231. They did not capture any of the Indians, to be reduced to a species of slavery, as they intended; but, as will appear further on, inhumanly butchered several of them, which would seem to have been an act of revenge rather than of punishment. The intercourse of the French with the natives of Cape Cod was, on the whole, less satisfactory than that with the northern tribes along the shores of Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. With the latter they had no hostile conflicts whatever, although the Indians were sufficiently implacable and revengeful towards their enemies. Those inhabiting the peninsula of Cape Cod, and as far north as Cape Anne, were more suspicious, and had apparently less clear conceptions of personal rights, especially the rights of property. Might and right were to them identical. Whatever they desired, they thought they had a right to have, if they had the power or wit to obtain it. The French came in contact with only two of the many subordinate tribes that were in possession of the peninsula; viz., the Monomoyicks at Chatham, and the Nausets at Eastham. The conflict in both instances grew out of an attempt on the part of the natives to commit a petty theft. But it is quite possible that the invasion of their territory by strangers, an unpardonable offence among civilized people, may have created a feeling of hostility that found a partial gratification in stealing their property; and, had not this occasion offered, the stifled feeling of hostility may have broken out in some other form. In general, they were not subsequently unfriendly in their intercourse with the English. The Nausets were, however, the same that sent a shower of arrows upon the Pilgrims in 1620, at the place called by them the "First Encounter," and not more than three miles from the spot where the same tribe, in 1605, had attacked the French, and Slain one of De Monts's men. It must, however, be said that, beside the invasion of their country, the Pilgrims had, some days before, rifled the granaries of the natives dwelling a few miles north of the Nausets, and taken away without leave a generous quantity of their winter's supply of corn; and this may have inspired them with a desire to be rid of visitors who helped themselves to their provisions, the fruit of their summer's toil, their dependence for the winter already upon them, with so little ceremony and such unscrupulous selfishness; for such it must have appeared to the Nausets in their savage and unenlightened state. It is to be regretted that these excellent men, the Pilgrims, did not more fully comprehend the moral character of their conduct in this instance. They lost at the outset a golden opportunity for impressing upon the minds of the natives the great practical principle enunciated