Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/241

Rh years that have passed, have justified their dispossession of successive tribes by the plea that they were only spoiling spoilers. The Muscogees from the Ohio moved down into Alabama after it had been desolated by De Soto, and pursued their conquests over many enfeebled tribes. In 1822, in a talk with the missionary Compère, Big Warrior, the chief of the Creek Confederacy, boasted of their prowess in conquering, driving out, and destroying the tribes in possession before them. But the missionary silenced the boaster with this question: “If this is the way your ancestors acquired all the territory of Georgia, how can you blame the Americans now in the State for trying to take it from you?”

Just previous to the arrival of the Plymouth and Bay colonists in Massachusetts a fatal plague had devastated the local tribes. Massasoit, the sachem of the once powerful Wampanoags wasted by this scourge, had in consequence become tributary to the Narragansetts; and he was glad to lighten the yoke by entering into a solemn treaty with the Pilgrims. This first treaty of white and red men lasted also longer than any one ever made between the parties, — unbroken for fifty years. The Pilgrims thus found protection, in their first extreme feebleness, in allies jealous of a superior native tribe. And when Philip began to organize his league he became tributary to Plymouth. In their exterminating war against the Pequots the English had the Narragansetts as allies. The Mohicans, who had occupied the upper Hudson, had been driven from it by the Mohawks in 1628, and, settling again on the Connecticut, had been made tributary to the Pequots, — thus being ready for an alliance with the English.

It must be admitted that the Europeans of every nationality, even when not fomenting discord, were all too ready to avail themselves of the rivalries, the hostilities, and the internecine struggles of the native tribes, and to turn them to their own account. Doubtless, too, the Europeans