In all twenty-six men. The whole regiment, drawn from the whole County of Barnstable, mustered but 149 men, nearly one-fifth of whom were volunteers from the little Indian Plantation of Marshpee, which then did not contain over one hundred male heads of families! No white town in the County furnished any thing like this proportion of the 149 volunteers. The Indian soldiers fought through the war; and as far as we have been able to ascertain the fact, from documents or tradition, all but one, fell martyrs to liberty, in the struggle for Independence. There is but one Indian now living, who receives the reward of his services as a revolutionary soldier, old Isaac Wickham, and he was not in Bradford's regiment. Parson Holly, in a memorial to the Legislature in 1783, states that most of the women in Marshpee, had lost their husbands in the war. At that time there were seventy widows on the Plantation.
But from that day, until the year 1834, the Marshpee Indians were enslaved by the laws of Massachusetts, and deprived of every civil right which belongs to man. White Overseers had power to tear their children from them and bind them out where they pleased. They could also sell the services of any adult Indian on the Plantation they chose to call idle, for three years at a time, and send him where they pleased, renewing the lease every three years, and thus, make him a slave for life.
It was with the greatest effort this monstrous injustice was in some degree remedied last winter, by getting the facts before the Legislature, in spite of a most determined opposition from those who had fattened for years on the spoils of poor Marshpee. In all but one thing, a reasonable law was made for the Indians. That one thing was giving the Governor power to appoint a Commissioner over the Indians for three years. This was protested against by the friends of the Indians, but in vain; and they were assured that this appointment would be safe in the hands of the Governor. They hoped so, and assented; but no sooner was the law passed, than the enemies of the Indians induced the Governor to appoint as the Commissioner, the person whom of all others they least wished to have, a former Overseer, against whom there were strong prejudices. The Indians remonstrated, and besought, but in vain. The Commissioner was appointed, and to all appeals to make a different appointment, a deaf ear has been turned. It seems as if a deliberate design had been formed somewhere, to defeat all the Legislature has done for the benefit of this oppressed people.
The consequences have been precisely what the Indians and their friends feared. Party divisions have grown up among them, arising out of the want of confidence in their Commissioner. He is found always on the side of their greatest trouble; the minister who unjustly holds almost 500 acres of the best land in the plantation, wrongfully given to him by an unlawful and arbitrary act of the State, which, in violation of the Constitution, appropriates the property of the Indians to pay a man they dislike, for preaching a doctrine they will not listen to, to a white congregation, while the native preachers, whom the Indians prefer, are left without a cent, and deprived of the Meeting-house, built by English liberality for the use of the Indians. The dissatisfaction has gone on increasing. The accounts with the former Overseers remain unadjusted to the satisfaction of the Selectmen. The Indians have no adviser near them in whom they can confide; those who hold the power, appear regardless of their wishes or their welfare; no pains is taken by the authorities to punish the wretches who continue to sell rum to those who will buy it; and though the Indians are still struggling to advance in improvement, every obstacle is thrown in their way that men can devise, whose intent it is to get them back to a state of vassalage, that they may get hold of their property. All this, we are satisfied, from personal inspection, is owing to the injudicious appointment made by Gov. Davis, of a commissioner, and yet the Governor unfortunately seems indisposed to listen to any application for a remedy to the existing evils.
The presses around us, who are so eloquent in denouncing the President for his conduct towards the Southern Indians, say not a word in behalf of our own Indians, whose fathers poured out their blood for out independence. Is this right, and ought the Indians to be sacrificed to the advantage a single man derives from holding an office of very trifling profit? Let us look at home, before we complain of the treatment of the Indians at the South.
The following; extract refers to the act passed to incorporate the Marshpee District, after so much trouble and expense to the Indians. I should suppose the people of Massachusetts would have been glad to have done us this justice, without making so much difficulty, if they had been aware of the true state of facts.
THE MARSHPEE ACT
Restoring the rights of self-government, in part, to the Marshpee Indians, of which our legislation has deprived them for one hundred and forty years, passed the Senate of Massachusetts yesterday, to the honor of that body, without a single dissenting vote. Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. Senator Barton, for the persevering and high-minded manner in which he has prepared and sustained this act. With two or three exceptions, but which, perhaps, may not be indispensable to the success of the measure, it is all the Indians or their friends should desire, under existing circumstances. The clause reserving the right of repeal, is probably the most unfortunate provision in the act, as it may tend to disquiet the Indians, and to give the Commissioner a sort of threatening control, that will add too much to his power, and may endanger all the benefits of the seventh section. This provision was not introduced by the Committee, but was opposed by Messrs. Barton and Strong, as wholly unnecessary.
[Daily Advocate.
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