none should purchase or receive of gift any land of the Indians without the knowledge and allowance of our Court ....  And if at any time they have brought complaints before us, they have had justice impartial and speedy, so that our own people have frequently complained that we erred on the other hand in showing them overmuch favour.”  The general laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as of Plymouth bear out what Winslow says, and show us that as a matter of policy the colonial governments were fully sensible of the importance of avoiding all occasions for quarrel with their savage neighbours. [Sidenote:  Puritans and Indians]

There can, moreover, be little doubt that the material comfort of the Indians was for a time considerably improved by their dealings with the white men.  Hitherto their want of foresight and thrift had been wont to involve them during the long winters in a dreadful struggle with famine.  Now the settlers were ready to pay liberally for the skin of every fur-covered animal the red men could catch; and where the trade thus arising did not suffice to keep off famine, instances of generous charity were frequent.  The Algonquin tribes of New England lived chiefly by hunting, but partly by agriculture.  They raised beans and corn, and succotash was a dish which they contributed to the white man’s table.  They could now raise or buy English vegetables, while from dogs and horses, pigs and poultry, oxen and sheep, little as they could avail themselves of such useful animals, they nevertheless derived some benefit. [29] Better blankets and better knives were brought within their reach; and in spite of all the colonial governments could do to prevent it, they were to some extent enabled to supply themselves with muskets and rum. [Sidenote:  Trade with the Indians]

Besides all this trade, which, except in the article of liquor, tended to improve the condition of the native tribes, there was on the part of the earlier settlers an earnest and diligent effort to convert them to Christianity and give them the rudiments of a civilized education.  Missionary work was begun in 1643 by Thomas Mayhew on the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.  The savages at first declared they were not so silly as to barter thirty-seven tutelar deities for one, but after much preaching and many pow-wows Mayhew succeeded in persuading them that the Deity of the white man was mightier than all their manitous. Whether they ever got much farther than this toward a comprehension of the white man’s religion may be doubted; but they were prevailed upon to let their children learn to read and write, and even to set up little courts, in which justice was administered according to some of the simplest rules of English law, and from which there lay an appeal to the court of Plymouth.  In 1646 Massachusetts enacted that the elders of the churches should choose two persons each year to go and spread the gospel among the Indians.  In 1649 Parliament