ow if she would dwell
with us, for truly wee are now so destitute (having now but an Indian)
that wee know not what to do." Lowell thus comments on such savage
ministrations:

"Let any housewife of our day who does not find the Keltic element
in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature,
imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with
by signs, for its maid-of-all-work, and take courage. Those were
serious times indeed when your cook might give warning by taking
your scalp or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it
into the woods."

We frequently glean from diaries of the times hints of the pleasures of
having a wild Nipmuck or Narragansett Indian as "help." Rev. Peter
Thatcher, of Milton, Mass., bought an Indian in 1674 for L5 down and L5
more at the end of the year--a high-priced servant for the times. One of
her duties was, apparently, the care of a young Thatcher infant. Shortly
after the purchase, the reverend gentleman makes this entry in his
diary: "Came home and found my Indian girl had liked to have knocked my
Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good
walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so
no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good
Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his
firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut stick as a
civilizing influence.

When we reach newspaper days we find Indian servants frequently among
the runaways; as Mather said, they could not endure the yoke; and,
indeed, it would seem natural enough that any such wild child of the
forests should flee away from the cramped atmosphere of a Puritan
household and house. We read pathetic accounts of the desertion of aged
colonists by their Indian servants. One writes that he took his "Pecod
girle" as a "chilld of death" when but two years old, had reared her
kindly, nursed her in sickness, and now she had run away from him when
he sorely needed her, and he wished to buy a blackamoor in her place.
Sometimes the description of the costumes in which these savages took
their flitting, is extremely picturesque. This is from the _Boston News
Letter_ of October, 1707:

"Run away from her master Baker. A tall Lusty Carolina Indian woman
named Keziah Wampum, having long straight Black Hair tyed up with a
red Hair Lace, very much marked