excitement. Some Englishmen were slain;
the murderers were seized, tried, and executed by the colonial
government, according to British law. These proceedings kindled a deep
resentment among the savages, and led to measures of retaliation at
their hands.

It has been an unfortunate feature of European settlement in America,
that the border population, those most in contact with the natives, have
been visually men of wild and desperate character, the tainted foam of
the advancing tide of civilization. Those reckless adventurers were
little scrupulous in their dealings with the simple savage; they utterly
disregarded those rights which his weakness could not defend, and by
intolerable provocation excited him to a bloody but futile resistance.
The Indians naturally confounded the whole English race with these
contemptuous oppressors, and commenced a war that resulted in their own
extermination. They did not face the English in the field, but hovered
round the border, and, with sudden surprise, overwhelmed detached posts
and settlements in a horrible destruction. The astute colonists soon
adopted the policy of forming alliances, and taking advantage of ancient
enmities to stir up hostilities among them. By this means they
accomplished the destruction of the warlike Pequods,[344] their
bitterest foes. Other enemies, however, soon came into the field, and
at length, the original allies of the English, jealous of the
encroaching power of the white strangers, also took arms against them.
The Indian chiefs, after a time, began to adopt European tactics of war,
and for many years kept the colony in alarm by their formidable attacks:
they were, however, finally driven altogether from the field.

The New England settlers showed more sincerity than other adventurers in
endeavoring to accomplish their principal professed object of
colonization, that of teaching Christianity to the Indians.[345] They
appointed zealous and pious ministers for the mission,[346] and
established a seminary for the education of the natives, whence some
scholars were to be selected to preach the Gospel among their savage
countrymen. Great obstacles were encountered in this good work; the
Indians showed a bigoted attachment to their own strange religious
conceits, and their priests and conjurers used all their powerful
influence against Christianity, denouncing in furious terms all who
forsook their creed for the English God. Despite these difficulties, a