the former of whom had been infamously driven from their land by the Pennsylvanians, or their proprietors, many years before. Other tribes, joining with these, spread havoc along all the western borders of the colonies, until peace was conquered, (1758.) Pontiac's war. The French war over, (1763,) the same tribes, with others of varied name and race, united under the great Ottawa chieftain, Pontiac, in one simultaneous attempt to clear the western country of the English invaders. Such an onslaught, occurring at an earlier period, might have driven the English, not only from the west but from the east. But made against them when they had just prevailed against the hosts of France, the attacks of the Indians, though at first successful, were met and decisively subdued, (1764.) * Indians Some sad and strange events, in connection with in Penn- the war thus closed, must be mentioned, for the sake sylvania. of the illustration which they offer of the passions so long dividing the English and the Indians. A number of Pennsylvanians, opposed to their own authorities, and excited with suspicion and hatred against all of Indian blood, made such demonstrations against the Indian converts of the Moravian missionaries, for some time at work in Pennsylvania, that the assembly ordered the Indians to be removed to Philadelphia. Hardly was this done, when the settlers of Paxton, a frontier town, put to death a handful of Indians lingering at Conestoga, pursuing and slaying some who, for safety's sake, had been lodged in the Lancaster jail. A force of from five to fifteen hundred borderers then set out on a march against Philadelphia, where they intended to seize the Indians transported thither, if not to make themselves masters of the city and the province altogether * The extreme western tribes remained in arms till 1765. They were not without their sympathizers in Philadelphia: but those who were prepared to resist them took so determined a course as to avert the dangers of the insurrection. The show of force in the city persuaded the borderers to retire, (1763-64.) wars, but decided. The tomahawk was not yet buried in the west or Other in the south. Year after year some party or some the issue tribe of Indians broke loose upon the frontiers. But the question had long been decided as to the hands into which victory was to fall. The scattered tribes, ill provided with arms or stores, with discipline or skill, had fallen away, from the first, before the concentrated numbers and accumulated resources of the colonists. Whatever individual bravery could do, whatever the undying independence of any single tribe could achieve, was all in vain, before the resistless advance of the English. Nay, not of the English alone, but of the Indians themselves, allied with the conquerors of their countrymen. But for such as joined the stranger, the conquest would have been slower, although none the less sure. Later The Indian wars form by no means a bright chapmissions. ter in our history. But, as we found something to light up the early, so we find something to light up the later relations of the Indians and the English. The missions, begun by the Mayhews and by Eliot, had never been abandoned in Massachusetts. As time passed, and the native race grew thinner upon its former soil, new stations were taken, to reach the remoter tribes. A mission at Stockbridge, at first in the charge of John Sergeant, afterwards obtained no less a superintendent than Jonathan Edwards, (1737-50.) A more radiant name is that of David Brainerd, of Connecticut, who, after laboring between Stockbridge and Albany, turned southwards to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, (1744.) The exertions of a few years so enfeebled him that he returned to the Connecticut valley only to die, (1747.) His place was taken in Pennsylvania by Moravian missionaries, (1748,) whose labors, protracted to a much later period, came to such sad results as have just been described. The missionary would convert the Indians; the colonist would hunt them to death. Alas, that so little was wrought by the friend and the teacher, in comparison with the vast achievements of the foe and the destroyer! Wars CHAPTER IV. DUTCH WARS. RETURNING to trace the fortunes of the Dutch with In- settlement of New Netherland, we immediately dians. find it, like its English neighbors, at war with the Indians, whom we may call Manhattans of the Algonquin race. Vexed by the traders, oppressed by the officials of the colony, the Manhattans had provocation enough to take up arms at an early period. But the vicinity of their dreaded foes, the Mohawks of the Five Nations, who were disposed to be friends with the Dutch, kept them at peace until peace was impossible. The incursions of the Indians into the Dutch settlements, and the horrid massacres inflicted by the Dutch in return, were of the same nature as the hostilities already described, (1640–43.) A temporary truce was instantly broken by a general war, spreading from the main land to the islands, and devastating almost the whole of the colony. But for a company of English settlers, just fresh from encounters with the Indians, it would have gone hard with New Netherland. As it was, the exhaustion of the colony was as great as that of its foes, when a treaty terminated the war, (1643–45.) Thrice, however, within the next twenty years, the Indians rose against the still oppressive Dutchmen, (1655, 1658, 1663.) The increase of New Netherland was arrrested by Effect upon New Netherland. these repeated wars. A contemporary document* (1644) dwells upon the favorable prospects of the colony after the fur trade was thrown open, (1638,) as previously mentioned. "At which time," we are told," the inhabitants there resident not only spread themselves far and wide, but new colonists came thither from fatherland, and the neighboring English, as well from Virginia as from New England, removed under us." hopes thus inspired are expressly stated to have been blasted by the Indian wars. Internal Had the wars never occurred, the colony would restric- have had no rapid progress. In itself it was divided tions. by what may be called castes. The patroons, for instance, were an order by themselves, not necessarily hostile to the authorities or unfriendly to the colonists, yet often proving to be one or both. Then the colony lay at the mercy of the company and its director, whose supremacy was shared by none but a few officials and councillors. The attempts at representation on the part of the more substantial colonists, were of no avail. Boards of twelve, eight, and nine men were successively established, with the director's consent, but without any power to restrain him or to elevate themselves. It was at length resolved by the nine men to draw up a statement of their grievances to be laid before the government of the mother country. But the member charged with preparing the document, Adrian Van der Donck, was robbed of his papers, thrown into prison, and expelled from the board of the nine men as well as from the director's council, in which he had a seat, (1649.) Liberated from his imprisonment, Van der Donck set sail for Holland, with other representatives of the cause for which he had suffered. His exertions there brought about * In O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland, Appendix E. |