Note 47 — Chapter XXIII · THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA TILL THE REVOLT OF THE COLONIES.

Cotton Mather records that, amongst the early settlers, it was considered a “religious act to kill Indians.”

A similar sentiment prevailed amongst the Dutch boors in South Africa, with regard to the natives of the country. Mr. Barrow writes, “A farmer thinks he cannot proclaim a more meritorious action than the murder of one of these people. A boor from Graaf Reinet, being asked in the secretary’s office, a few days before we left town, if the savages were numerous or troublesome on the road, replied, ‘he had only shot four,’ with as much composure and indifference as if he had been speaking of four partridges. I myself have heard one of the humane colonists boast of having destroyed, with his own hands, near 300 of these unfortunate wretches.”