But the "cruel prince" was far away out of sight, and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the heathen who came into immediate contact with him.

Indeed, he was the first to make any real effort for their conversion.
The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.
The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall, well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois nation.

They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting, beneath their dignity.

Their nature had much that was high and noble; and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's vices or his cruelty.

They were neither the outcast savages nor the abject inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants, but far better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of the magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his word, and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent.