Slavery

Ben and Baysage and I had some palaver about the history of slavery in the Americas. I wish to add this:

But how poorly were these unsuspecting natives repaid for their generous hospitality to the Puritans! Their numbers constantly increased, and their intrusion upon the country of the natives continued, pressing them step by step farther into the interior, committing various acts of cruelty upon individual Indians who violated their laws, or dared to come upon the ground which the Puritans themselves had acquired by acts of trespass upon the natives, in which the Pequots were driven to rebellion; and within two years after the famine before alluded to, we are informed by Trumbull that a party under Captain Stoughton surrounded a body of Pequots in a swamp. "They took eighty captives. Thirty were men, the rest were women and children. The Sachems promised to conduct the English to Sassacus, and for that purpose were spared for the present."

The reader will doubtless feel some curiosity to know what was .done with the women and children who were saved by those who had massacred in cold blood thirty men, save two taken prisoners in battle. The same historian thus details the sequel: "The Pequot women and children who had been captured were divided among the troops. Some were carried to Connecticut, others to Massachusetts. The people of Massachusetts sent a number of the women and boys to the West Indies, and sold them as slaves. It is supposed that about seven hundred Pequots were destroyed."

 The Puritan historian, alluding to the rebellion of the natives, which was thus terminated, says: " This happy event gave great joy to the Colonists, a day of public thanksgiving was appointed, and in all the churches of New England devout and animated praises were addressed to Him who giveth His people the victory and causeth them to dwell in safety. But the Puritans, it seems, were not satisfied with the fate of the rebellious natives, but seemed to glory in their acts of barbarism—a remorseless spirit not credible to a people professing so much Godliness and Christian devotion."

 
 Page 45 of  The American Indian (Un-nish-in-na-ba), by Elijah Middlebrook Haines , 1888

The Colonists also acted as procurers of slaves.
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