nds,
they were willing that the English should keep what they had got,
excepting the forts. On this point there was a sharp dialogue, and Shute
said bluntly that if he saw fit, he should build a fort at every new
settlement. At this all the Indians rose abruptly and went back to their
camp, leaving behind an English flag that had been given them.

Rale was at the Indian camp, and some of them came back in the evening
with a letter from him, in which he told Shute that the governor of
Canada had asked the King of France whether he had ever given the
Indians' land to the English, to which the King replied that he had not,
and would help the Indians to repel any encroachment upon them. This
cool assumption on the part of France of paramount right to the Abenaki
country incensed Shute, who rejected the letter with contempt.

As between the governor and the Indian orator, the savage had shown
himself by far the more mannerly; yet so unwilling were the Indians to
break with the English that on the next morning, seeing Shute about to
re-embark, they sent messengers to him to apologize for what they called
their rudeness, beg that the English flag might be returned to them, and
ask for another interview, saying that they would appoint another
spokesman instead of Wiwurna, who had given so much offence. Shute
consented, and the meeting was held. The new orator presented a wampum
belt, expressed a wish for peace, and said that his people wished the
English to extend their settlements as far as they had formerly done.
Shute, on his part, promised that trading-houses should be established
for supplying their needs, and that they should have a smith to mend
their guns, and an interpreter of their own choice. Twenty chiefs and
elders then affixed their totemic marks to a paper, renewing the pledges
made four years before at Portsmouth, and the meeting closed with a
dance in honor of the governor.[241]

The Indians, as we have seen, had shown no eagerness to accept the
ministrations of Rev. Joseph Baxter. The Massachusetts Assembly had
absurdly tried to counteract the influence of Rale by offering L150 a
year in their depreciated currency to any one of their ministers who
would teach Calvinism to the Indians. Baxter, whom Rale, with
characteristic exaggeration, calls the ablest of the Boston ministers,
but who was far from being so, as he was the pastor of the small country
village of Medfield, took up the task, and, with no experie