ill BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bill. 25 



today. On much the same plan were his settlements founded where 

 the colonies of " praj'ing Indians," with the government of the people 

 by the people and for the people, and with the o^'ersight of a l)ene\'o- 

 lent judge in Israel, were his coadjutors and pupils. It is, alas, 

 impossible to tell what would have been the outcome of this remark- 

 able experiment, for the outbreak of King Philip's war in the year 

 1GT.5 broke it up before it was fairly tested. 



Eliot's first religious service among the Indians was on Octooer 28, 

 l(!-±<3. When King Philip, in 1675, imited the Indian tribes of New 

 England in almost simultaneous attacks on the English settlements, 

 the excitement in the seaboard towns turned against Eliot's "praying 

 Indians," and the people suspected — as on such an occasion seems 

 natural — that these converts were in league with the enemy. So 

 strong was the popular feeling in Boston that Eliot was compelled to 

 remove his colony from Natick to Deer island, in Boston hai-bor, and 

 there, as exiles from their own land, they spent the months before 

 King Philip's power was broken. They then went back to Natick, 

 where the people celebrated, on the rtth of July last, the two hundred 

 and fiftieth anniversar}- of the establishment of that village. There 

 seems to l)e no one left in that neighborhood of the descendants of 

 this colony. 



A late and insufficient authority says that Natick means Place of 

 the Hills. The Dictionary of Dr Trumbull aflords no support for 

 this etymolog\', and it is probably mistaken. Charles river, as a 

 small stream, passes through the village. Captain John Smith gave to 

 it its name, which was the name of Prince Charles, afterward King- 

 Charles. The Indian name of this stream seems to have been Quino- 

 beguin; this woukh seem to mean Long river, from the root quin, 

 it is long (compare Quinnehtukqut, the Connecticut); or. quite as 

 pr(»ba])ly, it means the river which turns about, from <|uinuppe, 

 around about or all al)out. 



South of the Natick Indians the Narragansctt tri))e spoke a dialect 

 not very difl'erent from theirs, and west of these the Mohegan tribe 

 used another dialect of the same language. There is now no Narra- 

 gansctt Indian who remembers any woi"ds of the language of his fore- 

 fathers; Mrs Mitchell, who considered herself a descendant of King 

 Philip and who did remember some of the words of his tribe, died in the 

 spring of 1899. The Mashpee Indians still exist as a native community, 

 occupying the town of Mashpee on Cape Cod. They have taken on 

 all the habits of civilization; among others, they preserve tlieir own 

 trout brooks for the benefit of amateur sportsmen, and rent them to 

 such sportsmen for considerable revenue. They maintain free schools 

 as other towns of Massachusetts do, but in these schools no word of 

 the language of their race is spoken, nor do any of the I\Iashpee 

 Indians have further knowledo-e of it than does anv other New 



