checking the importation of Indians into the colony, is a transcript of the Massachusetts act and shows that the colonists considered a large Indian slave element in the population to be quite as undesirable as did the people of Massachusetts.[1140] The New Hampshire act of 1714 cited as a reason for checking the importation of Indians: “the over-great number and increase of such slaves within the province is likely to prove of fatal and pernicious consequences to her majesty’s subjects and interests here unless speedily remedied”.[1141] The Rhode Island act of July 5, 1715, similarly was passed to prevent the importation of Indian slaves, because “divers conspiracies, insurrections, rapes, thefts, and other execrable crimes have been lately perpetrated in this and the adjoining colonies by Indian slaves, etc.”[1142] Again, it seems not unlikely that the use of hired Indian servants may have had something to do with the passing of Indian slavery, though the influence was probably slight. Very early in the history of the northern colonies, Indians were employed for wages. The need for laborers could thus be partly met at very little cost. A Frenchman residing in Boston in 1687, records the wages of such servants who worked in the fields as “a shilling and a half a day and board which is eighteen pence”.[1143] The number of such Indians employed was generally small. As a hired laborer the Indian was no more reliable or trustworthy than as a slave. The keeping of Indians in the colonists’ families was always considered to be more or less dangerous. Massachusetts, in 1631,[1144] and Virginia, in 1661,[1145] required that all persons should get special licenses before employing Indians. In 1634, Winthrop and his son did so. Winthrop himself speaks of the “Indians which are in our families”,[1146] and mention of his Indian servant is found in other connections.[1147] As the colony grew stronger and the fear of the Indians passed away, other leading men of Massachusetts, such as Thomas Morton,[1148] the Reverend Mr. Pariss,[1149] Isaac Addington, secretary of the Council of Safety in 1714,[1150] and John Eliot[1151] employed such servants. The law was repealed in 1646, “there being more use of encouragement thereto than otherwise.”[1152] That a similar employment of Indians existed in Plymouth is seen by the act of 1651 which shows the danger to the colony in providing such servants with firearms.[1153] The Praying Indians hired themselves to the whites.[1154] The New England whale fisheries employed hired Indians, at least from 1670 to 1680.[1155] During the publication of the New Testament in Massachusetts in 1661, and the translation of the New and Old Testaments and the Psalms into the Indian language by John Eliot in 1663, Green, the printer, was assisted in his work by an Indian apprentice.[1156] In Little Compton, Massachusetts, hired Indians were largely engaged in building stone fences.[1157] In 1659