the savage natives as with men who had the same inalienable rights as themselves.[1] It is the first bright dawn of Christian day from the darkness of ages; the first boundary mark put down between the possessions of the unlettered savage, and the lawless desires of the schooled but uncivilized European; the first recognition of that law of property in the possessors of the soil of every country of the earth, until the complete establishment of which, blood must flow, the weak must be trodden down by the strong, and civilization and Christianity must pause in their course. Honour to Roger Williams and his flock in Narraganset Bay! The Puritan settlements still continued to spread. Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and Maine were planted by different bodies from Massachusets Bay; and the Indians, who found that the whites diffused themselves farther and farther over their territories, and soon ceased to purchase as Roger Williams had done, or even to ask permission; began to remonstrate. Remonstrances however produced little effect. The Indians saw that if they did not make a stand against these encroachments they must soon be driven out of their ancestral lands, and exterminated by those tribes on which they must be forced. They resolved therefore to exterminate the invaders that would hear no reason. The Pequods, who lay near the colony of Connecticut, called upon the Narragansets in 1637, to join them in their scheme. The Narragansets revealed it to the English, and both parties were speedily
- ↑ Purchases were, indeed, made by others; but it was seize first, and bargain afterwards, when the soil was already defended by muskets, and the only question with the natives was, "Shall we take a trifle for our lands, or be knocked on the head for them?"
