continued to remain
on friendly terms with the English, although several other Indian tribes
did not.

Between the years 1628 and 1640 many white people settled forty or fifty
miles north of Plymouth, in what is now Boston and Salem, and other
cities and towns near Massachusetts Bay.

Others settled inland on the Connecticut River, near the present
boundary line between Massachusetts and Connecticut, about seventy-five
miles west from Mount Hope, the home of Philip. Others settled at
Providence, and still others on the island of Rhode Island, fifteen to
twenty miles south of Mount Hope.

The settlers on the Connecticut had trouble with the Pequots, a tribe of
Indians living to the west of the Wampanoags, and in the war that
followed, all the Pequots were killed. The whites also had trouble with
the Narragansetts, who lived near Providence, outbreaks occurring every
year or two for several years.

During these years Philip and his father did nothing to injure the
settlers in any way. They refused to aid the other Indians in their wars
with the English, preferring to remain faithful to their early treaty
with the whites; and the whites remained on the most friendly terms with
them.

Philip knew nothing of the Christian religion. Several attempts were
made by the whites to convert the Indians to Christianity. In 1646, John
Eliot translated the Bible into the Indian language, taught the Indians
the English habits of industry and agriculture, and established near
Boston two towns composed entirely of converted Indians.

At the same time, Thomas Mayhew preached to the Wampanoags on Martha's
Vineyard, and there converted a great many. By the year 1675, four
thousand Indians had been converted to Christianity.

But the missionaries were not successful with Philip and the Wampanoags
at Mount Hope. They utterly refused to listen to the preachers. They
preferred their former mode of life, and there were several good reasons
for this preference, as they thought.

Philip noticed that many white men who called themselves Christians were
in the habit of stealing from the red men, and cheating them whenever
they could. He could not see that the Christian religion made them more
happy, more honest, or better than he was.

Again, he noticed that, as soon as the Indians were converted, they left
their former life and companions and joined themselves to the English.
This tended to lessen the control of the chiefs over their trib