The undersigned are Selectmen and School Committee of the District of Marshpee. We understand your Honors are going to make a distribution of the School Fund. Now we pray leave to say that the State, as the guardians of the Marshpee Indians, took our property into their possession, so that we could not use a dollar of it, and so held it for sixty years. We could make no contract with a school-master, and during that time, till 1831, we had no school house in Marshpee, and scarcely any schools. We began to have schools about five years ago, but still want means to employ competent white teachers to instruct our children. Our fathers often petitioned the Legislature to give them schools, but none were given till 1831, when the State generously built us two school-houses. We also beg leave to remind your Honors that our fathers shed their blood for liberty, and we their children have had but little benefit from it. When a continental regiment of four hundred men were raised in Barnstable county, in 1777, twenty-seven Marshpee Indians enlisted for the whole war. They fought through the war, and not one survives. After the war our fathers had sixty widows left on the Plantation, whose husbands had died or been slain. We have but one man living who draws a pension, and not a widow. We pray you, therefore, to allow to Marshpee, out of the School Fund, a larger amount in proportion than is allowed to other towns and districts who have had better means of education, and to allow us a certain sum per year--and as in duty bound, will ever pray. EZRA ATTAQUIN, : Selectmen and School ISAAC COOMBS, : Committee of Marshpee ISRAEL AMOS, : District. * * * * * To the Honorable, the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled: