In his Brief Description of New York (London, 1670), Daniel Denton says, in the quaint English of a son of a Presbyterian manse on 17th-century Long Island,
"To say something of the Indians, there is now but few upon the Island, and those few no ways hurtful but rather serviceable to the English, and it is to be admired, how strangely they have decreased by the Hand of God, since the English first settling of those parts; for since my time [Denton was born in 1644], where there were six towns, they are reduced to two small villages, and it hath generally been 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."
Elsewhere in his panegyric of New York, which is really a plug for immigration, Denton praises its "sweet and pleasant Air, and a continuation of such Influences as tend to the Health both of Man and Beast." He notices no contradiction between the blooming health of the English and their livestock, and the fact that the Indians are dropping dead from raging mortal diseases. The remarkable decline in the Indian population that he reports has nothing to do with interracial conflict, for he describes the treaties and the trade that bind the communities as being mutually "serviceable." He would know all about that, because in 1662 and 1663 his job was to negotiate the purchase of lands from the natives. So the Divine Hand was encompassing the convenient reduction of the Indian population by means of (here Denton got them in the wrong order) internecine conflict between tribes, and diseases to which the English were immune and the Indians were not.
