" But the plan of
exporting the captives was adhered to. As slaves they were understood to
be of little or no value, and sometimes for want of purchasers they were
set ashore on strange coasts and abandoned. A few were even carried to
one of the foulest of mediaeval slave-marts, Morocco, where their fate
was doubtless wretched enough. [Sidenote: Indians sold into slavery]
In spite of Church's doubts as to the wisdom of this harsh treatment,
it did not prevent the beaten and starving savages from surrendering
themselves in considerable numbers. To some the Federal Commissioners
offered amnesty, and the promise was faithfully fulfilled. Among those
who laid down arms in reliance upon it were 140 Christian Indians, with
their leader known as James the Printer, because he had been employed at
Cambridge in setting up the type for Eliot's Bible. Quite early in the
war it had been discovered that these converted savages still felt the
ties of blood to be stronger than those of creed. At the attack on
Mendon, only three weeks after the horrors at Swanzey that ushered in
the war, it was known that Christian Indians had behaved themselves
quite as cruelly as their unregenerate brethren. Afterwards they made
such a record that the jokers and punsters of the day--for such there
were, even among those sombre Puritans--in writing about the "Praying
Indians," spelled _praying_ with an _e_.
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