[746] Elliot, vol. 1, p. 155.
[747] Magnalia, vol. 1, p. 103.
[748] Ibid., p. 97.
[749] Orations, N. Y., 1855.
[750] Winthrop’s Hist., vol. 1, p. 97.
[751] Ibid., p. 76.
[752] Eliot spent the first years of his transatlantic life as a preacher at Roxbury. Here he was engaged with Weld and Richard Mather in compiling the first book published in New England—“The Psalms in Metre”—which appeared in 1640. In 1645, he became deeply interested in the work of evangelizing the Indians, “those ruins of mankind.” Into this labor he threw his whole heart; and he never relinquished it until God called him home; for he believed with the psalmist, that Jehovah was perpetually saying, “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance.”
Going into the wilderness, he preached his first Indian sermon in October, 1646, in a wigwam at Nonantum, near Watertown. He had already familiarized himself with the aboriginal languages; and since the New England tribes—loosely estimated at a united membership of forty thousand—were a part of the Algonquin race, whose tongues were similar, this acquisition was not as difficult as it might seem. Eliot had the happiness to witness several conversions as the result of his first essay; and from that moment he worked on with a resolution and self-abnegation above all earthly praise. The “Apostle,” as he soon came to be called, at once commenced several translations. Two catechisms were done into the Indian dialects. A primer, the Psalms, and Baxter’s Call, followed; and finally, an Indian Bible, a marvellous monument of patience, industry, and faith, appeared in 1663. Of course, this work necessitated money. Eliot appealed for aid. The English Parliament granted, in 1649, a special sum for the promotion of the gospel among the aborigines. Large collections were made throughout England for the same purpose; and even infant Boston contributed twenty-five hundred dollars in its poverty. The zeal of Eliot and the funds of the godly were not in vain expended. A number of Indians were hopefully converted, and these were colonized into separate towns. The chief seat of the “praying Indians” was Natick, settled by them in 1651. There Eliot erected his headquarters; and he gave his converts “the same advice as to government that Jethro gave to Moses; so they assembled, and chose their rulers of hundreds, fifties, and tens, and proclaimed, ‘that God should rule over them.’” Their houses were Indian cabins, built of bark, except the meeting-house, which was fashioned after the churches of the pale-faces. In this latter building Eliot had a bed and a room. Natick then contained one hundred and fifty-two persons. Eliot saw that civilization was necessary for his dusky protégés, both as a bond of union and as a fulcrum for his gospel lever. He knew also that responsibility educates. So he was careful to induct into offices of honor and responsibility those of his converts who seemed the most trusty, energetic, and intelligent. Such commissions were highly esteemed by the Indians, and sometimes they performed their official duty with amusing formality. On one occasion, a native magistrate named Hihoudi, issued the following warrant, directed to an Indian constable: “I, Hihoudi, you, Peter Waterman. Jeremy Wisket,—quick you take him, fast you hold him, straight you bring him before me. Hihoudi!”
Natick was a nucleus settlement. Soon a number of supplementary colonies were grouped about it, and these embraced, some sixty, some seventy, some eighty, “praying Indians,” all provided with churches, schools, and the rude initial apparatus of civilization. In 1674, there were eleven hundred Christian Indians who were possessed of fixed homes within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. And Eliot enumerated twenty-five hundred more to Boyle, as settled in Plymouth, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. The usual exercises were praying, reading the Bible, and preaching—sometimes by a white teacher, sometimes by a native missionary. Then all united in singing; and we are told that “sundry could manage to do so very well.” After this, some were catechized. Then, says Eliot, “if there was any act of public discipline—as divers times there was, since ignorance and partial barbarism made many stumblers—the offender was called forth, exhorted to give glory to God, and urged to confess his sins.” King Philip’s war partially paralyzed these efforts of Eliot and his compeers; it robbed them of the sympathy of the whites, and roughened their path; but they persevered; and even after Eliot’s decease, in 1690, God put it into the hearts of some to carry on his work, and efforts continued to be made towards the evangelization of the natives as far down as the year 1754. At that time the Rev. Mr. Hawley was “set apart” for that special work, in the “Old South Church,” in Boston, and Deacon Woodbridge and Jonathan Edwards were enlisted in the same good cause. Roger Williams had been an active co-worker with Eliot, and a little later the Mayhews gleaned their rich harvest at Martha’s Vineyard. Indeed, the Mayhews were so successful that on the single little island where they labored, six meetings were held in as many different places every Sabbath, and there were ten native preachers, who, according to the testimony of Thomas Mayhew, were of “good knowledge and holy conversation.”
But the missionaries did not find it plain sailing. Besides the incessant jealousy between the whites and the aborigines, they had to encounter the natural repugnance of the Indian to desert the blind faith of his fathers and accept the God and Saviour of the white men. Massasoit, spite of his friendship for the whites, lived and died a strict unbeliever. Philip, his son, was equally obstinate, saying on one occasion, after listening to an exhortation from Eliot, and placing his hand on a button on the Apostle’s coat: “I care no more for the gospel than I care for that button.” The Narragansetts went so far as to prohibit preaching within their borders. Yet still the missionaries went on, and, with God’s blessing, they harvested many souls, long before good Bishop Berkeley launched his noble but abortive scheme for the conversion of the red men. Those readers who are desirous of studying this subject in detail, are referred to Sparks’ Life of Eliot; Mayhew’s Indian experiences; Mansell’s recent reprint at Albany of tracts concerning Eliot’s Indian missions; R. Williams’ Key; Hubbard’s Hist.; Mather’s Magnalia; Gookin, in Mass. Hist. Col., etc., etc.