Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/446

426 those who essayed, as interpreters, teachers, and preachers, to master the tongue, as to the construction and compass of the language, and the difficulties or facilities of its acquisition. It would seem that of it, as of other languages, ancient and modern, barbarous or cultivated, written or unwritten, it was easy to catch enough of it for the common intercourse of life in the woods, the wigwam, or traffic. The embarrassment of communication in it increased according to the importance or dignity of the theme. Mr. William Leverich, a very successful preacher to the Indians in Sandwich, Mass., wrote, in 1651: —

Eliot seems even to intimate that Cotton of Plymouth was his superior in a mastery of the Indian tongue, and he relied largely upon Cotton's aid in his translation and printing of the Scriptures. He gave two full years of close study and practical trial of the language before he ventured to preach in it. Feeling that the time had fully come to justify the experiment, he invited the petty chief Waban and some of his Indians to gather near his wigwam, under an oak tree on a hill in Nonantum, now Newton, Mass.; and on the 28th of October, 1646, he discoursed to them in their