We have been sold a bill of goods concerning the American Indians. They were a vicious group of people, and attacked white settlers on a daily basis, unprovoked. Within the stories of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, is a plot by 4 surrounding tribes to wipe out the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims found out about this by finding a sick Indian in the woods. They took him home and nursed him to health. He was so grateful, he told them of the plot.
Captain Miles Standish gathered his musket and knife and went to confront each tribes chief to a fight to the death. What I cannot remember, is he either killed 3 chiiefs and the last chickened out, or he killed 1 chief, and the other 3 chickened out.
Also, the French and Indian wars showed their humanity, some siding with the French, some with the British, for whatever reasons. What was just as bad, was the Indians in the northest, capturing white settlers, killing the babies, and carrying off the survivors to be sold as slaves to the French Canadians.
One book you should lok for, it has been re-printed, is the book titled, "The Redeemed captive Returning to Zion". It is the story of a Deerfield, Massachusetts Preacher, whose family was captured, (After the initial asault, where he witnessed the peace-loving-Indians take his baby by the legs and slam it's head against a tree to kill it, and also his wife got a tomahawk in the head, lived, but was insane after he returned) by Indians and sold as slaves to the French Canadian Catholic Priests, which according to his account and others, was a common thing, where Catholicism was forced upon them: Convert or Die!
Or are you thinking of some other battle that I am not thinking of?