CHAPTER VI.
COLONIAL RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS.
There is matter of intensely exciting interest and of
momentous bearing upon the fortunes of the red man running
through the whole colonial period of our history before we
had become a nation, with a central power and a common
responsibility for our acts. During this colonial period,
— beginning with the first scattered and independent
settlements, from Acadia and Canada, down along the
seaboard to the Gulf, and ending with the war of the Revolution,
— each isolated group of colonists was of necessity left
to its own methods and policy in intercourse and treatment
of the savages. There was of course an ultimate reference
to the authority of the different sovereignties at home,
represented here by their respective subjects. Instructions
were from time to time received as to the way in which the
natives should be dealt with. But the straits and
emergencies of each feeble and exposed band of settlers had to
decide for them their own attitude and course of conduct
towards the aborigines. It was from the beginning a steady
struggle between the forces of civilization, aided by intelligence
and arbitrary power, and the natural rights and the
impotence of barbarians. The result was an inevitable
one; but the wrongs and outrages which secured it sadly
stain the record of the white man's triumph.
This chapter by its title covers the period and the events reaching from the first settlement of the territory of the United States by Europeans down to the Revolutionary
