The beaver trade, more than traffic in lumber and fish, had produced the village beyond the Piscataqua; yet in Maine, as in New Hampshire, there was "a great trade in deal boards." A sincere attempt had been made to convert the natives and win them to the regular industry of civilized life.

The ministers of the early emigration, fired with a zeal as pure as it was fervent, longed to redeem those "wrecks of humanity," by planting in their hearts the seeds of conscious virtue, and gathering them into permanent villages.

No pains were spared to teach them to read and write, and in a short time a larger proportion of the Massachusetts Indians could do so, than the inhabitants of Russia fifty years ago.

Some of them wrote and spoke English tolerably well.

Foremost among these early missionaries, the morning star of missionary enterprise, was John Elliot, whose benevolence amounted to the inspiration of genius.