and 1660, the people of Connecticut were employing the Mohegan Indians in agricultural labor,[1158] and the use of hired Indians is reported in the colony in 1774.[1159] By 1731 most of the Indians remaining in Narragansett were servants in families.[1160] The records also of Southampton, New York, show the employment of Indians for hire.[1161] It was a part of the Puritan missionary scheme to win the heathen to Christianity by employing them in their homes where they might be brought into contact with the workings of the Christian religion. In this manner they hoped to bring the savages to a state preparatory to conversion.[1162] Something of the same purpose was intended by the early Virginia colonists. Hence, in 1619, their first legislative assembly ordered that every plantation should procure Indian youths by just means for this purpose.[1163] In 1774, the governor of Connecticut, in reply to various inquiries made by the home government regarding conditions in the colony, stated that there were then 1,363 Indians in the colony, and that many of them dwelt in English families.[1164] A similar statement was made in 1731 by Dean Berkeley to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. He declared that nearly all the native Indians of Rhode Island were at that time servants or laborers for the English.[1165] Some of the earliest of the indentured servants used in America, moreover, were Indians. Reference has already been made to the Massachusetts law of 1700 seeking to avoid the abuse of the custom. In 1674, Plymouth passed a law providing that both Indians who lived idly and those who did not pay their debts on conviction could be handed over to those to whom they were indebted or to others as bond servants.[1166] The Southold town records mention Indian apprentices in 1678.[1167] Indentured male and female Indians existed in Salem in 1685.[1168] Similar records of Indian apprentices and indentured servants exist for Rhode Island,[1169] Connecticut,[1170] New Jersey[1171] and New York.[1172] As a rule these bond servants were young, for they were then more easily trained and were more tractable and useful. In Virginia, in every agreement between Indian parents and whites, a covenant had to be entered into providing that the child be instructed in the Christian religion.[1173]