History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

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bursement of moneys which should be given to aid
in instructing, clothing, civilizing, and Christian-
izing the Indians. A general collection was or-
dered to be made for these purposes through all
the churches of England and \Yales. The minis-
ters were required to read this act in the churches,
and to exhort the people to a cheerful contribution
to so pious a work. Circular letters were pub-
lished at the same time by the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge, recommending the same
object. A fund which in the time of Charles the
Second produced six hundred pounds sterling per
annum was thus provided, the benefits of which
lasted till the period of the separation of the colonies
from the mother country. Oliver Cromwell
interested himself in missions to the heathen, and
formed a gigantic scheme of uniting all the Protes-
tant churches in the world into one great mission-
ary society. The Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, founded in 1698, the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,
founded in 1701, and the Scottish Society for
Propagathig Christian Knowledge, founded in
1709, with all their benign fruits, had their roots
in the work of John Eliot among the Indians in
Newton.
An Indian church was never organized at New-
ton; but very soon after Eliot's work began at
Nonantum, a settlement of "praying Indians"
was formed, which was removed in 1651 to Na-
tick, by the advice of Eliot and the magistrates
and ministers. Here the Indians built a bridge
across the river, and erected for themselves a
meeting-house which would have done honor to an
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
English housewright. A civil government was established
among them on the model of the Hebrew
theocracy, and a church organized with fasting and
prayer. Mr. Eliot translated the whole Bible into
the Indian tongue, besides T/ie Poor Mmi's Prac-
tice of Pieli) and other works, and had the satisfaction
to see the Indians well advanced in their
civil and ecclesiastical estate.
At the age of eiglity Mr. Eliot oll'ered to relin-
quish his salary from the church in Roxbury, and
desired to be released from his labors as their
teacher. And when, from increasing infirmities,
he could no longer visit the Indians, lie ]i(M'su;ided
several families to send tiieir colored scivaiils lo
iiim every week, that he might iustruci ihrni in the
Word of God. So thorough-going was his mis-
sionary spirit and his .self-denial, that, it is said,
he gave most of his salary to the Indians, liv-
ing simply, and allo\^ing himself little sleep, that
he might have the more time and strength for
liis missionary work. Besides his Indian Bible,
printed in Cambridge in 1661 - 63, which was the
only Bible printed in America till a much later
period, he made a version of the Psalms in metre
in the same dialect, and prepared a Harmon// of
the Gospels in English, a work on the Christian
Common\Aealth, which the magistrates pronounced
seditious, and comjielled him openly to retract its
sentiments ; and various letters describing his work
among the Indians. When he departed, all New
England bewailed his death as a general calamity.
Cotton Mather says, " We had a tradition that the
country could never perish as long as Eliot was
alive."
At the period of the War of King Phibp in 1675,
a wide-spread prejudice sprang up against the In-
dian race, as was very natural, and from this preju-
dice the Nonantums, who had been the peculiar
charge of the apostle Eliot, were not exempt. He
remained faithful to them to the last; but they
became the object of the suspicions of the whites
and partly to satisfy those who were hostile to
them, and partly as a measure of safety, to preserve
their lives, they were unwillingly removed
from their homes, and transferred, amid much suf-
fering, to Deer Island in Boston Harbor, and de-
tained there till after the death of King Philip.
Tiiey never regained their manhood. But although
they had their civil and church state at Natick,
and acquired a certain degree of civilization, never-
theless through emigration, death, or intermarriage,
they gradually disappeared before the ad\ancing
tide of the white population. In about two hun-
dred years from the commencement of Eliot's
labors, it is believed the last drop of the Nonantum
blood ceased to flow in human veins; and now,
except for the histories of Eliot's missionary Avork,
the monuments commemorating his name and la-
bors in South Natick and Newton, the few copies
of the Indian Bible known to exist, the gravestone
of Daniel Takawambait, the native Indian preacher,
at Natick, and the cellar-holes of the liouses of
some of the Indians on the slope of Began Hill in
Dover, the name and record of tiiesc pcojjle liave
titterly vanished. Tlie Indian Bible and the Poor
Mail's Practice ofPieti/, with a few historical re-
ports and letters, are the only existing records of
the work of faitli of the Indian apostle. It is said
that with tlie materials thus supplied, the wife of
Rev. Dr. Robinson, the author of the Biblical Re-
;