Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
The words were good, said Cutshamakin, but the Indians would not obey
them. So Mr. Eliot, after consultation with the ministers and elders in
Boston, invited the Indians who understood English to hear a sermon
there, and in it the duty of rendering to all their due was fully
enforced. Afterwards, however, the Indians came forward declaring
themselves much surprised and mortified at being accused of not paying
their just duty to their chief; and they specified the service and gifts:
each had rendered twenty bushels of corn, six bushels of rye, fifteen
deer, days spent in hunting, the building of a wigwam, reclaiming two
acres of land; and the amount when added up amazed Mr. Eliot. At his
next lecture, then, he took for his text the rejection by the Saviour of
all the kingdoms of the world, and personally applied it to Cutshamakin,
reproaching him with lust of power and worldly ambition, and warning him
that Satan was tempting him to give up the faith for the sake of
recovering his arbitrary power. The discourse and the conversation that
followed again melted the Sachem, and he repented and retracted, although
he continued an unsafe and unstable man.
At length, in 1651, Mr. Eliot was able to convene his praying Indians and
with them lay the foundation of a town on the banks of Charles River,
about eighteen miles to the south-west of Boston. The spot, as he
believed, had been indicated to him in answer to prayer, and they named
it Natick, or the place of hills. The inhabitants of Nonantum removed
thither, and the work was put in hand. A bridge, eighty feet long and
nine feet wide, had already been laid across the river, entirely by
Indian workmen, under Mr. Eliot's superintendence; and the town was laid
out in three streets, two on one side of the river and one on the other;
the grounds were measured and divided, apple-trees planted, and sowing
begun. The cellars of some of the houses, it is said, remain to the
present day. In the midst was a circular fort, palisaded with trees, and
a large house built in the English style, though with only a day or two
of help from an English carpenter, the lower part of which was to serve
as a place of worship on Sunday, and for a school on other days, the
upper part as a wardrobe and storehouse for valuables, and with a room
partitioned off, and known as "the prophet's chamber," for the use of Mr.
Eliot on his visits to the settlement. Outside were canopies, formed by
mats stretched on poles, one for Mr. Eliot and his attendants, another
for the men, and a third for the women. These were apparently to shelter
a sort of forum, and likewise to supplement the school-chapel in warm
weather. A few English-built houses were raised; but the Indians found
them expensive and troublesome, and preferred the bark wigwams on
improved principles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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