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I !    146    UNITED    STATES    GAZETTEER.

j    repurchase their farms or leave them, suffering over again the grievances which disgraced the

i    i    government of Andros, and ended in his seizure and confinement by the injured and enraged

|    i    people.* His arbitrary cupidity, in -which he but too faithfully imitated his worthless master,

'    the bigoted and tyrannical James II., set an unhappy example, which yet was followed, and

|    produced    a hardihood of opposition that nerved the men of Vermont to daring actions.

I    When    the country which forms the sea-coast of New England began to be settled    from

^    Europe, the claim of Massachusetts to territory was extended to “ three miles north of the

j    River Merrimac." Casting one's eye on the map, it is easy to perceive, that a line drawn due

:    west from this northern boundary, as it is formed by the bend of the river towards the north,

!    not far from its mouth, would cut off a considerable portion of the southern part of what now

constitutes Vermont. The Massachusetts government, therefore, when it extended its cares
|    to the security of the northern frontiers against the Indians of Canada, without any hesitation

l    j    or doubt, as it seems, formed, in 1723, a lodgment in what is now Brattleborough, on the

I    western bank of Connecticut River. There, during the distressing war with the natives, aided

j    by the French, their instigators, which spread such terror and desolation along the borders of

the settlements of Maine and New Hampshire, as tvell as Massachusetts, a fort was constructed
^!    by Lieutenant Governor Dummer, of the latter state, which received his name, and the next

^{1    !}    year a settlement followed. This was the first English settlement within the limits of

i    Vermont, f

But although the frontier towards Canada was thus extended, and, under the shelter of a
¹    fort, the labors of clearing and cultivating the land appeared practicable, yet the country was

j    by no means in a state of security. We must never forget that American colonists were from

different nations. Spaniards, we know, peopled the southern part of the continent, or overran
it with their merciless troops, at an early period after its discovery by Columbus. And, jeal-
ous as they ever were of any encroachment on their power, wealth, or influence, they would
not have left “ the bleak, inhospitable north " to France or England, each of which nations took
a portion of it, had they discovered in it any gold, "which, as the commodity most available for
immediate use, and soonest adapted to the gratification of eager avarice, they chiefly sought.
By Papal permission and decree, they claimed all America. But France resisted this claim,
and labored to form there an empire of her own; and Charlevoix, the historian of it, boasts its
extent as “ greater than all Europe," f although the proud Spaniard termed it “ of nothing
worth." § This empire she exerted herself to establish and enlarge by all practicable means.
Among these was the employment of a religious influence over the minds of the natives.
Hence, in no inconsiderable degree, the efforts of her able, sagacious, indefatigable mission-
aries, most if not all of whom were Jesuits, bound to an implicit obedience to their head, eager
i    to extend to heathen nations the papal sway, which had suffered so much from Luther and the

reformation, and expecting to merit everlasting life by their exertions and sacrifices in spread-
ing the triumphs of their faith; at the same time looking on the English as heretics, beyond
the pale of the church, and so doomed to everlasting perdition. Religious bigotry, and hatred,
and contempt were all combined, in their almost unmitigated hostility; the full spirit of which
seemed imparted to their native converts, in addition to their own savage propensities and
habits. Can we wonder, then, at the dread of Indian warfare that pervaded the frontier settle-
ments of New England on the north ?

It must, however, be observed, that if treachery and cunning marked the Indian, as sensible
of his disadvantages in open warfare with his foes of European origin; and breach of promise,
and cruelty, and revenge, too often distinguished the Romanist, and led him also to connive
:    at and permit in his Indian subjects and allies atrocities at which Christian civilization shud-

ders ; there was yet no disposition in the Puritans of New England to view with favor the
•    character or conduct of a Papist. The very name was odious.

Vermont, then, as a “ thoroughfare " between nations of different origin, pursuits, and

* See Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., &c.    f Holmes's Amer. Annals, I. p. 531.

J Hist, de la Nouv. France, t. I. p. 1.    5 The import of the name “ Canada."