THE BLUE LAWS."

were never in existence in that colony, but were manufactured by a writer who desired to hold it up to ridicule.

Laws that en

tered into many details which are

now considered

matters of indifference to the State, gradually fell into desuetude, and passed away. They remain in our histories interesting tokens of the life of the forefathers, and cannot be omitted from any comprehensive study of their times.

In New England, schools and

colleges were

cern.

161

THE EARLY AMERICAN BOY OUT
OF SCHOOL.

promptly established. Churches were the first conHarvard College was established in 1638, the college of William and Mary, in Virginia, in 1693, and Yale College, in 1701. There were two public libra

ries within the limits of the colonies; one in Massachusetts, and one in South Carolina. Authorship was not cultivated to any great extent, but John Smith had written his account of his adventures; George Sandys had translated Ovid; and Governor Bradford had written a history of Plymouth Colony.*

*The reader who is interested in the subject of this chapter will find entertainment in Mr. Lowell's essay, entitled "New England two Centuries ago," and in Irving's humorous "History of New York." In the former, the foibles of the men of Boston and Plymouth are described; and in the latter, the Dutch are pleasantly satirized.

CHAPTER IX.

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SETTLERS AND THE INDIANS AND THE FRENCH.

N former chapters we have seen something of the relations existing between the new settlers and the Indian tribes. The whites came to a land but sparsely inhabited by a race that was not improving, but which, in some localities at least, was losing ground on account of disease and war. For the credit of the inhabitants of New England, the historian Palfrey asserts that they did not obtain their right to the land by force, but "when they wanted an enlargement of their borders, they acquired it, if at all, by amicable agreement with any who had earlier possession," giving "all that the thing parted with was worth to the settler." Governor Winslow said, in 1676, that before King Philip's war, "the English did not possess one foot of land in this Colony (Massachusetts) but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of. the Indian proprietors," adding that a law was made. that no one should even accept any gift of land from the Indians without the consent of the established authorities.

Mr. Palfrey thinks that the Indians were actually benefitted on a vast scale by the whites, "in respect to the accommodations of their daily life, even suppos

ing them still to adhere to their ancient manners and character, remaining in ignorance of the arts of civilization and of the revelations of Christianity. If they continued to be brutal savages still, they lost nothing, but, on the contrary, gained much by the neighborhood of industrious and orderly persons of a different race." No doubt this line of argument is correct, and that it is true that in times of peace the Indians profited by their contiguity to the whites. This does not palliate in any degree the sins of which the whites were guilty against them.

A brief examination will show that there was blood

shedding and inhumanity on both sides. In 1501, the Portuguese Cortereal carried away from their Canadian homes fifty-seven of the natives, and in 1520, the Spaniard Vasquez took two shiploads of Indians from the coast of Carolina, to suffer in the mines of Hispaniola (San Domingo). Thus the sons of the forest were early educated to consider the invading whites as dangerous enemies, who must be opposed by strategy or force.

The Pilgrims when they landed on Cape Cod, were met at first by a flight of arrows from Indians who had been taught to look upon whites in this light, before Samoset welcomed them and opened the way for the treaty of comity and friendship with Massassoit. In Virginia the settlers under Smith kept up friendly relations with the Indians as long as Powhattan lived, but on the twenty-second of March, 1622, every settlement was attacked to revenge the murder of a brave, and three hundred and forty-seven persons were destroyed in an hour. The entire English community would have been swept away had it not been for

MASSACRE AND EXTERMIN.

765

warning given to Jamestown and the settlements near it by a converted Indian. reduced in number from eighty to eight, though the The plantations were greater portion of the colonists were happily saved. A war of extermination was then begun by the whites, and, six years later, a law was passed that no treaty should be made with the natives. Meantime the Pequots had been actually exterminated in New Eng