"It's just like the West," Jones said, "when we were trying to settle it with the Indians."
He wouldn't elaborate.
"It means that we have to kill all of them," said a captain nearby, half-joking.

"Forty years after the Pequot War, Puritans and Indians fought again. This time it was the Wampanoags, occupying the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, who were in the way and also beginning to trade some of their land to people outside the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their chief, Massasoit, was dead. His son Wamsutta had been killed by Englishmen, and Wamsutta's brother Metacom (later to be called King Philip by the English) became chief. The English found their excuse, a murder which they attributed to Metacom, and they began a war of conquest against the Wampanoags, a war to take their land. They were clearly the aggressors, but claimed they attacked for preventive purposes. As Roger Williams, more friendly to the Indians than most, put it: 'All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive.'"

posted by Andy | link | | |