to himself worse than any devil, and almost expected to have been stoned rather than listened to. Indeed, something of this diffidence and sadness seems always to have weighed him down when he began to preach, though the fervour of his subject and the responding faces of his audience always exhilarated him and bore him up through his sermon. To learn the Indian language had not occurred to him as part of his preparation, but probably these Kent Red men had been enough among the English to understand him, for they seem to have been much impressed.
A Scottish Society for propagating Christian Knowledge had arisen, and the delegates hearing of the zeal of David Brainerd, desired to engage him at a salary. The sense of his own unworthiness, and fear of keeping out a better man, brought his spirits down to the lowest ebb; nevertheless, he went to meet the representatives of the Society at New York, and there, though between the hubbub of the town and his own perpetual self-condemnation he was continually wretched, they were so well satisfied with him as to give him the appointment, on condition that he studied the language, intending to send him to the Red men between the Susquehanna and the Delaware; but there was a dispute between these and the Government, and it was decided to send him to a settlement called Kanaumeek, between Stockbridge and Albany.
Before going, David Brainerd, having no thought beyond devotion to the Indians, and thinking his allowance enough for his wants, gave up the whole of his inheritance to support a scholar at the University, and set forth, undaunted by such weakness of health as in ordinary eyes would have fitted him for nothing but to be carefully nursed; for even then he was continually suffering from pain and dizziness, and weakness so great that he could often hardly stand.
In this state he arrived at Kanaumeek, with a young Indian to act as his interpreter, and there spent the first night sleeping on a heap of straw. It was a lonely, melancholy spot, where the Indians were herded together, watched with jealous eyes by adventurers who were always endeavouring to seize their lands, and sadly degenerated from the free, grave, high-spirited men to whom Eliot had preached. His first lodging was in the log house of a poor Scotchman who lived among the Indians-a single chamber, without so much as a floor, and where he shared the family meals upon porridge, boiled corn, and girdle-cakes. The family spoke Gaelic, only the master of the house knowing any English, and that not so good as the Indian interpreter's; and, moreover, the spot was a mile and a half from the Indian wigwams, no small consideration to so weakly a man, thus poorly fed. However, the Indians were pleased with his addresses, and seemed touched by them; but the evil habits of the White men were the terrible stumbling-block. Parties of them would come into the town, and vex the missionary's ears with their foul tongues, making a scandalous contrast to the grave, calm manners of the Indians. More than ever did he love solitude, and when with his own hands he had built himself a log hut, where he could be alone when he pleased, his relief was great.
He was not the highly educated scholar and practical theorist that his predecessor had been: he seems to have had no plans or systems, and merely to have tried to fulfil immediate needs; but he soon found that he could not hope to benefit his Red flock without a school, so he made a journey to New Jersey to entreat for means to set one up, and this was done, with his interpreter as master. His journey was made on horseback, and was no small undertaking, for even between Stockbridge and Kanaumeek he had once lost his way, and had to sleep a night in the woods.
He had by this time thoroughly repented of the uncharitableness and hastiness of his speech about Mr. Whittlesey, and he took a journey to New Haven to send in a thoroughly humble and Christian-like apology, requesting to be permitted to take his degree. Twice he was refused, and the third time was told that the only condition on which the degree would be granted would be the making up his term of residence at Yale, which was, of course, not possible to a licensed minister in full employment, and in fact was an insulting proposal to a man of his standing and character.
His journey cost him dear, for as he was riding home he was attacked with violent pain in the face and shiverings, which forced him to halt at the first shelter he could find, happily with kind friends, who nursed him for a fortnight before he could return home. He believed that had his illness seized him in his log house at home, he must certainly have died for want of care and attendance, although he was much beloved by his poor Indians.
His life was indeed a frightfully hard one, and would have been so for a healthy man; for he had to work with his own hands to store provisions for his horse in the winter, and that when weak and suffering the more for want of proper food. He could get no bread but by riding ten or fifteen miles to procure it, and if he brought home too much it became mouldy and sour, while, if he brought home a small quantity, he could not go for more if he failed to catch his horse, which was turned out to graze in the woods; so that he was reduced to making little cakes of Indian meal, which he fried in the ashes. 'And then,' he says, 'I blessed God as if I had been a king.' 'I have a house and many of the comforts of life to support me,' he says with great satisfaction; and the solitude of that house was so precious to him that, however weary he was, he would ride back twenty miles to it at night rather than spend an evening among ungodly men. By this terrible stinting of what we should deem the necessaries of life, he was actually able, in fifteen months, to devote a hundred pounds to charitable purposes, besides keeping the young man at the University.
So much, however, did he love his solitude, that he counted it as no relief, but an affliction, to have to ride to Stockbridge from time to time to learn the Indian language from Mr. Sergeant, the missionary there stationed. Something of this must have been morbid feeling, something from the want of energy consequent on the condition of his frame. For a man in confirmed decline such an entry in a journal as this is no trifle:-'December 20.-Rode to Stockbridge. Was very much fatigued with my journey, wherein I underwent great hardship; was much exposed, and very wet by falling into a river.' Mr. Sergeant could hardly have been profane company, but Brainerd never enjoyed these visits, thinking that intercourse with the world made him less familiar with heaven.
Another inconvenience was the proximity of Kanaumeek to the frontier, and these were the days of that horrid war between England and France in America, when the native allies of each nation made savage descents on the outlying settlements, inflicting all the flagrant outrages of their wild warfare. A message came one evening to Kanaumeek from Colonel Stoddart, warning all in exposed situations to secure themselves as well as possible, since an attack might come at any moment; and this Brainerd quietly records as a salutary warning not to attach himself too much to the
The attack was never made, but he came to the conclusion that his small congregation of Indians would be much better with their fellows at Stockbridge under the care of Mr. Sergeant, and that this would leave him free to go to more wild and untaught tribes. It was carried out, and the Indians removed. There was much mutual love between them and their pastor, and the parting was very affectionate, though even after two years he was still unable to speak the language, and never seems to have troubled himself about this trifling obstacle. Several English congregations entreated him to become their minister, but he refused them all, and went to meet the Commissioners of the Scottish Society at New Jersey. They arranged with him for a mission to the Delaware Indians, in spite of his being laid up for some days at the time; and when he went back to Kanaumeek to dispose of his books and other 'comforts,' the effects of being drenched with rain showed themselves in continued bleeding from the lungs. He knew that he was often in an almost dying state, and only wished to continue in his Master's service to the end he longed for. He owns that his heart did sometimes sink at the thought of going alone into the wilderness; but he thought of Abraham, and took courage, riding alone through the depths of the forest, so desolate and lonely day after day, that it struck terror even into his soul. There were scanty settlements of Dutch and Irish, where he sometimes spent a night, but the Sunday he passed among some Irish was so entirely unmarked by them, that he felt like a 'creature banished from the sight of God.'
At last he reached his destination on the fork of the river Delaware, and being within moderate distance of Newark, there received ordination as a minister on the 11th of June, 1744. Severe illness followed the exertion of preaching and praying before the convened ministers; but as soon as he could walk, he set forth on his return, though he was so weak that he could hardly open his numbed hand, but his heart and hopes had begun to revive, and the little settlement of Whites with whom he lived were willing to listen to him.
The Indians were in the midst of preparing for an idolatrous feast and dance. Brainerd spent a day in the woods in an anguish of prayer, and then went to the place of meeting, where, stranger as he was, he prevailed on them to cease their revels and attend to him.
His biographer, President Jonathan Edwards, provokingly leaves out his method of teaching, 'for the sake of brevity,' and from his own diary little is to be gathered but accounts of his state of feeling through endless journeyings and terrible prostrations of strength. He was always travelling about-now to the Susquehanna, now back to New England-apparently at times with the restlessness of disease, for this roving about must have
