Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/439

Rh epoch in Canada, and yielding the field to the aims of French policy and trade for secular dominion. In this case it was not by invading white men, greedy for territory and plunder, but by the ferocity of their own kindred tribes, that the Hurons were extirpated. Yet the Iroquois were armed by the Dutch. The result might have been otherwise. Prosperous and extended missions might have brought the whole region of the lakes and the West under priestly sway, through France; and an Indian empire, “tamed but not civilized,” might have grown up while the seaboard colonies were weak.

III. Protestant Mission-work among the Indians. — As we have taken the Jesuit Fathers of New France to represent to us the missionary work of the Roman Catholic Church for our aborigines, so the Puritan ministers of New England may represent to us the same work under Protestantism.

After the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, the first publication through the press in London, specially prepared in the form of a Report of the fortune of the enterprise, was a vigorously written pamphlet issued in 1643, entitled, “New England's First Fruits; etc.” The first subject presented is the relations established between the colonists and the natives, with particular reference to the work of conversion. The pledges made in the charter, and the avowals and professions of the colonists as to their intentions and obligations towards the Indians were then fresh in their minds. With the exception of the bloody and almost exterminating war with the Pequots, which is represented as having been provoked by the savages, and to have had peculiar reasons for justifying it, there had been a show of amity between the whites and the few red men they had encountered. There is a tone of satisfaction and heartiness about the report of the progress of a Christian work among the Indians. Instances are given of apparently real convictions