Wentworth Report on the Maroons

His Grace the Duke of Portland
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 21 April 1797

My Lord Duke,
I have the honour with the utmost respect to acknowledge the favour of Your Grace’s Letters No. 22 and 23 – And wish it were possible sufficiently to express my due sense of honour of happiness con___ on me by His Majesty’s condescension graciously to (approve?) my humble and truly faithful endeavours, and the favour I most thankfully feel, in your Grace's goodness in the very flattering communication, and respectfully (intrust?) your Grace will be assured that it will ever remain the object of my greatest diligence, ____ and ambition to maintain a continuance of (approbation?) which (conveys?) the highest reward of gratification...

The Maroons have ____ this, the longest and most rigorous winter known since the first settlement of Halifax, much better than could be expected. At present they entertain considerable apprehensions of the long winter, and late spring, which they (artfully?) express more than they feel with a view to secure more comforts and exemption from labour, which are naturally the prevailing motives with a people used to an easy life of hunting, ____ ____ ____ War, and gratification to the ____ which gratified their vanity and indulged their habits of dissipation. These dispositions will be superseded only by a judicious (perseverance?) and patient attention in Instruction, guidance & (discreet?) application to relieve their wants, introduce new ideas and substitute other objects of pursuit and ambition.

They have maintained as good health as any other inhabitants, with less exceptions of casualties from frost than apprehended arising from their inexperience and reluctant use of shoes and stockings. I do not find that anyone has lost more than a joint of a toe or finger and but a few of these. The disorder that some of them have had obviously arose from the more solid and plentiful food and total want of that exercise they had been accustomed to added to their being to many in each house which they keep hotter than fever heat – All these things may be gradually amended by placing them in familiar, in separate houses, on little farms with the means of culture and (arising stock?), they will each find an advantage and occupation, from whence convenience will result, and self importance derived which ____ the greatest consideration, interest and (property?) will succeed. The progress of their improvement and comfort afford satisfaction for the humane and charitable (protection?). I may say ____ extended to them by His Majesty’s Govt – They are all cunning – some of them are sensible. None have yet discovered talents beyond this. Hence, observing the care and kindness exercised toward them. They ____ complaints ____ indulgences. Human nature cannot be free of troubles. It is therefore necessary to consider that these people can only be so put in a state to be as comfortable as others of ... might probably be applied for the Maroons to this charitable and (fierce end?), if approved and recommended by your Grace –

I am truly happy in your Grace’s (approbation?) of my attention to the extremely distressed and ____ in a state of the Indians in this province notwithstanding the utmost care and ____ it was impossible not to exceed the ____ in my former letter. Their Misery and distress increased form unforeseen and unavoidable accidents, which deprived them almost entirely of their natural means of procuring some part of their clothing and food the little crops of potatoes they had attempted were almost universally destroyed by early frost or insufficient storing of them, population and clearing of lands, destroy the objects of hunting and entirely disappointed that resource. Therefore the supply could not be withheld lest they should be driven by ____ necessity to (plunder?) the dispersed settlers, which would ____ have ____ on murders and devastation in the interior of settlements and occasioned a necessity to employ at least one good Regiment to protect the scattered inhabitants and destoy if Indians...”

Public Archives of Nova Scotia
RG1, Vols. 51, 51, 52 (mfm no. 15238)

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The Early 19th Century:

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