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 CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEQUOD WAR, AND THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS IN CAROLINA, GEORGIA, AND PHILADELPHIA.

We left the New England colonies on the eve of the first great Indian war, which originated in the jealousy of the Pequods—a fierce race living between the Narragansetts and Mohegans of New England and the Iroquois of the East—at the sudden influx of foreigners into the fertile districts of Connecticut. Although, strictly speaking, it is scarcely within our province, we will give an outline of this terrible struggle, affording, as it does, a typical example of the general policy pursued toward each other by the natives and settlers in the New World.

As early as 1634, a Captain Stone had been murdered, with all his crew, off Fort Good Hope, a Dutch outpost of Connecticut; and in the two years which followed, aggressions and robberies on the part of the Pequods were of frequent occurrence. The crisis was not reached, however, until 1636, when our old friend, Captain Oldham, fell a victim to the fury of the Indians. The details of this second tragedy will never be known, and it is more than possible that the outrage may not have been altogether unprovoked, the captain having been a man of hasty temper, disposed to carry matters with the natives with a very high hand.

Oldham was last seen alive starting in a vessel of his own on a trading excursion up the Connecticut River, and a little later a fisherman named Gallop, at work on Block Island, caught sight of the boat drifting out to sea, crowded with Indians, who were evidently at a total loss how to manage their capture. In a moment Gallop, accompanied by one man and two boys, started in pursuit; the vessel was boarded, and, without pausing to inquire into the rights of the matter, the four newcomers laid about them right and left, till the Indians were driven off, leaving many of their number dead or dying on the deck.

This summary vengeance inflicted, Gallop looked about him for its justi