buried the dead warrior's weapons along with him. In some spots there
were skulls and other human bones lying unburied. In 1633, and the year
afterwards, the small-pox broke out among the Massachusetts Indians,
multitudes of whom died by this terrible disease of the Old World. These
misfortunes made them far less powerful than they had formerly been.

For nearly half a century after the arrival of the English the red men
showed themselves generally inclined to peace and amity. They often made
submission when they might have made successful war. The Plymouth
settlers, led by the famous Captain Miles Standish, slew some of them,
in 1623, without any very evident necessity for so doing. In 1636, and
the following year, there was the most dreadful war that had yet
occurred between the Indians and the English. The Connecticut settlers,
assisted by a celebrated Indian chief named Uncas, bore the brunt of
this war, with but little aid from Massachusetts. Many hundreds of the
hostile Indians were slain or burned in their wigwams. Sassacus, their
sachem, fled to another tribe, after his own people were defeated; but
he was murdered by them, and his head was sent to his English enemies.

From that period down to the time of King Philip's War, which will be
mentioned hereafter, there was not much trouble with the Indians. But
the colonists were always on their guard, and kept their weapons ready
for the conflict.

"I have sometimes doubted," said Grandfather, when he had told these
things to the Children,- "I have sometimes doubted whether there was
more than a single man among our forefathers who realized that an Indian
possesses a mind, and a heart, and an immortal soul. That single man was
John Eliot. All the rest of the early settlers seemed to think that the
Indians were an inferior race of beings, whom the Creator had merely