He was not the highly educated scholar and practical theorist that his predecessor had been: he seems to have had no plans or systems, and merely to have tried to fulfil immediate needs; but he soon found that he could not hope to benefit his Red flock without a school, so he made a journey to New Jersey to entreat for means to set one up, and this was done, with his interpreter as master. His journey was made on horseback, and was no small undertaking, for even between Stockbridge and Kanaumeek he had once lost his way, and had to sleep a night in the woods.
He had by this time thoroughly repented of the uncharitableness and hastiness of his speech about Mr. Whittlesey, and he took a journey to New Haven to send in a thoroughly humble and Christian-like apology, requesting to be permitted to take his degree. Twice he was refused, and the third time was told that the only condition on which the degree would be granted would be the making up his term of residence at Yale, which was, of course, not possible to a licensed minister in full employment, and in fact was an insulting proposal to a man of his standing and character.
His journey cost him dear, for as he was riding home he was attacked with violent pain in the face and shiverings, which forced him to halt at the first shelter he could find, happily with kind friends, who nursed him for a fortnight before he could return home. He believed that had his illness seized him in his log house at home, he must certainly have died for want of care and attendance, although he was much beloved by his poor Indians.
His life was indeed a frightfully hard one, and would have been so for a healthy man; for he had to work with his own hands to store provisions for his horse in the winter, and that when weak and suffering the more for want of proper food. He could get no bread but by riding ten or fifteen miles to procure it, and if he brought home too much it became mouldy and sour, while, if he brought home a small quantity, he could not go for more if he failed to catch his horse, which was turned out to graze in the woods; so that he was reduced to making little cakes of Indian meal, which he fried in the ashes. “And then,” he says, “I blessed God as if I had been a king.” “I have a house and many of the comforts of life to support me,” he says with great satisfaction; and the solitude of that house was so precious to him that, however weary he was, he would ride back twenty miles to it at night rather than spend an evening among ungodly men. By this terrible stinting of what we should deem the necessaries of life, he was actually able, in fifteen months, to devote a hundred pounds to charitable purposes, besides keeping the young man at the University.
So much, however, did he love his solitude, that he counted it as no relief, but an affliction, to have to ride to Stockbridge from time to time to learn the Indian language from Mr. Sergeant, the missionary there stationed. Something of this must have been morbid feeling, something from the want of energy consequent on the condition of his frame. For a man in confirmed decline such an entry in a journal as this is no trifle:—“December 20.—Rode to Stockbridge. Was very much fatigued with my journey, wherein I underwent great hardship; was much exposed, and very wet by falling into a river.” Mr. Sergeant could hardly have been profane company, but Brainerd never enjoyed these visits, thinking that intercourse with the world made him less familiar with heaven.
Another inconvenience was the proximity of Kanaumeek to the frontier, and these were the days of that horrid war between England and France in America, when the native allies of each nation made savage descents on the outlying settlements, inflicting all the flagrant outrages of their wild warfare. A message came one evening to Kanaumeek from Colonel Stoddart, warning all in exposed situations to secure themselves as well as possible, since an attack might come at any moment; and this Brainerd quietly records as a salutary warning not to attach himself too much to the comforts of life he enjoyed.
The attack was never made, but he came to the conclusion that his small congregation of Indians would be much better with their fellows at Stockbridge under the care of Mr. Sergeant, and that this would leave him free to go to more wild and untaught tribes. It was carried out, and the Indians removed. There was much mutual love between them and their pastor, and the parting was very affectionate, though even after two years he was still unable to speak the language, and never seems to have troubled himself about this trifling obstacle. Several English congregations entreated him to become their minister, but he refused them all, and went to meet the Commissioners of the Scottish Society at New Jersey. They arranged with him for a mission to the Delaware Indians, in spite of his being laid up for some days at the time; and when he went back to Kanaumeek to dispose of his books and other “comforts,” the effects of being drenched with rain showed themselves in continued bleeding from the lungs. He knew that he was often in an almost dying state, and only wished to continue in his Master’s service to the end he longed for. He owns that his heart did sometimes sink at the thought of going alone into the wilderness; but he thought of Abraham, and took courage, riding alone through the depths of the forest, so desolate and lonely day after day, that it struck terror even into his soul. There were scanty settlements of Dutch and Irish, where he sometimes spent a night, but the Sunday he passed among some Irish was so entirely unmarked by them, that he felt like a “creature banished from the sight of God.”
At last he reached his destination on the fork of the river Delaware, and being within moderate distance of Newark, there received ordination as a minister on the 11th of June, 1744. Severe illness followed the exertion of preaching and praying before the convened ministers; but as soon as he could walk, he set forth on his return, though he was so weak that he could hardly open his numbed hand, but his heart and hopes had begun to revive, and the little settlement of Whites with whom he lived were willing to listen to him.
The Indians were in the midst of preparing for an idolatrous feast and dance. Brainerd spent a day in the woods in an anguish of prayer, and then went to the place of meeting, where, stranger as he was, he prevailed on them to cease their revels and attend to him.
His biographer, President Jonathan Edwards, provokingly leaves out his method of teaching, “for the sake of brevity,” and from his own diary little is to be gathered but accounts of his state of feeling through endless journeyings and terrible prostrations of strength. He was always travelling about—now to the Susquehanna, now back to New England—apparently at times with the restlessness of disease, for this roving about must have prevented him from ever deepening the impression made by his preaching, which after all was only through an interpreter, for he never gave himself time to learn the language.
Yet after some months he did find a settlement of Indians, about eighty miles from the fork of Delaware, at a place called Crossweeksung, who were far more disposed to attend to him. They listened so eagerly, that day after day they would travel after him from village to village, hardly taking any heed to secure provisions for themselves. The description of their conduct is like that of those touched by Wesleyan preaching. They threw themselves on the ground, wept bitterly, and prayed aloud, with the general enthusiasm of excitement, though, he expressly says, without fainting or convulsions, and even the White men around, who came to scoff, were deeply impressed.
David Brainerd had at last his hour of bliss! He was delivered from his melancholy by the joy of such results, and in trembling happiness baptized his converts in the river beside their wigwams before leaving them to proceed to a village on the Susquehanna, where he hoped for an interview with the chief Sachem of the Delawares.
The place, however, was in the wildest confusion