Pioneers and Founders

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.