Introduction. lxxix

Nanticokes. Sir William Johnson wrote to Sharpe under date of May i,
1767, that representatives of the Otsaningo Nanticokes were on their way to
Maryland for the purpose of persuading those remaining in Maryland to join
them. At a Council meeting held on July 13, 1767, it is recorded that Amos
Ogden, their interpreter, had arrived with a group of eleven Indians. The
Governor gave Ogden and his Indians a letter addressed to Col. Henry Ennals
and Charles Dickinson, Esquire, of Dorchester County, asking them to treat
the visitors with consideration and to make enquiry as to the complaints of the
Indians that white squatters had settled on the Nanticokes' Dorchester County
lands, and saying that if the Indians on the Nanticoke and Choptank rivers
wished to leave Maryland he was inclined to encourage them to do so. The
Governor gave a pass to Ogden and the eleven Indians with him to travel freely
through the Province to Dorchester County and to return. The Council made
presents of match coats, blankets, and linen, bought from Lancelot Jacques,
at a cost of £12: 14: 7 1/2, to the eleven visiting Indians whose names are all
given in the record (Arch. Md. XXXII, 207-212). Sharpe on August 20,
1767, wrote Sir William of the meeting, explaining the status of the Nanti-
coke lands in Maryland (Arch. Md. XIV, 418), and on March 25, 1768,
Sir William replied that he had seen Captain Ogden about the matter, and was
now giving him a power of attorney to act for the Nanticokes before the
Maryland Assembly, and that any money received in settlement would on their
return be promptly distributed among the Indians in his presence (Arch.
Md. XIV, 471-472). On June 27, 1768, Sharpe wrote Johnson telling him
of the action of the Assembly (ibid, 511-512).

The Lower House committee, in its report, dated May 28, 1768, stated that
by virtue of an act passed in 1704, a tract of land lying in Dorchester County
on the north side of the Nanticoke River, had been set aside for the use of the
Nanticoke Indians as long as they continued to live on it; that by another act
passed in 1723 for quieting the possessions of the Indians on the Nanticoke
and Choptank Rivers, land were confirmed to them and their descendants as
long as they shall use and not totally desert it; by an act passed in 1711, a tract
of 2500 acres, valued by a jury at 50,000 pounds of tobacco, lying in Somerset
County on Broad Creek, and another of 500 acres, valued at 10,000 pounds of
tobacco, on the south side of Broad Creek, was laid out in the same way for
the use of these Maryland Indians, the Journal of Accounts for these years
showing that 60,000 pounds of tobacco were paid to the former owners for
these tracts, and 8880 pounds of tobacco for improvements and expenses

(pp. 335-337).

From the committee's report and an accompanying message from the Lower
House to the Governor, it appeared that the reversionary interest of certain
of these lands, those on the Nanticoke River, was vested in the heirs of Colonel
John Rider of Dorchester County, and that Rider's daughters and coheirs—
Sarah, wife of Robert Darnall, Anne, wife of Henry Steele, and Dorothy, wife
of John Henry—claimed 1664 acres in the bounds of the tract laid out in 1704
in Dorchester County on the north side of the Nanticoke River, which, they
asserted, reverted to them under the terms of the act, whenever the Nanticoke