After the death of Uncas, his eldest son, Oneko, became King of Mohegan, who refused to grant any deeds of land to the colony; whereupon, vexed at his wisdom and honor, they declared him an incestuous son, deposed him, and proclaimed his natural brother, Abimeleck, to be sachem of the Mohegans. Oneko gave a deed of all his lands to Mason and Harrison, who were his friends; as did Abimeleck, of the same lands, to the colony who had made him sachem. This laid a foundation for a suit at law, which was first
tried before the judges of the colony, where Mason, of course, lost his suit. He appealed to the King in Council, who ordered a special court to sit at Norwich, in Connecticut: Mr. Dudley, a learned man, and Governor of Massachusetts Bay, was president of it. The court met, and, having heard the evidence and pleadings of both parties, gave a verdict in favor of Mason’s claim. The colony appealed home to England, but never prosecuted their suit to an issue. Mason died. The colony kept possession under Abimeleck, their created King of Mohegan. About ten years ago the heirs of Mason and Harrison petitioned the government to decree that Dudley’s verdict should be enforced; but the colonists found means to confound the claims of those competitors without establishing their own. The truth is, neither the colonists nor Mason and Harrison ever had any deed or title to those lands from Sassacus or his heirs; their deeds spring from Uncas, already mentioned, a rebel subject of Sassacus, without any royal blood in his veins. Nevertheless, Mr. Neal, and others, who have written histories of New England, have taken especial care to vindicate the justice of the settlers, who always, they say, conscientiously purchased their lands of the sachems. I have given the reader some idea of the purchases of the first colonizers in Connecticut, who by their iniquitous act of making Sachems have entailed lawsuits without end on their posterity; for there is not one foot of land in the whole province which is not covered by ten deeds granted by ten different nominal sachems to ten different persons; and, what aggravates the misfortune, the courts of justice differ every session concerning the
true sachem, so that what a plaintiff recovers at a hearing before one jury, he loses upon a rehearing before another.
Enough, surely, has been said to nullify the colonists’ plea for having bought their lands from the Indians.
As to any purchases made of the Saybrook settlers, those of Hertford totally declined them till the farcical business respecting their charter came into agitation between the two juntos who procured it, of which I shall speak hereafter; and, so far were the people of Newhaven from buying any right of Fenwick or his associates that they scorned the idea of claiming under them; nay, it was one of their principal views, in the machinations wherein they were continually employed, to reduce the Saybrook colony under the tyranny of their own dominions as having no more title to the country than possession gave them. And, upon the other supposition, it is impossible to account for the neglect of the colonizers of Hertford to secure their lands by such a purchase, seeming as they did to ransack heaven and earth for a title satisfactory even in their own eyes; they were conscious no purchase of that kind could give them firmer footing than they had already.
The truth, therefore, undoubtedly is that Fenwick and Peters had no legal right to sell the lands they occupied, whatever might be their pretensions; nor, indeed, did they pretend to the power of selling more on their own account than was granted to them severally by their patrons—the Lords Say and Brook—which cannot be supposed but an inconsiderable proportion of their American property.
No wonder, then, that we find another claim set up—a claim by conquest. This was particularly agreeable to the genius of the Hertford and Newhaven heroes, but will nevertheless appear to as little for their right as their honor, from the following considerations: 1. The invaders did not find Connecticut in a state of Nature, but cultivated and settled by its Indian inhabitants, whose numbers were thousands, and who had three kings, viz., Connecticote, Quinnipiog, and Sassacus, of whom Connecticote was the emperor, or king of kings—a dignity he and his ancestors had enjoyed, according to the Indian mode of reckoning, twenty sticks,[13] i. e., time immemorial; 2. They had no authority to invade, make war upon, and conquer the Indians, who were not at war with the King of England, nor his patentees, or their assignees; and, 3. Seizures, without legal commission, of however long standing, do not convey right or title by the English law.
Feeling the weight of these considerations, the colonists have been obliged to found their claim to the country on their charter, which was obtained in 1662—more than twenty-six years after they had taken possession. Here, again, they are destitute of support, for the king, any more than his subjects, could not give to others the property of the Duke of Hamilton unless his title had been proved to be forfeited by due course of law. But the charter created no title; it merely conferred
on the people the authority of a legal corporation, without conveying any title to the lands. And, indeed, the prevarications of the colonists themselves with regard to the charter-claim sufficiently explode it. Whenever they find their property affected by any duty, custom, etc., imposed by Parliament, and warranted by charter, they allege that they got the lands in possession by their own arms, without the aid of the King and Parliament of Great Britain; as Charles II. allowed in granting the charter, which conveyed no title, but was founded upon the title they possessed before the date of it. At other times, when these selfish temporizers find it convenient either for promoting their own, or preventing their neighbors’ encroachments, they then plead their charter as the one only thing needful to prove their right of land even to the South Sea itself.
In short, and upon the whole, possession, begun in usurpation, is the best title the inhabitants of Connecticut ever had, or can set up, unless they can prove they hold the lands by a heavenly grant, as the Israelites did those of Canaan.