bject
to payment of some small tribute, in beads or powder, to these native
lords of the continent. In 1637, when Capt. John Mason marched against
Sassacus, at the head of ninety men, he had with him half the fighting
force of the Connecticut Colony. In 1653 a wall was built across
Manhattan Island to keep out the savages; though, when we say that the
line of defence just covered the present course of Wall Street (which
derives its name from that circumstance), our readers may not fail to
wonder whether the savages were not the rather kept in by it. In 1675,
when the New-England Colonies had grown comparatively strong, they
mustered for their war against Philip one thousand men, of whom
Massachusetts furnished five hundred and twenty-seven, Plymouth one
hundred and fifty-eight, and Connecticut three hundred and fifteen.

To men peering out from block-houses, or crouching behind walls,
awaiting the terrific yell of an Indian attack, it was not likely to
occur that they might compromise their dignity by treating on equal
terms with an enemy tenfold as numerous as themselves; nor were the
statesmen of that early heroic age likely to give themselves trouble
about the character and standing among the nations of the earth, of
confederacies that could bring five thousand warriors into the field.
And so the feeble colonies struggled on through those days of gloom and
fear, deprecating the anger of the savages as they might, and
circumventing their wiles when they could; played off one chieftain
against another; made contribution of malice and powder to every
intestine feud among the natives; bought off tribes, without much
scruple as to the ultimate fulfilment of their bargains; postponed the
evil day by every expedient, knowing that time was on their side: and
when they had, in spite of all, to fight, fought as men who know that
they will not themselves be spared,--planned ambuscades and massacres;
fired Indian camps, and shot the inmates as they leaped from their
blazing wigwams; studied and mastered all the arts of forest warfare;
and beat the savages with their own weapons, as men of the higher race
will always do when forced by circumstances to such a contest.

Nor during the early part of the eighteenth century, when all danger of
a war of extermination had passed from the apprehension of the most
timid, when the Colonies had become in a degree compacted, and the line
of white occupation had been made continuous from Mas