Letter from Colony of Connecticut to the Commissioners of the United Colonies

Honored Gentlemen,

The former insolent and proud carriages and manifold abuses that our people in this colony (as your worships well understand) have sustained from the uncircumcised heathens round about us have been no small exercise to our spirits, quietly though not contentedly to bear, yet hoping after so much pains taken by the worshipful commissioners at the last session at Hartford, both by messages sent to several of them and impositions and injunctions upon them for wrongs done, and the intimations of your minds in reference to such carriages manifested and declared unto them that it might have prevailed to have curbed their proud humors and in issue have accomplished a peaceable correspondence in point neighborly carriage towards the English for the future.  But all candidness and clemency towards these beastly minded and mannered creatures seems rather to embolden them in (not only uncivil and inhumane) but in tendency to bloody practices for not many weeks now past we are by sufficient information certified that one night at the new plantation at Mohegan, some Indians (as will appear of the Narragansett’s) shot eleven bullets into a house of our English there, in hopes (as they boasted) to have slain him, whom we have cause to honor, whose safety our Deputy Governor, Major Mason, we cannot but take ourselves bound to promote, as also slew another at Robert Lay’s to the great affrightment.  Which outrages, though we cannot but judge, calls unto us and terror of Goodwife Lay to be awakened and to take some speedy course for distribution of justice to those that have thus carried toward us in ours.  Yet bearing due respect to our near union to and confederation with the other colonies to whom our lives and comforts are (we hope) precious, we thought meet to acquaint your worships with the premises desiring if it may be some speedy redress of the wrongs done unto us in this colony and provision for our indemnity and security, which if your worships, after your serious consideration on what hath now as an addition to former matters been presented to your worships, see not cause to stir or act on our behalf.  We cannot but take the best advice that God shall direct us unto what God requires and calls for at our hands to provide for our people’s safety, not only in endeavoring to discover the guilty but also to use just and lawful means to prevent such abuses and affronts for the future.  Our earnest desire is that your worships would be pleased to expedite a return to our Governor Winthrop, our Deputy Governor Major Mason what your worships do judge in the premises.  We entreat you to consider how incongruous and cross it would have been twenty years ago to an English spirit to bear such things as now we are forced to bear, or whether the Indians would not have expected a visitation upon less occasions then these that have of late been met with by several of ours.  We cannot but conceive it is high time to renew upon the memory of these pagans the obliterate memorials of the English.  We desire not unnecessarily to enlarge, but rather refer your thoughts to a reduplicate animadversion on the precedent lines. 

Hoping for a speedy intimation of your advice therein, wherein we commend you to the infinite wisdom of the wonderful counselor to guide and direct you and subscribe.  Gentlemen,

Yours in a ready discharge of relative obligations.

                        Endorsement:              The premises ordered to be sent to the commissioners of the other colonies  /

June 9, 1660

            Cataloguing:  4a, 4b, 5

Miscellaneous:   I I Honored Gentlemen           H  H  H  H H  H