Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/324

304 tells us that Louis had written to the Governor of Canada, La Barre: “As it is of importance to the good of my service to diminish as much as possible the number of the Iroquois, and that as these savages, who are strong and robust, will serve usefully in my galleys, I desire that you will do everything in your power to make as many of them as possible prisoners of war, and send them over to France.” Some of the survivors were afterwards brought back to Canada.

How unlike were the way, the means, and the intent of the first English colonists on the Atlantic seaboard! The most resolute, the most successful of them, — those the fruits of whose enterprise have been the richest and the most permanent, — stole away, we may say, from England, under a covert. The New England colonists asked no royal patronage beyond that going with their parchment charters, the main intent and value of which were to secure their territorial rights and jurisdiction against foreign rivals and jealous intruders of their own stock. They neither borrowed nor begged supplies in ships, armaments, or subsistence. They sent home no reports of progress or failure to the officials of the mother country, nor received from her any challenge to return a reckoning to her. No civil or military function was discharged among them by commission or appointment from abroad; but their magistrates, judges, and captains were elected from among themselves. Occasionally, under the sharp pressure of their poverty or misfortunes, or in the apprehension of some collision with the Dutch or the French, a suggestion was dropped by one or another of the less sturdy of the New England stock, that they should look to the mother country for counsel or help. But the timid purpose was at once repudiated, on the ground that the call upon England for the slightest favor, or even the acceptance of one unasked, would afford a pretext to her for intermeddling in the affairs of her exiled offspring, whose spirit and direction of self-management