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