he appear anxious to increase their number. I do not exactly know how long this mission lasted, but I find, in my memoranda, that Dellius was some years afterwards driven away from Albany by M. de Bellamont.* The Protestant religion has certainly not fared well among the Iroquois. It is not the first attempt of this sort: which ought to have convinced Messieurs les Réformés that their sect possesses neither that fecundity, nor laborious zeal for the salvation of infidels, which forms one of the most distinguishing marks of the true church of Christ." +

Messieurs les Réformés, it must be confessed, often shewed themselves, in their writings, to be as sarcastic and severe against the Catholics, as the latter were against the Protestants. "Bommaseen," says Mather, was, with some other Indians, now a prisoner at Boston; and he desired a conference with a minister there, which was granted to him. Bommaseen then, with the other Indians assenting

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Dellius, however, in a letter written in 1693, retorts upon the Jesuit missionaries. It concludes thus: "I am, under favour, of opinion that the Jesuit catechism, with the cases of conscience added thereto, writ by their own hands, which they teach the Indians, may be very serviceable to convince our proselytes, and other French that come here, of their pernicious principles; and I wish the same might be sent me."-Mather's Magnalia, book vi. ch. 6.

+ Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouvelle France, liv. xvii.

to it, told the minister that he prayed his instruction in the Christian religion-inasmuch as he was afraid that the French, in the Christian religion which they taught the Indians, had abused them. The minister inquired of him what of the things taught 'em by the French appeared most suspicious to 'em? He said the French taught 'em that the Lord Jesus Christ was of the French nation: that his Mother, the Virgin Mary, was a French lady; that they were the English who murdered him; and that all who would recommend themselves unto his favour, must revenge his quarrel upon the English as far as they can. He asked the minister, whether these things were so? and prayed the minister to instruct him in the true religion. The minister, considering that the humour and manner of the Indians was to have their discourses managed with much of similitude in them, looked about for some agreeable object from whence he might, with apt resemblances, convey the ideas of truth into the minds of salvages, and he thought none would be more agreeable to them than a tankard of drink, which happened then to be standing on the table. So he proceeded in this method with 'em :

"He told them that our Lord Jesus Christ had given us a good religion, which might be resembled unto the good drink on the table: that if we take this good religion, even that good drink, into our hearts, it will do us good, and preserve us from

death that God's book, the Bible, is the cup wherein that good drink of religion is offered unto us: that the French, having the cup of good drink in their hands, had put poison into it, and then made the Indians to drink that poisoned liquor, whereupon they run mad, and fell to killing of the English that it was plain the English had put no poison into the good drink, for they set the cup wide open, and invited all men to come and see before they taste; even the very Indians themselves, for we translated the Bible into Indian. That they might gather from hence that the French had put poison into the good drink, inasmuch as they kept the cup fast shut (the Bible in an unknown tongue), and kept their hands upón the eyes of the Indians when they put it into their

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mouths.

"The Indians expressing themselves to be well satisfied with what the minister had hitherto said, prayed him to go on with shewing them what was the good drink, and what was the poison the French had put into it. He then set before them distinctly the chief articles of the Christian religion, with all the simplicity and sincerity of a Protestant: adding upon each, 'This is the good drink in the Lord's cup of life;' and the Indians still professed that they liked it all. Whereupon he demonstrated unto them how the papists had, in their idolatrous popery, some way or other, de

praved and altered every one of these articles with scandalous ingredients of their own invention; adding upon each, this is the poison that the French have put into the cup,'

There is a curious struggle recorded by Père Rasles, the French Jesuit, as having occurred between him and a Protestant minister of New England, on the subject of an attempt made by the latter to obtain scholars and converts among the Indians. Rasles had long resided as a missionary in the frontier country situated towards the English settlements; and he probably considered his residence of nearly thirty years upon the spot, as securing to him a prescriptive right against all heretical intruders. He therefore employed his leisure hours in instigating his flock to make incessant hostility against their Protestant neighbours of New England. Complaints were repeatedly made on this subject to the government of Canada by the governor of Massachussets, but no redress was obtained. At length the patience of the English being exhausted, a party was sent, which surprised the Indian village where Rasles resided. He escaped into the woods, but his papers were seized; and his correspondence with Monsieur de Vau dreuil, the governor of New France, distinctly shewed that Rasles, under the direction of his

* Mather's Magnalia, book vii. art. 22.

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government (though the two powers were then at peace), was constantly instigating the Indians against the English colonists; the consequence of which was, that the cattle of the settlers were often destroyed, their crops of corn wantonly injured, their houses burnt, and many of the inhabitants killed by the savages.

Matters continued in this deplorable state; Rasles still instigating hostility against the British settlers. At length a Protestant minister from Boston was sent to that quarter, for the purpose, as complained of by Rasles, of gaining converts, and establishing a school for the instruction of Indian children, who were to be clothed and maintained at the expense of the government. This minister appears to have omitted no means to procure them he went about among the Indians, encouraging them to have their youth educated by him, distributing presents among them: but all in vain ; not a child was sent to him.

"This Protestant minister," says Father Rasles, "then addressed my Indians themselves. He put various questions to them respecting their belief, and, when they gave their answers, he turned into ridicule all the pious observances of our Romish church-our purgatory, invocation of saints, images, crosses, beads, and tapers. I thought it

*

• Belknap's History of New Hampshire, vol. ii. page 45.