XII. proved, by confession or otherwise, to be a Quaker, CHAPTER should be delivered, under the magistrate's warrant, to the constable of the town, "to be stripped naked from 1661. the middle upward, and tied to a cart's tail and whipped through the town, and thence be immediately conveyed to the constable of the next town toward the borders of our jurisdiction, and so from constable to constable, to any the outermost town," and so to be whipped over the border. This process, in case of return, was to be twice repeated. Those who came in a fourth time were to be arrested and committed to the house of correction for trial at the next court; and such as the court did not judge meet to release were to be branded on the left shoulder with the letter R., severely whipped, and then flogged, as before, out of the jurisdiction. If, after all this discipline, any persisted in returning, they were to be proceeded against "as incorrigible rogues and enemies of the common peace," under the law of banishment, with pain of death if they returned. Those residents who became Quakers were first to be thrust out of the jurisdiction, and, if they came back, were to be proceeded against as vagabond Quakers. Meanwhile the philanthropic Eliot was pursuing his missionary labors, for the support of which the society in England now annually remitted a sum equivalent to about $3000. Out of this fund upward of twenty teachers, several of them Indians, received salaries of from $50 to $250 each, and a number of Indian youth were supported and educated. No impression could be made on the Wampanoags and Narragansets, notwithstanding the threats of the praying Indians, recorded by Williams, that unless they submitted to the Gospel, Massachusetts "would destroy them by war." Even Uncas, the tool and favored ally of the colonists, was inflexible on this CHAPTER point, as were most of the sacheins, and especially the XII. -pow-wows or priests. Eliot had compiled a form of gov. 1660. ernment for his converts, based on the institutions of Moses; but the Commissioners for the United Colonies. who had the general oversight of the missions, and the administration of the funds, advised him to be cautious how he interfered too much with the authority of the chiefs. Not content with Christianizing, Eliot wished also to civilize the Indians; indeed, he held civilization essential to Christianity. But he found it much easier to imbue his converts with his theological ideas than to habituate them to settled life and regular labor. Wine and rum, freely imported from Madeira and the West Indies, proved a sore temptation to the converts, unprincipled traders violating the laws which forbade selling to the Indians. Difficulties still more insurmountable were encountered in the violent prejudices of caste which prevailed in New England. The first emigrants seem to have entertained hopes of incorporating the Indians into 1633. their commonwealth. A very early law had provided for the assignment of lands to such Indians as might become civilized, and for organizing them into townships. the theocratic section of the Puritans were not the men for a work requiring an enlarged benevolence, a patient forbearance, and a respect for human nature which formed no part of their creed. In spite of Eliot's attempts to trace the Indians from the ten lost tribes of Israel, they were despised as savages by the Puritan colonists, and hated as heathen. Familiar with all the stern details of the Old Testament history, the colonists compared themselves to the Israelites, the natives to the Canaanites, and New England to the promised land. It was even suggested that the Indians might be naturally as well as figuratively the children of the devil, whose de But XII. vout worshipers they were believed to be, and his willing CHAPTER pupils in sorcery and witchcraft-mere names to us, but to our fathers horrible and most detestable realities. The colonists, however, did not act up to their model. The Pequod territory and some other tracts were claimed by conquest, but in general the Indian title was purchased. The prices appear small; a coat or a few hatchets paid for a township. The value, in fact, was very little; but it may well be questioned how far the chiefs. from whom these purchases were made had any authority to alienate the lands of their tribe, or how far they understood to what extent they were parting with their title. That justice toward the natives, upon which the colonists of New England prided themselves, was conscientious, indeed, but narrow and very vindictive; alike ignorant and careless of the views, feelings, and usages of the Indians; holding them responsible to a strict and austere code, little consonant, on many points, to their habits or ideas; and ascribing to the chiefs an extent of authority, and a control over their people, which they did not by any means actually possess. In all their intercourse with the Indians, they insisted strenuously, as in the instructions to Gibbons when marching against the Narragansets, "on the distance which is to be observed betwixt Christians and barbarians, as well in war as in other negotiations." The feelings of hatred, distrust, and contempt with which the natives were generally regarded, extended even to the "praying Indians," as the converts were called. They were suspected by the mass of the colonists of being secretly in league with the Dutch, and parties to the supposed hostile designs of the Narragansets. To judge by their cautions to Eliot, the Commissioners for the United Colonies, who administered the mission fund, were 1660. CHAPTER very strongly suspicious lest the converts "should only XIL follow Christ for loaves and outward advantage." It was 1660. only by steady perseverance and oft-repeated importunities that Eliot so far gained upon prevailing prejudice as to obtain liberty to organize a church at his Indian town of Natick. The missions received little, if any aid from the colonists, being sustained by the contributions from England. Out of that fund were printed Eliot's Indian Grammar, Psalm Book, and Catechism, followed first by the New Testament, and presently by the Old, translated by that indefatigable laborer into the Massachusetts dialect, and printed at Cambridge—the first 1661. American edition of the Bible. Out of the same fund, 1663. also, a small building was erected at the college for the special use of Indian students. Many Indians were taught to read and write, and one graduated at the college. Other villages besides that at Natick, and other churches, were formed. But these converted and civilized Indians were still treated in every respect as a distinct and an inferior race, restricted to villages of their own, and cut off by opinion as well as by law from intermarriage and intermixture with the whites. What wonder, in spite of all Eliot's zeal and devotedness, that this scheme for civilizing and Christianizing the Indians proved in the end an almost total failure? CHAPTER XIII. NEW SWEDEN. PROGRESS OF NEW NETHERLAND. ITS XIII. IT was not against English encroachments alone that CHAPTER the Dutch of New Netherland had to contend. Ussellinx, the original projector of the Dutch West India Company, dissatisfied, as often happens, at his treatment by those who had availed themselves of his projects, had looked round for a new patron. To Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, greatly distinguished a few years afterward by his victories in Germany, which saved the Protestants of that empire from total ruin and raised Sweden to a high pitch of temporary importance, Ussellinx proposed 1626 a plan for a Swedish trading company. This plan the king inclined to favor, and a charter for such a company was presently issued. But the scheme was cut short by the 1630. breaking out of the German war, and the untimely death 1633 of the hero of the north at the victorious battle of Lutzen. The plan of Ussellinx, or a portion of it, was revived by Peter Minuet, whom we have formerly seen director of New Netherland, and who, after his recall from that government, went to Sweden, where he was patronized by the celebrated Oxenstiern, minister of Queen Christina, the daughter of Gustavus. Furnished, by his assistance, with an armed vessel, the Key of Calmar, a tender called the Griffin, and fifty men, Minuet set sail to establish a Swedish settlement and trading post in America. Не touched at Jamestown, in Virginia, took in wood and 1638. water, and, during a stay of ten days, endeavored to pur March |