He also carried a sword and
sometimes a pike, and thus heavily burdened with multitudinous arms and
cumbersome armor, could never have run after or from an Indian with much
agility or celerity; though he could stand at the church-door with his
leather gun,--an awe-inspiring figure,--and he could shoot with his
"harquebuss," or "carbin," as we well know.
These armed "sentinells" are always regarded as a most picturesque
accompaniment of Puritan religious worship, and the Salem and Plymouth
armed men were imposing, though clumsy. But the New Haven soldiers, with
their bulky garments wadded and stuffed out with thick layers of cotton
wool, must have been more safety-assuring and comforting than they were
romantic or heroic; but perhaps they too wore painted tin armor, "corselets
and gorgets and tasses."
In Concord, New Hampshire, the men, who all came armed to meeting, stacked
their muskets around a post in the middle of the church, while the honored
pastor, who was a good shot and owned the best gun in the settlement,
preached with his treasured weapon in the pulpit by his side, ready from
his post of vantage to blaze away at any red man whom he saw sneaking
without, or to lead, if necessary, his congregation to battle. The church
in York, Maine, until the year 1746, felt it necessary to retain the custom
of carrying arms to the meeting-house, so plentiful and so aggressive were
Maine Indians.
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