His advice and assistance must often have been valuable to his countrymen in their transactions with the Indians.

Occasionally, perhaps, the governor and some of the councillors came to visit Mr.
Eliot.

Perchance they were seeking some method to circumvent the forest people.

They inquired, it may be, how they could obtain possession of such and such a tract of their rich land.

Or they talked of making the Indians their servants; as if God had destined them for perpetual bondage to the more powerful white man.
Perhaps, too, some warlike captain, dressed in his buff coat, with a corselet beneath it, accompanied the governor and councillors.