USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 6
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"'Why,' demanded the natives, 'did not God give all men good hearts?'
'Since God is all-powerful, why did not God kill the devil, that made men bad?' Of themselves, they fell into the mazes of fixed decrees and free will. 'Doth God know who shall repent and believe, and who not?'
"Cases of casuity occurred; I will cite but two of them, one of which, at least, cannot easily be decided. Eliot preached against polygamy. ‘Suppose a man before he knows God,' inquired a convert, 'hath two wives; the first childless, the second bearing him many sweet children, whom he exceedingly loves; which of these two wives is to be put away?' And the question which Kotzebue proposed in a fiction, that has found its way across the globe, was in real life put to the pure-minded Eliot, among the wigwams of Nonantum. 'Suppose a squaw desert and flee from her husband, and live with another dis- tant Indian, till, hearing the word, she repents, and desires to come again to her husband, who remains still unmarried; shall the husband, upon her repentence, receive her again?' And Eliot was never tired with their impor- tunity, and his simplicity of life and manners and evangelical sweetness of temper, won for him all hearts, whether in the villages of the emigrants, or the 'smoaky cells' of the natives."
These and other questions got into tracts printed in England in the cam- paigns to raise funds for evangelical work in New England. Some of them are in the form of an Indian catechism. Here is a sample :
Q. "How comes it to passe that the Sea water was salt, and the land water fresh?"
Ans. "This so from the wonderful worke of God, as why are Straw- berries sweet and Cranberries sowre?"
Q. "If God could not be seene with their eyes, how could hee bee seene with their soule within ?"
Ans. "If they saw a great wigwam, would they think that Racoones or Foxes builte it that had no wisdome? No, but they would beleeve some wise workman made it though they did not see him; so should they beleeve con- cerning God, when they looked up to Heaven, Sunne, Moone, and Stars, and saw this great house he hath made, though they did not see him with their eyes.'
Wor .- 4
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The same tract neglects to make answer to some of the questions which Bancroft cites, the author getting out of the dilemma by an off-hand "lest I clog up your time with reading."
Occasionally came from an Indian a question which Eliot would not answer. On one occasion a somewhat inebriate Indian named George, a scapegrace who had the distinction of having stolen a cow, skinned it, and sold the carcass to President Dunster of Harvard College for a moose, disturbed the meeting before which the apostle was preaching by crying out: "Master Eliot, who made sack? Did God make sack?" George was thrown out.
The Nipmuck tribes, in common with all the other New England Indians, were prodigiously impressed by the prowess of the English in the ruthless but necessary war which nearly exterminated the Pequod nation in 1637. They were in a plastic mood as to the God to whom the whites in their frequent prayers attributed their successes. Eliot received a Pequod captive as a bond servant, and his learning of the Algonquin tongue was begun. He could have taught the Indians to read the English Bible. In fact, many of them became sufficiently familiar with the language. But his creed was that God spoke Indian as well as English, and therefore there must be an Indian Bible. He accomplished this seemingly impossible task, for the dialect was exceedingly difficult even to so profound a linguist. He translated the Bible complete and printed it on the only press in the Colony, at Harvard College. He also printed an Indian primer, catechism and other useful books.
In 1646 he was ready to begin the missionary work for which he had been yearning for years. He was, instinctively, extraordinarily wise in his methods of reaching the Indians. With all his fanatical zeal he was tactful, patient, tolerant and practical. The untutored people whom he took into his heart could not fail to recognize his utterly unselfish sincerity and goodness. His first appearance before them as a preacher was auspicious. In 1646 he visited the nearest village, Nonentum, on the bank of the Charles opposite Water- town, where he was welcomed by Waban, the sagamore. On a beautiful October day, under the sky, he preached a sermon of an hour and half in the Indian tongue, and the villagers said they understood him. Then-wonderful showmanship !- he distributed apples and biscuits to the squaws and children and tobacco to the men ! John Eliot made good.
The next year when the Church Council met in Cambridge he staged a demonstration to prove that the conversion of the savages was no idle dream. He had gathered together there a great concourse of his converts and in the presence of the Council preached to them in their language, and followed with a catechism to which his proselytes roared out the answers, "which did mar- vellously affect all the wise and Godly ministers, magistrates, and people."
The good word spread among the tribes. From the Bay villages of the Massachusetts tribe, from Cape Cod and Nantucket, from the Nipmuck
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Country, even from the powerful Passaconaway in his distant capital at Pennacook on the Merrimack (now Concord, New Hampshire) came word that they were "hungry for instruction." The Apostle was escorted by a guard of twenty sannups to far-away Quabaug.
The tidings got across the water of the successful Christianizing of the New England Indians. Money was quickly forthcoming. The savages must be brought into the fold and saved, no matter what it cost. The Rump Parlia- ment granted incorporation to the Society for Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England, which, when Charles II ascended the throne, the Long Parliament renewed under the even longer name of "The Society or Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New Eng- land and the Parts Adjacent." It was a generous corporation, and well that it was, for it cost £ 10 per Indian to carry on the conversion, which in those days was high.
The sales resistance of the English people was quickly broken down. Powerful friends to the cause were made, notable among them Lady Mary Armine, childless widow of a famous parliamentarian, already a founder of hospitals. For twenty-five years she regularly furnished Eliot with funds for purposes of conversion. In ten years, more than $25,000 was transmitted to New England. The corporation even worked the British Army for £51I in four years, in spite of the fact that the soldiers had just emerged from the civil war.
In the very beginning, Eliot blocked out the policy that Christianity could travel no faster than the civilization which accompanied it. He determined that the Indians should be induced to "sit down orderly" in permanent com- munities, where they might learn civilized ways of living-English methods of agriculture, the useful trades and decent social conditions. He spent large sums of the corporation's money on such practical things as agricultural imple- ments, tools, and cattle and swine.
"It did not do, from the Puritan point of view, to catch your Indian and baptise him and then turn him loose," writes Morrison. "From the way the ancient Hebrews used to break out into idolatry, the Puritans were convinced that a nomadic state was incompatible with good morals. Eliot wished to have his converts prosperous and self-respecting. Cleanliness he did not unduly insist upon, but one-family lodges he did require; and his converts were not only deprived of the pleasure of scalping their enemies, but they were urged to give up their mutual and friendly offices on that part of their anatomy.
"Nor did the English seek to cover the bronze, athletic bodies of the red men with the cast-off clothing of his parish, indeed he is said to have adopted the Indian undress himself in his wilderness visitations; but a settled life for the Indians meant a loss of both aptitude and opportunity to procure fur
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garments. Eliot tried without much success to teach the squaws to spin and weave, and he had to call on his English supporters for blankets, cloth and clothing. Those who have laughed at the picture of Mrs. Jellyby, making red flannel undies for the natives of Barrioboola-Gha, may smile if they will at Lady Armine and her kind, providing the intergumentary emblems of civiliza- tion for the worthy red men of Hassanamisco, Wabaquasset, and Titicat."
In 1651 the General Court set off the first Praying Town at Natick. "A place of God's proving as a fruit of prayer," Eliot called it. A village was laid out astraddle the Charles River, with a connecting footbridge. In the center was a palisaded square containing a good sized meetinghouse. Each family had a house-lot and a share in the common cornfield and meadow. But the Indians stuck to their wigwams and lodges. This village was the model which was followed as the other Praying Towns were established one after another.
An Indian college was established as an adjunct of Harvard College, but this was not a success, for few of the young Indians had minds fitted for the assimilation of the classics. Some of them ran away; others stayed long enough to write Latin and Greek poetry, but did not graduate. Joel Hia- coomes, Harvard '65, went home to Nantucket to spend his vacation among his old cronies and one of them, a pagan, murdered him, perhaps because he insisted upon reciting poetry in Greek or Latin. His classmate, Caleb Chee- shateaumuck, took his degree of bachelor of arts and promptly died.
The most prolific of the Indian schools was at Natick. The Apostle picked likely young men as they finished the course, and made them preachers or teachers. To the preacher was given a Bible, to the teacher a supply of primers for pupils, to each a pair of spectacles, to lend distinction and dignity, and serve as a badge of office. Their salary was £ 10 per annum.
"King Philip's War, most devastating for Massachusetts of all the many wars she has survived, was started and prosecuted by pagan Indians who had absolutely refused to allow missionaries into their dominions," says Morrison. "Although a number of the recent converts in the Nipmuck Country fell away, those of the Old Praying Towns were loyal almost to a man. These seven towns, situated in an arc from the Merrimack to the Connecticut line, formed a natural first line of defense for the English. Daniel Gookin wished to use them as such. He begged the court to send a small file of soldiers to each praying town to keep up its morale and organize the men for scouting.
"But the Court would not listen. A war-time frenzy broke out against the 'enemy in our midst,' of the same sort that prevailed here a few years ago. Nothing would satisfy the people but to interne the Praying Indians in Boston Harbor. Even Eliot's ewe lambs of Natick were deported, 'patiently, humbly and piously without murmuring or complaining against the English.' Three forlorn winters they spent on Deer Island, living largely on shellfish, and more
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than once threatened with extermination by the meaner sort of Bostonians, patriots too cowardly to fight at the front, but ready to fall on the helpless within their power.
"Daniel Gookin as a 'pro Indian' had his life threatened more than once and when he and Eliot were sailing down the harbor on a mission of mercy their boat was deliberately run down, and with difficulty they were saved by their companions. 'Some thanked God, and some wished that we had been drowned,' wrote Eliot. 'Soon after, one that wished we had drowned, was himself drowned about the same place.' That incident, one gathers, afforded Eliot the only pleasure he got out of the war, although he lost a 'good castor hat worth ten shillings.'"
John Eliot's work, considered by its permanent results, proved useless. This was inevitable. Here were living two peoples, racially so different and so mutually antagonistic that their mingling as a homogeneous community was impossible. The French and Spaniards accomplished this to a limited extent. But there was something in the Indian personality and manner of living which was repugnant and even abhorrent to the minds of English, Scotch and Irish people. Inexorable fate decreed that either white men or red men must disappear from the scene. Even if the Puritans had acted in the purest spirit of fair play, it could have been no different, provided they were eventually to occupy the land.
When the tribes were defeated in their abortive war of extermination of the whites, the Colonists had come to regard them as so many dangerous and malignant animals. There was much of cruelty in the treatment of the sur- rendered Indians. Hundreds of them, men, women, and children, were sold into captivity in the West Indies and Bermuda, Southern Europe, and even in the Barbary States. Many were executed. The spirit of the survivors was broken. The Praying Towns remained only as remnants to recall former prosperity, tranquility and contentment. Their Bibles and catechisms and primers had mostly disappeared. English interest in them, quite naturally, was destroyed. The morale of the Praying Indians in common with that of their pagan brethren deteriorated rapidly. Hardly a trace of usefulness remained to the credit of the years of effort and the money which had been devoted to this sincere and generous missionary effort.
But let it not be forgotten that to Eliot's Indians is due the credit for pre- venting what threatened to be a highly organized uprising against the English settlers, the consequence of which, beyond a doubt, would have been frightful. It is conceivable that the Colonies would have been completely wiped out in a massacre almost without precedent. Philip and his chiefs were perfecting and spreading a plot of simultaneous attack upon the unsuspecting settlers every- where outside of the zones of the large coast towns. Bancroft says that he could find no evidence of such a conspiracy. But he stands almost alone
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among historians, and there seems to be ample proof in the statements of the Indians themselves who told of Philip's visit among them and his persuading of the sagamores. His own Poconokets, the Narragansetts, the Nipmucks, who were not under Eliot's influence, and some that were, and other kindred tribes were in secret agreement. They held with Philip that the future of their people was dark indeed unless they succeeded in driving the whites from their ancestral lands, and their judgment was sound.
But in 1675, "The Day" had not arrived. Philip was not nearly ready to give the signal. He may have planned it for later in that year, but probably his thought was of the next year or even later.
The conspiracy was revealed by the Praying Indians. The aged Sagamore Waban of the Watertown village heard of it. But it was John Sausaman, a Natick Indian teacher, who learned the details and revealed them to the gov- ernor of Plymouth. In revenge for what the savages considered his treachery, he was murdered, the murder led to executions, the executions to a reprisal attack upon Swansea, in disobedience of Philip's orders, and the war was on. The Indians were caught unprepared.
Had the conspiracy been permitted to ripen to fruition, bands of Indians on a given night would have descended upon every white settlement, which, not suspecting danger, would have been unprepared for resistance. The survivors, where there were any, would have been driven back upon Boston and Plym- outh and such other places as might offer safest refuge. The defense of these might or might not have been sufficient to drive off such hordes of exultant savages, thirsty for more blood and eager for more scalps. The settlement of New England might have been put back a generation. The "might have beens" mount up into a sinister total. Apart from conjecture they have no meaning, excepting to emphasize that Eliot through his Indian friends bestowed upon the Colonies one grand final blessing.
CHAPTER V.
Outbreak of King Philip's War
The year 1675 opened with the tension between the English and the Indians rapidly approaching the breaking point. King Philip was not ready to strike, but conditions were such that a conflict might easily be precipitated, even by some happening insignificant in itself, as actually happened. Yet the English, to judge from their lack of preparations to meet a warlike emergency, had small realization that raging and determined savages might descend upon them with little or no warning.
Perhaps, in the outlying settlements, like Lancaster and Brookfield and Mendon, the inhabitants had lived so long at peace with their red neighbors that they could not conceive of such a possibility. It may have seemed a fanciful thought that these indolent, easy-going, mildly troublesome, some- times useful people could be suddenly transformed into painted warriors, yelling their war-whoop, thirsting for revenge and stern in their resolution to drive the intruders from their lands. There was little organization for defence. The experienced military men among the English must have been fully aware that such means as had been devised for meeting an Indian attack were quite inadequate. But nothing was done about it.
Things had been going from bad to worse. Each year the settlers had encroached further upon the Indian lands. They had paid their way, to be sure, according to English law. "I think I can truly say," wrote Governor Winslow, in May, 1676, "that before these present troubles broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in this Colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian Proprietors. Nay, because some of our people are of a covetous disposition, and the Indians are in straits easily prevailed with to part with their lands, we first made a law, that none should purchase or receive of gift any land of the Indians without the knowledge and allowance of our courts and penalty of a fine, five pounds per acre for all that should be bought or obtained."
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Such was the self-satisfied state of mind of the English regarding their real estate transactions with the original owners of the Colonial lands. Many of them took full advantage of people who had no knowledge whatsoever of land values as measured in English money. J. H. Denison in his book "Emotional Currents in American History," 1932, puts the case clearly, when he says : "To the Indian land can no more be bought and sold than sky and ocean, and when the white man thought he was purchasing territory, the Indians failed to grasp the idea that for a few gifts he was renouncing his fields and hunting ground in perpetuity. Consequently they were as much annoyed with the settlers upon their territory as is an Englishman with a poacher. . . . . There is a brutality about the advance of civilization which rivals that of the savage." No one will deny, we think, that if these same Englishmen had owned this vast area of wilderness, no man could have bought it from them for what, in the money of today, would have been a dollar or two a square mile.
King Philip, of Mount Hope, had brooded long. He may have had thoughts as lofty as those of white patriots whose names and glory are immor- tal. To his Indian mind his people had been stripped of their ancestral lands and of their liberty. He may have acted with purest motive in plotting to win back their freedom. He may have chanted "Poconokets never shall be slaves." He may have cried in gutteral Algonquin : "Give me liberty or give me death !" He, too, was a patriot. But this world of ours draws sharp dis- tinction between Nipmucks and Narragansetts and Poconokets fighting for their liberty in 1675, and the American Colonies fighting for the same precious heritage in 1775.
But whether or not Philip, son of Massasoit, was a great-hearted patriot, he surely was nursing a formidable list of personal grudges against the Eng- lish. He was a proud man, they tell us, descended from a line of powerful chieftains, whose lands had covered all of southeastern Massachusetts. He had been robbed of the greater part of his former power, and had been publicly humiliated more than once. He had been forced to sign an obnoxious confes- sion of evil doings, and to give up the guns he had paid for.
He had seen his people grow poorer and poorer, to a condition of almost abject poverty. They had listened to the blandishments of the English and had sold their lands, for, conforming to their inbred trait of no thought for the morrow, the lure of money in the fist was a temptation easy to yield to. So Philip's country had become smaller each year, its northern and eastern bor- ders had approached steadily closer to his stronghold on Mount Hope, which rises from the northern shore of the great eastern bight of Narragansett Bay. Finally there was nothing left but a few peninsulas, which the General Court had set aside for them-counterparts of the present-day Indian reservations. Even these were fenced off from English lands, on the plea that the cattle might not stray into the Indians' fields and destroy their growing crops.
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According to Hubbard, Philip had first contemplated an uprising in 1671. Discussing the premature outbreak of 1675, he wrote: "Yet some are ready to think that if his own life had not been in jeopardy by the guilt of the murder of Sausaman, his heart might have failed him as it did before in the year 1671, which made one of his captains, of better courage and resolution than himself, when he saw his cowardly temper and disposition, fling down his arms, calling him a white-livered cur."
However, that may be, Philip, in 1675, was not ready for his uprising. His guns were gone and he had no means of replacing them. His organiza- tion of the three nations was far from being perfected. It is written that when he heard of the killing of the people at Swansea, his neighbor white village, he wept. His plans were knocked awry. He must have sensed that reprisal would be swift. There was left for him and his people and allies only the opportunity for a final brutal and bloody vengeance.
When this happened he was at his home on Mount Hope. It was the early summer of 1675. A year later, close by the home of his boyhood, he was shot down by a traitorous Indian companion. In the intervening months the outlying settlements of Massachusetts and Rhode Island were burned and laid waste, hundreds of their inhabitants were killed and other hundreds car- ried away as captives, the military forces of the Colonies, though triumphant because of their dogged Anglo-Saxon courage, were ambushed and slaugh- tered. Thousands of Indians were dead, the Poconokets and Narragansetts were almost exterminated, the Nipmucks, excepting some of the faithful Praying Indians, were decimated and broken. Nothing was left of the three conspiring nations but miserable remnants.
New England in 1675-"The prosperity of the Massachusetts colony portended danger," wrote Bancroft, "for the increase of the English alarmed the race of red men, who could not change their habits, and who saw them- selves deprived of their usual means of subsistance. It is difficult to form exact opinions on the population of the several colonies in this early period of their history; the colonial accounts are incomplete; and those which were furnished by emissaries from England are extravagantly false. Perhaps no great error will be committed, if we suppose the white population of New England, in 1675, to have more than fifty-five thousand souls. Of these, Plymouth may have contained not many less than seven thousand; Connecti- cut nearly fourteen thousand; Massachusetts proper, more than twenty-two thousand; and Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, each perhaps four thousand.
"The settlements were chiefly agricultural communities, planted near the sea-side, from New Haven to Pemaquid. The beaver trade, even more than traffic in lumber and fish, had produced the villages beyond the Piscataqua ;
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yet in Maine, as in New Hampshire, there was 'a great trade in deal boards.' Most of the towns were insulated settlements near the ocean, on rivers, which were employed to drive the saw-mills, then described as a 'late invention'; and cultivation had not extended far into the interior.
"Haverhill on the Merrimack was a frontier town; from Connecticut, emi- grants had ascended as far as the rich meadows of Deerfield and Northfield ; but to the west Berkshire was a wilderness; Westfield was the remotest plan- tation. Between the towns on Connecticut river and the cluster of towns near Massachusetts Bay, Lancaster and Mendon and Brookfield and Worcester were the solitary abodes of Christians in the desert. The government of Massachusetts extended to the Kennebec, and included more than half the population of New England. The confederacy of the colonies had also been renewed, in anticipation of dangers.
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