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[10] an annual present of a coat to the squaw sachem during her lifetime. The relations between white men and red men were friendly. In 1644, these Mystic Indians voluntarily put themselves under the protection and jurisdiction of the English government at Boston. Eliot's first sermon to the Indians was preached in 1646 at Nonantum, south of Charles River, and at that time within the limits of Cambridge. More than 1000 Indians in the country between Boston and Worcester came to profess Christianity, and it was hoped that Harvard College could be used effectively in civilizing them. But Harvard had only one Indian graduate, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, who received his degree in 1665 and died the next year. In the terrible crisis of King Philip's War some of the ‘praying Indians’ found the ties of blood stronger than those of religion, and a fierce popular distrust was aroused against them. In the early spring of 1676, there was a feeling of alarm in Cambridge lest the town should be attacked, and timber was gathered for strengthening the fortifications, which had suffered from neglect; but the panic soon subsided, and after that year such dangers were removed to an ever receding frontier.

The settlers of New England dreaded heresy far more than they dreaded Indians, and in 1646 a synod of delegates from the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven was assembled at Cambridge, in order to define their creed and agree upon a system of church government. The work of the synod was finished in 1648. The Westminster Assembly's creed was adopted, as also a ‘platform of church discipline,’ known as the Cambridge Platform, upon which all the Congregational churches of New England were able to stand for the next four generations.

While the synod was in session the first permanent schoolhouse was built, on the west side of Holyoke Street, where it stood until 1769; for nearly another century its site was occupied by the printing-press long since famous as the University Press. The parsonage was built in 1670, on the north side of Harvard Street, with a glebe of about four acres attached to it. In 1680, the number of ratable polls was returned as 169, which indicates a population of about 850 souls in Cambridge. Their annual allowance for the parson was about £ 51 in cash and £ 78 in provisions, besides 20 loads of firewood and the use of house and land. The schoolmaster was paid about £ 20 a year.

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