Larry Schweikert

They heard that the pilgrims got there, that they hadn't been squashed or extinguished by the crown, that they were thriving with their own religion.

And so all sorts of other religious groups, sects began to come in, whether it was the Quakers who moved out into Pennsylvania, whether it was the Catholics who came into Maryland.

It was kind of a religious movement that sparked the rise of New England into all of these colonies.

But the second key element there is land, that you could always get more land.

Now,

we've kind of harped on this business of titles and deeds, but it is important that if there were conflicts with the Indians, the settlers would always say to the Indians, okay, where's your land deed?

Where's your title?

And of course, they didn't have it.

The Indians, with a couple of exceptions, had mostly an oral tradition, and they didn't have written titles and deeds.

So they were at a disadvantage against Western Europeans

No, you're absolutely right, which is why there's constant frontier warfare.

Everywhere you look, there's warfare between whites and Indians, and they would draft treaties.

But again, these treaties are hard to enforce because you don't have hard and fast lines.

Yes, it was very much like having, I don't know, a nation the size of Holland, if you want to liken the pilgrims and the people of Massachusetts to a Holland, compared to all these other big powers of Indian confederations, whether it was the Mohicans, the Hurons, the Narragansetts, the Penobscots, the...

toxins.

You have all of these different tribes.

Some of them are allied with each other.

Some of them are deadly enemies to each other.

Some of them ally with the whites.

Some of them oppose the whites.