years afterward in King Philip's war; for the savages had not as yet become accustomed to firearms, and the English settlements did not present so many points exposed to attack; but there is no doubt that it might have wrought fearful havoc. We can, at any rate, find no difficulty in comprehending the manifold perplexity of the Massachusetts men at this time, threatened as they were at once by an Indian crusade, by the machinations of a faithless king, and by a bitter theological quarrel at home, in this eventful year when they laid aside part of their incomes to establish Harvard College. [Sidenote: Origin of the Pequot War] The schemes of Sassacus were unsuccessful. The hereditary enmity of the Narragansetts toward their Pequot rivals was too strong to be lightly overcome. Roger Williams, taking advantage of this feeling, so worked upon the minds of the Narragansett chiefs that in the autumn of 1636 they sent an embassy to Boston and made a treaty of alliance with the English. The Pequots were thus left to fight out their own quarrel; and had they still been separated from the English by the distance between Boston and the Thames river, the feud might very likely have smouldered until the drift of events had given a different shape to it. But as the English had in this very year thrown out their advanced posts into the lower Connecticut valley, there was clearly no issue from the situation save in deadly war. All through the winter of 1636-37 the Connecticut towns were kept in a state of alarm by the savages. Men going to their work were killed and horribly mangled. A Wethersfield man was kidnapped and roasted alive. Emboldened by the success of this feat, the Pequots attacked Wethersfield, massacred ten people, and carried away two girls. [Sidenote: Sassacus is foiled by Roger Williams] [Sidenote: The Pequots take the warpath alone]