With great Pleasure and satisfaction I take my Pen in
Hand to try to
write You a Letter, & thereby to inform you that we arrived at
Butlers berry the
11th of July Well & safe, &
Mr
Pomroy
&
Sir Wheelock arrived the
17th
Sir Wheelock went in the
Castle to settle a school there, & the Indians were very
much Pleaſed with his Discourſe, & liked very well to have a school there & they
made fair Promiſes that they would send their Children every Day Steady; &
so I entered the
Cast[illegible]le
22d of July in order to open the School, & I told the In
dians
^yt
^ I should have been glad to open’d the school on the
23,d but the Indians
were very loth to send their Children, for what reaſon I know not, I went to
the Indians day after Day to get some of their
Children to School, but all this
signified nothing, the Indians would make excuſes that they had work for
them to do, so that they could not send them yet,
but they would send them
Tomorrow, & so on till the
30th I told them I would leave ‘em, that I could
not stay with them Doing Nothing & on the Morrow they sent Five
Children, & so on till
Mr Wheelock came from
the
Upper Castle;
And then I related him
all what was done, He told the Indians y
t
Mr
Kinney would Preach to them on Sunday following Two of the Clock
in
the afternoon, so the Indians gathered but they could
not get no In
terpreter, for the Preacher,
wthey got an Interpreter for
Sir Wheelock to interpret what he had to
say, & so he told them that it was God’s
Day that he would have it kept for
him &c. at last he told them
that he had let them have the Benifit of a Schoolmaster to teac
^h^ their Children & when he came in the
Castle
[illegible]that he ex
pected to find a Doz– or Forteen Children in the School all
buſy with their Books, but at his expectation, he found but
Five Children which
made his heart ake
& the Indians so
unwilling to send their Children
“it seems that they wanted no Schooling &
then he asked th
[illegible]em what should he
do, must he take away so great a Bleſsing
y
t was given them or no, but he would fain try them a little longer he would
let me
stay with them till the’ fall & so he ended. The Indians replyed
^yt^ they would give
an Answer Wednesday following, and on Wednesday the
Indians met they said they
thanked him for his good will in trying to do them a
little good but what can we
do their are some that do not want schooling & we are mixt some good & some bad
they said they had been & sought out as many as wanted to have a school & they
said they could send 15 Children to school the greatest part of the
time & if
Sir Wheelock thought fit to take me away why they
could not help it there was
as many as were at home, by and by
^the
rest of the Indians^
they would come home & likely they would
have a mind to send their Children at School too, they
say alſo that they are
going out to hunt & that they must needs take their Children with them
that they cant leave
their Children alone &c
&c — — — —
Sir if I have mist any thing or said any thing Wrong I hope your Son
will bring it write I cant tell it no Straiter. I have now Eighteen Schollars which
come very Steady, but it his very hard to bring them too I do my best that I can &
yet the Indians will complain that I am not severe enough will it do for me
to
be a thrashing them continually, how oft have I corrected them within a Week
sometimes twice or thrice a Day I hate forever to be a whipping, whipping too
much
wont do, I told them if I was not severe enough they must in consequence
get a Severer one but I hope Sir in time to bring them too by the help of God
which I cannot do without, all theſe means wont do, they are stubburn People
sometimes I am ready to give out With theſe Indians & with the Pains I have, I have
a hard head acke certain time in the afternoon which sometimes is so hard that I
hardly know
that I am about &cc The Indians say that I shall not come home theſe
three years they think that I am their Serwant
& are obliged to keep school for Yem
^& yet they wont send their Children^ It is true I should be glad to
keep School here all my Days but all the
yſe things makes me
faint hearted together my wanting to see my father Mother & relations —
P.S. Pleaſe Sir to send me up some Stokins
by
David Fowler if it pleaſes the & a pair
of shoes &c Yours
Hez- Calvin