History of the United States, Volume 1Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
History
History of the United States, Volume 1
Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
United States -- History
If in these things the new polity was inferior to the old, in two
respects it was superior; Suffrage was now practically universal, and
every species of religious profession, save Catholicism, made legal.
Also, Massachusetts territory was enlarged southward to take in all
Plymouth, eastward to embrace Maine (Sagadahoc) and Nova Scotia. Maine,
henceforth including Sagadahoc, that is, all land eastward to the Saint
Croix, remained part of Massachusetts till March 15, 1820, when it
became a member of the Union by itself. Nova Scotia, over which Phips's
conquest of Port Royal in 1690 had established a nominal rather than a
real English authority, was assigned to France again by the Treaty of
Ryswick, 1697.
[Illustration: Box in which the Connecticut Charter was kept.]
CHAPTER II.
KING PHILIP'S WAR
[1675]
Simultaneously with the Stuart Restoration another cloud darkened the
New England sky. Since the Pequot War, Indians and whites had in the
main been friendly. This by itself is proof that our fathers were less
unjust to the red men than is sometimes charged. They did assume the
right to acquire lands here, and they had this right. The Indians were
not in any proper sense owners of New England. They were few--by 1660
not more numerous than the pale-faces--and, far from settling or
occupying the land, roamed from place to place. Had it been otherwise
they, as barbarians, would have had no such claim upon the territory as
to justify them in barring out civilization. However, the colonists did
not plead this consideration. Whenever districts were desired to which
Indians had any obvious title, it was both law and custom to pay them
their price. In this, Roger Williams and William Penn were not peculiar.
If individual white men sometimes cheated in land trades, as in other
negotiations, the aggrieved side could not, and did not, regard this as
the white man's policy.
Yet little by little the Indians came to distrust and hate the rival
race. It did not matter to the son of the forest, even if he thought so
far, that the neighborhood of civilization greatly bettered his lot in
many things, as, for instance, giving him market for corn and peltry,
which he could exchange for fire-arms, blankets, and all sorts of
valuable conveniences. The efforts to teach and elevate him he
appreciated still less. As has been said, he loved better to disfurnish
the outside of other people's heads than to furnish the inside of his
own. What he felt, and keenly, was that the newcomers treated him as an
inferior, were day by day narrowing his range, and slowly but surely
reducing his condition to that of a subject people. Dull as he was, he
saw that one of three fates confronted him: to perish, to migrate, or to
lay aside his savage character and mode of life. Such thoughts frenzied
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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