The principle is the same applied to the relation Mr. Fish holds to the Marshpee Indians.  He was placed over them by others, and the Indians are now compelled either to lose all the benefits of their own parsonage, or to hear a man in whose doctrines they do not believe, and whom they cannot consent to take as their spiritual teacher.

Upon a full investigation into this branch of the inquiry, there seems to be no legal or equitable ground, on which Mr. Fish can claim to hold the parsonage and Meeting-house against the Proprietors, and he must therefore, be regarded as a trespasser, liable to be ejected, and the men he employs to cut and cart wood from the plantation, are liable to indictment under the new law of 1834.

The invalidity of title, is however, a still stronger ground against Mr. Fish’s right of adverse occupancy, which he now holds, and a case in principle precisely like this, has been decided by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.  It occurred in 1798, before there was a reporter of the Supreme Court.  Hon John Davis, United States District Judge, was counsel for the Indians, and Samuel Dexter, for the defendant.  It was tried on a demurrer, before the Supreme Court in Barnstable, upon an action of ejectment, Proprietors of Marshpee, vs.  Ebenezer Crocker.  Judge Paine delivered the opinion of the Court in favor of the Indians.  Judge Benjamin Whitman of Boston, was also, we believe, concerned in the cause.  The substance of the case, as stated by Judge Davis and Judge Whitman, was thus: 

Ebenezer Crocker of Cotuet, had furnished an Indian woman, (known as the Indian Queen,) with supplies for many years.  She occupied and claimed in severalty as her own, a valuable tract of about 200 acres of land on the Marshpee Plantation, called the neck, of which tract she gave a deed in fee, some time before her death, to said Crocker, in consideration of the support he had given her.  The consideration at that time, was not very greatly disproportioned to the value of the land.  After her death, she having left 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