Pioneers and Founders Read online

  Our work was not taken up so soon as theirs, partly because the spirit of colonization did not begin amongst us so early as in Spain and Portugal, and partly because the foundations of most of our colonies were laid by private enterprise, rather than by public adventure, and moreover some of the earlier ones in unsettled times.

  It may be reckoned as one peculiarity of Englishmen, that their greatest works are usually not the outcome of enthusiastic design, but rather grow upon them by degrees, as they are led in paths that they have not known, and merely undertake the duty that stands immediately before them, step by step.

  The young schoolmaster at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford, who decided on following in the track of the Pilgrim Fathers to New England, went simply to enjoy liberty of conscience, and to be free to minister according to his own views, and never intended to become the Apostle of the Red Indians.

  Nothing is more remarkable than the recoil from neglected truths. When, even in the earliest ages of the Church, the Second Commandment was supposed to be a mere enhancing of the first, and therefore curtailed and omitted, there was little perception that this would lead to popular, though not theoretical, idolatry, still less that this law, when again brought forward, would be pushed by scrupulous minds to the most strange and unexpected consequences, to the over-powering of all authority of ancient custom, and to the repudiation of everything symbolical.

  This resolution against acknowledging any obligation to use either symbol or ceremony, together with the opposition of the hierarchy, led to the rejection of the traditional usages of the Church and the previously universal interpretation of Scripture in favour of three orders in the ministry. The elders, or presbytery, were deemed sufficient; and when, after having for many years been carried along, acquiescing, in the stream of the Reformation, the English Episcopacy tried to make a stand, the coercion was regarded as a return to bondage, and the more ardent spirits sought a new soil on which to enjoy the immunities that they regarded as Christian freedom.

  The Mayflower led the way in 1620, and the news of the success of the first Pilgrim Fathers impelled many others to follow in their track. Among these was John Eliot. He had been born in 1604 at Nasing in Essex, and had been bred up by careful parents, full of that strong craving for theological studies that characterized the middle classes in the reign of James I.

  Nothing more is known of his youth except that he received a university education, and, like others who have been foremost in missionary labours, had a gift for the comparison of languages and study of grammar. He studied the Holy Scriptures in the original tongues with the zeal that was infused into all scholars by the knowledge that the Authorized Version was in hand, and by the stimulus that was afforded by the promise of a copy of the first edition to him who should detect and correct an error in the type.

  The usual fate of a scholar was to be either schoolmaster or clergyman, if not both, and young Eliot commenced his career as an assistant to Mr. John Hooker, at the Grammar School at Little Baddow. He considered this period to have been that in which the strongest religious impressions were made upon him. John Hooker was a thorough-going Puritan of great piety and rigid scruples, and instructed his household diligently in godliness, both theoretical and practical. Eliot became anxious to enter the ministry, but the reaction of Church principles, which had set in with James I., was an obstacle in his way; and imagining all ceremonial not observed by the foreign Protestants to be oppressions on Christian liberty, it became the strongest resolution of the whole party to accept nothing of all these rites, and thus ordination became impossible to them, while the laws were stringent against any preaching or praying publicly by any unordained person. The instruction of youth was likewise only permitted to those who were licensed by the bishop of the diocese; and Mr. Hooker, failing to fulfil the required tests, was silenced, and, although forty-seven clergy petitioned on his behalf, was obliged to flee to Holland.

  This decided Eliot, then twenty-seven years of age, on leaving England, and seeking a freer sphere of action in the newly-founded colonies of New England, which held a charter from Government. He took leave of his betrothed, of whom we only know that her Christian name was Anne (gracious), and that her nature answered to her name, and sailed on the 3rd of November, 1631, in the ship Lyon, with a company of sixty persons, among whom were the family of Governor Winthrop.

  They landed at Boston, then newly rising into a city over its harbour, and there he found his services immediately required to conduct the worship in the congregation during the absence of the pastor, who had gone to England finally to arrange his affairs.

  On his return, Mr. Eliot was found to be in such favour, that the Bostonites strove to retain him as an assistant minister; but this he refused, knowing that many friends in England wished to found a separate settlement of their own; and in less than a year this arrangement was actually carried out, a steep hill in the forest-land was selected, and a staunch band of East Saxons, bringing with them the gracious Anne, came forth. John Eliot was married, elected pastor, ordained, after Presbyterian custom, by the laying on of the hands of the ministers in solemn assembly, and then took possession of the abode prepared for him and of the building on the top of the hill, where his ministrations were to be conducted.

  These old fathers of the United States had found a soil, fair and well watered; and though less rich than the wondrous alluvial lands to the west, yet with capacities to yield them plentiful provision, when cleared from the vast forest that covered it. Nor had they come for the sake of wealth or luxury; the earnestness of newly-awakened, and in some degree persecuted, religion was upon them, and they regarded a sufficiency of food and clothing as all that they had a right to seek. Indeed, the spirit of ascetiscism was one of their foremost characteristics. Eliot was a man who lived in constant self-restraint as to both sleep and diet, and, on all occasions of special prayer, prefaced them by a rigorous fast-and he seems to have been in a continual atmosphere of devotion.

  One of his friends objected (oddly enough as it seems to us) to his stooping to pick up a weed in his garden. "Sir, you tell us we must be heavenly-minded."

  "It is true," he said, "and this is no impediment unto that; for, were I sure to go to heaven to-morrow, I would do what I do to-day."

  And, like many a good Christian, his outward life was to him full of allegory. Going up the steep hill to his church, he said, "This is very like the way to heaven. 'Tis up hill! The Lord in His grace fetch us up;" and spying a bush near him, he added, "And truly there are thorns and briars in the way, too."

  He had great command of his flock at Roxbury, and was a most diligent preacher and catechiser, declaring, in reference to the charge to St. Peter, that "the care of the lambs is one-third part of the charge to the Church of God." An excellent free school was founded at Roxbury, which was held in great repute in the time of Cotton Mather, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of this good man. The biography is put together in the peculiar fashion of that day, not chronologically, but under heads illustrating his various virtues, so that it is not easy to pick out the course of his undertakings. Before passing on to that which especially distinguished him, we must give an anecdote or two from the "article" denominated "His exquisite charity." His wife had become exceedingly skilful in medicine and in dealing with wounds, no small benefit in a recent colony scant of doctors, and she gave her aid freely to all who stood in need of help. A person who had taken offence at something in one of his sermons, and had abused him passionately, both in speech and in writing, chanced to wound himself severely, whereupon he at once sent his wife to act as surgeon; and when the man, having recovered, came to return thanks and presents, he would accept nothing, but detained him to a friendly meal, "and," says Mather, "by this carriage he mollified and conquered the stomach of his reviler."

  "He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring a loud Courfew Bell wherever he saw the fires of animosity." When he heard any ministers complain that such and such i
n their flocks were too difficult for them, the strain of his answer was still: "Brother, compass them;" and, "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words, 'bear, forbear, forgive.'"

  Once, when at an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers containing matters of difference and contention between two parties-who, he thought, should rather unite-was laid on the table, Eliot rose up and put the whole upon the fire, saying, "Brethren, wonder not at that which I have done: I did it on my knees this morning before I came among you."

  But that "exquisite charity" seems a little one-sided in another anecdote recorded of him, when "a godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr. Foster, with his son, was taken captive by his Turkish enemies." {f:6} Public prayers were offered for his release: but when tidings were received that the "Bloody Prince" who had enslaved him had resolved that no captive should be liberated in his own lifetime, and the distressed friends concluded, "Our hope is lost;" Mr. Eliot, "in some of his prayers before a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged, 'Heavenly Father, work for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster, and if the prince which detains him will not, as they say, release him so long as himself lives, Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him, and glorify Thyself upon him.' And now behold the answer. The poor captiv'd gentleman quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and brings us news that the prince, which had hitherto held him, was come to an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty."

  "And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest suppliant for his friend. But the "cruel prince" was far away out of sight, and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the heathen who came into immediate contact with him. Indeed, he was the first to make any real effort for their conversion.

  The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.

  The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall, well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois nation. They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting, beneath their dignity. Their nature had much that was high and noble; and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's vices or his cruelty. They were neither the outcast savages nor the abject inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants, but far better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of the magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his word, and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent. It was in mercy and tenderness that the character was the most deficient. The whole European instinct of forbearance and respect to woman was utterly wanting,-the squaws were the most degraded of slaves; and to the captive the most barbarous cruelty was shown. Experience has shown that there is something in the nature of the Red Indian which makes him very slow of being able to endure civilization, renders wandering almost a necessity to his constitution, and generally makes him, when under restraint, even under the most favourable conditions, dwindle away, lose all his fine natural endowments, and become an abject and often a vicious being. The misfortune has been that, with a few honourable exceptions, it has not been within the power of the better and more thoughtful portion of man to change the Red Indian's vague belief in his "Great Spirit" to a more systematic and stringent acceptance of other eternal verities and their consequent obligations, and at the same time leave him free to lead the roving life of the patriarchs of old; since, as Scripture itself shows us, it takes many generations to train the wandering hunter to a tiller of the soil, or a dweller in cities; and the shock to the wild man of a sudden change is almost always fatal both to mental and bodily health. This conclusion, however, has been a matter of slow and sad experience, often confused by the wretched effects of the vice, barbarity, and avarice of the settler and seaman, which in many cases have counteracted the effects of the missionary, and accelerated the extinction of the native.

  In John Eliot's time, there was all to hope; and the community of Englishmen with whom he lived, though stern, fierce, intolerant, and at times cruel in their intolerance, did not embarrass his work nor corrupt the Indians by the grosser and coarser vices, when, in his biographer's words, "our Eliot was on such ill terms with the devil as to alarm him with sounding the silver trumpets of Heaven in his territories, and make some noble and zealous endeavours towards ousting him of his ancient possessions." The Pilgrim Fathers had obtained their land by fair purchase, i.e. if purchase could be fair where there was no real mutual understanding; and a good deal of interest had been felt in England in the religious state of the Red men. The charter to the colony had enforced their conversion on the settlers, and Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells, declared that but for his old age and infirmities he would have headed a mission to America for the purpose. Had he done so, perhaps something systematic might have been attempted. As it was the new colonists had too severe a struggle with their own difficulties to attend to their heathen surroundings, even though the seal of their colony of Massachusetts represented an Indian with the label in his mouth, "Come over and help us." A few conversions had taken place, but rather owing to the interest in the White men's worship taken by individual Indians, than to any efforts on the part of the settlers.

  Sixteen years, however, passed without overt aggression, though already was beginning the sad story that is repeated wherever civilized man extends his frontiers. The savage finds his hunting-ground broken up, the White man's farm is ruined by the game or the chase, the luxuries of civilization excite the natives' desires, mistrust leads to injury, retaliation follows, and then war.

  In 1634, only two years after Eliot's arrival, two gentlemen, with their boat's crew, were killed on the Connecticut river, and some of the barbarities took place that we shall too often have to notice-attacks by the natives on solitary dwellings or lonely travellers, and increasing anger on the part of the colonists, until they ceased to regard their enemies as fellow-creatures.

  However, the Pequots were likewise at war with the Dutch and with the Narragansets, or river Indians, and they sent a deputation to endeavour to make peace with the English, and secure their assistance against these enemies. They were appointed to return for their answer in a month's time; and after consultation with the clergy, Mr. Dudley and Mr. Ludlow, the Governor and Deputy-Governor, decided on making a treaty with them, on condition of their delivering up the murderers of the Englishmen, and paying down forty beaver and thirty otter skins, besides 400 fathoms of wampum, i.e. strings of the small whelks and Venus-shells that served as current coin, a fathom being worth about five shillings.

  It surprises us that Eliot's name first appears in connection with the Indians as an objector to this treaty, and in a sermon too, at Roxbury; not on any grounds of injustice to the Indians, but because it had been conducted by the magistrates without reference to the people, which was an offence to his views of the republican rights to be exercised in the colony. So serious was his objection deemed, that a deputation was appointed to explain the principles on which Government had acted, and thus convince Mr. Eliot, which they did so effectually that he retracted his censure in his next sermon.

  Probably this was what first awakened John Eliot's interest in the Red- skins; but for the next few years, in spite of the treaty, there was a good deal of disturbance on the frontier, and some commission of cruelties, until the colonists became gradually roused into fury. Some tribes were friendly with them; and, uniting with these the Mohicans and river Indians, under the conduct of Uncas, the Mohican chief, seventy- seven Englishmen made a raid into the Pequot country and drove them from it. Then, in 1637, a battle, called "the Great Swamp Fight," took place betwee
n the English, Dutch, and friendly Indians on the one hand, and the Pequots on the other. It ended in the slaughter of seven hundred of the Pequots and thirteen of their Sachems. The wife of one of the Sachems was taken, and as she had protected two captive English girls she was treated with great consideration, and was much admired for her good sense and modesty; but the other prisoners were dispersed among the settlers to serve as slaves, and a great number of the poor creatures were shipped off to the West India Islands to work on the sugar plantations.

  Those who had escaped the battle were hunted down by the Mohicans and Narragansets, who continually brought their scalps in to the English towns, and at last they were reduced to sue for peace when only 200 braves were still living. These, with their families, were amalgamated with the Mohicans and Narragansets, and expelled from their former territory, on which the English settled. An annual tribute of a length of wampum, for every male in the tribe, varying according to age and rank, was paid to the English, and their supremacy was so entirely established that nearly forty years of peace succeeded.

  Eliot's missionary enterprise, Mather allows, was first inspired by the "remarkable zeal of the Romish missionaries," by whom he probably means the French Jesuits, who were working with much effect in the settlements in Louisiana, first occupied in the time of Henri IV. Another stimulus came from the expressions in the Royal Charter which had granted licence for the establishment of the colony, namely, "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, in our Royal intention and the Adventurers' free profession, is the principal end of the Plantation."

  That the devil himself was the Red men's master, and came to their assistance when summoned by the incantations of their medicine men, was the universal belief of the colonists, in corroboration of which the following story is given:-"The Indians in their wars with us, finding a sore inconvenience by our dogs, which would make a sad yelling if in the night they scented the approaches of them, they sacrificed a dog to the devil, after which no English dog would bark at an Indian for divers months ensuing."