CHAPTER I. JOHN ELIOT, THE APOSTLE OF THE RED INDIANS.

Transcribed from the 184 Macmillan & Co. edition by David Price, email

ccx074@pglaf.org

PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS,

or

Recent Workers in the Mission field.

BY C. M. YONGE,

_Author of_ "_The Heir of Radclyffe_."

{i:Portrait of Reginald Heber: p0.jpg}

London:

MACMILLAN & CO

1874.

INTRODUCTION.

It has been my endeavour in the ensuing narratives to bring together such

of the more distinguished Missionaries of the English and American

nations as might best illustrate the character and growth of Mission work

in the last two centuries. It is impossible to make it a real history of

the Missions of modern times. If I could, I would have followed in the

track of Mr. Maclear's admirable volume, but the field is too wide, the

material at once too numerous and too scattered, and the account of the

spread of the Gospel in the distant parts of the earth has yet to be

written in volumes far exceeding the bulk of those allotted to the

"Sunday Library."

Two large classes of admirable Missions have been purposely

avoided,--namely, those of the Jesuits in Japan, China, and North and

South America, and those of the Moravians in Greenland, the United

States, and Africa. These are noble works, but they are subjects apart,

and our narratives deal with men exclusively of British blood, with the

exception of Schwartz, whose toils were so entirely accepted and adopted

by the Church of England, that he cannot but be reckoned among her

ambassadors. The object, then, has been to throw together such

biographies as are most complete, most illustrative, and have been found

most inciting to stir up others--representative lives, as far as

possible--from the time when the destitution of the Red Indians first

stirred the heart of John Eliot, till the misery of the hunted negro

brought Charles Mackenzie to the banks of the fever-haunted Zambesi.

We think it will be found that, so far from being the talking,

exaggerating, unpractical men that the critical and popular mind is apt

to suppose, these labourers were in general eminently practical and hard-

working. They seem to us to range themselves into three classes: one,

stirred up by the sight of the destitution before their eyes, and quietly

trying to supply those needs; one, inspired by fervid zeal to devote

themselves; and one, selected by others, taking that selection as a call,

and toiling as a duty, as they would have toiled at any other duty set

before them. Each and all have their place, and fulfil the work. The

hindrances and drawbacks are generally not in the men themselves, nor in

the objects of their labour, but first and foremost in the almost uniform

hostility of the colonists around, who are used to consider the dark

races as subjects for servitude, and either despise or resent any attempt

at raising them in the scale; and next, in the extreme difficulty of

obtaining means. This it is that has more than anything tended to bring

Mission work into disrepute. Many people have no regular system nor

principle of giving--the much-needed supplies can only be charmed out of

their pockets by sensational accounts, such as the most really

hard-working and devoted men cannot prevail on themselves to pour forth;

and the work of collection is left to any of the rank and file who have

the power of speech, backed by articles where immediate results may be

dwelt upon to satisfy those who will not sow in faith and wait patiently.

And the Societies that do their best to regulate and collect the funds

raised by those who give, whether on impulse or principle, are

necessarily managed by home committees, who ought to unite the qualities

of men of business with an intimate knowledge of the needs and

governments of numerous young churches, among varied peoples, nations,

and languages, each in an entirely abnormal state; and, moreover, to deal

with those great men who now and then rise to fulfil great tasks, and

cannot be judged by common rules. Thus it is that home Societies are

often to be reckoned among the trials of Missionaries.

But we will not dwell on such shortcomings, and will rather pass on to

what we had designed as the purpose of our present introduction; namely,

to supplement the information which the biographical form of our work has

necessitated us to leave imperfect, respecting the Missions as well as

the men.

Of the Red Indians who first stirred the compassion of John Eliot, there

is little that is good to tell, or rather there is little good to tell of

the White man's treatment of them. Self-government by the stronger

people always falls hard on the weaker, and Mission after Mission has

been extinguished by the enmity of the surrounding Whites and the

corruption and decay of the Indians. A Moravian Mission has been

actually persecuted. Every here and there some good man has arisen and

done a good work on those immediately around him, and at the present time

there are some Indians living upon the reserves in the western part of

the continent, fairly civilized, settled, and Christianized, and only

diminishing from that law of their physical nature that forbids them to

flourish without a wilderness in which to roam.

But between the long-settled States of America and those upon the shores

of the Pacific, lies a territory where the Indian is still a wild and

savage man, and where hatred and slaughter prevail. The Government at

Washington would fain act a humane part, and set apart reserves of land

and supplies, but the agents through which the transactions are carried

on have too often proved unfaithful, and palmed off inferior goods on the

Indians, or brought up old debts against them; and in the meantime mutual

injuries work up the settlers and the Red men to such a pitch of

exasperation, that horrid cruelties are perpetrated on the one side, and

on the other the wild men are shot down as pitilessly as beasts of prey,

while the travellers and soldiers who live in daily watch and ward

against the "wily savage" learn to stigmatize all pity for him as a sort

of sentimentalism sprung from Cooper's novels.

Still, where there is peace, good men make their way, and with blessed

effect. We wish we had room for the records of the Bishopric of

Minnesota, and the details of the work among the Indians; more especially

how, when a rising was contemplated to massacre the White settlers all

along the border, a Christian Indian travelled all night to give warning;

and how, on another occasion, no less than four hundred White women and

children were saved by the interposition of four Christian Indian chiefs.

Perhaps the Church has never made so systematic an effort upon the

Indians as in Minnesota, and it is to be hoped that there may be some

success.

For the need of system seems to me one of the great morals to be deduced

from the lives I have here collected. I confess that I began them with

the unwilling belief that greater works had been effected by persons

outside the pale of the Church than by those within; but as I have gone

on, the conviction has grown on me that even though the individuals were

often great men, their works lacked that permanency and grasp that Church

work, as such, has had.

The equality of rank in the ministry of other bodies has prevented the

original great founders from being invested with the power that is really

needed in training and disciplining inferior and more inexperienced

assistants, and produces a want of compactness and authority which has

disastrous effects in movements of emergency. Moreover, the lack of

forms causes a deficiency of framework for religion to attach itself to,

and this is almost fatal to dealing with unintellectual minds.

On the whole, the East Indian Missions have prospered best. Schwartz was

the very type of a founder, with his quiet, plodding earnestness, and

power of being generally valuable; and the impression he made had not had

time to die away before the Episcopate brought authority to deal with the

difficulties he had left. Martyn was, like Brainerd before him, one of

the beacons of the cause, and did more by his example than by actual

teaching; and the foundation of the See of Calcutta gave stability to the

former efforts. Except Heber, the Bishops of the Indian See were not

remarkable men, but their history has been put together as a whole for

the sake of the completion of the subject, as a sample of the

difficulties of the position, and likewise because of the steady progress

of the labours there recorded.

The Serampore brethren are too notable to be passed over, if only for the

memorable fact that Carey the cobbler lighted the missionary fire

throughout England and America at a time when the embers had become so

extinct that our Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had to borrow

workers from Denmark and Germany. Indeed, Martyn's zeal was partly

lighted by Carey, though the early termination of his labours has forced

me to place his biography before that of the longer-lived Baptist

friends--both men of curious and wonderful powers, but whose history

shows the disadvantages of the Society government, and whose achievements

were the less permanent in consequence. The Burmese branch of their work

is chiefly noticeable for the characters and adventures of Dr. Judson and

his three wives, and for the interesting display of Buddhism in contact

with Christianity. According to the statistics in an American Missionary

Dictionary, the work they founded has not fallen to the ground either at

Moulmein or Rangoon; while there has also sprung up a hopeful English

Church Mission in the same quarter. The last thing I saw about it was a

mention of the neatness and dexterity of Burmese girls as needlewomen.

Samuel Marsden may be called the patriarch of Australasian Christianity.

There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed

Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their

masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand. His

foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot

dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a

subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out

of it, has not yet seen its first generation.

The Polynesian work, of which John Williams was the martyr and the

representative man, has chiefly been carried on by the London Mission. It

has always been a principle with the Missionaries of the Anglican Church,

whose centre has been first New Zealand, then Norfolk Island, never to

enter upon any islands pre-occupied by Christian teachers of any

denomination, since there is no lack of wholly unoccupied ground, without

perplexing the spirit of the natives with the spectacle of "our unhappy

divisions;" and thus while Melanesia is for the most part left to the

Church, Polynesia is in the hands of the London Mission. Much good has

been effected. The difficulty is that, for want of supervision,

individual Missionaries are too much left to themselves, and are in

danger of becoming too despotic in their islands. At least such is the

impression they sometimes give to officers of the navy. French

aggression has much disturbed them both in Tahiti and in the Loyalty

Islands, and the introduction of Roman Catholic priests into their

territory is bitterly resented. On the whole, observers tolerably

impartial think that the civilization which these married teachers bring

with them has a happier effect as an example and stimulus to the natives

than the solitary ascetic priest,--a true, self-devoted saint indeed but

unable to win the attention of the people in their present condition. In

India, where asceticism is the test of sanctity even among the heathen,

the most self-denying preacher has the best chance of being respected;

but in those luxurious islets, poverty and plainness of living, without

the power of showing the arts of life, get despised. If the priests

could bring their pomp of worship, and large bands of brethren or sisters

to reclaim the waste, they might tell upon the minds of the people, but

at present they go forth few and poor, and are little heeded in their

isolation. Unfortunately, too, the antagonism between them and the

London Mission is desperate. The latter hold the tenets perhaps the most

widely removed from Catholicism of any Protestant sect, and are mostly

not educated enough to understand the opposite point of view, so that

each party would almost as soon see the natives unconverted as joining

the hostile camp: and precious time is wasted in warrings the one against

the other.

The most real enemies to Christianity in these seas are, however, the

lawless traders, the English and American whalers and sandal-wood

dealers, who bring uncontrolled vice and violence where they put in for

water; while they, on the one hand, corrupt the natives, on the other

they provoke them into reprisals on the next White men who fall in their

way. That the Polynesians are good sailors and not bad workmen, has

proved another misfortune, for they are often kidnapped by unscrupulous

captains to supply the deficiency of labour in some of the Australasian

settlements. Everywhere it seems to be the unhappy fact that Christian

men are the most fatal hinderers of God's word among the heathen.

Yet most of the more accessible of the isles have a resident missionary,

and keep up schools and chapels. Their chiefs have accepted a Christian

code, and the horrid atrocities of cannibalism have been entirely given

up, though there is still much evil prevalent, especially in those which

have convenient harbours, and are in the pathway of ships. The Samoan

islanders have a college, managed by an English minister and his wife,

where teachers are educated not only to much good discipline, but to much

real refinement, and go forth as admirable and self-devoted heralds of

the Gospel into other isles. They have furnished willing martyrs, and

many have been far beyond praise. One lack, however, seems to be of that

definite formularies, a deficiency which leaves the teaching to depend

over much on the individual impressions of the teacher.

The chief remnants of cannibalism are to be found in the New Hebrides.

The leader of the attack on John Williams is still alive at Erromango,

and the savage defiant nature of this people has never been subdued. They

belong more to the Melanesian than the Polynesian races. The first are

more like the Negro, the second more like the Malay. The Melanesian

Missions are in the charge of the Missionary Bishop, John Coleridge

Patteson, who went out as a priest with the Bishop of New Zealand in

1855.

The New Zealand story, as I have said, cannot be told in the lifetime of

the chief actor in it. It is a story of startling success, and then of

disappointment through colonial impracticability. In some points it has

been John Eliot's experience upon a larger scale; but in this case the

political quarrel led to the rise of a savage and murderous sect among

the Maories, a sort of endeavour to combine some features of Christianity

and even Judaism with the old forgotten Paganism, and yet promoting even

cannibalism. It is memorable, however, that not one Maori who had

received Holy Orders has ever swerved from the faith, though the "Hau-

Haus" have led away many hundreds of Christians. Still, a good number

remain loyal and faithful, and hold to the English in the miserable war

which is still raging, provoked by disputes over the sale of land.

The Melanesian Mission was begun from New Zealand; but whereas the isles

are too hot for English constitutions, they can only be visited from the

sea, and lads are brought away to be educated for teachers. New Zealand

proved too cold for these natives of a tropical climate, and the college

has been transplanted to Norfolk Island, where Bishop Patteson has fixed

his head-quarters. One of his converts from Banks's Island has received

Holy Orders, and this latter group seems in good train to afford a supply

of native ministers to islands where few Englishmen could take up a

permanent abode.

The African Missions would afford much detail, but want of space has

prevented me from mentioning the Rev. George Leacock, the West Indian

clergyman, who gave up everything when already an old man to pave the way

of the Gospel in the Pongas. And the Cape still retains its first

Bishop, so that it is only on the side of Natal and Zululand, where the

workers have passed away, that the narrative can be complete. But the

African Church is extending its stakes in Graham's Town, Orange River,

Zululand, and Zanzibar; and while the cry from East, West, and South is

still "Come over and help us," we cannot but feel that, in spite of many

a failure, many a disappointment, many a fatal error, still the Gospel

trumpet is being blown, and not blown in vain, even in the few spots

whose history, for the sake of their representative men, I have here

tried to record. Of the Canadian and Columbian Indian Missions, of the

Sandwich Isles, and of many more, I have here been able to say nothing;

but I hope that the pictures of these labourers in the cause may tend to

some understanding, not only of their toils, but of their joys, and may

show that they were men not easily deceived, and thoroughly to be trusted

in their own reports of their progress.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.

_March_ 16_th_, 1871.

CHAPTER I. JOHN ELIOT, THE APOSTLE OF THE RED INDIANS.

Since the great efforts that Britain had made between the years 500 and

1000 to bring the knowledge of the truth into the still heathen portions

of the Continent,--since the days of Columban and Gal, of Boniface and

Willibrord,--there had been a cessation of missionary enterprise. The

known portions of the world were either Christian, or were in the hands

of the Mahommedans; and no doubt much of the adventurous spirit which,

united with religious enthusiasm, forms the missionary, found vent in the

Crusades, and training in the military orders. The temper of the age,

and the hopelessness of converting a Mahommedan, made the good men of the

third 500 years use their swords rather than their tongues against the

infidel; and it was only in the case of men possessing such rare natures

as those of Francis of Assisi, or Raymond Lull, that the possibility of

trying to bring over a single Saracen to the faith was imagined.

It was in the revival from the Paganism with which classical tastes had

infected the Church, that the spirit of missions again awoke, stimulated,

of course, by the wide discoveries of fresh lands that were dawning upon

the earth. If from 1000 to 1500 the progress of the Gospel was confined

to the borders of the Slavonic nation, the space of time from 1500

onwards has been one of constant and unwearied effort to raise the

standard of the Cross in the new worlds beyond the Atlantic.

Spain, Portugal, France, as nations, and the great company of the Jesuits

as one mighty brotherhood, were the foremost in the great undertaking;

but their doings form a history of their own, and our business is with

the efforts of our own Church and country in the same great cause.

Our work was not taken up so soon as theirs, partly because the spirit of

colonization did not begin amongst us so early as in Spain and Portugal,

and partly because the foundations of most of our colonies were laid by

private enterprise, rather than by public adventure, and moreover some of

the earlier ones in unsettled times.

It may be reckoned as one peculiarity of Englishmen, that their greatest

works are usually not the outcome of enthusiastic design, but rather grow

upon them by degrees, as they are led in paths that they have not known,

and merely undertake the duty that stands immediately before them, step

by step.

The young schoolmaster at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford, who decided on

following in the track of the Pilgrim Fathers to New England, went simply

to enjoy liberty of conscience, and to be free to minister according to

his own views, and never intended to become the Apostle of the Red

Indians.

Nothing is more remarkable than the recoil from neglected truths. When,

even in the earliest ages of the Church, the Second Commandment was

supposed to be a mere enhancing of the first, and therefore curtailed and

omitted, there was little perception that this would lead to popular,

though not theoretical, idolatry, still less that this law, when again

brought forward, would be pushed by scrupulous minds to the most strange

and unexpected consequences, to the over-powering of all authority of

ancient custom, and to the repudiation of everything symbolical.

This resolution against acknowledging any obligation to use either symbol

or ceremony, together with the opposition of the hierarchy, led to the

rejection of the traditional usages of the Church and the previously

universal interpretation of Scripture in favour of three orders in the

ministry. The elders, or presbytery, were deemed sufficient; and when,

after having for many years been carried along, acquiescing, in the

stream of the Reformation, the English Episcopacy tried to make a stand,

the coercion was regarded as a return to bondage, and the more ardent

spirits sought a new soil on which to enjoy the immunities that they

regarded as Christian freedom.

The _Mayflower_ led the way in 1620, and the news of the success of the

first Pilgrim Fathers impelled many others to follow in their track.

Among these was John Eliot. He had been born in 1604 at Nasing in Essex,

and had been bred up by careful parents, full of that strong craving for

theological studies that characterized the middle classes in the reign of

James I.

Nothing more is known of his youth except that he received a university

education, and, like others who have been foremost in missionary labours,

had a gift for the comparison of languages and study of grammar. He

studied the Holy Scriptures in the original tongues with the zeal that

was infused into all scholars by the knowledge that the Authorized

Version was in hand, and by the stimulus that was afforded by the promise

of a copy of the first edition to him who should detect and correct an

error in the type.

The usual fate of a scholar was to be either schoolmaster or clergyman,

if not both, and young Eliot commenced his career as an assistant to Mr.

John Hooker, at the Grammar School at Little Baddow. He considered this

period to have been that in which the strongest religious impressions

were made upon him. John Hooker was a thorough-going Puritan of great

piety and rigid scruples, and instructed his household diligently in

godliness, both theoretical and practical. Eliot became anxious to enter

the ministry, but the reaction of Church principles, which had set in

with James I., was an obstacle in his way; and imagining all ceremonial

not observed by the foreign Protestants to be oppressions on Christian

liberty, it became the strongest resolution of the whole party to accept

nothing of all these rites, and thus ordination became impossible to

them, while the laws were stringent against any preaching or praying

publicly by any unordained person. The instruction of youth was likewise

only permitted to those who were licensed by the bishop of the diocese;

and Mr. Hooker, failing to fulfil the required tests, was silenced, and,

although forty-seven clergy petitioned on his behalf, was obliged to flee

to Holland.

This decided Eliot, then twenty-seven years of age, on leaving England,

and seeking a freer sphere of action in the newly-founded colonies of New

England, which held a charter from Government. He took leave of his

betrothed, of whom we only know that her Christian name was Anne

(gracious), and that her nature answered to her name, and sailed on the

3rd of November, 1631, in the ship _Lyon_, with a company of sixty

persons, among whom were the family of Governor Winthrop.

They landed at Boston, then newly rising into a city over its harbour,

and there he found his services immediately required to conduct the

worship in the congregation during the absence of the pastor, who had

gone to England finally to arrange his affairs.

On his return, Mr. Eliot was found to be in such favour, that the

Bostonites strove to retain him as an assistant minister; but this he

refused, knowing that many friends in England wished to found a separate

settlement of their own; and in less than a year this arrangement was

actually carried out, a steep hill in the forest-land was selected, and a

staunch band of East Saxons, bringing with them the gracious Anne, came

forth. John Eliot was married, elected pastor, ordained, after

Presbyterian custom, by the laying on of the hands of the ministers in

solemn assembly, and then took possession of the abode prepared for him

and of the building on the top of the hill, where his ministrations were

to be conducted.

These old fathers of the United States had found a soil, fair and well

watered; and though less rich than the wondrous alluvial lands to the

west, yet with capacities to yield them plentiful provision, when cleared

from the vast forest that covered it. Nor had they come for the sake of

wealth or luxury; the earnestness of newly-awakened, and in some degree

persecuted, religion was upon them, and they regarded a sufficiency of

food and clothing as all that they had a right to seek. Indeed, the

spirit of ascetiscism was one of their foremost characteristics. Eliot

was a man who lived in constant self-restraint as to both sleep and diet,

and, on all occasions of special prayer, prefaced them by a rigorous

fast--and he seems to have been in a continual atmosphere of devotion.

One of his friends objected (oddly enough as it seems to us) to his

stooping to pick up a weed in his garden. "Sir, you tell us we must be

heavenly-minded."

"It is true," he said, "and this is no impediment unto that; for, were I

sure to go to heaven to-morrow, I would do what I do to-day."

And, like many a good Christian, his outward life was to him full of

allegory. Going up the steep hill to his church, he said, "This is very

like the way to heaven. 'Tis up hill! The Lord in His grace fetch us

up;" and spying a bush near him, he added, "And truly there are thorns

and briars in the way, too."

He had great command of his flock at Roxbury, and was a most diligent

preacher and catechiser, declaring, in reference to the charge to St.

Peter, that "the care of the lambs is one-third part of the charge to the

Church of God." An excellent free school was founded at Roxbury, which

was held in great repute in the time of Cotton Mather, to whom we owe

most of our knowledge of this good man. The biography is put together in

the peculiar fashion of that day, not chronologically, but under heads

illustrating his various virtues, so that it is not easy to pick out the

course of his undertakings. Before passing on to that which especially

distinguished him, we must give an anecdote or two from the "article"

denominated "His exquisite charity." His wife had become exceedingly

skilful in medicine and in dealing with wounds, no small benefit in a

recent colony scant of doctors, and she gave her aid freely to all who

stood in need of help. A person who had taken offence at something in

one of his sermons, and had abused him passionately, both in speech and

in writing, chanced to wound himself severely, whereupon he at once sent

his wife to act as surgeon; and when the man, having recovered, came to

return thanks and presents, he would accept nothing, but detained him to

a friendly meal, "and," says Mather, "by this carriage he mollified and

conquered the stomach of his reviler."

"He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring a loud

_Courfew Bell_ wherever he saw the fires of animosity." When he heard

any ministers complain that such and such in their flocks were too

difficult for them, the strain of his answer was still: "Brother, compass

them;" and, "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words,

'bear, forbear, forgive.'"

Once, when at an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers containing

matters of difference and contention between two parties--who, he

thought, should rather unite--was laid on the table, Eliot rose up and

put the whole upon the fire, saying, "Brethren, wonder not at that which

I have done: I did it on my knees this morning before I came among you."

But that "exquisite charity" seems a little one-sided in another anecdote

recorded of him, when "a godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr. Foster,

with his son, was taken captive by his Turkish enemies." {f:6} Public

prayers were offered for his release: but when tidings were received that

the "Bloody Prince" who had enslaved him had resolved that no captive

should be liberated in his own lifetime, and the distressed friends

concluded, "Our hope is lost;" Mr. Eliot, "in some of his prayers before

a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged, 'Heavenly Father, work

for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster, and if the prince which

detains him will not, as they say, release him so long as himself lives,

Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him, and glorify Thyself

upon him.' And now behold the answer. The poor captiv'd gentleman

quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and

brings us news that the prince, which had hitherto held him, was come to

an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty."

"And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest

suppliant for his friend. But the "cruel prince" was far away out of

sight, and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the

heathen who came into immediate contact with him. Indeed, he was the

first to make any real effort for their conversion.

The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the

coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of

the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.

The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall,

well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois

nation. They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws

cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the

buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every

imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they

themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting,

beneath their dignity. Their nature had much that was high and noble;

and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's vices

or his cruelty. They were neither the outcast savages nor the abject

inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants, but far

better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of the

magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his word,

and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent. It was in mercy and

tenderness that the character was the most deficient. The whole European

instinct of forbearance and respect to woman was utterly wanting,--the

squaws were the most degraded of slaves; and to the captive the most

barbarous cruelty was shown. Experience has shown that there is

something in the nature of the Red Indian which makes him very slow of

being able to endure civilization, renders wandering almost a necessity

to his constitution, and generally makes him, when under restraint, even

under the most favourable conditions, dwindle away, lose all his fine

natural endowments, and become an abject and often a vicious being. The

misfortune has been that, with a few honourable exceptions, it has not

been within the power of the better and more thoughtful portion of man to

change the Red Indian's vague belief in his "Great Spirit" to a more

systematic and stringent acceptance of other eternal verities and their

consequent obligations, and at the same time leave him free to lead the

roving life of the patriarchs of old; since, as Scripture itself shows

us, it takes many generations to train the wandering hunter to a tiller

of the soil, or a dweller in cities; and the shock to the wild man of a

sudden change is almost always fatal both to mental and bodily health.

This conclusion, however, has been a matter of slow and sad experience,

often confused by the wretched effects of the vice, barbarity, and

avarice of the settler and seaman, which in many cases have counteracted

the effects of the missionary, and accelerated the extinction of the

native.

In John Eliot's time, there was all to hope; and the community of

Englishmen with whom he lived, though stern, fierce, intolerant, and at

times cruel in their intolerance, did not embarrass his work nor corrupt

the Indians by the grosser and coarser vices, when, in his biographer's

words, "our Eliot was on such ill terms with the devil as to alarm him

with sounding the silver trumpets of Heaven in his territories, and make

some noble and zealous endeavours towards ousting him of his ancient

possessions." The Pilgrim Fathers had obtained their land by fair

purchase, _i.e._ if purchase could be fair where there was no real mutual

understanding; and a good deal of interest had been felt in England in

the religious state of the Red men. The charter to the colony had

enforced their conversion on the settlers, and Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath

and Wells, declared that but for his old age and infirmities he would

have headed a mission to America for the purpose. Had he done so,

perhaps something systematic might have been attempted. As it was the

new colonists had too severe a struggle with their own difficulties to

attend to their heathen surroundings, even though the seal of their

colony of Massachusetts represented an Indian with the label in his

mouth, "Come over and help us." A few conversions had taken place, but

rather owing to the interest in the White men's worship taken by

individual Indians, than to any efforts on the part of the settlers.

Sixteen years, however, passed without overt aggression, though already

was beginning the sad story that is repeated wherever civilized man

extends his frontiers. The savage finds his hunting-ground broken up,

the White man's farm is ruined by the game or the chase, the luxuries of

civilization excite the natives' desires, mistrust leads to injury,

retaliation follows, and then war.

In 1634, only two years after Eliot's arrival, two gentlemen, with their

boat's crew, were killed on the Connecticut river, and some of the

barbarities took place that we shall too often have to notice--attacks by

the natives on solitary dwellings or lonely travellers, and increasing

anger on the part of the colonists, until they ceased to regard their

enemies as fellow-creatures.

However, the Pequots were likewise at war with the Dutch and with the

Narragansets, or river Indians, and they sent a deputation to endeavour

to make peace with the English, and secure their assistance against these

enemies. They were appointed to return for their answer in a month's

time; and after consultation with the clergy, Mr. Dudley and Mr. Ludlow,

the Governor and Deputy-Governor, decided on making a treaty with them,

on condition of their delivering up the murderers of the Englishmen, and

paying down forty beaver and thirty otter skins, besides 400 fathoms of

wampum, _i.e._ strings of the small whelks and Venus-shells that served

as current coin, a fathom being worth about five shillings.

It surprises us that Eliot's name first appears in connection with the

Indians as an objector to this treaty, and in a sermon too, at Roxbury;

not on any grounds of injustice to the Indians, but because it had been

conducted by the magistrates without reference to the people, which was

an offence to his views of the republican rights to be exercised in the

colony. So serious was his objection deemed, that a deputation was

appointed to explain the principles on which Government had acted, and

thus convince Mr. Eliot, which they did so effectually that he retracted

his censure in his next sermon.

Probably this was what first awakened John Eliot's interest in the Red-

skins; but for the next few years, in spite of the treaty, there was a

good deal of disturbance on the frontier, and some commission of

cruelties, until the colonists became gradually roused into fury. Some

tribes were friendly with them; and, uniting with these the Mohicans and

river Indians, under the conduct of Uncas, the Mohican chief, seventy-

seven Englishmen made a raid into the Pequot country and drove them from

it. Then, in 1637, a battle, called "the Great Swamp Fight," took place

between the English, Dutch, and friendly Indians on the one hand, and the

Pequots on the other. It ended in the slaughter of seven hundred of the

Pequots and thirteen of their Sachems. The wife of one of the Sachems

was taken, and as she had protected two captive English girls she was

treated with great consideration, and was much admired for her good sense

and modesty; but the other prisoners were dispersed among the settlers to

serve as slaves, and a great number of the poor creatures were shipped

off to the West India Islands to work on the sugar plantations.

Those who had escaped the battle were hunted down by the Mohicans and

Narragansets, who continually brought their scalps in to the English

towns, and at last they were reduced to sue for peace when only 200

braves were still living. These, with their families, were amalgamated

with the Mohicans and Narragansets, and expelled from their former

territory, on which the English settled. An annual tribute of a length

of wampum, for every male in the tribe, varying according to age and

rank, was paid to the English, and their supremacy was so entirely

established that nearly forty years of peace succeeded.

Eliot's missionary enterprise, Mather allows, was first inspired by the

"remarkable zeal of the Romish missionaries," by whom he probably means

the French Jesuits, who were working with much effect in the settlements

in Louisiana, first occupied in the time of Henri IV. Another stimulus

came from the expressions in the Royal Charter which had granted licence

for the establishment of the colony, namely, "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, in our Royal

intention and the Adventurers' free profession, is the principal end of

the Plantation."

That the devil himself was the Red men's master, and came to their

assistance when summoned by the incantations of their medicine men, was

the universal belief of the colonists, in corroboration of which the

following story is given:--"The Indians in their wars with us, finding a

sore inconvenience by our dogs, which would make a sad yelling if in the

night they scented the approaches of them, they sacrificed a dog to the

devil, after which no English dog would bark at an Indian for divers

months ensuing."

In the intended contest Mr. Eliot began by preaching and making

collections from the English settlers, and likewise "he hires a native to

teach him this exotick language, and, with a laborious care and skill,

reduces it into a grammar, which afterwards he published. There is a

letter or two of our alphabet which the Indians never had in theirs;

though there were enough of the dog in their temper, there can scarce be

found an R in their language, . . . but, if their alphabet be short, I am

sure the words composed of it are long enough to tire the patience of any

scholar in the world; they are _Sesquipedalia verba_, of which their

linguo is composed. For instance, if I were to translate our Loves, it

must be nothing shorter than _Noowomantamoonkanunonush_. Or to give my

reader a longer word, _Kremmogkodonattootummootiteaonganunnnash_ is, in

English, our _question_."

The worthy Mr. Mather adds, with a sort of apology, that, having once

found that the demons in a possessed young woman understood Latin, Greek,

and Hebrew, he himself tried them with this Indian tongue, and "the

demons did seem as if they understood it." Indeed, he thinks the words

must have been growing ever since the confusion of Babel! The fact

appears to be, that these are what are now called agglutinate languages,

and, like those of all savage tribes, in a continual course of

alteration--also often using a long periphrastic description to convey an

idea or form a name. A few familiar instances will occur, such as

_Niagara_, "thunder of water."

This formidable language Mr. Eliot--the anagram of whose name, Mather

appropriately observes, was _Toils_--mastered with the assistance of a

"pregnant-witted Indian," who had been a servant in an English family. By

the help of his natural turn for philology, he was able to subdue this

instrument to his great and holy end,--with what difficulty may be

estimated from the sentence with which he concluded his grammar: "Prayer

and pains through faith in CHRIST JESUS will do anything."

It was in the year 1646, while Cromwell was gradually obtaining a

preponderating influence in England, and King Charles had gone to seek

protection in the Scottish army, that John Eliot, then in his

forty-second year, having thus prepared himself, commenced his campaign.

He had had a good deal of conversation with individual Indians who came

about the settlement at Roxbury, and who perceived the advantages of some

of the English customs. They said they believed that in forty years the

Red and White men would be all one, and were really anxious for this

consummation. When Eliot declared that the superiority of the White race

came from their better knowledge of God, and offered to come and instruct

them, they were full of joy and gratitude; and on the 28th of October,

1646, among the glowing autumn woods, a meeting of Indians was convoked,

to which Mr. Eliot came with three companions. They were met by a chief

named Waban, or the Wind, who had a son at an English school, and was

already well disposed towards them, and who led them to his wigwam, where

the principal men of the tribe awaited them.

"All the old men of the village,

All the warriors of the nation,

All the Jossakeeds, the prophets,

The magicians, the Wabenos,

And the medicine men, the medas,

Came to bid the strangers welcome.

'It is well,' they said, 'O brothers,

That you came so far to see us.'

In a circle round the doorway,

With their pipes they sat in silence,

Waiting to behold the strangers,

Waiting to receive their message,

Till the Black Robe chief, the pale face,

From the wigwam came to greet them,

Stammering in his speech a little,

Speaking words yet unfamiliar."

Mr. Eliot prayed in English, and then preached on the 9th and 10th verses

of the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet is bid to call the

Breath of God from the four winds of heaven to give life to the dry bones

around. It so happened that the Indian word for breath or wind was

_Waban_, and this made a great impression, and was afterwards viewed as

an omen.

The preacher worked up from the natural religion, of which this fine race

already had an idea, to the leading Christian truths.

Then the Black Robe chief, the prophet,

Told his message to the people,

Told the purport of his mission,

Told them of the Virgin Mary,

And her blessed Son, the Saviour:

How in distant lands and ages

He had lived on earth as we do;

How He fasted, prayed, and laboured;

How the Jews, the tribe accursed,

Mocked Him, scourged Him, crucified Him;

How He rose from where they laid Him,

Walked again with His disciples,

And ascended into heaven."

The sermon lasted an hour and a quarter, but the Indians are a dignified

and patient people, prone to long discourses themselves, and apt to

listen to them from others. When he finally asked if they had

understood, many voices replied that they had; and, on his encouraging

them to ask questions, many intelligent inquiries were made. The whole

conference lasted three hours, and Mr. Eliot was invited to come again,

which he did at intervals of about a fortnight, and again with good

promise.

In one of these meetings they asked, very reasonably, why the English

called them Indians, a question it could not have been easy to answer.

The Powaws, or priests, began to make some opposition, but Waban was

continually going about among the people, repeating portions of the

instructions he had received, and teaching his friends to pray--for some

had at first supposed that the English God might not be addressed in the

native tongue, but only in English.

After some little time, he thought the Indians ripe for being taught to

live a settled life, and obtained for his congregation--"the praying

Indians," as they were commonly called--a grant of the site of his first

instructions. The place was named "Rejoicing,"--in Indian, a word that

soon got corrupted into Nonantum; and, under Mr. Eliot's directions, they

divided their grounds with trenches and stone walls, for which he gave

them tools to the best of his ability. They built wigwams of a superior

construction, and the women learnt to spin; there was a continual

manufacture of brushes, eel-pots, and baskets, which were sold in the

English towns, together with turkeys, fish, venison, and fruits,

according to the season. At hay and harvest times they would hire

themselves out to work for their English neighbours, but were thought

unable or unwilling to do what sturdy Englishmen regarded as a fair day's

work.

A second settlement of praying Indians followed at Neponset, around the

wigwam of a Sachem named Cutshamakin, a man of rank much superior to

Waban. He had already been in treaty with the English, and had promised

to observe the Ten Commandments, but had unhappily learnt also from the

English that love of drink which was the bane of the Indian; and while

Mr. Eliot was formally instructing the family, one of the sons, a boy of

fifteen, when learning the fifth commandment, persisted in saying only

"honour thy mother," and, when admonished, declared that his father had

given him fire-water, which had intoxicated him, and had besides been

passionate and violent with him. The boy had always been a rude,

contumacious fellow, and at the next lecture day Mr. Eliot turned to the

Sachem, and lamented over these faults, but added that the first step to

reforming him would be for his father to set the example by a confession

of his own sins, which were neither few nor light.

The Sachem's pride was subdued. He stood up and openly declared his

offences, lamenting over them with deep sincerity. The boy was so

touched that he made humble confession in his turn, and entreated

forgiveness. His parents were so much moved that they wept aloud, and

the board on which Cutshamakin stood was wet with his tears. He was

softened then, but, poor man, he said: "My heart is but very little

better than it was, and I am afraid it will be as bad again as it was

before. I sometimes wish I might die before I be so bad again!"

Poor Cutshamakin! he estimated himself truly. The Puritan discipline,

which aimed at acting on the conduct rather through the conscience and

feelings than by means of grace, never entirely subdued him, and he

remained a fitfully fierce, and yet repentant, savage to the end of his

life. His squaw must have been a clever woman; for, being publicly

reprimanded by the Indian preacher Nabanton, for fetching water on a

Sunday, she told him after the meeting that he had done more harm by

raising the discussion than she had done by fetching the water.

Sunday was impressed upon the natives with all the strictness peculiar to

the British Calvinists in their reaction from the ale-feasts, juggleries,

and merry-makings of the almost pagan fifteenth century. It is never

hard to make savage converts observe a day of rest; they are generally

used to keep certain seasons already, and, as Mr. Eliot's Indians

honestly said, they do so little work at any time that a weekly

abstinence from it comes very easily. At Nonantum, indeed, they seem to

have emulated the Pharisees themselves in their strictness. Waban got

into trouble for having a racoon killed to entertain two unexpected

guests; and a case was brought up at public lecture of a man who, finding

his fire nearly gone out, had violated the Sabbath by splitting one piece

of dry wood with his axe.

But the "weightier matters of the law" were not by any means forgotten,

and there was a continual struggle to cure the converts of their new vice

of drunkenness, and their old habit of despising and maltreating their

squaws, who in the Christian villages were raised to a state far less

degraded; for any cruelty or tyranny towards them was made matter of

public censure and confession in the assembly.

Several more distant journeys were taken by Mr. Eliot, some of them to

the Merrimac River to see a powerful old Sachem of a great age, named

Passaconaway, who his people believed to be able to make green leaves

grow in winter, trees dance, and water burn.

He was so much afraid of the Missionary that he fled away the first time

he heard he was coming, probably thinking him a great sorcerer; but the

next time he remained, listened eagerly, expressed his intention of

praying, and tried to induce Mr. Eliot to settle in his district. He

lived to a great age, and left a charge with his children never to

contend with the English, having convinced himself that the struggle was

hopeless. Several other Sachems gave a sort of attention: and it

appeared that the way had been in some degree prepared by a French

priest, who had been wrecked on Cape Cod, had been passed from one tribe

to another, and had died among them, but not without having left a

tradition of teaching which was by some identified with Eliot's.

Of one Sachem, Mather tells a story: "While Mr. Eliot was preaching of

Christ unto the other Indians, a demon appeared unto a Prince of the

Eastern Indians in a shape that had some resemblance of Mr. Eliot or of

an English minister, pretending to be the Englishman's God. The spectre

commanded him 'to forbear the drinking of rum and to observe the Sabbath-

day, and to deal justly with his neighbours;' all which things had been

inculcated in Mr. Eliot's ministry, promising therewithal unto him that,

if he did so, at his death his soul should ascend into a happy place,

otherwise descend unto miseries; but the apparition all the while never

said one word about Christ, which was the main subject of Mr. Eliot's

ministry. The Sachem received such an impression from the apparition

that he dealt justly with all men except in the bloody tragedies and

cruelties he afterwards committed on the English in our wars. He kept

the Sabbath-day like a fast, frequently attending in our congregations;

he would not meddle with any rum, though usually his countrymen had

rather die than undergo such a piece of self-denial. That liquor has

merely enchanted them. At last, and not long since, this demon appeared

again unto this pagan, requiring him to kill himself, and assuring him

that he should revive in a day or two, never to die any more. He

thereupon divers times attempted it, but his friends very carefully

prevented it; however, at length he found a _fair_ opportunity for this

_foul_ business, and hanged himself,--you may be sure without his

expected resurrection."

This story, grotesque as it sounds in the solemn simplicity of the worthy

Puritan, is really only an instance of what takes place wherever the

light of the Gospel is held up to men capable of appreciating its

standard of morality, but too proud to bend the spirit to accept the

doctrine of the Cross. The Sachem was but a red-skinned "seeker after

God," an "ape of Christianity," like Marcus Aurelius, and like the many

others we shall meet with who loved darkness rather than light, not so

much because their deeds were evil as because their hearts were proud.

Like all practical men, Eliot found it absolutely necessary to do what he

called "carrying on civility with religion," _i.e._ instructing the

converts in such of the arts of life as would afford them wholesome

industry; but want of means was his great difficulty, and in the middle

of a civil war England was not very likely to supply him.

Still he made his Indians at Nonantum hedge and ditch, plant trees, sow

cornfields, and saw planks; and some good man in England, whose name he

never knew, sent him in 1648 ten pounds for schools among the natives,

half of which he gave to a mistress at Cambridge, and half to a master at

Dorchester, under whom the Indian children made good progress, and he

catechized them himself most diligently by way of teaching both them and

the parents who looked on.

He had by this time translated the Bible, but it remained in manuscript

for want of the means of printing it; and his favourite scheme of

creating an Indian city, with a scriptural government, well out of the

way of temptation from and interference by the English, was also at a

standstill, from his poverty.

He likewise sustained a great loss in his friend Mr. Shepard, who had

worked with him with equal devotion and enthusiasm, but this loss really

led to the fulfilment of his wishes, for Mr. Shepard's papers were sent

home, and aroused such an interest in Calamy and others of the devout

ministers in London, that the needs of the Indians of New England were

brought before Parliament, and an ordinance was passed on the 27th of

July, 1649, for the advancement of civilization and Christianity among

them. Then a corporation was instituted, entitled the Society for the

Propagation of the Gospel in New England, of which Judge Street was the

first president, and Mr. Henry Ashurst the first treasurer, with powers

to receive the collections that the ministers in every parish were

exhorted to make by authority of Parliament, backed up by letters from

the two Universities.

There was a good deal of opposition; people fancied it a new plan of

getting money for Government, and were not at all interested about the

Indians, but money enough was collected to purchase lands worth about

500_l._ or 600_l._ a year, by way of foundation, at a time when the

property of Cavaliers was going cheap, and the Society was able to

undertake the cost of printing Eliot's Bible, as well as of building him

an Indian college, of paying his teachers, and of supplying the greatly

needed tools and other necessaries for his much-desired station.

Still there was a great deal of difficulty and opposition, from the

English dislike and contempt for the Indians, who were judged _en masse_

by the degraded ones who loitered about the settlements, begging and

drinking; as well as from the Powaws or medicine men who found their

dupes escaping, and tried to terrify them by every means by which it was

possible to work upon their superstition. The Sachems, likewise, were

finding out that Christians were less under their tyranny since they had

had a higher standard, and many opposed Eliot violently, trying to drive

him from their villages with threats and menacing gestures, but he calmly

answered, "I am engaged in the work of God, and God is with me. I fear

not all the Sachems in the country. I shall go on with my work. Touch

me if you dare;" nor did he ever fail to keep the most angry in check

while he was present, though they hated him greatly. Uncas, the chief of

the Mohicans, made a regular complaint to Government that Eliot and his

colleagues prayed by name for the conversion of the Mohicans and

Narragansets. Even Cutshamakin, when he heard of the project of an

Indian town, broke out against it with such fury, that all the men in

favour of it cowered and slunk away from his furious howls and

gesticulations. Mr. Eliot was left alone to confront him, and looking

steadily at him told him that, as this was God's work, no fear of him

should hinder it. The savage quailed before him, but afterwards came to

him and stated that his objection was that the praying Indians did not

pay him their tribute. Eliot kindly answered that this had been

complained of before, and that he had preached a sermon enforcing this

duty upon the tribe.

The words were good, said Cutshamakin, but the Indians would not obey

them. So Mr. Eliot, after consultation with the ministers and elders in

Boston, invited the Indians who understood English to hear a sermon

there, and in it the duty of rendering to all their due was fully

enforced. Afterwards, however, the Indians came forward declaring

themselves much surprised and mortified at being accused of not paying

their just duty to their chief; and they specified the service and gifts:

each had rendered twenty bushels of corn, six bushels of rye, fifteen

deer, days spent in hunting, the building of a wigwam, reclaiming two

acres of land; and the amount when added up amazed Mr. Eliot. At his

next lecture, then, he took for his text the rejection by the Saviour of

all the kingdoms of the world, and personally applied it to Cutshamakin,

reproaching him with lust of power and worldly ambition, and warning him

that Satan was tempting him to give up the faith for the sake of

recovering his arbitrary power. The discourse and the conversation that

followed again melted the Sachem, and he repented and retracted, although

he continued an unsafe and unstable man.

At length, in 1651, Mr. Eliot was able to convene his praying Indians and

with them lay the foundation of a town on the banks of Charles River,

about eighteen miles to the south-west of Boston. The spot, as he

believed, had been indicated to him in answer to prayer, and they named

it Natick, or the place of hills. The inhabitants of Nonantum removed

thither, and the work was put in hand. A bridge, eighty feet long and

nine feet wide, had already been laid across the river, entirely by

Indian workmen, under Mr. Eliot's superintendence; and the town was laid

out in three streets, two on one side of the river and one on the other;

the grounds were measured and divided, apple-trees planted, and sowing

begun. The cellars of some of the houses, it is said, remain to the

present day. In the midst was a circular fort, palisaded with trees, and

a large house built in the English style, though with only a day or two

of help from an English carpenter, the lower part of which was to serve

as a place of worship on Sunday, and for a school on other days, the

upper part as a wardrobe and storehouse for valuables, and with a room

partitioned off, and known as "the prophet's chamber," for the use of Mr.

Eliot on his visits to the settlement. Outside were canopies, formed by

mats stretched on poles, one for Mr. Eliot and his attendants, another

for the men, and a third for the women. These were apparently to shelter

a sort of forum, and likewise to supplement the school-chapel in warm

weather. A few English-built houses were raised; but the Indians found

them expensive and troublesome, and preferred the bark wigwams on

improved principles.

The spot was secured to the Indians by the Council of Government, acting

under the Commonwealth at home; but the right of local self-government

was vested in each township; and Eliot, as the guide of his new settlers,

could lead them to what he believed to be a truly scriptural code, such

as he longed to see prevail in his native land. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "the

blessed day in England, when the Word of God shall be their Magna Carta

and chief law book, and all lawyers must be divines to study the

Scripture."

His commencement in carrying out this system was to preach Jethro's

advice to Moses, and thence deduce that the Indians should divide

themselves into hundreds and into tens, and elect rulers for each

division, each tithing man being responsible for the ten under him, each

chief of a hundred for the ten tithings. This was done on the 6th of

August, 1651; and Eliot declared that it seemed to him as if he beheld

the scattered bones he had spoken of in his first sermon to the Indians,

come bone to bone, and a civil political life begin. His hundreds and

tithings were as much suggested by the traditional arrangements of King

Alfred as by those of Moses in the wilderness; and his next step was, in

like manner, partly founded on Scripture, partly on English

history,--namely, the binding his Indians by a solemn covenant to serve

the Lord, and ratifying it on a fast-day. His converts had often asked

him why he held none of the great fast-days with them that they saw the

English hold, and he had always replied that there was not a sufficient

occasion, but he regarded this as truly important enough. Moreover, a

ship containing some supplies, sent by the Society in England, had been

wrecked, and the goods, though saved, were damaged. This he regarded as

a frown of Providence and a fruit of sin. Poor Cutshamakin also was in

trouble again, having been drawn into a great revel, where much spirits

had been drunk; and his warm though unstable temper always made him ready

to serve as a public example of confession and humiliation. So when, on

the 24th of September, 1651, Mr. Eliot had conducted the fast-day

service, it began with Cutshamakin's confession; then three Indians

preached and prayed in turn, and Mr. Eliot finally preached on Ezra's

great fast. There was a pause for rest; then the assembly came together

again, and before them Mr. Eliot solemnly recited the terms of the

Covenant, by which all were to bind themselves to the service of the

Lord, and which included all their principal laws. He asked them whether

they stood to the Covenant. All the chiefs first bound themselves, then

the remainder of the people; a collection was made for the poor; and so

ended that "blessed day," as the happy apostle of the Indians called it.

When Governor Endicot shortly after visited the place, he was greatly

struck with the orderliness and civilization he found there. "I account

this one of the best journeys I have made for many years," he says. Many

little manufactures were carried on, in particular one of drums, which

were used for lack of bells in some of the American settlements, as a

summons to come to church.

There was a native schoolmaster, named Monequassum, who could write,

read, and spell English correctly, and under whom the children were

making good progress. Promising lads were trained by Mr. Eliot himself,

in hopes of making them act as missionaries among their brethren. All

this time his praying Indians were not baptized, nor what he called

"gathered into a Church estate." He seems to have been determined to

have full proof of their stability before he so accepted them; for it was

from no inclination to Baptist views that he so long delayed receiving

them. However, on the 13th of October, 1652, he convened his brother-

ministers to hear his Indians make public confession of their faith. What

the converts said was perfectly satisfactory; but they were a long-winded

race, accustomed to flowing periods; and as each man spoke for himself,

and his confession had to be copied down in writing, Mr. Eliot himself

owns that their "enlargement of spirit" did make "the work longsome." So

longsome it was, that while the schoolmaster was speaking every one got

restless, and there was a confusion; and the ministers, who had a long

dark ride through the woods before them, went away, and were hard to

bring back again, so that he had to finish hearing the declarations of

faith alone.

Still, he cut off the baptism and organization of a church till he had

sent all these confessions to be considered by the Society in England,

printed and published under the title of "Tears of Repentance," with a

dedication to Oliver Cromwell. Then came other delays; some from the

jealousy and distrust of the English, who feared that the Indians were

going to ally themselves to the Dutch; some from the difficulty of

getting pastors to join in the tedious task of listening to the wordy

confessions; and some from the distressing scandal of drunkenness

breaking out among the Indians, in spite of the strict discipline that

always punished it. It was not till 1660 that Mr. Eliot baptized any

Indians, and the next day admitted them to the Lord's Supper, nine years

after he had begun to preach. The numbers we do not know, but there is

no doubt that he received no adults except well proved and tried persons

coming up to the Puritan standard of sincerity and devotion.

At this time the Society at home was in great danger; for, on the

Restoration, the charter had become void, and, moreover, the principal

estate that formed the endowment had been the property of a Roman

Catholic,--Colonel Bedingfield,--who resumed possession, and refused to

refund the purchase money, as considering the Society at an end. It

would probably have been entirely lost, but for the excellent Robert

Boyle, so notable at once for his science, piety, and beneficence. He

placed the matter in its true light before Lord Clarendon, and obtained

by his means a fresh charter from Charles II. The judgment in the Court

of Chancery was given in favour of the Society, and Boyle himself

likewise endowed it with a third part of a grant of the forfeited

impropriations in Ireland which he had received from the king. But all

the time there was a great disbelief in the efficacy of the work among

the Indians both at home and in New England. It was the fashion to call

all the stories of Indian conversions mere devices for getting money, and

the unhappy, proud hostility that almost always actuated the ordinary

English colonist in dealing with natives, was setting in in full force.

However, at Massachusetts, the general court appointed an English

magistrate to hold a court of judicature in conjunction with the chiefs

of the Christian Indians, and to be in fact a sort of special member of

government on their behalf. The first so appointed was Daniel Gookin, a

man of great piety, wisdom, and excellence, and a warm friend of Mr.

Eliot, with whom he worked most heartily, not only in dealing with the

Indians of Natick, but with all those who came under English

jurisdiction, providing schools, and procuring the observance of the

Sunday among them. It was also provided that the Christian Indians

should set apart a tenth of all their produce for the support of their

teachers--a practice that Mr. Gookin defended from the charge of Judaism.

It seems as if these good men, who went direct to the Old Testament for

their politics, must have been hard set between their desire of

scriptural authority and their dread of Judaizing.

It was well for Eliot that he had friends, for in the first flush of the

tidings of the successes of the Puritans in England, he had written a set

of papers upon Government, entitled the "Christian Commonwealth," which

had been sent to England, and there lay dormant for nine or ten years,

until in the midst of all the excitement on the Restoration, this

speculative work, the theory of a scholar upon Christian democracy, was

actually printed and launched upon the world at home, whether by an enemy

or by an ill-advised friend does not appear, and without the author's

consent. Complaints of this as a seditious book came out to New England,

and John Eliot was forced to appear before the court, when he owned the

authorship, but disowned the publication, and retracted whatever might

have declared the Government of England, by King, Lords, and Commons, to

be anti-Christian, avowing it to be "not only a lawful but eminent form

of government, and professing himself ready to conform to any polity that

could be deduced from Scripture as being of Divine authority." The court

was satisfied, and suppressed the book, while publishing Mr. Eliot's

retractation. Some have sneered at his conduct on this occasion as an

act of moral cowardice; but it would be very hard if every man were bound

to stand to all the political views expressed in an essay never meant for

the general eye, ten years old, and written in the enthusiasm of the

commencement of an experiment, which to the Presbyterian mind had proved

a grievous disappointment.

He had a much more important work in hand than the defence of old dreams

of the reign of the saints--for the Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel in New England had just finished printing his translation of the

New Testament, _Wusku Wuttestermentum_ as it was called, and in two years

more the Old Testament was finished. A copy was presented to Charles

II., to the Chancellor Clarendon, and to the two Universities in England,

as well as to Harvard College. It was in the Mohican dialect, which was

sufficiently like that of the neighbouring tribes to serve for them, and

had all the correctness that the scholarship and philology of the time

could furnish. There is a story that Eliot wrote the whole with a single

pen. It went through a good many editions, but is now very rare, and

with Eliot's Catechism, and translations of Baxter's chief works, and a

metrical version of the Psalms, remains the only vestige of the language

of the Mohicans.

There were now several Indian congregations, one in especial at the

island called Martha's Vineyard, under the charge of an Indian pastor,

John Hiacoomes, who is said to have been the first red-skinned convert,

and who had made proof of much true Christian courage. Once in the act

of prayer he received a severe blow from a Sachem, and would have been

killed if some English had not been present; but all his answer was, "I

have two hands. I had one hand for injuries, and the other for God.

While I did receive wrong with the one, the other laid the greater hold

on God."

When some of the Powaws, or medicine men, were boasting that they could,

if they would, destroy all the praying Indians at once, Hiacoomes made

reply: "Let all the Powaws in the island come together, I'll venture

myself in the midst among them all. Let them use all their witchcrafts.

With the help of God, I'll tread upon them all!"

By which defiance he wonderfully "heartened" his flock, who, Christians

as they were, had still been beset by the dread of the magic arts, in

which, as we have seen, even their White teachers did not wholly

disbelieve.

Such a man as this was well worthy of promotion, and Mr. Eliot hoped to

educate his more promising scholars, so as to supply a succession of

learned and trained native pastors. Two young men, named Joel and Caleb,

were sent to Harvard College, Cambridge, where they both were gaining

distinguished success, and were about to take their degree, when Joel,

who had gone home on a visit, was wrecked on the Island of Nantucket,

and, with the rest of the ship's company, was either drowned or murdered

by the Indians. The name of Caleb, Chee-shah-teau-muck, Indus, is still

to be seen in the registers of those who took their degree, and there are

two Latin and Greek elegies remaining, which he composed on the death of

an eminent minister, bearing his signature, with the addition, Senior

Sophister. How curiously do the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin proclaim

themselves the universal languages, thus blending with the uncouth

Mohican word! Caleb's constitution proved unable to endure College

discipline and learning, and he died of decline soon after taking his

degree. Consumption was very frequent among the Indians, as it so often

is among savages suddenly brought to habits of civilization, and it seems

to have mown down especially the more intellectual of the Indians;

Monequassum, the first schoolmaster at Natick, among them. An Indian

College, which had been established at Cambridge, failed from the deaths

of some scholars and the discouragement of others, and had to be turned

into a printing house, and the energetic and indefatigable Eliot did the

best he could by giving courses of lectures in logic and theology to

candidates for the ministry at Natick, and even printed an "Indian logick

primer." It was a wonderful feat, considering the loose unwieldy words

of the language.

From 1660 to 1675 were Eliot's years of chief success. His own vigour

was unabated, and he had Major Gookin's hearty co-operation. There had

been time for a race of his own pupils to grow up; and there had not been

time for the first love of his converts to wax cool. There had been a

long interval of average peace and goodwill between English and natives,

and there seemed good reason to suppose that Christianity and

civilization would keep them friends, if not fuse them together. There

were eleven hundred Christian Indians, according to Eliot and Gookin's

computation, with six regularly constituted "churches" after the fashion

of Natick, and fourteen towns, of which seven were called old and seven

new, where praying Indians lived, for the most part, in a well-conducted,

peaceable manner, though now and then disorderly conduct would take

place, chiefly from drunkenness. Several Sachems had likewise been

converted, in especial Wanalanset, the eldest son of the famous old chief

Passaconnaway. After four years of hesitation whether he should, as he

said, quit his old canoe and embark in a new one, he came to the

conclusion that the old canoe was floating down the stream of

destruction, and manfully embraced the faith, although at the cost of

losing many of his tribe, who deserted him on his profession of

Christianity.

But there is always a period of check and disappointment in every great

and holy work. The tide of evil may be driven into ebb for a time, but

it always rallies and flows back upon the servant of God, and usually

when the prime of his strength is past, and he is less able to withstand.

Most good and great men have closed their eyes upon apparent failure and

disappointment in what is especially their own task, and, like the first

great Leader and Lawgiver, have had to cry, "Show Thy servants Thy work,

and their children Thy glory." Often the next generation does see the

success, and gather the fruits; but the strong, wise, scholarly,

statesman-like Apostle of the Indians was destined to see his work swept

away like snow before the rage and fury of man, and to leave behind him

little save a great witness and example. At least he had the comfort of

knowing that the evil did not arise among his own children in the faith,

but came from causes entirely external, and as much to be preferred as

persecution is better than corruption.

The Sachem nearest to Plymouth had been at the first arrival of the

Pilgrim Fathers, Massasoiet, chief of the Wampanongs, who had kept the

peace out of fear. His son Alexander had followed his example, but it

was current among the English that he had died of "choler," on being

detected in a plot against them, and his successor, Philip, was a man of

more than common pride, fierceness, cunning, and ability. These were

only names given them by the English; none of them were Christians. Mr.

Eliot had made some attempts upon Philip, but had been treated with

scorn. The Sachem, twisting a button upon the minister's coat, told him

he cared not _that_ for his Gospel; but Major Gookin had some hopes of

having touched his heart.

However, there were indications that he was endeavouring to unite all the

surrounding tribes in an alliance against the colony. A murder of an

Englishman had taken place, and the Government at Plymouth required all

natives to surrender the fire-arms they had obtained from the English.

Even Philip consented to deliver them up until the English should see no

further cause for detaining them. Upon this, in June 1671, Eliot wrote a

remarkable letter to Mr. Prince, the Governor of Plymouth, requiring him

not to detain the arms, especially of Philip. "My reasons are," he says,

"first, lest we render ourselves more afraid of them and their guns than

indeed we are or have cause to be. Alas! it is not the gun, but the man;

nor, indeed, is it the man, but our sin that we have cause to be afraid

of. Secondly, your so doing will open an effectual door to the

entertainment of the Gospel." Probably Mr. Eliot was right, and the

keeping the arms only irritated the high-spirited chief, who said to the

messenger of the Governor of Massachusetts, "Your governor is but a

subject. I will not treat but with my brother, King Charles of England."

For four years enmity smouldered on. The rights of the dispute will

never be known. The settlers laid all upon Philip's machinations, except

those who lived near his wigwams and knew him best; and they said that so

far from entering into a conspiracy, he always deplored the war, but was

forced on by the rage and fury of the young braves, over whom the Sachems

had no real power, and who wanted to signalize their valour, and could

not fail to have their pride insulted by the demeanour of the ordinary

English. One instance of brutality on the river Saco is said to have

been the immediate cause of the war in that district. Some English

sailors, seeing a canoe with an Indian woman and her infant, and having

heard that a papoose could swim like a duck, actually upset the canoe to

make the experiment. The poor baby sank, and the mother dived and

brought it up alive, but it died so soon after, that the loss was laid to

the charge of the cruel men by the father, who was a Sachem named

Squando, of considerable dignity and influence, a great medicine man.

On Philip's border to the southward, a plantation called Swawny was

attacked and burnt by the Indians in the June of 1675. He is said to

have shed tears (impassible Indian as he was) at the tidings, foreseeing

the utter ruin of his people; and, twenty days after, Squando's influence

led to another attack 200 miles off, and this was viewed as a sign of

complicity with Philip.

There was deadly terror among the English. The Indians swarmed down at

night on lonely villages and farmhouses, slew, scalped, burnt, and now

and then carried off prisoners to be tortured to death, and children to

tell by and by strange tales of life in the wigwams. The militia were

called out, but left their houses unprotected. At Newich-wannock, the

farmhouse of a man named Tozer was attacked by the Indians when only

tenanted by fifteen women and children. A girl of eighteen, who was the

first to see the approach, bravely shut the door and set her back against

it; thus giving time for the others to escape by another door to a better

secured building. The Indians chopped the door to pieces with their

hatchets, knocked the girl down, left her for dead, and hurried on in

pursuit of the others, but only came up with two poor little children,

who had not been able to get over the fence. The rest were saved, and

the brave girl recovered from her wounds; but other attacks ended far

more fatally for the sufferers, and the rage and alarm of the New

Englanders were great. A few of the recently taught and unbaptized

Indians from what were called the "new praying towns" had joined their

countrymen; and though the great body of the converts were true and

faithful, the English confounded them all in one common hatred to the Red-

skin. The magistrates and Government were not infected by this blind

passion, and did all they could to restrain it, showing trust in the

Christian natives by employing them in the war, when they rendered good

and faithful service; but the commonalty, who were in the habit of

viewing the whole people as Hivites and Jebusites, treated these allies

with such distrust and contumely as was quite enough to alienate them.

In July 1675, three Christian Indians were sent as guides and

interpreters to an expedition to treat with the Indians in the Nipmuck

country. One was made prisoner, but the two officers in command gave the

fullest testimony to the good conduct of the other two; nevertheless they

were so misused on their return that Mr. Gookin declared that they had

been, by ill-treatment, "in a manner constrained to fall off to the

enemy." One was killed by a scouting party of praying Indians; the other

was taken, sold as a slave, and sent to Jamaica; and though Mr. Eliot

prevailed to have him brought back, and redeemed his wife and children,

he was still kept in captivity.

The next month, August, a number of the Christian Indians were arrested

and sent up to Boston to be tried for some murders that had been

committed at Lancaster. Eliot and Gookin succeeded in proving their

perfect innocence, but the magistrates had great difficulty in saving

their lives from the fury of the mob, who thirsted for Indian blood, and

both minister and major were insulted and reviled, so that Gookin said on

the bench that it was not safe for him to walk in the streets; and when

Eliot met with a dangerous boat accident, wishes were expressed that he

had been drowned.

Natick was looked upon with so much distrust and aversion that

Government, fearing occasions of bloodshed, decided that the inhabitants

must be removed to Deer Island. On the 7th of October a great fast-day,

with prayer and preaching, had been held, and fierce and bitter

entreaties had been uttered against the Indian Sachems, especially

Philip. One wonders whether Eliot--now seventy-one years old--felt it

come home to him that he knew not what spirit he had been of when he had

prayed for the death of the Moorish prince. It must have been a heart-

breaking time for the aged man, to see the spot founded in so much hope

and prayer, the fruit of so much care and meditation, thus broken up and

ruined, and when he was too old to do the like work over again. At the

end of that month of October, Captain Thomas Prentiss, with a party of

horse and five or six carts, arrived at Natick, and made known the

commands of the Government. Sadly but patiently the Indians submitted.

Two hundred men, women, and children were made to get together all they

could carry, and marched from their homes to the banks of the Charles

River. Here, at a spot called the Pines, Mr. Eliot met them, and they

gathered round him to hear his words of comfort, as he exhorted them to

meek patience, resignation, and steadiness to the faith. The scene was

exceedingly affecting, as the white-haired pastor stood by the river-side

beneath the tall pines, with his dark-skinned, newly reclaimed children

about him, clinging to him for consolation, but neither murmuring nor

struggling, only praying and encouraging one another. Captain Prentiss

and his soldiers were deeply touched; but at midnight, when the tide was

high enough, three large boats bore the Indians over to Deer Island. Here

they were, transplanted from their comfortable homes in the beginning of

a long and very severe winter; but, well divided by the river from all

suspicion of doing violence, they fared better than the praying Indians

of the new town of Wamesit. A barn full of hay and corn had been burnt,

and fourteen men of Chelmsford, the next settlement, concluding it had

been done by the Wamesit Red-skins, went thither, called them out of

their wigwams, and then fired at them, killing a lad and five women and

children. After all, the fire had been caused by some skulking heathen

Indians; but though the Government obtained the arrest of the murderers,

the jury would not find them guilty. The Wamesit Indians fled into the

forest, and sent a piteous letter:--"We are not sorry for what we leave

behind, but we are sorry that the English have driven us from our praying

to God and from our teacher. We did begin to understand praying to God a

_little_." They were invited back, but were afraid to come till cold and

hunger drove them to their old abode, and then the indefatigable Eliot

and Gookin visited them, and did all in their power to bring about a

better feeling towards them in Chelmsford.

This whole autumn and winter--a terribly severe one--seems to have been

spent by these good men in trying to heal the strifes between the English

and the Indians. Wanalanset had fled, true to his father's policy of

never resisting, and they were sent to invite him back again; but when he

returned, he found that the maize grounds of his settlement had been

ploughed up by the English and sown with rye, so that his tribe had most

scanty subsistence.

Several settlements of Christians were deported to Deer Island. One

large party had been made prisoners by their heathen countrymen and had

managed to escape, but when met with wandering in the woods by a party of

English soldiers, were plundered of the little the heathens had left

them, in especial of a pewter cup, their communion plate, which Mr. Eliot

had given them, and which was much treasured by their native pastor. The

General interfered in their behalf, but could not protect them from much

ill-usage. The teacher was sent with his old father and young children

to Boston, where Mr. Eliot saw and cheered him before he was conveyed to

Deer Island. There, in December, Eliot, with Gookin and other friends,

frequently visited the Indians, now five hundred in number, and found

them undergoing many privations, but patient, resigned, and unmurmuring.

The snow was four feet deep in the woods by the 10th of December that

year, and the exertion and exposure of travelling, either on snow-shoes

or sledges, must have been tremendous to a man of Mr. Eliot's age; but he

never seems to have intermitted his labours in carrying spiritual and

temporal succour to his people, and in endeavouring to keep the peace

between them and the English.

The hard winter had had a great effect in breaking the strength of the

enemy, and they were much more feeble on the renewal of the war in the

spring. The good conduct of the praying Indians had overcome the popular

prejudice so much that it was decided to employ them to assist the scanty

forces of the English in hunting down the hostile tribes, and Gookin

boasts of their having taken and slain more than 400 foes in the course

of the summer of 1676, which one would scarcely think was very good for

their recent Christianity. In the mean time, the absence of all the able-

bodied men and hunters reduced their families to such distress that

serious illness broke out among them, and Major Gookin caused them to be

brought to the neighbourhood of Cambridge, where there was good fishing,

and where he could attend to them, and provide them with food, clothing,

and medicine.

In August Philip was killed, the English believing themselves to "have

prayed the bullet straight into his heart;" and his head was carried

about on a pole, in a manner we should have called worthy of the Indians

themselves, did we not recollect that there were a good many city gates

at home with much the same kind of trophy, while his wife and

children--miserable fate!--were, like many others of the captives, sold

into slavery to the sugar planters in Jamaica.

After this the war did not entirely cease, but the Christian Indians were

allowed to creep back to their old settlements at Nonantum, and even at

Natick, where Mr. Eliot continued periodically to visit and instruct

them; but after this unhappy war there were only four instead of fourteen

towns of Christian Indians in Massachusetts, and a blow had been given to

his mission that it never recovered.

Still there was a splendid energy and resolution about this undaunted old

man, now writing a narrative of the Gospel History in his seventy-fourth

year, now sending Robert Boyle new physical facts, now protesting hard

against the cruel policy of selling captive Indians into slavery. What

must not the slavery of the West Indian isles, which had already killed

off their native Caribbeans, have been to these free hunters of the North

American forest, too proud to work for themselves, and bred in a climate

of cold, dry, bracing air? And even in the West Indies, a shipload of

these miserable creatures was refused in the over-stocked market, and the

horrors of the slave-ship were prolonged across the Atlantic, till at

last Mr. Eliot traced the unhappy freight to Tangier. He at once wrote

to conjure the excellent Mr. Boyle to endeavour to have them redeemed and

sent home,--with what success, or if any were left alive, does not

appear.

He had the pleasure of seeing a son of good Major Gookin become the

minister of a district including Natick, and likewise of the ordination

at Natick of an Indian named Daniel Takawombgrait. Of his own six

children only one son and one daughter survived him. Benjamin, the

youngest son, was his coadjutor at Roxbury, and was left in charge there

while he circulated amongst his Indians, and would have succeeded him.

The loss of this son must have fallen very heavily on him; but "the good

old man would sometimes comfortably say, 'I have had six children, and I

bless God for His free grace; they are all either _with_ Christ or _in_

Christ, and my mind is now at rest concerning them.'"

When asked how he could bear the death of such excellent children, his

answer was, "My desire was that they should have served God on earth, but

if God will choose to have them rather serve Him in heaven, I have

nothing to object against it, but His will be done."

His last letter to Mr. Boyle was written in his eighty-fourth year, and

was a farewell but a cheerful one, and he had good hopes then of a

renewal of the spirit of missions among his people. But though his

Christians did not bely their name in his own generation, alcohol did its

work on some, consumption on others; and, in 1836, when Jabez Sparks

wrote his biography, there was one wigwam at Natick inhabited by a few

persons of mingled Indian and Negro blood, the sole living remnants of

the foundation he had loved so well. Nevertheless, Eliot's work was not

wasted. The spark he lit has never gone out wholly in men's minds.

His wife died in 1684, at a great age, and her elegy over her coffin were

these words from himself: "Here lies my dear faithful, pious, prudent,

prayerful wife. I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me."

He had become very feeble, and was wont to say, when asked how he did,

"Alas! I have lost everything: 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."

He was forced to give up the duties of his office to a new pastor, and

though often entreated to preach again, he would hardly ever do so, by

reason, he said, that it would be wronging the souls of his people, when

they had an able minister; and when he preached for the last time on a

fast day, on the 63rd Psalm, it was with an apology for what he called

the poorness, and meanness, and brokenness of his meditations.

"I wonder," he used to say, "for what the Lord lets me live. He knows

that now I can do nothing for Him."

Yet he was working for Him to the utmost of his power. A little boy in

the neighbourhood had fallen into the fire, and lost his eyesight in

consequence. The old minister took him into his house to instruct, and

first taught him to repeat many chapters in the Bible, and to know it so

thoroughly that when listening to readers he could correct them if they

missed a word; after which he taught him Latin, so that an "ordinary

piece" had become easy to him.

The importation of negro slaves had already begun, and Mr. Eliot

"lamented with a bleeding and a burning passion that the English used

their negroes but as their horses or oxen, and that so little care was

taken about their immortal souls. He look'd upon it as a prodigy, that

any bearing the name of Christians should so much have the heart of

devils in them, as to prevent and hinder the instruction of the poor

Blackamores, and confine the souls of their miserable slaves to a

destroying ignorance, merely through fear of using the benefit of their

vassalage." So, old as he was, he induced the settlers around to send

him their negroes on certain days of the week for instruction; but he had

not made much progress in the work before he became too feeble to carry

it on. He fell into languishments attended with fever, and this he

viewed as his summons. His successor, Mr. Nehemiah Walters, came to live

with him, and held a good deal of conversation with him.

"There is a cloud," he said, "a dark cloud upon the work of the Gospel

among the poor Indians. The Lord renew and prosper that work, and grant

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."

Mather relates that he spake other words "little short of oracles," and

laments that they were not correctly recorded; but it appears that he

gradually sank, and died in his eighty-seventh year of age, at Roxbury,

in the year 1690. His last words were, "Welcome joy."