Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and Maine were planted by different
bodies from Massachusets Bay; and the Indians, who found that the
whites diffused themselves farther and farther over their territories,
and soon ceased to purchase as Roger Williams had done, or even to
ask permission; began to remonstrate. Remonstrances however produced
little effect. The Indians saw that if they did not make a stand
against these encroachments they must soon be driven out of their
ancestral lands, and exterminated by those tribes on which they must be
forced. They resolved therefore to exterminate the invaders that would
hear no reason. The Pequods, who lay near the colony of Connecticut,
called upon the Narragansets in 1637, to join them in their scheme.
The Narragansets revealed it to the English, and both parties were
speedily in arms against each other. The different colonies of New
England had entered into an association for common defence. The people
of Connecticut called on those of Massachusets Bay for help, which
was accorded; but before its arrival the soldiers of Connecticut, who
seemed on all occasions eager to shed Indian blood, had attacked the
Pequods where they had posted themselves, in a sort of rude camp in
a swamp, defended with stakes and boughs of trees. The Pequods were
supposed to be a thousand strong, besides having all their women and
children with them; but their simple fortification was soon forced, and
set fire to; and men, women, children perished in the flames, or were
cut down on rushing out, or seized and bound. The Massachusets forces
soon after joined them, and then the Indians were hunted from place
to place with unrelenting fury. They determined to treat them, not as
brave men fighting for their invaded territories, for their families
and posterity, but as wild beasts. They massacred some in cold blood,
others they handed over to the Narragansets to be tortured to death;
and great numbers were sold into Bermudas as slaves. In less than
three months, the great and ancient tribe of the Pequods had ceased
to exist. What did Roger Williams say to this butchery by a Christian
people? But the spirit of resentment against the Indians grew to such a
pitch in those states that nothing but the language of Cotton Mather,
(the historian of New England,) can express it. He calls them devils
incarnate, and declares that unless he had “a pen made of a porcupine’s
quill and dipped in aquafortis he could not describe all their
cruelties.” Could they be possibly greater than those of the Puritan
settlers, who were at once the aggressors, and bore the name of
Christian? So deadly, indeed, became the vengeance of these colonists,
that they granted a public reward to any one who should kill an Indian.
The Assembly, says Douglass, in 1703, voted 40_l._ premium for each
Indian scalp or captive. In the former war the premium was 12_l._ In
1706, he says, “about this time premiums for Indian scalps and captives
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