George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[97] him all hearts, whether in the villages of the emigrants,

Chap XII.}

or ‘the smoaky cells’ of the natives.

Nor was Eliot alone. In the islands round Massachusetts, and within the limits of the Plymouth patent, missionary zeal and charity were active; and ‘that young New England scholar,’ the gentle Mayhew, forgetting the pride of learning, endeavored to win the natives to a new religion. At a later day, he took passage for England to awaken interest there; and the ship in which he sailed was never more heard of. But such had been the force of his example, that his father, though bowed down by the weight of seventy years, resolved on assuming the office of the son whom he had lost, and, till beyond the age of fourscore years and twelve, continued to instruct the natives of the isles; and with the happiest results. The Indians within his influence, though twenty times more numerous than the whites in their immediate neighborhood, preserved an immutable friendship with Massachusetts.¹

Thus churches were gathered among the heathen; villages of ‘praying Indians’ established; at Cambridge an Indian actually became a bachelor of arts.

16

Yet Christianity hardly spread beyond the Indians on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, and the seven feeble villages round Boston. The Narragansetts, a powerful tribe, counting at least a thousand warriors,² hemmed in between Connecticut and Plymouth, restless and jealous, retained their old belief; and Philip of Pokanoket, at the head of seven hundred warriors, professed with pride the faith of his fathers.