But to return to Bourne: having obtained for the Indians their land, in 1665 he furthered their “desire of living in some orderly way of government, for the better preventing and redressing of things amiss among them by just means,” and a court was set up consisting of six Indians, under his guidance, reserving, however, that “what homage accustomed legally due to any superior sachem be not infringed.” In 1670 Bourne was ordained by Eliot as their pastor. And his son, following the father’s example, procured an act of the Court guarding the tenure of their land, which might not be “bought by or sold to any white person or persons without the consent of all the Indians.” And in the ministry Bourne was succeeded by men, sometimes Indians, sometimes whites, who had due regard for their charges, “the Praying Indians,” they were called. At Eastham, the Reverend Samuel Treat was at pains to learn the language of his Indian neighbors, and translated the Confession of Faith into the Nauset dialect. Mr. Treat was an old-school Calvinist, whose chief means to grace was the threat of eternal damnation. “God himself shall be the principal agent in thy misery,” he could thunder out in the little meeting-house with a voice that carried far beyond its walls. “His is that consuming fire; his breath is the bellows which blows up the flame of hell forever; he is the damning fire—the everlasting burning; and if he punish thee, if he meet thee in his fury, he will not meet thee as a man, he will give thee an omnipotent blow.” Whether Mr. Treat dealt out such red-hot doctrine to his Indians, we cannot know; perhaps they were warmed by the fervor rather than alarmed by the tenor of his words. At any rate, they loved him; and when he died during the Great Snow of 1716, they tunnelled a way to the grave and bore him to his rest. There were old ordinances forbidding the whites to give or sell firearms, ammunition, canoes, or horses to Indians. There was also a provision that “whoever shall shoot off a gun on any unnecessary occasion, or at any game except at an Indian, or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings for every shot.” Evidently all was not love and trust between the races. The Indians steadily dwindled in numbers until at Eastham in 1763 there were but five Indians, and at Truro in 1792 only one family, although an old lady then remembered that there used to be as many Indian children at school as whites, and “sometimes the little Injuns tried to crow over ’em.” Early in the nineteenth century the pure-breed Mashpees were extinct; but in 1830 William Apes, an “Indian” preacher, succeeded in enlarging their religious liberties; in 1842 their common lands were apportioned in sixty-acre lots; in 1870 Mashpee became a town with full self-government, though still with some special grants of state aid for schools and highways.