contemplation and serious consideration whereof, we have thought it fit, according to our kingly duty, so much as in us lieth, to second and follow God's sacred will, rendering thanks to His Divine Majesty for His gracious favor in laying open and revealing the same unto us before any other Christian prince or state; by which means, without offence, and as we trust to His glory, we may with boldness go on to the settling of so hopeful a work, which tendeth to the reducing and conversion of such savages as remain wandering in desolation and distress, to civil society and the Christian religion." And in this, the charter professes to favor the "worthy disposition" of the petitioners to whom it was granted. Nothing could be more natural, therefore, than that John Robinson, pastor of that part of the church which remained at Leyden, in Holland, should exclaim, in his letter to the governor of the colony at Plymouth, "Oh that you had converted some before you killed any!" But, in fact, the Plymouth colonists applied themselves to the conversion of the natives from the very first. They endeavored to communicate the knowledge of the Gospel to the scattered Indians around them, and took pains to establish · schools for their instruction. The result was, that several gave satisfactory evidence, living and dying, of real conversion to God. A poor, small colony, struggling for its very existence with all manner of hardships, could not be expected to do much in this way, yet in 1636 we find that it made a legal provision for the preaching of the Gospel among the Indians, and for the establishment of courts to punish trespasses committed against them.

The Massachusetts charter sets forth that, "to win and incite the natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind, and the Christian Faith, in our royal intention and the adventurer's free profession, is the principal end of the plantation." The seal of the colony had for its device the figure of an Indian, with the words of the Macedonian entreaty, "Come over and help us." And here, as at Plymouth, some attempts not altogether abortive were made to convert the natives from the very first.

Thus, these two colonies might be considered as self-supporting missions, and rank among the earliest Protestant missionary enterprises. The Swedes had in the preceding century done something for their benighted countrymen in the northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. French Huguenots, too, as we have seen, made an attempt, as early as 1556, under the auspices of the brave and good Coligny, to carry the Gospel to America, by founding a settlement in Brazil. Calvin furnished several pastors for it from his school at Geneva. But Villagagnon, who took the lead, having relapsed to

Romanism, put three of the Genevan pastors to death; whereupon some of the colonists returned to Europe, and the remainder were massacred by the Portuguese. A subsequent attempt, made under the same auspices, to plant a Protestant colony in Florida, also failed. Thus, even assuming, which is not very evident, that these attempts were of a missionary character, certain it is that the New England colonies may be regarded as the first successful enterprises of the kind.

In 1646, the Massachusetts Legislature passed an act for the encouragement of Christian missions among the Indians, and that same year the celebrated John Eliot began his labors at Nonantum, now forming part of the township of Newton, about six miles from Boston. Great success attended this good man's preaching and other modes of instruction. Nor were his labors confined to the Indians near Boston. From Cape Cod to Worcester, over a tract of country near one hundred miles long, he made repeated journeys, preaching to the native tribes, whose language he had thoroughly mastered, and translated the Scriptures and other Christian books into it. Both editions of his Indian Bible, the one of fifteen hundred copies in 1663, the other of two thousand copies in 1685, were printed at Cambridge, near Boston, and were the only Bibles printed in America until long after. Eliot, who has ever since been called the "Apostle of the Indians," died in 1690, at the age of eighty-five. "Welcome joy," was one of his last expressions. His labors, and those of others whom he engaged in the same great work, were blessed to the conversion of many souls, and many settlements of "praying Indians" were formed in the country round Boston.

But Eliot was not the first who preached the Gospel with success to the Indians in New England. Thomas Mayhew began his labors among them on the island called Martha's Vineyard, in 1643. In 1646 he sailed for England to solicit aid; but the ship was lost at sea. His father, Thomas Mayhew, the proprietor of the island, though seventy years of age, then undertook the task, and continued it till 1681, when he died, at the age of ninety-three. His grandson succeeded; and for five generations, till the death of Zachariah Mayhew in 1803, aged eighty-seven years, that family supplied pastors to the Indians living on Martha's Vineyard.

In the Plymouth colony we find honorable mention made, among those who labored to evangelize the Indians during Eliot's life-time, of Messrs. Treat, Tupper, and Cotton; while in Massachusetts, besides Eliot, there were Messrs. Goskin, Thatcher, and Rawson; and in Connecticut, Messrs. Fitch and Pierson. The result of their united efforts were seen in 1675, in fourteen settlements of "praying In

dians, twenty-four congregations, and twenty-four Indian preachers." Besides religious instruction, the Indians were taught agriculture, and the other most necessary arts of civilized life.

But that very year (1675), King Philip, the chief of the Pokanoket tribe, instigated by his hatred of Christianity, and still more, probably, by jealousy of the growing power of the English settlers, made an unprovoked war upon the colonies. It ended in the annihilation of his party, not, however, without vast injury to the "praying settlements." Still, though the Gospel experienced a check, it soon began again to make progress, so that in 1696 there were thirty Indian churches in Massachusetts colony, and two years later three thousand reputed "converts."

In Rhode Island, Connecticut, and also Long Island (which belonged to the province of New York, though its eastern part was colonized by emigrants from New England), missionary efforts were less successful. Still, the Gospel was not wholly without effect, and portions of the Narragansett, Pequod, Nantick, Mohegan, and Montauk tribes were converted to Christianity, and long formed "Christian settlements," some remnants of which exist to this day.

The news respecting the progress of the Gospel among the Indians in New England excited so much interest in the mother country from the first, that "The Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England" was incorporated in England so early as 1649, and though its charter was annulled at the Restoration in 1660, a new one was granted the following year, reorganizing the society, under the title of "The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen Nations of New England and the parts adjacent in America." The celebrated Robert Boyle took a great interest in it, and was its "governor" or president for thirty years. The good Baxter was its friend. In 1698, "The Society for promoting Christian Knowledge" was founded by members of the Established Church in England; and in 1701, "The Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts" was instituted. This last joined with the first in aiding the American missions, as did also, at a later day, "The Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge," which was founded in Scotland. A considerable portion of the funds expended by these societies, in the missions among the Indians, was contributed by the churches in America; for, before the Revolution, they had no independent missionary organizations of their own, owing to their dependent condition as colonies. In 1762, the Massachusetts Legislature incorporated a society formed at Boston, "for promoting Christian knowledge among the Indians in North America," but the ratification of this act by the crown being refused, the missions had still to be conducted on behalf of the soci

eties in Great Britain through American committees formed at Boston and New York.

In 1734, Mr. John Sergeant began to labor among some Mohegans whom he had gathered round him at Stockbridge, in Massachusetts, whence the name given them ever after of "Stockbridge Indians." That good man, whose labors were greatly blessed, died in 1749, whereupon these Indians passed under the care of the great Jonathan Edwards, who had been settled at Northampton. It was while laboring as an humble missionary at Stockbridge that he wrote his celebrated treatises on the "Freedom of the Will” and “Original Sin." Having spent six years at Stockbridge, he was called to be President of Princeton College, New Jersey.

After the Revolution, the Stockbridge Indians, many of them being Christians, removed to the central part of the State of New York, thence to Indiana, thence to Green Bay, and at last to their present settlement on the east of Lake Winnebago, where they have a church and a missionary.

Cotemporaneously with the commencement of Mr. Sergeant's labors at Stockbridge, the Moravians began a mission in Georgia, whence they were compelled by supervening difficulties to remove soon after to Pennsylvania. In compliance with applications transmitted by them to Herrnhut, in Germany, the Society sent over several missionaries, and these worthy men began in 1740 to labor very successfully among the Mohegans on the borders of the States of Connecticut and New York. But the opposition of wicked white men compelled them at length to remove, with as many of the Indians as would accompany them, to the neighborhood of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, and there they remained for several years, but suffered much in consequence of the hostilities between France and Great Britain in 1755-63. From that place they went first to the banks of the upper Susquehanna, and afterward beyond the western borders of Pennsylvania, where they joined some Indian converts of the excellent David Zeisberger from the Allegheny River. These quarters they exchanged in 1772 for others on the Muskingum River, in Ohio, where they enjoyed great spiritual prosperity for a season. From that point they moved afterward to the Sandusky River, in the same State. After many calamities and much suffering during the Revolutionary war, in which the Indians generally took part against the Americans, and after several changes of quarters subsequent to the return of peace, they finally settled on the River Thames, in Upper Canada, where they built the town of Fairfield, at which they now reside.

David Brainerd commenced his short but useful career in 1743

among the Indians between Albany and Stockbridge, near what is now called New Lebanon. He preached afterward to the Indians at the Forks of the Delaware, in Pennsylvania, the site of the present town of Easton. And, finally, he labored for a short time, but with amazing success, among the New Jersey Indians at Crossweeksung. On the termination of his labors by death, at the age of thirty, his brother John continued them, and was much blessed in the attempt. Upon John's death in 1783, his Indian flock had the ministration of the Word continued chiefly by the pastors in the neighborhood until 1802, when it joined the Stockbridge Indians at their settlement in New York.

A school for Indian youth was opened at Lebanon, in Connecticut, in 1748, under the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, and there the well-known Indian preacher, Mr. Occum, and the celebrated Mohawk chief, Brant, were educated, It was afterward removed to Hanover, in New Hampshire, where it is still to be found, and is nominally connected, I understand, with Dartmouth College. Its proper title is "Moor's Charity School."

One of the most useful of the more recent missionaries among the Indians was the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, who began his labors with the Oneidas in the State of New York in 1764, and died in 1808, having preached the Gospel to the Indians, with some short interruptions, for more than forty years.

We have elsewhere referred to something being done in the way of Indian missions in Virginia, but in none of the Southern colonies was there any thing of this kind accomplished deserving of particular mention. The wars between the Aborigines and the immigrants, that broke out soon after the arrival of the latter, and were repeatedly renewed afterward, extinguished any little zeal they may have ever felt in such a cause.

These notices will, no doubt, surprise such of our readers as have been under the impression that the colonists never did any thing for the conversion of the Indians to the Gospel. Still, who can but regret that more was not done to bring the original occupants of the soil to that knowledge both of Christianity, and the arts of civilized life, by which alone the gradual extinction of so many of their tribes could have been arrested? The efforts of the colonists, however, encountered many obstacles. The wars between France, when mistress of the Canadas, and the British empire, of which the United States were then a part, invariably drew their respective colonies, together with the intervening Indian tribes, into hostilities. These were protracted, bloody, and cruel, so as to leave deep traces of exasperation in the minds of all who did not possess a large share of the