Part 8

Eliot was a sweet, simple, and very lovable man. He was so generous that once, in paying him his salary, the parish treasurer tied it up in the good man's handkerchief with several knots, so that he should not be able to give it all away before reaching home. But Eliot, unable to undo these hard knots when he met a poor woman, gave her handkerchief and all, saying: "Here, my dear, take it; I believe the Lord designs it all for you."

After years of faithful work among the savages, Eliot, the "Apostle of the Indians," died, at the age of eighty-six. He tried harder than any other Puritan to convert the red men, who lost their best friend when he passed away. The Bible he worked so diligently to translate still exists; but as there are no Massachusetts Indians left, it is now of no use, except to remind us of Eliot's great patience and perseverance.

As the soil was poor, hands few, and the harvests too scanty to supply food for all, the colonists soon began to wonder how they could earn money. Before long, they discovered that by sending fish to England, they could get all the food they wanted. For that reason they fished diligently, and soon used a huge codfish as an emblem for the Massachusetts Bay colony. Next, the colonists built a large ship called the _Blessing of the Bay_, in which they sent lumber to the West Indies. In exchange for timber, they got sugar and molasses, from which they made rum to ship to England. Thus commerce was begun, and, increasing year by year, finally made the Massachusetts Puritans both rich and independent.

The Puritans, as you have seen, left England because they were not allowed to worship there as they pleased. But although they did not like it when the English tried to make them obey the Anglican Church, they now wanted to force all who came among them to think just as they did.

One young man, Roger Williams, came to New England in 1631, and preached for a while at Salem. But as he openly said that the Puritans had no right to punish people for thinking differently about religious matters, or for such trifles as smoking on the street or laughing too loud, he soon displeased some of the colonists.

They sent him away for a while, thinking he would change his mind; but when Williams came back to Salem, he insisted harder than ever that every man had a right to think just as he pleased, to worship God as his conscience bade him, and to vote whether he went to church or not. He also declared that the land around there belonged to the Indians and not to the King of England. These opinions seemed so wicked to the good Puritans that they called him up before their Council to reprove him.

Finding that the Puritans would not let him live in peace in any part of the colony, but intended to send him back to England to be tried, Williams secretly escaped from Massachusetts, and went to live among the Indians. As he knew their language, and had made friends with them, he spent a very peaceful winter in their camp.

When spring came, Williams wanted to settle at See´konk; but as the Plymouth people claimed that part of the land, he went farther still, to a place which he called Prov´i-dence. Settling there, in 1636, on land he bought from the Indians, Williams was soon joined by others who shared his opinions, and thus a colony was formed in what is now Rhode Island, where all except Jews were allowed to vote. This was considered very generous in those days, although it now seems unfair to exclude anyone on account of religion.

Because Williams was so much broader-minded than many other people of his time, he has often been called the "Apostle of Toleration"--a word which means letting others alone, or allowing others to do as they please. People of every belief came to settle in Williams's neighborhood before long, and there was soon such a variety of them that it was said if a man had lost his religion he would be sure to find it again in Rhode Island.

XXXIV. WILLIAMS AND THE INDIANS.

One of the first important persons who followed Williams to Rhode Island was Mrs. Anne Hutch´in-son. Soon after her arrival in Massachusetts, in 1634, she began to hold meetings and to preach. The Puritans, who did not believe in women's talking in public, told her to be silent; but she refused to obey, and went on preaching until she gained great influence over many people.

Indeed, when an Indian war broke out, her followers even refused to go and fight unless she was allowed to talk just as much as she pleased. But as soon as the war was over, Mrs. Hutchinson was banished. Then she, too, went to Rhode Island (1637), where she bought from the Indians the large island of that name. She gave them only twenty hoes, ten coats, and forty fathoms of wampum in payment for it, and near one end of it she began the town which is now the beautiful city of New´port. Several Quakers, driven out of the Massachusetts colonies by the Puritans, also came to live near her, and her settlement prospered greatly.

Other colonies were also begun farther north. A short time after the founding of Plymouth, Mason and Gor´ges received from the king a grant of land. Coming over to America, they divided their land and founded colonies, Gorges in Maine and Mason in New Hamp´shire. Among the principal settlements thus made were the towns of Ports´moŭth and Dover. Some years later, however, these places were added to Massachusetts, to which colony New Hampshire was joined for about thirty-five years.

In 1630, at the time when Boston was founded, some fishermen reported that the Con-nect´i-cut River flowed between very fertile banks. This news made Lords Say, Brooke, and others ask for a grant of land there, which the king readily gave them. These owners then prepared to found a new colony, which was called Say´brook, after two of their number. But they very soon found that there was no time to lose if they wanted to claim the land the king had given them, for the Dutch had already built a trading station where Hartford now stands, and were threatening to occupy all the Connecticut valley.

In spite of the fact that the Dutch got there first, Winthrop's son was told to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut, or Long River, where he was soon joined by a colony of about fifty men. These settlers suffered greatly from lack of food and proper shelter.

Still, the white men spread rapidly in Connecticut, and in the spring of 1636, Pastor Hooker, "the light of the western church," came there from Massachusetts, with about one hundred men, women, and children. Walking through the woods, driving their cattle before them, and carrying poor sick Mrs. Hooker on a litter, these colonists came to settle on the banks of the Connecticut, where they founded Hartford. They brought written laws with them, in which, among other things, it was stated that a man need not be a church member to vote.

But the Connecticut colonists soon met two foes in this new region; they were the Dutch and the Pe´quot Indians, of whom the latter proved by far the more troublesome. Soon after murdering one settler, the Pequots carried his family off to Block Island. The news of murder and capture no sooner reached Massachusetts, than ninety men set out, under John Endicott, to punish the Indians.

Sailing to Block Island, the Indian stronghold, they killed the Indians and burned down their village. Then some of them went on to the Connecticut valley, to join and help the English there. The Pequots, angry with the colonists, now sought the friendship of the Narragansett and Mo-he´gan Indians; for they thought that if three such powerful tribes joined forces, the white men would soon be crushed.

When the settlers heard of this, they were terrified. But knowing Roger Williams was the only man who could prevent the Narragansetts from making an alliance with their foes, they hastily sent him a message, imploring his aid. Instead of acting meanly, as some other men would have done in his place, and leaving those who had treated him ill to look out for themselves, Roger Williams set out right away, although a terrible storm was then raging.

Narrowly escaping death, he paddled bravely on in his frail skiff till he came to the Narragansetts' camp. There he found the Pequots fiercely urging their friends to fight by showing them the bloody scalps they had already taken. During the next three days and nights, Williams pleaded and argued with the Narragansett Indians, and he finally persuaded them not to take part in the Pequot war. Thanks to his efforts, too, the Mohegans sided with the white men, their chief bravely helping John Mason, the commander of the settlers' force.

After a night spent in prayer, the combined force of colonists and friendly Indians suddenly attacked the principal Pequot camp in what is now southeastern Connecticut. Taken unawares, the savages, roused by the barking of their dogs, sprang out of their wigwams, only in time to see the white men rush into their fort. A moment later, the invaders flung blazing torches at their dwellings, which were soon in flames over the heads of their wives and children. Many perished in the fire, and the glare of the flames allowed the colonists to see and kill nearly all their dusky foes.

Soon after this massacre, the Pequot chief was overtaken and slain, and his head was long exposed on a tree, in a place since known as Sachems Head, or Point. The few remaining Pequots either became slaves or fled to the Hudson River. This was the first real Indian war in New England (1636-1638). After it was all over the colonists along the Connecticut were left in peace, and for nearly forty years there was no more trouble with the red men.

The Pequot war was scarcely finished when three hundred English settlers came to found New Haven. They were mostly rich trading people, and they wanted to have a colony which would be governed only by the laws of the Bible. The New Haven colony grew fast, and before long included Saybrook and five other very prosperous towns.

It was in the Pequot war that the colonies first saw the advantage of helping one another, and five years later (1643) a league was formed between Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Maine and Rhode Island were not allowed to join it, because they were not Puritan colonies. But New Hampshire really belonged to it, as that colony had been joined to Massachusetts in 1641.

XXXV. THE QUAKERS.

While the English were founding the New England colonies, many changes had taken place in England. King James I. was succeeded by Charles I., and the English, weary of monarchs who did not keep their promises, rose up in rebellion in 1643.

By this time, the English Puritans had increased so that they became masters of the whole country. It was governed by their chief, Oliver Crom´well, and called the Commonwealth of England. The Puritans, being in power, made the Roman Catholics and the Church of England people as uncomfortable as the latter had once made them. Many Catholics and Anglicans were therefore only too glad to cross the ocean, in their turn, so as to found new homes where they could worship as they pleased; and you shall soon hear how they prospered.

Cromwell, as Protector of the Commonwealth of England, made a new law (1651), called the Navigation Act. By this law it was decided that the colonists should build no more ships, and that all their goods should be carried across the ocean only in English vessels. This law was very unjust, and captains of English ships speedily took advantage of it to raise their prices for freight. So, while England was rapidly growing rich, her colonists grumbled sorely at the heavy rates they had to pay.

That same year began the great Quaker excitement in Massachusetts. The Quakers were the disciples of a very good man, George Fox. They called themselves Friends, but were called Quakers by the other people, because they often said one ought to quake at the thought of the wrath of God.

As some of the months and days of the week bore the names of old heathen gods, the Friends would not use them, but, instead, numbered the days and months, speaking of the first day of the sixth month, the twelfth day of the second month, and so on. They would not take any oaths, either, but used only the words "yea" and "nay." They further treated all persons alike, calling even the king by his given name, and refused to take off their hats in his presence. Although generally quiet and modest, a few of the Quakers were so anxious to spread the teachings of their preacher Fox that they came over to Massachusetts, knowing they would be illtreated there.

Nevertheless, they began preaching, and firmly but quietly refused to stop when told to do so. They were therefore tortured and punished in many ways. A few were whipped, sent to jail, or put in the stocks. Their books were burned; they were driven out of the colony; and as all this was not enough, four of them were hanged.

The Quaker excitement finally grew so great that some of them were sent back to England and the rest forced to take refuge in Rhode Island, where they could practice any religion they liked. But the Quakers who had been shipped back to England, and especially a few discontented colonists, complained very much of the Massachusetts government, and made considerable trouble for New England.

XXXVI. THE KING-KILLERS.

Cromwell having died in 1658, the English, most of whom were still greatly attached to the royal family, soon begged Charles II. to come back and take possession of his throne. He gladly returned to England, where he punished no one for the revolution, except the men who had condemned his father, Charles I., to death. A few of these king-killers, or "reg´i-cides," as they were called, fled from England as soon as they heard the king was coming, and three took passage for America.

Two of these men, Goffe and Whal´ley, after some trouble, reached the New Haven colony, where Puritan friends helped them to hide. The king sent orders to arrest them, and magistrates began to search every house to secure the regicides. For about eighteen years these two men lived in constant dread of being caught; but, thanks to their many friends, they always escaped. They dwelt for a while in a deserted mill, then in a cave, and once hid under a bridge while their pursuers galloped over it, expecting soon to overtake them.

The fact that the New Haven people had sheltered some of his father's judges, added to the complaints of the Quakers and discontented colonists, displeased Charles II. greatly; and he finally declared that New Haven should cease to form a separate colony, and joined it to Connecticut, which received a new charter (1662).

It is also said, however, that these two colonies were united mainly to please the Connecticut people, because they had won the king's favor by sending him a pretty message to welcome him back to the throne. The charter he gave them was the most liberal ever granted the colonists, although the one Roger Williams secured for Rhode Island also granted many privileges.

You doubtless remember the treaty made between the Indian King Massasoit and Governor Carver, when the Pilgrims first came to Plymouth. This treaty was kept forty years, and Massasoit and his tribe faithfully helped the colonists to fight the other Indians. But when Massasoit died, his two sons, who had received the names of Alexander and Philip, began to rule in their turn.

Alexander knew, by the wampum belts which were the history books of his tribe, that nearly all the land of his Indian fathers had been sold to the white men, piece by piece. It had been given in exchange for beads, kettles, blankets, etc., and now very little was left. But the Indians fancied that, although they had sold the land, they could still hunt and fish there as much as they pleased. The colonists, however, would not allow them to do so, and drove the Indians farther and farther off, until they began to feel cramped for space.

It is said that when one of the colonists once came to bid an Indian chief to remove still farther from the white settlements, the red man invited him to take a seat beside him on a log. Crowding nearer and nearer his guest, the chief bade him move again and again, until he forced him to the very end of the log. But when the colonist declared he could not move another inch without falling off, the chief calmly answered: "It is just so with us. We have moved as far as we can go, and now you come here to ask us to move farther still."

This feeling of unfair treatment made Alexander so angry, at last, that he formed a secret alliance with the Narragansett Indians to kill all the white men. But the Plymouth governor, hearing of this, promptly sent for him, bidding him come and clear himself of the accusation of treachery. Then, as the Indian did not obey at once, Winslow quickly set out, with his men, to bring him by force.

Alexander, furious at being thus compelled to mind, fell seriously ill from fever. The colonists then allowed his followers to carry him home; but on the way back, the Indian chief breathed his last. Ever after, his people were in the habit of saying that he had gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds, where the palefaces could never come to crowd him out.

XXXVII. KING PHILIP'S WAR.

At Alexander's death, Philip became chief of his tribe; and thinking the English had poisoned Alexander, he began to plot revenge. After brooding over his wrongs for several years, Philip was accused of planning to attack the colonists. The governor of Plymouth sent word to Philip to come and explain his conduct, but, we are told, the Indian haughtily said to the messenger: "Your governor is but a subject of King Charles of England. I shall not treat with a subject. I shall only treat with the king, my brother. When he comes, I am ready."

Still, Philip did come, and promised to keep the peace. But a few years later, he was about to fall upon the colonists unexpectedly, when a praying Indian warned them of their danger. This Indian was murdered by three of Philip's friends, who were found guilty and put to death for the crime. Not long after this, the Indians attacked the colonists at Swan´sea, as they were walking home from church, and killed all those who could not escape in time to the blockhouse.

As had been agreed beforehand, an alarm was sent right away to Plymouth and Boston, where signal fires were kindled on what is still known as Beacon Hill. An army of colonists hastily obeyed this summons, and set out to attack Philip. But the latter was too quick for them, and managed to escape from his camp at Mount Hope, with about seven hundred Indians.

Small villages and outlying farmhouses were now in constant danger; for the savages, gliding along as noiselessly as snakes, pounced upon the people by day or by night. They forced their way into the houses, killed and scalped the men, carried women and children off into captivity, and left nothing but heaps of smoking ruins behind them.

In the course of this terrible war, several women were carried off with all their children. One child--a tiny babe--annoyed one of the savages by crying, so he killed it in the poor mother's arms. The unhappy woman, too ill to walk as fast as the Indians wished, was also slain; but the rest of her children were sold into captivity. In time, all were rescued, except one little girl, who later married an Indian, and never saw her family again until she was a grandmother.

In the course of King Philip's War, which lasted from 1675 till 1678, forty out of ninety English towns suffered greatly, and thirteen were burned to the ground. Although there were no great battles,--except a swamp fight, in which about one thousand Indians were killed,--there were many small engagements, one of the fiercest being that of Bloody Brook, near Deerfield. It seems that, owing to an alarm, the village was deserted, but nearly one hundred men were sent there to save the crops. On their way back, they carelessly laid their guns in a cart, and scattered to eat grapes. The Indians, lurking in the forest in great numbers, took advantage of this to fall upon them unawares, and seizing their weapons, killed all but a few of them.

The Indians treated all their captives cruelly, and often made them suffer horrible tortures. Terrible stories are told of this time, when many died, and but few captives escaped. Once, the savages suddenly broke into a house, and a servant hastily thrust a little child under a big kettle to hide it from them. The little one kept so very quiet that the Indians did not know it was there, and later on it was found unharmed. We are also told that a woman once drove a party of Indians away by flinging ladlefuls of boiling soap at them, which made them flee, shrieking with pain. Another band of Indians, creeping into a house by way of the chimney, were killed on the hearth, one after another, by a mother who thus bravely defended her little ones.

Once, while the people of Hadley were at church, some Indians came sneaking into the village; but they were seen by the king-killer Goffe, who happened to be hiding just then in the minister's house. Rushing out, that white-haired old man gave the alarm, and led the colonists so boldly that the Indians were driven away. But as soon as the danger was over, Goffe again disappeared, and was never seen in public again, although he is said to have died at Hadley a few years later, and to have been buried in the minister's cellar.

All these secret attacks and massacres roused the anger of the colonists, who finally got the better of their savage foes. Philip's wife and son fell into their hands, and we are told that when the Indian chief heard that his child had been sent to the West Indies, to be sold as a slave, he bitterly cried: "My heart breaks! I am ready to die."

Shortly after, the camp where he and his tribe were rapidly starving to death was surrounded by Captain Church's little army. Philip fled, hoping yet to escape; but a bullet from an Indian's gun struck him, and "he fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him." When his body was found thus, his head was cut off, and set up on a pole in Plymouth, where it was kept for about twenty years. To reward Church for his services to the colony, the settlers gave him Philip's wampum belt, which has always been carefully kept as a great curiosity; and the sword which he handled in King Philip's War can still be seen in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

XXXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF NEW YORK.

Charles II. was such a very merry and easy-going king that whenever his followers asked him for land in America, he readily granted it to them. In fact, he was so free-handed that sometimes he even gave away what really did not belong to him! Thus, he told his brother James, Duke of York, that he could have all the country claimed by the Dutch, saying that it was English because Cabot had visited it first.

As you will see, this led to trouble; for the Dutch, after building their first trading post on Manhattan Island, in 1614, had begun to form a colony in the New World. At first, the Dutch settlers were on very good terms with the Indians; but, owing mostly to the fire water they so freely sold, quarrels soon arose.

Seeing this, the Dutchman Min´u-it purchased the whole of Manhattan Island, in 1626, for about twenty-four dollars' worth of beads and trinkets. The town on it was called New Amsterdam, after a great city in Holland, and this sale, which gave the Dutch land for one sixth of a cent an acre, was soon followed by many others. Indeed, they soon owned all the Hudson and Delaware valleys, besides a strip of coast between the mouths of these two rivers.