THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Earl of Bellomont to the Lords of Trade
(New York, January 16, 1701)
Bellomont, Earl of in: New York
Colonial Documents IV,
(London Documents: XIII), pp. 833-835.
p. 834.
demonstration by what the Undertakers for masts have already done) provided your Lordships give me that support and assistance which you have often promised in getting the Vacating Act approved by the King which I sent home, and sending new orders to me and the Assembly to break all the rest of Fletchers extravagant grants of land and some others made by former Governours. I do not desire new orders upon my own account, for I know the former are vallid, but to animate the Assembly.
My second design is to invite the Onagongues or Eastern Indians to come and settle at Schackhook in this Province, and to make a perpetual league & friendship between them and our five Nations; by which means I will strengthen our Indians and disappoint the French of those Eastern Indians who were as so many swords in their hands against us. For this purpose I make use of Coll: Schuyler's brother, who has an interest in our Schackhook or River Indians that are to be the instruments to prevail with those Eastern Indians to come and settle at Schackhook. What progress Capt. Schuyler has made in that matter your Lordships will learn from his letter to me, which I received last night and which is (mark'd E.)
My third design is to ingage the Dowaganhas Twictwicts Dienondades and all those numerous nations in a trade with us, which the French by their Missionaries have at present monopoliz'd; but I hope in a year's time to be able to give your Lordships a good account of those nations, if I may be allowed to use my own methods and that I be well supported by your Lordships. If I can bring things to bear according to my expectation and hopes, I fancie I may once within a year tell your Lordships you may set the French at defiance and laugh at all their projects to circumvent us, their new settlement at Mechisipi and Canada and Nova Scotia put together.
In order to this design the Beaver trade ought to be incouraged by the Parliament, all duties wholly taken of, both here and in England from Beaver and other peltry exported from this Province. Some French merchants lately come from England to live here, assure me that the French King to incourage the Beaver trade had ordered the Parliament of Paris to put forth (an Arrest as the French call it) an Act requiring all the hatters to mix a certain quantity of Beaver's furr in all their hats, under a severe penalty; which is a wise course, and I wish our Parliament would take such a course to help the consumption of Beaver which at present is grown almost out of use in England, since Carolina hats have been so much and Beaver hatts so little in fashion.
I am extreamly importun'd to erect a Court of Chancery, many people being like to be ruin'd for want of one. I shall therefore very soon settle that Court tho' I should make no decrees till the arrival of the Judge and Attorney General. But at present I am much inconvenienced by the want of five Counsellors for under that number I cannot hold a Court of Chancery. The Council are now but seven: Coll. Schuyler never comes near us and lives a 150 miles off at Albany: Mr Livingston lives there too, but comes pretty often hither when the season of the year permits; Coll. Smith comes as seldom as he can and lives 100 miles off; and Mr Graham tho' but 8 miles off has not been here almost these five months. So that we have but three Members of the Council that I can be sure of attending, if the occasion were ever so important. I must therefore (since the Kings instruction allows me not to add to the number of seven Counsellors) suspend two of the present Council that will not attend and add Mr Weaver who as Collector ought to be one, and Mr William Lawrence of Newtown in Queen's County in
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