It is a
provision disgraceful to the statute book of the State, and
discreditable to the civilization of the age. Yet two tribes, the
Chappequiddick and the Christiantown, were made subject to the
provisions of this law, without the power to accept or reject it, and
are governed by it to this day"[10] (1861).

The Marshpee tribe doubtless had a larger infusion of Negro blood than
any. When the population of this tribe was 327 in 1771, 14 of them
were Negroes, married to Indians. In 1832 there were 315 inhabitants,
of whom 16 were Negroes. According to the report of the Indian
commissioner in 1849 the population was 305 in 1848, of whom 26 were
foreigners, all Negroes or mulattoes. The tribe numbered 403 in 1859,
"including 32 foreigners, married to natives of the tribe, all Negroes
or mulattoes, or various mixtures of Negro, Indian, or white
blood--none of them being pure whites."[11]

The Punkapog Tribe of Indians formerly dwelt on a tract of land in
Canton, Norfolk County, containing five thousand acres, granted them
by the General Court of Massachusetts. Before 1861, however, they had
lost all of this property, the last of it being sold by the guardian,
about 1841, in pursuance of a resolve of the legislature. "The
full-blood Indians of the tribe," says the report of 1861, "are all
extinct. Their descendants, who, like those of all the other tribes in
the States, are of various grades of mixtures, of Indian, white, and
Negro blood, number, so far as is ascertained one hundred and
seventeen persons."[12]

According to the survey made in 1861 the moral condition of the
Indians was rather low and it was a regret that the people of color
exhibiting generally more moral stamina should be degraded by living
among them. Accounting for this condition of Affairs a contemporary
said of the low moral condition of the Fall River Indians in 1861:
"The prejudice of color and caste, and the social proscription to
which the colored people are subjected, has a twofold unfavorable
effect upon them; first to detract from their self-respect and so to
weaken the moral instincts, and then to throw them into the
association of the more dissolute and degraded of other races, where
they fall an easy prey to immoral habits. There are, however, in this
tribe as well as the others, instances of those who rise above all the
evil influences with which they are encompassed and maintain a good
standing, as worthy and respectable members of the