We may conclude, then, that the Indians were the lawful proprietors of all the lands which they occupied. They were independent nations, and had a right to regulate their governments, and use their territory, as they pleased, while they respected the rights of others. They consequently could not be lawfully subjected to the sway of any other nation, without their own consent. No charters from popes or kings could give a right to take possession of the Indian territory. The Indians were nevertheless under an obligation to receive distressed Europeans, who sought their coasts, and to sell them land. They were, too, bound by the great law of God, which requires men to aspire after moral and physical perfection. This law obliged them to become civilized, and to adopt those modes of life which would enable their territory to support the greatest possible number of inhabitants. Hence arose another obligation to admit Europeans among them, who were capable of instructing and elevating them to the rank of civilized, educated, Christian nations. The duties of the settlers were, to make a reasonable compensation for the land ceded; to respect the rights of the natives; to treat them with uniform kindness; to teach them the arts of civilization; and, above all, to inculcate the principles and the practice of the Christian religion. It is pleasing to observe, in the history of the New-England colonists, that the duties of both parties were, to so great an extent, fulfilled. The Indians, in most cases, received the white men with generous hospitality; they sold them land, on easy terms; many tribes remained their firm friends; and some of the natives became converts to the Christian faith. The colonists, on the other hand, purchased their lands from the Indians, for such a compensation as satisfied the natives, and was a fair equivalent at that time.[119] They treated the Indians, generally, with justice, and they made many zealous efforts for their conversion. That some of the proceedings of the colonists towards the Indians were not strictly equitable nor kind, must be admitted. Our fathers were too prone to view them rather as heathens than as men. They recurred too often to the Jewish history, for imaginary analogies; and drew unauthorized inferences from the conduct of the Jews towards idolatrous nations, whom God, the sovereign ruler, commanded them to destroy. In their wars with the natives, the colonists were sometimes unjustifiably severe; but it is due to their memory to say, that those wars were commenced by the savages themselves, from jealousy of the advancing power of the whites, rather than from the experience of actual injury. We must consider, too, that when the struggle came, it was, on the part of the whites, a contest for life and death, with an enemy vastly more numerous, and whose modes of warfare were treacherous, cruel, and terrific in the highest degree to the scattered and feeble settlements.[120]