As a matter of practical policy the annihilation of the
Pequots can be condemned only by those who read history so incorrectly
as to suppose that savages, whose business is to torture and slay, can
always be dealt with according to the methods in use between civilized
peoples. A mighty nation, like the United States, is in honour bound to
treat the red man with scrupulous justice and refrain from cruelty in
punishing his delinquencies. But if the founders of Connecticut, in
confronting a danger which threatened their very existence, struck with
savage fierceness, we cannot blame them. The world is so made that it
is only in that way that the higher races have been able to preserve
themselves and carry on their progressive work.
The overthrow of the Pequots was a cardinal event in the planting of
New England. It removed the chief obstacle to the colonization of
the Connecticut coast, and brought the inland settlements into such
unimpeded communication with those on tide-water as to prepare the way
for the formation of the New England confederacy. Its first fruits were
seen in the direction taken by the next wave of migration, which ended
the Puritan exodus from England to America. About a month after the
storming of the palisaded village there arrived in Boston a company of
wealthy London merchants, with their families.
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