William Bradford's "The Ruins of Humanity" has the passage that makes the claim that "Convinced thus of his divine right to Indian territories, the Puritan discovered in the Indians themselves evidence of a demonic hostility to the fundamental notion of divinity." In the 17th century, many Puritans held the view that they were God's chosen people and had a divine right to conquer the New World and its resources, including the lands of the native peoples. This viewpoint is reflected in this remark. This viewpoint that native peoples were "savages" who were morally and mentally lower to the Puritans was frequently shared with this one. Bradford, a Puritan leader and the colony's governor, published "The Ruins of Humanity," a history of the first few decades of the Plymouth colony.