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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from Alexander Martin to Joseph Harden
Martin, Alexander, 1740-1807
Volume 19, Pages 944-945

GOV. MARTIN TO COLO. JOSEPH HARDEN OF GREENE COUNTY.
[From Executive Letter Book.]

Sir:

Reposing great confidence in your firmness and love to your Country I have to request that you will make it your immediate business to have every person living on the Indian Lands west of Broad River warned of the same by the middle of March, after which time if any person will be hardy enough to continue You will order out such a number of horsemen under your own command, or some discreet person you judge sufficient to pull down their Cabins and drive the owners off, if they should appear refractory afterwards, you will then commit to the Oyer and Terminer Gaol of the Western Counties there to remain until the Oyer Court. You will also inform them that their Stocks will be given up as free Booty to the Indians tressed with the repeated complaints of those injured savages against Our unruly Citizens who are daily trespassing on their grounds

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whose bounds as ascertained by Act of Assembly, I mean to hold sacred, lest our Faith as a State be held in Contempt with them and all Nations, especially with our late Enemies who are daily instilling into the minds of the Indians in General that we intend seizing all their Lands and driving them off the Continent; by such means they have imbibed prejudices that may render them at last a desperate Enemy, which is now to be prevented, by our distributing to them their common Justice due to all men.

I am, &c.,
ALEX. MARTIN.