?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(AMERICAN INDIANS.) Mott, Nathaniel. Petition against being fined for selling "hot water" to Indians. Autograph Document Signed. 2 pages, 12 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, on one folding sheet with address panel on verso of second page; faint dampstaining, lacking lower half of second leaf (apparently blank). Np, 21 April 1664
Nathaniel Mott (circa 1622-1675) of Braintree, MA submitted this petition to the Middlesex County Court then sitting in Charlestown. Two weeks before, he had been fined 6 pounds "upon an accusation layed against mee for sellinge hot waters unto some Endians, which two Indians stood to affirme." He did not deny the charge of providing the Indians with liquor, but pleaded that "it was very heavy upon mee, beinge low and miserable in respect of my estate . . . in the sense of my very greate want, and low estate, and distresse of my family, having a wife and fower children." A related 1663 indictment at the Newberry Library shows that Mott sold 10 quarts of liquor to the Massachusetts Indians. This was likely the same Nathaniel Mott who served on an expedition against the Narragansett Indians in 1645, and is listed in the Braintree records as "kill'd by the Indians Feb. 23, 1675." Provenance: Henkels' Elliot Danforth sale, 6 December 1912, lot 667; thence by descent to the consignor.
