esticulations. Mr. Eliot was left alone to confront him, and looking
steadily at him told him that, as this was God's work, no fear of him
should hinder it. The savage quailed before him, but afterwards came to
him and stated that his objection was that the praying Indians did not
pay him their tribute. Eliot kindly answered that this had been
complained of before, and that he had preached a sermon enforcing this
duty upon the tribe.

The words were good, said Cutshamakin, but the Indians would not obey
them. So Mr. Eliot, after consultation with the ministers and elders in
Boston, invited the Indians who understood English to hear a sermon
there, and in it the duty of rendering to all their due was fully
enforced. Afterwards, however, the Indians came forward declaring
themselves much surprised and mortified at being accused of not paying
their just duty to their chief; and they specified the service and gifts:
each had rendered twenty bushels of corn, six bushels of rye, fifteen
deer, days spent in hunting, the building of a wigwam, reclaiming two
acres of land; and the amount when added up amazed Mr. Eliot. At his
next lecture, then, he took for his text the rejection by the Saviour of
all the kingdoms of the world, and personally applied it to Cutshamakin,
reproaching him with lust of power and worldly ambition, and warning him
that Satan was tempting him to give up the faith for the sake of
recovering his arbitrary power. The discourse and the conversation that
followed again melted the Sachem, and he repented and retracted, although
he continued an unsafe and unstable man.

At length, in 1651, Mr. Eliot was able to convene his praying Indians and
with them lay the foundation of a town on the banks of Charles River,
about eighteen miles to the south-west of Boston. The spot, as he
believed, had been indicated to him in answer to prayer, and they named
it Natick, or the place of hills. The inhabitants of Nonantum removed
thither, and the work was put in hand. A bridge, eighty feet long and
nine feet wide, had already been laid across the river, entirely by
Indian workmen, under Mr. Eliot's superintendence; and the town was laid
out in three streets, two on one side of the river and one on the other;
the grounds were measured and divided, apple-trees planted, and sowing
begun. The cellars of some of the houses, it is said, remain to the
present day. In the midst was a circular fort, palisaded with trees,