uly the work was done with Cromwellian thoroughness. The
tribe which had lorded it so fiercely over the New England forests was
all at once wiped out of existence. So terrible a vengeance the Indians
had never heard of. If the name of Pequot had hitherto been a name of
terror, so now did the Englishmen win the inheritance of that deadly
prestige. Not for eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the
Pequots, not until a generation of red men had grown up that knew not
Underhill and Mason, did the Indian of New England dare again to lift
his hand against the white man. [Sidenote: And are exterminated]

Such scenes of wholesale slaughter are not pleasant reading in this
milder age. But our forefathers felt that the wars of Canaan afforded
a sound precedent for such cases; and, indeed, if we remember what
the soldiers of Tilly and Wallenstein were doing at this very time in
Germany, we shall realize that the work of Mason and Underhill would not
have been felt by any one in that age to merit censure or stand in need
of excuses. As a matter of practical policy the annihilation of the
Pequots can be condemned only by those who read history so incorrectly
as to suppose that savages, whose business is to torture and slay, can
always be dealt with according to the methods in use between civilized
peoples. A mighty nation, like the United States, is in honour bound to
treat the red man with scrupulous justice and refrain from cruelty in
punishing his delinquencies. But if the founders of Connecticut, in
confronting a danger which threatened their very existence, struck with
savage fierceness, we cannot blame them. The world is so made that it
is only in that way that the higher races have been able to preserve
themselves and carry on their progressive work.

The overthrow of the Pequots was a cardinal event in the planting of
New England. It removed the chief obstacle to the colonization of
the Connecticut coast, and brought the inland settlements into such
unimpeded communication with those on tide-water as to prepare the way
for the formation of the New England confederacy. Its first fruits were
seen in the direction taken by the next wave of migration, which ended
the Puritan exodus from England to America. About a month after the
storming of the palisaded village there arrived in Boston a company of
wealthy London merchants, with their families. The most prominent among
them, Theophilus Eaton, was a member of the Compa