Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v1.djvu/52

26 narrow ecclesiasticism of the day. He was also in a position to know about the public events of his time. His history of New England, had it been published, must have given us an important view of the subject.

Another historian of the Indians was Dr. Cadwallader Colden, a man of learning and high position in Philadelphia and New York. He settled in New York in 1710, where he enjoyed the confidence of the authorities and was promoted to important offices. He had a deep interest in the superior organization of the Iroquois and wrote about them in his History of the Five Indian Nations (1727-47). Through great industry he collected a large amount of valuable information about these Indians, and the book is still a mine of facts, although the research of later times has rendered many of its statements unsatisfactory. In this connection mention should be made of John Lawson's History of North Carolina, published first as New Voyage to Carolina in 1709. It was written by a man of excellent sense who had opportunity to know the Indians and natural resources of North Carolina, but it contains little about civil affairs. Lawson was English born and bred, and lived only a few years after his arrival, but he had a right to the name “American,”' since he gave his life to the service of the colony. He was murdered by the Indians in 1711.

It seems certain that most of the books on the Indians were written in answer to a popular demand. The same could not be said of the political histories, which began to appear in the first half of the eighteenth century. The impulse behind such works is perhaps best stated in the words of Stith, of Virginia, who said that he began to write his history as “a noble and elegant entertainment for my vacant hours, which it is not in my power to employ more to my own satisfaction, or the use and benefit of my country.” Few of the historians of this class had a large number of readers. Two wrote about Virginia, Robert Beverley and the Rev. William Stith. The former was a wealthy planter who saw while in London a poor account of the colony by the British historian and pamphleteer, John Oldmixon, and undertook to write a better. His book, A History of Virginia (1705), was hastily prepared without any study of documents or other respectable sources. Its chief value lies in the shrewd and just observations the author