He had had a good deal of conversation with individual Indians who came about the settlement at Roxbury, and who perceived the advantages of some of the English customs. They said they believed that in forty years the Red and White men would be all one, and were really anxious for this consummation. When Eliot declared that the superiority of the White race came from their better knowledge of God, and offered to come and instruct them, they were full of joy and gratitude; and on the 28th of October, 1646, among the glowing autumn woods, a meeting of Indians was convoked, to which Mr. Eliot came with three companions. They were met by a chief named Waban, or the Wind, who had a son at an English school, and was already well disposed towards them, and who led them to his wigwam, where the principal men of the tribe awaited them.
"All the old men of the village,
All the warriors of the nation,
All the Jossakeeds, the prophets,
The magicians, the Wabenos,
And the medicine men, the medas,
Came to bid the strangers welcome.
'It is well,' they said, 'O brothers,
That you came so far to see us.'
In a circle round the doorway,
With their pipes they sat in silence,
Waiting to behold the strangers,
Waiting to receive their message,
Till the Black Robe chief, the pale face,
From the wigwam came to greet them,
Stammering in his speech a little,
Speaking words yet unfamiliar."
Mr. Eliot prayed in English, and then preached on the 9th and 10th verses of the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet is bid to call the Breath of God from the four winds of heaven to give life to the dry bones around. It so happened that the Indian word for breath or wind was Waban, and this made a great impression, and was afterwards viewed as an omen.
The preacher worked up from the natural religion, of which this fine race already had an idea, to the leading Christian truths.
Then the Black Robe chief, the prophet,
Told his message to the people,
Told the purport of his mission,
Told them of the Virgin Mary,
And her blessed Son, the Saviour:
How in distant lands and ages
He had lived on earth as we do;
How He fasted, prayed, and laboured;
How the Jews, the tribe accursed,
Mocked Him, scourged Him, crucified Him;
How He rose from where they laid Him,
Walked again with His disciples,
And ascended into heaven."
The sermon lasted an hour and a quarter, but the Indians are a dignified and patient people, prone to long discourses themselves, and apt to listen to them from others. When he finally asked if they had understood, many voices replied that they had; and, on his encouraging them to ask questions, many intelligent inquiries were made. The whole conference lasted three hours, and Mr. Eliot was invited to come again, which he did at intervals of about a fortnight, and again with good promise.
In one of these meetings they asked, very reasonably, why the English called them Indians, a question it could not have been easy to answer. The Powaws, or priests, began to make some opposition, but Waban was continually going about among the people, repeating portions of the instructions he had received, and teaching his friends to pray-for some had at first supposed that the English God might not be addressed in the native tongue, but only in English.
After some little time, he thought the Indians ripe for being taught to live a settled life, and obtained for his congregation-"the praying Indians," as they were commonly called-a grant of the site of his first instructions. The place was named "Rejoicing,"-in Indian, a word that soon got corrupted into Nonantum; and, under Mr. Eliot's directions, they divided their grounds with trenches and stone walls, for which he gave them tools to the best of his ability. They built wigwams of a superior construction, and the women learnt to spin; there was a continual manufacture of brushes, eel-pots, and baskets, which were sold in the English towns, together with turkeys, fish, venison, and fruits, according to the season. At hay and harvest times they would hire themselves out to work for their English neighbours, but were thought unable or unwilling to do what sturdy Englishmen regarded as a fair day's work.
A second settlement of praying Indians followed at Neponset, around the wigwam of a Sachem named Cutshamakin, a man of rank much superior to Waban. He had already been in treaty with the English, and had promised to observe the Ten Commandments, but had unhappily learnt also from the English that love of drink which was the bane of the Indian; and while Mr. Eliot was formally instructing the family, one of the sons, a boy of fifteen, when learning the fifth commandment, persisted in saying only "honour thy mother," and, when admonished, declared that his father had given him fire-water, which had intoxicated him, and had besides been passionate and violent with him. The boy had always been a rude, contumacious fellow, and at the next lecture day Mr. Eliot turned to the Sachem, and lamented over these faults, but added that the first step to reforming him would be for his father to set the example by a confession of his own sins, which were neither few nor light.
The Sachem's pride was subdued. He stood up and openly declared his offences, lamenting over them with deep sincerity. The boy was so touched that he made humble confession in his turn, and entreated forgiveness. His parents were so much moved that they wept aloud, and the board on which Cutshamakin stood was wet with his tears. He was softened then, but, poor man, he said: "My heart is but very little better than it was, and I am afraid it will be as bad again as it was before. I sometimes wish I might die before I be so bad again!"
Poor Cutshamakin! he estimated himself truly. The Puritan discipline, which aimed at acting on the conduct rather through the conscience and feelings than by means of grace, never entirely subdued him, and he remained a fitfully fierce, and yet repentant, savage to the end of his life. His squaw must have been a clever woman; for, being publicly reprimanded by the Indian preacher Nabanton, for fetching water on a Sunday, she told him after the meeting that he had done more harm by raising the discussion than she had done by fetching the water.
Sunday was impressed upon the natives with all the strictness peculiar to the British Calvinists in their reaction from the ale-feasts, juggleries, and merry-makings of the almost pagan fifteenth century. It is never hard to make savage converts observe a day of rest; they are generally used to keep certain seasons already, and, as Mr. Eliot's Indians honestly said, they do so little work at any time that a weekly abstinence from it comes very easily. At Nonantum, indeed, they seem to have emulated the Pharisees themselves in their strictness. Waban got into trouble for having a racoon killed to entertain two unexpected guests; and a case was brought up at public lecture of a man who, finding his fire nearly gone out, had violated the Sabbath by splitting one piece of dry wood with his axe.
But the "weightier matters of the law" were not by any means forgotten, and there was a continual struggle to cure the converts of their new vice of drunkenness, and their old habit of despising and maltreating their squaws, who in the Christian villages were raised to a state far less degraded; for any cruelty or tyranny towards them was made matter of public censure and confession in the assembly.
Several more distant journeys were taken by Mr. Eliot, some of them to the Merrimac River to see a powerful old Sachem of a great age, named Passaconaway, who his people believed to be able to make green leaves grow in winter, trees dance, and water burn.
He was so much afraid of the Missionary that he fled away the first time he heard he was coming, probably thinking him a great sorcerer; but the next time he remained, listened eagerly, expressed his intention of praying, and tried to induce Mr. Eliot to settle in his district. He lived to a great age, and left a charge with his children never to contend with the English, having convinced himself that the struggle was hopeless. Several other Sachems gave a sort of attention: and it appeared that the way had been in some degree prepared by a French priest, who had been wrecked on Cape Cod, had been passed from one tribe to another, and had died among them, but not without having left a tradition of teaching which was by some identified with Eliot's.