LANCASTER COUNTY. 15 



Belknap, a common thing in New England to make fair 

 and regular purchases from the Indians; many of their 

 deeds are still preserved in the public records. Nume- 

 rous instances, showing that the purchases were made 

 from the Indians, might be quoted; a few must suffice. 



The noble hearted, who were not allured by the love 

 of conquest, and the power of wealth, in their efforts to 

 colonize, purchased the right of possession from the sons 

 of the forest. Calvert, a Roman Catholic, when he 

 planted his colony, 1634, in the province of Maryland, 

 commenced with an act of justice, of which the natives 

 of that State may well be proud ; he purchased of the 

 savage proprietors, a right to the soil, before he took pos- 

 session ; for a compensation with which the Indians were 

 satisfied.* 



Roger Williams, a baptist, on his expulsion from Mas- 

 sachusetts, in 1636, went to Seconk, where he procured 

 a grant of land from Osamaquin, the chief Sachem of 

 Pokanot. He honestly purchased their land, and a suf- 

 ficiency of it, for his little colony; he was uniformly 

 their friend, and neglected no opportunity of ameliorat- 

 ing their condition, and elevating their character.! The 

 Swedes, landing at Inlopen, 1637 or 1638, on the west- 

 ern shore of the Delaware Bay, proceeded up the river, 

 opened communications with the Indians; 3ind purchased 

 from them the soil upon the western shore, from the 



*Haw's Contribution, I. 23. fHolmes' Annals, L 233. 



Note. — In Roger Williams' Life, published by J. Knowles, 

 in 1834, it is stated that Aquedueck Island, now Rhode Island, 

 was ceded or sold to him for forty fathoms of white beads, 

 then the currency of the country, by the realm owner 

 Canonicus, King of the Naragansets, because he was a good 

 man and a friend of the Indians, having settled among them in 

 1634, at Mochasuck, now Providence— MSS. 14. 



