i 
[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 233 
familiar with the methods of using place names in vogue among our 
Indians, and one very noticeable fact is this, that even at this day, 
after more than another century of contact with the whites, they still 
prefer to use their own native names for places, and do so among them- 
selves. That the Indians could have obtained the name St. Croix from 
the French in 1604 or 1605, and then have used it as a place-name 
down to 1764 seems to me so entirely inconsistent with their methods, 
that I find it impossible to believe it, besides which if they really had 
obtained the name from the French at all they would have obtained it 
for the Scoodic to which, as we now know, the French applied it.* I 
cannot believe therefore that the use of the name St. Croix by the 
Indians much antedated the year 1764. But as to how they obtained 
the name we have no evidence whatever. But we should note that if 
some person ‘interested in having the boundary of Massachusetts made 
as far east as possible, had chosen to put the idea into the heads of the 
Indians that the Magaguadavie was the St. Croix, he would not have 
had much difficulty in doing so, for an Indian, as I know by experience, 
is very willing to give an inquirer the kind of information he sees the 
latter desires, and once given he adheres to it. The very fact mentioned 
above that some of the Indians after declaring to the commissioners 
at Passamaquoddy that they had always known the Magaguadavic as 
the St. Croix, afterwards stated that they had been bribed to say so 
shows how little reliance can be placed upon their word in such a case, 
while the fact that some of them the next year (1765) as we shall pres- 
ently see, told Surveyor General Morris of Nova Scotia that the Cob- 
scook was known to them as the St. Croix, shows still further what value 
is to be placed upon their testimony. I do not mean to state that the 
Indians are habitually untruthful, but I do think that their minds are 
very like those of young children, which do not view truth and false- 
hood in the same moral light that the adult and moral Caucasian does, 
and that, as in young children, the Indians will persist in such a false- 
hood when once started.? My opinion of the whole matter is that either 

1 There is no evidence at all in Champlain or Lescarbot that DeMonts 
erected any cross at the mouth of the Magaguadavic, and hence the name 
could not have originated in that way. It is of course possible that some later 
expedition visited the Bay and erected a cross at the mouth of the Magagua- 
davic, but opposed to this is the fact that the traditions given in the bound- 
ary MS. speak as if those who erected the cross afterwards settled on the 
islands in the Scoodic (i.e., DeMonts’ expedition). It is not impossible that 
some of the Priests who probably established the mission at St. Andrews, 
which originated that name, may also first have erected a cross at the mouth 
of the Magaguadavic. 
? On this phase of Indian character, compare Baxter’s Pioneers of 
France, 85. 
Sec. 11, 1901015: 
