, "Our hope is lost;" Mr. Eliot, "in some of his prayers before
a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged, 'Heavenly Father, work
for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster, and if the prince which
detains him will not, as they say, release him so long as himself lives,
Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him, and glorify Thyself
upon him.' And now behold the answer. The poor captiv'd gentleman
quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and
brings us news that the prince, which had hitherto held him, was come to
an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty."

"And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest
suppliant for his friend. But the "cruel prince" was far away out of
sight, and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the
heathen who came into immediate contact with him. Indeed, he was the
first to make any real effort for their conversion.

The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the
coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of
the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.

The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall,
well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois
nation. They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws
cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the
buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every
imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they
themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting,
beneath their dignity. Their nature had much that was high and noble;
and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's vices
or his cruelty. They were neither the outcast savages nor the abject
inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants, but far
better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of the
magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his word,
and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent. It was in mercy and
tenderness that the character was the most deficient. The whole European
instinct of forbearance and respect to woman was utterly wanting,--the
squaws were the most degraded of slaves; and to the captive the most
barbarous cruelty was shown. Experience has shown that there is
something in the nature of the Red Indian