Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/468

448 Waban, Nataôus, Monequassum (the native schoolmaster, who could spell, read, and write, then wasting in consumption), Ponampam, Peter (“a ruler of ten, a godly man,” who soon after died in sanctity), John Speen, Robin Speen, Nishohkon, Magus, Poquanum, Nookan, Antony, Owussumag, and Ephraim. Eliot says the Indians were abashed in making their confessions. The hearing of them deliberately spoken and then interpreted, must have been a tedious trial of patience to some of the English listeners, “who whispered and went out.” Eliot says, “These things did make the work longsome, considering the enlargement of spirit God gave some of them.” Sunset was near before the close. “The place being remote in the woods, the nights long and cold, and people not fitted to lie abroad, and no competent lodgings in the place for such persons, and the work of such moment as would not admit of huddling up in haste,” — it was concluded not to complete it on that day. The Indians were disappointed; but Eliot comforted them, as the elders did him, with just praise and encouragement. The poor man needed all sympathy and cheer. He says he “missed some words of weight in some sentences, — partly by my short and curt touches of what they more fully spake, and partly by reason of the different idioms of their language and ours.” The schoolmaster especially, in his confession, had the “enlargement of spirit.” “The graver sort thought the time long; therefore, knowing he had spoken enough (at least as I judged), I here took him off. Then one of the elders asked if I took, him off, or whether had he finished. I answered that I took him off. So after my reading what he had said, we called another.”

These “confessions” doubtless suffered in the interpretation. They are juiceless and parrot-like, formal, constrained, and technical, wholly lacking in the unique and picturesque originality of the Indian speech. They are for the most part accounts of thoughts or impressions ascribed