The words were good, said Cutshamakin, but the Indians would not obey them. So Mr. Eliot, after consultation with the ministers and elders in Boston, invited the Indians who understood English to hear a sermon there, and in it the duty of rendering to all their due was fully enforced. Afterwards, however, the Indians came forward declaring themselves much surprised and mortified at being accused of not paying their just duty to their chief; and they specified the service and gifts: each had rendered twenty bushels of corn, six bushels of rye, fifteen deer, days spent in hunting, the building of a wigwam, reclaiming two acres of land; and the amount when added up amazed Mr. Eliot. At his next lecture, then, he took for his text the rejection by the Saviour of all the kingdoms of the world, and personally applied it to Cutshamakin, reproaching him with lust of power and worldly ambition, and warning him that Satan was tempting him to give up the faith for the sake of recovering his arbitrary power. The discourse and the conversation that followed again melted the Sachem, and he repented and retracted, although he continued an unsafe and unstable man.
At length, in 1651, Mr. Eliot was able to convene his praying Indians and with them lay the foundation of a town on the banks of Charles River, about eighteen miles to the south-west of Boston. The spot, as he believed, had been indicated to him in answer to prayer, and they named it Natick, or the place of hills. The inhabitants of Nonantum removed thither, and the work was put in hand. A bridge, eighty feet long and nine feet wide, had already been laid across the river, entirely by Indian workmen, under Mr. Eliot’s superintendence; and the town was laid out in three streets, two on one side of the river and one on the other; the grounds were measured and divided, apple-trees planted, and sowing begun. The cellars of some of the houses, it is said, remain to the present day. In the midst was a circular fort, palisaded with trees, and a large house built in the English style, though with only a day or two of help from an English carpenter, the lower part of which was to serve as a place of worship on Sunday, and for a school on other days, the upper part as a wardrobe and storehouse for valuables, and with a room partitioned off, and known as “the prophet’s chamber,” for the use of Mr. Eliot on his visits to the settlement. Outside were canopies, formed by mats stretched on poles, one for Mr. Eliot and his attendants, another for the men, and a third for the women. These were apparently to shelter a sort of forum, and likewise to supplement the school-chapel in warm weather. A few English-built houses were raised; but the Indians found them expensive and troublesome, and preferred the bark wigwams on improved principles.
The spot was secured to the Indians by the Council of Government, acting under the Commonwealth at home; but the right of local self-government was vested in each township; and Eliot, as the guide of his new settlers, could lead them to what he believed to be a truly scriptural code, such as he longed to see prevail in his native land. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “the blessed day in England, when the Word of God shall be their Magna Carta and chief law book, and all lawyers must be divines to study the Scripture.”
His commencement in carrying out this system was to preach Jethro’s advice to Moses, and thence deduce that the Indians should divide themselves into hundreds and into tens, and elect rulers for each division, each tithing man being responsible for the ten under him, each chief of a hundred for the ten tithings. This was done on the 6th of August, 1651; and Eliot declared that it seemed to him as if he beheld the scattered bones he had spoken of in his first sermon to the Indians, come bone to bone, and a civil political life begin. His hundreds and tithings were as much suggested by the traditional arrangements of King Alfred as by those of Moses in the wilderness; and his next step was, in like manner, partly founded on Scripture, partly on English history,—namely, the binding his Indians by a solemn covenant to serve the Lord, and ratifying it on a fast-day. His converts had often asked him why he held none of the great fast-days with them that they saw the English hold, and he had always replied that there was not a sufficient occasion, but he regarded this as truly important enough. Moreover, a ship containing some supplies, sent by the Society in England, had been wrecked, and the goods, though saved, were damaged. This he regarded as a frown of Providence and a fruit of sin. Poor Cutshamakin also was in trouble again, having been drawn into a great revel, where much spirits had been drunk; and his warm though unstable temper always made him ready to serve as a public example of confession and humiliation. So when, on the 24th of September, 1651, Mr. Eliot had conducted the fast-day service, it began with Cutshamakin’s confession; then three Indians preached and prayed in turn, and Mr. Eliot finally preached on Ezra’s great fast. There was a pause for rest; then the assembly came together again, and before them Mr. Eliot solemnly recited the terms of the Covenant, by which all were to bind themselves to the service of the Lord, and which included all their principal laws. He asked them whether they stood to the Covenant. All the chiefs first bound themselves, then the remainder of the people; a collection was made for the poor; and so ended that “blessed day,” as the happy apostle of the Indians called it.
When Governor Endicot shortly after visited the place, he was greatly struck with the orderliness and civilization he found there. “I account this one of the best journeys I have made for many years,” he says. Many little manufactures were carried on, in particular one of drums, which were used for lack of bells in some of the American settlements, as a summons to come to church.
There was a native schoolmaster, named Monequassum, who could write, read, and spell English correctly, and under whom the children were making good progress. Promising lads were trained by Mr. Eliot himself, in hopes of making them act as missionaries among their brethren. All this time his praying Indians were not baptized, nor what he called “gathered into a Church estate.” He seems to have been determined to have full proof of their stability before he so accepted them; for it was from no inclination to Baptist views that he so long delayed receiving them. However, on the 13th of October, 1652, he convened his brother-ministers to hear his Indians make public confession of their faith. What the converts said was perfectly satisfactory; but they were a long-winded race, accustomed to flowing periods; and as each man spoke for himself, and his confession had to be copied down in writing, Mr. Eliot himself owns that their “enlargement of spirit” did make “the work longsome.” So longsome it was, that while the schoolmaster was speaking every one got restless, and there was a confusion; and the ministers, who had a long dark ride through the woods before them, went away, and were hard to bring back again, so that he had to finish hearing the declarations of faith alone.
Still, he cut off the baptism and organization of a church till he had sent all these confessions to be considered by the Society in England, printed and published under the title of “Tears of Repentance,” with a dedication to Oliver Cromwell. Then came other delays; some from the jealousy and distrust of the English, who feared that the Indians were going to ally themselves to the Dutch; some from the difficulty of getting pastors to join in the tedious task of listening to the wordy confessions; and some from the distressing scandal of drunkenness breaking out among the Indians, in spite of the strict discipline that always punished it. It was not till 1660 that Mr. Eliot baptized any Indians, and the next day admitted them to the Lord’s Supper, nine years after he had begun to preach. The numbers