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 INTRODUCTION. iii in his acquaintance with the early explorers, English or others, that had prejudiced him fav- orably toward white men. These had kidnapped him to exhibit him as a curiosity in Europe or to sell him into slavery; they had shot him in little else than wantonness or for petty thiev- ery. When colonization began and the Indian himself had furnished the valuable food-plant without which permanent settlements at that time would probably have failed, he saw his own planting places overrun by cattle, his game driven away, his fisheries ruined by mills and mill-dams, his people destroyed by the firearms, diseases, vices, fire-water, indeed by the very religion of the whites. He was human. Natur- ally enough, before he was overwhelmed, he de- vastated outl>ang settlements and decimated the colonists; during the half century preceding the publication of this History, more than eight thousand New England settlers lost their lives and few families there were who mourned no relative or friend. In such a community the interest in Indian affairs was predominant. A specific instance of this interest is seen in the practice of making Indian affairs the chief topic in the published serm.on — the newspaper of that day. Whatever the occasion, this dis- course afforded the opportunity for publishing, with appropriate comments, the latest news of important events — conflagrations, m^arine dis- asters, earthquakes and the always important accounts of depredations and massacres in the frontier settlements. Our author, for instance, acknowledges his indebtedness for the latest de-