Note 166 — Chapter X

Winthrop, vol. i. 147, 149. The Pequods agreed to deliver up the individuals who were engaged in the murder, and to pay four hundred fathoms of wampumpeag, forty beaver skins, and thirty otter skins. While the Pequod ambassadors were at Boston, a party of the Narragansets came as far as Naponset, and it was rumored that their object was to murder the Pequod ambassadors. The magistrates had a conference at Roxbury, with the Narragansets, (among whom were two sachems) and persuaded them to make peace with the Pequods, to which the sachems agreed, the magistrates having secretly promised them, as a condition, a part of the wampumpeag, which the Pequods had stipulated to pay. The note of Mr. Savage, on this affair, deserves to be repeated:

“If any doubt has ever been entertained, in Europe or America, of the equitable and pacific principles of the founders of New-England, in their relations with the Indians, the secret history, in the foregoing paragraph, of this negotiation, should dissipate it. By the unholy maxims of vulgar policy, the discord of these unfriendly nations would have been encouraged, and our European fathers should have employed the passions of the aborigines for their mutual destruction. On the contrary, an honest artifice was resorted to for their reconciliation, and the tribute received by us from one offending party was, by a Christian deception, divided with their enemies, to procure mutual peace. Such mediation is more useful than victory, and more honorable than conquest.”

It may be added, here, as an illustration of the temper of the times, that Mr. Eliot, the Indian apostle, expressed, in a sermon, some disapprobation of this treaty with the Pequods, for this reason, among others, that the magistrates and ministers acted without authority from the people. He was called to account, and Mr. Cotton and two other ministers were appointed to convince him of his error. The good man appeared to be convinced, and agreed to make a public retraction. It is stated by Dr. Bentley, that Mr. Williams, then at Salem, expressed his disapprobation of the treaty, doubtless on the same ground, of the combination of civil and clerical agency in the transaction. But Mr. Williams would not retract, after the example of Eliot.