NEW-NETHERLANDS AND PLYMOUTH.                   367
likewise written and sent the copies of their letters, that together with their and your honourable directions we may know how to order ourselves herein. They have used trading there this six or seven and twenty years, but have begun to plant of later time, and now have reduced their trade to some order, and confined it only to their company, which heretofore was spoiled by their seamen and interlopers-, as ours is this year most notoriously, of whom we have made some complaint in our letters to the Council, not doubting but we shall find worshipful furtherance therein. We are now upon concluding with our adventurers, and shall be put upon hard straits by great payments, which we are enforced to make for sundry years, or else to leave all, which will be to us very difficult; and, to say the truth, if these disorders of fishermen and interlopers be not remedied, no plantations are able to stand, but will decay ; whereas otherwise they may subsist and flourish. Thus in all humbleness I take leave, and rest, At your service,
WILLIAM BRADFORD. Plymouth, June 15, Anno 1627.
P. S. Besides the spoiling of the trade this last year, our boat and men had like to have been cut off by the Indians, after the fishermen were gone, for the wrongs which they did them in stealing their skins and other abuses offered them, both the last year and this ; and besides they still continue to truck pieces, powder and shot with them, which will be the overthrow of all, if it be not looked unto.
NOTE.
A collision cams near taking place between the two colonies in 1633, growing out of the first attempts to extend their settlements to Connecticut river.— Prince, under that year, has tha following extracts from Bradford's MS. History in relation to this subject:—" We having had formerly converse and familiarity with the Dutch, they seeing us seated in a barren quarter tpld us of a river called by them the Fresh river, which they often commended to us for a fine place both for plantation and trade, and wished us to make us>e of it; but oar hands being full otherwise, we let it pass. But afterwards there coming a company of Indians into these parts, who were driven thence by the Fequents, who usurped upon them, they often solicited us to go thither and we should have much trade, especially if we would keep a house there. And having a good store of commodities, we began to send that way to discover the same and trade with the natives. We found it to be a fine place, and tried divers times not without profit, but saw the most certainty would be by keeping a