Part 4

At certain seasons the Indians meet to study the meaning, and renew their ideas of their strings and belts of wampum. On such occasions, they sit down around the place in which they are deposited, and taking out a string or belt, one after another, hand them to every person present; and in order that they may all comprehend its meaning, repeat the words pronounced on the delivery, in their whole connexion. By these means they are enabled to remember the promises reciprocally made; and, as they admit young boys who are related to the chiefs, they become early acquainted with all their national concerns; and thus the contents of their wampum documents are transmitted to their posterity. The following instance may serve to show how well this mode of communication answers the purpose of refreshing the memory:—A gentleman in Philadelphia, once gave an Indian a string of wampum, saying, ‘I am your friend, and will serve you to the utmost of my power.’ Forty years after, the Indian returned the string, adding, ‘Brother, you gave me this string of wampum, saying, I am your friend, and will serve you to the utmost of my power.’ ‘I am now aged, infirm, and poor; do now as you promised.’ The gentleman honourably redeemed his promise, and generously assisted the old Indian.

BURNING OF BROOKFIELD.

It has been remarked, that the history of every incursion of the Indians into the territory of the whites may be written in the words _surprise_, _massacre_, _plunder_ and _retreat_. They fall upon the defenceless village in the dead of night, “as falls the plague on men,” or as the lightning falls on the forest. No vigilance seems to have been sufficient effectually to guard against these attacks, and no prudence or foresight could avert them. The Indians made their approaches to the isolated villages by creeping cautiously through the surrounding woods in the dead of night. The outposts were seized, and the sentinels silently tomahawked, ere the war-whoop roused the sleeping families from their beds.

During the early settlements of New England, the inhabitants suffered much from the incursions of the Indians. The most celebrated war, perhaps, which ever took place with the natives, however, was King Philip’s war. During its continuance, the town of Brookfield, Massachusetts, was attacked. The inhabitants collected in one house which was immediately besieged by the savages, who set fire instantly to every other building in the town. For two days and nights the Indians shot upon the people in the house incessantly, but were met with a most determined defence on the part of the besieged. They then attempted to fire the house by flaming torches at the ends of long poles; but the garrison continued to defend themselves by firing from the windows, and throwing water upon the flames, as they fortunately had a pump within the house. These attempts failing, the Indians then prepared a cart loaded with flax, hemp, and other combustible matters, and under cover of a barricade of boards, thrust the burning mass, by means of long timbers, against the house. In this movement one of the wheels came off, which turned the machine aside, and exposed the Indians to the fire of the garrison; a shower of rain coming on at the same time extinguished the flames. Shortly afterwards a reinforcement of forty men arrived from Boston, forced their way through the enemy, and joined the garrison. The Indians then abandoned the siege and retired, having suffered a heavy loss.

THE HEROIC COLLAPISSA.

In the heart of the savage, there are some noble and redeeming qualities; he can be faithful, even unto death, to the friend or the stranger who has dwelt beneath his roof, or sat under the shadow of the same tree. He can be generous also; can endure all tortures, rather than show weakness or fear.

“An instance of this occurred,” says Bossu, “when the French were in possession of New Orleans: a Chactaw, speaking very ill of them, said the Collapissas were their slaves; one of the latter, vexed at such words, killed him with his gun. The nation of Chactaws, the greatest and most numerous on the continent, armed immediately, and sent deputies to New Orleans to ask for the head of the murderer, who had put himself under the protection of the French. They offered presents to make up the quarrel, but the cruel people would not accept any! they even threatened to destroy the village of the Collapissas. To prevent the effusion of blood, the unhappy Indian was delivered up to them: the Sieur Ferrand was charged with the commission. The Indian was called Tichou; he stood upright in the midst of his own people and of his enemies, and said, “I am a true man, that is, I do not fear death; but I pity the fate of a wife and four children, whom I leave behind me very young; and of my father and mother, who are old, and for whom I got subsistence by hunting.” (He was the best hunter in the nation.)

He had hardly spoken the last word of this short speech, when his father, penetrated with his son’s love, rose amidst the people, and spoke as follows:—

“It is through courage that my son dies; but, being young and full of vigour, he is more fit than myself to provide for his mother, wife, and four little children: it is therefore necessary he should stay on earth to take care of them. As to myself, I am near the end of my career; I am no longer fit for anything: I cannot go like the roebuck, whose course is like the winds, unseen; I cannot sleep like the hare, with my ears never shut; but I have lived as a man, and will die as such, therefore I go to take his place.”

At these words, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and their little children, shed tears round the brave old man: he embraced them for the last time. The relations of the dead Chactaw accepted the offer; after that, he laid himself on the trunk of a tree, and his head was cut off with one stroke of a hatchet. Every thing was made up by this death; but the young man was obliged to give them his father’s head: in taking it up, he said to it, “Pardon me thy death, and remember me in the country of spirits.”

All the French who assisted at this event were moved even to tears, and admired this noble old man. A people among whom such things could be done, hardly deserved the sweeping censures of Mather and other good men, who painted them rather as fiends in human shape. Courage is, of course, the virtue held in most honour: those who run away or desert in an action are not punished, they are considered as the disgrace of human nature: the ugliest girls will not accept of them for husbands: they are obliged to let their hair grow, and to wear an alcoman, or apron, like the women. “I saw one of them,” says Bossu, who dwelt a long time among the Indians, “who, being ashamed of his figure, went by himself to fight the Chicachas, for his misery was more than he could bear: for three or four days he went on creeping like a snake, and hiding himself in the great grass, without eating or drinking; so he came to their country, and watched a long time to do some exploit; often lying down in the rushes, when his enemies came near, and putting out his head above the water from time to time, to take breath. At last he drew near a village in the night, cried the cry of death, killed one of the people, and then fled with the speed of an arrow. He was out three months upon this expedition: when he drew nigh to his own village, weary, and bearing the head of his enemy, they came down the hill to meet him. The women were loud in his praises—the warriors gathered round him; and then they gave him a wife.”

JOHN ELIOT’S FIRST MISSION TO THE INDIANS.

On the 28th of October, 1646, Eliot set out from his home, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in company with three friends, to the nearest Indian settlement: he had previously sent to give this tribe notice of his coming, and a very large number was collected from all quarters. If the savages expected the coming of their guest, of whose name they had often heard, to be like that of a warrior or sachem, they were greatly deceived. They saw Eliot on foot, drawing near, with his companions; his translation of the scriptures, like a calumet of peace and love, in his hand. He was met by their chief, Waubon, who conducted him to a large wigwam. After a short rest, Eliot went into the open air and standing on a grassy mound, while the people formed around him in all the stillness of strong surprise and curiosity, he prayed in the English tongue, as if he could not address heaven in a language both strange and new. And then he preached for an hour in their own tongue, and gave a clear and simple account of the religion of Christ, of his character and life, of the blessed state of those who believed in him.

Of what avail would it have been to set before this listening people the terrors of the Almighty, and the doom of the guilty? This wise man knew, by long experience as a minister, that the heart loves better to be persuaded than terrified—to be melted than alarmed. The whole career of the Indian’s life tended to freeze up the finer and softer feelings, and make the more dark and painful passions familiar to him. He resolved to strike a new chord, and when he saw the tear stream down their stern faces, and the haughty head sink low on the breast, as he painted the ineffable love of Christ, he said it was “a glorious and affecting spectacle to see a company of perishing forlorn outcasts, so drinking in the word of salvation.” The impressions this discourse produced, were of a very favourable nature: as far as the chief, Waubon, was concerned, they were never effaced. Afterwards the guest passed several hours conversing with the Indians, and answering their questions. When night came, he returned to the tent with the chief, and the people entered their wigwams, or lay down around, and slept on the grass. What were Eliot’s feelings on this night? At last, the longing of years was accomplished; the fruit of his prayers was given to him.

“Could the walls of his loved study speak,” says his friend, “they would tell of the entreaties poured forth before the Lord, of the days and nights set apart with fasting—that thus, thus it might be.” A few of the chiefs’ friends alone remained, after the people were retired. One of the Christians perceived an Indian, who was hanging down his head, weeping; the former went to him, and spoke encouraging words, after which he turned his face to the wall, and wept yet more abundantly: soon after, he rose and went out. “When they told me of his tears,” said Eliot, “we resolved to go forth, and follow him into the wood, and speak to him. The proud Indian’s spirit was quite broken: at last we parted, greatly rejoicing for such sorrowing.”

He now resolved to continue his labours; but, on the 26th of November, when he met the assembly of the Indians for the third time, he found that, though many of them had constructed wigwams at the place of meeting, for the more readily attending his ministry, his audience was not so numerous as on the former occasions. The Powahs (or soothsayers) had strictly charged the people not to listen to the instructions of the English, and threatened them with death in case of disobedience. Having warned his auditors against the impositions of these men, he proceeded to discourse as formerly, and was heard with the greatest attention. “It is wonderful,” observed one of his friends, “to see what a little light will effect, even upon hearts and spirits most incapable.”

On the night after this third meeting, many were gathered in the tent, looking earnestly at Eliot, with the solemn gravity and stillness which these savages affected; when the chief, Waubon, suddenly rose, and began to instruct all the company out of the things he had heard that day from Eliot, with the wild and impressive eloquence of the desert. And waking often that night, he many times was heard speaking to some or other of his people, of the words of truth and mercy that he had heard.

Two or three days after these impressions had been made, Eliot saw that they were likely to be attended with permanent consequences. Wampas, an intelligent Indian, came with two of his companions to the English, and desired to be admitted into their families. He brought his son, and several other children with him, and begged that they might be educated in the Christian faith: the example quickly spread and all the Indians who were present at the fourth meeting, on the 9th of December, offered their children to be instructed.

The missionary was himself surprised at the success of his first efforts, as well as at his facility of preaching and conversing in the Indian tongue; it was the reward of his long and patient application. “To think of raising,” says Mather, “these hideous creatures unto the elevations of our holy religion, must argue a more than common or little soul in the undertaker: could he see any thing angelical to encourage his labours?—all was diabolical among them.”

Eliot saw that they must be civilized ere they could be christianized; that he must make men of them, ere he could hope to see them saints. It is, no doubt, far easier and more flattering to the soul of the agent, to see men weep and tremble beneath his word, than to teach them to build, to plant, to rear the walls and the roof-tree, and sit at their own hearth-side: this is slow and painful work for a man of lofty mind and glowing enthusiasm. But in his own words, “he abhorred that he should sit still, and let that work alone;” and lost no time in addressing himself to the General Court of the colony, in behalf of those who showed a willingness to be placed under his care. His application was successful; and the Indians, having received a grant of land on which they might build a town, and enjoy the Christian instruction which they desired, met together, and gave their assent to several laws which he had framed, to enforce industry and decency—to secure personal and domestic comfort.

The ground of the town having been marked out, Eliot advised the Indians to surround it with ditches and a stone wall; gave them instruments to aid these objects, and such rewards, in money, as induced them to work hard. It was a strange and novel thing to see these men of the wilderness, to whom a few months previous all restraint was slavery, and their lakes and forests dearer than the palaces of kings, submit cheerfully to this drudgery of bricks and mortar—chief as well as serf; the very hands that were lately red with slaughter, scooping the earth at the bidding of Eliot, from morn to night. He soon had the pleasure of seeing Nonanetum completed.

The progress of civilization which followed, was remarkable for its extent and rapidity: the women were taught to spin, and they soon found something to send to the nearest markets all the year round: in winter they sold staves, baskets, and poultry; in spring and summer, fish, grapes, strawberries, &c.

In the mean while, he instructed the men in husbandry, and the more simple mechanical arts: in hay-time and harvest, he went forth into the fields with them. All this was not done in a day, for they were neither so industrious nor so capable of hard labour as those who had been accustomed to it from early life.

AN INDIAN FUNERAL AT NONANETUM.

At a funeral, on the 7th of October, 1647, a change in the usages and prejudices of the Indians was evinced in a striking manner. The deceased was a man of some consequence. Their custom had been to mourn much for the dead, and to appear overcome with grief, especially when the earth shrouded them from their sight. The departed was borne to the grave on a light bier, and interred in a sitting posture; in his hand was placed a calumet and some tobacco, that he might present the ensigns of peace to the people of another world. If the corpse was that of a warrior, his quiver full of arrows, a bow, and a hatchet, were placed by his side, and also a little mirror, that he might see how his face looked after passing through the region of death; and a little vermilion to take away its extreme paleness. His was a bold hand that could at once tear aside these loved usages, and make the dust of the warrior of no more consequence than that of the meanest of his followers. The cemetery of the new town was in the woods, and the procession of all the inhabitants moved slowly beneath their shadow, in deep and solemn silence, with the missionary at their head: no wail was heard—no wild gush of sorrow. To estimate this sacrifice, it is necessary to recur to the Indian belief, “that after death they should go to a very fertile country, where they were to have many wives, and, above all, lovely places for hunting:” often, no doubt, the shadowy chase of the bear and the stag came on the dreams of the dying man; and afterwards, beautiful women would welcome him, weary to his home. When the dead was laid in the grave, Eliot read the funeral service over him, and then told the many people, that in heaven they neither married nor were given in marriage; that the passions of this world, the wild chase or the warrior’s joy, could never come there; _there_ was neither chieftain nor slave; that in the love of Christ, who was the resurrection and the life, all these things would be lost. And they believed him—those fierce and brutal men—and wept, not for the dead, but for themselves; “so that the woods,” says a gentleman who was present, “rang with their sighs and prayers;” he also adds these words,—“God was with Eliot, and the sword of his word will pierce deep, in the hand of the mighty.” His opinion of the mental powers of this people was not a very low one:—“There is need,” he says, in one of his letters, “of learning, in ministers who preach to Indians, much more than to Englishmen and gracious Christians; for these had sundry philosophical questions, which some knowledge of the arts must help to give answer to, and without which they would not have been satisfied. Worse than Indian ignorance hath blinded their eyes, that renounce learning as an enemy to gospel ministers.” So acute were many of the questions proposed by the Indians, and so deeply expressive of a gentler and better nature, that more than one educated stranger was induced to attend regularly the assemblies of the missionary.

LOVEWELL’S FIGHT.

Captain John Lovewell, of Dunstable, raised a volunteer company and met with great success. At one time he fell in with an Indian trail and pursued it till he discovered them asleep on the bank of a pond. They were all killed, and their scalps, stretched upon hoops, served to decorate their triumphal return. They, of course, received the bounty, which amounted to ten pounds.

(1725.) Lovewell, having augmented his company to 46 men, again set out with the intention of attacking an Indian town on the Saco. They built a fort on the Great Ossapy pond, and then proceeded, leaving one of their number sick, and eight men to guard the fort.

When about 22 miles from the fort they rested on the banks of a pond, where they discovered a single Indian at a distance, on a point of land, and rightly judging that he was attached to a large party of Indians, Lovewell determined to advance and attack them. Accordingly the whole company threw off their packs in one place among the brakes; and, to gain the advantage, the men were spread so as partially to surround the water. Lovewell had, however, mistaken the position of the Indians, who were already on his track, and coming to the place where the packs were deposited, by counting them discovered the number of English to be less than their own. They, therefore, marched to assault the English in the rear, and actually hemmed them in between the mouth of a brook, a rocky point, a deep bog, and the pond. The company, completely surrounded, fought desperately till nightfall, when the Indians, tired of the conflict, moved off. The number of killed and wounded amounted to 23, Lovewell being among the former. The remainder of the party returned to the fort which had been deserted, in consequence of the arrival of one of Lovewell’s men who fled at the beginning of the fight, and reported all the rest killed. After resting, they started for home, where they arrived, to the great joy of their friends, after enduring the severest hardships. The survivors were liberally compensated, and the widows and families of the slain were provided for by the government of the province.

COTTON MATHER’S ACCOUNT OF THE INDIANS OF HIS TIME.

“These shiftless Indians,” says Mather, “their housing is nothing but a few mats tied about poles fastened into the earth, where a good fire is their bed-clothes in the coldest season: their diet has not a greater dainty; a handful of meal and a spoonful of water being their food for many days; for they depend on the produce of their hunting and fishing, and badly cultivated grounds: thus they are subject to long fastings. They have a cure for some diseases, even a little cave: after they have terribly heated it, a crew of them go and sit there with the priest, looking in the heat and smoke like so many fiends, and then they rush forth on a sudden, and plunge into the water: how they escape death, instead of getting cured, is marvellous; they are so slothful, that their poor wives must plant, and build, and beat their corn. All the religion they have is a belief in many gods, who made the different nations of the world, but chiefly in one great one of the name of Kicktan, who dwelt in the south-west regions of the heavens, who created the original parents of mankind, who, though never seen by the eye of man, was entitled to their gratitude, that we have in us immortal souls, which, if good, should go to a splendid entertainment with Kicktan; but, otherwise, must wander about in a restless horror for ever.”

THE VALIANT OLD MOHAWK.

(1696.) On one occasion, when Count Frontignac succeeded in capturing a Mohawk fort, it was found deserted of all its inhabitants except a sachem in extreme old age, who sat with the composure of an ancient Roman in his capitol, and saluted his civilized compeer in age and infirmity, with dignified courtesy and venerable address. Every hand was instantly raised to wound and deface his time-stricken frame; and while French and Indian knives were plunged into his body, he recommended to his Indian enemies rather to burn him with fire, that he might teach their French allies how to suffer like men. “Never, perhaps,” says Charlevoix, “was a man treated with more cruelty; nor ever did any endure it with superior magnanimity and resolution.”

OPECHANCANOUGH’S LAST WAR.

Opechancanough was by no means backward in taking advantage of the repose afforded by the treaty of 1632. For the long period which elapsed between its conclusion and his final effort, in 1644, he was industriously occupied in making preparations for a renewal of hostilities. An opportunity at length presented itself for executing his long-cherished purpose. The colony was involved in intestine dissensions. An insurrection had taken place in consequence of the unpopularity of the governor, and at a moment when the people were occupied with internal disorders and heedless of danger from without, their great enemy struck a powerful and almost fatal blow.