Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/45

Rh Penn, we read of the “commendable desire to reduce the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the love of civil society and the Christian religion.”

It is observable, however, that in these and many other similar royal and public avowals and instructions as to the righ t ful claims of the natives upon the colonists, but little is said about remunerating the Indians or purchasing from them any territorial rights. It was always complacently assumed that the whites might quietly take possession. Whatever then was the intent or the degree of sincerity of these royal instructions, they all rested upon the assumption that the invaders might rightfully override, by a claim of superiority, the tenure of barbarians on the soil.

It is noteworthy also, that, from the very earliest settlement of the English colonists, the intent and effort to benefit the natives took the ambitious form of providing for them schools and even colleges, in which they should enjoy the highest advantages of education with the whites. While the issue was as yet uncertain, whether the English would maintain their hold as planters in Virginia, Sir Edwin Sandys, as treasurer of the Company, proposed, in 1619, to found a college in the colony for English and Indian youth in common. He received an anonymous gift of £500 for the education of Indian youth in English and in the Christian religion. Other gifts were added, and the prospect seemed promising and hopeful. By advice of the King and the Bishops £1,500 were collected in England. The Company appropriated for the purpose ten thousand acres of land at Henrico, near Richmond. But the massacre of the whites by the Indians, in 1622, soon after a beginning had been made in the work, effectually annulled it.

The first brick building on the grounds of Harvard bore the name of the Indian College. It was built by funds gathered in England. Its design was to furnish rooms