The distant land to which they came was not an uninhabited wilderness. They found there, as occupants of the soil, an unknown race, in the lower stage of barbarism, with whom they had to contend for its possession. With a few notable exceptions, the relations of the whites with the Indians were the same in all the colonies. The natives were traded with, fought with, occasionally preached to, and then, as far as possible, exterminated. “The precepts Christianity delivers,” wrote Lord Bryce, of the relations between advanced and backward races, “might have been expected to soften the feelings and tame the pride of the stronger race. It must, however, be admitted that in all or nearly all the countries ... Christianity ... has failed to impress the lessons of human equality and brotherhood upon the whites.... Their sense of scornful superiority resists its precepts.”[19] Footnote 19: Lord Bryce, _The Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races of Mankind_ (Romanes Lecture; Oxford, 1902), p. 40. He contrasts the failure of Christianity with the success of Islam in that regard. This comment, which is only too true in the present day, was still more true in the seventeenth century. Even in history, the Indian has usually been treated as, at best, a picturesque element, to give color to the somewhat drab homespun of the colonial story; while the Indian policy of the several colonies, the history of the Indian trade, and the influence of the Indian upon the settler, yet await adequate treatment. The Indian's character and mental traits, which were frequently misinterpreted, were those to be expected in a savage at his stage of culture. If, on the one hand, he was not the noble being painted by Cooper, on the other, he was not the demon often conceived. Indeed, in scanning the list of epithets hurled at him by some of New England's ministers of Christ, one is reminded of Professor Murray's comment on the Greek story of Œdipus. “Unnatural affection, child-murder, father-murder, incest, a great deal of hereditary cursing, a double fratricide and a violation of the sanctity of dead bodies—when one reads,” writes this scholar, “such a list of charges brought against any tribe or people, either in ancient or in modern times, one can hardly help concluding that somebody wanted to annex their land.”[20] Footnote 20: Gilbert Murray, _The Rise of the Greek Epic_ (Oxford, 1911), p. 54.