in their treatment of the red men.  The true explanation is rather to be found in the relations between the Indian tribes toward the close of the seventeenth century.  Early in that century the Pennsylvania region had been in the hands of the ferocious and powerful Susquehannocks, but in 1672, after a frightful struggle of twenty years, this great tribe was swept from the face of the earth by the resistless league of the Five Nations.  When the Quakers came to Pennsylvania in 1682, the only Indians in that neighbourhood were the Delawares, who had just been terribly beaten by the Five Nations and forced into a treaty by which they submitted to be called “women,” and to surrender their tomahawks.  Penn’s famous treaty was made with the Delawares as occupants of the land and also with the Iroquois league as overlords. [30] Now the great central fact of early American history, so far as the relations between white men and red men are concerned, is the unshaken friendship of the Iroquois for the English.  This was the natural consequence of the deadly hostility between the Iroquois and the French which began with Champlain’s defeat of the Mohawks in 1609.  During the seventy-three years which intervened between the founding of Pennsylvania and the defeat of Braddock there was never a moment when the Delawares could have attacked the Quakers without incurring the wrath and vengeance of their overlords the Five Nations.  This was the reason why Pennsylvania was left so long in quiet.  No better proof could be desired than the fact that in Pontiac’s war, after the overthrow of the French and when Indian politics had changed, no state suffered so much as Pennsylvania from the horrors of Indian warfare. [Sidenote:  Why Pennsylvania was so long unmolested by the Indians]

In New England at the time of Philip’s War, the situation was very different from what it was between the Hudson and the Susquehanna.  The settlers were thrown into immediate relations with several tribes whose mutual hostility and rivalry was such that it was simply impossible to keep on good terms with all at once.  Such complicated questions as that which involved the English in responsibility for the fate of Miantonomo did not arise in Pennsylvania.  Since the destruction of the Pequots we have observed the Narragansetts and Mohegans contending for the foremost place among New England tribes.  Of the two rivals the Mohegans were the weaker, and therefore courted the friendship of the formidable palefaces.  The English had no desire to take part in these barbarous feuds, but they could not treat the Mohegans well without incurring the hostility of the Narragansetts.  For thirty years the feeling of the latter tribe toward the English had been very unfriendly and would doubtless have vented itself in murder but for their recollection of the fate of the Pequots.  After the loss of their chief Miantonomo their attitude became so sullen and defiant that the Federal Commissioners, in order to be in readiness for an outbreak, collected a force of 300 men.  At the first news of these preparations the Narragansetts, overcome with terror, sent a liberal tribute of wampum to Boston, and were fain to conclude a treaty in which they promised to behave themselves well in the future.