the Indian villages. Added to the terrors of the pestilence, which was
resistless as fate to the children of the forest, was the fear and dread
of their implacable enemies, the fierce Mohawks of the west. The spirit
of the Indian was broken. In 1644, Passaconaway renounced his authority
as an independent chief, and placed himself and his tribe of several
thousand souls under the protection of the colonial magistrates. The
Indian villages at Pawtucket Falls, on the Merrimack, and Wamesit Falls,
on the Concord, the Musketaquid of the aborigines, were first visited in
1647 by the Reverend John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians. In 1652,
Captain Simon Willard and Captain Edward Johnson made their tour up the
Merrimack Paver to Lake Winnipiseogee, and marked a stone near the Weirs
as the northern boundary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The following
year the work of settlement swept onward, crowding in upon the
cornfields of the red men; and Eliot, caring for his charges, procured
the passage of an act by the General Court reserving a good part of the
land on which Lowell now stands to the exclusive use of the Indians.

[Illustration: MERRIMACK RIVER BELOW HUNT'S FALLS.]

The towns of Chelmsford and Billerica were incorporated May 29, 1655.

In 1656, Major-General Daniel Gookin was appointed superintendent of all
the Indians under the jurisdiction of the Colony. By his fair dealing he
won their entire confidence. They had good friends in Judge Gookin and
the Apostle Eliot, who were ever ready to protect them from
encroachments of their neighbors.

In 1660, Passaconaway relinquished all authority over his tribe,
retiring at a ripe old age, and turning over his office of sachem to his
son Wannalancet, whose headquarters were at Penacook. Numphow, who was