But while King Philip’s War wrought such fearful damage to the English, it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction.  Most of the warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the conquerors showed but scant mercy.  The Puritan, who conned his Bible so earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching.  Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England, except as an ally of the French in bloody raids upon the frontier.  In that capacity he does mischief enough for yet a half-century more, but from central and southern New England, as an element of disturbance or a power to be reckoned with, he disappears forever.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.

The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern history.  It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions, official reports, and private letters.  It was not a time in which mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such things we do find in the history of New England.  There was nevertheless a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern reader.  This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity.  The men who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness.  They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing.  They felt themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of “manifest destiny.”  Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of God’s kingdom upon earth.  Such opinions, which took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its pages for illustrations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle, almost as a talisman.  In every propitious event they saw a special providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the snares of an ever watchful Satan.  This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.  It was of great moral value.  It gave them clearness of purpose and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them, like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and aggressive energy.  At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a true historical perspective. [Sidenote:  Romantic features in the early history of New England]