r brad with the
parel of our liues & allso broght uery low by so grat a charg
of bilding garisons & fortefycations by ordur of athorety &
thar is saural of our Inhabitants ramoued out of town & others
are prouiding to remoue, axcapt somthing be don for our
Incoridgment for we are so few & so por that we canot pay two
ministors nathar ar we wiling to liue without any we spand so
much time in waching and warding that we can doe but litel els
& truly we haue liued allmost 2 yers more like soulders then
other wise & accapt your honars can find out some bater way
for our safty and support we cannot uphold as a town ather by
remitting our tax or tow alow pay for building the sauarall
forts alowed and ordred by athority or alls to alow the one
half of our own Inhabitants to be under pay or to grant
liberty for our remufe Into our naiburing towns to tak cer for
oursalfs all which if your honors shall se meet to grant you
will hereby gratly incoridg your humble pateceners to conflect
with th many trubls we are ensadant unto.[50:1]

Forced together into houses for protection, getting in their crops at
the peril of their lives, the frontier townsmen felt it a hardship to
contribute also to the taxes of the province while they helped to
protect the exposed frontier. In addition there were grievances of
absentee proprietors who paid no town taxes and yet profited by the
exertions of the frontiersmen; of that I shall speak later.

If we were to trust to these petitions asking favors from the government
of the colony, we might impute to these early frontiersmen a degree of
submission to authority unlike that of other frontiersmen,[51:1] and
indeed not wholly warranted by the facts. Reading carefully, we find
that, however prudently phrased, the petitions are in fact complaints
against taxation; demands for expenditures by the colony in their
behalf; criticisms of absentee proprietors; intimations that they may be
forced to abandon the frontier position so essential to the defense of
the settled eastern country.

The spirit of military insubordination characteristic of the frontier is
evident in the accounts of these towns, such as Pynchon's in 1694,
complaining of the decay of the fortifications at Hatfield, Hadley, and
Springfield: "the people a little wilful. Inclined to doe when and how
they please or not at all."[51:2] Saltonstall writes from H