Under their charter a government was established by the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, which was entirely theocratic in form and substance. To be a freeman, that is a citizen and voter, it was necessary to be a member of the established church, which was the Congregational, and was supported at the public expense. The members of that church claimed to be God's elect, and they showed no mercy to any other sect and allowed of no dissent whatever; all others were heretics or heathens. From the beginning, the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, as well as those at Plymouth, regarded the "heathen around them" and all their possessions as fit spoil for the "Saints." Accordingly they began at a very early period to help themselves. In the year 1637, in a war begun against the Piquods, that tribe of Indians was exterminated by slaughter and capture. Of several hundred prisoners taken, the adult males, constituting but a small portion of the captives, were sent to the West Indies and sold into slavery, while the women and children were distributed among the colonists as slaves also; this was done by the constituted authorities. These colonists commenced the building of ships in the year 1634, and engaged in commerce, the African slave trade, being, from the beginning, a part of that commerce. By the year 1640, six large vessels had been built, and fitted out by the Boston merchants, which were sent on voyages to Spain, Madeira and the Canaries with cargoes of fish and staves, and brought back, among other things, cargoes of negroes from the coast of Africa for sale at Barbadoes and the other British West India Islands. It was not a great while before the religious persecution in Massachusetts drove off a number of dissenters from the established faith, among them being the celebrated Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptists in America. These "heretics," as they were called, took refuge within the present limits of Rhode Island, where they established, at different points, separate governments for themselves, all of which were subsequently merged in that of Rhode Island. Emigrants from Massachusetts also established themselves at different points in the present limits of Connecticut and formed two separate governments, one called New Haven and the other Connecticut, which were afterwards united under that of Connecticut. Massachusetts set up a claim of jurisdiction over all of these settlements, but finally had to abandon it.