To the dangers arising from the ill-will of the crown, and from these theological quarrels, there was added the danger of a general attack by the savages.  Down to this time, since the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the settlers of New England had been in no way molested by the natives.  Massasoit’s treaty with the Pilgrims was scrupulously observed on both sides, and kept the Wampanoags quiet for fifty-four years.  The somewhat smaller tribe which took its name from the Massawachusett, or Great Hill, of Milton, kept on friendly terms with the settlers about Boston, because these red men coveted the powerful aid of the white strangers in case of war with their hereditary foes the Tarratines, who dwelt in the Piscataqua country.  It was only when the English began to leave these coast regions and press into the interior that trouble arose.  The western shores of Narragansett bay were possessed by the numerous and warlike tribe of that name, which held in partial subjection the Nyantics near Point Judith.  To the west of these, and about the Thames river, dwelt the still more formidable Pequots, a tribe which for bravery and ferocity asserted a preeminence in New England not unlike that which the Iroquois league of the Mohawk valley was fast winning over all North America east of the Mississippi.  North of the Pequots, the squalid villages of the Nipmucks were scattered over the beautiful highlands that stretch in long ridges from Quinsigamond to Nichewaug, and beyond toward blue Monadnock.  Westward, in the lower Connecticut valley, lived the Mohegans, a small but valiant tribe, now for some time held tributary to their Pequot cousins, and very restive under the yoke.  The thickly wooded mountain ranges between the Connecticut and the Hudson had few human inhabitants.  These hundred miles of crag and forest were a bulwark none too wide or strong against the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail.  Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga.  The scowls that greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote:  From the Indians:  the Pequot supremacy]

Among the various points in which civilized man surpasses the savage none is more conspicuous than the military brute force which in the highest civilization is always latent though comparatively seldom exerted.  The sudden intrusion of English warfare into the Indian world of the seventeenth century may well have seemed to the red men a supernatural visitation, like the hurricane or the earthquake.  The uncompromising vigour with which the founders of Massachusetts carried on their work was viewed in some quarters with a dissatisfaction which soon thrust the English migration into the very heart of the Indian country.