3,600. Eliot, writing in 1673, names six Indian churches at Natick, Grafton, Mashpee, Nantucket, and two at the Vineyard. All these, he says, have regular native teachers, except Natick, where, “in modesty, they stand off, because so long as I live, they say, there is no need.” In 1687 President Increase Mather wrote to Professor Leusden, of Holland: “There are six regular churches of baptized Indians in New England, and eighteen assemblies of catechumens (or candidates for baptism), professing the name of Christ. Of the Indians there are twenty-four preachers of the Word. There are also four English ministers who preach the Gospel in the Indian tongue.” In 1698 Grindal Kawson and Samuel Danforth, as a committee appointed to visit Natick, reported: “We find there a small church, consisting of seven men and three women. Their pastor (ordained by that reverend and holy man of God John Eliot, deceased) is Daniel Tahawampait, and is a person of good knowledge. Here are fifty-nine men, fifty-one women, and seventy children under sixteen years of age. We find no schoolmaster here, and only one child that can read.” Up to the year 1733 all the town officers of Natick were Indians. They were partially such till 1762, after which date there were none. The place was incorporated as an English town in 1762, having been under its former character from 1651 to that date. By the census of 1763 there were in the town thirty-seven Indians. In 1792 there remained but a single Indian family, that having five members.
October 28, 1846, there was a local celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Eliot's first visit to the spot. Two very suggestive incidents, deeply pathetic, marked that occasion. There was present at the exercises a girl of sixteen years, who was the only lineal descendant of the Indians known to exist. A copy of Eliot's Indian Bible — purchased by subscription for the purpose, from the sale of the library of the Hon. John Pickering — was then presented for deposit among the town's records.
