whom he had met carrying rum," and the justices promised the punishment of the offender. The justices, on their part, charged that the Indians

" had hired

negroes to fight against the Christ

Not a conference passed ians/' which the sachem denied. without a claim for lands taken from the Indians without com pensation,

many of them entirely unfounded, according to the

English interpretation of boundaries, but doubtless well founded in the absolute knowledge of the claimants, who, in their sales,

had designated hills and not intervening valleys.

The principal

purpose of the conferences, however, appears to have been to dismiss the Indians with assurances of friendship, a few blankets

and considerable rum.

If they rapidly became a " contemptible

people," it was in consequence of the influences by which they were surrounded. In their wanderings a few of them came un der the teachings of the Moravians, and united with the Mahican

converts in Pennsylvania, but to them as an organization no The people - of Kingston missionary work was undertaken. cared little for their own improvement, much less for that of the Indians, and preferred rather to earn for themselves the

sobri

" the Sodom of New York," than to perform those quet of acts of charity and mercy which spring from a proper apprecia

tion of the Christian character.

Had

they followed the exter

minating policy of the Puritans it would have been more to their credit.

The

Wappingers, too, maintained an organization on the the changes which surrounded and attended