Pioneers and Founders | Page 7

recovered, came to return thanks and presents, he would
accept nothing, but detained him to a friendly meal, "and," says Mather,
"by this carriage he mollified and conquered the stomach of his
reviler."
"He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring a loud
Courfew Bell wherever he saw the fires of animosity." When he heard
any ministers complain that such and such in their flocks were too
difficult for them, the strain of his answer was still: "Brother, compass
them;" and, "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words,
'bear, forbear, forgive.'"
Once, when at an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers containing
matters of difference and contention between two parties--who, he
thought, should rather unite--was laid on the table, Eliot rose up and put
the whole upon the fire, saying, "Brethren, wonder not at that which I
have done: I did it on my knees this morning before I came among
you."

But that "exquisite charity" seems a little one-sided in another anecdote
recorded of him, when "a godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr.
Foster, with his son, was taken captive by his Turkish enemies." {f:6}
Public prayers were offered for his release: but when tidings were
received that the "Bloody Prince" who had enslaved him had resolved
that no captive should be liberated in his own lifetime, and the
distressed friends concluded, "Our hope is lost;" Mr. Eliot, "in some of
his prayers before a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged,
'Heavenly Father, work for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster,
and if the prince which detains him will not, as they say, release him so
long as himself lives, Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him,
and glorify Thyself upon him.' And now behold the answer. The poor
captiv'd gentleman quickly returns to us that had been mourning for
him as a lost man, and brings us news that the prince, which had
hitherto held him, was come to an untimely death, by which means he
was now set at liberty."
"And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest
suppliant for his friend. But the "cruel prince" was far away out of sight,
and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the heathen
who came into immediate contact with him. Indeed, he was the first to
make any real effort for their conversion.
The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the
coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of
the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.
The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall,
well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois
nation. They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws
cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the
buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every
imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they
themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting,
beneath their dignity. Their nature had much that was high and noble;
and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's
vices or his cruelty. They were neither the outcast savages nor the

abject inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants,
but far better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of
the magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his
word, and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent. It was in mercy and
tenderness that the character was the most deficient. The whole
European instinct of forbearance and respect to woman was utterly
wanting,--the squaws were the most degraded of slaves; and to the
captive the most barbarous cruelty was shown. Experience has shown
that there is something in the nature of the Red Indian which makes
him very slow of being able to endure civilization, renders wandering
almost a necessity to his constitution, and generally makes him, when
under restraint, even under the most favourable conditions, dwindle
away, lose all his fine natural endowments, and become an abject and
often a vicious being. The misfortune has been that, with a few
honourable exceptions, it has not been within the power of the better
and more thoughtful portion of man to change the Red Indian's vague
belief in his "Great Spirit" to a more systematic and stringent
acceptance of other eternal verities and their consequent obligations,
and at the same time leave him free to lead the roving life of the
patriarchs of old; since, as Scripture itself shows us, it takes many
generations to train the wandering hunter to a tiller of the soil, or a
dweller in cities; and the shock to the wild man