Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/484

464 The continued distrust of the “Praying Indians” was steadily met by the confidence and urgency of the few friends, who made themselves personal enemies by so doing. By and by, the English found that all their efforts against the wily foe, at ruinous sacrifices of money, property, and life, were baffled by the mode of the enemy's warfare, in ambushes and surprises, in dense forests and in swamps. It seemed as if the advantage was on their side, and that the white settlements would all fall before the torch and the massacre. In this dire extremity Eliot and Gookin proposed that some of their disciples, for whose fidelity, prowess, and skill in Indian warfare they would pledge themselves, should be employed as guides and allies, especially on errands for redeeming such captive whites as had not been tomahawked, and to penetrate swamps and thickets. With extreme misgiving and caution, and not without sharpening new jealousies, the suggestion was heeded, and the resource proved to be highly serviceable. At first one, then two, and slowly more, of the poor wretches on Deer Island were put to this use. The allies proved faithful. They stripped and painted themselves like the enemy, and tracked them to their lairs. At last a company of eighty of them was put under the command of Captain Hunting of Charlestown, and did eminent service. Gookin affirms that in the summer of 1676 the Indian allies, in scouting and in battles, had killed at least four hundred of the enemy, and that their co-operation “turned the balance to the English side,” and “the enemy went down the wind amain.” It was alleged that an Indian would always yield to the temptation of liquor, and would become infuriated by it. Gookin said, that, being used only to water, a very little spirit would intoxicate one of them. He could not bear the fourth part of an Englishman's dram. Gookin had “known one drunk with an eighth of a pint of strong water, and others with a little more than a pint of cider.” Another statement of Gookin's on this point may