Such distress caused by Indian raids did not, of course, cease with the seventeenth century. During the entire period of the next century the settlers on the western frontier lived under constant dread of such calamities. It has been one of the chief elements in American history—this ceaseless expectation of warfare with primitive savages. In the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, in the establishment of the great states of the Plains, in the founding of civilization on the Pacific slope, even down to the twentieth century, the price of progress has been paid in this form of savage torture of women and children. Even in the long settled communities of the eighteenth century such dangers did not entirely disappear. As late as 1782, when an attempt was made by Burgoyne to capture General Schuyler, the ancient contest between mother and Indian warrior once more occurred. "Their guns were stacked in the hall, the guards being outside and the relief asleep. Lest the small Philip (grandson of General Schuyler) be tempted to play with the guns, his mother had them removed. The guards rushed for their guns, but they were gone. The family fled up stairs, but Margaret, remembering the baby in the cradle below, ran back, seized the baby, and when she was half way up the flight, an Indian flung his tomahawk at her head, which, missing her, buried itself in the wood, and left its historic mark to the present time."[92]
VIII. Parental Training
We sometimes hear the complaint that the training of the modern child is left almost entirely to the mother or to the woman school teacher, and that as a result the boy is becoming effeminate. The indications are that this could not have been said of the colonial child; for, according to the records of that day, there was admirable co-operation between man and wife in the training of their little ones. Kindly Judge Sewall, who so indiscriminately mingled his accounts of courtships, weddings, funerals, visits to neighbors, notices of hangings, duties as a magistrate, what not, often spared time from his activities among the grown-ups to record such incidents as: "Sabbath-day, Febr. 14, 1685. Little Hull speaks Apple plainly in the hearing of his grandmother and Eliza Jane; this the first word."[93]
And hear what Samuel Mather in his Life of Cotton Mather tells of the famous divine's interest in the children of the household: "He began betimes to entertain them with delightful stories, especially scriptural ones; and he would ever conclude with some lesson of piety, giving them to learn that lesson from the story.... And thus every day at the table he used himself to tell some entertaining tale before he rose; and endeavored to make it useful to the olive plants about the table. When his children accidentally, at any time, came in his way, it was his custom to let fall some sentence or other that might be monitory or profitable to them.... As soon as possible he would make the children learn to write; and, when they had the use of the pen, he would employ then in writing out the most instructive, and profitable things he could invent for them.... The first chastisement which he would inflict for any ordinary fault was to let the child see and hear him in an astonishment, and hardly able to believe that the child could do so base a thing; but believing they would never do it again. He would never come to give a child a blow excepting in case of obstinacy or something very criminal. To be chased for a while out of his presence he would make to be looked upon as the sorest punishment in his family. He would not say much to them of the evil angels; because he would not have them entertain any frightful fancies about the apparitions of devils. But yet he would briefly let them know that there are devils to tempt to wickedness."
Beside this tender picture we may place one of juvenile warfare in the godly home of Judge Sewall, and of the effect such a rise of the Old Adam had upon the soul of the conscientious magistrate: "Nov. 6, 1692. Joseph threw a knob of Brass and hit his sister Betty on the forhead so as to make it bleed and swell, upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle: which gave me the sorrowfull remembrance of Adam's carriage."[94]
Such turmoil was, of course, unusual in the Sewall or any other Puritan home; but the spiritual paroxysms of his daughter Betty, as noted in previous pages, were more characteristic, and probably not half so alarming to the deeply religious father. There seems to be little "sorrowfull remembrance" in the following note by the Judge; what would have caused genuine alarm to a modern parent seemed to be almost a source of secret satisfaction to him: "Sabbath, May 3, 1696. Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping; tells me she is afraid she is gone back, does not taste that sweetness in reading the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is worn off. I said what I could to her, and in the evening pray'd with her alone."[95]
Though more mention is made in the early records about the endeavors of the father than of the efforts of the mother to lead the children aright, we may, of course, take it for granted that the maternal care and watchfulness were at least as strong as in our own day. Eliza Pinckney, who had read widely and studied much, did not consider it beneath her dignity to give her closest attention to the awakening intellect of her babe. "Shall I give you the trouble, my dear madam," she wrote to a friend, "to buy my son a new toy (a description of which I enclose) to teach him according to Mr. Locke's method (which I have carefully studied) to play himself into learning. Mr. Pinckney, himself, has been contriving a sett of toys to teach him his letters by the time he can speak. You perceive we begin betimes, for he is not yet four months old." Her consciousness of her responsibility toward her children is also set forth in this statement: "I am resolved to be a good Mother to my children, to pray for them, to set them good examples, to give them good advice, to be careful both in their souls and bodys, to watch over their tender minds, to carefully root out the first appearing and budings of vice, and to instill piety.... To spair no paines or trouble to do them good.... And never omit to encourage every Virtue I may see dawning in them."[96] That her care brought forth good fruit is indicated when she spoke, years later, of her boy as "a son who has lived to near twenty-three years of age without once offending me."
Here and there we thus have directed testimony as to the part taken by mothers in the mental and spiritual training of children. For instance, in New York, according to Mrs. Grant, such instruction was left entirely to the women. "Indeed, it was on the females that the task of religious instruction generally devolved; and in all cases where the heart is interested, whoever teaches at the same time learns.... Not only the training of children, but of plants, such as needed peculiar care or skill to rear them, was the female province."[97]
In New England, as we have seen, the parental love and care for the little ones was at least as much a part of the father's domestic activities as of the mother's; unfortunately the men were in the majority as writers, and they generally wrote of what they themselves did for their children. Abigail Adams was one of the exceptional women, and her letters have many a reference to the training of her famous son. Writing to him while he was with his father in Europe in 1778, she said: "My dear Son.... Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render many things unnecessary for me to write ... but the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed, or that an untimely death crop you in your infant years, than see you an immoral profligate, or graceless child...."[98]
Such quotations should prove that home life in colonial days was no one-sided affair. The father and the mother were on a par in matters of child training, and the influence of both entered into that strong race of men who, through long years of struggle and warfare, wrested civilization from savagery, and a new nation from an old one. What a modern writer has written about Mrs. Adams might possibly be applicable to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs. Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital. Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of the world's history.... Every night, when the Lord's prayer had been repeated, she heard him [John Quincey] say the ode of Collins beginning,