liberty of commonage for wood, timber, feeding of his cattle, upon any common land, within our township or plantation.”

"Second day of May, 1677.

Signed, sealed, and delivered in presence of us,

THOMAS DANFORTH, Assistant.

Entered and recorded at the Registry at Cambridge.

*99

It is thus described by Gookin in 1674. "In this Indian Plantation there is a piece of fertile land, containing above 150 acres, upon which the Indians have, not long since, lived, and planted several apple trees thereupon, which bear abundance of fruit; but now the Indians are removed from it about a mile. This tract of land doth so embosom itself into the English town, that it is encompassed about with it, except one way; and upon the edge of this land the English have placed their Meeting House." It was a favorite design of the benevolent Gookin, which he proposed in his Historical Collections, "as an expedient for civilizing the Indians, and propagating the Gospel among them," to have this tract of land, which, with certain meadows and woodland, he says, "is well worth £200 in money, set apart for an Indian free school; and there to build a convenient house for a school master and his family, and under the same roof may be a room for a school." This, with the necessary out buildings, he computes will not cost more than £200 in money; and the use of the land, he thinks, will be an adequate compensation for the services of the school master.

"Moreover, it is very probable," he adds, "that the English people of Marlborough will gladly and readily send their children to the same school, and pay the school master for them, which will better his maintenance; for they have no school in that place at the present."

We learn further from this account that the number of families in Marlborough, at this period, did not amount to fifty, every village containing that number being required by the laws to provide a school "to teach the English tongue, and to write." "These

*May 18, 1682. Waban, Piamboo, Great James, Thomas Tray, and John Wincols, proprietors of the Indian Plantation of Whipsufferadge, granted to Samuel Gookin, of Cambridge, liberty to erect a Saw Mill upon any brook or run of water within the said Plantation, with land not exceeding three acres, use of timber, &c. for 30 years.

people of Marlborough," says he, somewhat indignantly, "wanting a few of fifty families, do take that low advantage to ease their purses of this common charge."

What reception this proposal met with, we are not informed. It was mest certainly an expedient that promised the happiest consequences, and worthy of the liberal and philanthropic mind of its author. How close is the resemblance between this plan, conceived more than one hundred and fifty years since, and that of the Indian schools recently established at Brainerd, Eliot, Mayhew, and other places in the United States ?*

The people of Marlborough, notwithstanding the severity of Gookin's censure, have not been behind other towns in New England in their attention to schools. Owing to the troubles which ensued, soon after the date of Gookin's Historical Collections, they felt themselves unable to meet the expense of a public school for several following years. At length, however, in 1698, Benjamin Franklin was employed as a school master in Marlborough, from the first of November, 1696, to the last of March, 1697, at eight shillings per week; "he engaging carefully to teach all such youth as com or are sent to him, to read English once a day, att least, or more, if need require; also to learn to write and cast accounts." The school was kept in Isaac Wood's house, which was then unoccupied.

*1 Hist. Col. I. p. 220.

+ This person was probably an uncle of Doctor Benjamin Franklin. In the first volume of Franklin's Works, edited by his grandson, William Temple Franklin, page 6, is the following account of the person referred to above. "My grandfather had four sons, who grew up, viz: Thomas, John, Benjamin and Josiah. Benjamin was bred a silk dyer, serving an apprenticeship in London. He was an ingenious man. I remember, when I was a boy, he came to my father's, in Boston, and resided in the house with us for several years. There was always a particular affection between my father and him, and I was his godson. He lived to a great age. He left behind him two quarto volumes of manuscript of his own poetry, consisting of fugitive pieces addressed to his friends. He had invented a short hand of his own, which he taught me, but not having practiced it, I have now forgotten it. He was very pious, and an assiduous attendant at the sermons of the best preachers, which he reduced to writing according to his method, and had thus collected several volumes of them. He was also a good deal of a politician; too much so, perhaps, for his station. There fell lately into my possession, in London, a collection he made of all the principal political pamphlets relating to public affairs, from the year 1641 to 1717; many of the volumes are wanting, as appears, by their numbering; but there still remains eight volumes in folio, and twenty in quarto and octavo. A dealer in old books had met with them, and knowing me by name, having bought books of him, he brought them to me. It would appear that my uncle must have left them here, when he went to America, which was about fifty years ago. I found several of his notes in the margins. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, is still living in Boston."

Jan. 10, 1698-9. The town voted to build a school house. After this, Mr. Jonathan Johnson was employed as a school master for many years in succession.

The Indian Plantation was laid out agreeably to the following report of the Commissioners appointed as aforesaid.

"WHIPSUPPENICKE THE 19th OF JUNE, 1659. "The Committee appointed by the Gen. Court to lay out a Plantation for the Indians of 6000 acres at the above named place, having given Mr. Eliot* a meeting and duly weighed all his exceptions in the behalf of the Indians; first, what hath beene formerly acted and returned to the Gen. Court, do judge meete in way of complyance, that the bounds of the Indian Plantation bee enlarged unto the most westerly part of the fence, that now standeth on the west side of the Hill or planting field called Ockoocangansett, and from thence to bee extended on a direct north line untill they have their full quantity of 6000 acres: the bounds of their Plantation in all other respects, wee judge meete that they stand as in the form returned; and that their full complement of meadow by Court Grant, may stand and bee exactly measured out by an artist within the limits of the aforesaid lines, when the Indians, or any in their behalf, are willing to be at the charges thereof: provided alwaies that the Indians may have noe power to make sale thereof, of all or any part of their abovesaid lands, otherwise than by the consent of the Hond Gen1 Court; or when any shall be made or happen, the Plantation of English there seated may have the first tender of it from the Court; which caution wee the rather insert, because not only a considerable part of the nearest and best planting land is beereby taken away from the English (as we are informed) but the nearest and best part of their meadow, by estimation about an hundred acres in one place, that this north line doth take away, which tendeth much to the detrimenting of the English Plantation, especially if the lands should bee impropriated to any other use than the Indians proposed, that is to say, for an Indian Plantation, or for the accommodating their Plantation, they should bee deprived thereof."

The celebrated John Eliot, minister of Roxbury, commonly called the Apostle of the Indians.

The account given of this Plantation by Capt. afterwards, Maj. Gen. Gookin, of Cambridge, who visited it in 1674, more than one hundred and fifty years since, will be interesting to those who have not already seen it.

"Okommakamesit, alias Marlborough, is situated about twelve miles north northeast from Hassanamesitt, (Grafton) about thirty miles from Boston westerly.

"This village contains about ten families, and consequently about fifty souls. The quantity of land appertaining to it is six thousand acres. It is much of it good land, and yieldeth plenty of corn, being well husbanded. It is sufficiently stored with meadow, and is well wooded and watered. It hath several good orchards upon it, planted by the Indians: and is in itself a very good plantation. This town doth join so near to the English of Marlborough, that it (we might apply to it what) was spoken of David in type and our Lord Jesus Christ, the antitype, "Under his shadow ye shall rejoice:" but the Indians here do not much rejoice under the Englishmen's shadow; who do so overtop them in their number of people, stocks of cattle, &c. that the Indians do not greatly flourish, or delight in their station at present.

"Their ruler here was Onomog, who is lately deceased, about two months since; which is a great blow to that place. He was a pious and discreet man, and the very soul as it were of that place. Their teacher's name is **** Here they observe the same decorum for religion and civil order, as is done in other towns. They have a constable and other officers, as the rest have. The Lord sancti

fy the present affliction they are under by reason of their bereavements; and raise up others, and give them grace to promote religion and good order among them."

From this account, which is given by an eye witness, it is pretty evident that a spirit of jealousy and envy against their more prosperous neighbors of the English Plantation, was even then rankling in their hearts: and we are not much surprised to learn that, in the calamitous war which broke out in the following year between the English and Indians, known by the name of King Philip's war, some of these half civilized sons of the forest were found among the enemy, at the place of their general rendezvous, in the western part of Worcester County, a few days previous to their desolating march

*Hutchinson says his name was Solomon, judged to be a serious and sound Christian. p. 167.

through the country, in which Lancaster, and many other towns, experienced the horrors of savage warfare.*

James Quanipaug, who was sent out with another Indian by the name of Job to reconnoitre the enemy, then in the Western part of this County, in the beginning of 1676, passed through Hassanamesit (Grafton) thence to Manexit, (a part of Woodstock) where he was taken by seven Indians and carried to Menimesseg, (New Braintree) where he found many of the enemy, and among them "the Marlborough Indians who pretended that they had been fetched away by the other Indians." Some of them professed to be willing to return. Philip is said at this time to have been about half a day's journey on the other side of Fort Orania, (Albany) and the Hadley Indians on this side. They were then preparing for that memorable expedition, in which the towns of Lancaster, Groton, Marlborough, Sudbury, and Medfield, were destroyed.

The letter of James Quanipaug bears date 24th: 11 mo: 1675. (Jan. 24, 1676.) It was only 16 days after this, viz. Feb. 10th O. S. that they made a descent upon Lancaster, with 1500 warriors, and butchered or carried into captivity nearly all the inhabitants of that flourishing village.

Whether the Marlborough Indians joined in this expedition, or left the enemy and returned to their homes, I have not been able after diligent enquiry to ascertain. The little that I have been able to collect, though corroborated by circumstantial evidence, rests mainly on tradition.

Though it appears from the testimony of James Quanipaug that the Marlborough Indians were with Philip's men at Menimesseg, it is by no means certain that all who belonged to the Plantation had gone over to the enemy. Tradition says, that those who remained at home were suspected of treachery, and that representations to that effect were made to the governor, (Leverett) who dispatched a company of soldiers under the command of Capt. Mosely, to convey them to Boston. They reached Marlborough, it is said, in the night; and early in the morning, before the Indians had any suspicion of their design, surrounded the fort to which they were accustomed to repair at night, siezed on their arms, and obliged them to surrender. They attempted no resistance, and it is by no means certain that they entertained any hostile designs against the English. They were, however, taken into the custody of the soldiers; and, having their hands fastened behind their backs, and then being connected together by means of a cart rope, they were in this manner driven down to Boston, whence it is probable, that they were conveyed, in company with the Indians of Natick and other places, to one of the islands in the harbor, and kept in durance till the close of the war.

This tradition is corroborated by the following circumstances.

In the account of Daniel Gookin, in 1 Hist. Col. 1, 228, it is said that "some instances of perfidy in Indians, who had professed themselves friendly, excited suspicions against all their tribes. The General Court of Massachusetts passed several severe laws against them; and the Indians of Natick and other places, who had subjected themselves to the English government, were hurried down to Long Island (Hutchinson says Deer Island,) in the harbor of Boston, where they remained all winter, and endured inexpressible hardships." We learn further from Hutchinson, that the Indians of Punkapog alone (now Stoughton) were exempted from this severity of treatment. The ground of the harsh measures adopted in reference to the Indians in the neighborhood of Boston, was, the perfidious conduct of the Springfield Indians, in assisting in the destruction of Westfield, Hadley, and other places, in October 1675. "This instance of perfidy," says Hutchinson, "seems to have increased the jealousies and suspicions, which had before begun of the Indians round Boston, viz. Punkapog, Natick, &c."

At the session, in October, the General Court ordered "that no person shall entertain, own, or countenance any Indian under the penalty of being a betrayer of this government."

"That a guard be set at the entrance of the town of Boston, and that no