Writers and textbook publishers of American history have generally omitted or, if mentioned at all, glossed over historic accounts of genocide and inhumane treatment of American Indian populations. Had factual accounts of European colonization and Euro-American settling of the Americas existed, it is doubtful that the white population would have allowed these accounts to be placed on the bookshelves. One such factual account that does exist, and which virtually condemns a certain group of early colonists, is that of the 1637 Puritan annihilation of the Pequots in the Connecticut Valley. Over five hundred noncombatants, prisoners, and surrendering Pequots were murdered in the confrontation. The few who survived were sold off to other tribes or to plantations in the West Indies. The account reads:

In 1638, the Puritans and their Indian allies signed the Treaty of Hartford, which declared the Pequot nation dissolved. The spirit behind this genocide is encapsulated in the victory sermon of Increase Mather, a leading Puritan minister, who asked his congregation to thank God 'that on this day we have sent six hundred heathen souls to hell' (Chalk 1990:180).


From initial contact to present times, the white Judeo-Christian attitude toward American Indians has been one of superiority. Divine providence and manifest destiny allowed the immigrant Europeans to use whatever means possible to secure the Americas as their New World. The Puritans found help in their expansionist exploits when thousands of indigenous inhabitants succumbed to a smallpox epidemic in the early 1630s. The town records of Charlestown, Virginia, report that "without this remarkable and terrible stroke of God upon the natives, [we] would with much more difficulty have found room, and at far greater charge have obtained and purchased land" (Chalk 1990:185). The Puritan policy was God-directed and anyone who opposed the church opposed God.The original American Indian populations were demoralized, depressed, and severely reduced throughout the seventeenth century. The ever-expanding Euro-American contingent was hale and hearty and eager to conquer new frontiers and acquire more and more land. By 1700 the white population far outnumbered that of the American Indian. The Europeans' proclamation of sovereignty over North America was irreversible.