Chapter IV

Nonantum. Mather’s description of the natives. The Lost Tribes
of Israel. Specimen of Indian words. Eliot’s first religious
exercise at Nonantum. Indian Questions. Second visit to
the Indians. Indian Questions. Eliot’s reflections on his
interviews. Anecdotes.

The old turnpike road to Worcester, in Brighton, leaves Nonantum hill on the left, and a private road conducts to the summit of the hill which is crowned by two mansions.[18] The scenery from that hill has a rare combination of still life and of the busy world. The Charles River, seen from a distant part of the hill, meanders to the sea; the quiet, classic scenes of Cambridge are before the eye; soft undulations of hill and dale, winding roads and aboriginal woods, and the quiet waters of the estuary, impress the mind with sensations of repose which are pleasantly broken by the distant noise of travel upon the bridges, the sudden whistle of the locomotive, and an impressive view of the neighboring city. That hill, extending as far as Watertown, and Newton, was once the favorite residence of the Indians, in this vicinity,[19] and thither Eliot, the pastor of the neighboring Church in Roxbury, directed his way, to give the Indians the word and ordinances of the Gospel in their own language.

Cotton Mather says, “The natives of the country now possessed by the New Englanders, had been forlorn and wretched heathen ever since their first herding here; and though we know not how these Indians first became inhabitants of this mighty continent, yet we may guess that probably the devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hopes that the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them. But our Eliot was in such ill-terms with the devil, as to alarm him by sounding the silver trumpets of heaven in his territories, and make some noble and zealous attempt towards ousting him of his ancient possessions here. There were, I think, twenty several nations, if I may call them so, of Indians, upon that spot of ground which fell under the influence of our Three United Colonies; and our Eliot was willing to rescue as many of them as he could from that old usurping landlord of America, who is, by the wrath of God, the prince of this world.”[20]

Some of the interest and zeal which many of the first planters and their successors felt with regard to the Indians, was owing to their belief that they were the Ten Tribes of Israel. Cotton Mather enumerates “some small reasons,” as he calls them, which led the English to suspect that they might be Israelites. He adds, “They have, too, a great unkindness for our swine;”—but he does not seem to place much reliance on that coincidence with the Jewish antipathy to swine, for he adds, “but I suppose that is because our swine devour their clams, which are a great dainty with them.”

This supposition that the North American Indians are the Ten Tribes of Israel, has seemed even more probable to many modern writers than it did to the first settlers of the country. Mr. Catlin, in his interesting and valuable work on the North American Indians, mentions many curious facts in the history, manners and customs of the present race of red men, in favor of this supposition. But there are so many theories on the subject of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and it is so easy for an ingenious mind to discover or invent resemblances, that neither this theory nor any other on the same subject has ever obtained general belief.

It was to a people of rude speech and fierce countenance that Mr. Eliot endeavored to give a knowledge of the Gospel and the institutions of civilized life. His first labor of course was to acquire their language. It was the language of the Massachusetts Indians to which he applied himself. He found an old Indian who could speak English, took him into his family, and by finding out one word, and expression, and sentence after another, he soon was able to converse in that tongue, and finally understood it so well that he reduced it to rules, and made an Indian grammar. One glance at this language will show that it must have been no easy task for a stranger to learn it well enough to converse in it. Some of the words are of enormous length, one of them sometimes filling a whole line. The word for “our loves,” is _noowoomantammoorkanunornash_. “Our question” is _Kummogkodonnattootummooetiteaongannunnarash_. “One would think,” says Mather, “that these words had been growing ever since Babel unto the dimensions to which they are now extended.” Another remark of his on this subject, though it may seem to us to be somewhat in a trifling mood, was undoubtedly written with sober feelings, considering the prevalent superstitions of those times—superstitions with regard to which we greatly err if we suppose them to have been, in those times, peculiar to America.[21] “I know not,” this writer adds, “what thoughts it will produce in my reader, when I inform him that once finding that the demons in a possessed young woman understood the Latin and Greek and Hebrew languages, my curiosity led me to make trial of this Indian language, and the demons did seem as if they did not understand it.”

The reason of the great length of these Indian words is understood to be, that instead of having separate words for pronouns and adjectives, the noun or verb expresses them by adding syllables to itself. Mather, who was ready at anagrams and puns, says that the name _Eliot_ read backwards, is _t o i l E_, and he thinks that the name corresponds well with the toil of reducing such a language to a grammar. At the close of his Grammar Eliot wrote these words: “Prayers and pains through faith in Christ Jesus, will do any thing.”

We have from Eliot’s own pen a narrative, called “A true relation of our beginnings with the Indians.” It was published in London, in 1647, under this title, “The Day breaking, if not the Sun-rising, of the Gospel, with the Indians in New England.”

In October, 1646, Eliot, with a few others, having sought the blessing of God, went to Nonantum, for the purpose, as he says, of making known to the Indians the things of their peace. As they approached the wigwams, five or six of the Chiefs met them with English salutations and bid them welcome. The principal wigwam had been previously prepared for the meeting, and many of the Indians were assembled. Eliot and his companions then began with prayer in the English language, not being sufficiently acquainted with the Indian tongue to make suitable religious impressions at first with it upon the minds of the Indians, and besides they wished to let the Indians see that they felt the duty in hand to be serious and sacred, and they had a desire, moreover, as missionaries to offer up a united supplication to God, “with the same request and heart sorrowes,” in that place where God was never wont to be called upon.

It was an affecting sight, as we may suppose, to Eliot and his friends, when they ceased from prayer and looked upon the company of Indians sitting in silence, with a mixture of curiosity and seriousness and wildness in their faces. To such an audience Eliot preached in the Indian tongue from Ezekiel 37:9. “Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.”

It is a curious fact that the name of the man[22] in whose wigwam they were assembled was Waban, and Waban is the Indian name for the wind, so that it seemed to Waban that the message was sent to him, and it proved a means in his conversion. The text from which Mr. Eliot preached on this occasion, was not one which his hearers could at first understand, and therefore some have expressed surprise at the selection of it. But in reply to this, it may be asked, what passage of the Word of God would have been immediately intelligible to those ignorant hearers? Besides, the text seems to have been chosen by Mr. Eliot for a purpose which is certainly proper on special occasions, viz., as a warrant and encouragement to his own soul and that of his helpers, in preaching in that valley of dry bones. Yet, after suitable religious impressions had been made, and the hearers had felt their lost and wretched state, and their need of divine power, in reflecting upon the text it must have seemed to the hearers peculiarly appropriate to the occasion and to their condition.

An hour and a quarter was occupied in the discourse. Mr. Eliot gave the Indians first a brief exposition of the ten commandments, showing the wrath and curse of God against those who break the least one of them. The subject was then applied, and the law having been brought to do its work in their hearts, and their sins being pointed out to them, as Mr. Eliot says, with much sweet affection, Jesus Christ was preached to them as the only Saviour. He told them who Christ was, and what he did, and whither he had gone, and how he will come again to judge the wicked and burn the world. The creation and fall of man, the greatness of God, heaven and hell, the pleasures of religion and the miseries of sin were then explained in language and with illustrations suited to their capacity.

The sermon being finished, Mr. Eliot proposed some questions to them, and first inquired whether they understood what had been said, and whether all or only some of them understood it? A multitude of voices exclaimed that they all understood every thing which had been spoken. Leave was then granted them to put questions, and it is interesting to notice the first questions which these children of the wilderness proposed. The first questions were,

“What is the cause of thunder?”

“What makes the sea ebb and flow?”

“What makes the wind blow?”

But there were some questions proposed by them which Mr. Eliot says some special wisdom of God directed them to ask, as, for example,

_How may we come to know Jesus Christ?_

Mr. Eliot told them that if they could read the Bible they would see clearly who Jesus Christ is, but inasmuch as they could not then read, he desired them to remember what he had told them out of the Bible, and to think much and often upon it, when they lay down on their mats in their wigwams and when they rose up, and to go alone in the fields, and woods, and muse on it, and so God would teach them.

He told them that if they would have help from God in this thing, they must begin to pray, and though they could not make long prayers as the English did, yet if they did but sigh and groan, saying, “Lord, make me to know Jesus Christ for I know him not,” and if with all their hearts they persisted in such prayers, they might hope that God would help them. But they were especially to remember that they must confess their sins and ignorance to God and mourn over them and acknowledge how just it would be in God to withhold from them any knowledge of Christ, on account of their sins.

This instruction was communicated to them by Mr. Eliot through the Indian interpreter whom he had brought with him, but he says he was struck with the fact that a few words from the Preacher had much greater effect than many from the interpreter.

One of them asked, whether Englishmen were ever at any time so ignorant of God and Jesus Christ as they themselves?

Another put this question: Whether if the father be naught and the child good, will God be offended with that child? because in the second commandment it is said that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.

They were told in reply to this that every child who is good will not be punished for the sins of his father, but if the child be bad, God would then visit his father’s sins upon him, and they were bid to notice that part of the second commandment which contains a promise to the thousands of them that love God and keep his commandments.

One of them asked, How is all the world now become so full of people, if they were all once drowned in the flood? This led to the story of the ark and the preservation of Noah.

Mr. Eliot then proposed some questions to them, for example, Whether they did not desire to see God, and were not tempted to think there is no God because they could not see him?

Some of them answered, They did desire to see Him if it could be, but they had heard from Mr. Eliot that he could not be seen, and they did believe that though their eyes could not see him, he was to be seen with their soul within.

Mr. Eliot endeavored to confirm them in this impression, and asked them if they saw a great wigwam or a great house, would they think that racoons or foxes built it? or would they think that it made itself? or that no wise builder made it, because they could not see him who made it?

Knowing that the doctrine of one God was a great stumbling block to them, Mr. Eliot asked them if they did not think it strange that there should be but one God, and yet this God be in Massachusetts, and in Connecticut, in Old England, in this wigwam, and the next, and every where at the same time?

One of the most sober of them replied that it was indeed strange, as every thing else they had heard preached was strange, and they were wonderful things which they never heard of before, but yet they thought “it might be true, and that God was so big every where.” Mr. Eliot illustrated the truth by the light of the sun, which, though it was but a creature of God, shed its light into that wigwam, and the next, in Massachusetts and Old England, at once.

He inquired of them if they did not find something troubling them within after the commission of murder, theft, adultery, lying; and what would comfort them, and remove that trouble of conscience when they should die and appear before God?

They replied that they were thus troubled, but they could not tell what they should say about it, or what would remove this trouble of mind, whereupon Mr. Eliot enlarged upon the evil of sin and the condition of the soul which is cast out of the favor of God.

Having spent three hours in this interview, Mr. Eliot asked them if they were not weary, and they said, no. But thinking it best to leave them with an appetite, Mr. Eliot concluded the meeting with prayer, but before he departed the principal Indian expressed a desire for more land to build a Town upon, and Mr. Eliot promised to speak for them to the General Court, “that they might possess all the compass of that hill upon which their wigwams then stood.”

In the second visit which Mr. Eliot made to the Indians at Nonantum, he began to catechise the younger children. He framed three questions only, that their memories might not be overloaded. The questions and answers were these:

1. Who made you and all the world. Ans. God.

2. Who do you think should save you and redeem you from sin and hell? Ans. Jesus Christ.

3. How many commandments hath God given you to keep. Ans. Ten.

By the time that the questions reached the smaller children, they had learned the answers perfectly, from hearing the others repeat them, and the parents had become familiar with them, and they were requested to use this _Shorter_ Catechism of three questions, in teaching their children, against the next visit.

The substance of Mr. Eliot’s address to the Indians on this occasion was this: “We are come to bring you good news from the great God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, and to tell you how evil and wicked men may come to be good, so that while they live they may be happy, and when they die may go to God and live in heaven.”

He then endeavored to give them just impressions concerning God, his power, greatness, and goodness, his will, what he required of all men, even of the Indians, in the ten commandments, the dreadful punishment of all who break one of these commandments, the anger of God at sin, and yet his compassion for sinners in sending Christ to die for wicked men. He taught them that if they would repent and believe, God would love the poor miserable Indians, but that the wrath of God would burn against all who neglected so great salvation as was now offered to them by those whose only desire was their salvation.

The power of these words was manifestly felt by one of the Indians, who at the thought of his sins and of the danger to which they exposed him, wept aloud, yet without affectation, but striving to conceal his emotions.

Perhaps in no way can we communicate religious instruction in a more simple and effectual way to the young who may read this book, than to record here the questions and answers which Mr. Eliot has preserved in his several interviews with the Indians. Other writers who lived at that time have also recorded questions and answers which they heard. But it will not be necessary to state the times, or places, or the hand by which they were recorded.

An old man rose up after Mr. Eliot had finished his sermon, and asked whether it was not too late for such an old man as he, who was near death, to repent or seek after God.

This question affected Mr. Eliot and his companions with compassion. They told him what is said in the Bible about those who were hired at the eleventh hour, and drew a parallel to his case by describing a son who had for very many years been disobedient, and afterwards penitent, and the feelings of his father towards him.

Question. How came the English to differ so much from the Indians in the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, seeing they all had at first one father?

Question. How may we come to serve God?

Question. How comes it to pass that the sea water is salt and the land water fresh?

Answer. This is one of the wonderful works of God. As strawberries are sweet and cranberries sour, by the appointment of God, so was it in this case. To this was added some account of natural causes and effects in connection with this subject, “which they less understood, yet did understand somewhat, as appeared by their usual signs of approving what they understand.”

Question. If the water is higher than the earth, how comes it to pass that it doth not overflow all the earth?

The missionary took an apple and illustrated the shape of the earth, the motion on its axis, and round the sun; then showed them how God made a great hollow ditch for the waters, which was so deep as to hold the waters by the attraction of gravitation, so that notwithstanding their convexity, they could not overflow the earth.

During a recess in this interview, the Indians were busily employed in discussing these several subjects among themselves, their minds being evidently excited by them, through the effect of new ideas upon subjects which were new or had always been incomprehensible to them. Being afterwards asked if they wished to propose any further questions, one asked,

If a man has committed some great sins, (stolen goods, &c.,) and the Sachem does not punish him, and he is not punished, but he restores the goods, what then? is not all well now? meaning to ask whether restoration made sufficient amends to the law of God.

He was told that though men be not offended at such sins, yet God is angry. The holiness of God was here illustrated. Such a sinner should seek forgiveness as much as any other sinner through the blood of Christ.

Upon hearing this answer, the Indian who proposed the question drew back and hung down his head, with an appearance of great sorrow and confusion, and finally broke out saying, “Me little know Jesus Christ, or me should seek him better.” Mr. Eliot comforted him by telling him that as it is early dawn at first when there is but little light, but the sun rises to perfect day, so it would be with him and his people with regard to a knowledge of the favor of God if they would seek Him.

One of the Indians who had received religious impressions in his acquaintance with the colonists, said he would propose this question. A little while since he said he was praying in his wigwam to God and Jesus Christ, that God would give him a good heart; that in his prayer another Indian interrupted him and told him that he prayed in vain, because that Jesus Christ could not understand what Indians speak in prayer; he had been used to hear Englishmen pray, and so could well enough understand them, but Indian language in prayer he was not acquainted with. His question therefore was, “Whether God and Jesus Christ did understand Indian prayers?”

At the close of one interview, Mr. Eliot prayed for above fifteen minutes in the Indian tongue, that they might feel that Christ understood such prayers. The Indians stood about him in grotesque figures, some of them lifting up their eyes and their hands to accompany the prayer, and one of them holding a rag to his eyes and weeping violently, and after prayer retiring to a corner of the wigwam to weep in secret; which one of Mr. Eliot’s companions observed and spoke with him, and found him to be deeply affected with a sense of his guilt.

Mr. Eliot makes several useful observations in view of his first two visits to the Indians.

1. None of them slept in sermon or derided God’s messenger.

2. That there is need of learning in ministers who preach to Indians more than to gracious Christians, in order to answer their philosophical questions.

3. That there is no need of miraculous or extraordinary gifts in seeking the conversion of the most depraved of the human family.

4. If Englishmen despise the preaching of faith and repentance and humiliation for sin, the poor heathens will be glad of it, and it shall do good to them.

He adds to this, The Lord grant that the foundation of our English woe be not laid in the ruin and contempt of those fundamental doctrines of faith, repentance, humiliation for sin, but rather relishing the novelties and dreams of such men as are surfeited with the ordinary food of the Gospel of Christ. Indians shall weep to have faith and repentance preached, when Englishmen shall mourn, too late, that are weary of such truths.

5. That the deepest estrangement of man from God is no hindrance to his grace, nor to the Spirit of grace. What nation or people ever so deeply degenerated since Adam’s fall, as these Indians, and yet the Spirit of God is working upon them.

“It is very likely if ever the Lord convert any of these natives, they will mourn for sin exceedingly, and consequently love Christ dearly; for if by a little measure of light such heart-breakings have appeared, what may we think will be when more is let in?”

“They are some of them very wicked, some very ingenious. These latter are very apt and quick of understanding, and naturally sad and melancholy, (a good servant to repentance) and therefore there is the greater hope of heart-breakings if ever God brings them effectually home, for which we should affectionately pray.”

Mr. Eliot says, “It is wonderful to see what a little leaven and that small mustard-seed of the Gospel will do, and how truth will work when the spirit of Christ hath the setting of it on, even upon hearts and spirits most incapable.” The night after the Indians had heard the Gospel preached for the third time, an English youth lodged in Waban’s tent. He said that Waban instructed his companions with regard to the things which they had heard that day, and prayed with them, and that he awoke several times that night and began to pray and speak to one and another of the Indians of the things which they had heard. Mr. E. says, This man, being a man of gravity and chief prudence, a counsel among them, although no Sachem, is like to be a means of great good to the rest of his company, unless cowardice or witchery put an end, as usually they have done, to such hopeful beginnings.

Two young Indians being at an Elder’s house one Sabbath evening, having been previously affected under Mr. Eliot’s preaching, one of them began to confess to the elder how wicked he had been, and declared that God could never look upon him with love. The elder opened to him in a familiar manner the truth of God’s love to the guilty, his willingness to pardon the vilest through the redemption made by Christ, and illustrated his instructions by the discourse of Christ to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, and how Christ forgave her though she was living in sin at the moment when he began to speak to her. Whereupon the young man began to weep bitterly, and the other youth, his companion, disclosing his own guilt, burst out into loud weeping in which they both continued for half an hour.

An old man told Mr. Eliot at one of the meetings that he was fully purposed to keep the Sabbath, but still he was in fear whether he should go to heaven or hell. This was a case in which reliance on good works gave as usual no peace to the conscience. It led Mr. Eliot to speak fully of the way of justification by Christ without works, “as the remedy against all fears of hell.”

Mr. Eliot was interested in the fact that some of the Indians who seemed to receive the Gospel most readily, and feel its power, were able to use “gracious expressions,” as he calls them, which he was confident they had not heard from him, nor from his assistants. He gives a specimen of them with the corresponding Indian words:

Amanaomen Jehovah tabassen metagh. Checheson Jehovah kekowhogkow.
Take away, Lord, my stony heart. Wash, Lord, my soul.

“What are these,” he says, “but the sprinklings of the spirit and blood of Christ Jesus on their hearts? and ’tis no small matter that such dry, barren, and long accursed ground should yield such kind of increase in so small a time. I would not readily commend a fair day before night, nor promise much of such kind of beginnings, in all persons, nor yet in all of these, for we know how the profession of many is but a mere paint, and their best graces nothing but mere flashes and pangs which are suddenly kindled, and as soon to go out, and are extinct again; yet God doth not usually send his plough and seeds-men to a place but there is at least some little piece of good ground, although three to one be naught; and methinks the Lord Jesus would never have made so fit a key for their locks unless he had intended to open some of their doors, and so to make way for his coming in.”

At the fourth meeting with the Indians, the children having been catechised, and the vision of the dry bones, which seems to have impressed Mr. Eliot from the first in speaking to the Indians, being explained, they offered all their children to the English to be educated by them.

At this time one of them being asked, What is sin? he answered, A naughty heart. He did not seem to feel that sin consists only in outward acts.

One of them complained that some of the Indians reviled him and the more serious Indians, calling them rogues, and otherwise insulting them for cutting off their long locks and arranging their hair in a modest manner, for, Mr. Eliot says, “since the word hath begun to work upon their hearts they have discerned the vanity and pride which they placed in their hair, and have therefore, of their own accord (none speaking to them that we know of) cut it modestly.” They said that some Indians who had heard the news of the great attention to religion among them, would come from a distance and stay with them three or four days, and one Sabbath, and then they would go from them, (implying that they did not like the Sabbath), but as for themselves, they said they were fully purposed to keep the Sabbath.

Some of the Indians who heard the Gospel, despised and rejected it. So it has always been and is now, wherever the Gospel is preached. Some have their hearts opened to attend to the things of their peace, and others are hardened. Mr. Eliot’s assistant, learning that some Indians had discouraged and threatened others with regard to their attendance on the preaching, spoke to them on one occasion about the temptations of Satan. After sermon they proposed these questions:

1. Some Indians say we must pray to the devil for all good, and some to God; may we pray to the devil or no?

2. What does _humiliation_ mean, which we hear used so often by the English?

3. Why do the English call us Indians, for before they came here we had another name?

4. What is a spirit?

5. May we believe in dreams?

6. How did the English come to know God so much, and we so little?

At the close of this interview they said that their great desire was to have a town and to learn to spin.

They believed in the existence of an evil spirit, whom they called CHEPIAN, and who they thought corresponded to the devil in Scripture. They gave the following account of their way in which conjurers or Powows were made: Whenever an Indian had a strange dream in which Chepian appeared to him as a serpent, he would make it known to the rest, and for two days the Indians would dance and rejoice for what the serpent had told him, and he then became a Powow, or one whom the devil favored with his communications. The reader will notice the identity of the form in which they made the devil to appear to them, with the form in which he appeared to our first parents.