on a whaling voyage would earn four or five hundred dollars, and
the shipmaster would account to the overseers for the whole sum. The
Indian would get some small part of his due, in order to encourage
him to go again, and gain more for his white masters, to support
themselves and educate their children with. And this is but a specimen
of the systematic course taken to degrade the tribe from generation
to generation. I could tell of one of our masters who has not only
supported himself and family out of the proceeds of our lands and
labors, but has educated a son at College, at our expense.

It is true that if any Indian elected to leave the plantation, he
might settle and accumulate property elsewhere, and be free; but if he
dared to return home with his property, it was taken out of his hands
by the Board of Overseers, according to the unjust law. His property
had no more protection from their rapacity than the rest of the
plantation. In the name of Heaven, (with due reverence,) I ask,
what people could improve under laws which gave such temptation and
facility to plunder? I think such experiments as our government have
made ought to be seldom tried.

If the government of Massachusetts do not see fit to believe me, I
would fain propose to them a test of the soundness of my reasoning.
Let them put our white neighbors in Barnstable County under the
guardianship of a Board of Overseers, and give them no privileges
other than have been allowed to the poor, despised Indians. Let them
inflict upon the said whites a preacher whom they neither love nor
respect, and do not wish to hear. Let them, in short, be treated
just as the Marshpee tribe have been, I think there will soon be a
declension of morals and population. We shall see if they will be able
to build up a town in such circumstances. Any enterprising men who may