+    These Examples are a testimony, That they teach their children
+    the knowledg and fear of God, whom they now call upon; and also
+    that the Spirit of God co-worketh with their instructions, who
+    teacheth by man, more than man is able to do.”
+
+    Mr. Eliot says, ‘I have now finished all that I purpose to
+    publish at this time; the Lord give them Acceptance in the
+    hearts of his Saints, to engage them the more to pray for them;
+    and Oh! that their judgings of themselves, and breathings after
+    Christ, might move others (that have more means than they
+    have, but as yet regard it not) to do the like, and much more
+    abundantly.’
+
+A meeting of the Elders of the Churches was requested by Mr. Eliot, as
+before stated, to give advice in view of these Confessions, and upon
+further personal examination of some of the Indians, as to the next step
+to be taken in organizing the Indian Church. But Mr. E. says,
+
+    “There fell out a very great discouragement a little before
+    the time, which might have been a scandall unto them, and I
+    doubt not but Satan intended it so; but the Lord improved it to
+    stir up faith and Prayer, and so turned it another way: Thus it
+    was. Three of the unsound sort of such as are among them that
+    pray unto God, who are hemmed in by Relations, and other means,
+    to doe that which their hearts love not, and whose Vices Satan
+    improveth to scandalize and reproach the better sort withall;
+    while many, and some good people are too ready to say they
+    are all alike. I say three of them had gotten severall quarts
+    of strong water, (which sundry out of a greedy desire of a
+    little gaine, are too ready to sell unto them, to the offence
+    and grief of the better sort of _Indians_, and of the godly
+    English too)[31] and with these Liquors, did not onely make
+    themselves drunk, but got a Child of eleven years of age, the
+    Son of _Toteswamp_, whom his Father had sent for a little Corne
+    and Fish to that place near _Watertowne_ where they were. Unto
+    this Child they first gave too spoonfuls of Strong-water, which
+    was more then his head could bear; and another of them put a
+    Bottle, or such like Vessel to his mouth, and caused him to
+    drink till he was very drunk; and then one of them domineered,
+    and said, _Now we will see whether your Father will punish us
+    for drunkennesse_ (for he is a Ruler among them) _seeing you
+    are drunk with us for company_; and in this case lay the Child
+    abroad all night. They also fought, and had been severall times
+    Punished formerly for Drunkennesse.
+
+    When _Toteswamp_ heard of this, it was a great shame and
+    breaking of heart unto him, and he knew not what to doe. The
+    rest of the Rulers with him considered of the matter, they
+    found a complication of many sins together.
+
+    1 The sin of Drunkennesse, and that after many former
+    Punishments for the same.
+
+    2 A willful making of the Child drunk, and exposing him to
+    danger also.
+
+    3 A degree of reproaching the Rulers.
+
+    4 Fighting.
+
+    Word was brought to me of it, a little before I took Horse to
+    goe to _Natick_ to keep the Sabbath with them, being about ten
+    dayes before the appointed Meeting. The Tidings sunk my spirit
+    extreamly, I did judge it to be the greatest frowne of God that
+    ever I met withall in the work, I could read nothing in it but
+    displeasure, I began to doubt about our intended work: I knew
+    not what to doe, the blacknesse of the sins, and the Persons
+    reflected on, made my very heart faile me: For one of the
+    offendors (though least in the offence) was he that hath been
+    my Interpreter, whom I have used in Translating a good part of
+    the Holy Scriptures; and in that respect I saw much of Satans
+    venome, and in God I saw displeasure. For this and some other
+    acts of Apostacy at this time, I had thoughts of casting him
+    off from that work, yet now the Lord hath found a way to humble
+    him. But his Apostacy at this time was a great Triall, and I
+    did lay him by for that day of our Examination, I used another
+    in his room. Thus Satan aimed at me in this their miscarrying;
+    and _Toteswamp_ is a Principall man in the work, as you shall
+    have occasion to see anon God-willing.
+
+    By some occasion our Ruling Elder and I being together, I
+    opened the case unto him, and the Lord guided him to speak some
+    gracious words of encouragement unto me, by which the Lord did
+    relieve my spirit; and so I committed the matter and issue unto
+    the Lord, to doe what pleased him, and in so doing my soul was
+    quiet in the Lord. I went on my journey being the 6 day of the
+    week; when I came at _Natick_, the Rulers had then a Court
+    about it. Soon after I came there, the Rulers came to me with
+    a Question about this matter, they related the whole businesse
+    unto me, with much trouble and grief.
+
+    Then _Toteswamp_ spake to this purpose, _I am greatly
+    grieved about these things, and now God tryeth me whether I
+    love Christ or my Child best. They say, They will try me; but
+    I say, God will try me. Christ saith, He that loveth father,
+    or mother, or wife, or Child, better than me, is not worthy of
+    me. Christ saith, I must correct my Child, if I should refuse
+    to doe that, I should not love Christ. God bid Abraham kill
+    his Son, Abraham loved God, and therefore he would have done
+    it, had not God with-held him. God saith to me, onely punish
+    your Child, and how can I love God, if I should refuse to doe
+    that?_ These things he spake in more words, and much affection,
+    and not with dry eyes: Nor could I refraine from teares to
+    hear him. When it was said, The Child was not so guilty of
+    the sin, as those that made him drunk; he said, _That he was
+    guilty of sin, in that he feared not sin, and in that he did
+    not believe his counsells that he had often given him, to take
+    heed of evill company; but he had believed Satan and sinners
+    more then him, therefore he needed to be punished._ After other
+    such like discourse, the Rulers left me, and went unto their
+    businesse, which they were about before I came, which they did
+    bring unto this conclusion, and judgement, They judged the
+    three men to sit in the stocks a good space of time, and thence
+    to be brought to the whipping-Post, & have each of them twenty
+    lashes. The boy to be put in the stocks a little while, and the
+    next day his father was to whip him in the School, before the
+    Children there; all which Judgement was executed. When they
+    came to be whipt, the Constable fetcht them one after another
+    to the Tree (which they make use of instead of a Post) where
+    they all received their Punishments: which done, the Rulers
+    spake thus, one of them said, _The Punishments for sin are
+    the Commandements of God, and the worke of God, and his end
+    was, to doe them good, and bring them to repentance._ And upon
+    that ground he did in more words exhort them to repentance,
+    and amendment of life. When he had done, another spake unto
+    them to this purpose, _You are taught in Catechisme, that the
+    wages of sin are all miseries and calamities in this life, and
+    also death and eternall damnation in hell. Now you feele some
+    smart as the fruit of your sin, and this is to bring you to
+    repentance, that so you may escape the rest._ And in more words
+    he exhorted them to repentance. When he had done, another spake
+    to this purpose, _Heare all yee people_ (turning himselfe to
+    the People who stood round about, I think not lesse then two
+    hundred, small and great) _this is the Commandement of the
+    Lord, that thus it should be done unto sinners; and therefore
+    let all take warning by this, that you commit not such sins,
+    least you incur these Punishments_. And with more words he
+    exhorted the People. Others of the Rulers spake also, but some
+    things spoken I understood not, and some things slipt from me:
+    But these which I have related remained with me.
+
+    When I returned to _Roxbury_, I related these things to our
+    Elder, to whom I had before related the sin, and my grief: who
+    was much affected to hear it, and magnified God. He said also,
+    That their sin was but a Transient act, which had no Rule, and
+    would vanish. But these Judgements were an ordinance of God,
+    and would remaine, and doe more good every way, then their sin
+    could doe hurt, telling me what cause I had to be thankfull for
+    such an issue: Which I therefore relate, because the Lord did
+    speak to my heart, in this exigent, by his words.”
+
+This difficulty being thus settled, the time came for the meeting of the
+Elders. Mr. Eliot observes,
+
+    “When the assembly was met for Examination of the _Indians_,
+    and ordered, I declared the end and Reason of this Meeting,
+    and therefore declared, That any one, in due order, might have
+    liberty to propound any Questions for their satisfaction.
+    Likewise, I requested the Assembly, That if any one doubted
+    of the Interpretations that should be given of their answers,
+    that they would Propound their doubt, and they should have
+    the words scanned and tryed by the Interpreters, that so all
+    things may be done most clearly. For my desire was to be
+    true to Christ, to their soules, and to the Churches: And
+    the trying out of any of their Answers by the Interpreters,
+    would tend to the satisfaction of such as doubt, as it fell
+    out in one Answer which they gave; the Question was, _How
+    they knew the Scriptures to be the word of God?_ The finall
+    Answer was, Because they did find that it did change their
+    hearts, and wrought in them wisedome and humility. This Answer
+    being Interpreted to the Assembly, my Brother _Mahu_ doubted,
+    especially of the word [_Hohpoóonk_] signifying _Humility_, it
+    was scanned by the Interpreters, and proved to be right, and
+    he rested satisfied therein. I was purposed my selfe to have
+    written the Elders Questions, and the _Indians_ Answers, but
+    I was so imployed in propounding to the _Indians_ the Elders
+    Questions, and in returning the _Indians_ Answers, as that
+    it was not possible for me to write unlesse I had caused the
+    Assembly to stay upon it, which had not been fitting; therefore
+    seeing Mr. _Walton_ writing, I did request him to write the
+    Questions and Answers, and help me with a Copy of them, which
+    I thank him, he did, a Copy whereof I herewith send to be
+    inserted in this place, on which, this only I will animadvert,
+    That the Elders in wisdome thought it not fit to ask them in
+    Catechisticall method strictly, in which way Children might
+    Answer. But that they might try whether they understood
+    what they said, they traversed up and downe in Questions of
+    Religion, as here you see.
+
+                            POSTSCRIPT.
+
+    Let the Reader take notice, That these questions were not
+    propounded all to one man, but to sundry, which is the reason
+    that sometime the same Questions are propounded againe and
+    againe. Also the number Examined were about eight, namely,
+    so many as might be first called forth to enter into
+    Church-Covenant, if the Lord give opportunity.”
+
+We have a Catechism, entitled “The Examination of the Indians at Roxbury,
+the 13th day of the 4th month, 1654.” The following are some of the
+questions and answers.
+
+    _Q._ Have not some Indians many Gods?
+
+    _A._ They have many Gods.
+
+    _Q._ How doe you know these Gods are no Gods.
+
+    _A._ Before the English came we knew not but that they were
+    Gods, but since they came we know they are no Gods.
+
+    _Q._ How doe you know the word of God is Gods word?
+
+    _A._ I believe the word that you teach us, was spoken of God.
+
+    _Q._ Why doe you believe it?
+
+    _A._ Therefore I believe it to be the word of God, because when
+    we learn it, it teacheth our hearts to be wise and humble.
+
+    _Q._ Whether are not your sins, and the temptations of
+    _Hobbomak_ more strong since, then before you prayed to God?
+
+    _A._ Before I prayed to God, I knew not what Satans temptations
+    were.
+
+    _Q._ Doe you know now?
+
+    _A._ Now I have heard what Satans temptations are.
+
+    _Q._ What is a temptation of the Devill in your heart, doe you
+    understand what it is?
+
+    _A._ Within my heart there are Hypocrisies, which doe not
+    appear without.
+
+    _Q._ Whether doe not you find this a principall temptation
+    from the wickednesse of your heart, to drive you away from
+    Christ, and not to believe the gracious Promises in Jesus
+    Christ? Or whether when you find wickednesse in your heart, you
+    are not tempted that you cannot believe?
+
+    _A._ My heart doth strongly desire to goe on in sin, but this
+    is a strong temptation, but Faith is the work of Jesus Christ.
+
+    _Q._ What doe you believe about the immortality of the soule,
+    and resurrection of the body? doth the soule dye when the body
+    dyeth?
+
+    _A._ I believe, when the body of a good man dyeth, the Angels
+    carry his soule to heaven, when a wicked man dyeth, the Devills
+    carry his soule to hell.
+
+    _Q._ How long shall they be in that state?
+
+    _A._ Untill Christ cometh to Judgement.
+
+    _Q._ When Christ cometh to judge the world, what then shall
+    become of them?
+
+    _A._ The dead bodies of all men shall rise againe.
+
+    _Q._ Whether shall they ever dye any more?
+
+    _A._ Good men shall never dye any more.
+
+    _Q._ Whether doe you believe that these very bodies of ours
+    shall rise againe?
+
+    _A._ This body which rots in the earth, this very body, God
+    maketh it new.
+
+    _Q._ Who is Jesus Christ?
+
+    _A._ Jesus Christ is the Son of God, yet borne man, and so
+    both God and man.
+
+    _Q._ Why was Christ Jesus a man?
+
+    _A._ That he might dye for us.
+
+    _Q._ Why is Christ Jesus God?
+
+    _A._ That his death might be of great value.
+
+    _Q._ Why doe you say, Christ Jesus was a man that he might dye,
+    doe onely men dye?
+
+    _A._ He dyed for our sins.
+
+    _Q._ What reason or justice is there, that Christ should dye
+    for our sins?
+
+    _A._ God made all the world, and man sinned, therefore it was
+    necessary Christ should dye to carry men up to Heaven. God hath
+    given unto us his Son Jesus Christ, because of our sins.
+
+The Question being put to another for further Answer, his Answer was,
+_That God so loved the world, that he gave his onely begotten Son, that
+whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life_.
+
+    _Q._ When you heare that _Adam_ by his sin deserved eternall
+    death, and when you hear of the grace of God sending Jesus to
+    save you, which of these break your heart most?
+
+    _A._ Pardon of sin goeth deepest.
+
+With regard to the formation of the church, one writer says;
+
+    “This great and solemne work of calling up these poor Indians
+    unto that Gospel light and beauty of visible Church-estate,
+    having now passed through a second Tryall: In the former
+    whereof, they expressed what experience they had found of
+    Gods grace in their hearts, turning them from dead works, to
+    seek after the living God, and salvation in our Saviour Jesus
+    Christ. In this second they have in some measure declared how
+    far the Lord hath let in the light of the good knowledge of God
+    into their soules, and what tast they have of the Principles
+    of Religion, and doctrine of salvation. Now the Question
+    remaineth, _What shall we further doe? And when shall they
+    enjoy the Ordinances of Jesus Christ in Church-estate?_
+
+    “The work is very solemne, and the Question needeth a solemne
+    Answer. It is a great matter to betrust those with the holy
+    priviledges of Gods house, upon which the name of Christ is so
+    much called, who have so little knowledge and experience in
+    the wayes of Christ, so newly come out of that great depth of
+    darknesse, and wild course of life; in such danger of polluting
+    and defiling the name of Christ among their barbarous Friends
+    and Countrey-men; and under so many doubts and jealousies of
+    many people; and having not yet stood in the wayes of Christ
+    so long, as to give sufficient proof and experience of their
+    stedfastnesse in their new begun profession. Being also the
+    first Church gathered among them, it is like to be a pattern
+    and president of after proceedings, even unto following
+    Generations. Hence it is very needfull that this proceeding
+    of ours at first, be with all care and wearinesse guided, for
+    the most effectuall advancement of the holinesse and honour of
+    Jesus Christ among them.
+
+    “Upon such like grounds as these, though I and some others
+    know more of the sincerity of some of them, than others doe,
+    and are better satisfied with them: Yet because I may be in
+    a temptation on that hand, I am well content to make slow
+    hast in this matter, remembring that word of God, _Lay hands
+    suddenly on no man_. Gods works among men doe usually goe
+    on slowly, and he that goeth slowly, doth usually goe most
+    surely, especially when he goeth by counsell. _Sat cito si
+    sat bene_,[32] the greater proof we have of them, the better
+    approbation they may obtain at last. Besides, we having had
+    one publick meeting about them already this summer, it will be
+    difficult to compasse another, for we have many other great
+    occasions, which may hinder the same, and it is an hard matter
+    to get Interpreters together to attend such a work, they living
+    so remote. The dayes also will soon grow short, and the nights
+    cold, which will be an hindrance in the attendance unto the
+    accomplishment of that work, which will most fitly be done at
+    _Natick_.
+
+    “But above all other Reasons this is greatest, that they
+    living in sundry Towns and places remote from each other, and
+    labourers few to take care of them, it is necessary that some
+    of themselves should be trained up, and peculiarly instructed,
+    unto whom the care of ruling and ordering of them in the
+    affaires of Gods house may be committed, in the absence of such
+    as look after their instruction. So that this is now the thing
+    we desire to attend, for the comfort of our little _Sister that
+    hath no breasts_, that such may be trained up, and prepared,
+    unto whom the charge of the rest may be committed in the Lord.
+    And upon this ground we make the slower hast to accomplish
+    this work among them. Mean while I hope the Commissioners
+    will afford some encouragement for the furtherance of the
+    instruction of some of the most godly and able among them, who
+    may be in a speciall manner helpfull unto the rest, in due
+    order and season.
+
+    “And thus have I briefly set down our present state in respect
+    of our Ecclesiasticall proceedings. I beg the prayers of the
+    good people of the Lord, to be particularly present at the
+    Throne of Grace, in these matters, according as you have hereby
+    a particular Information how our condition is. And for me also,
+    who am the most unfit in humane reason for such a work as
+    this, but my soule desireth to depend and live upon the Lord
+    Jesus, and fetch all help, grace, mercy, assistance, and supply
+    from him. And herein I doe improve his faithfull Covenant and
+    Promises, and in particular, the Lord doth cause my soule to
+    live upon that word of his, _Psal._ 37:3, 4, 5, 6, 7, wherein
+    I have food, rayment, and all necessaries for my selfe and
+    children (whom I have dedicated unto the Lord, to serve him in
+    this work of his, if he will please to accept of them) and this
+    supply I live upon in these rich words of gracious Promise,
+    _verse_ 3. _Trust in the Lord, and doe good, dwell in the Land,
+    and verily thou shalt be fed._
+
+    “Herein also I find supply of grace to believe the conversion
+    of these poor Indians, & that not only in this present season,
+    in what I doe already see, but in the future also, further then
+    by mine eye or reason I can see. Which supply of grace, I live
+    upon in those words of his gracious Promise, which I apply
+    and improve in this particular respect, _verse_ 4. _Delight
+    thyselfe also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires
+    of thy heart_.
+
+    “Herein also I find supply of grace to believe, that they shall
+    be in Gods season, which is the fittest, brought into Church
+    Estate; faith fetching this particular blessing out of the
+    rich Fountaine of those gracious words of Promise, _Commit thy
+    way unto the Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to
+    passe_.
+
+    “Herein also my soule is strengthened and quieted, to stay
+    upon the Lord, and to be supported against all suspitious
+    jealousies, hard speeches, and unkindnesses of men, touching
+    the sincerity and reality of this work, and about my carriage
+    of matters, and supply herein. Which grace my soule receiveth
+    by a particular improvement of that rich treasury of the
+    Promise in these words, _verse_ 6. _And he shall bring forth
+    thy righteousnesse as the light, and thy judgement as the noon
+    day._ And herein likewise I find supply of grace, to wait
+    patiently for the Lords time, when year after year, and time
+    after time, I meet with disappointments. Which grace I receive
+    from the commanding force of that gracious Promise, _verse_ 7.
+    _Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him, fret not thy
+    selfe_, either for one cause, or another. Thus I live, and thus
+    I labor, here I have supply, and here is my hope, I beg the
+    help of prayers, that I may still so live and labour in the
+    Lords work, and that I may so live and dye.”
+
+In 1670, the number of men and women in full communion at Natick, was
+between forty and fifty, and more than three hundred and fifty had
+renounced their savage practices and open sins, and gave heed to the
+instructions of the Gospel.
+
+Their meetings were notified by the drum. In their assemblies they were
+attentive and reverent. A native teacher commenced worship with prayer,
+and the English Christians assisted in the business of instruction.
+There, as at other times, and in other places among civilized people God
+poured out his Spirit upon the young. Several cases of hopeful piety in
+young children are mentioned. The most interesting of them have already
+been given.
+
+Mr. Eliot having made a grammar of the Indian tongue, and a catechism,
+was proceeding with his Indian Bible. In 1649, he said it was his earnest
+wish to translate some parts of the Scriptures for the Indians. He
+probably labored at this work, at intervals, for twelve years, and he was
+at least forty-five years of age when he began it.
+
+It should be remembered that this work, unlike the same employment of our
+foreign missionaries at their first arrival at new stations, was wholly
+in addition to his labors as Pastor of another people,—the congregation
+at Roxbury. It was of no direct use to him in his ministerial work, any
+farther than investigation and study is always profitable to the mind.
+It was a labor superadded to the cares and toil of his pastoral and
+ministerial office.
+
+A man who has a taste for languages is generally repaid for the labor
+of acquiring them, by the stores of learning which they contain. Cato
+learned Greek at the age of eighty, and the literary world mention
+it to his praise. But here is a man learning a language which has no
+literature. No tragic or heroic muse had left her inspired strains in
+it. No beautiful old ballads or legendary songs repaid his labor,—no
+Canterbury Tales, or Children in the Wood, or Chevy Chase, or Fairy
+Queen, hymns of devotion, nor martial songs; the language could only
+whoop and powaw; the great word, gathering subjunctives and adjuncts into
+itself, like a crowded wigwam, was savagely ignorant of the graces, or
+the concise, vigorous expressions of some barbarous tongues, and Eliot’s
+researches into it were like digging, as the Plymouth settlers did, into
+the mounds for corn, and finding nothing but skulls. But nothing could
+repress the ardor of his benevolent mind. He was determined that the
+Indians should have the word of God in their own tongue, and the work
+drew near to its accomplishment.
+
+But how could it ever be printed? His slender salary could not pay for
+it; the planters could not subscribe an adequate sum. In a letter to
+England in 1651, he says, with much sorrow, “I have no hope to see the
+Bible printed in my days.”
+
+The Society for Propagating the Gospel came to his help.[33] In
+September, 1661, the New Testament in the Indian tongue was published at
+Cambridge. Three years after this, the Old Testament was added, and the
+whole Bible, with a Catechism and the Psalms of David in metre, was thus
+given to the Aborigines of this desert, in their own tongue, in forty
+years after the settlement of the country.
+
+This was the first Bible printed on this Continent. It was printed at
+Cambridge, by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson. A copy handsomely
+bound, was sent to King Charles II., and the Rev. Richard Baxter says of
+it, “Such a work and fruit of a plantation was never before presented
+unto a king.” Two hundred copies, in plain and strong leather, were
+immediately put in circulation for the use of the Indians. An angel would
+almost have exchanged his heavenly joy for the happiness of Eliot, when
+he visited Natick, and saw the Bible in the hands of the natives. Like
+old Jacob, strengthening himself upon his dying bed, he might then have
+said, “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord;” or, like Simeon, “Now,
+Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen
+thy salvation.”
+
+Douglass, in his History of America,[34] says, “Mr. Eliot with immense
+labor translated and printed our Bible into Indian. It was done with a
+good pious design, but it must be reckoned among the _otiosorum hominum
+negotia_, (works of men of leisure). It was done in the Natick (Nipmuck)
+language. Of the Naticks, at present, there are not twenty families
+subsisting, and scarce any of these can read. _Cui bono?_” (To what
+profit?)
+
+Those who know how far Mr. Eliot was from being a man of leisure, will
+smile at the suggestion that the translation of the Bible into the Indian
+tongue was the work of an idle amateur. The disappearance of the race for
+whom this translation was designed, so unexpected, and indeed so contrary
+to the fond hopes of our forefathers, is very far from showing the
+futility of Mr. Eliot’s pious labor. Many of the Indians were made wise
+unto eternal life by the translated Bible. The good which it accomplished
+was more than an equivalent for the labor which it cost.
+
+Cotton Mather says, “Behold, ye Americans, the greatest honour that ever
+you were partakers of. This Bible was printed here at our Cambridge,
+and it is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America, from the
+very foundation of the world. The whole translation he writ with but one
+pen; which pen, had it not been lost, would have certainly deserved a
+richer case than was bestowed upon that pen with which Holland writ his
+translation of Plutarch.”[35]
+
+The New Testament was published first, and then the whole Bible, Primers,
+Grammars, Psalters, Catechisms, The Practice of Piety, Baxter’s Call,
+Shepard’s sincere Convert and Sound Believer, soon appeared in the Indian
+tongue, from the pen of Mr. Eliot.
+
+By this time there were fourteen places of praying Indians under the
+care of Mr. Eliot, and about eleven hundred souls who were apparently
+converted. Natick, Stoughton, Grafton, Tewksbury, Hopkinton, Oxford,
+Dudley, Woodstock (three villages), Uxbridge and Marlboro’, all had
+communities of praying Indians.
+
+Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the United States,[36] says, “No pains
+were spared to teach them to read and write, and in a short time a larger
+proportion of the Massachusetts Indians could do so, than recently of
+the inhabitants of Russia.” The Indians of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard,
+and Nantucket, amounting to about twenty-nine hundred, also were, by the
+labors of the Mayhews and others, partly evangelized. Mr. Eliot says, in
+1673, that there were six churches gathered among the Indians, one at
+Natick, one at Grafton, one at Marshpee, two at Martha’s Vineyard, and
+one at Nantucket. All these had religious teachers devoted exclusively to
+them, except the church at Natick, of which Mr. Eliot says, “In modesty
+they stand off, because they say that so long as I live, there is no
+need.” They could not be prevailed upon to have another teacher even with
+the advantages of his entire devotion to them, while Mr. Eliot was alive.
+
+Cotton Mather says,[37] “The number of preachers to the Indians
+increases apace. At Martha’s Vineyard, the old Mr. Mayhew and several
+of his sons, or grand-sons, have done very worthily for the souls of
+the Indians; there were fifteen years ago by computation about fifteen
+hundred souls of their ministry, upon that one island. In Connecticut,
+the holy and acute Mr. Fitch has made noble essays towards the conversion
+of the Indians; but I think the sinner he has to deal withal, being
+an obstinate infidel, gives unhappy rumor as to the successes of his
+ministry. And godly Mr. Pierson has, if I mistake not, deserved well
+in that colony upon the same account. In Massachusetts we see at this
+day the pious Mr. Gookin, the gracious Mr. Peter Thacher, the well
+accomplished and industrious Mr. Grindal Rawson, all of them hard at
+work, to turn these poor creatures from darkness to light, and from Satan
+unto God. In Plymouth we have the most active Mr. Samuel Treat laying out
+himself to save this generation, and there is one Mr. Tupper, who uses
+his laudable endeavours for the instruction of them.
+
+“’Tis my relation to him[38] that causes me to defer unto the last place
+the mention of Mr. John Cotton, who hath addressed the Indians in their
+own language with some dexterity. He hired an Indian after the rate of
+twelve pence per day, for fifty days, to teach him the Indian tongue; but
+his knavish tutor having received his whole pay too soon, ran away before
+twenty days were out; however, in this time he had profited so far that
+he could quickly preach unto the natives.”
+
+Two Indians from Martha’s Vineyard were entered at Harvard College.
+Their names were Joel and Caleb. Joel was lost on his voyage from Boston
+to Nantucket just before taking his degree. Caleb was graduated, but soon
+died of consumption at Charlestown. His name now stands on the College
+Catalogue in this form: “1665, Caleb Cheesehahteaumuck, Indus.” He
+composed a Latin and Greek Elegy on the death of an eminent minister, and
+subscribed them, “Cheesehahteaumuck, Senior Sophista.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+    Disturbance of Missionary efforts. Philip’s war. Removal of
+    the Indians to Deer Isle. Return. Conclusion of the History
+    of Missionary efforts among the Indians of this neighborhood.
+    Reflections.
+
+
+Civilization and the influence of the Gospel, however, had their limits.
+The Narraganset Indians, situated between the Connecticut and Plymouth
+Colonies, refused the Gospel, and the benevolent intentions of the
+English. King Philip, the famous warrior of Mount Hope, (now Bristol)
+whose name was terrible to our forefathers, scorned the doctrines of the
+cross. Mr. Eliot once had an interview with him, explained the way of
+salvation, and exhorted him to repent. The Indian chieftain rose, took
+hold of Mr. Eliot’s button, and told him, that he cared no more for his
+Gospel than he did for that button.
+
+The Indians under Philip were growing jealous of English encroachments
+upon their hunting fields. Petty depredations were made by the Indians
+upon the English settlements, then followed a summons to court, which, in
+process of time, became exceedingly annoying to proud, untamed savages.
+They had bartered their lands for English implements and toys; the tools
+and the toys were gone, and the savage could not be satisfied to abide
+by a paper, call it treaty, bond, or contract, on which he had scratched
+his mark. He sighed for his old domains; the waves of civilization were
+coming round him like a flood; his people were artfully crowded by the
+English into narrow inlets between the settlements, that they might be
+watched on all sides.
+
+King Philip was summoned to Court in 1674, for some offence committed by
+his tribe. The informer was murdered by the angry savages. The murderers
+were hanged by the English. The massacre of eight or nine of the English
+at Swansey was the consequence. Philip wept when he heard that the blood
+of a white man had been shed. The Colonists began to arm, and a universal
+panic prevailed. The superstition of those days added much to the general
+terror. Signs in the heavens were reported to have been seen, a scalp on
+the disc of the moon in an eclipse; an Indian bow was imprinted on the
+sky. Troops of horses were heard rushing through the air. The horrors of
+an Indian war made their faces pale and their hearts faint. The scenes at
+Bloody Brook, the burning of Lancaster, Medfield, Brookfield, Weymouth,
+Groton, Marlborough, the ambushments rising on the congregation as they
+returned from public worship, the massacre of wives and children at
+home, and the scalping of husbands and brothers in the field, roused the
+colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut to an exterminating
+war.
+
+It is easy to see that the communities of praying Indians could not
+escape the influence of the general excitement against the Indians. Some
+of them were accused, justly or unjustly, of favoring the designs of the
+enemy. The Colonists were all the time afraid that the instinctive love
+of war and carnage in the Indian bosom would break through the restraints
+of religion, and that all which had been done for the Indians would be
+only a qualification of them as more successful traitors and expert
+butchers.
+
+On the other hand, King Philip was jealous of the praying Indians. He
+used every means of persuasion and fear to enlist them on his side. Their
+situation was trying in the extreme. In the excited state of mind which
+an Indian war created among the English, a war on the part of the savages
+of stratagem, and treachery, it was natural that the Christian Indians
+should be trusted and feared. Some of them enlisted with the English and
+did good service, and some deserted to Philip.
+
+In 1675, a number of the Christian Indians were brought to Boston on
+a charge of being concerned in a murder at Lancaster. Mr. Eliot and
+his friends interposed to save them, and succeeded in showing that the
+accusation was false and malicious. In so doing, they incurred the
+popular resentment, and were suspected and accused of bad motives and
+treasonable conduct.
+
+The feelings of the people were now so unreasonable that the worst
+consequences to the praying Indians were apprehended. In this state of
+things the General Court, as a means of protection to themselves and to
+the Indians, passed an order that the Natick Indians should be removed to
+Deer Island, in Boston harbor, between four and five miles from shore.
+They came to the place called the Pines, near Cambridge, on Charles
+River, and were thence conveyed by water to Deer Island. Mr. Eliot met
+them at the Pines, and endeavored to soothe and cheer them. He was then
+seventy years old. One might question whether he or the Indians suffered
+most in their removal.
+
+A party of Indians had fired a barn at Chelmsford. The English imputed
+it to the praying Indians at Tewksbury. A party of the English went to
+their wigwams, called them out and shot one lad, and wounded several
+women and children. The murderers were tried, but the jury were overawed
+by the public sentiment and cleared them. The Tewksbury Indians fled into
+the wilderness; messengers were sent to them inviting them to return, but
+they gave this answer: We are not sorry for what we leave behind, but
+we are sorry that the English have driven us from praying to God, and
+from our leader. We did begin to understand a little of praying to God.
+When the winter season came, their sufferings forced them back to their
+wigwams, and the English endeavored in various ways to atone for the
+injuries they had suffered.
+
+The Stoughton Indians, for some suspicion, were also removed to Deer
+Island, and the whole number there amounted to five hundred. Mr. Eliot
+and his friends visited them, and found them patient and meek, exhibiting
+the true influence of the Gospel in a satisfactory degree. But they were
+exposed to want and suffering of various kinds. The ill-treatment of
+other communities of Indians followed in rapid succession, and it was in
+vain that they sought in moments of contention, to repair the injuries
+which they had inflicted. One party of Indians, for example, had been
+taken by a Narraganset Sachem, and had escaped, and were wandering in
+the woods, when an English scouting party met them, taking from them,
+among other things, a pewter cup which Mr. Eliot had given them for their
+communion service, and which they had kept and carried with them with the
+reverence of a Jew for his sacred vessels of gold and silver. This party
+were also carried to Deer Island.
+
+Philip, the terror of the English Colonies on this continent, was
+finally destroyed. The war subsiding, the Deer Island Indians, with the
+permission of the General Court, and by the funds of the society in
+England for propagating the Gospel, were removed to Cambridge, and were
+permitted to choose their places of settlement. Some of them went to
+the various falls of Charles River, some to Brush Hill in Milton, some
+settled at Nonantum, and many of them went to Natick.
+
+But the efforts to Christianize the Indians were never resumed with
+the interest and zeal which were formerly felt. On the part of the
+English, there was conscience of wrong, and on the part of the Indians a
+remembrance of injustice, and thus a breach was made between them which
+was never healed. Some of the Indians had been made slaves. King Philip’s
+wife and son had been sold in the West Indies.[39] Mr. Eliot followed
+with his prayers and efforts those of his Christian Indians who had been
+sold into bondage. He wrote to the celebrated and honorable Robert Boyle
+to use his efforts in redeeming some who had been left at Tangier.
+
+By various means the praying towns had been reduced in 1684, to four.
+The tribes have dwindled and finally disappeared, till a few years since
+one poor hut in Natick, inhabited by a family of Indian and Negro blood,
+and the gravestone of Daniel Takawambait in the stone wall, were the most
+prominent of the memorials which they have left behind them. Fragments of
+their language are imperishably associated with many places and scenes
+throughout the land. The rural retreat, the new town, the gallant ship,
+are emulous of their names; while the tavern sign, the bank note, the
+omnibus, and the tobacconist, grace themselves with their faces and
+implements. The New England poet, historian, and orator, draw thrilling
+incidents from Mount Hope and Bloody Brook, and the Christian and the
+philanthropist will enshrine the names of Nonantum and Natick. Westward
+and still westward, the New England tribes have receded. Civilization has
+had more repulsion and injury for the savage than Christianity has been
+able to overcome. There is a law of progress in the affairs of nations
+expressed in the prophetic language of the patriarch Noah; “God shall
+enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” The savage
+retreats before the civilized man, and while we mourn over the ruin of
+individual tribes, we cannot but stand in awe of that resistless measure
+of God’s providence by which he is forcing the Caucasian race to fill the
+earth, and suffering uncivilized nations to melt away like the snow in
+spring.
+
+But that same vigorous faith which brought the Pilgrims here as
+missionaries to the Indians, has followed the red man in his wanderings
+over this vast continent. The names of David Brainard, Samuel Kirkland,
+and Gideon Blackburn, are identified with the history of Indian missions.
+The American Board has pursued the work of evangelizing them with much
+success. The history of the Cherokees, the mountaineers of America, is
+of itself a tale of romantic and thrilling interest. The sketches of the
+present North American Indians by Mr. Catlin, in his valuable work, show
+that a large field for missionary effort on this continent is yet spread
+before the American churches.
+
+When the workmen were digging for the foundation of some new houses at
+the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets, in Boston, several years ago,
+they found the skeleton of an Indian. He had been buried on his side,
+reclining on his arm, and was found in that posture. Christian faith
+and hope, mingled with a little fancy, would fain lead us to hail this
+incident as a sign that the Indian race are not yet recumbent in hopeless
+degradation; that though seemingly buried in the great wilderness, they
+are buried in the posture of rising. Many interesting recollections, and
+our natural feelings towards an oppressed people, make us wish that this
+was more than fancy, and, as the Indian on the seal of the Massachusetts
+colony had a passage of Scripture proceeding from his mouth, Come over
+and help us, would we gladly put another passage into the mouth of that
+resurrection Indian above mentioned, making him say, with prophetic
+ecstasy, as he looks towards Nonantum and surveys the scenes of his
+ancient, and apparently lost race, “Thy dead men shall live, together
+with my dead body shall they arise; awake and sing, ye that dwell in
+dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out
+her dead.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    Mr. Eliot’s avowal of republicanism, and his retraction of it.
+    His connection with the controversy about Mrs. Hutchinson.
+    Richard Baxter’s Testimony about Mr. Eliot. Roman Catholics
+    instructing the Indians. Mrs. Eliot. Close of Mr. Eliot’s life.
+    Conclusion.
+
+
+Two events in the life of Mr. Eliot must necessarily be noticed in
+giving a complete account of him. One is the publication and subsequent
+retraction of a book called the Christian Commonwealth, and the other is
+his connection with the controversy raised by that notorious woman, Mrs.
+Anne Hutchinson.
+
+Mr. Eliot wrote a book about the year 1650, called the Christian
+Commonwealth. It was carried to England in manuscript and printed. In
+1660, the Governor and Council of Massachusetts condemned this book
+as being “full of seditious principles and notions in relation to all
+established governments in the Christian world, especially against the
+government established in their native country.”
+
+Mr. Eliot wrote an acknowledgment of error as the author of the book,
+and presented his recantation to the General Court. He speaks in it of
+Cromwell and his friends as “the late innovators” in the government of
+Great Britain, and of the monarchy as restored under Charles II., “as not
+only a lawful but eminent form of government.” The book was suppressed,
+and Mr. Eliot’s recantation was published through the colony.
+
+This incident has been considered as reflecting on Mr. Eliot’s
+character for discretion, or for decision. The book does not survive in
+this country to speak for itself. The facts in the case seem to be that
+during the success of Cromwell, Mr. Eliot composed his book in accordance
+with what seemed to be the tendency in England towards a settled
+republican form of government. But upon the restoration of Charles II.,
+the provincial government of Massachusetts felt in duty bound to show
+their allegiance to the crown by protesting against the sentiments
+of a book which favored republicanism. How often it is the case that
+success is regarded as settling the question of right. Had Cromwell’s
+plan succeeded, the Massachusetts government would not have felt obliged
+to condemn Mr. Eliot’s book. We may perhaps reflect upon him for not
+maintaining and defending the principles of his book; but to have done
+so would have been treason, seeing that monarchy had again become the
+established form of government in the mother country. Mr. Eliot, perhaps,
+felt that it was right for him to find reasons for that permanent change
+in the government of Great Britain which in the providence of God seemed
+to be at hand. When the event proved otherwise than he expected, loyally
+being then so much a part of religion, and “the powers” in the government
+of the mother country being, according to the received opinions of
+Christians, and like all other powers “that be,” “ordained of God,” it
+was a question with Mr. Eliot between decision and boldness, amounting to
+a treasonable spirit, and submission to constituted authority. The ill
+success of Cromwell no doubt made Eliot think that he had misinterpreted
+the purposes of God. Men are apt to feel and reason in this manner.
+If a colony, or province, or a number of men make insurrection, and
+succeed in overthrowing the government, men call it a revolution, and
+the independence of the new state or nation is acknowledged. If they do
+not succeed, the attempt is called a plot, conspiracy, insurrection,
+and the actors who in the event of success would have been “the fathers
+of their country,” “the founders of a nation,” are gibbeted by their
+generation, and regarded as traitors by the next, and by the world.
+While a revolution is pending, a man may say many things as an observer
+and theorizer, which, when events contradict them, he will do his best
+to retract, or cover up. It cannot be wondered at, that, amid the
+enthusiasm which attended the Restoration, and the implicit submission
+of the Colonial government to the restored king, and influenced by the
+loyal spirit of his times, Mr. Eliot should have deemed it a Christian
+duty to confess and retract that which the providence of God seemed
+to indicate was an error. He was not prepared to lift up a standard
+against the government of Great Britain; the appeal which Cromwell and
+his friends had made to the God of nations and of battles, had not been
+answered in his favor, and Mr. Eliot was meek enough to yield submission
+to that which, in the circumstances, seemed to be a Christian obligation.
+What should he have done? Had he still believed that Cromwell was the
+anointed of the Lord, and that Charles was the usurper, he should have
+suffered any punishment rather than falsify his sentiments. It may be
+charitably supposed, however, that the events of the Restoration changed
+his opinion, and made him satisfied to be still a royalist. We have no
+evidence in any part of his life, that Mr. Eliot was a time-server, or
+coward; on the contrary, he was remarkable for decision of character and
+independence.
+
+In confirmation of what has now been said respecting Mr. Eliot’s
+decision and firmness, we may allude to the part he took in opposing the
+sentiments and influence of that notorious disturber of the churches in
+his day, Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. She was of the sect of Antinomians, who
+abused the doctrines of free grace, maintaining that the law is of no use
+or obligation under the dispensation of the Gospel, while the doctrines
+they taught superseded the necessity of good works. Mrs. Hutchinson
+pretended to immediate impressions from heaven as the rule of conduct,
+saying that she knew God “spake to her, just as Abraham knew that it was
+the command of Heaven to sacrifice Isaac.” The Governor, Vane, who was an
+enthusiast, countenanced this woman, and Rev. Mr. Cotton, who took Mr.
+Eliot’s place in the church at Boston, when Mr. Eliot removed to Roxbury,
+was also infected by her influence so far as to oppose his colleague,
+the Rev. Mr. Wilson, and the other ministers, who were generally opposed
+to her. Had Mr. Eliot remained the teacher of the church in Boston, it
+would have prevented that church from being divided as it was with regard
+to Mrs. Hutchinson, through the influence of his successor, Mr. Cotton.
+Mr. Eliot, with several other ministers, visited her, conversed with
+her upon religious subjects to ascertain her sentiments and spirit, and
+remonstrated with her for her bold denunciation of all the Plantation
+except Messrs. Cotton and Wheelright. Mr. Eliot appeared as a witness
+against her on her trial before the magistrates, and with Hugh Peters
+and Mr. Weld, testified that she said to them that “Mr. Cotton preached
+a covenant of grace, and the other ministers a covenant of works.” Mr.
+Eliot added, “I do remember this also, that she said we were not able
+and faithful ministers of the new covenant, because we were not like the
+apostles before the ascension.” Mr. Eliot took occasion on this trial to
+bear testimony against yielding to _impressions_ as a rule of faith and
+duty. A passage from Mr. Hooker’s sermons was quoted in justification
+of Mrs. Hutchinson’s statements. But Mr. Eliot who had been brought up
+at the feet of Mr. Hooker, and knew his opinions well, insisted that
+the construction given to the passage was contrary to Mr. Hooker’s mind
+and judgment. His old friend, Gov. Winthrop, gently dissented from Mr.
+Eliot’s strong testimony against impressions. Mr. Eliot said, “I say
+there is an expectation of things promised; but to have a particular
+revelation of things, as they shall fall out, there is no such thing in
+the Scripture.” Gov. Winthrop replied, “We must not limit the word of
+God.”[40] Mrs. Hutchinson was condemned and banished. Her end softened
+the feelings of those who condemned her, and made them reflect upon
+the inexpediency of proceeding so strenuously as they did against her.
+Such feelings always arise in the minds of good men who have withstood
+prevailing errors, not to make them regret the testimony they bore for
+the truth, but to mourn over hasty and excessive zeal, when patience, and
+perhaps a measure of neglect, might sooner have ended a controversy, or
+have prevented it altogether. But it is easier for those who are removed,
+by time or place, from the excitements of a controversy, to moralize
+upon the best way of conducting it, than it would have been for them
+to exercise the judicious temper which they recommend and praise, had
+they themselves partaken in the strife. Mr. Eliot showed himself in this
+controversy to be no fanatical enthusiast, and gave evidence that he was
+a man of decision and courage.
+
+The following characteristic letter was written by the famous Rev.
+Richard Baxter to Dr. Increase Mather then in London. It was occasioned
+by the receipt of Cotton Mather’s Life of Eliot.
+
+    “DEAR BROTHER:
+
+    I thought I had been near dying at 12 o’clock, in bed; but your
+    book revived me. I lay reading it until between one and two. I
+    knew much of Mr. Eliot’s opinions, by many letters which I had
+    from him. There was no man on earth whom I honoured above him.
+    It is his evangelical work that is the apostolical succession
+    that I plead for. I am now dying, I hope, as he did. It pleased
+    me to read from him my case, [_my understanding faileth, my
+    memory faileth, my tongue faileth_,] (and my hand and pen,)
+    _but my charity faileth not_. That word much comforted me. I
+    am as zealous a lover of the New England Churches as any man,
+    according to Mr. Noyes’, Mr. Norton’s, Mr. Mitchel’s, and the
+    Synod’s model.
+
+    I loved your father upon the letters I received from him.
+    I love you better for your learning, labors, and peaceable
+    moderation. I love your son better than either of you, for the
+    excellent temper that appeareth in his writings.[41] O that
+    godliness and wisdom (may) thus increase in all families! He
+    hath honoured himself half as much as Mr. Eliot. I say but
+    half as much; for deeds excel words. God preserve you and New
+    England! Pray for
+
+                   Your fainting, languishing Friend,
+
+                                                        RI. BAXTER.”
+
+    _August 3, 1691._
+
+In contrast with the instructions which Mr. Eliot and other Protestant
+missionaries to the Indians gave the children of the wilderness, Cotton
+Mather alludes to the instructions given to the Indians in some parts of
+the country by the Popish missionaries. He says,
+
+    “By an odd accident there are lately fallen into my hands
+    the manuscripts of a Jesuit, whom the French employed as a
+    missionary among the western Indians, in which papers there
+    are both a catechism, containing the principles which those
+    heathens are to be instructed in, and cases of conscience
+    referring to their conversations. The catechism, which is in
+    the Iroquois language—with a translation annexed, has one
+    chapter about heaven, and another about hell, wherein are such
+    thick skulled passages as these.”
+
+    _Q._ How is the soil made in heaven?
+
+    _A._ ’Tis a very fair soil, they want neither for meats nor
+    clothes; ’tis but wishing, and we have them.
+
+    _Q._ Are they employed in heaven?
+
+    _A._ No, they do nothing; the fields yield corn, beans,
+    pumpkins, and the like without any tillage.
+
+    _Q._ What sort of trees are there?
+
+    _A._ Always green, full, flourishing.
+
+    _Q._ Have they in heaven the same sun, the same wind, the same
+    thunder that we have here?
+
+    _A._ No, the sun ever shines; it is always fair weather.
+
+    _Q._ But how are their fruits?
+
+    _A._ In this one quality they exceed ours, that they are never
+    wasted; you have no sooner plucked one, but you see another
+    presently hanging in its room.
+
+    Concerning hell, it thus discourses.
+
+    _Q._ What sort of a soil is that of hell?
+
+    _A._ A very wretched soil; ’tis a fiery pit in the centre of
+    the earth.
+
+    _Q._ Have they any light in hell?
+
+    _A._ No. ’Tis always dark; there is always smoke there; their
+    eyes are always in pain with it; they can see nothing but the
+    devils.
+
+    _Q._ What shaped things are the devils?
+
+    _A._ Very ill shaped things; they go about with vizards on, and
+    they terrify men.
+
+    _Q._ What do they eat in hell?
+
+    _A._ They are always hungry, but the damned feed on hot ashes
+    and serpents there.
+
+    _Q._ What water do they drink?
+
+    _A._ Horrid water, nothing but melted lead.
+
+    _Q._ Don’t they die in hell?
+
+    _A._ No; yet they eat one another every day; but anon, God
+    restores and renews the man that was eaten, as a cropt plant in
+    a little time repullulates.
+
+    One case of conscience is thus resolved by the Jesuit:
+
+    _Q._ Whether an Indian stealing a hatchet from a Dutchman be
+    bound to make restitution?
+
+    _A._ If the Dutchman be one that has used any trade with other
+    Indians, the thief is not bound unto any restitution; for it is
+    certain he gains more by such a trade than the value of many
+    hatchets in a year.
+
+    In the History of the Early Jesuit Missions to the Indians
+    of this country,[42] as well as in all other Jesuit missions,
+    there is a degree of zeal and devotedness which is truly
+    wonderful. This is not the place to discuss the motives of
+    these men, nor the principle in human nature which leads to
+    their self-sacrifice in the missionary work. The fruits of
+    their work, however, show that they do not promulgate the
+    Gospel of Christ in its simplicity, did we not know this by
+    more direct evidence.
+
+The wife of Mr. Eliot died three years before him, at the age of 84.
+She had come to him across the ocean, a betrothed bride, when he had
+found a home for her in this new world. During her residence here, “she
+had attained unto a considerable skill in physick and chirurgery which
+enabled her to dispense many safe, good, and useful medicines unto the
+poor that had occasion for them; and some hundreds of sick and weak and
+maimed people owed praises to God for the benefit which therein they
+freely received of her.”[43]
+
+She managed all the private affairs of her husband for him that he
+might devote his whole time and strength to his arduous public labors.
+She brought up his six children of whom he beautifully said, “they are
+all in Christ, or with Christ,” and then she smoothed his passage to the
+tomb by going before him, and making him more willing to depart. “That
+one wife,” says Mather, “which was given to him truly from the Lord, he
+loved, prized, cherished, with a kindness that notably represented the
+compassion which he thereby taught his church to expect from the Lord
+Jesus Christ; and after he had lived with her for more than half an
+hundred years he followed her to the grave with lamentations beyond those
+which the Jews, from the figure of a letter in the text,[44] affirm, that
+Abraham deplored his Sarah with; her departure made a deeper impression
+on him than what any common affliction could. His whole conversation with
+her had that sweetness and that gravity and modesty beautifying of it,
+that every one called them Zachery and Elizabeth.”[45]
+
+The old gray haired apostle stood over her coffin, and said to the
+concourse of people who had come to the funeral, “Here lies my dear,
+faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife. I shall go to her, but she
+shall not return to me.”
+
+Lord Bacon[46] speaking of “marriage and single life,” tells us what
+wives are to young men, and that “for middle age” they are “companions,”
+and “old men’s nurses.” Men generally do not wait till old age before
+they experience the exquisite tenderness and assiduity of woman in
+their sickness. We all subscribe to the last couplet of the following
+quotation, but not to the first:
+
+    “O woman! in thine hours of ease
+    Deceitful, coy, and hard to please.
+    ...
+    When pain and sickness wring the brow,
+    A ministering angel thou.”
+
+There is a beautiful passage in one of Steele’s papers in the Spectator.
+It purports to be a letter to his wife. He says,
+
+“It is impossible for me to look back on many evils and pains which I
+have suffered since we came together, without a pleasure which is not
+to be expressed from the proofs I have had, in those circumstances, of
+your unmeasured goodness. How often has your tenderness removed pain
+from my sick head! how often anguish from my afflicted heart! With how
+skillful patience have I known you comply with the vain projects which
+pain has suggested, to have an aching limb removed, by journeying from
+one side of a room to another! how often, the next instant, traveled the
+same ground again, _without telling your patient it was to no purpose to
+change his situation_. If there are such beings as guardian angels, thus
+are they employed. I will no more believe one of them more good in its
+inclinations, than I can conceive it more charming in its form than my
+wife.”
+
+As Mr. Eliot became disabled by age for the ministerial work, he seemed
+to have the earnest solicitude about a successor which Moses had when,
+towards the close of his life, he “cried to the Lord” that he would “set
+a man over the congregation.” Mr. Eliot more than once assembled the
+people of the town to fast and pray with reference to a successor. The
+Rev. Nehemiah Walter was by the unanimous vote of the people associated
+with him in the pastoral office, after which it was with difficulty that
+he could be persuaded to conduct any public religious service, saying,
+“It would be a wrong to the souls of the people for him to do any thing
+among them when they were supplied so much to their advantage.” The last
+time that he preached is said to have been on the occasion of a public
+fast, when he expounded the lxxxiii. Psalm, being, (as the caption has
+it,) a complaint to God of the enemies’ conspiracies, and a prayer
+against them that oppress the church. He concluded his exposition with
+an apology, begging his hearers to pardon the poorness and meanness and
+brokenness of his meditations, adding, “my dear brother here will by and
+by mend all.”
+
+He once expressed the fear that his old friends and neighbors, Messrs.
+Cotton, of Boston, and Mather, of Dorchester, who had gone to heaven
+before him, would suspect him to have gone the wrong way, because he
+staid so long behind them.
+
+Towards the close of his life his mind dwelt much on the coming of the
+Son of Man, and whatever theme he began to converse upon, he soon fell
+into a strain of remarks upon this subject. On one occasion some one
+brought him intelligence of certain sad events whereby the Churches of
+New England were much afflicted. His reply was, “Behold some of the
+clouds in which we must look for the coming of the Son of Man.”
+
+Mr. Walter coming in to see him on his dying bed, Mr. Eliot said,
+“Brother, thou art welcome to my very soul. Pray retire to thy study for
+me, and give me leave to be gone,” meaning that he should pray for his
+speedy release.
+
+Being asked how he did, he said, “Alas, I have lost every thing; my
+understanding leaves me, my memory fails me, my utterance fails me; but
+I thank God my charity holds out still; I find that rather grows than
+fails.”
+
+Speaking of the work in which he had been engaged among the Indians, he
+said, “There is a cloud, a dark cloud, upon the work of the gospel, among
+the poor Indians. The Lord revive and prosper that work, and grant that
+it may live when I am dead. It is a work which I have been doing much and
+long about. But what was the word I spoke last? I recall that word, _my
+doings_! Alas! they have been poor and small, and lean doings; and I’ll
+be the man that shall throw the first stone at them all.”
+
+The Rev. Increase Mather had gone to England on business connected with
+the ecclesiastical affairs of New England. Mr. Eliot wrote the following
+letter to him, and it is the last writing of his of which we have any
+account.
+
+    “Reverend and beloved Mr. Increase Mather.
+
+    I cannot write. Read Neh. 2:10. When Sanballat the Horonite,
+    and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite heard of it, it grieved
+    them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare
+    of the children of Israel.
+
+    Let thy blessed soul feed full and fat upon this and other
+    Scriptures. All other things I leave to other men, and rest,
+
+                          Your loving Brother,
+
+                                                        JOHN ELIOT.”
+
+One of Mr. Eliot’s last expressions was this, Welcome joy! His last
+breath was spent in calling upon those who stood around his dying bed to
+“Pray, Pray, Pray.” He died in the beginning of the year 1690, in the
+eighty-sixth year of his age.
+
+Before his death, Mr. Eliot had the pleasure of seeing several faithful
+men raised up to labor among the Indians; among whom were Daniel Gookin,
+James Noyce, Rowland Cotton, Peter Thacher, Grindal Rawson, Goddefred
+Dettins, and M. Bondet. Mather says, “about the year 1700, through the
+blessing of God in this one Massachusetts province, the Indians have
+mostly embraced the Christian religion. There are I suppose, more than
+thirty congregations of Indians, and many more than three thousand
+Indians, in this one province, calling on God in Christ, and hearing of
+his glorious Word.”
+
+In writing these pages, I have before me a copy of Eliot’s Indian Bible,
+to which are annexed his Psalms and Hymns, in the Indian tongue, and a
+short Catechism. Here is the monument of John Eliot; and what monument of
+earthly greatness is to be compared with it! The kings of the earth sleep
+in the great cathedral; the beautiful, ivy grown, ruined abbey crowns
+the sepulchre of the novelist and poet; the marble statue immortalizes
+the name and deeds of the conqueror by land or sea. They are but the
+grass that withereth, and the flower which fadeth, “but the word of the
+Lord endureth forever.” “Endureth”? There is not one Indian on this
+continent, or on the face of the earth, that can read this book. It can
+never guide another soul to God. As you look upon its title page, written
+in an unknown tongue, you see these words, Up-Biblum God, the Book of
+God. How significant, we may say, the appearance of those words when we
+consider the condition of the book bereaved of the race who once read it.
+“Up-Biblum God.” Like the man-child of the woman clothed with the sun who
+fled into the wilderness, and whose child was caught up unto God, and
+to his throne, this book, having done its office here, is, in a certain
+sense, caught up to God; and there it “endureth forever,” in the hearts
+and souls of redeemed savages.
+
+This book will never, of course, be reprinted, and copies of it are
+becoming rare. But if we wished to send something to a desponding
+missionary, or an example of condescension and love for souls to a
+minister who despises and neglects his poor, humble people, no better
+gift could be selected than a copy of Eliot’s Bible. What gentle rebuke,
+what exhortation and encouragement, its long barbarous words would
+speak oftentimes in the minister’s or missionary’s study. We might
+appropriately inscribe on its cover the third reflection of Mr. Eliot
+on returning from one of his visits to Nonantum, and send it to every
+missionary station round the globe: “There is no need of miraculous or
+extraordinary gifts in seeking the salvation of the most depraved of the
+human family.”
+
+The mention of this Bible may lead us to think of that half million of
+wild Indians and that million and a half of partly civilized Indians
+who now occupy the wilderness of the west. It bids us attempt their
+conversion; it shows us that no difficulties are too mighty for the
+Gospel to overcome, no discouragements too great for true Christian faith
+and courage. The objects of our forefathers’ zeal and hope in coming to
+these shores, are now beyond the Rocky Mountains. A wilderness still
+invites our increasing missionary efforts, as a wilderness once invited
+the labors of the Pilgrims. Wronged and driven away by the while man,
+still they cry:
+
+[Illustration: COME OVER AND HELP VS]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+A.—See page 201.
+
+(Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. 1732.)
+
+“The following fabulous Traditions and Customs of the Indians of Martha’s
+Vineyard, were communicated to BENJAMIN BASSET, Esq. of Chilmark, by
+THOMAS COOPER, a half blooded Indian, of Gay head, aged about sixty
+years; and which, he says, he obtained of his grandmother, who, to use
+his own expression, was a stout girl, when the English came to the island.
+
+The first Indian who came to the Vineyard, was brought thither with his
+dog on a cake of ice. When he came to Gay Head, he found a very large
+man, whose name was Moshup. He had a wife and five children, four sons
+and one daughter; and lived in the Den. He used to catch whales, and then
+pluck up trees, and make a fire, and roast them. The coals of the trees,
+and the bones of the whales, are now to be seen. After he was tired of
+staying here, he told his children to go and play ball on a beach that
+joined Noman’s Land to Gay Head. He then made a mark with his toe across
+the beach at each end, and so deep, that the water followed, and cut away
+the beach; so that his children were in fear of drowning. They took their
+sister up, and held her out of the water. He told them to act as if they
+were going to kill whales; and they were all turned into killers, (a
+fish so called.) The sister was dressed in large stripes. He gave them a
+strict charge always to be kind to her. His wife mourned the loss of her
+children so exceedingly, that he threw her away. She fell upon Seconet,
+near the rocks, where she lived some time, exacting contribution of all
+who passed by water. After a while she was changed into a stone. The
+entire shape remained for many years. But after the English came, some of
+them broke off the arms, head, &c. but the most of the body remains to
+this day. Moshup went away nobody knows whither. He had no conversation
+with the Indians, but was kind to them, by sending whales, &c. ashore to
+them to eat. But after they grew thick around him he left them.
+
+Whenever the Indians worshipped, they always sang and danced, and then
+begged of the sun and moon, as they thought most likely to hear them, to
+send them the desired favour; most generally rain or fair weather, or
+freedom from their enemies or sickness.
+
+Before the English came among the Indians, there were two disorders
+of which they most generally died, viz. the consumption and the yellow
+fever. The latter they could always _lay_ in the following manner. After
+it had raged and swept off a number, those who were well met to lay it.
+The rich, that is, such as had a canoe, skins, axes, &c. brought them.
+They took their seat in a circle; and all the poor sat around, without.
+The richest then proposed to begin to lay the sickness; and having in
+his hand something in shape resembling his canoe, skin, or whatever his
+riches were, he threw it up in the air; and whoever of the poor without
+could take it, the property it was intended to resemble became forever
+transferred to him or her. After the rich had thus given away all their
+moveable property to the poor, they looked out the handsomest and most
+sprightly young man in the assembly, and put him into an entire new
+wigwam, built of every thing new for that purpose. They then formed into
+two files at a small distance from each other. One standing in the space
+at each end, put fire to the bottom of the wigwam on all parts, and
+fell to singing and dancing. Presently the youth would leap out of the
+flames, and fall down to appearance dead. Him they committed to the care
+of five virgins, prepared for that purpose, to restore to life again.
+The term required for this would be uncertain, from six to forty-eight
+hours; during which time the dance must be kept up. When he was restored,
+he would tell, that he had been carried in a large thing high up in the
+air, where he came to a great company of white people, with whom he had
+interceded hard to have the distemper layed; and generally after much
+persuasion, would obtain a promise, or answer of peace which never failed
+of laying the distemper.”
+
+    “_Inscription copied from a grave stone at Gay Head._
+
+       1     2     3
+    YEUUH’WOHHOK’SIPSIN’
+
+        4           5
+    SIL’PAUL’NOHTOBEYONTOK’
+
+                 6         7
+    AGED’ 49: YEARS’NUPPOOP’TAH’
+
+    AUGUST’24TH1787.
+
+    EXPLANATIONS.
+
+    1. Here.
+    2. The body.
+    3. Lies.
+    4. Silas Paul.
+    5. An ordained preacher.
+    6. Died.
+    7. Then, or in.”
+
+
+B.—See page 41.
+
+In connection with the remarks in the foregoing pages on the climate and
+soil of New England, the following extract from a piece by Rev. John
+Higginson of Salem, 1629, will be read with interest. It is taken from
+the Collections of the Mass. Hist. Society, 1792.
+
+
+NEW-ENGLANDS PLANTATION.
+
+Or, a short and true DESCRIPTION of the Commodities and Discommodities
+of that countrey. Written in the year 1629, by Mr. HIGGESON, a Reverend
+Divine, now there resident. Whereunto is added a Letter, sent by Mr.
+GRAVES, an Enginere, out of New-England. Reprinted from the third
+edition, London, 1530.
+
+Letting passe our voyage by sea,[47] we will now begin our discourse
+on the shore of New-England. And because the life and wel-fare of every
+creature heere below, and the commodiousnesse of the countrey whereat
+such creatures live, doth by the most wise ordering of God’s providence,
+depend next unto himselfe, upon the temperature and disposition of the
+foure elements, earth, water, aire, and fire (for as of the mixture of
+all these, all sublunary things are composed; so by the more or lesse
+enjoyment of the wholesome temper and convenient use of these, consisteth
+the onely well-being both of man and beast in a more or lesse comfortable
+measure in all countreys under the heavens) therefore I will indeavour
+to shew you what New-England is by the consideration of each of these
+apart, and truly indeavour by God’s helpe to report nothing but the
+naked truth, and that both to tell you of the discommodities as well as
+of the commodities, though as the idle proverbe is, _travellers may lye
+by authoritie_, and so may take too much sinfull libertie that way. Yet
+I may say of my selfe as once Nehemiah did in another case: _Shall such
+a man as I lye?_ No verily: It becommeth not a preacher of truth to be
+a writer of falshod in any degree: And therefore I have beene carefull
+to report nothing of New-England but what I have partly seene with mine
+own eyes, and partly heard and enquired from the mouths of verie honest
+and religious persons, who, by living in the countrey a good space of
+time, have had experience and knowledge of the state thereof, and whose
+testimonies I doe beleeve as my selfe.
+
+First therefore of the earth of New-England and all the appertenances
+thereof: It is a land of divers and sundry sorts all about Masathulets
+Bay, and at Charles river is as fat blacke earth as can be seene any
+where: and in other places you have a clay soyle, in other gravell, in
+other sandy, as it is all about our plantation at Salem, for so our towne
+is now named. Psal. 76:2.
+
+The forme of the earth here in the superfices of it is neither too
+flat in the plainnesse, nor too high in hils, but partakes of both in a
+mediocritie, and fit for pasture, or for plow or meddow ground, as men
+please to employ it: though all the countrey bee as it were a thicke
+wood for the generall, yet in divers places there is much ground cleared
+by the Indians, and especially about the plantation: And I am told that
+about three miles from us a man may stand on a little hilly place and see
+divers thousands of acres of ground as good as need to be, and not a tree
+in the same. It is thought here is good clay to make bricke and tyles and
+earthen-pot as need to be. At this instant we are setting a brick-kill
+on worke to make brickes and tiles for the building of our houses. For
+stone, here is plentie of slates at the Isle of Slate in Masathulets
+bay, and lime-stone, free-stone, and smooth-stone, and iron-stone, and
+marble-stone also in such store, that we have great rocks of it, and a
+harbour hard by. Our plantation is from thence called Marble-harbour.
+
+Of minerals there hath yet beene but little triall made, yet we are not
+without great hope of being furnished in that soyle.
+
+The fertilitie of the soyle is to be admired at, as appeareth in the
+aboundance of grasse that groweth everie where, both verie thicke, verie
+long, and verie high in divers places: But it groweth verie wildly with
+a great stalke and a broad and ranker blade, because it never had been
+eaten with cattle, nor mowed with a sythe, and seldome trampled on by
+foot. It is scarce to bee beleeved how our kine and goates, horses and
+hogges, doe thrive and prosper here and like well of this countrey.
+
+In our plantation we have already a quart of milke for a penny: but the
+aboundant encrease of corne proves this countrey to bee a wonderment.
+Thirtie, fortie, fiftie, sixtie are ordinarie here: Yea Joseph’s encrease
+in Ægypt is outstript here with us. Our planters hope to have more then
+a hundred fould this yere: And all this while I am within compasse; what
+will you say of two hundred fould and upwards? It is almost incredible
+what great gaine some of our English planters have had by our Indiane
+corne. Credible persons have assured me, and the partie himselfe avouched
+the truth of it to me, that of the setting of 13 gallons of corne hee
+hath had encrease of it 52 hogsheads, every hogshead holding seven
+bushels of London measure, and every bushell was by him sold and trusted
+to the Indians for so much beaver as was worth 13 shillings; and so of
+this 13 gallons of corne, which was worth 6 shillings 8 pence, he made
+about 327 pounds of it the yeere following, as by reckoning will appeare:
+where you may see how God blessed husbandry in this land. There is not
+such greate and plentifull eares of corne I suppose any where else to
+bee found but in this countrey: Because also of varietie of colours, as
+red, blew, and yellow, &c. and of one corne there springeth four or five
+hundred. I have sent you many eares of divers colours that you might see
+the truth of it.
+
+Little children here by setting of corne may earne much more then their
+owne maintenance.
+
+They have tryed our English corne at New Plimmouth plantation, so that
+all our several graines will grow here verie well, and have a fitting
+soyle for their nature.
+
+Our Governor hath store of greene pease growing in his garden, as good as
+ever I eat in England.
+
+This country aboundeth naturally with store of roots of great varitie
+and good to eat. Our turnips, parsnips, and carrots are here both bigger
+and sweeter then is ordinary to be found in England. Here are store
+of pumpions, cowcombers, and other things of that nature which I know
+not. Also divers excellent pot-herbs grow abundantly among the grasse,
+as strawberrie leaves in all places of the countrey, and plentie of
+strawberries in their time, and pennyroyall, wintersaverie, sorrell,
+brookelime, liverwort, carvell, and watercresses, also leekes and onions
+are ordinarie, and divers physicall herbs. Here are also aboundance of
+other sweet herbs delightful to the smell, whose names we know not, &c.
+and plentie of single damaske roses verie sweete; and two kinds of herbes
+that bare two kinds of flowers very sweet, which they say, are as good to
+make cordage or cloath as any hempe or flaxe we have.
+
+Excellent vines are here up and downe in the woods. Our Governour hath
+already planted a vineyard with great hope of encrease.
+
+Also, mulberries, plums, raspberries, corrance, chesnuts, filberds,
+walnuts, smalnuts, hurtleberies, and hawes of whitethorne neere as good
+as our cherries in England, they grow in plentie here.
+
+For wood there is no better in the world I thinke, here being foure sorts
+of oke differing both in the leafe, timber, and colour, all excellent
+good. There is also good ash, elme, willow, birch, beech, saxafras,
+juniper, cipres, cedar, spruce, pines, and firre that will yeeld
+abundance of turpentine, pitch, tarre, masts, and other materials for
+building both of ships and houses. Also here are store of sumacke trees,
+they are good for dying and tanning of leather, likewise such trees yeeld
+a precious gem called wine benjamin, that they say is excellent for
+perfumes. Also here be divers roots and berries wherewith the Indians dye
+excellent holding colours that no raine nor washing can alter. Also, wee
+have materials to make sope-ashes and salt-peter in aboundance.
+
+For beasts there are some beares, and they say some _lyons_ also;
+for they have been seen at Cape Anne. Also here are several sorts of
+deere, some whereof bring three or four young ones at once, which is
+not ordinarie in England. Also wolves, foxes, beavers, otters, martins,
+great wild cats, and a great beast called a molke as bigge as an oxe. I
+have seen the skins of all these beasts since I came to this plantation
+excepting lyons. Also here are great store of squerrels, some greater,
+and some smaller and lesser: there are some of the lesser sort, they tell
+me, that by a certaine skill will fly from tree to tree, though they
+stand farre distant.
+
+
+_Of the waters of_ New-England, _with the things belonging to the same_.
+
+New-England hath water enough, both salt and fresh, the greatest sea in
+the world, the Atlanticke sea, runs all along the coast thereof. There
+are abundance of Ilands along the shore, some full of wood and masts to
+feed swine; and others cleere of wood, and fruitful to bear corne. Also
+wee have store of excellent harbours for ships, as at Cape Anne, and at
+Masathulets Bay, and at Salem, and at many other places: and they are the
+better because for strangers there is a verie difficult and dangerous
+passage into them, but unto such as are well acquainted with them, they
+are easie and safe enough. The aboundance of sea-fish are almost beyond
+beleeving, and sure I should scarce have beleeved it, except I had seene
+it with mine owne eyes. I saw great store of whales, and crampusse,
+and such aboundance of mackerils that it would astonish one to behold,
+likewise cod-fish in aboundance on the coast, and in their season are
+plentifully taken. There is a fish called a basse, a most sweet and
+wholesome fish as ever I did eate, it is altogether as good as our fresh
+sammon, and the season of their comming was begun when wee came first
+to New-England in June, and so continued about three months space. Of
+this fish our fishers take many hundreds together, which I have seen
+lying on the shore to my admiration; yea their nets ordinarily take more
+than they are able to hale to land, and for want of boats and men they
+are constrained to let a many goe after they have taken them, and yet
+sometimes they fill two boates at a time with them. And besides basse wee
+take plentie of scate and thornbacks, and abundance of lobsters and the
+least boy in the plantation may both catch and eat what he will of them.
+For my owne part I was soone cloyed with them, they were so great, and
+fat, and lussious. I have seene some myselfe that have weighed 16 pound,
+but others have had divers times so great lobsters as have weighed 25
+pound, as they assure mee. Also heere is abundance of herring, turbut,
+sturgion, cuskes, hadocks, mullets, eeles, crabbes, muskles, and oysters.
+Besides there is probability that the countrey is of an excellent temper
+for the making of salt: For since our comming our fishermen have brought
+home very good salt which they found candied by the standing of the sea
+water and the heat of the sunne, upon a rocke by the sea shore: and in
+divers salt marishes that some have gone through, they have found some
+salt in some places crushing under their feete and cleaving to their
+shooes.
+
+And as for fresh water, the countrey is full of dainty springs, and some
+great rivers, and some lesser brookes; and at Masathulets Bay they digged
+wels and found water at three foot deepe in most places: And neere Salem
+thay have as fine cleare water as we can desire, and we may digge wels
+and find water where we list.
+
+Thus wee see both land and sea abound with store of blessings for the
+comfortable sustenance of man’s life in New-England.
+
+
+_Of the aire of_ New-England _with the temper and creatures in it_.
+
+The temper of the aire of New-England is one speciall thing that
+commends this place. Experience doth manifest that there is hardly a
+more healthfull place to be found in the world that agreeth better with
+our English bodyes. Many that have been weake and sickly in old England,
+by comming hither have beene thoroughly healed and growne healthfull
+strong. For here is an extraordinarie cleere and dry aire that is of a
+most healing nature to all such as are of a cold, melancholy, flegmatick,
+rheumatick temper of body. None can more truly speake hereof by their
+owne experience then my selfe. My friends that knew me can well tell how
+verie sickly I have bin and continually in physick, being much troubled
+with a tormenting paine through an extraordinarie weaknesse of my
+stomacke, and aboundance of melancholicke humors; but since I came hither
+on this voyage, I thanke God, I have had perfect health, and freed from
+paine and vomiting, having a stomacke to digest the hardest and coursest
+fare, who before could not eat finest meat; and whereas my stomache could
+onely digest and did require such drinke as was both strong and stale,
+now I can and doe often times drink New-England water verie well; and
+I that have not gone without a cap for many yeeres together, neither
+durst leave off the same, have now cast away my cap, and doe weare none
+at all in the day time: And whereas beforetime I cloathed my selfe with
+double cloaths and thicke waistcoates to keep me warme, even in the
+summer time, I doe now goe as thin clad as any, onely wearing a light
+stuffe cassocke upon my shirt, and stuffe breeches of one thickness
+without linings. Besides I have one of my children that was formerly
+most lamentably handled with sore breaking out of both his hands and
+feet of the king’s-evill, but since he came hither hee is very well ever
+he was, and there is hope of perfect recoverie shortly even by the very
+wholesomnesse of the aire, altering, digesting and drying up the cold and
+crude humours of the body: And therefore I thinke it is a wise course for
+al cold complections to come to take physick in New-England: for a sup of
+New-England’s aire is better then a whole draught of Old England’s ale.
+
+In the summer time, in the midst of July and August, it is a good deale
+hotter then in Old England: And in winter, January and February are much
+colder, as they say: But the spring and autumne are of a middle temper.
+
+Fowles of the aire are plentifull here, and of all sorts as we have in
+England, as farre as I can learn, and a great many of strange fowles
+which we know not. Whilst I was writing these things, one of our men
+brought home an eagle which hee had killed in the wood: They say they
+are good meate. Also here are many kinds of excellent hawkes, both sea
+hawkes and land hawkes: And my self walking in the woods with another
+in company, sprung a patridge so bigge that through the heaviness of
+his body could fly but a little way: They that have killed them, say
+they are as bigge as our hens. Here are likewise aboundance of turkies
+often killed in the woods, farre greater then our English turkies, and
+exceeding fat, sweet, and fleshy, for here they have aboundance of
+feeding all the yeere long, as strawberries, in summer al places are
+full of them, and all manner of berries and fruits. In the winter time
+I have scene flockes of pidgeons, and have eaten of them: They doe fly
+from tree to tree as other birds doe, which our pidgeons will not doe in
+England: They are of all colours as ours are, but their wings and tayles
+are far longer, and therefore it is likely they fly swifter to escape the
+terrible hawkes in this country. In winter time this country doth abound
+with wild geese, wild ducks, and other sea fowle, that a great part of
+winter the planters have eaten nothing but roast-meate of divers fowles
+which they have killed.
+
+Thus you have heard of the earth, water and aire of New-England, now it
+may bee you expect something to bee said of the fire proportionable to
+the rest of the elements. Indeede I thinke New-England may boast of this
+element more then of all the rest: For though it bee here somewhat cold
+in the winter, yet here we have plenty of fire to warme us, and that a
+great deal cheaper then they sel billets and faggots in London: Nay, all
+Europe is not able to afford to make so great fires as New-England. A
+poore servant here that is to possesse but 50 acres of land, may afford
+to give more wood for timber and fire as good as the world yeelds, then
+many noble men in England can afford to do. Here is good living for those
+that love good fires. And although New-England have no tallow to make
+candles of, yet by the aboundance of the fish thereof, it can afford oil
+for lampes. Yea our pine-trees that are the most plentifull of all wood,
+doth allow us plenty of candles which are very usefull in a house: And
+they are such candles as the Indians commonly use, having no other, and
+they are nothing else but the wood of the pine tree cloven in two little
+slices, something thin, which are so full of the moysture of turpentine
+and pitch, that they burne as cleere as a torch. I have sent you some of
+them that you may see the experience of them.
+
+Thus of New-England’s commodities: now I will tell you of some
+discommodities that are here to be found.
+
+First, in the summer season for these three months, June, July, and
+August, we are troubled much with little flyes called musketoes, being
+the same they are troubled with in Lincolneshire and the Fens; and they
+are nothing but gnats, which except they bee smoked out of their houses
+are troublesome in the night season.
+
+Secondly, in the winter season for two months space, the earth is
+commonly covered with snow, which is accompanied with sharp biting
+frosts, something more sharpe then is in Old England, and therefore are
+forced to make great fires.
+
+Thirdly, the countrey being very full of woods, and wildernesses, doth
+also much abound with snakes and serpents of strange colours, and huge
+greatnesse: yea there are some serpents called rattle-snakes that have
+rattles in their tailes, that will not fly from a man as others will, but
+will flye upon him, and sting him so mortally, that hee will dye within a
+quarter of an houre after, except the partie stinged have about him some
+of the root of an herbe called snake-weed to bite on, and then hee shall
+receive no harme: but yet seldom falles it out that any hurt is done by
+these. About three years since, an Indian was stung to death by one of
+them, but wee heard of none since that time.
+
+Fourthly and lastly, here wants as it were good company of honest
+christians to bring with them horses, kine, and sheepe, to make use
+of this fruitfull land: great pitty it is to see so much good ground
+for corne and for grasse as any is under the heavens, to ly altogether
+unoccupied, when so many honest men and their families in Old England
+through the populousnesse thereof, do make evry hard shift to live one by
+the other.
+
+Now, thus you know what New-England is, as also with the commodities and
+discommodities thereof: Now I will shew you a little of the inhabitants
+thereof, and their government.
+
+For their governors they have kings, which they call Saggamores, some
+greater, and some lesser, according to the number of their subjects.
+
+The greatest Saggamores about us can not make above three hundred
+men,[48] and other lesse Saggamores have not above fifteen subjects, and
+others neere about us but two.
+
+Their subjects above twelve years since[49] were swept away by a great
+and grievous plague that was amongst them, so that there are verie few
+left to inhabite the country.
+
+The Indians are not able to make use of the one fourth part of the
+land, neither have they any settled places, as townes to dwell in, nor
+any ground as they challenge for their own possession, but change their
+habitation from place to place.
+
+For their statures, they are a tall and strong limmed people, their
+colours are tawney, they goe naked, save onely they are in part covered
+with beasts skins on one of their shoulders, and weare something before;
+their haire is generally blacke, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and
+one locke longer than the rest, much like to our gentelmen, which fashion
+I thinke came from hence into England.
+
+For their weapons, they have bowes and arrowes, some of them headed with
+bone, and some with brasse: I have sent you some of them for an example.
+
+The men for the most part live idely, they do nothing but hunt and fish:
+Their wives set their corne and doe all their other worke. They have
+little houshold stuffe, as a kettle, and some other vessels like trayes,
+spoones, dishes, and baskets.
+
+Their houses are verie little and homely, being made with small poles
+pricked into the ground, and so bended and fastened at the tops, and on
+the sides they are matted with boughs and covered on the roof with sedge
+and old mats, and for their beds that they take their rest on, they have
+a mat.
+
+They doe generally professe to like well of our coming and planting here;
+partly because their is abundance of ground that they cannot possesse
+nor make use of, and partly because our being here will bee a meanes
+both of relief to them when they want, and also a defence from their
+enemies, wherewith (I say) before this plantation began, they were often
+indangered.
+
+For their religion they do worship two Gods, a good God and an evil God:
+The good God they call Tantum, and their evil God whom they fear will doe
+them hurt, they call Squantum.
+
+For their dealing with us, we neither fear them nor trust them, for
+fourtie of our musketeeres will drive five hundred of them out of the
+field. We use them kindly; they will come into our houses sometimes by
+half a dozen or half a score at a time when we are at victuals, but will
+ask or take nothing but what we give them.
+
+We purpose to learn their language as soon as we can, which will be a
+means to do them good.
+
+
+_Of the present condition of the Plantation, and what it is._
+
+When we came first to Nehum-kek,[50] we found about half a score houses,
+and a faire house newly built for the Governor, we found also aboundance
+of corne planted by them, very good and well liking. And we brought
+with us about two hundred passengers and planters more, which by common
+consent of the old planters were all combined together into one body
+politicke, under the same Governour.
+
+There are in all of us both old and new planters about three hundred,
+whereof two hundred of them are settled at Nehum-kek, now called Salem:
+And the rest have planted themselves at Masathulets Bay, beginning to
+build a towne there which wee do call Cherton, or Charles Town.
+
+We that are settled at Salem make what haste we can to build houses, so
+that within a short time we shall have a faire towne.
+
+We have great ordnance, wherewith we doubt not but we shall fortifie
+ourselves in a short time to keepe out a potent adversary. But that which
+is our greatest comfort, and meanes of defence above all other, is, that
+we have here the true religion and holy ordinances of Almighty God taught
+amongst us: Thankes be to God, wee have here plenty of preaching, and
+diligent catechizing, with strict and carefull exercise, and good and
+commendable orders to bring our people into a christian conversation with
+whom we have to doe withall. And thus wee doubt not but God will be with
+us, and _if God be with us, who can be against us?_
+
+[Here ends Master Higgeson’s relation of New-England.]
+
+
+_A letter sent from New England, by Master GRAVES, Engynere, now there
+resident._
+
+Thus much I can affirme in generall, that I never came in a more goodly
+country in all my life, all things considered: If it hath not at any time
+been manured and husbanded, yet it is very beautifull in open lands,
+mixed with goodly woods, and again open plaines, in some places five
+hundred acres, some places more, some lesse, not much troublesome for
+to cleer for the plough to goe in, no place barren, but on the tops of
+the hils; the grasse and weeds grow up to a man’s face, in the lowlands
+and by fresh rivers, aboundance of grasse and large meddowes without any
+tree or shrubbe to hinder the sith. I never saw, except in Hungaria,
+unto which I alwayes paralell this countrie, in all our most respects,
+for every thing that is heare eyther sowne or planted prospereth far
+better then in Old-England: The increase of corne is here farre beyond
+expectation, as I have seene here by experience in barly, the which
+because it is so much above your conception I will not mention. And
+cattle doe prosper very well, and those that are bredd here farr greater
+than those with you in England. Vines doe grow here plentifully laden
+with the biggest grapes that ever I saw, some I have seen foure inches
+about, so that I am bold to say of this countrie, as it is commonly said
+in Germany of Hungaria, that for cattel, corne, and wine it excelleth. We
+have many more hopefull commodities here in this country, the which time
+will teach to make good use of: In the mean time wee abound with such
+things which next under God doe make us subsist: as fish, foule, deere,
+and sundrie sorts of fruits, as musk-millions, water-millions, Indian
+pompions, Indian pease, beanes, and many other odde fruits that I cannot
+name; all which are made good and pleasant through this maine blessing
+of God, the healthfulnesse of the countrie which far exceedeth all parts
+that ever I have beene in: It is observed that few or none doe here fal
+sicke, unless of the scurvy, that they bring from aboard the ship with
+them, whereof I have cured some of my companie onely by labour.
+
+
+C.—See page 204.
+
+See Morell’s poem on New England, Mass. Hist. Coll., 1792.
+
+
+D.—See page 222.
+
+The following letter to King Charles II. accompanied the presentation of
+the New Testament in the Indian tongue. The letter was written and sent
+by the Commissioners of the United Colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth,
+Connecticut and New Haven.
+
+    “To the High and Mighty Prince, Charles the second, by the
+    grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland,
+    Defender of the faith, &c.
+
+    “The Commissioners of the United Colonies in New England, wish
+    increase of all happiness.
+
+    “Most dread Sovereign,
+
+    “If our weak apprehensions have not misled us, this work will
+    be no unacceptable present to your Majesty, as having a greater
+    interest therein, than we believe is generally understood,
+    which upon this occasion we conceive it our duty to declare.
+
+    “The people of these four colonies (confederate for mutual
+    defence, in the times of the late distractions of our dear
+    native country) your Majesty’s natural born subjects, by the
+    favour and grace of your royal father and grandfather of
+    famous memory, put themselves upon this great and hazardous
+    undertaking, of planting themselves at their own charge in
+    these remote ends of the earth; that without offence or
+    provocation to our dear brethren and countrymen, we might enjoy
+    that liberty to worship God, which our own conscience informed
+    us was not only our right but duty; as also that we, if it so
+    pleased God, might be instrumental to spread the light of the
+    gospel, the knowledge of the son of God, our saviour, to the
+    poor, barbarous heathen; which by his late Majesty, in some of
+    our patents, is declared to be the principal aim.
+
+    “These honest and pious intentions have through the grace of
+    God and our kings, been seconded with proportionable success.
+    For, omitting the immunities indulged by your Highness’s royal
+    predecessors, we have been greatly encouraged by your Majesty’s
+    gracious expressions of favour and approbation, signified unto
+    the address made by the principal of our colonies; to which
+    the rest do most cordially subscribe; though wanting the like
+    seasonable opportunity, they have been till now deprived of the
+    means to congratulate your Majesty’s happy restitution, after
+    your long sufferings; which we implore may yet be graciously
+    accepted, that we may be equal partakers of your royal favour
+    and moderation; which hath been so illustrious, that to
+    admiration, the animosities of different persuasions of men
+    have been so soon composed, and so much cause of hope, that,
+    unless the sins of the nation prevent, a blessed calm will
+    succeed the late horrid confusions of church and state. And
+    shall not we, dread sovereign, your subjects of these colonies,
+    of the same faith and belief in all points of doctrine with
+    our countrymen and other reformed churches, though perhaps not
+    alike persuaded in some matters of order, which in outward
+    respects hath been unhappy for us,—promise and assure ourselves
+    of all just favour and indulgence from a prince so graciously
+    and happily endowed?
+
+    “The other part of our errand hither hath been attended with
+    endeavours and blessing; many of the wild Indians being taught,
+    and understanding, the doctrine of the christian religion,
+    and with much affection attending such preachers as are sent
+    to teach them. Many of their children are instructed to write
+    and read; and some of them have proceeded further to attain
+    the knowledge of the Latin and the Greek tongues, and are
+    brought up with our English youth in university learning.
+    There are divers of them that can and do read some parts of
+    the scripture, and some catechisms which formerly have been
+    translated into their own language: which hath occasioned the
+    undertaking of a great work, viz. the printing the whole bible:
+    which, being translated by a painful labourer among them, who
+    was desirous to see the work accomplished in his days, hath
+    already proceeded to the finishing of the new testament; which
+    we here humbly present to your Majesty, as the first fruit and
+    accomplishment of the pious design of your royal ancestors. The
+    old testament is now under the press, wanting and craving your
+    royal favour and assistance for the perfecting thereof.
+
+    “We may not conceal, though this work hath been begun and
+    prosecuted by such instruments as God has raised up here; yet
+    the chief charge and cost, which hath supported and carried it
+    thus far, hath been from the charity and piety of divers of
+    our well affected countrymen in England; who, being sensible
+    of our inability in that respect, and studious to promote so
+    good a work, contributed large sums of money, which were to
+    be improved according to the direction and order of the then
+    prevailing powers; which hath been faithfully and religiously
+    attended, both there and here, according to the pious
+    intentions of the benefactors. And we most humbly beseech your
+    Majesty, that a matter of so much devotion and piety, tending
+    so much to the honour of God, may suffer no disappointment
+    through any legal defect, without the fault of the donors,
+    or poor Indians, who only receive the benefit; but that your
+    Majesty be graciously pleased to establish and confirm the
+    same; being contrived and done, as we conceive, in that first
+    year of your Majesty’s reign, of this book was begun and now
+    finished the first year of your establishment: which doth not
+    only presage the happy success of your Highness’s government,
+    but will be a perpetual monument, that by your Majesty’s
+    favour, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ was made known to
+    the Indians; an honour whereof, we are assured, your Majesty
+    will not a little esteem.
+
+    “Sir, the shine of your royal favour upon these undertakings
+    will make these tender plants to flourish, notwithstanding any
+    malevolent aspect from those that bear evil will to this Sion;
+    and render your Majesty more illustrious and glorious to after
+    generations.
+
+    “The God of heaven long preserve and bless your Majesty with
+    many happy days, to his glory, the good and comfort of his
+    church and people. Amen.”
+
+
+E.—See page 182.
+
+The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians has been
+mentioned several times in this work.
+
+About the year 1648, during the Protectorate of Cromwell, when the
+Presbyterians and Independents had influence in England, a Society was
+formed through the influence, it is believed, of Gov. Winslow, and called
+the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and others in
+North America.
+
+It is somewhere stated respecting Cromwell that he had conceived a
+very extensive scheme for the universal propagation of the Gospel,
+borrowing the zeal and ingenuity of the Jesuits, and intending to meet
+and counteract their efforts everywhere. This scheme perished with him
+in his early death. Even the Society for Propagating the Gospel among
+the Indians, &c., did not long survive the restoration of royalty in
+1660. But during its existence under the Commonwealth it rendered aid
+to Mayhew, Eliot, and others, the funds being applied here through the
+Commissioners of the four Colonies.
+
+The Society being dissolved at the Restoration of monarchy under Charles
+II., an urgent application was soon made for another Society having the
+same name and objects. The honorable and distinguished Robert Boyle was
+President of the new Society. He had great wealth, and used it with
+profuse liberality. The celebrated Bishop Burnet was his almoner in many
+private as well as public charities. He distributed a thousand pounds
+a year for several years before his death among the French refugees in
+England. He also gave yearly, for a long time, the sum of three hundred
+pounds for the propagation of the Gospel in North America. Mr. Eliot’s
+letters to his noble benefactor, which may be found in the Collections of
+the Mass. Hist. Society, will be read with interest.
+
+The Indian School, at Cambridge, was supported by the funds of this
+Society, and a building erected for it by the same. In 1665 there were
+eight Indian youths in that school. Eliot’s Indian Bible was printed at
+the expense of this Society, and cost £500, or not far from two thousand
+dollars.
+
+For a few years, the General Court of Massachusetts granted five hundred
+dollars towards the object of this Society. At the suggestion of the
+Society the Governor issued a request for contributions in its behalf to
+the towns of the Commonwealth. About $1560 were collected.
+
+This Society continues to this time. In 1800, its funds amounted to
+$20.000. At present they are not far from twice that sum. It is in the
+hands of members of the Unitarian denomination.[51]
+
+
+F.
+
+Letters of Mr. Eliot to Hon. Robert Boyle may be found in Mass. Hist.
+Coll. 1792. Also two interesting letters from the same in Francis’ Life
+of Eliot, pp. 250 and 267.
+
+
+G.
+
+See, for an account of the Missionary Labors of the Mayhews, Wilson’s
+Memoirs of Eliot, pp. 273-9.
+
+
+H.
+
+See Wilson’s Memoirs of E., p. 290.
+
+
+I.
+
+Mr. Eliot’s Observations on forming the Indian Alphabet, do. do., p. 284.
+
+
+K.
+
+For an account of Rev. William Leverich, and some other laborers among
+the Indians, see Wilson’s Memoirs, pp. 257-60, p. 278-99.
+
+
+L.—See page 133.
+
+The following petitions of Mr. Eliot have been copied for this work from
+the Mass. State Papers. The first is a temperance document which has not
+lost any pertinency or force by age.
+
+    _Petition of John Eliot to the —— General Court concerning the
+    Indians_,
+
+    SHEWETH,
+
+    That whereas the Indians have frequent recourse to English
+    townes and especially to Boston where they too often see evil
+    examples of excessive drinking with English who are too often
+    disgraced with that beastly sin of drunkenness. And themselves
+    many of them greatly delighting in strong liquors, not
+    considering the strength and evil of them, and also too well
+    knowing the liberty of the law which prohibiteth above half a
+    pint of wine to a man that therefore they may without offence
+    to the law have their half pint, and when they have had it in
+    one place they goe to another and have the like till they be
+    drunken. And sometime find too much entertainment that way by
+    such who keepe no ordinary only desire theire trade though it
+    be with the hurt and perdition of their soules. Therefore my
+    humble request unto this honored Court is this, that there may
+    be but one ordinary in all Boston who may have liberty to sell
+    wine or any strong drink unto the Indians. And that whoever
+    shall further them in their vicious drinking for theire own
+    base ends who keep no ordinary may not be suffered in such a
+    sinne without due punishment. And that at what ordinary soever
+    in any other towne as well as Boston any Indian shall be found
+    drunk, having had any considerable quantity of drink there,
+    they should come under severe censure. These things I am bold
+    to present unto you for the preventing of those scandalous
+    evils which greatly blemish and interrupt their entertainment
+    of the Gospel through the policy of Satan who counter worketh
+    Christ with not a little uncomfortable success. And thus with
+    my hearty desire of the gracious and blessed presence of God
+    among you in all your weighty affairs, I humbly take leave and
+    rest your servant to command in our Savour Christ,
+
+                                                         JOHN ELIOT.
+
+    this 23d of the 8th 1648.
+
+
+M.—See page 134.
+
+The next petition is exceedingly interesting.
+
+    _To the Honorable the Governor and Council sitting at Boston
+    the 13th of the 6th, 1675. The humble petition of John Eliot_,
+
+    SHEWETH,
+
+    That the terrour of selling away such Indians in the Ilands
+    for perpetual Slaves who shall yield up themselves to your
+    mercy is likely to be an effectual prolongation of the warre
+    and such an exasperation of them as may produce we know not
+    what evil consequences upon all the land. Christ hath said,
+    “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” This
+    [treatment] of them is worse than death. To put to death men
+    that have deserved to die is an ordinance of God and a blessing
+    is promised to it. It may be done in faith. The design of
+    Christ in these last days is not to extirpate nations but to
+    gospelize them. He will spread the Gospel sound the world
+    about, rev. 11. 15. The kingdoms of the world have become the
+    kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. His sovereign hand
+    and grace hath brought the Gospel into these dark places of
+    the earth. When we came we declared to the world, and it is
+    recorded, yea we are instructed by our letters patent from the
+    King’s majesty that the endeavour of the Indians conversion not
+    their extirpation was one great end of our enterprize in coming
+    to these ends of the earth. The Lord hath so succeeded his work
+    as that (by his grace) they have the Holy Scriptures and sundry
+    of themselves able to teach their countrymen the good knowledge
+    of God. The light of the Gospel is risen among those who sat in
+    darkness and in the region of the shadow of death. And however
+    some of them have refused to receive the Gospel, and are now
+    incensed in their spirits unto a warre against the English, yet
+    by that good promise, Ps. 1:1-6, I doubt not but the meaning of
+    Christ is to open the door for the free passage of the Gospel
+    among them, and that the Lord will publish that word, v. 6. Yet
+    have I set my king on my holy hill of Syon, though some rage at
+    it. My humble request is if you would follow Christ his design
+    in this matter to promote the free passage of religion among
+    them and not destroy them. To send them away from the light
+    of the Gospel which Christ hath graciously given them unto a
+    place, a state, a way of spiritual darkness to the eternal
+    ruin of their souls is as I apprehend to act contrary to the
+    mind of Christ. God’s command is that we should inlarge the
+    kingdom of Jesus Christ. Esay, 54:2. Enlarge the place of thy
+    tent. It seemeth to me that to sell them away for slaves is
+    to hinder the inlargement of his kingdom. How can a Christian
+    [soule yield to act]—(these words are indistinct) in casting
+    away their soules for which Christ hath with an eminent hand
+    provided an offer of the Gospel. To sell soules for money
+    seemeth to me a dangerous merchandize. If they deserve to
+    dy, it is far better to be put to death under godly [rulers]
+    who will take care if meanes may be used that they may die
+    penitently. To fall away from all meanes of grace when Christ
+    hath provided meanes of grace for them, is for us to be active
+    in the destroying their soules when we are highly obliged to
+    seek their conversion and salvation and have opportunity in our
+    hands so to doe. Deut. 23:15, 16.[52] A fugitive servant from
+    his Pagan master might not be delivered to his master, but be
+    kept in Israel for the good of his soul. How much less lawful
+    is it to sell away souls from under the light of the Gospel
+    into a condition where their souls will be utterly lost, so
+    far as appertains unto man. All men (of reading) condemned the
+    Spaniard for cruelty upon this point for destroying men and
+    depopulating the land. The country is large enough, here is
+    land enough for them and us to, Prov. 14:28. In the multitude
+    of people is the King’s honor. It will be much to the glory
+    of Christ to have many brought in to worship his great name.
+    I beseech the honored Council to pardon my boldnesse, and let
+    the case of conscience be discussed orderly before the thing
+    be acted. Cover my weaknesse and weigh the reason and religion
+    that laboreth in this great case of conscience.
+
+
+N.—See page 135.
+
+The following petition of Mr. Eliot illustrates the kind interest which
+he took in the common and private affairs of the Indians. I have copied
+it from Mass. State Papers, (Indian Papers) 30. p. 15. 1639-1705.
+
+    PETITION THAT TWO INDIANS MAY HAVE THEIR DUE.
+
+    _The humble petition of John Eliot to this Honorable Court._
+
+    First in the behalfe of Totherswompe unto whom one of Uncas his
+    men doth owe 18 fathom of wampompeague for 6 beare skins and
+    he cannot obtain justice with ease and therefore doth humbly
+    intreat this honored Court to procure justice for him in this
+    particular. Phoxon well knoweth his demand is just and true, as
+    Thomas and Stanton can testify.
+
+    The other is in behalf of Anonganisch, who lost 17 fathom
+    which Uncas and his men tooke unjustly from him 3 years since
+    when they fell upon the Indians by Mr. Winthrop’s plantation,
+    and he saith that when his case was at this Court formerly
+    heard The Governour promised him that he should have justice,
+    and that doth embolden him to sue again in the case. The
+    bringing them to doe justice doth so far cause them to honour
+    and acknowledge God and therefore I humbly entreat your favour
+    in furtherance of the same, and so commending all your weighty
+    occasions to the blessing of the Lord.
+
+                 Your worships servant in Jesus Christ,
+
+                                                     JOHN ELIOT.[53]
+
+
+O.—See page 48.
+
+    THE CHURCH IN ROXBURY.
+
+    (See Am. Quarterly Register, Vol. 8th.)
+
+    THOMAS WELDE, the first Minister of Roxbury, was a minister in
+    Essex, England. Refusing to conform to the requirements of the
+    Established Church, he sought the quiet enjoyment of the rights
+    of conscience in this country. He arrived in Boston, June 5,
+    1632, and entered upon the pastoral office in Roxbury, at which
+    time the Church was embodied. In 1641, he was sent as an agent,
+    with REV. HUGH PETERS, to England for the Province and never
+    returned.
+
+    JOHN ELIOT became teacher of the Church in Roxbury, Nov. 5,
+    1632. The next year he became colleague with Mr. Welde.
+
+    SAMUEL DANFORTH was colleague with Mr. Eliot after Mr. Welde
+    went to England. He continued in office 24 years.
+
+    NEHEMIAH WALTER, born in Ireland, came to Boston at the age of
+    16. Graduated at Harvard College, and was the third colleague
+    of Mr. Eliot. He had so good knowledge of the French Language
+    that he preached to a society of French Protestants while
+    their Pastor was absent. Whitefield called him “the good old
+    Puritan.” A well known publication of his is called, “The
+    Wonderfulness of Christ.”
+
+    THOMAS WALTER, his son, became colleague with his father, but
+    died 7 years after.
+
+    OLIVER PEABODY, son of the Missionary at Natick of the same
+    name, succeeded Mr. Walter, but continued only 18 months, and
+    died when on the eve of being married, aged 27.
+
+    AMOS ADAMS, was Pastor at Roxbury 22 years and died of the
+    epidemic which prevailed in the camp at Roxbury and Cambridge.
+    The title of one of his published Sermons was, The only Hope
+    and Refuge of Sinners.
+
+    ELIPHALET PORTER succeeded him and continued in office 51 years.
+
+    GEORGE PUTNAM, the present Pastor, was ordained colleague with
+    him, July 7, 1830.
+
+A Church was organized in Roxbury, Sept. 18, 1834, composed of Members of
+Evangelical sentiments, and of the Orthodox Congregational denomination.
+It took the name of “ELIOT CHURCH.”
+
+Rev. John S. C. Abbott was ordained Pastor, Nov. 25, 1835.
+
+Rev. Augustus C. Thompson was ordained Pastor, July 27, 1842.
+
+
+P.—See page 51.
+
+    ROXBURY “ELIOT SCHOOL FUND.”
+
+    “Eliot School Fund had its origin in the donation of Rev. John
+    Eliot, of Roxbury, well known as the Apostle to the Indians,
+    who, in the year 1689, conveyed an estate of about seventy-five
+    acres of land to certain persons and their heirs, as Trustees
+    for ‘the maintenance, support and encouragement of a school and
+    school master at that part of Roxbury, commonly called Jamaica
+    or the Pond Plain, for the teaching and instructing of the
+    children of that end of the town (together with such Indians
+    and negroes as shall or may come to the said school) and to no
+    other use, intent, or purpose whatever. This is the language of
+    the deed.’ (The fund was afterwards increased by donations.)
+
+    “The Eliot school fund consists (1840) of 89,699.94. The School
+    also possesses some real estate, which yields an annual income
+    of 8381.”
+
+    Report of the Committee on the School Fund, Roxbury. Auditor’s
+    Reports, 1831-1846.
+
+The following are the principal of Mr. Eliot’s publications. It is
+remarkable that no entire Sermon of his has been preserved.
+
+Answer to Norcott’s book against Infant Baptism.
+
+The Harmony of the Gospels in the Holy History of Jesus Christ.
+
+The Christian Commonwealth.
+
+The Divine management of Gospel Churches by the Ordinance of Councils,
+constituted in order according to the Scriptures, which may be a means
+of uniting those two holy and eminent parties, the Presbyterians and the
+Congregational.
+
+Indian Bible, Catechism, and Psalms of David in metre.
+
+Baxter’s “Call to the unconverted,” translated into the Indian Tongue.
+
+The Practice of Piety, translated into the Indian Tongue. This book was
+written by Lewis Bayly, for some time Chaplain to James the First. In
+1792, it had reached the _seventy-first_ edition. The author was promoted
+to the see of Bangor, 1616. See Lib. Am. Biog. V. 245. Francis’ Life of
+Eliot. BIOG. BRITAN. Art. BAYLY.
+
+Thomas Shepard’s Sincere Convert, translated into the Indian tongue.
+
+Thomas Shepard’s Sound Believer, translated into the Indian tongue.
+
+Indian Primer.
+
+This little book has been of great help to linguists by the division of
+syllables in it for children, thereby giving learners of a larger growth
+some insight into the formation of Indian words.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+The following appropriate conclusion to this volume came to hand just as
+the last pages were going to press.
+
+    THE CHOCTAWS TO THEIR WHITE BRETHREN OF IRELAND.—A meeting for
+    the relief of the starving poor of Ireland was held at the
+    Choctaw agency, on the 23d ult. Maj. William Armstrong was
+    called to the chair, and J. B. Luce was appointed secretary. A
+    circular of the “Memphis committee” was read by Maj. Armstrong,
+    after which the meeting contributed $170. All subscribed,
+    agents, missionaries, traders and Indians, a considerable
+    portion of which fund was made up by the latter. The “poor
+    Indian” sending his mite to the poor Irish!
+
+                                [_Arkansas Intelligencer, April 3_.]
+
+[Illustration: THE END OF VOL III.]
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] See Laws of Mass. I., page 77, Sect. 8, 9.
+
+“_Whereas one end in planting these parts was to propagate the true
+religion unto the Indians_, and that divers of them are become subject
+unto the English, and have engaged themselves to be ready and willing to
+understand the law of God: It is therefore ordered that such necessary
+and wholesome laws which are in force, and may be made from time to time,
+to reduce them to civility of life, shall be once a year, if the times be
+safe, made known to them by such fit persons as the general court shall
+appoint.”
+
+[2]
+
+                    “Venient annis
+    Secula seris, quibus Oceanus
+    Vincula rerum, laxet, et ingens
+    Pateat tellus, Typhis que novos
+    Deteget orbes; nec sit terris
+    Ultima Thule.”
+
+            _Medea, Act. 3, v. 375._
+
+[3] “America known to the Ancients.” Boston, 1773.
+
+[4] Mather.
+
+[5] Governor Bradford’s History of Plymouth.
+
+[6] Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll. 1794., p. 206.
+
+[7] Key, p. 213.
+
+[8] See Appendix, B.
+
+[9] See Appendix, C.
+
+[10] Roger Williams’ Key, p. 26.
+
+[11] Mag. B. III. Life of Eliot. Art. 1.
+
+[12] Sparks’ Lib. Am. Biog. V. 9. Francis’ Life of Eliot.
+
+[13] Mag. Book III., 499.
+
+[14] Vol. III., p. 15.
+
+[15] Book III. Art. IV.
+
+[16] Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia.”
+
+[17] Newton. Dr. Homer, in his History of Newton says, “This son of
+the apostle Eliot was the first minister of Newton. His abilities
+and occupation in the ministry are said to be pre-eminent. Under the
+direction of his father, he obtained considerable proficiency in
+the Indian language, and was an assistant to him in the missionary
+employment, until he settled at Newton. Even after his ordination there,
+he imitated the manner of his father, devoting himself to the instruction
+of the Indians, as well as his own flock. Accordingly he preached
+statedly once in a fortnight to them at Pequimet, (Stoughton,) and
+sometimes at Natick.”
+
+[18] Now owned and occupied by Warren Dutton and Horace Gray, Esqrs.
+
+[19] “The first place he began to preach at was Nonantum, near Watertown,
+upon the south side of Charles River, about four or five miles from his
+own house; where lived at that time, Wabon, one of their principal men,
+and some Indians with him.” Gookin, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll, for 1792. Vol
+I.
+
+“The place where Eliot first began to preach to the Indians, was at
+Nonantum, a hill at the northeast corner of Newton, nearly where Messrs.
+Haven’s and Wiggin’s houses now stand.” Moore’s Life of Eliot.
+
+[20] Mag. Book III., Part IV. See Appendix, C.
+
+[21] He who thinks that a belief in witchcraft, &c., was a peculiarity of
+New England, should look into Strype’s Ecclesiastical Memorials.
+
+[22] He was not a Sachem, as frequently stated. See Mass. Hist., Col.
+IV., 19.
+
+[23] The Day Breaking &c., p. 15.
+
+[24] Shepard’s Clear Sunshine, p. 39. Hist. Coll. Vol. IV. 3d series.
+Shattuck’s Hist. Concord.
+
+[25] Shepard’s Clear Sunshine, &c., p. 41.
+
+[26] See page 19.
+
+[27] See Bancroft’s History of the United States, Vol. I.
+
+[28] See Sir Walter Scott’s “Demonology and Witchcraft,” Letter II.
+
+[29] “Cleare Sunshine of the Gospel,” p. 46.
+
+[30] Shepard’s “Cleare Sunshine.”
+
+[31] See the Memorial of Mr. Eliot to the General Court, on this subject,
+Appendix L.
+
+[32] Fast enough, if well enough.
+
+[33] See Appendix, E.
+
+[34] I. 172. Note. 1715.
+
+[35] Mag. II, 511. _Philemon Holland._ See Rees’ Encyc., Aiken’s Biog.
+Mem. of Medicine. He was the _translator general_ of his age, a man
+of incredible industry. In Fuller’s Worthies of England we learn that
+Holland, having written several translations with one pen, made the
+following stanza:
+
+    “With one solo pen I writ this book,
+      Made of a gray goose quill;
+    A pen it was when I it took,
+      And a pen I leave it still.”
+
+A familiar story is told of Gibbon, in writing the “Decline and Fall,”
+and that he presented the pen to the Duchess of Devonshire, who honored
+it with a silver case. These stories are probably fabulous. The
+contrivances which these men must have used to make one pen, or even one
+quill, do so much work, would deserve the appellation above quoted from
+Douglass, “otiosorum hominum negotia,” or, the notions of men who had
+plenty of leisure.
+
+[36] II. 94.
+
+[37] Magnalia I, 516.—See Appendix, G.
+
+[38] Cotton Mather’s mother was the daughter of Mr. Cotton.
+
+[39] See Appendix, M.
+
+[40] Mass. Hist. Coll. 1802.
+
+[41] This testimony from Richard Baxter, in favor of the Mathers, is
+valuable to those who have seen them decried by some modern writers.
+
+[42] See Early Jesuit Missions, &c., by Wm Ingraham Kip.
+
+[43] C. Mather.
+
+[44] Mather’s allusion is probably this: In Gen. 23:2, where it is said
+that Abraham came to weep for Sarah, a letter, smaller than the rest, in
+the Hebrew word _to weep for her_ is believed by the Jewish critics to
+intimate that his grief was somewhat composed; (—“_luctum Abrahæ fuisse
+moderatum_.”—Poole’s Synopsis.)—ED.
+
+[45] Magnalia I. 495.
+
+[46] Essays, VIII.
+
+[47] For the Journal of Mr. Higginson’s Voyage, see Hutchinson’s
+Collection of Papers, page 32.
+
+[48] That is fighting men.
+
+[49] 1617.
+
+[50] Or Naumkeag. Salem.
+
+[51] See Smith & Choules’ Hist. Miss. 1832, Vol. II.
+
+[52] “Thou shall not deliver unto his master the servant which is
+escaped,” &c.
+
+[53] Those who are interested in the subjects referred to in other
+petitions of Mr. Eliot may find those petitions as follows:
+
+Petition that the Indians may have more land, Mass. State Papers, 30,
+page 31.
+
+Petition in relation to exchange of land with the Indians, do. do. page
+81.
+
+Statement of John Eliot respecting lands, do. do. pp. 99, 100.
+
+Complains of wrong done to the Nipmucks by the Narragansetts, do. do.
+page 138.
+
+Gookin’s and Eliot’s petition for lands for the Christian Indians, do.
+do. p. 286.
+
+There are also some original MSS. of Mr. Eliot’s in the Hutchinson papers
+in the Library of the Mass. Historical Society, but they are somewhat
+illegible and of no special pertinency to the present work.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79004 ***