The Iroquois, for instance, held their own against all comers for two centuries.

Many other tribes stayed for a time the oncoming white flood, or even drove it back; in Maine the settlers were for a hundred years confined to a narrow strip of sea-coast.

Against the Spaniards, there were even here and there Indian nations who definitely recovered the ground they had lost.
When the whites first landed, the superiority and, above all, the novelty of their arms gave them a very great advantage.

But the Indians soon became accustomed to the new-comers' weapons and style of warfare.

By the time the English had consolidated the Atlantic colonies under their rule, the Indians had become what they have remained ever since, the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colonists of European stock.