Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/75

 SECT. II.] ALGONKIN-LENAPE AND IROQUOIS NATIONS. 39 gans and of the conquered Pequods, who appears to have been a constant though subordinate ally of the British, and Mian- tonimo, Sachem of the Narragansets, who had indeed assisted them against the Pequods, but seems to have afterwards enter- tained hostile designs against them. He brought nine hundred warriors into the field against Uncas, who could oppose him with only five hundred. Miantonimo was nevertheless defeated, made prisoner and delivered by Uncas to the English. After due deliberation, the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England determined, that he might be justly, and ought to be, put to death, but that this should be done out of the English jurisdiction, and without any act of cruelty. He was accordingly delivered again to Uncas and killed. The act at this day appears unjustifiable. The English had not taken an active part in the contest. They might have refused to receive him from Uncas. But, this having been done, he was under their protection, and, however dangerous to them, ought to have been either released altogether, or kept a prisoner. The Narragansets from that time kept the colonies in a state of perpetual uneasiness. Yet the war which broke out in 1675, commonly called King Philip's war, can hardly be ascribed to this or to any other particular circumstance, and appears to have been the unavoidable result of the relative situation in which the Indians and the whites were placed. Collisions had during the preceding period often occurred ; but no actual hos- tilities of any importance had taken place ; and Massachusetts particularly, though exposed to obloquy on that account, always interposed to prevent a war. If the Indians were not always kindly, at least it cannot be said that they were in general un- justly, treated. With the exception of the conquered Pequods, no lands were ever forcibly taken from them. They were all gradually purchased from those Sachems respectively in whose possession they were. But there, as everywhere else, the In- dians, after a certain length of time, found that, in selling their lands they had lost their usual means of subsistence, that they were daily diminishing, that the gradual progress of the whites was irresistible ; and, as a last effort, though too late, they at- tempted to get rid of the intruders. The history of the Indians in the other British colonies is everywhere substantially the same. The massacre of the whites in Virginia, in the years 1622 and 1644, the Tuscarora war of North Carolina in 1712, that with the Yemassees of South Carolina in 1715, were