Nonetheless, the simple existence of the Indian slave trade—thousands of native men and women working in bondage for Europeans—was a testament to Indians’ catastrophic loss of power and status. What happened? Europeans won military victories in New England, historians say, partly because they were divided among themselves. Indians were unwilling, too, to match the English tactic of massacring whole villages. But another, bigger part of the reason for the foreigners’ triumph was that by the 1670s the newcomers outnumbered the natives. Groups like the Narragansett, which had been spared by the
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