Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s Note: There are two Chapter VIIs.

LIVES
OF THE
CHIEF FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND.

The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: let
him not leave us, nor forsake us.

1 Kings 8:57.

VOL. III.

THE LIFE
OF
JOHN ELIOT:

WITH AN ACCOUNT
OF THE EARLY MISSIONARY EFFORTS
AMONG
THE INDIANS OF NEW ENGLAND.

BY NEHEMIAH ADAMS,
PASTOR OF ESSEX STREET CHURCH, BOSTON.

_Written for the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, and
approved by the Committee of Publication._

BOSTON:
MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY,
Depository, No. 13 Cornhill.
1847.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847,
BY CHRISTOPHER C. DEAN,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.

The substance of this book is a Lecture delivered in 1842, before the Young Men’s Missionary Association of Boston. On application of the Publishing Committee, the author has consented to enlarge it for publication, as one of the Series of the Lives of the New England Fathers.

SEAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS (OR SALEM) COLONY.

TRANSLATION.

Seal of the Governor and Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England.

LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

Missionary object of the Pilgrims. Seal of Massachusetts
Colony. Reasons with the Pilgrims for leaving Holland. Extract
from the Royal Charter of the Plymouth Colony. Charter of
the Salem Company. Thoughts on this Continent as a field for
Missionary efforts. Account of the landing at Plymouth, and the
first meeting with the Indians. First Missionary efforts among
them. Manners and habits of the New England Indians. Numbers in
the various tribes. Reflections on the Missionary character and
efforts of the Pilgrims. The May-flower.

A prominent object with the Pilgrim fathers in coming hither, was, to preach the Gospel to the Indians of this Continent.

Many popular orators and writers represent them, as it were, following and worshiping a goddess of liberty. But it was not for the mere liberty of believing and doing what they pleased that they braved the ocean and the perils of this wilderness. Two great motives influenced them. For the liberty of worshiping God according to their own consciences, they “went out not knowing,” as the event proved, “whither they went.” But this was not all; they had a missionary object in coming here.

It is an interesting fact that the original seal of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, who arrived and settled at Salem in 1628, had on it a North American Indian, with these words proceeding from his mouth, “Come over and help us.” This device on the seal of their colony published to the world the fact that they regarded themselves as foreign missionaries to North America. This was also the case with their brethren of the Plymouth Colony, who arrived eight years before.

The Pilgrims had fled to Holland, from the persecutions of the English Church. In the account of their residence in Holland we find some records which establish beyond a doubt the fact of their missionary intentions in coming to these shores. Governor Bradford, in his History of Plymouth, speaking of the Pilgrims while yet in Holland, says, “This year, (1617,) Mr. Robinson and his Church begin to think of a remove to America, for several weighty reasons, as (1.) The difficulties in Holland discouraged many from coming to them out of England, and obliged many to return. (2.) By reason of these difficulties with the licentiousness of the youth, and temptations of the place, many of their children left their parents, some of them becoming soldiers, others taking to foreign voyages, and some to dissoluteness and the danger of their souls, to the great grief of their parents, and fear lest their posterity through these temptations and examples should degenerate, and religion die among them. (3.) From an inward zeal and great hope of laying some foundation or making way for propagating the kingdom of Christ to the remote ends of the earth, though they should be but as stepping stones to others.”

They obtained letters patent from the crown authorizing them to settle in North Virginia. The following is an extract from the Royal Charter, and is of the same purport with the third reason assigned by Governor Bradford for their removal to America. The Royal Charter says,—“We have thought it fit, according to our kingly duty—to second and follow God’s holy will, by which means we may with boldness go on to the settling of so hopeful a work which tendeth to the reducing and conversion of such savages as remain wandering in desolation and distress, to civil society and Christian religion.”

It is well known that the Colonists who received this Charter, and sailed for North Virginia, were driven into the waters of Cape Cod, and thus unintentionally landed and settled at Plymouth.

The Charter of “the Colony of Massachusetts Bay,” who settled a few years after at Salem, says, “To win and incite the natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith, is, in our royal intention and the adventurer’s free profession, the principal end of the plantation.”

The Committee of the “Massachusetts” Company, in their letter dated at Gravesend, and addressed to Mr. Endicott, the leader, and afterward the Governor, of the Massachusetts or Salem Colony, say, “For that the propagating the Gospel is the thing we profess above all in settling this plantation, we have been careful to make plentiful provision of good ministers.”[1]

It is interesting to think of this Continent as having been the object of missionary zeal and efforts with the pilgrim fathers. The place which this continent occupies on the globe is peculiar and interesting. The numerous nations of the old world are crowded together in one hemisphere, and this continent is the prominent object of the other. It did not seem presumption to the pilgrims to believe that God laid its deep foundations by itself, in the midst of the oceans rolling between it and the rest of the globe, for some purpose as singular as its position. In the writings of ancient poets there are remarkable allusions to this continent, when as yet it was undiscovered. Seneca, a Latin writer, who lived at the beginning of the Christian era, has in his “Medea” this declaration: “The time will come in remote years when the ocean will unloose the present boundaries of nature, and a great country will appear. Another Typhis will discover new worlds, and Thule will no longer be the limit of the earth.”[2] Homer and Horace had sung of Islands west of Africa, the Atlantides, which were “the Elysian fields.” Hanno, the Carthaginian general and great navigator, had sailed from the pillars of Hercules, (the straits of Gibraltar,) westward, thirty days. Some suppose that he must have seen America, or some of the neighboring islands.[3] Columbus verified the dreams and surmises of the world; the Cabots pursued his sublime discoveries, and they, with their Bristol crews, long accustomed to Icelandic fisheries, found this continent. New adventurers carried home some of the native Indians; and, at length, a new Continent, inhabited by wild men, became the subject of intense interest to the civilized world. Our pious forefathers, while yet in the old world, fancied that they heard the Macedonian cry from the Indians here, and it quickened their flight, as they say, “to follow Christ into a waste howling wilderness.”

Having been driven into the waters of Cape Cod, instead of North Virginia, and making a safe harbor on Saturday, the Pilgrims fell on their knees and blessed the God of heaven. The Sabbath came; the Mayflower riding at anchor, and the exploring party in the shallop, kept the first Sabbath of the Lord which, perhaps, had ever been recognized in this region, since God rested from his works.

“Monday,” says Prince, in his New England Chronology, “the people go ashore to refresh themselves;—the whales play round about them, and the greatest store of fowl they ever saw. But the earth here a company of sand hills, and the water so shallow near the shore, they were forced to wade a bow-shot or two to get to land, which being freezing weather, affecteth them with grievous coughs and colds, which after proves the death of many. When they had marched a mile southward, they see five or six savages whom they follow ten miles till night, but could not overtake them, and lodge in the woods. The next day they come to a place of graves, then to some heaps of sand, when they dig into them, and find several baskets full of Indian corn, and take some, for which they purpose to give the natives full satisfaction as soon as they could meet with any of them.” Two days after, they returned to borrow more corn; the ground had frozen a foot deep, but they made up their corn, says Governor Morton, to ten bushels; the next day some of the party, having spent the night there, dug again into some little hillocks, but they found that instead of being cornhills they were graves. By the overruling providence of God, the corn which they had thus borrowed with such good intent to repay, furnished them with seed for the ensuing spring. Here we have the first scene of their approach to the wild objects of their pious and benevolent endeavors.

During the month of February, after their arrival, the colony were afterwards informed that the Indians assembled all their Powwaws, or the conjurers of the country, to curse them with their horrid ceremonies and incantations. They held their assembly for this purpose in a dark and dismal swamp.

On the morning of March 16th, however, they say a savage boldly came alone along the houses straight to the rendezvous, and surprised them with calling out, “Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome, Englishmen!” It seems that he had learned some broken English from the fishermen of Nova Scotia. He said that his name was Samoset, that he was sagamore or lord of a country “a day’s sail thence with a great wind,” or five days land travel. He told them that four years ago all the inhabitants of the place where they then were, (now Plymouth,) died of an extraordinary plague; that there was neither man, woman, nor child remaining. At night they lodged and watched him. A few days after he returned with an Indian named Squanto, whom a man by the name of Hunt had carried to Spain with nineteen others, and who by some means went to England, and lived in Cornhill, London, with Mr. John Slanie, merchant. He could speak a little English, and thus he was extremely useful to the colonists in assisting them to trade and make treaties with the surrounding Indians. They endeavored to conciliate the natives, but wisely mingled intimations that they were prepared to resist them if attacked.

The treacherous tribe of Narragansett Indians, with five thousand fighting men, who at first made a treaty with the settlers, showed signs on one occasion of hostility. Canonicus, their chief Sachem, sent a bundle of arrows, tied with a snake’s skin, which Squanto told them meant a challenge. Governor Bradford and his Council sent them word that if they had rather have war than peace, they might begin when they would; they had done the Indians no wrong, nor did they fear them; nor would the Indians find them unprepared. Then, with some wit, the Governor sent them, by another messenger, the snake’s skin filled with powder and bullets; but they refused to receive it, and sent it back.

Thus, after various alarms, and treaties, the pilgrims had fortified themselves in the country, and individuals among them had begun the pious work of instructing some of the young Indians in the Christian religion.

In 1621, one year after the arrival at Plymouth, Elder Robert Cushman sent word to his friends in England that many of the Indians, especially the younger of them, were teachable; that if the Colony had means they would bring up hundreds of them to labor, and learning, and that young men in England who desired to further the Gospel among these poor heathen, would do well to come over and spend their estates, time, and labor, in so doing.

During the few first years after the settlement at Plymouth, several of the natives gave evidence of conversion, and instances of happy death occurred among them. But the hardships and trials incident to a removal into this wilderness delayed the systematic and general efforts of the settlers to convert the Indians. Individuals, however, were laboring among them with success. In 1636, the Plymouth Colony enacted laws to provide for the preaching of the Gospel among the Indians, and ten years after, the Massachusetts Colony passed a similar act.

In 1675, it was ascertained that the whole number of Indians in New England, beginning as far east as the St. Croix River, was about fifty thousand. Of these, about twelve thousand were in the neighborhood of the Massachusetts and the Plymouth Colonies.

At the settlement of this country there were five principal nations, or sachemships, of Indians, in this part of New England, viz, 1. The Pequots; 2. The Narragansetts; 3. The Pawkunnawkuts; 4. The Pawtucketts; 5. The Massachusetts. Each of these nations included several tribes, governed by sagamores.

The Pequots formerly had 4000 warriors; in 1674, 300.

The Narragansetts formerly had 5000 warriors; in 1674, 1000.

The Pawkunnawkuts formerly had 3000 warriors; in 1674, nearly extinct.

The Pawtuckets formerly had 3000 warriors; in 1674, 250.

The Massachusetts formerly had 3000 warriors; in 1674, 300.

The _Pequots_ inhabited the most southerly parts of New England, their country for the most part fell under the Connecticut jurisdiction. Their principal sachem lived at or near New London, called, in their language Pequot.

The _Narragansetts_ occupied Rhode Island, and other islands in Narragansett bay.

The _Pawkunnawkuts_ inhabited the region of the Plymouth Colony, and their sachem held sway over the Sagamores of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and neighboring places. A few years before the arrival of the Pilgrims, a great number of this nation of Indians as before stated, were swept away by a plague, and thus the way was opened for the entrance of the Pilgrims.

The _Pawtuckets_ lived to the north, and northeast of the Massachusetts Indians. They were almost wholly destroyed by the plague just mentioned.

The _Massachusetts_ Indians dwelt principally about the parts of Massachusetts bay which were first settled by the English, and bordering, some of them, on the region of the Pawkunnawkuts. They were very numerous and powerful. Their chief sachem held rule over many petty chiefs. This people was also visited by the plague in 1612-13, which destroyed the most of them, and prepared the way for the English settlers.

This fact has often brought to mind these words of David: “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their day, in the times of old. How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people and cast them out. For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favor unto them.”

An early New England writer[4] says, that he had not been able to learn accurately the nature of the disease or plague which depopulated the Indian tribes in the remarkable manner already described; but that he had “discoursed” with some old Indians, who told him that the patients were “all over exceedingly yellow,” and this they described by showing him a yellow garment which the bodies of the victims resembled in color, both before and after death. There is a tradition that a Frenchman, who not long before this plague, had fallen into their hands by shipwreck, told them, as some of the surviving shipmates reported, just before he died by their hands, that “God was angry with them for their wickedness, and would not only destroy them all, but would also people their country with men who would not live after their brutish manners.” Those infidels then blasphemously replied, that God could not kill them; which blasphemous mistake was confuted by an horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes, that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcases, and they that were left alive were smitten into awful and humbler regards of the English by the terrors which the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.

When the Pilgrims in Holland thought of coming to this country, some of them hesitated for several reasons, and among others through their fear of the savages, who they heard were “cruel, barbarous, and treacherous, being most furious in their rage, and merciless where they overcome, not being content only to kill and take away life, but delight to torment men in most bloody manner that may be, flaying men alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the points and members of others by piecemeals, and broiling them on the coals, and causing men to eat the collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live; with other cruelties horrible to be related.”[5] Some were therefore in favor of settling in Guiana, in South America. But they feared the jealousy of the Spaniards, and finally concluded to settle within the jurisdiction of the company of Virginia, where the English, in 1607, had made a settlement. In this way, they supposed that they could also have better access to the savages, “to reduce them to civil society, and the Christian religion.” But God brought them by a way they knew not, having first in part cut off the heathen nations to bring them in.

The May-flower sailed from Holland, September 6, 1620, for the Hudson River. But they were driven into the waters of Cape Cod, and it was a current belief that the shipmaster was bribed by the Dutch to change her course, because the Dutch wished to settle in the region for which the Pilgrims embarked. But some of the best authorities deny this, and say that the change of their course was accidental.

There is so much connection between climate and characters that we may reasonably suppose it to have been the intention of Providence to plant the Pilgrims in this cold region, and on this hard soil, that they might be and do that which is proved to have been their high destiny to be and to accomplish. Whereas, had they settled in a warmer and more enervating latitude, we cannot believe that such a New England as we now behold would have arisen; it would have been easier for the settlers to have borne the imposition of slavery from the mother country, whereas here in Massachusetts the sturdy vigor and independence which were borne and nourished on this rocky and sandy soil, grew impatient of slavery, and soon threw it off, and hence in part the present difference between the North and the South, in some of the essential elements of natural prosperity. God brought the Pilgrims into these bays and harbors, and to this northern soil, because here the qualities necessary to their future usefulness and greatness as a nation could be most successfully developed and strengthened. Instead of reducing the savages to slavery as they might have done had the institution of slavery been fastened upon them in southern regions, they “reduced the savages to civil society, and the Christian religion.” Let us return for a moment to the landing of the Pilgrims.

When the May-flower had cast anchor, the Pilgrims fitted up the little shallop which they had brought in their vessel, and coasted the Cape for about a month to determine on the best place for landing and settlement. Having at length fixed on a place, the shallop, with the exploring party came to anchor on Saturday, the 9th of December, corresponding to December 20, New Style. The Sabbath dawned upon them, but the exploring party remained on board, notwithstanding the inmates of the May-flower were still at anchor, waiting to know the result of the exploration. How beautiful and striking was the coincidence of their arriving at Plymouth on the eve of the Sabbath. What a Sabbath it must have been to them. Not only was their comfortless and perilous voyage in a crowded vessel, and their anxious search for a landing place now over, but their persecutions in the old world, their oppressive treatment from the Established Church for not conforming to rites and practices which they could not observe, had now come to an end. Now they had found a new world where they might believe and worship as they pleased. Now they would no longer be taxed for the support of worship in which they had no share. Now their ministers would no longer be ill-used or nick-named, for not conforming to unscriptural practices; now they would not be obliged to keep Lent, and Ash-Wednesday, Candlemas, Christmas, and All-Saints’-day, in a manner repugnant to their consciences. As they looked on this great wilderness, free from all corruptions of man in the worship of God, and pure in that respect as the virgin snows that covered the evergreens, and sheeted the old sand wastes, and shone on the distant hills, they could breathe freely, as they said in the words which indicate the essential spirit of their faith, God is a spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. The world has never seen such a sight, before or since, as that shallop and the May-flower in Plymouth Bay, with the progenitors of this great and glorious New England; fleeing from the old world, arriving at this new world and keeping Sabbath at anchor in these waters. What has ever happened to be likened to it since the time when Noah and his family sailed away from the old world, which had corrupted itself before God, and transplanted the religion of the true God for a new beginning? It would have been interesting to have heard the prayers, and songs of praise, and words of Scripture, with which they kept the Sabbath in their floating Bethels. We notice here that Puritan regard for the Sabbath which has ever characterized New England, and on which her safety so much depends. How natural it would have been for the voyagers to have leaped ashore at the first moment of their arrival in the harbor which they had concluded to make their home. How many passengers now in similar circumstances, would deny themselves the pleasure of exchanging the wearisome confinement on ship-board, for the excitement and satisfaction of exploring their new home? But the Pilgrims would not begin the work of their settlement, of removing any of their effects from the vessel, on the Lord’s day, and since the time when God rested from his work on the Sabbath, there has not been a more sublime act of rest and of worship, than was observed by that Pilgrim band.

All this was in accordance with their character and intentions as a missionary band, and for its relation to this view of their character we have dwelt at large upon this incident in their history.

It cannot be impressed too deeply upon our minds that our forefathers did not come here merely to “enjoy their liberty,” not merely to flee from persecution, not to increase their worldly estate; they came here, among other good reasons, as they expressly declare, to extend the kingdom of Christ, and the Royal Charter professed that the royal object in granting it was that they might reduce such savages as they found wandering in desolation and distress to civil society and the Christian religion. Does any one cherish a feeling of reverence and love for these pilgrims in view of their sacrifices and efforts to found these institutions which we possess, who yet feels no interest in the work of propagating the gospel to the ends of the earth? Let him consider that a company of Christian missionaries going from this land and settling in India, or Africa, or Oceanica, may be the founders of just such institutions as we enjoy, among the people to whom they are sent. Let every missionary consider that in distant years he may be justly regarded as a pilgrim-father to some portion of the earth for whom he may have done as much as the New England Pilgrims have done for New England. The object of Christian missions is to re-produce and multiply our Christian institutions in heathen and pagan lands. The opportunity of laying foundations in heathen wilds, similar to those which the Pilgrims laid here, has not come to an end. Many a missionary bark may yet be, essentially, a May-flower to distant parts of the earth. Some islands which were filled with savages as barbarous as our Indians, have had their independence recognized by Christian nations, and have taken their place among the nations of the earth; and that band of American missionaries who left these shores for the Sandwich Islands in 1820, and who went round Cape Horn singing the old hymn in the tune of Melton Mowbray,

“Head of the church triumphant,
We cheerfully adore thee,” &c.,

and who planted the Gospel on those islands, will no doubt in after times have their names enshrined by a grateful posterity in those distant seas. The little schooner which the Rev. John Williams, the martyr of Rarotonga, built with his own hand, to visit the islands of the Harvey group, was a real “May-flower.” Prophetic visions of the effects of the Gospel we see fulfilled on these shores and around the globe. Here, emphatically, “instead of the thorn has come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier the myrtle-tree.” In what way can we cherish the memory of our Pilgrim fathers better than to keep alive in us and our children that zeal to spread the Christian religion and Christian institutions, which was one of the strong impulses that bore them across the flood? As the missionary spirit was the native air in which the pilgrim faith was born and nurtured, we may believe that the same spirit will most effectually cherish those institutions and laws which are the fruit of their wisdom. That spirit is a sincere desire to see the glory of God promoted in the world, a willingness to make efforts and sacrifices “that his way may be known on earth, his saving health among all nations.”

“The May-flower”! That name must have been proposed by some gentle wife, or by some sweet child, to the man who built that favored vessel! She was, in her seasonableness, more than a _May-flower_; she was the Crocus among the eternal snows and the dreary winter of this western savage world. In the selection of her for the great mission which she accomplished, angels might have said to her, as they came to be ministering spirits to those in her who were to be, in more than one sense, “heirs of salvation,” as Gabriel said to Mary, “Hail, thou that art highly favored—the Lord is with thee!” The name of this vessel is one of those instances, of which we see so many in the word, the providence of God, in which “the beauty of the Lord our God” appears in connection with his acts of renown. To the cold eye of reason that name was only a mercantile accident; the eye of faith is willing to be accounted visionary while it sees in it that same hand which, after the deluge, selected the rainbow instead of a periodical tempest, or a Dead Sea, as the memorial of a covenant with the earth.

The painting of the Landing of the Pilgrims, by Weir, justly represents some of the pilgrim company as of cultivated and even polished appearance and manners; they were not the offscouring of the earth. They were men and women of whom, in their day, the world was not worthy. For scholarship, intelligence, and moral worth, the Pilgrims and their associates in the old countries would have been ornaments to the land which chased them away. The reader will find this illustrated in a satisfactory manner in the Life of the Rev. John Cotton, by the Rev. A. W. M’Clure, in the first two volumes in this series of the Lives of eminent N. E. Puritans.