LOCAL NATIVE AMERICAN REBUKES TOWN LEADERS
MASSACHUSETTS- 1647. Webbacowitt, the former medicine man of Musketequid, today known as Concord, rebuked the English settlers living here, asking, "How has it happened that some of you having been in the country for no less than twenty seven years, have never taught us to know God, until now?"
The Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury first brought the good news of Jesus Christ to Musketequid chief Tahattawan's son in law, Waban, on October 28th 1646 at Nonantum (now Newton). The gospel experience has had a dramatic impact on Waban's life and on the Nonantum community.
Webbacowitt added, "Why did you not impart sooner what you professed to consider so important?"
"Had you done it sooner, we might have known much of God by this time, and much sin might have been prevented. But now some of us have grown old in our sin."
A Concord spokesman replied to the allegation: "We do repent that we did not do this long agao as we do now." The Reverend Peter Bulkeley, also acting as Concord's Town Moderator, has taken pains in recent days to do what he can to ammend the situation.
-See page 25 The History of Concord, 1835 by Lemuel Shattuck; picture courtesy of New Life Fine Arts, from the musical "Song on the Wind" by David MacAdam; see http://www.newlifefinearts.org/
