it came to pass, if the water was higher than the earth, that it did not overflow the whole world?" Mr. Eliot and his friends having answered these and some other questions, the Indians told them they did greatly thank God for their coming among them, and for what they had heard: they were wonderful things to them.*

About a fortnight after, Mr. Eliot visited the Indians a third time, but the assembly was not so numerous as before; for the powaws, or conjurors, had, in the mean while, interfered with their authority, dissuading some from hearing the English ministers, and threatning others with death in case of disobedience. Such, however, as were present appeared very serious, and seemed much affected with the sermon. Two or three days after, Wampas, a sage Indian, with two of his companions, came to the English, and desired to be admitted into one of their families. He brought his son and two or three other Indian children with him, begging they might be educated in the Christian faith; and, at the next meeting, all who were present offered their children to be catechised and instructed by the white people.†

Encouraged by these auspicious circumstances, the General Court of Massachusetts, on the application of Mr. Eliot, gave the Indians in that neighbourhood some land on which to build a town, where they might live together, enjoy the privilege of religious instruction, and cultivate the arts of life. This place they called Noonatomen; and a number of them having met together to form some laws for the government of their little society, they agreed on the following regulations, some of which are curious enough.

1st, If a man be idle a week, or at most a fortnight, he shall pay a fine of five shillings.

2dly, If any unmarried man lie with an unmarried woman, he shall pay twenty shillings.

* Day-breaking of the Gospel in Neal's Hist. New-England, vol. i. p. 243. † Ibid. p. 244.

3dly, If any man beat his wife, he shall be carried to the place of justice with his hands tied behind his back, and severely punished.

4thly, Every young man who is not a servant, and is unmarried, shall be obliged to build a wigwam, and to plant some ground for himself, and not shift up and down in other houses.

5thly, If any woman shall not have her hair tied up, but shall allow it to hang loose, or to be cut as men's hair, she shall pay five shillings.

6thly, If any woman go with her breasts uncovered, she shall be fined in two shillings.

7thly, If any man wear long hair, he shall pay five shillings.

Lastly, Whoever shall kill their lice between their teeth, shall be fined in five shillings.*

These fines, though to us they may seem inconsiderable, yet to the Indians they must have appeared very heavy, considering the general poverty under which they laboured, and the value of money at that period. Some of the regulations, indeed, are frivolous enough, and certainly had better been omitted; but let it be remembered, every age has its follies.

The seat of the town being marked out, Mr. Eliot advised them to surround it with ditches and a stone wall, promising to furnish them with shovels, spades, mattocks, and crows of iron for this purpose; and he likewise gave money to such as wrought hardest. By these means, the village was in a short time not only enclosed, but the wigwams of the meanest were equal to the houses of the sachems in other towns, being built not with matts, but with the bark of trees, and divided into several apartments; whereas, formerly, they used to eat and sleep, and perform all the offices of nature in the same place.t

Being now settled in comfortable habitations, the women began to learn to spin, to make various little articles, and to

Day-breaking of the Gospel in Neal's Hist. New-England, vol. i. p. 245.

Shepard's Clear Sunshine of the Gospel upon the Indians, London, 1648, in Neal's Hist. New-Eng. vol. i. p. 247.

carry the natural productions of the country to market for sale. In winter, they sold brooms, staves, baskets, turkies; in spring, cranberries, strawberries, fish; in summer, hortleberries, grapes, &c. Besides, several of them wrought with the English in hay-time and harvest, but it was remarked, they were not so industrious, nor yet so able to work, as those who had been accustomed to it from their infancy. Some of the men learned such trades as were deemed most necessary; and so great was the improvement they made, that they built a house for public worship, fifty feet in length, and twenty-five in breadth, which appeared like the workmanship of an English housewright.*

While these things were going on at Noonatomen, the Indians in the neighbourhood of Concord expressed a similar desire of uniting together, in a regular society, of receiving the christian faith, and of learning the arts of civilized life. With this view they requested Mr. Eliot to come and preach the gospel to them, and they begged the government to grant them a piece of land on which they might build themselves a town. In February, 1647, several of their sachems and other principal men met at Concord, and agreed on the following regulations for their government in civil and religious matters:

1st, That no powawing or conjuring should be allowed among them, under a penalty of twenty shillings for each offence.

2dly, That whoever should be drunk, should pay a fine of twenty shillings.

3dly, That whoever should be convicted of stealing, should restore fourfold.

4thly, That whoever should profane the Sabbath, should be fined in twenty shillings.

5thly, That whoever should commit fornication, should pay twenty shillings if a man, and ten shillings if a woman.

6thly, That wilful murder, adultery, and lying with a beast, should be punished with death.

* Shepard in Neal's Hist. New-England, vol. i. p. 247.-Hutcheson, vol. i. p. 165.

7thly, That no person should beat his wife, under a penalty of twenty shillings.

8thly, That they would lay aside their old ceremonies of howling, greasing their bodies, adorning their hair, and follow the customs of the English.

Lastly, They agreed to pray in their wigwams, and to say grace before and after meat.

These, and some other regulations of a similar kind, were agreed to by the whole assembly, and a recorder was chosen to see them carried into execution.*

Mr. Eliot, however by no means confined his labours to these two places. Though he still retained the pastoral charge of the church at Roxbury, yet he usually went once a fortnight on a missionary excursion, travelling through the different parts of Massachusetts and of the neighbouring country, as far as Cape Cod, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom to as many of the Indians as would hear him. Many were the toils, many the hardships, many the dangers, he encountered in the prosecution of this important work. In a letter to the Hon. Mr. Winslow, he says, "I have not been dry night nor day from Tuesday to Saturday, but have travelled from place to place in that condition; and at night I pull off my boots, wring my stockings, and on with them again, and so continue. But God steps in and helps me. I have considered the exhortation of Paul to his son Timothy, Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Such sufferings as these, however, were the least of his trials. When travelling in the wilderness without a friend or companion, he was sometimes treated by the Indians in a very barbarous manner, and was not unfrequently in danger even of his life. Boththe chiefs and the powaws were the determined enemies of Christianity-the sachems being jealous of their authority, the priests of their gain; and hence they often laid plots for the destruction of this good man, and would certainly have put him to death, had they not been overawed by the power Shepard in Neal's Hist. New-Eng. vol. i. p. 247.

of the English. Sometimes the chiefs, indeed, thrust him out from among them, saying, "It was impertinent in him to trouble himself with them or their religion, and that should he return again, it would be at his peril." To such threatnings he used only to reply, "That he was engaged in the service of the Great God, and therefore he did not fear them, nor all the sachems in the country, but was resolved to go on with his work, and bade them touch him if they dared," To manifest their malignity, however, as far as was possible, they banished from their society such of the people as favoured Christianity; and when it might be done with safety, they even put them to death. Nothing indeed, but the dread of the English prevented them from massacring the whole of the converts; a circumstance which induced some of them to conceal their sentiments, and others to fly to the colonists for protection.*

But, notwithstanding the opposition of the sachems and the priests, Mr. Eliot's labours were by no means in vain. By means of his zealous and unwearied exertions, numbers of the Indians, in different parts of the country, embraced the gospel; and in the year 1651, a considerable body of them united together in building a town, which they called Natick, on the banks of Charles' river, about eighteen miles south-west from Boston. This village consisted of three long streets, two on this side of the river, and one on the other, with a piece of ground for each family. A few of the houses were built in the English style, but most of them were after the Indian fashion; for as the former were neither so cheap nor so warm, nor yet so easily removed as their wigwams, in which not a single nail was used, they generally retained their own mode of building. There was, however, one large house in the English style; the lower room was a great hall which served for a place of worship on the Sabbath, and a school-house through the week; the upper room

Eliot's Letters, published by Whitfield, 1651,-Whitfield's Discovery of the present state of the Indians in New England, 1651, in Neal's Hist. New-Eng. vol. i. p. 249.