Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/351

Rh probably find that they regarded the English as a somewhat unscrupulous people.

Further, we must note that it soon came to be understood that the relations of Europeans as they reached here, towards the native races, would be decided in each case by the intent and purpose of each party of the strangers as they appeared, whether that purpose involved transient traffic, as in the fisheries and the fur-trade, or permanent occupancy of the soil, with extending farms and towns. The Dutch and the French might, for their purposes, have had peaceful relations with the savages, to their mutual benefit. The English colonists, radiating from their original landings, and steadily extending into the interior, found, for obvious reasons, that their relations with the natives must be hostile. Why? Simply because the temper and habits, the prejudices and purposes of English yeomen made it utterly impossible for them to have the savages as co-residents on the soil, or even as proximate neighbors. In fifty years, more than as many English towns had been planted on our shores and in the nearest border of the wilderness, in valleys, on river bottoms and mill streams. In the skirting forests the savages still harbored, and the primary antagonisms of the two modes of life at once presented themselves with sharp and practical issues. When King Philip found that the value of the land which he had sold to the whites was so enhanced by their use of it, he regretted that he had parted with it. Conspicuously intelligent as he was for a savage, and proudly independent in spirit, like the other great conspiring chieftains with whom we have come into conflict, he stoutly withstood civilization and what was offered to him as Christianity. He forbade all mission work, all attempts to convert his people. He preferred by inclination and conviction the wild state as best and fittest for them. Such views of Christianity as he had formed from contact with its white disciples and the converts they had made from