Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/273

Rh the soil. Though we cannot suppose that the Indian tribes bordering on the whole Atlantic seaboard maintained such close communication with each other as to be well informed about what was transpiring at widely separated points on the coast at the time of most rapid colonization, yet they had some common knowledge on the subject. They found the Europeans rushing hitherward in swarms, evidently with a purpose of remaining, of taking possession of the soil, and extending their settlements. The Indians were amazed and bewildered by the spectacle. They came to think that for some reason unknown to them the people from another world were all coming hither and emptying themselves on this continent. Nor did it relieve their wonder when they found that the new comers represented rival and hostile parties like their own tribes, fighting each other, and transferring Old World quarrels to this soil.

While the natives thus came to realize the ultimate purpose of the whites, and to realize too what destiny it would involve for them, the Europeans on their part had strengthened themselves for each successive stage of conflict which the struggle would encounter. As the first objects of their enterprise, invasion, and exploration — the precious metals and peltry — were abandoned or subordinated, new aims and attractions took their place. Commerce on the high seas, the fisheries, freedom of range for those who had been cramped in the Old World, the privilege of trying theories of government and of religion denied them in Europe, and even the opportunities for obtaining abundant subsistence though at the cost of healthful toil, began in the first half century of real colonization to prepare the way for the stupendous development of the continent and for making it the harborage of emigrating Europe. If the aborigines could ever have withstood this process, or in any way modified the fate which it would inevitably involve for them, it could have been only in its very earliest stages. Even then