Pioneers and Founders

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  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 polit
ical 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 deme
anour 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.