The whole conference lasted three hours, and Mr.Eliot was invited to come again, which he did at intervals of about a fortnight, and again with good promise.
In one of these meetings they asked, very reasonably, why the English called them Indians, a question it could not have been easy to answer.
The Powaws, or priests, began to make some opposition, but Waban was continually going about among the people, repeating portions of the instructions he had received, and teaching his friends to pray--for some had at first supposed that the English God might not be addressed in the native tongue, but only in English.
After some little time, he thought the Indians ripe for being taught to live a settled life, and obtained for his congregation--"the praying Indians," as they were commonly called--a grant of the site of his first instructions.

The place was named "Rejoicing,"-- in Indian, a word that soon got corrupted into Nonantum; and, under Mr.Eliot's directions, they divided their grounds with trenches and stone walls, for which he gave them tools to the best of his ability.

They built wigwams of a superior construction, and the women learnt to spin; there was a continual manufacture of brushes, eel-pots, and baskets, which were sold in the English towns, together with turkeys, fish, venison, and fruits, according to the season.

At hay and harvest times they would hire themselves out to work for their English neighbours, but were thought unable or unwilling to do what sturdy Englishmen regarded as a fair day's work.
A second settlement of praying Indians followed at Neponset, around the wigwam of a Sachem named Cutshamakin, a man of rank much superior to Waban.

He had already been in treaty with the English, and had promised to observe the Ten Commandments, but had unhappily learnt also from the English that love of drink which was the bane of the Indian; and while Mr.Eliot was formally instructing the family, one of the sons, a boy of fifteen, when learning the fifth commandment, persisted in saying only "honour thy mother," and, when admonished, declared that his father had given him fire-water, which had intoxicated him, and had besides been passionate and violent with him.