Chapter VII

Disturbance of Missionary efforts. Philip’s war. Removal of
the Indians to Deer Isle. Return. Conclusion of the History
of Missionary efforts among the Indians of this neighborhood.
Reflections.

Civilization and the influence of the Gospel, however, had their limits. The Narraganset Indians, situated between the Connecticut and Plymouth Colonies, refused the Gospel, and the benevolent intentions of the English. King Philip, the famous warrior of Mount Hope, (now Bristol) whose name was terrible to our forefathers, scorned the doctrines of the cross. Mr. Eliot once had an interview with him, explained the way of salvation, and exhorted him to repent. The Indian chieftain rose, took hold of Mr. Eliot’s button, and told him, that he cared no more for his Gospel than he did for that button.

The Indians under Philip were growing jealous of English encroachments upon their hunting fields. Petty depredations were made by the Indians upon the English settlements, then followed a summons to court, which, in process of time, became exceedingly annoying to proud, untamed savages. They had bartered their lands for English implements and toys; the tools and the toys were gone, and the savage could not be satisfied to abide by a paper, call it treaty, bond, or contract, on which he had scratched his mark. He sighed for his old domains; the waves of civilization were coming round him like a flood; his people were artfully crowded by the English into narrow inlets between the settlements, that they might be watched on all sides.

King Philip was summoned to Court in 1674, for some offence committed by his tribe. The informer was murdered by the angry savages. The murderers were hanged by the English. The massacre of eight or nine of the English at Swansey was the consequence. Philip wept when he heard that the blood of a white man had been shed. The Colonists began to arm, and a universal panic prevailed. The superstition of those days added much to the general terror. Signs in the heavens were reported to have been seen, a scalp on the disc of the moon in an eclipse; an Indian bow was imprinted on the sky. Troops of horses were heard rushing through the air. The horrors of an Indian war made their faces pale and their hearts faint. The scenes at Bloody Brook, the burning of Lancaster, Medfield, Brookfield, Weymouth, Groton, Marlborough, the ambushments rising on the congregation as they returned from public worship, the massacre of wives and children at home, and the scalping of husbands and brothers in the field, roused the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut to an exterminating war.

It is easy to see that the communities of praying Indians could not escape the influence of the general excitement against the Indians. Some of them were accused, justly or unjustly, of favoring the designs of the enemy. The Colonists were all the time afraid that the instinctive love of war and carnage in the Indian bosom would break through the restraints of religion, and that all which had been done for the Indians would be only a qualification of them as more successful traitors and expert butchers.

On the other hand, King Philip was jealous of the praying Indians. He used every means of persuasion and fear to enlist them on his side. Their situation was trying in the extreme. In the excited state of mind which an Indian war created among the English, a war on the part of the savages of stratagem, and treachery, it was natural that the Christian Indians should be trusted and feared. Some of them enlisted with the English and did good service, and some deserted to Philip.

In 1675, a number of the Christian Indians were brought to Boston on a charge of being concerned in a murder at Lancaster. Mr. Eliot and his friends interposed to save them, and succeeded in showing that the accusation was false and malicious. In so doing, they incurred the popular resentment, and were suspected and accused of bad motives and treasonable conduct.

The feelings of the people were now so unreasonable that the worst consequences to the praying Indians were apprehended. In this state of things the General Court, as a means of protection to themselves and to the Indians, passed an order that the Natick Indians should be removed to Deer Island, in Boston harbor, between four and five miles from shore. They came to the place called the Pines, near Cambridge, on Charles River, and were thence conveyed by water to Deer Island. Mr. Eliot met them at the Pines, and endeavored to soothe and cheer them. He was then seventy years old. One might question whether he or the Indians suffered most in their removal.

A party of Indians had fired a barn at Chelmsford. The English imputed it to the praying Indians at Tewksbury. A party of the English went to their wigwams, called them out and shot one lad, and wounded several women and children. The murderers were tried, but the jury were overawed by the public sentiment and cleared them. The Tewksbury Indians fled into the wilderness; messengers were sent to them inviting them to return, but they gave this answer: We are not sorry for what we leave behind, but we are sorry that the English have driven us from praying to God, and from our leader. We did begin to understand a little of praying to God. When the winter season came, their sufferings forced them back to their wigwams, and the English endeavored in various ways to atone for the injuries they had suffered.

The Stoughton Indians, for some suspicion, were also removed to Deer Island, and the whole number there amounted to five hundred. Mr. Eliot and his friends visited them, and found them patient and meek, exhibiting the true influence of the Gospel in a satisfactory degree. But they were exposed to want and suffering of various kinds. The ill-treatment of other communities of Indians followed in rapid succession, and it was in vain that they sought in moments of contention, to repair the injuries which they had inflicted. One party of Indians, for example, had been taken by a Narraganset Sachem, and had escaped, and were wandering in the woods, when an English scouting party met them, taking from them, among other things, a pewter cup which Mr. Eliot had given them for their communion service, and which they had kept and carried with them with the reverence of a Jew for his sacred vessels of gold and silver. This party were also carried to Deer Island.

Philip, the terror of the English Colonies on this continent, was finally destroyed. The war subsiding, the Deer Island Indians, with the permission of the General Court, and by the funds of the society in England for propagating the Gospel, were removed to Cambridge, and were permitted to choose their places of settlement. Some of them went to the various falls of Charles River, some to Brush Hill in Milton, some settled at Nonantum, and many of them went to Natick.

But the efforts to Christianize the Indians were never resumed with the interest and zeal which were formerly felt. On the part of the English, there was conscience of wrong, and on the part of the Indians a remembrance of injustice, and thus a breach was made between them which was never healed. Some of the Indians had been made slaves. King Philip’s wife and son had been sold in the West Indies.[39] Mr. Eliot followed with his prayers and efforts those of his Christian Indians who had been sold into bondage. He wrote to the celebrated and honorable Robert Boyle to use his efforts in redeeming some who had been left at Tangier.

By various means the praying towns had been reduced in 1684, to four. The tribes have dwindled and finally disappeared, till a few years since one poor hut in Natick, inhabited by a family of Indian and Negro blood, and the gravestone of Daniel Takawambait in the stone wall, were the most prominent of the memorials which they have left behind them. Fragments of their language are imperishably associated with many places and scenes throughout the land. The rural retreat, the new town, the gallant ship, are emulous of their names; while the tavern sign, the bank note, the omnibus, and the tobacconist, grace themselves with their faces and implements. The New England poet, historian, and orator, draw thrilling incidents from Mount Hope and Bloody Brook, and the Christian and the philanthropist will enshrine the names of Nonantum and Natick. Westward and still westward, the New England tribes have receded. Civilization has had more repulsion and injury for the savage than Christianity has been able to overcome. There is a law of progress in the affairs of nations expressed in the prophetic language of the patriarch Noah; “God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” The savage retreats before the civilized man, and while we mourn over the ruin of individual tribes, we cannot but stand in awe of that resistless measure of God’s providence by which he is forcing the Caucasian race to fill the earth, and suffering uncivilized nations to melt away like the snow in spring.

But that same vigorous faith which brought the Pilgrims here as missionaries to the Indians, has followed the red man in his wanderings over this vast continent. The names of David Brainard, Samuel Kirkland, and Gideon Blackburn, are identified with the history of Indian missions. The American Board has pursued the work of evangelizing them with much success. The history of the Cherokees, the mountaineers of America, is of itself a tale of romantic and thrilling interest. The sketches of the present North American Indians by Mr. Catlin, in his valuable work, show that a large field for missionary effort on this continent is yet spread before the American churches.

When the workmen were digging for the foundation of some new houses at the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets, in Boston, several years ago, they found the skeleton of an Indian. He had been buried on his side, reclining on his arm, and was found in that posture. Christian faith and hope, mingled with a little fancy, would fain lead us to hail this incident as a sign that the Indian race are not yet recumbent in hopeless degradation; that though seemingly buried in the great wilderness, they are buried in the posture of rising. Many interesting recollections, and our natural feelings towards an oppressed people, make us wish that this was more than fancy, and, as the Indian on the seal of the Massachusetts colony had a passage of Scripture proceeding from his mouth, Come over and help us, would we gladly put another passage into the mouth of that resurrection Indian above mentioned, making him say, with prophetic ecstasy, as he looks towards Nonantum and surveys the scenes of his ancient, and apparently lost race, “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise; awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her dead.”