William Apess

“ Fish's mission is any criterion to judge others by. No doubt, many of them have done much good; but I greatly doubt that any missionary has ever thought of making the Indian or African his equal. As soon as we begin to talk about equal rights, the cry of amalgamation is set up, as if men of color could not enjoy their natural rights without any necessity for intermarriage between the sons and daughters of the two races. ”

“ We have known these Indians, from our youth up. They live near our native home. The first pleasure we ever derived from the exercise of benevolence, was in satisfying the calls of their women and children for bread, at our father's door, and we always found them kind hearted to those who were kind to them. We have often met with them to worship in their rural meeting-house, and have again and again explored with the angling rod, the romantic stream, abounding with the nimble trout, which courses through their plantation. ”

“ Does it follow that the Indian or the African must go to the judge on his bench, or to the Governor, Senator, or indeed any other man, to ask for a help-meet, because his name may be found on the voter's list, or in the jury boxes? I promise all concerned, that we Marshpees have less inclination to seek their daughters than they have to seek ours. Should the worst come to the worst, does the proud white think that a dark skin is less honorable in the sight of God than his own beautiful hide? ”

“ Much has been said in and out of the papers about the Indians in Marshpee. All that the Indians want in Marshpee is to enjoy their rights without molestation. They have hurt or harmed no one. They have only been searching out their rights, and in so doing, exposed and uncovered, have thrown aside the mantle of deception, that honest men might behold and see for themselves their wrongs. The Indians could spread columns before the world which would cause the hearts of good men to be sad, and recoil at the conduct of their white brothers. ”

“ We doubt not they have acted honestly; but, in the spirit of the laws, they have almost unavoidably exercised a stern control over the property and persons of the tribe. In fact the laws, as they now stand, almost permit the Overseers, with impunity, to sell the Indians for slaves. They can bind them out as they please, do as they please with their contracts, expel them from the plantation almost at will, and in fact use them nearly as slaves. We do not think they have intentionally done wrong to the Indians, but the whole system of government is wrong ”

“ Editors, as our situation is but little understood, and the minds of the people much agitated, we feel a desire to lay before them some of the causes of the late excitement. We have long been under guardians, placed in authority over us, without our having any voice in the selection, and, as we believe, not constitutional. Will the good people of Massachusetts revert back to the days of their fathers, when they were under the galling yoke of the mother country? when they petitioned the government for a redress of grievances, but in vain? ”

“ I trow, all the schooling the Marshpee people have ever had, they have gotten themselves. There was not even a house on the plantation for the accommodation of a teacher, till I arrived among them. We have now a house respectable enough for even a white teacher to lodge in comfortably, and we are in strong hopes that we shall one day soon be able to provide for our own wants, if the whites will only permit us to do so, as they never have done yet. If they can but be convinced that we are human beings, I trust they will be our hindrance no longer. ”

“ It is sedition, it is true; but only the sedition of freedom against oppression; of justice against fraud; of humanity against cruelty. It is the intellect opposed to darkness; the soul opposed to degradation. It is an earnest of better things to come, provided the struggling spirit be set free. Let this tribe have at least a fair trial. While they remain as paupers, they will feel like paupers; be regarded like paupers; be degraded like paupers. We protest against this unnatural order of things ”

“ White people are his visitors and hearers. We would remark here that we have no objection to worship with our white neighbors, provided they come as they ought to come, and not as thieves and robbers, and we would ask all the world if the Marshpee Indians have not been robbed of their rights. We wonder how the good citizens of Boston, or any town would like to have the Indians send them a preacher and force him into the pulpit and then send other Indians to crowd the whites out of their own meeting house and not pay one cent for it. ”

“ The Legislature of last year, with a becoming sense of justice, restored to the Marshpee Indians a portion of their rights, which had been wrested from them, most wrongfully, for a period of seventy-four years. The State of Massachusetts, in the exercise of a most unjust and arbitrary power, had, until that time, deprived the Indians of all civil rights, and placed their property at the mercy of designing men, who had used it for their own benefit, and despoiled the native owners of the soil to which they hold a better title than the whites hold to any land in the Commonwealth. ”

“ But I sincerely think it is wrong in the whites to take the gospel from the Indians, as they do in Marshpee, by occupying their meeting-house, and receiving the benefit of the missionary fund. I mean that the people about Cotuet and Marshpee go to our house, and fill it, to our exclusion, without any charge; while the Indians are enforced by the laws which deprive them of the use of their own lands, to pay a heavy tax, from which they derive no benefit. Is not depriving them of all means of mental culture the worst of all robberies? ”

“ If, therefore, the course we have pursued, and mean to pursue, in laying their claims to justice before the public, entitles us to be listened to as a friend, we beg them to abstain from all acts which violate even the unjust and hard laws by which they are now held in bondage. Resistance will furnish their enemies with the strongest weapons against them, and discourage their friends. Let them endure patiently, till the next Legislature meets, and if there is any virtue or honesty in our public men, the rights of the Marshpee Indians will be secured. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a sorrowful truth that, heretofore, all legislation regarding the affairs of Indians, has had a direct tendency to degrade them, to drive them from their homes, and the graves of their fathers, and to give their lands as a spoil to the general government, or to the several States. In New England, especially, it can be proved that Indian lands have been taken to support schools for the whites, and the preaching of the gospel to them. ”

“ If an honest white man could look into our private affairs and know what wrongs we have suffered, it would change his complexion to a hue redder than the Indian's. But the crimes committed against our race cannot be enumerated here below. They will each and all, however, be judged at the bar of God, and it must be the comfort of the poor and oppressed, who cry for justice and find it not, that there is one who sees and knows, and will do right. The next is from the Boston Daily Advocate, of July 12. ”

“ It involves the rights, the interests, and the happiness of a large number of that race which has been nearly exterminated by the neglect, the oppression, and the cruelty of a superior number of foreign invaders.
In the enslavement of two millions of American people in the Southern States, the tyranny of this nation assumes a gigantic form. The magnitude of the crime elevates the indignation of the soul. ”

“ The agents always have the ear of the government, or rather they are the government. The Indians have nobody to speak for them. They are kept too poor to pay counsel. I think it is not too much to say that almost any degree of injustice, short of murder, might be done them without any likelihood of their obtaining redress.
Why should not this odious, and brutifying system be put an end to? Why should not the remaining Indians in this Commonwealth be placed upon the same footing as to rights of property, as to civil privileges and duties, as other men? ”

“ If any white man should come to Marshpee and ask hospitality for a night or two, I do not believe that one of the whole tribe would turn him from his door, savages though they be. Does not he better deserve the name who took from us two dollars for sleeping in his stable? This usage made me think that in this part of New England prejudice was strong against the poor children of the woods, and that any aid we might receive must come from the more hospitable Indians, among whom we arrived on the twenty-first, and rested till the twenty-fifth. ”

“ No matter who are the Overseers, (we know them not,) nor how faithfully they have executed the laws. The complaint is principally against the State; incidentally against them. They may succeed, perhaps, in vindicating their own conduct; but the State is to be judged out of the Statute Book, by the laws now in force for the regulation of the tribe. Fearing, in the plenitude of its benevolence, that the Indians would never rise to be men, the Commonwealth has, in the perfection of its wisdom, given them over to absolute pauperism. ”

“ It is true that we have had a preacher, but we do not believe that he cares any thing about us. Neither had we any hand in his settlement over us. To be sure, he likes to stay with us, but we think it is because he gets so much good pay. But five or six adult persons attend his preaching, there being not one Indian male belonging to his church. This gentleman has cut much wood, to the dissatisfaction of the Indians; and it is true they have passed resolutions that they will not hear him preach. ”

“ An augmentation, diminution, or change of the Board of Overseers, will not remedy the evil. It lies elsewhere; in the absolute prostration of the petitioners by a blind legislation. They are not, and do not aspire to be an independent government, but citizens of Massachusetts.
Fortunately, there is a soul for freedom in the present Legislature. A more independent House of Representatives has never been elected by the people. The cries of the Indians have reached their ears, and we trust affected their hearts. ”

“ We are still at a loss to know under what law these Indians were found guilty of riot, in preventing their own wood from being carried off their own land. Where are all our Cherokee philanthropists, at this time?
The injustice of the proceedings of the Barnstable Court of Common Pleas and Sessions, is here fitly exposed. In empanelling the jury, it is certain that no name of one favorably inclined toward the Indians was selected, and there are many who do not scruple to say, that it was the determination of the Court to condemn them, right or wrong. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Can it be wondered, that the Indians become more and more degraded? I presume all honest people will regret that such has been the case. It will be seen that both the missionaries and their white followers, imbibed all the prejudices of the day, and by disseminating them, hindered others from doing us good. This is no excuse, however, for the government of this Commonwealth, whose duty it was to see that its red children were not abused in this way. ”