Novelists like Cooper, historians like Parkman,
poets like Longfellow, have dealt with the rich material offered
by the life of the aborigines, but the long series begins with
the scribbled story of colonists. Here are comedy and tragedy,
plain narratives of trading and travel, missionary zeal and
triumphs; then the inevitable alienation of the two races and the
doom of the native.
The "noble savage" note may be found in John Rolfe, the husband
of Pocahontas, with whom, poor fellow, his "best thoughts are so
intangled and enthralled." Other Virginians, like Smith,
Strachey, and Percy, show close naturalistic observation, touched
with the abounding Elizabethan zest for novelties. To Alexander
Whitaker, however, these "naked slaves of the devil" were "not so
simple as some have supposed." He yearned and labored over their
souls, as did John Eliot and Roger Williams and Daniel Gookin of
New England. In the Pequot War of 1637 the grim settlers resolved
to be rid of that tribe once for all, and the narratives of
Captain Edward Johnson and Captain John Mason, who led in the
storming and slaughter at the Indians' Mystic Fort, are as
piously relentless as anything in the Old Testament.
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