LABORS OF ELLIOT AMONG THE INDIANS.

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tion and continual desire. As he was one of the holiest, so was he also one of the happiest and most beloved of men. When he felt himself disabled from preaching, by the infirmities of old age, he proposed to his parishioners of Roxbury, to resign his ministerial salary; but the people unanimously declared, that they would willingly pay the stipend, for the happiness of having him reside among them. His example, indeed, was the most valuable part of his ministry among Christians; his life, during many years, being a continual effusion of soul in devotion to God and charity to mankind.

The mild, persuasive address of Elliot soon gained him a favorable audience from many of the Indians; and having successfully represented to them the expediency of an entire departure from their savage habits of life, he obtained from the general court a suitable tract of land adjoining the settlement of Concord, in Massachusetts, upon which a number of Indian families began, under his counsel, to erect fixed habitations for themselves, and where they eagerly received his instructions, both spiritual and secular. It was not long before a violent opposition to these innovations was excited by the powows, or Indian priests, who threatened death and other inflictions of the vengeance of their idols on all who should embrace Christianity. The menaces and artifices of these persons caused several of the seeming converts to draw back, but induced others to separate themselves entirely from the society and converse of the main body of their countrymen, and court the advantage of a closer association with that superior race of men, who showed themselves so willing, nay, so anxious, to diffuse and communicate the benefits of their own improved condition. A considerable number of Indians resorted to the land allotted to them by the provincial government, and exchanged their wild and barbarous habits for the modes of civilized living and industry. Elliot was continually among them, instructing, animating, and directing them. They felt his superior wisdom, and saw him continually and serenely happy; and there was nothing in his exterior condition that indicated sources of enjoyment from which they were debarred. On the contrary, it was obvious that of every article of merely selfish comfort, he was willing to divest himself, in order to communicate to them a share of what he esteemed the only true riches of an immortal being. The women in the new settlement learned to spin; the men to dig and till the ground; and the children were instructed in the English language, and taught to read and write. As the number of domesticated Indians increased, they built a town by the side of Charles river, which they called Natick; and they

desired Elliot to frame a system of municipal government for them. He directed their attention to the counsel that Jethro gave to Moses; and in conformity with it, they elected for themselves rulers of hundreds, of fifties and of tens. The provincial government also appointed a court, which, without assuming jurisdiction over them, tendered the assistance of its judicial mediation to all who might be willing to refer to it the adjustment of their more difficult or important controversies. In endeavoring to extend their missionary influence among the surrounding tribes, Elliot and his associates met with diversified results, corresponding to the visible varieties of human character, and the invisible predeterminations of the Divine will. Many Indians expressed the utmost abhorrence and contempt of Christianity; some made a hollow profession of willingness to hear, and even of conviction, with the view, as it afterwards appeared, of obtaining the tools and other articles of value that were furnished to every Indian who proposed to embrace the habits of civilized life. In spite of great discouragement the missionaries persisted; and the difficulties that at first mocked their efforts, seeming at length to vanish under an invisible influence, their labors were attended with astonishing success. The character and habits of the lay colonists promoted the efficacy of these pious endeavors, in a manner which will be forcibly appreciated by all who have examined the history and progress of missions. Simple in their manners, devout, moral and industrious in their lives,-they enforced the lessons of the missionaries by demonstrating their practicability and their beneficial effects, and presented a model which in point of refinement was not too elevated for Indian imitation.

While Elliot and an increasing body of associates were thus employed in the province of Massachusetts, Thomas Mayhew, a man who combined the gentlest manners with the most ardent and enthusiastic spirit, together with a few coadjutors, diligently prosecuted the same design in Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Elizabeth Isles, and the territory comprehended in the Plymouth patent. Abasing themselves, that they might elevate their species and promote the divine glory, they wrought with their own hands among those Indians whom they persuaded to forsake savage habits; and zealously employing all the influence they acquired to the communication of moral and spiritual improvement, they beheld their exertions crowned with the most signal success. The character and manners of Mayhew appear to have been singularly calculated to excite the tenderness, no less than the veneration, of the objects of his benevolence. His address derived a penetrating interest from that earnest concern, and high and holy

value, which he manifestly entertained for every member of the family of mankind. Many years after his death, the Indians could not hear his name mentioned without shedding tears, and betraying transports of grateful emotion.

Both Elliot and Mayhew found great advantage in the practice of selecting the most docile and ingenious of their Indian pupils, and by especial attention to their instruction, qualifying them to act as schoolmasters among their countrymen. To a zeal that seemed to increase by exercise, they added insurmountable patience and admirable prudence; and steadily fixing their view on the glory of the Most High, and declaring that, whether outwardly successful or not in prosecuting it, they felt themselves blest and happy in pursuing it; they found its influence sufficient to light them through the darkness of every perplexity and peril, and finally conduct them to a degree of success and victory unparalleled, perhaps, since that era when the miraculous endowments of the apostolic ministry caused multitudes to be converted in a day. They were not hasty in urging the Indians to embrace improved institutions; they desired rather to lead them insensibly forward,-more especially in the establishment of religious ordinances. Those practices, indeed, which they accounted likely to commend themselves, by their obviously beneficial effects, to the natural understanding of men, they were not restrained from recommending to their early adoption; and trial by jury very soon superseded the savage modes of determining right, or ascertaining guilt, and contributed to improve and refine the sense of equity. In the dress and modes of intercourse among the savages, they also introduced, at an early period, alterations calculated to form and develop a sentiment of modesty, of which the Indians were found to be grossly and universally deficient. But all those practices which are, or ought to be exclusively the fruits of renewed nature and divine light, they desired to teach entirely by example, and by diligently radicating and cultivating in the minds of their flock, the principles out of which alone such visible fruits of piety can lastingly and beneficially grow. It was not till the year 1660, that the first Indian church was founded by Elliot and his fellow-laborers in Massachusetts. There were at that time no fewer than ten settlements within the province occupied by Indians comparatively civilized.

Elliot had occasionally translated and printed various approved theological dissertations for the use of the Indians; and, at length, in the year 1664, the Bible was printed for the first time, in the native language of the New World, at Cambridge, in Massachusetts. This, indeed, was not accomplished without the assistance of

pecuniary contributions from the mother country. The colonists had zealously and cheerfully coöperated-with their ministers, and assisted to defray the cost of their charitable enterprises; but the increasing expenses threatened at last to exceed what their narrow means were competent to afford. Happily, the tidings of this great work excited a kindred spirit in the parent state, where, in the year 1649, there was formed, by act of parliament, a Society for propagating the Gospel in New England, whose cooperation proved of essential service to the missionary cause. This society, having been dissolved at the restoration, was afterwards reerected by a charter from Charles the Second, obtained by the exertions of the pious Richard Baxter, and the influence of the illustrious Robert Boyle, who thus approved himself the benefactor of New England, as well as of Virginia. Supported by its ample endowments, and the liberal contributions of their own fellow-colonists, the American missionaries exerted themselves with such energy and success in the work of converting and civilizing the savages, that, before the close of the seventeenth century, there were collected in the province of Massachusetts, more than thirty congregations of Indians, comprising upwards of three thousand persons, reclaimed from a gross barbarism and degrading superstition, and advanced to the comfort and respectability of civilized life, and the dignity and happiness of worshippers of the true God. There were nearly as many converts to religion and civilization in the islands of Massachusetts Bay; there were several Indian congregations in the Plymouth territories; and among some of the tribes that still pursued their wonted style of roving life, there was introduced a considerable improvement in civil and moral habits.

CHAPTER XLII.

NEW HAMPSHIRE. Gorges and Mason's projects.-Foundat on of Portsmouth.--New Hampshire absorbed in Massachusetts.-RHODE ISLAND. Williams obtains a charter for that colony.-CONNECTICUT. First attempt of the Dutch at a settlement.-Hartford founded by the English.-Government of Connecticut.-New Haven.-Distresses of the first settlers.-Troubles with the Indians and Dutch.— Connecticut obtains a charter.

SIR Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason, members of the council of Plymouth, obtained, in 1622, a patent for Laconia, under which name was then comprised all the coast from the river Merrimac to the St. Lawrence. A company was formed in Eng. land, under this patent, and settlements effected at Portsmouth and Dover, in 1623. The colony, however, made but little progress; the patentees got involved in territorial disputes with their Massachusetts neighbors, and wasted their efforts in suits at law, -the poorest means of helping the growth of an estate. Fifteen years later, the whole coast of New Hampshire and Maine is described as a mere wilderness, with a few huts scattered here and there along the shore; and at the end of thirty years, Portsmouth contained only fifty or sixty families. Mason took out a new pa ent, but his American estate became ruined. Neither the proprietor nor the king paid any attention to this colony, and the New