Page:The Life of George Washington, Volume 1.djvu/531



Mr. Trumbull gives the following statement of the information received by the commissioners of the United Colonies. "Upon a close attention to the reports which had been spread, and a critical examination of the evidence, all the commissioners, except those of the Massachussetts, were of opinion, that there had been a horrid and execrable plot, concerted by the Dutch governor and the Indians, for the destruction of the English colonies. Nirrigrate, it appeared, had spent the winter at the Manhadoes, with Stuyvesant, on the business. He had been over Hudson's river, among the western Indians; procured a meeting of the sachems; made ample declarations against the English; and solicited their aid against the colonies. He was brought back in the spring in a Dutch sloop with arms and ammunition from the Dutch governor. The Indians, for some hundreds of miles, appeared to be disaffected and hostile. Tribes, which before had been always friendly to the English, became inimical; and the Indians boasted that they were to have goods from the Dutch at half the price for which the English sold them; and powder as plenty as sand. The Long Island Indians testified to the plot; nine sachems who lived in the vicinity of the Dutch, sent their united testimony to Stamford, "that the Dutch governor had solicited them, by promising them guns, powder, swords, wampum, coats, and waistcoats, to cut off the English." The messengers, who were sent, declared, "they were as the mouth of the nine Sagamores who all spake, they would not lie." One of the nine sachems afterwards came to Stamford, with other Indians, and testified the same. The plot was confessed by a Wampeag, and a Narraghansett Indian; and was confirmed by Indian testimonies from all