USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 37
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76
A suggestive scene is offered to an artist who would find a subject for his pencil in early New England History, in a visit received by Eliot at Roxbury, in 1650, from a most unwonted guest. In that year Governor D'Aillebout sent to the governors of this and of Plymouth Colony Father Druillettes, a Jesuit missionary among the Indians in Canada, to engage the English settlers in commercial relations, with a view also to secure them in alliance against the Mohawk Indians, the enemies of the French. There was then a law of our General Court that a Jesuit presuming to enter this jurisdiction should at once be banished, on pain of death if he ventured to return. Druillettes's diplomatic character was his security. He has left a charming letter in French describing his visit. Though he was unsuccess- ful in the object of his errand, he met with kind treatment and generous hospitality. Doubtless the Mass was for the first time celebrated in Boston by himself in a private room, with "a key" furnished him by his courteous host, Major Gibbons. Governor Endicott in Salem treated him in a friendly way, and talked French with him. Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, invited him to dinner, and, "it being Friday, entertaincd him with fish." The Father describes his visit to "Mr. Heliot" at Roxbury, who, it being November, invited him to stay with him, and thus defer his journey back to Canada through the wintry wilderness; but the priest could not remain.1
The attractive scene for the artist is the interview between these two devoted missionaries to the Indians, who labored for them, each beyond the bounds of four-score years, representing the extremes and antagonisms of two creeds and policies in the method and aim of their work. Doubtless they conferred together as Christian gentlemen, perhaps on something in which they could accord, and oblivious of all that divided them. Onc loves to think of Eliot's humble cottage as thus graced. His Indian interpreter might have been crouching by the cheerful chimney; and one or more Indian youth, whom Eliot always had near him, might have looked on in wonder as the cassocked priest and the Puritan discussed the difficulties of the Indian tongues, in which both of them attained great skill, and accom- plished their ministry as translators and preachers.
Eliot, in allowing and prompting his converts to ask questions, in order to make him sure that they understood his teachings, quickened in them a keen spirit of disputation and even casuistry. In the reports which he sent to
1 [See the conclusion of Mr. C. C. Smith's chapter in this volume, on " Boston and the Neigh- boring Jurisdictions."- ED.]
269
THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS.
England he often reveals some amusing illustrations of the acuteness and perplexity of the Indian intellect on the speculative and didactic themes of Calvinism. The excellent Gookin writes, " Divers of them had a faculty to frame hard and difficult questions, which Mr. Eliot did in a grave and Chris- tian manner endeavor to resolve and answer to their satisfaction." Being told that they were the children, not of God, but of the Devil, they were naturally interested chiefly in the latter. They asked, -
" Whether ye Devil or man was made first? Whether there might not be some- thing, if only a little, gained by praying to ye Devil? Why does not God, who has full power, kill ye Devil that makes all men so bad? If God made Hell in one of the 'six days,' why did he make it before Adam had sinned? If all ye world be burned up, where shall Hell be then? Are all ye Indians who have died now in Hell, while only we are in ye way of getting to Heaven? Why does not God give all men good hearts, that they may be good? Whither do dying little children go, seeing that they have not sinned ?" - " This question [says Eliot] gave occasion to teach them more fully original sin and the damned state of all men. I could give them no further comfort than that, when God elects the parents, he elects their seed also." " If a man should be inclosed in iron a foot thick, and thrown into the fire, how would his soul get out ? "
There is a sweet beauty in one of the questions put by a pupil of natural religion. " Can one be saved by reading y Book of yª Creature?" [Na- ture.] Eliot says, "This question was made when I taught them that God gave us two Bookes, and that in ye Booke of ye Creature every creature was a word or sentence."
The good Apostle records some that he calls "weak questions." Among these is the following: "What shall be in ye roome of ye world when it is burnt up?" This he depreciates as a " woman's question," though it was not put by a woman. Only once does he record an instance of trifling : "We had this year a malignant, drunken Indian, that, to cast some reproach as wee feared upon this way, boldly pronounced this question : 'Mr. Eliot, who made Sack? Who made Sack?' [The word for all strong drinks.] He was presently snibbed [snubbed?] by y^ other Indians calling it a pappoose question, and seriously and gravely answered not so much to his question as to his spirit, which hath cooled his boldness ever since." The questioner was a sad reprobate. He stole, killed, and skinned a young cow, which he had the effrontery to pass off on President Dunster as a " moose."
In deferring the entrance of his converts on a " Church Estate " till they were fully trained and disciplined, Eliot had to keep in view the coldness, jealousy, and still unreconciled opposition of many of his Puritan friends, who would be sadly affronted by any parody upon, or any debasement of the dignity of, their cherished institutions. But the day approached at last. In preparation for it Eliot painfully put some of his most promising subjects through the same process of "relation," " confession," and revealing of pri- vate religious " experience " which was required of members of his own
270
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
parish as a requisite to full church communion. A half dozen of these " exercises " he translated, wrote down, and submitted to his clerical breth- ren. Further " exercises" of the sort were called forth on a solemn Fast Day at Natick, Oct. 16, 1652. Still more " confessions " were heard at a great meeting of the Commissioners of the United Colonies at Roxbury in July 1654. Eliot said of some of his subjects, "We know ye profession of very many of them is but a meere paint, and their best graces nothing but meere flashes and pangs." "My desire is to be true to Christ, to their soules, and to ye churches." The listening to the confessions and to their interpretation was very tedious. "The work was long-som considering ye inlargement of spirit God gave some of them." Some of the English visi- tors "whispered and went out." Further delays occurred, and it was not till 1660 that a church of natives after the Puritan pattern was instituted at Natick.
The marvellous accomplishment in Eliot's missionary work, - the trans- lation of the entire Scriptures into the Indian tongue, - so far from having been in his view when he began his labors, had been by him then regarded and pronounced an impossible task. The utmost he had hoped for was the translation of some parts of the Bible and of a few simple manuals. It is to be remembered that other conditions in his circumstances disabled him from the singleness of devotion enjoyed by a Jesuit priest. He was depend- ent for his support of himself and a family mainly on his salary as a hard-work- ing pastor in his own church. Besides a wife and a daughter, he had five sons, all of whom he trained for Harvard College. One of these died in his course ; the other four became preachers. Grammars and dictionaries of some of the native languages had been published in Spanish America a century be- fore Eliot began his labors. The English society cautioned him against putting any Scripture into print until he felt sure of his mastery of the In- dian tongue. A reviewer of Eliot's linguistic labors cannot repress the wish that he might have had the benefit and used the facilities of the modern art of phonography. It was found that while many of the English teachers spoke in Indian with great facility, in writing sentences of it they would use much diversity in the spelling and in the number of letters, and especially of consonants, guided, as they were, simply by the sound as they caught the gutturals and grunts of the natives. Thus on pages of the same book we find the two words aukooks and ohkukes, as the name of an Indian stone kettle. Cotton Mather thought that some Indian words had been lengthen- ing themselves out ever since the confusion of tongues at Babel. To us it seems as if an Indian root-word started little and compact, like one of their own pappooses, and then grew at either extremity, thickened in the middle, extended in shape and proportion in each limb, member, and feature, and was completed with a feathered head-knot. We might copy here some of their words, each of more than forty letters. The Jesuit Biard, in Acadia, says he was satisfied with translating into Indian, "ye Lord's Prayer, ye Salutation of ye Virgin, y Commandments of God and of ye Church,
271
THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS.
with a short explanation of ye Sacraments, and some Prayers, for this is all ye Theology they need." But Eliot, true to the Puritan idea that the Bible ought to be to all Christians what the " Church " is to the Romanists, finally essayed a complete translation of both Testaments. So the patriarchal his- tory, the wars in Canaan, the Levitical institution, the Tabernacle and Tem- ple worship, the genealogical tables of Kings and Chronicles, and the technical arguments of the Epistles took their equal places with the Psalms of penitence and aspiration and of the sweet Benedictions and Parables of Christ. Eliot also made Indian catechisms and primers and a few devo- tional tracts, and put some psalms into Indian in metre. The restored King renewed the charter of the Parliamentary Corporation in aid of the Indian work which furnished type, paper, printer, and funds for the publica- tion of the Indian Bible. The New Testament appeared Sept. 5, 1661, the Old in 1663, and a copy, with a somewhat fulsome dedication, was richly bound and sent to Charles II. as the first European sovereign who ever received such a work with such " a superlative lustre " upon it from his sub- jects. As the book will be the appropriate matter for treatment in another place in this Memorial History, nothing more need be said about it here.1 It has now, in the score or more of copies of it which alone are extant, held at lofty valuations, but little other use than as the sight of it yields a sacramental power as a monument of holy - and must we say of wasted? - toil. The reader may recall with quite other reflections the beautiful pas- sage in Hallam, as he notices the publication of the Latin or Mazarin Bible, " the earliest printed book, properly so called ": "We may see in imagina- tion this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicat- ing its first fruits to the service of Heaven." 2
What would have been the later working and the continuous and final results of the experiment tried among the Massachusetts Indians, had it been left to a peaceful development, is certainly a question of interest. It would find different answers according to the hopefulness or the distrust and misgivings which any one might bring to its consideration from his views of what has been or what might be the result of similar experiments. It is for us only to recognize the deplorable and disheartening catastrophe which brought such a grievous disappointment to Eliot and Gookin, with such bitter miseries on the " Praying Indians." That catastrophe was the outbreak of Philip's war, regarded by the whites as a conspiracy designed for, and at one interval darkly threatening, the utter extermination of the English settlements in New England.
The outbreak occurred when about thirty years had passed in the trial of Eliot's fond experiment. There were then in the colony seven tol- erably well-established villages of more or less civilized and Christianized
1 [See the chapter by Dr. Trumbull on " The Indian Tongue and its Literature." Eliot is said to have learned the language under the
instruction in part of Job Nesutan, an Indian servant in his household. - ED.]
2 Literature of Europe, i. 211.
272
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
natives, and seven others in a crude state working toward that condition. The majority of the residents in the former of these villages had in the main abandoned a vagabond life, and were trying to subsist on the produce of the soil, on simple handicraft, and on wages paid them for labor by the whites, with occasional hunting and fishing. These more advanced villages had their forts, their outlying fields, fenced or walled, their more cleanly and decent cabins, their native mechanics, teachers, petty magistrates, and preachers, with schools and meeting-houses. Fruit-trees and growing crops gave a show of thrift and culture to the scenes. The subjects of all this care were, however, jealously watched and restrained in ways often irritating to them. There were rognes, pilferers, and nuisances among them. Doubtless they committed much mischief, and were suspected of some of which they were innocent. The old feeling of distrust, antipathy, and opposition to the experiment still lingered and perhaps was even strengthened among many of the English, who regarded the so-called " Praying Indians " as more of a nuisance than were those in a state of Nature, - as in fact mere hankerers for the "loaves and fishes," hypocrites, weaklings, shiftless and dependent paupers. Gookin's hopeful narrative of success could not have been long circulated in England before he was compelled, in 1677, to write a despond- ing one, which, remaining in obscurity in private hands for more than a cen- tury and a half, was only put in print as an antiquarian document in 1836.1 Even at this day that later narrative will draw from the reader a pang of profound sympathy with the heart-agony of the writer of it. The gentle, earnest truthfulness, the sweet forbearance, the passionless tone, and the minute and well-authenticated matter of the record give to it a touching pathos and power. The substance of it is a rehearsal of the jealousies, apprehensions, and severe measures on the part of the authorities of Massa- chusetts in their dealing with the " Praying Indians " during the horrors, bar- barities, massacres, and burnings of the war instigated by the sachem of the Narragansetts with his red allies. Gookin and Eliot, perhaps over confident- ly, were persuaded that the Indians under their charge, in numbers, fidelity, and constancy, might have been most effective allies of the whites in the war, and that their settlements would be a wall of defence. But from the outbreak of that havoc of burning, pillage, and carnage, a panic-horror of dismay and awful apprehension seized many of the whites that the darkest treachery was working in the Indian towns among the viperons reptiles whom a weak sentimentality had warmed into life. Rumors filled the laden and melancholy air. A few certified occurrences there were which sufficed to warrant the darkest apprehensions. Tribes heretofore hostile to each other
1 [ Daniel Gookin, in 1674, planned a history of New England, of which only the second vol- ume, " Hist. Coll. of the Indians in New Eng. land," is preserved and printed in I Mass. Hist. Coll. i., and of this, chapter v. is given to the conversion of the natives of Massachusetts. Cf. N. E. Ilist. and Geneal. Reg., October, I859, P. 347. His " Historical Account of the Doings
and Sufferings of the Christian Indians of New England," a manuscript written in 1677 and dedicated to Robert Boyle, is printed in the Archeologia Americana, ii. 423-564. A synopsis of Gookin's historical writings is given in the N. E. Hist. and Gencal. Reg., October, IS59 There is a Gookin genealogy in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1847. - ED.]
273
THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS.
and harmless to the English were drawn into Philip's league. Just enough of cases of treachery occurred to confirm the panic-frenzy about the "nourishing of vipers." A few Indians slipped away from the towns, and were charged with burning barns and outbuildings, when possibly this was the work of malignant strollers, of whom there were enough in the woods. In no single instance, however, was a criminal act proved against any Indian that had had the confidence of Eliot or Gookin. Still, some of the natives under training, disgusted by restraint, or maddened by the jealousy and hate felt towards them, did leave the settlements; and in the histories of some of our towns, published in recent years, we find antiquarian mention of one or more Natick, Grafton, or Marlborough Indians as seen among the files or ambushcd parties of " the wily and hellish foe."
There was no reasoning with the people under this panic. Eliot and Gookin became victims of dark animosity among the people, -the life of the latter being threatened in the streets because he pleaded so be- seechingly for confidence and mercy to his wards. Doubtless there would have been a popular rising if the Indians had been left in their towns.1 The magistrates, to protect both parties, decided at first that the Indians should be moved from their distant settlements, and brought chiefly near the seaboard, - to Cambridge plains, Dorchester Neck, and Noddle's Island, and some to Concord and Mendon. This proposition only exasper- ated the residents in those towns, as it would but bring the dreaded scourge nearer. Finally it was decided to move the Indians from Natick, while their crops were ungathered, to Deer Island, then covered with forest trees and used for the grazing of sheep. A sad scene was presented in the autumn of 1675 at the site of the United States Arsenal, on Charles river, then called " The Pines." The Natick Indians, who had been temporarily brought there on foot, by horses and carts for the sick and lame, after a comforting prayer by Eliot, were, by the serving tide at midnight on October 30th, shipped in three vessels for the Island, - Eliot wrote, "patiently, humbly, and piously, without murmuring or complaining against ye English." They had a forlorn winter on the Island, which was bleak and cold and shelterless. Some of their corn was taken to them, " a boat and man was appointed to look after them." Their subsistence was largely from shell-fish. In the dire extremity of the continued war by Philip the English were finally in- duced to avail themselves of the service of a few of the " Praying Indians," for whose fidelity and constancy Eliot pledged himself. Indians again were used against Indians by the whites. The substitutes and allies, by their skill in forest strategy, proved of utmost use in the emergency. They stood nobly for their dubious benefactors, and some of them won special praise and rewards. They stripped and painted themselves, became Indians again like the enemy, tracked them to their lairs, brought home such captives as had not been massacred; and so far as they were traitors it was to their own race. Gookin says that these red allies killed at least 400 of the
1 [Cf. Dr. Hale's section on "Boston in Philip's War."- ED.]
VOL. 1 .- 35.
274
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
enemy, " turning ye balance to ye English side, so that ye enemy went down ye wind amain."
The poor exiles from Natick were returned there in May, 1678. It was estimated at the time that about a fourth part of all the Indians in New England - those of Massachusetts being 3000 of that quarter - had been more or less influenced by civilization and Christianity ; and that had these been in full league with Philip, the whites would have been exterminated. After the war the stated places for Indian church settlements were reduced to four, while there were other temporary stations. There were ten stations in Plymouth Colony, the same number in the Vineyard, and five in Nantuck- et. President Mather, writing in 1687, said there were in New England six regular churches of baptized Indians, and eighteen assemblies of catechu- mens, twenty-four Indian preachers, and four English ministers who preached in Indian. A committee to visit Natick in 1698 reported a church there of seven men and three women (Indians), a native minister ordained by Eliot, 59 native men, 51 women, and 70 children. Up to 1733 all the town officers were Indians. The place was incorporated as an English town in 1762. In 1792 there was in it but a single Indian family. At a local celebration there in 1846, the two-hundredth anniversary of Eliot's first service, a girl of six- teen was the only known native descendant. A copy of Eliot's Indian Bible, obtained from the library of the Hon. John Pickering for the purpose, was then deposited among the town records.
No laments could deepen the melancholy in which this story finds its close. To moralize over it would be to open an inexhaustible theme. There were places in this State where feeble remnants of partially civilized natives remained a little longer than at Natick. But the longer they sur- vived the more forlorn was the spectacle they presented, as poor pension- ers and vagabonds, the virility of their native nobleness in the wild woods crushed in abject abasement before the white man, their veins mixed with African rather than with English blood. Humiliated, taciturn, retrospec- tive, and with no longer heritage, name, or progeny, they preached more suggestive and impressive sermons than were ever preached to them. Yet, as if in memorial of motives or compunctions which those who have driven them from the soil once felt towards them, there are now vested charitable funds held for the benefit of those who are not here to receive it.
" Alas ! for them, - their day is o'er, Their fires are out from shore to shore ; No more for them the wild deer bounds, The plough is on their hunting grounds ; The pale man's axe rings through their woods, The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods, Their pleasant springs are dry." 1
Fragen E. Ellis.
1 From Charles Sprague's Centennial Ode, 1830.
CHAPTER VII.
BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS.
BY CHARLES C. SMITH. Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
F ROM her fortunate position at the head of the bay, and from her comparatively large population and wealth, Boston was brought into more intimate relations with the neighboring English, French, and Dutch colonies than were sustained by any other Massachusetts town. But these relations arose mainly from the circumstance that the people of the town were led to engage in trade with the other colonies, partly by the ne- cessity of supplying the various wants of a growing community, and partly by the thrifty habits of the first settlers. With the Indians Boston seldom came into direct contact ; and only once were there serious fears of an attack from them. This was in August, 1632, not quite two years after the settlement of the town, when "notice being given of ten sagamores and many Indians assembled at Muddy River," says Winthrop, "the governor sent Captain Underhill with twenty musketeers to discover, &c .; but at Roxbury they heard they were broke up."1 While towns not more than twenty or thirty miles distant were the scenes of frequent alarms, Boston was happily preserved from the Indian torch and tomahawk. There was a limited trade with the Indians, but from the comparatively small number of them living near Boston it could never have been of much value to the town. The extensive maritime trade which sprang up at an early datc had its origin, however, in a voyage to the Indian country. Only a few weeks after the naming of the town a vessel was sent south to buy corn. "About the end of October, this year, 1630, I joined with the governor and Mr. Maverick," says Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, "in sending out our pinnace to the Narragansetts, to trade for corn to supply our wants; but after the pinnace had doubled Cape Cod, she put into the next harbor she found, and there meeting with Indians, who showed their willingness to truck, she made her voyage there, and brought us a hundred bushels of corn, at about four shillings a bushel, which helped us some- what." 2
1 Winthrop, Hist. of New England, i. SS.
2 Young, Chronicles of Mass., pp. 322, 323; 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 42.
276
THE MEMORIAL, HISTORY OF BOSTON.
This expedition was more fortunate than that of the Salem people in the following year. In September, 1631, the Salem pinnace was sent out on a similar errand, but was driven by head winds into Plymouth harbor, "where," says Winthrop, "the governor, &c., fell out with them, not only forbidding them to trade, but also telling them they would oppose them by force, even to the spending of their lives, &c .; whereupon they returned, and acquainting the governor of Massachusetts with it, he wrote to the governor of Plymouth this letter, here inserted with their answer, which came about a month after."1 So far as is known, neither Winthrop's letter nor Bradford's reply has been preserved. But about the middle of Novem- ber, we are told, "the governor of Plymouth came to Boston, and lodged in the ship."2 The purpose of this visit was, no doubt, to settle the quarrel ; and from that time the relations of the Boston and the Plymouth people were almost uniformly of a friendly, and sometimes of a very intimate character. In September of the next year Winthrop and Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, went on foot from Weymouth to Plymouth, where they partook of the communion with the Plymouth church, and afterward addressed the congregation.3 In June, 1647, Governor Bradford attended the synod at Cambridge as a messenger from the church of Plymouth.4 In the latter part of 1646, Edward Winslow, at that time one of the Plymouth magistrates, was sent to England as the agent of Massachusetts to answer the complaints of Child and Gorton.5 At the very close of the colonial period the Plymouth Court passed a vote of thanks to Increase Mather for his services in England, and desired Sir Henry Ashurst, who was made their agent, to consult with him about obtaining a charter for the colony ; 6 and it was mainly through Mather's efforts that Massachusetts and Plymouth were brought under one government.7 These instances are sufficient to show how intimate were the relations of the two colonies.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.