Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/457

tation and civility.” The bounds of the plantation were laid out by the Court in 1652. Mainly by the labor of the Indians, a strong, arched foot-bridge, eighty feet long and eight feet high, had been thrown over the stream, with its pilings heavily laden with stone. Proud were its rude builders when it stood through the frost and freshets of the next season, which wrecked a bridge built by the English over the same stream at Medfield. Three wide parallel streets ran, two on one side and one on the other side of the stream, through the projected village; and the territory was portioned into lots, with walls and fencing, for houses, tillage, and pasturage. Fruit-trees were planted, and a palisaded fort enclosed a meeting-house fifty feet long, twenty-five broad, and twelve high, built of squared timber after the English fashion, with sills and plates, mortises and tenons, and a chimney. The Indians had no other aid in this work than that of an English carpenter for two days. The lower story was to be used for a school and for preaching and worship, and the loft for a place for keeping furs and garments, and for a bed-room for Eliot. Wilson, the Boston pastor, describes the scene when he was present at a lecture. He says the women and the men sat apart on benches, there being about one hundred Indians, “most, if not all, clad in English apparel,” and thirty English. The place soon began to wear the aspect of industry and thrift, and to offer the comforts and securities of household life, with fields fenced and broken for crops, and fruit-trees set in the ground. The Indians preferred to construct their dwellings in their own style; but cleanliness and a regard for decency were strictly required of them. A sort of magistracy among themselves was established in the autumn. Eliot, throughout his plan, followed the theocratic model after which the colonists themselves were self-governed. He directed the Indians to choose among themselves ten rulers of tens, two of fifties, and one of a hundred, by the Scripture pattern. On Sept. 24, 1651,