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What I found most interesting in reading this chapter was that the Puritans had trouble getting their vision of a “city on a hill” to come to fruition, and Taylor references how the American Indians had a much healthier communal society that took care of everyone in the community. It is extremely ironic that many European immigrants saw these people as Barbarians when the native people had what the Puritans were searching for (aside from the absence of Christianity in the native people’s communities). Taylor Simmons does point out that not everyone saw these ‘Barbarians’ as savage, sub-human people groups, but the large majority of the settlers did not care enough to consider the American Indians’ life style, so most people did not have the same revelation as Roger Williams. I think that overall (Alan) Taylor does a good job of portraying the colonial Indian wars, and I understand that covering an entire war in two to three pages is extremely difficult, but I wish he would have spent more time covering the Pequot War because I feel like the colonists’ attitudes to the Indians is portrayed very clearly. He could have built on Governor William Bradford’s view that “God had found them worthy” (196) to take over the land. Also, many religious leaders’ responses to the war contradicted what Williams thought, including Reverend John Robinson of the Plymouth Colony who said, “how happy a thing it had been, if you had converted some before you had killed any…” (197). Religion continued to play a key roll in the settlers’ attitude to the Indians, and Taylor could have devoted more time to this topic. I like Taylor’s use of primary sources in the chapter, and the quotes he uses prove how much religion dictated confrontation with the Indians. I just wish he would have built on these sources more. Taylor supports his argument of colonists changing the environment (and, therefore, the lives) of the American Indians and how they dwindled into a small minority because of the effect of European settlement.