Three blots on the Puritans’ escutcheon (they were men, not seraphs) have been dealt with waveringly by historians. Witchcraft, slavery and Indian warfare gloom darkly against a shining background of righteousness. Much has been made of the fleeting phase, and little of the more permanent conditions--which proves the historic value of the picturesque. That Salem should to-day sell witch spoons and trinkets, trafficking upon memories she might be reasonably supposed to regret, is a triumph of commercialism. The brief and dire obsession of witchcraft was in strict accord with times and circumstances. It bred fear, horror, and a tense excitement which lifted from Massachusetts all reproach of dulness. The walls between the known and the unknown world were battered savagely, and the men and women who thronged from house to house to see the “Afflicted Children” writhe in convulsions had a fearful appreciation of the spectacle. That terrible child, Ann Putnam, who at twelve years of age was instrumental in bringing to the scaffold some of the most respected citizens of Salem, is a unique figure in history. The apprehensive interest she inspired in her townspeople may be readily conceived. It brought her to ignominy in the end. The Plymouth colonists kept on good terms with their Indian neighbours for half a century. The Bay colonists had more aggressive neighbours, and dealt with them accordingly. It was an unequal combat. The malignancy of the red men lacked concentration and thoroughness. They were only savages, and accustomed to episodic warfare. The white men knew the value of finality. When Massachusetts planned with Connecticut to exterminate the Pequots, less than a dozen men escaped extermination. It was a very complete killing, and no settler slept less soundly for having had a hand in it. Mr. Fiske says that the measures employed in King Philip’s War “did not lack harshness,” which is a euphemism. The flinging of the child Astyanax over the walls of Troy was less barbarous than the selling of King Philip’s little son into slavery. Hundreds of adult captives were sent at the same time to Barbados. It would have been more merciful, though less profitable, to have butchered them at home. The New England settlers were not indifferent to the Indians’ souls. They forbade them, when they could, to hunt or fish on the Lord’s day. John Eliot, Jonathan Edwards, and other famous divines preached to them earnestly, and gave them a fair chance of salvation. But, like all savages, they had a trick of melting into the forest just when their conversion seemed at hand. Cotton Mather, in his “Magnalia,” speculates ruthlessly upon their condition and prospects. “We know not,” he writes, “when or how these Indians first became inhabitants of this mighty continent; yet we may guess that probably the Devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hopes that the Gospel of the Lord would never come to destroy or disturb his absolute Empire over them.”