e
coast, fishery, soil, and produce of Newfoundland, says, "the natives
are ingenious and apt by discreet and moderate government, to be
brought to obedience. Many of them join the French and Biscayans on
the Northern coast, and work hard for them about fish, whales, and
other things; receiving for their labor some bread or trifling
trinkets." They believed, according to Whitburne, that they were
created from arrows stuck in the ground by the Good Spirit, and that
the dead went into a far country to make merry with their friends.
Other early voyagers also make favourable mention of the natives, but
notwithstanding this testimony, it is evident, even from information
given by their apologist Whitburne himself, that the Red Indians were
not exempt from those pilfering habits which, in many instances, have
marked the conduct of the inhabitants of newly discovered Islands on
their first meeting with Europeans. Whitburne, when expressing his
readiness to adopt measures for opening a trade with the Indians,
incidentally mentions an instance where their thievish propensities
were displayed.--He says, "I am ready with my life and means whereby
to find out some new trade with the Indians of the country, for they
have great store of red ochre, which they use to colour their bodies,
bows, arrows, and canoes. The canoes are built in shape like wherries
on the river Thames, but that they are much longer, made with the
rinds of birch trees, which they sew very artificially and close
together, and overlay every seam with turpentine. In like manner they
sew the rinds of birch trees round and deep in proportion like a brass
kettle, to boil their meat in; which hath been proved to me by three
mariners of a ship riding at anchor by me--who being robbed in the
night by the savages of their apparel and provisions, did next day
seek after and came suddenly to where they had set up three tents and
were feasting; they had three pots made of the rinds of trees standing
each of them on stones, boiling with fowls in each; they had also many
such pots so sewed, and which were full of yolk of eggs that they had
boiled hard and so dried, and which the savages do use in their broth.
They had great store of skins of deer, beaver, bears, otter, seal, and
divers other fine skins, which were well dressed; they had also great
store of several sorts of fish dried. By shooting off a musquet
towards them, they all ran away without any apparel but only their