of the treaty, there was a
good deal of disturbance on the frontier, and some commission of
cruelties, until the colonists became gradually roused into fury. Some
tribes were friendly with them; and, uniting with these the Mohicans and
river Indians, under the conduct of Uncas, the Mohican chief, seventy-
seven Englishmen made a raid into the Pequot country and drove them from
it. Then, in 1637, a battle, called "the Great Swamp Fight," took place
between the English, Dutch, and friendly Indians on the one hand, and the
Pequots on the other. It ended in the slaughter of seven hundred of the
Pequots and thirteen of their Sachems. The wife of one of the Sachems
was taken, and as she had protected two captive English girls she was
treated with great consideration, and was much admired for her good sense
and modesty; but the other prisoners were dispersed among the settlers to
serve as slaves, and a great number of the poor creatures were shipped
off to the West India Islands to work on the sugar plantations.

Those who had escaped the battle were hunted down by the Mohicans and
Narragansets, who continually brought their scalps in to the English
towns, and at last they were reduced to sue for peace when only 200
braves were still living. These, with their families, were amalgamated
with the Mohicans and Narragansets, and expelled from their former
territory, on which the English settled. An annual tribute of a length
of wampum, for every male in the tribe, varying according to age and
rank, was paid to the English, and their supremacy was so entirely
established that nearly forty years of peace succeeded.

Eliot's missionary enterprise, Mather allows, was first inspired by the
"remarkable zeal of the Romish missionaries," by whom he probably means
the French Jesuits, who were working with much effect in the settlements
in Louisiana, first occupied in the time of Henri IV. Another stimulus
came from the expressions in the Royal Charter which had granted licence
for the establishment of the colony, namely, "To win and incite the
natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true
God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith, in our Royal
intention and the Adventurers' free profession, is the principal end of
the Plantation."

That the devil himself was the Red men's master, and came to their
assistance when summoned by the incantations of their medicine men, was
the universal belief of the