easier (I go on with the Doctor's language) to popize than to christianize the Indians. Teaching them a few words and ceremonies, of which they know not the meaning; giving them a few trinkets, and inspiring them with a mortal hatred against the English, makes them good Christians enough to serve the purposes of the French: and no wonder that such conversions are effected with ease. Our Society cannot undertake to make proselytes in this manner. Besides, it hath not such numbers to employ, such funds to maintain them, nor such authority to require their perseverance in the work. Many of their missionaries are under vows of absolute obedience, none of ours are; and therefore they will engage to go only where they chuse, and will stay no longer than they chuse. Reasonable persons will be moderate in blaming them, if they consider the manifold disagreeableness and danger of such an employment; but at least they will be far from blaming the Society for not sending missionaries, when they cannot procure them. And that they have failed to use their best endeavours for procuring them, the Doctor doth not assert.

too "

Instead of this, he first insinuates without proof, what would be nothing to his purpose if true, that "the missionaries have frequently given the world" pompous accounts of their efforts, and spoken hyperbolically of their difficulties, and been" too "soon discouraged *;" then goes on to make remarks on Mr. now Dr. Barclay's mission about twenty-five years ago, as if nothing worth notice had been attempted before. He is careful indeed to tell us, that an order of council was made very early [in 1702] for sending two protestant ministers to the Indians of the Five Nations; that this order was communicated Page 99.

事

to the Society, and referred to a committee *. But that any thing was done, or tried upon it, or about the same time with it, he hath not given the least hint. Yet he might have known, and probably did know, from Dr. Humphreys, to whom Mr. Apthorp refers his readers, not only that the Society sent a missionary that very year, the first after it was formed, to endeavour the conversion of the Indians bordering on South Carolina, and that "the governor and other gentlemen there, thinking it not to be a proper season," disposed of him another way†: but that in pursuance of the above order, the Society, after inviting unsuccessfully a Dutch and an English minister, who lived in the neighbourhood of those nations, to undertake their conversion, prevailed on the Rev. Mr. Thoroughgood Moor to go upon this design in 1704, who applied to the Mohocks, and acquainted them, "that another minister was daily expected for the Oneydes, and one for every other nation, as soon as proper and willing persons could be found ;" that they seemed at first highly pleased with the care thus taken of them: but would give no determinate answer to his offers of instructing them, nor at last any answers at all, “though he used all the means he could think of to get their good will:" so after near a twelvemonth's trial he left them, and was soon after lost at seat. The Doctor might also have known, if he did not, that Mr. Barclay, a different person from the above-mentioned, being sent missionary to the same Indians in or before 1709, "tried all the methods he could to engage them to be instructed in our language and religion, but with very small success;" that "several indeed would seem for a time to be con+ Page 108. Page 286-291.

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verted, but soon after they would return again to their first savage life *."

His passing over in silence the following account is yet more observable. In 1710, the request of the four sachems, who came over to England that their subjects might be instructed in Christianity by resident ministers, being thought to favour a new attempt, "the Society agreed to send two missionaries to the Mohock and Oneyde Indians, with a salary of 150%. sterling each, together with an interpreter and schoolmaster to teach the young Indians." Accordingly Mr. Andrews was sent as missionary, and an interpreter and schoolmaster were assigned him. He was presented to the Indians with great solemnity, and received by them with great marks of joy; but the parents obstinately refused to let their children learn English. Therefore both parents and children were instructed in the Indian tongue, as well as the nature of it would permit. But in a short time they grew weary of being taught. Their fathers would not suffer their boys to be corrected or displeased, in order to their learning any thing. As they grew up, they took them along with them, when they went out in bodies to hunt, for several months together, and they could not be brought to a settled life. They took and dismissed wives at their pleasure; were continually making expeditions, and practising cruelties one upon another; left their aged men and women to perish; got drunk whenever they could, and in their drunkenness were mad and mischievous to the highest degree. They who had learnt something, shewed in their lives no regard to it: and even the four sachems became savages again. French *Page 215, 216.

Jesuits from Canada instilled into them jealousies by false assertions, which popish missionaries never scruple; and some of the Juscararo Indians, driven from North Carolina, which they had perfidiously attacked, filled them with such groundless resentments by unjust representations of what had passed there, that they forbad Mr. Andrews to visit them at their habitations, would no longer come to the chapel or the school, nor suffer him to speak of religion to them when he met them occasionally; but insulted and threatened him and his companions, who were in danger of their lives whenever they ventured out of the fort, where they dwelt. At length therefore he represented to the Society, that he despaired of any further success. Yet they would not hearken to his single narration and opinion, but requested Mr. Hunter, governor of New York, to make enquiry, whether continuing his mission was likely to be of use. on the governor's confirming the accounts which Mr. Andrews had given, they recalled him, after a trial of six years *.

And

I beg the reader to compare these relations, taken from authentic papers, with the Doctor's unauthorized suggestions, that the missionaries told what stories they would, and the Society believed them without examination, or wilfully neglected this part of their business. Without entering into the subsequent par ticulars of this Indian undertaking, I shall only say, in general, that other missionaries were sent afterwards, and with some effect, down to the year 1735, when the first-mentioned Mr. Barclay went, of whose mission alone the Doctor is pleased to take notice, because he thinks it will afford matter of objection. Accordingly he alleges, that Mr. Barclay had not

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"half a proper support," but "the mission was starved." For Mr. Sergeant, a missionary from the Society incorporated in 1661, reports from a letter of Mr. Barclay, that "he had but a scanty allowance," (i. e. from the Society) "and could obtain no salary for an interpreter or schoolmaster *." And Mr. Barclay himself saith in a letter, June 11, 1736, that "he laboured under great disadvantage for want of an interpreter, which could he but enjoy for two or three years, he should be master of the Indian language †." Now when Mr. Barclay wrote these letters, of which I know nothing but from the Doctor, he was not a missionary but a catechist only. And though he had, as he saith, but a scanty allowance, i. e. 30l. a year from the Society, yet he expected "further encouragement" from them; and the assembly of New York had also voted him 30l. a year, which may account for the smallness of the Society's allowance. Only he had not received either of the salaries . But before the end of the same year, he wrote to the Society, that he had made himself master of the Mohock language, which probably induced them to think an interpreter unnecessary. The next year they raised his salary to 50%. Why he desired in 1740 an interpreter, as well as a schoolmaster, appears not, but in the same year a schoolmaster was allowed him. That the Society should be cautious and frugal in the first trial of a young man, after so many disappointments, is far from being strange. And the expence of an interpreter for two or three years, which is all that Mr. Barclay wished, could not possibly be grudged, in order to save so trifling a sum towards a more favourite purpose, as the Doctor would have it believed. Nor did the mission miscarry for want of + Page 102. Page 102, 103.

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