arshpees; I fear, under a mere pretext of doing
them good; and, therefore, that they and the overseers might have a
support from the plantation, the owners were constantly proclaimed
to be savages. I wonder what the whites would say, should the Indians
take possession of any part of their property. Many and many a red man
has been butchered for a less wrong than the Marshpees complain of.

Neither of the reverend gentlemen set up schools, and when the
Marshpee children were put out to service, it was with the express
understanding, as their parents all agree, that they should not be
schooled. Many of those who held them in servitude, used them more
like dogs than human beings, feeding them scantily, lodging them hard,
and clothing them with rags. Such I believe has always been the case
about Indian reservations. I had a sister who was slavishly used and
half starved; and I have not forgotten, nor can I ever forget, the
abuse I received myself. To keep Indian children from hearing the
gospel preached in a land of gospel privileges, in order that they
might do work unbefitting the Sabbath at home, has been the practice,
almost without an exception, wherever I have had opportunity to
observe. I think that the Indians ought to keep the twenty-fifth
of December[5], and the fourth of July, as days of fasting and
lamentation, and dress themselves, and their houses, and their cattle,
in mourning weeds, and pray to Heaven for deliverance from their
oppressions; for surely there is no joy in those days for the man of
color.

Let the reader judge from what has been stated, what good the Marshpee
Indians have derived from their two missionaries. I say boldly, none
at all. On the contrary, they have been in the way of the good that
would have been done by others. I say also that all the religious
advantages the Indians have enjoyed, have come from other ministers,
and members of other churches. I am equally sure that the money paid
for our use, from the Williams Fund, has been a curse, and not a
blessing to us. Had some good Christian minister come to the tribe
with half the sum, there is no doubt that God would have made him an
instrument to raise up a respectable Christian Society; whereas the
fund has only served to build up the missionaries and the whites about
the plantation. I am glad that it has done even this good; though it
be to our enemies; for I am not of a spirit to envy the prosperity
of others; I rejoice in it. But