Pioneers and Founders

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