Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/363

Rh had not improved upon his tenantry by substituting white for red men.

A journal written in the Dutch province, at Albany, New York, soon after 1640, traces the beginnings of discordant relations with the neighboring Indians to the misdoings of the whites. The writer says, that, instead of trading, as a company and by system, with the natives, each man set up for himself, roamed in the wilderness for free traffic, and was mastered by a jealous selfishness. They drew upon themselves contempt instead of respect from the Indians by over familiarity, — admitting them to their cabins, feasting and trifling with them, and selling them guns, powder, and bullets. At least four hundred armed savages were then found between the Dutch settlements and Canada, and were thus placed at an unfair and mischievous advantage over other Indians. These charges relate rather, at the time when they were written, to the Dutch than to the English, and were strictly true. The English governor of the province long after its transfer, Governor Colden, tells us how a chief complained to him of the stiffer attitude of pride which the English assumed towards the natives. He said: “When the Dutch held this country, we lay in their houses; but the English have always made us lie without doors.” Colden adds: “It is true that the Plantations were first settled by the meanest people of every nation, and such as had the least sense of honor. The Dutch first settlers, many of them, I may say, had none of the virtues of their countrymen except their industry in getting money, and they sacrificed everything other people think honorable or most sacred, to their gain.” This also was said of the Dutch, not of the English, colonists.

From 1640 to 1643 the war then raging between the Dutch and the Indians threatened to become general through the colonies. The traders up the Hudson had defied all the rigid prohibitions against the selling arms to the Indians, and the Mohawks with their confederates on the