Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/606

 The Indian Remnant in New England. March 28, 1709, and it also bore the other up a watering-place. We had just as lief necessary signatures. have them there, but we want pay for our land." The tribe claims that this instrument fur nishes the entire basis of the State's property The watering-place enterprises along the in all lands which it holds now or ever held shore near Fort Neck, then just begun, were within the original limits of the Narragan- probably the main incentive of the move sett territory; that the reservations of this ment, originating with the dominant race, instrument included all the shore rights on for "conferring'' citizenship on the Indians, sea waters, which was distinctly shown on which carried with it the surrender of the tribal lands. Several the map, according to subordinate estab the president. He sta lishments have ted thatthismapcould sprang up about the not now be found; and that, probably, it main one, now known never came into the for nearly twenty possession of the In years as Narragandians. sett Pier; so that old The president of "Fort Neck" and the council called many other sections the attention of the of the west shore of commission to the the bay have become fact that the owners valuable property. of land purchased of The extent of this the Indians "used to claim of shore land is build walls around thus stated by the the shore and into commission in its re the surf, or onto the port: "The Indians rocks, so that cattle claimed before your couldn't go by;" but, Board of Commis he said that doing sioners that the tribe thus, they claimed owned not only the something that wasn't reservation in the theirs. . . . "Hightown of Charlestown, water mark is gov but a strip of land ernment waters, and five rods in width INDIAN CEREMONIAL DRESS. we lay right on along the shores ex government waters." tending from Wes terly around Point Judith and up the bay to The general assembly also, he said, had the mouth of the Blackstone river." asserted that the conventional distance In regard to this claim, a report of the between the fences and high-water mark was five rods. If the original bound commission made a year after the statement was changed at Fort Neck, where the old on the matter by the president of the Indian council, says: "That the first English settlers walls were torn down, it was Governor Fen ner who laid out the new lines, taking for upon the lands of the Narragansetts believed his high-tide mark that of the extraordinary that the Indians were the absolute owners of September gale. "And," continued the the soil, there can be no question. Roger Indian president, "they have gone and put Williams, even before he left Massachusetts,