t no heirs, the grantee,
Mr. Crocker, who was an influential member of the General Court,
petitioned that body and procured a full confirmation of the deed
to him, in the same manner the General Court in 1809, confirmed the
parsonage deed of 1783, except that there was not so long a time
intervening between Mr. Crocker's receiving the deed from the Indian
Queen in her life time, and its full confirmation by the General Court
after her death.

This took place previous to the law of 1788, putting the Indians under
guardianship, when either the law of 1693 or the charter of 1763, was
in force.[3] When the white Overseers came in, in 1798, they found
Crocker in possession of this land, under the above title, and they
employed Judge John Davis, as counsel, to vacate the deed and the
act of the General Court. Judge Davis brought an action of ejectment
against Crocker, (not in the name of the Overseers,) but in the name
of the Proprietors of Marshpee, whose property he claimed, was as
tenants in common, on the ground that the old Queen, though she
occupied it in severalty during her life, could not, as one tenant in
common, convey the interest of her co-tenants in common. It was tried
in the Supreme Court, and the deed was set aside, for insufficiency
of title. This insufficiency of title vitiated the conveyance on the
ground that the old Queen had no power to convey when she made the
deed, and that the General Court had no power to make good, by a
resolve, a title originally invalid.

Crocker also set up the claim of quiet possession, for thirty years,
which it was supposed would secure the title; but the Court decided
that this gave no title, and the land was restored to the Indians, and
now forms a portion of their common land. Mr. Crocker of course, lost
all he had furnished to the old Queen, and in this respect, his
case was harder than it would be, were Mr. Fish dispossessed of the
parsonage, after enjoying it for twenty-four years, without any title
thereto. It would he difficult for any lawyer to show why Crocker's
deed confirmed by the General Court, should have been set aside in
1798, and Lot Nye's deed, of the parsonage, be held valid in 1834.

On referring to my minutes of the trial of the petition of the
Indians, for their liberty, in 1834, before a Committee of the
Legislature, I find the following facts stated by Rev. Phineas Fish,
who was a witness before that Committee. They will throw some light on
the su