The progress of civilization which followed, was remarkable for its extent and rapidity: the women were taught to spin, and they soon found something to send to the nearest markets all the year round: in winter they sold staves, baskets, and poultry; in spring and summer fish, grapes, strawberries, &c.
In the mean while, he instructed the men in husbandry, and the more simple mechanical arts: in hay-time and harvest, he went forth into the fields with them. All this was not done in a day, for they were neither so industrious nor so capable of hard labour as those who had been accustomed to it from early life.
AN INDIAN FUNERAL AT NONANETUM.
At a funeral, on the 7th of October, 1647, a change in the usages and prejudices of the Indians was evinced in a striking manner. The deceased was a man of some consequence. Their custom had been to mourn much for the dead, and to appear overcome with grief, especially when the earth shrouded them from their sight. The departed was borne to the grave on a light bier, and interred in a sitting posture; in his hand was placed a calumet and some tobacco, that he might present the ensigns of peace to the people of another world. If the corpse was that of a warrior, his quiver full of arrows, a bow, and a hatchet, were placed by his side, and also a little mirror, that he might see how his face looked after passing through the region of death; and a little vermilion to take away its extreme paleness. His was a bold hand that could at once tear aside these loved usages, and make the dust of the warrior of no more consequence than that of the meanest of his followers. The cemetery of the new town was in the woods, and the procession of all the inhabitants moved slowly beneath their shadow, in deep and solemn silence, with the missionary at their head: no wail was heard—no wild gush of sorrow. To estimate this sacrifice, it is necessary to recur to the Indian belief, “that after death they should go to a very fertile country, where they were to have many wives, and, above all, lovely places for hunting:” often, no doubt, the shadowy chase of the bear and the stag came on the dreams of the dying man; and afterwards, beautiful women would welcome him, weary to his home. When the dead was laid in the grave, Eliot read the funeral service over him, and then told the many people, that in heaven they neither married nor were given in marriage; that the passions of this world, the wild chase or the warrior’s joy, could never come there; there was neither chieftain nor slave; that in the love of Christ, who was the resurrection and the life, all these things would be lost. And they believed him—those fierce and brutal men—and wept, not for the dead, but for themselves; “so that the woods,” says a gentleman who was present, “rang with their sighs and prayers;” he also adds these words,—“God was with Eliot, and the sword of his word will pierce deep, in the hand of the mighty.” His opinion of the mental powers of this people was not a very low one:—“There is need,” he says, in one of his letters, “of learning, in ministers who preach to Indians, much more than to Englishmen and gracious Christians; for these had sundry philosophical questions, which some knowledge of the arts must help to give answer to, and without which they would not have been satisfied. Worse than Indian ignorance hath blinded their eyes, that renounce learning as an enemy to gospel ministers”. So acute were many of the questions proposed by the Indians, and so deeply expressive of a gentler and better nature, that more than one educated stranger was induced to attend regularly the assemblies of the missionary.
LOVEWELL’S FIGHT.
Captain John Lovewell, of Dunstable, raised a volunteer company and met with great success. At one time he fell in with an Indian trail and pursued it till he discovered them asleep on the bank of a pond. They were all killed, and their scalps, stretched upon hoops, served to decorate their triumphal return. They, of course, received the bounty, which amounted to ten pounds.
(1725.) Lovewell, having augmented his company to 46 men, again set out with the intention of attacking an Indian town on the Saco. They built a fort on the Great Ossapy pond, and then proceeded, leaving one of their number sick, and eight men to guard the fort.
When about 22 miles from the fort they rested on the banks of a pond, where they discovered a single Indian at a distance, on a point of land, and rightly judging that he was attached to a large party of Indians, Lovewell determined to advance and attack them. Accordingly the whole company threw off their packs in one place among the brakes; and, to gain the advantage, the men were spread so as partially to surround the water. Lovewell had, however, mistaken the position of the Indians, who were already on his track, and coming to the place where the packs were deposited, by counting them discovered the number of English to be less than their own. They, therefore marched to assault the English in the rear, and actually hemmed them in between the mouth of a brook, a rocky point, a deep bog, and the pond. The company, completely surrounded, fought desperately till nightfall, when the Indians, tired of the conflict, moved off. The number of killed and wounded amounted to 23, Lovewell being among the former. The remainder of the party returned to the fort which had been deserted, in consequence of the arrival of one of Lovewell’s men who fled at the beginning of the fight, and reported all the rest killed. After resting, they started for home, where they arrived, to the great joy of their friends, after enduring the severest hardships. The survivors were liberally compensated, and the widows and families of the slain were provided for by the government of the province.