Nonantum. Mather’s description of the natives. The Lost Tribes
of Israel. Specimen of Indian words. Eliot’s first religious
exercise at Nonantum. Indian Questions. Second visit to
the Indians. Indian Questions. Eliot’s reflections on his
interviews. Anecdotes.
The old turnpike road to Worcester, in Brighton, leaves Nonantum hill
on the left, and a private road conducts to the summit of the hill which
is crowned by two mansions.[18] The scenery from that hill has a rare
combination of still life and of the busy world. The Charles River, seen
from a distant part of the hill, meanders to the sea; the quiet, classic
scenes of Cambridge are before the eye; soft undulations of hill and
dale, winding roads and aboriginal woods, and the quiet waters of the
estuary, impress the mind with sensations of repose which are pleasantly
broken by the distant noise of travel upon the bridges, the sudden
whistle of the locomotive, and an impressive view of the neighboring
city. That hill, extending as far as Watertown, and Newton, was once the
favorite residence of the Indians, in this vicinity,[19] and thither
Eliot, the pastor of the neighboring Church in Roxbury, directed his way,
to give the Indians the word and ordinances of the Gospel in their own
language.
Cotton Mather says, “The natives of the country now possessed by the
New Englanders, had been forlorn and wretched heathen ever since their
first herding here; and though we know not how these Indians first became
inhabitants of this mighty continent, yet we may guess that probably the
devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hopes that the gospel
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy
or disturb his absolute empire over them. But our Eliot was in such
ill-terms with the devil, as to alarm him by sounding the silver trumpets
of heaven in his territories, and make some noble and zealous attempt
towards ousting him of his ancient possessions here. There were, I think,
twenty several nations, if I may call them so, of Indians, upon that spot
of ground which fell under the influence of our Three United Colonies;
and our Eliot was willing to rescue as many of them as he could from that
old usurping landlord of America, who is, by the wrath of God, the prince
of this world.”[20]
Some of the interest and zeal which many of the first planters and their
successors felt with regard to the Indians, was owing to their belief
that they were the Ten Tribes of Israel. Cotton Mather enumerates “some
small reasons,” as he calls them, which led the English to suspect that
they might be Israelites. He adds, “They have, too, a great unkindness
for our swine;”—but he does not seem to place much reliance on that
coincidence with the Jewish antipathy to swine, for he adds, “but I
suppose that is because our swine devour their clams, which are a great
dainty with them.”
This supposition that the North American Indians are the Ten Tribes of
Israel, has seemed even more probable to many modern writers than it did
to the first settlers of the country. Mr. Catlin, in his interesting and
valuable work on the North American Indians, mentions many curious facts
in the history, manners and customs of the present race of red men, in
favor of this supposition. But there are so many theories on the subject
of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and it is so easy for an ingenious mind to
discover or invent resemblances, that neither this theory nor any other
on the same subject has ever obtained general belief.
It was to a people of rude speech and fierce countenance that Mr. Eliot
endeavored to give a knowledge of the Gospel and the institutions of
civilized life. His first labor of course was to acquire their language.
It was the language of the Massachusetts Indians to which he applied
himself. He found an old Indian who could speak English, took him into
his family, and by finding out one word, and expression, and sentence
after another, he soon was able to converse in that tongue, and finally
understood it so well that he reduced it to rules, and made an Indian
grammar. One glance at this language will show that it must have been
no easy task for a stranger to learn it well enough to converse in it.
Some of the words are of enormous length, one of them sometimes filling a
whole line. The word for “our loves,” is _noowoomantammoorkanunornash_.
“Our question” is _Kummogkodonnattootummooetiteaongannunnarash_. “One
would think,” says Mather, “that these words had been growing ever since
Babel unto the dimensions to which they are now extended.” Another remark
of his on this subject, though it may seem to us to be somewhat in a
trifling mood, was undoubtedly written with sober feelings, considering
the prevalent superstitions of those times—superstitions with regard to
which we greatly err if we suppose them to have been, in those times,
peculiar to America.[21] “I know not,” this writer adds, “what thoughts
it will produce in my reader, when I inform him that once finding that
the demons in a possessed young woman understood the Latin and Greek
and Hebrew languages, my curiosity led me to make trial of this Indian
language, and the demons did seem as if they did not understand it.”
The reason of the great length of these Indian words is understood to
be, that instead of having separate words for pronouns and adjectives,
the noun or verb expresses them by adding syllables to itself. Mather,
who was ready at anagrams and puns, says that the name _Eliot_ read
backwards, is _t o i l E_, and he thinks that the name corresponds well
with the toil of reducing such a language to a grammar. At the close of
his Grammar Eliot wrote these words: “Prayers and pains through faith in
Christ Jesus, will do any thing.”
We have from Eliot’s own pen a narrative, called “A true relation of our
beginnings with the Indians.” It was published in London, in 1647, under
this title, “The Day breaking, if not the Sun-rising, of the Gospel, with
the Indians in New England.”
In October, 1646, Eliot, with a few others, having sought the blessing
of God, went to Nonantum, for the purpose, as he says, of making known to
the Indians the things of their peace. As they approached the wigwams,
five or six of the Chiefs met them with English salutations and bid
them welcome. The principal wigwam had been previously prepared for the
meeting, and many of the Indians were assembled. Eliot and his companions
then began with prayer in the English language, not being sufficiently
acquainted with the Indian tongue to make suitable religious impressions
at first with it upon the minds of the Indians, and besides they wished
to let the Indians see that they felt the duty in hand to be serious and
sacred, and they had a desire, moreover, as missionaries to offer up a
united supplication to God, “with the same request and heart sorrowes,”
in that place where God was never wont to be called upon.
It was an affecting sight, as we may suppose, to Eliot and his friends,
when they ceased from prayer and looked upon the company of Indians
sitting in silence, with a mixture of curiosity and seriousness and
wildness in their faces. To such an audience Eliot preached in the Indian
tongue from Ezekiel 37:9. “Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind,
Thus saith the Lord, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon
these slain that they may live.”
It is a curious fact that the name of the man[22] in whose wigwam they
were assembled was Waban, and Waban is the Indian name for the wind, so
that it seemed to Waban that the message was sent to him, and it proved
a means in his conversion. The text from which Mr. Eliot preached on
this occasion, was not one which his hearers could at first understand,
and therefore some have expressed surprise at the selection of it. But
in reply to this, it may be asked, what passage of the Word of God
would have been immediately intelligible to those ignorant hearers?
Besides, the text seems to have been chosen by Mr. Eliot for a purpose
which is certainly proper on special occasions, viz., as a warrant and
encouragement to his own soul and that of his helpers, in preaching in
that valley of dry bones. Yet, after suitable religious impressions had
been made, and the hearers had felt their lost and wretched state, and
their need of divine power, in reflecting upon the text it must have
seemed to the hearers peculiarly appropriate to the occasion and to their
condition.
An hour and a quarter was occupied in the discourse. Mr. Eliot gave the
Indians first a brief exposition of the ten commandments, showing the
wrath and curse of God against those who break the least one of them. The
subject was then applied, and the law having been brought to do its work
in their hearts, and their sins being pointed out to them, as Mr. Eliot
says, with much sweet affection, Jesus Christ was preached to them as the
only Saviour. He told them who Christ was, and what he did, and whither
he had gone, and how he will come again to judge the wicked and burn
the world. The creation and fall of man, the greatness of God, heaven
and hell, the pleasures of religion and the miseries of sin were then
explained in language and with illustrations suited to their capacity.
The sermon being finished, Mr. Eliot proposed some questions to them,
and first inquired whether they understood what had been said, and
whether all or only some of them understood it? A multitude of voices
exclaimed that they all understood every thing which had been spoken.
Leave was then granted them to put questions, and it is interesting
to notice the first questions which these children of the wilderness
proposed. The first questions were,
“What is the cause of thunder?”
“What makes the sea ebb and flow?”
“What makes the wind blow?”
But there were some questions proposed by them which Mr. Eliot says some
special wisdom of God directed them to ask, as, for example,
_How may we come to know Jesus Christ?_
Mr. Eliot told them that if they could read the Bible they would see
clearly who Jesus Christ is, but inasmuch as they could not then read, he
desired them to remember what he had told them out of the Bible, and to
think much and often upon it, when they lay down on their mats in their
wigwams and when they rose up, and to go alone in the fields, and woods,
and muse on it, and so God would teach them.
He told them that if they would have help from God in this thing, they
must begin to pray, and though they could not make long prayers as the
English did, yet if they did but sigh and groan, saying, “Lord, make me
to know Jesus Christ for I know him not,” and if with all their hearts
they persisted in such prayers, they might hope that God would help them.
But they were especially to remember that they must confess their sins
and ignorance to God and mourn over them and acknowledge how just it
would be in God to withhold from them any knowledge of Christ, on account
of their sins.
This instruction was communicated to them by Mr. Eliot through the Indian
interpreter whom he had brought with him, but he says he was struck with
the fact that a few words from the Preacher had much greater effect than
many from the interpreter.
One of them asked, whether Englishmen were ever at any time so ignorant
of God and Jesus Christ as they themselves?
Another put this question: Whether if the father be naught and the
child good, will God be offended with that child? because in the second
commandment it is said that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the
children.
They were told in reply to this that every child who is good will not be
punished for the sins of his father, but if the child be bad, God would
then visit his father’s sins upon him, and they were bid to notice that
part of the second commandment which contains a promise to the thousands
of them that love God and keep his commandments.
One of them asked, How is all the world now become so full of people, if
they were all once drowned in the flood? This led to the story of the ark
and the preservation of Noah.
Mr. Eliot then proposed some questions to them, for example, Whether they
did not desire to see God, and were not tempted to think there is no God
because they could not see him?
Some of them answered, They did desire to see Him if it could be, but
they had heard from Mr. Eliot that he could not be seen, and they did
believe that though their eyes could not see him, he was to be seen with
their soul within.
Mr. Eliot endeavored to confirm them in this impression, and asked them
if they saw a great wigwam or a great house, would they think that
racoons or foxes built it? or would they think that it made itself? or
that no wise builder made it, because they could not see him who made it?
Knowing that the doctrine of one God was a great stumbling block to
them, Mr. Eliot asked them if they did not think it strange that there
should be but one God, and yet this God be in Massachusetts, and in
Connecticut, in Old England, in this wigwam, and the next, and every
where at the same time?
One of the most sober of them replied that it was indeed strange, as
every thing else they had heard preached was strange, and they were
wonderful things which they never heard of before, but yet they thought
“it might be true, and that God was so big every where.” Mr. Eliot
illustrated the truth by the light of the sun, which, though it was but
a creature of God, shed its light into that wigwam, and the next, in
Massachusetts and Old England, at once.
He inquired of them if they did not find something troubling them within
after the commission of murder, theft, adultery, lying; and what would
comfort them, and remove that trouble of conscience when they should die
and appear before God?
They replied that they were thus troubled, but they could not tell what
they should say about it, or what would remove this trouble of mind,
whereupon Mr. Eliot enlarged upon the evil of sin and the condition of
the soul which is cast out of the favor of God.
Having spent three hours in this interview, Mr. Eliot asked them if
they were not weary, and they said, no. But thinking it best to leave
them with an appetite, Mr. Eliot concluded the meeting with prayer, but
before he departed the principal Indian expressed a desire for more land
to build a Town upon, and Mr. Eliot promised to speak for them to the
General Court, “that they might possess all the compass of that hill upon
which their wigwams then stood.”
In the second visit which Mr. Eliot made to the Indians at Nonantum, he
began to catechise the younger children. He framed three questions only,
that their memories might not be overloaded. The questions and answers
were these:
1. Who made you and all the world. Ans. God.
2. Who do you think should save you and redeem you from sin and hell?
Ans. Jesus Christ.
3. How many commandments hath God given you to keep. Ans. Ten.
By the time that the questions reached the smaller children, they had
learned the answers perfectly, from hearing the others repeat them, and
the parents had become familiar with them, and they were requested to use
this _Shorter_ Catechism of three questions, in teaching their children,
against the next visit.
The substance of Mr. Eliot’s address to the Indians on this occasion was
this: “We are come to bring you good news from the great God Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and earth, and to tell you how evil and wicked men may
come to be good, so that while they live they may be happy, and when they
die may go to God and live in heaven.”
He then endeavored to give them just impressions concerning God, his
power, greatness, and goodness, his will, what he required of all men,
even of the Indians, in the ten commandments, the dreadful punishment of
all who break one of these commandments, the anger of God at sin, and
yet his compassion for sinners in sending Christ to die for wicked men.
He taught them that if they would repent and believe, God would love the
poor miserable Indians, but that the wrath of God would burn against all
who neglected so great salvation as was now offered to them by those
whose only desire was their salvation.
The power of these words was manifestly felt by one of the Indians, who
at the thought of his sins and of the danger to which they exposed him,
wept aloud, yet without affectation, but striving to conceal his emotions.
Perhaps in no way can we communicate religious instruction in a more
simple and effectual way to the young who may read this book, than to
record here the questions and answers which Mr. Eliot has preserved in
his several interviews with the Indians. Other writers who lived at that
time have also recorded questions and answers which they heard. But it
will not be necessary to state the times, or places, or the hand by which
they were recorded.
An old man rose up after Mr. Eliot had finished his sermon, and asked
whether it was not too late for such an old man as he, who was near
death, to repent or seek after God.
This question affected Mr. Eliot and his companions with compassion. They
told him what is said in the Bible about those who were hired at the
eleventh hour, and drew a parallel to his case by describing a son who
had for very many years been disobedient, and afterwards penitent, and
the feelings of his father towards him.
Question. How came the English to differ so much from the Indians in
the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, seeing they all had at first one
father?
Question. How may we come to serve God?
Question. How comes it to pass that the sea water is salt and the land
water fresh?
Answer. This is one of the wonderful works of God. As strawberries are
sweet and cranberries sour, by the appointment of God, so was it in
this case. To this was added some account of natural causes and effects
in connection with this subject, “which they less understood, yet did
understand somewhat, as appeared by their usual signs of approving what
they understand.”
Question. If the water is higher than the earth, how comes it to pass
that it doth not overflow all the earth?
The missionary took an apple and illustrated the shape of the earth, the
motion on its axis, and round the sun; then showed them how God made
a great hollow ditch for the waters, which was so deep as to hold the
waters by the attraction of gravitation, so that notwithstanding their
convexity, they could not overflow the earth.
During a recess in this interview, the Indians were busily employed in
discussing these several subjects among themselves, their minds being
evidently excited by them, through the effect of new ideas upon subjects
which were new or had always been incomprehensible to them. Being
afterwards asked if they wished to propose any further questions, one
asked,
If a man has committed some great sins, (stolen goods, &c.,) and the
Sachem does not punish him, and he is not punished, but he restores the
goods, what then? is not all well now? meaning to ask whether restoration
made sufficient amends to the law of God.
He was told that though men be not offended at such sins, yet God is
angry. The holiness of God was here illustrated. Such a sinner should
seek forgiveness as much as any other sinner through the blood of Christ.
Upon hearing this answer, the Indian who proposed the question drew back
and hung down his head, with an appearance of great sorrow and confusion,
and finally broke out saying, “Me little know Jesus Christ, or me should
seek him better.” Mr. Eliot comforted him by telling him that as it is
early dawn at first when there is but little light, but the sun rises
to perfect day, so it would be with him and his people with regard to a
knowledge of the favor of God if they would seek Him.
One of the Indians who had received religious impressions in his
acquaintance with the colonists, said he would propose this question. A
little while since he said he was praying in his wigwam to God and Jesus
Christ, that God would give him a good heart; that in his prayer another
Indian interrupted him and told him that he prayed in vain, because that
Jesus Christ could not understand what Indians speak in prayer; he had
been used to hear Englishmen pray, and so could well enough understand
them, but Indian language in prayer he was not acquainted with. His
question therefore was, “Whether God and Jesus Christ did understand
Indian prayers?”
At the close of one interview, Mr. Eliot prayed for above fifteen minutes
in the Indian tongue, that they might feel that Christ understood such
prayers. The Indians stood about him in grotesque figures, some of them
lifting up their eyes and their hands to accompany the prayer, and one of
them holding a rag to his eyes and weeping violently, and after prayer
retiring to a corner of the wigwam to weep in secret; which one of Mr.
Eliot’s companions observed and spoke with him, and found him to be
deeply affected with a sense of his guilt.
Mr. Eliot makes several useful observations in view of his first two
visits to the Indians.
1. None of them slept in sermon or derided God’s messenger.
2. That there is need of learning in ministers who preach to Indians
more than to gracious Christians, in order to answer their philosophical
questions.
3. That there is no need of miraculous or extraordinary gifts in seeking
the conversion of the most depraved of the human family.
4. If Englishmen despise the preaching of faith and repentance and
humiliation for sin, the poor heathens will be glad of it, and it shall
do good to them.
He adds to this, The Lord grant that the foundation of our English woe
be not laid in the ruin and contempt of those fundamental doctrines
of faith, repentance, humiliation for sin, but rather relishing the
novelties and dreams of such men as are surfeited with the ordinary food
of the Gospel of Christ. Indians shall weep to have faith and repentance
preached, when Englishmen shall mourn, too late, that are weary of such
truths.
5. That the deepest estrangement of man from God is no hindrance to his
grace, nor to the Spirit of grace. What nation or people ever so deeply
degenerated since Adam’s fall, as these Indians, and yet the Spirit of
God is working upon them.
“It is very likely if ever the Lord convert any of these natives, they
will mourn for sin exceedingly, and consequently love Christ dearly; for
if by a little measure of light such heart-breakings have appeared, what
may we think will be when more is let in?”
“They are some of them very wicked, some very ingenious. These
latter are very apt and quick of understanding, and naturally sad and
melancholy, (a good servant to repentance) and therefore there is the
greater hope of heart-breakings if ever God brings them effectually home,
for which we should affectionately pray.”
Mr. Eliot says, “It is wonderful to see what a little leaven and that
small mustard-seed of the Gospel will do, and how truth will work when
the spirit of Christ hath the setting of it on, even upon hearts and
spirits most incapable.” The night after the Indians had heard the Gospel
preached for the third time, an English youth lodged in Waban’s tent. He
said that Waban instructed his companions with regard to the things which
they had heard that day, and prayed with them, and that he awoke several
times that night and began to pray and speak to one and another of the
Indians of the things which they had heard. Mr. E. says, This man, being
a man of gravity and chief prudence, a counsel among them, although no
Sachem, is like to be a means of great good to the rest of his company,
unless cowardice or witchery put an end, as usually they have done, to
such hopeful beginnings.
Two young Indians being at an Elder’s house one Sabbath evening, having
been previously affected under Mr. Eliot’s preaching, one of them began
to confess to the elder how wicked he had been, and declared that God
could never look upon him with love. The elder opened to him in a
familiar manner the truth of God’s love to the guilty, his willingness to
pardon the vilest through the redemption made by Christ, and illustrated
his instructions by the discourse of Christ to the Samaritan woman at
Jacob’s well, and how Christ forgave her though she was living in sin at
the moment when he began to speak to her. Whereupon the young man began
to weep bitterly, and the other youth, his companion, disclosing his own
guilt, burst out into loud weeping in which they both continued for half
an hour.
An old man told Mr. Eliot at one of the meetings that he was fully
purposed to keep the Sabbath, but still he was in fear whether he should
go to heaven or hell. This was a case in which reliance on good works
gave as usual no peace to the conscience. It led Mr. Eliot to speak fully
of the way of justification by Christ without works, “as the remedy
against all fears of hell.”
Mr. Eliot was interested in the fact that some of the Indians who seemed
to receive the Gospel most readily, and feel its power, were able to use
“gracious expressions,” as he calls them, which he was confident they had
not heard from him, nor from his assistants. He gives a specimen of them
with the corresponding Indian words:
Amanaomen Jehovah tabassen metagh. Checheson Jehovah kekowhogkow.
Take away, Lord, my stony heart. Wash, Lord, my soul.
“What are these,” he says, “but the sprinklings of the spirit and blood
of Christ Jesus on their hearts? and ’tis no small matter that such dry,
barren, and long accursed ground should yield such kind of increase in so
small a time. I would not readily commend a fair day before night, nor
promise much of such kind of beginnings, in all persons, nor yet in all
of these, for we know how the profession of many is but a mere paint, and
their best graces nothing but mere flashes and pangs which are suddenly
kindled, and as soon to go out, and are extinct again; yet God doth not
usually send his plough and seeds-men to a place but there is at least
some little piece of good ground, although three to one be naught; and
methinks the Lord Jesus would never have made so fit a key for their
locks unless he had intended to open some of their doors, and so to make
way for his coming in.”
At the fourth meeting with the Indians, the children having been
catechised, and the vision of the dry bones, which seems to have
impressed Mr. Eliot from the first in speaking to the Indians, being
explained, they offered all their children to the English to be educated
by them.
At this time one of them being asked, What is sin? he answered, A naughty
heart. He did not seem to feel that sin consists only in outward acts.
One of them complained that some of the Indians reviled him and the more
serious Indians, calling them rogues, and otherwise insulting them for
cutting off their long locks and arranging their hair in a modest manner,
for, Mr. Eliot says, “since the word hath begun to work upon their hearts
they have discerned the vanity and pride which they placed in their hair,
and have therefore, of their own accord (none speaking to them that we
know of) cut it modestly.” They said that some Indians who had heard the
news of the great attention to religion among them, would come from a
distance and stay with them three or four days, and one Sabbath, and then
they would go from them, (implying that they did not like the Sabbath),
but as for themselves, they said they were fully purposed to keep the
Sabbath.
Some of the Indians who heard the Gospel, despised and rejected it. So it
has always been and is now, wherever the Gospel is preached. Some have
their hearts opened to attend to the things of their peace, and others
are hardened. Mr. Eliot’s assistant, learning that some Indians had
discouraged and threatened others with regard to their attendance on the
preaching, spoke to them on one occasion about the temptations of Satan.
After sermon they proposed these questions:
1. Some Indians say we must pray to the devil for all good, and some to
God; may we pray to the devil or no?
2. What does _humiliation_ mean, which we hear used so often by the
English?
3. Why do the English call us Indians, for before they came here we had
another name?
4. What is a spirit?
5. May we believe in dreams?
6. How did the English come to know God so much, and we so little?
At the close of this interview they said that their great desire was to
have a town and to learn to spin.
They believed in the existence of an evil spirit, whom they called
CHEPIAN, and who they thought corresponded to the devil in Scripture.
They gave the following account of their way in which conjurers or Powows
were made: Whenever an Indian had a strange dream in which Chepian
appeared to him as a serpent, he would make it known to the rest, and for
two days the Indians would dance and rejoice for what the serpent had
told him, and he then became a Powow, or one whom the devil favored with
his communications. The reader will notice the identity of the form in
which they made the devil to appear to them, with the form in which he
appeared to our first parents.