Petition of Amos Ahauton and Other Indians at Ponkapoag to the Massachusetts General Court

Province of the Massachusetts Bay

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To His Excellency [1] William Shirley, Esq., Captain General and Governour in Chief, To the Honorable His Majesty’s Council and Honorable House of Representatives in General Court Assembled, November 25, 1741

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The petition of Amos Ahaton, Thomas Ahaton, Hezekiah Squamogus, and Simon George, Indian Proprietors at Ponkapog, an Indian Plantation within the Township of Stoughton within the County of Suffolk and Province aforesaid humbly sheweth that your petitioner with the allowance of the Great and General Court aforesaid did on the twenty-second of March seventeen hundred and twenty-five sell a considerable part of our land to some of our English neighbours for a large sum of money, which was by the order of the said Court to be paid into the hands of a Committee appointed to manage the Indian affairs at Ponkapoag at that time but to be for the only use of the Indians there, your present petitioners and others and notwithstanding. There was at first five hundred and fifty pounds and since it amounts to about seven hundred and twenty pounds yet we have received but little of the interest money, and inasmuch as your petitioners are advanced to old age and not knowing how soon we may be taken away [from?] our children and grandchildren and being sensible that the Legislature interposing in our affairs was with the good design of preventing our being wronged by subtle and designing persons, which good dispositions we doubt not still continue.  And we being sensible there is great need of a reformation among us, we therefore pray Your Excellency and Your Honours would take such effectual methods in order to bring about so good a thing as in your wisdom you shall think proper.  We more particularly desire your interposition relating to our observation of the Lord's Day that all may be made to attend on public worship, which at present is much neglected, and in order to our so doing your petitioners humbly move Your Excellency and Honours that you would be pleased to let us have one hundred pounds of our money to b[uild?] us a meeting house[2] in some convenient place on our land and [your] petitioners further pray that the interest of our money may be paid us or that the same may be laid out in clothes and such necessaries as at present we stand in great need of the infirmities of old age being now such with us that we are not able to do little or nothing towards obtaining a livelihood.  The interest of our money amounts to upwards of five hundred pounds which we expected would have been paid us yearly by the Honorable John Quincy, Esq.,[3] the Trustee but we know not what is become of so much interest money, and we have no account from the Trustee either of what we have received or are to receive and what we have already received, it is in lieu of money, but we think some of it is not half so good.  Wherefore, your poor petitioners humbly pray the Trustee may be called to an account that we may know how the circumstance of our affairs stand for we think very hard justice done us and that the good intentions of the General Court towards us are in a great measure frustrated, and we further pray that when the Trustee [ torn ] rendered his account that Your Excellency and Honours would in compassion to us appoint some other suitable person to be Trustee in the stead of the present Trustee, and if Your Excellency and Honours should in their great goodness think fit to appoint Samuel Miller, Esq.,[4] of Milton to be the Trustee, it would be gratefully accepted by your poor petitioners, yet with the greatest submission we leave it to your wise conduct to appoint such other person as Your Excellency and Honours shall think proper.   Your poor petitioners humbly desire to leave the whole of this affair to your wise and just consideration, praying that a speedy issue may be of this affair so that [they?] may be provided with some clothes for ourselves and wives before the approaching winter.

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And your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever

pray,

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Amos Ahaton

Thomas Ahaton, mark

Hezekiah Squamogus, his mark

Thomas Hunter, mark

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