Their love of strong drink not infrequently led the Indians into temporary servitude, and served as a means by which the colonists, if so minded, could force them into that condition. On one occasion Boston was building a fort on an island in the harbor. Wages were high and economy was desirable. The general court, therefore, ordered that for drunkenness the Indians should not be whipped, but sent to this island to work for ten days. The Indians protested and preferred whipping as punishment, but their complaint received no attention.[703] On March 8, 1683, the Plymouth general court decreed that a certain Indian should serve as a slave for a specified time because of a judgment against him.[704] At a council held in Boston, also, June 14, 1686, upon notification of the keeper of the prison that a sentence of transportation of an Indian had not been carried into effect, the treasurer was ordered to sell the Indian for a period not exceeding seven years in satisfaction of the judgment against him.[705] The Massachusetts council records of January 18, 1695, tell of an Indian accused of “corresponding with and adhering to the Indian enemy” who was transported and sold for the offense.[706] A similar instance occurred in 1696, when an Indian was condemned “to be transported beyond the seas as a dangerous person and sold”.[707] On December 1, 1705, the Massachusetts deputies sent in a bill providing that fornication or marriage of white men with negroes or Indians should be punished by selling the colored offenders out of the colony as slaves. Through the intercession of Samuel Sewall, the Indians were dropped from the bill which was then passed as applying to blacks and mulattoes.[708] The records mention other instances in 1713[709] and 1776[710] when Indians were sold as punishment for crime, the latter case being one of theft. An incident occurred in 1721 when the sentence of an Indian imprisoned in Boston was changed from imprisonment to a term of servitude.[711] Another Indian, in 1727, was sold for a term of years to a resident of the colony to serve a sentence for debt.[712] In 1739, on petition of the sheriff of Barnstaple county, the Massachusetts general court impowered the justices of that county to sell an Indian prisoner convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to imprisonment “to any of his majesty’s good subjects for a term not exceeding ten years, for the most he will fetch”, in order to get money to pay the cost of prosecuting the prisoner and the charges of his imprisonment.[713]