Letter of Transmittal. xxvii

Governor for redress (Archiv. Md., xxxi, 83). An act was passed by the As-
sembly at this session affording a simpler and less costly legal method of evicting
such trespassers and wasters, and for obtaining damages against them.

Fear of hostile Indians, and especially of the Nanticokes, a tribe which some
years before had moved from Maryland to the West, led to the suspicion that
members of this tribe were involved in some of the outrages of the previous
summer and were now, on the pretence of hunting, acting as spies for the
French. An act was therefore passed requiring all constables in the Province to
make a census of the Indians in their several districts, giving the name, both
Indian and English, age, and sex, of every Indian, the lists to be filed among
the county records. The act further prohibited any Indian from travelling more
than ten miles from the town in which he lived, but specifically exempted from
its provisions ambassadors of the Six Nations en route to visit the Governor.
The Lower House, May 21st, ordered a bill to be brought in to provide for the
orphans of Mr. Thomas Cresap, Jr., who had been killed in a late battle with
the Indians, but no such bill seems to have been introduced.

The Governor, March i6th, sent a message to the Lower House in which he
stated that by action of the Council, the French neutrals lately transported into
the Province from Nova Scotia, had been distributed over the Province, except to
Frederick County, and that most of them were now quartered in the families
of various charitable gentlemen. Those who had been landed at Oxford, in
Talbot County, and in Somerset County, had been provided for respectively by
Mr. Callister and Capt. Lowes until their separation, and under the Governor's
orders Mr. Middleton had carried a number from Annapolis to Baltimore. The
Governor declared that these gentlemen should be reimbursed for the trouble
and expense they had incurred. On April loth, Joseph L'Andre and the other
Acadians at Oxford petitioned the Governor for relief, and on April I9th the
Governor again reminded the Lower House of the plight of these unfortunate
French neutrals and sent, for its information, a copy of an act just passed by the
Pennsylvania Assembly for the relief of those in that colony. He also requested
that a bill be prepared to prevent their removal from the counties into which
they had been sent, and to intercept such as might try to reach the western fron-
tier. The Lower House on May 3d, ordered the Committee of Laws to bring in
a bill requiring the several county courts to make a levy for their support. An
Act was then passed which recited that the Governor of Nova Scotia had
thought it of advantage to the British interest to distribute the French inhabi-
tants of that Province among other British colonies; that numbers had been
brought to Maryland, who, out of compassion for their unhappy condition, had
been permitted to land, and later distributed throughout various counties in
order that they might earn their living by their own labor and industry. The