University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

The next successive step in the progress of our eventful
story, will take us to the quiet banks of that beautiful but
singularly sinuous river of eastern Massachusetts, which, after
meandering its way full one hundred miles to gain one fourth
of that number in direct distance, and thereby embracing
within its doubling folds more than twenty of the best and
most populous towns in the state, comes gently urging its
tranquil waters to its briny estuary, where now lie, in the
parent city and its clustering appendants, those thronged
marts of trade and wealth, going to make up the proud emporium
of New England.

In an extensive grove of scattered pines, on the banks of
the stream just described, near the point where the brackish
and turbulent waters of the estuary subside into those of the
pure and gentle river, might have been seen, on a pleasant
evening, a few days subsequent to the events narrated in the
last chapter, a mingled multitude of men and boys from the
neighboring city, occasionally interspersed by a few shy, abject
looking natives of the forest—some listlessly sauntering
along the banks of the stream upward, some gathered round
a number of light shallops and skiffs moored to the shore at
the lower part of the grove, and others standing in scattered
groups further in shore, and, while engaged in conversation,

frequently turning an eye or ear towards the southwest, as if
awaiting the sight or sound of something expected to approach
along the road from that direction. In one of these groups
stood our young hero, Vane Willis, who, it will be recollected,
had avowed his purpose of coming to this quarter to enlist
some chosen friends to stand ready to engage with him in repelling
the first onset in the war he so confidently anticipated.
He was conversing with a stoutly built, middle-aged man,
with a bronzed, weather-beaten visage, and a frank, resolute
countenance. Although the two had met for the first time
but an hour before, yet they had heard of each other, and
were now conversing with a freedom and confidence, which a
mutual appreciation of character will often at once beget between
the greatest of strangers.

“I have now,” said Willis, at the point of the conversation
which it concerns us to report—“I have now privately
enrolled in your colony, Captain Mosely, a dozen choice fellows
that I have been with enough in forest hardships and
dangers, to know the mettle they are made of; and, within
another week, I will have twice that number in my own colony,
equally well fitted for the service. And having appointed
a midway rendezvous, we will all be ready to take the
field, or the forest, as the case may require, within twenty-four
hours after the first act of hostility shall have occurred.”

“The first act of hostility!” exclaimed the other, repeating
the words in surprise—“Why, that has already occurred.”

“When and where do you make that out?” asked the
former.

“Last week, in Plymouth, as I supposed you knew,” replied
Mosely. “The cussed hell-hounds, they say, came
boldly into that town and carried off one of the citizens; and
though he escaped with his life, I believe, he found the woods
full of the red devils preparing to fall on the settlements. It

was that news which the messengers brought, with what was
known before, that led our court to authorize me to raise the
company of volunteers I have been telling you about.”

“That! Oh, that was no very serious matter, I fancy,”
said Willis, smiling. “But after all, it is well, perhaps, that
it happened; for it may arouse the Plymouth leaders to a sense
of the dangers they have incurred by their own short-sighted
policy, and teach them the necessity of preparing for a blow
which is now sure to fall upon us soon; and if it is delayed,
it will only be to make the stroke more certain and heavy.”

“Well, people are so excited and crazy these days that one
scarce knows what to believe. I didn't think it a very likely
story, myself: nor have I believed any thing in their cussed
mummery about the signs and omens. But I fully agree with
you, that your stupid Plymouth managers have brought trouble
on us all. And it will probably be found that you and I
have moved none too early in the business. You and your
company of woodsmen, I plainly perceive, will be just the fellows
to cope with this kind of foe, in all the bush-fighting, at
least. You have a commission, I suppose?

“No; I and my boys are agoing to fight on our own hook.
I have not asked for a commission, and having openly condemned
the course of the Plymouth Court, I should not get
one if I had.”

“I shouldn't think you need have much trouble about
that, my young friend; you belong to the church, of course?”

“No, captain, I have not that honor.”

“Oh, that's it,—I see now,—there's the secret of your difficulty,
Willis. I could not have got up a single peg in this
colony, an' I had not thrown my anchor on a church bottom.”

“You a church member?—You who was brought up a swearing
soldier in the English army that took Jamaica from the
Spanish; and then, if they didn't belie you, Captain, sailed
some time with the West India buccaneers, and always was in

the habit of cursing and swearing enough to throw old Shimei
himself into the shade.—You in the church?”

“You talk rather plainly about past matters, it strikes me,
young man. And if you was one of your mealy-mouthed hypocrites,
you and I would see who was the best man. But as
you are one of the sincere, out-spoken sort of fellows I like, I
wlll take no offense and answer your question. I am a member,
and, for anything I know, in regular standing in the
church.”

“But how could you get in, Captain?”

“I will tell you, as it may be some use to you, hereafter,
perhaps, though the less you mouth it the better. Well,
when I gave up roving, about ten years ago, and settled down
here to be something, I soon saw I should be little better than
nobody at all, unless I got into the church; and so I offered
myself. But, for some time, owing, I was told, to that cuss'd
habit of swearing you speak of, I found the gate shut against
me. Well, as I did not like to give in beat, and as I could
not break up the habit, I cast round for some safe outlet for it,
which I at length found. For having noticed that these particular
church gentry had a sort of orthodox fashion of swearing
themselves, about the men and things they hated, I improved
on the hint thus obtained, and at once turned all my
heaviest batteries upon the Quakers and heretics, whom I
then fell to cussing and damning like the house a-fire. And
the result of it all was, that I soon sailed into the churchharbor
with flying colors.”

“I can't say, Captain,” remarked Willis, good-humoredly
shaking his head,—“that I quite approve the principle you
apear to have acted on in the matter.”

“Nor I,” bluntly responded Mosely, — “I know well
enough that it was a cussed mean principle; but it was as good
an one as the strait-laced times would admit. If it was a
wrong one, the responsibility, I hold, should be on those, who,

by making church-membership the only stepping-stone to office,
tempted me to resort to it. They could not expect a
fellow of any gumption was a-going to sit down contented to
remain at the bottom of the heap forever.”

“But you must surely feel a reverence for religion?”

“Religion? To be sure I do. It is my best private comforter.
But what has that to do with the church? I hold
religion to be quite too good a thing to be mixed up with
church matters; and they shall never have mine, I swear to
them, to use for that purpose.”

“Some such notions, I confess, have often been forced on
my mind; for, as deeply as I love and reverence the gospel
of our Saviour, I cannot agree with the practical construction
so often put upon it by our church and state rulers, in their
persecutions of dissenting sects, and in their violation of the
rights of the Indians, even where the poor, trusting creatures
have become their own converts, as in the cruel and unnecessary
measure which we are now waiting to see executed, and
which will probably make scores of them enemies, who, if let
alone, might be made useful friends in the approaching
war.”

“Yes, a cussed foolish buzziness, as I have told them,” responded
the blunt captain. “But, hark! was not that the
blast of a trumpet? Ay, ay, there they come! Captain
Prentiss and his red brood just heaving in sight, yonder,”
added the speaker, pointing up the road, round a distant curve
of which a well mounted military officer, with a trumpeter at
his side, followed by a strong company of cavalry, enclosing a
motley body of two or three hundred Indians of all ages and
sexes, hurrying along on foot, came sweeping into view.

The occasion of this unwonted spectacle, as may have been
already partly inferred from the closing words of the foregoing
dialogue, as well as of the assembling of those here present,
to witness it, was the removal, under an order of the Gen

eral Court, of the large body of christianized Indians who had
long since been peacably located at Natic, and who were now
being conducted by a military force to this place for embarkation,
in boats, for their destination on Deer Island, lying
outside of Boston harbor, at too great a distance from the
main land, it was supposed, to permit of their escape.

Nearly a quarter of a century before the period of which we
are writing, the self-sacrificing John Eliot, the St. John of
the new world, who, instead of aspiring to the positions of
honor and influence among his own people, to which his acknowledged
talents and learning would have doubtless elevated
him, devoted all the energies of his life to the work of christianizing
the natives of the forest, had seen the great wish of
his heart realized in the permanent settlement of a large body
of his red disciples at Natic.[1]

After the most unwearied efforts, he had succeeded in obtaining
the cession of the five or six thousand acres of land,
which was to constitute this Indian town, from the inhabitants
of Dedham, who appear to have claimed the tract as part of
their own territory. Next, he procured a quit claim conveyance
of the tract, from one Speene and his associates, who, on
their part, claimed the original right of soil; and, finally, to
make the grant doubly secure against future contesting claimants,
he had obtained for it the formal confirmation of the
General Court of the Colony.

Here the indefatigable apostle to the wild children of the
forest, as he has been so justly called, had gathered in his
disciples from all quarters, joined them, with the labors of his
own hands, in building a bridge across Charles river, which
ran through the town; in erecting a spacious meeting-house as
the general centre of their Christian worship; and lastly, in

building permanent dwelling-houses for a village, and for an
agricultural independent community, which no earthly powers
had the right to molest, so long as engaged in the peaceful
pursuit of their avocations.

Here the gratified leader had spent months and months,
through a period of more than twenty years, in privately instructing
his trusting and devoted followers in the arts of
civilized life, in civil polity for the government of their community,
and especially, in the simple but sublime truths of
Christian revelation. Here, he statedly preached to them in
the loved tabernacle which he had helped them to build and
consecrate, and to which, on each hallowed Sabbath morning,
they came flocking at the beat of a drum, like loving doves
to their windows. In short, he had labored and lived to see
his hopeful flock here permanently settled—gaining year by
year in temporal thrift and moral elevation, and in making
such a progress in Christian knowledge and virtue, as to have
gained for them as a church, the full acknowledgment and
fellowship of all the white Christian churches in the colony.
And he had not only beheld, as he did with unspeakable satisfaction,
the practicability of his great experiment for christianizing
the red men, thus measurably demonstrated to the
doubting world, and his labors of love crowned year after year
with a more and more perfect success; but he had lived to
enjoy the additional gratification of beholding the natural
antipathies of the people at large against the objects of his
affectionate solicitude, to all appearance, nearly overcome, or
so far, at least, that they began to be looked upon as fellowmen,
and entitled to the ordinary privileges of humanity.

But latterly, a change had come over the spirit of the people.
The jealousy and hatred which had been long springing
up between the colony at Plymouth, and King Philip and his
subjects, and which had now come to a crisis, had, within the
last year or two been rapidly spreading among the colonists

of Massachusetts, who hitherto had treated the natives with
much more fairness than had been shown them by the
people of Plymouth, and had so little sympathized in the
fears and suspicions of the latter as to have often interposed
to rebuke and quiet their growing disaffection.

At the present juncture, however, the old antipathies of the
Bay colonists seemed not only to have been fully revived, but
now to have been fanned to a flame by the startling news from
Plymouth. They everywhere began to look upon the natives
with distrust, and whatever their tribal relations, or whatever
their character for friendliness or Christian conduct, to place
them all in one and the same category—that of the natural
enemies of the white men. And the General Court, sharing
in the prevalent excitement and alarm, had not only taken
steps to raise military forces, but passed a decree for the forcible
removal, or rather virtual imprisonment of the praying
Indians. Accordingly, the thorough going Captain Prentiss
had been promptly dispatched with his company of cavalry to
their principal establishment at Natic, to drive them from
their doubly guaranteed homes and possessions, and conduct
them off, like a gang of slaves, to a barren island which could
afford them at best, but a pitiable subsistence.

In a short time the showy and domineering cavalcade with
their long line of sorrowing victims, came pouring along
against the landing, where the boats were in waiting to receive
them; when the sharp, stern voice of Captain Prentiss was
heard commanding a halt, and issuing his orders for an immediate
embarkation.

At this moment a plainly dressed man of a clerical air, and
a meek, pleading countenance, was seen hastening, with the
quick, tremulous steps of age, from a neighboring coppice,
and eagerly making his way through the crowd towards the
spot where the officer just named sat on his horse, giving directions
to his subordinates respecting the business on hand.

It was the good Eliot, the Indian Apostle, whose body, worn
and exhausted in the willing service of benefiting the red man,
was now tottering on the brink of the grave, but whose soul
was still glowing with the intensity of his love and yearning
solicitude for the unfortunate race, for whose eternal welfare
he had spent, without hope of any earthly reward, all the best
part of his laborious life. He had heard of the project of
their cruel and unwarranted banishment with deep surprise,
and with feelings of unspeakable anguish. He had remonstrated
with the leading men of the court, and persevered in
his intercessions until he had brought upon himself the contumely
of both the rulers and the people, who had now become
so crazed with fear and excitement, as not only to look upon
all the praying Indians as secret plotters in aid of the impending
war, but to regard, with dislike and suspicion, every
white man who ventured to speak a word in their defence.
But he might as well have remonstrated with the angry billows
of the ocean for dashing over their usual limits when
lashed into blind fury by the power of the natural tempest.
And having found all his remonstrances and intercessions
wholly ineffectual, and having that morning seen, with an
aching heart, the troops depart to carry the despotic order
into execution, he had come here to take a sad farewell of his
beloved flock, minister to them the consolations of the gospel,
and offer up for their future welfare and safety his prayers
and intercessions to Him, with whom, he felt he might plead
unrebuked for that answer of peace which he had failed to
receive from men who professed to worship the same God
with himself, and who, at that very hour, perhaps were thanking
him for the success of their unholy doings in the present
outrage.

As the venerable man passed along through the yielding
throng, who seemed to shrink from his presence as from the
contact of a leper, many a spiteful hiss reached his ears, and

many a pointed finger of scorn greeted his eyes; but, heeding
none of them, he pressed on to the side of the stern commander
and meekly asked his attention in listening to “a respectful
request for a small favor, the granting of which would be
received with much gratitude.”

“Favor! what favor, old man?” gruffly responded the
officer, looking down with an air of mingled impatience and
disdain upon the meek suppliant.

“These once wild but now well meaning people, Captain
Prentiss,” respectfully but earnestly urged the aged intercessor,
“have for more than a score of my weary years, been
the especial subjects of my ministerial labors. I love them
as children; and they have come to look on me as their father
and friend; and the favor I have to ask, is to be permitted,
for one short hour, to hold a little meeting with them,
in some secluded corner of this shady grove, where unmolested,
I may commune with them, pray with them, and give
them my parting counsels. I cannot think the General Court
would refuse.”

“Yes, yes, I hear you, sir,” impatiently interrupted the
other. “But instead of receiving such an undeserved permission,
to enable you, for ought I know, to preach to them
a little more of the sedition you are suspected of by some,
shouldn't you be well satisfied with the favor the Court has
already mercifully vouchsafed you, in that you are not driven
off with them?”

Repeated bursts of laughter ran through the crowd, in savage
approval of the words of the last speaker, who, after glancing
around with a gratified air a moment, was about to resume;
when Captain Mosely, who had stood by witnessing what took
place, promptly stepped forward, and in his abrupt, bold manner,
exclaimed,

“Avast! there, Captain Prentiss. This, to be sure, is none
of my commands, or my business—thank God for it!—and I

don't wish to interfere; but, natheless, I may suggest whether
we had better do any thing that will make the Indians themselves
blush for us. We must recollect that these poor
creatures have not, as yet, done any thing blameworthy; and
as they are about to be shipped, both they and their preacher
very naturally want a little talk and worship together, and I
move they have the permit. I will be answerable for all the
sedition Father Eliot will preach to them; for, to say nothing
about you, captain, I wish to God I was half as good a man
as I believe him to be.”

A visible frown passed over the sternly grave countenance
of the military bigot who had been selected for the present
service, but he was evidently staggered by the plain remarks
of Mosely, who, whatever his faults, was a great favorite
among the common people, and who, as the former perceived
from sundry manifestations of applause with which his remarks
were also in turn received, was not without a strong party in
the crowd to sustain him; and the result was, that Captain
Prentiss, after a brief consultation with his lieutenant, commanded
the attention of his company, and announced to them
that, “as Captain Mosely had agreed to become responsible
for the Indians in charge, while they and their minister should
hold a short prayer-meeting, the troop might now take a respite
of one half hour, at the end of which they must all be in
readiness—one half to take the horses round to Boston, and
the other half to go with him in the boats to take the suspected
heathen crew to their destination.”

“Captain Mosely,” said Willis, who had retained his place
at the side of the other, and had been the most out-spoken of
all in approval of his course, “I shall always honor you for
your fearless and humane interposition. They not only meant
to insult Father Eliot, but deprive him of all chance to speak
to his flock. But here he comes to thank you himself, I
presume.”

“It is truly so,” said the good old man, feelingly, as he
warmly grasped the rough palm of the captain, while a tear
was starting to his eye, and his lips began to tremble with his
grateful emotions. “Sir, I th—ank you,—thank you for this!
May God bless you. Yea, and you, too, young man, for approving
the kind act. You both shall have my prayers.”

“Well, we need 'em bad enough—at least I do,” responded
Mosely; “but no thanks, Father Eliot; I don't deserve 'em,
for I spoke out for myself, being riled all up to see them use
you so, like cussed Arabs.”

“Oh, don't curse them,” said the other, “don't curse them.
They knew not what they did. Let it all pass. But they
have allowed me brief time — I must improve it,” he added,
turning away and hastening to a little elevation, where he
could be seen and heard by all of his dusky flock.

“My children!” he then cried, in the most touching
accents of affection, “we have found friends, and they have
prevailed. We are to be indulged in a short meeting. So
follow me, now—follow me, my children.”

The gratified apostle then with hurrying steps led the way
to a place in another part of the grove, which he seemed to
have already selected for the purpose; while the agitated mass
of his devoted followers, with eyes gleaming with joy and love,
and with the confiding alacrity of a brood of chickens running
at the call of the feathered parent, went streaming along after
him. When he reached the allotted place, which was an open
grassy plat, surrounded with low evergreens, he took his stand
in the centre, and, with a countenance working with emotion,
he motioned them to arrange themselves around him. He
then commenced the loving ceremony of taking them, one
after another, individually by the hand, exchanging with them,
in broken utterance, the mutual salutations, and ministering
to them all the words of faith and Christian consolation.

“Hard, hard, farder Eliot,” said these sobbing children of

persecution, as they came up to grasp the proffered hand of
their idolized pastor, and to water it with their tears—“hard
go away so! never, may be, come back again! then no more
Natic home, no more green fields, no more good houses, no
more meeting house, no more pray there, no more preach, no
more see good farder Eliot—Oh, hard, hard!”

“Yes, yes, my beloved children,” would reply the weeping
pastor, to remarks like these, “it is indeed a sore trial, and
hard to be borne; but we must all bow to the will of the
Great and good One above, who has doubtless ordered it for
wise purposes, and our own benefit. It has often been so
with the followers of the Lamb, who has told us, that through
much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God.”

At the conclusion of this touching scene, in which more
than half the allotted time had been spent in thus commingling
their sorrows and sympathies, he asked them all to
kneel on the ground closely around him. Readily comprehending
the object, they immediately gathered up, dropped
upon their knees in thickly encircling lines, and reverently
bowed their grief-bedewed faces to the earth; when, with his
thin, trembling hands widely spread over them, the silvery
locks of his uncovered head, rising and falling in the fitful
evening breeze, and the fast coming tears coursing down his
furrowed cheeks, the good and guileless old man lifted up his
broken voice and prayed—

“O thou good and merciful God, who hast proclaimed thyself
the father of all, are not these poor, suffering, and sorrowing
ones, all thy children? Are they not as dear to thee,
and as much entitled to thy kindly regard, as those, whom,
in thy ever wise dispensations, thou hast permitted thus to
afflict them? We entreat thee, then, O heavenly Parent, as
much of the red man as the white—our Father, and their Father—our
God, and their God—we entreat thee, in the faith
and love thou hast planted with thine own hand in the yearning

bosom of thy unworthy servant—we earnestly entreat
thee to take them under thy especial care and protection, doing
unto them, and for them, according to their need and
their weakness, to enable them to bear up under the heavy
hand of the strong that has now been so grievously laid upon
them. Give them of the fullness of thy grace and love.
Make good unto them all the peace and satisfaction of which
their misguided oppressors may now perchance be deprived,
for their offences towards these little ones, of the same Christian
family. Take them by thy fostering and fatherly hand,
and lead them in pleasant places. Provide for all their temporal
wants. Vouchsafe to them thy choicest blessings.
Minister unto them, and comfort them in all their trials and
afflictions. Guard them from all the forms of sin and temptation.
Constantly reveal thyself to them in thine unerring
Spirit, as a light to guide their feet in their strivings onward
along their dim pathway, to a more perfect righteousness
above. Guide them safely through this thorny vale of life;
and finally, O merciful Redeemer, gather them all to the great
fold of thy loved and accepted ones in heaven.”

The last word of this impassioned appeal to heaven in behalf
of this injured flock of converted and affiliated Indians,
had scarcely died away among the whispering pines, before
the stern, harsh voice of Captain Prentiss, now seen galloping,
with fiercely waving sword, towards the spot, was heard
authoritatively exclaiming—

“Turn out! turn out there! ye moping mischief brewers.
Your time is up. Budge along here, then, to the boats; and
step lively, every soul of ye, or I'll have a platoon of troopers
at your heels!”

With the hurried, apprehensive motions of a gang of slaves,
sharply threatened with the lash of the master, the Indians
bade their now doubly dear, earthly shepherd a hasty farewell;
for they saw he was too much overpowered by his emotions

to follow them on their thronged way to the landing,
where they had hoped he would repair to give them his final
blessing. But though deprived of this satisfaction, they were
not to be left without a compensating comfort. Through the
openings of the swaying shubbery, they occasionally caught
precious glimpses of his revered person, still standing on the
consecrated spot, where solitary and silent, he was now affectionately
stretching out his arms towards them, and now raising
them aloft, as if to snatch from Heaven one more blessing
on their departing heads.

If there is any form of worship among men acceptable in
the sight of heaven, it must be the secretly offered incense of
a trusting and devoted heart; when words and thoughts are
breathed and shaped in the conscious absence of all human
witnesses. If men ever pray worthily, and in the unalloyed
sincerity of their hearts, it is then; for who shall say, how
many detracting thoughts,—how many shades of unworthy
feeling, or vanity, the lurking love of approbation, or the fear
of giving offence, may throw over the petitions of men praying
in public? Many a public prayer, we fear, has been
framed less for the acceptance of Heaven, than the admiration
of men.

After father Eliot had stood some time indulging in his
grief, and in the outpourings of his heart in secret prayer, he
turned, with heavy steps, to depart; when he, for the first
time, became aware that the scene just described had not been
without a concealed witness, whose searching scrutiny above
that of all other men, he would, under the peculiar circumstance,
have been the most anxious to avoid. But for a new
scene, let us take a new chapter.