When Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497 he saw Savages, whom he describes as “painted with red ochre, and covered with skins.”  Cartier in 1534 saw the Red Indians, whom he describes “as of good stature,—­wearing their hair in a bunch on the top of the head, and adorned with feathers.”  In 1574 Frobisher having been driven by the ice on the coast of Newfoundland, induced some of the natives to come on board, and with one of them he sent five sailors on shore, whom he never saw again; on this account he seized one of the Indians, who died shortly after arriving in England.

As soon after the discovery of Newfoundland as its valuable fisheries became known, vessels from various countries found their way hither, for the purpose of catching whales, and of following other pursuits connected with the fishery.  Among those early visiters was a Captain Richard Whitburne, who commanded a ship of 300 tons, belonging to “one Master Cotton of South-hampton” and who fished at Trinity.  This Captain Whitburne, in a work published by him in 1622, describing the 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