doubt that these
Indians were really benefited both materially and morally by the change
in their life. In theology it is not likely that they reached any higher
view than that expressed by the Connecticut sachem Wequash who "seeing
and beholding the mighty power of God in the English forces, how they
fell upon the Pequots, ... from that time was convinced and persuaded
that our God was a most dreadful God;" accordingly, says the author of
"New England's First Fruits," "he became thoroughly reformed according
to his light." Matters of outward observance, too, the Indians could
understand; for we read of one of them rebuking an Englishman "for
profaning the Lord's Day by felling of a tree." The Indian's notions of
religion were probably confined within this narrow compass; the notions
of some people that call themselves civilized perhaps do not extend much
further. [Sidenote: Villages of Christian Indians]

From such facts as those above cited we may infer that the early
relations of the Puritan settlers to the Algonquin tribes of New England
were by no means like the relations between white men and red men in
recent times on our western plains. During Philip's War, as we shall
see, the Puritan theory of the situation was entirely changed and our
forefathers began to act in accordance with the frontiersman's doctrine
that the good Indians are dead Indians. But down to that time it is
clear that his intention was to deal honourably and gently with his
tawny neighbour. We sometimes hear the justice and kindness of the
Quakers in Pennsylvania alleged as an adequate reason for the success
with which they kept clear of an Indian war. This explanation, however,
does not seem to be adequate; it does not appear that, on the whole, the
Puritans were less just and kind than the Quakers in their treatment of
the red men. The true explanation is rather to be found in the relations
between the Indian tribes toward the close of the seventeenth century.
Early in that century the Pennsylvania region had been in the hands
of the ferocious and powerful Susquehannocks, but in 1672, after a
frightful struggle of twenty years, this great tribe was swept from the
face of the earth by the resistless league of the Five Nations. When
the Quakers came to Pennsylvania in 1682, the only Indians in that
neighbourhood were the Delawares, who had just been terribly beaten by
the Five Nations and forced into a treaty by which they submitted to be
call