Almost from the beginning, the relations of the English with the natives were hostile. And it can not be denied that the fault was with the English. The Indians were very desirous of friendly intercourse. It was an unspeakable advantage to them, and they highly prized it, to be able to exchange their furs for the kettles, hatchets, knives, guns, powder and shot of the English. With the bullet they could strike down the deer at three times the distance to which they could throw an arrow. The shrewd Indian, who had used flints only to cut with, could well appreciate the value of a hatchet and a knife. Our Puritan fathers were very anxious to treat the Indians with brotherly kindness. And so were the governmental authorities generally in all the colonies. But there was no strength in the Christian principles of good men, or in the feeble powers which were established in the colonies, to pursue, arrest, and punish the desperadoes who, from the frontiers, penetrated the wilderness with sword and rifle, shot down the Indians, plundered the wigwams, and inflicted every outrage upon their wives and daughters. No candid man can read an account of these outrages without saying: “Had I been an Indian I would have joined in any conspiracy, and would have strained every nerve, to exterminate such wretches from the land they were polluting.” The untaught natives could draw no fine distinctions. When the Indian hunter returned to his wigwam, and found it plundered and in ashes, his eldest son dead and weltering in blood, and heard from his wife and daughters the story of their wrongs, he could make no distinction between the miscreants who had perpetrated the demoniac deed, and the Christian white men who deplored such atrocities and who implored God to interpose and prevent them. The poor Indian could only say: “The white man has thus wronged me. Oh, thou Great Spirit, whenever I meet the white man, wilt thou help me to take vengeance.” Increasing population increased these outrages. There was no law in the wilderness. These British desperadoes regarded no more the restraints of religion than did the bears and the wolves. They behaved like demons, and they roused the demoniac spirit in the savages. Crime was followed by crime, cruelty by cruelty, blood by blood. But for man’s inhumanity to man beautiful Virginia, with her brilliant skies, her salubrious air, her fertile fields, her crystal streams, her majestic mountains, her sublime forests, her placid lakes, might have been almost like the Garden of Eden. If the heart of man had been imbued with the religion of Jesus, the whole realm might have been adorned with homes, in some degree, at least, like those found in the mansions of the blest. But the conduct of depraved men converted the whole region into a valley of Hinnom, abounding in smouldering ruins, gory corpses, and groans of despair.