[Edward Manning Ruttenber (1872)] 1 Colonial History, vn, 512, 6n, etc. 8 Ib., vni, 476. 9 The records of these conferences are scattered, some being found at Kingston, others in the Clinton and Johnson papers in the State Library, and others in the office of the secretary of state. 202 1HE INDIAN TRIBES whom he had met carrying rum," and the justices promised the punishment of the offender. The justices, on their part, charged that the Indians " had hired negroes to fight against the Christ ians/' which the sachem denied. Not a conference passed without a claim for lands taken from the Indians without com pensation, many of them entirely unfounded, according to the English interpretation of boundaries, but doubtless well founded in the absolute knowledge of the claimants, who, in their sales, had designated hills and not intervening valleys. The principal purpose of the conferences, however, appears to have been to dismiss the Indians with assurances of friendship, a few blankets and considerable rum. If they rapidly became a " contemptible people," it was in consequence of the influences by which they were surrounded. In their wanderings a few of them came un der the teachings of the Moravians, and united with the Mahican converts in Pennsylvania, but to them as an organization no missionary work was undertaken.