The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s8.77

c4.s8.77

63. The idea of their being divinely ordained was really a much older English assumption. In *A Brief Description of New York Formerly called New-Netherlands*, published in 1670, referring to the indigenous people in that part of North America, Daniel Denton observes: 'It is to be admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the English first settling of those parts; for since my time, where there were six towns, they are reduced to two small villages, and it hath been generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians either by wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease.' (Reprint 1902 p.45)