OR EED INDIANS OP NEWFOUNDLAND. 128 



before. I have shown iu another place ' that the principal scene of his explorations was 

 the east coast of Newfoundland, and probably part of Labrador. On this expedition he 

 captured fifty of the natives, men, women and children, intending them for slaves. Two 

 of his vessels in which they were embarked reached Lisbon safely, but the one in which 

 he sailed himself was never heard of. We have said in that place that it is quite possible 

 that he and his crew fell a victim to the vengeance of the remaining members of the tribe. 

 The unfortunates carried away were seen by Pasqualigo, the Venetian ambassador at 

 Lisbon, who describes them as "of like colour, stature and aspect, and bearing the greatest 

 resemblance to the gypsies." By those on board they were described in their own land 

 as numerous, and in person well built, as living in wooden houses, clothing themselves 

 in skins and furs, and using swords made out of a kind of stone, and pointing their 

 arrows with the same material. Farther Pasqualigo tells us that " His Serene Highness 

 contemplates deriving great advantage from the country, not only on account of the tim- 

 ber of which he has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for 

 labour and the best slaves I haA'e ever seen." Such was the treatment that these people 

 received almost at their first meeting with Christian civilization, and we believe that it 

 was the beginning of that bitter hostility between the two which, continued through 

 subsequent generations, ended in the entire extermination of the weaker race. 



For about threec^uarlers of a century we have no notices of them, except that of 

 Jacques Cartier, who met them on his voyage in 1534, and thus describes them : " They 

 are of good stature, but wild and unruly. They wear their hair tied on the top like a 

 wreath of hay, and put a wooden pin in it, or any other sui-h thing instead of a nail, and 

 with Ihem they biud certain birds' feathers. They are well clothed with beasts' skins, as 

 well the men as the women, but the women go somewhat straighter and closer in their 

 garments than the men do, with their waists girded." 



According to Hakluyt, in the year 1536, an expedition, under Mr. Hore, with 120 

 souls, sailed for Newfoundland. That worthy author travelled 200 miles to see the last 

 survivor of the expedition, who informed him that " after their arrival in Newfoundland, 

 and having been there certain days at anchor, he saw a boat with savages rowing towards 

 them to gaze upon the ship and our people. They manned their ship's boat in order to 

 have taken them, but they fled to an island in the bay and escaped our men. They found 

 a fire and a side of a bear on a wooden spit, also a boot garnished on the calf as it were 

 with raw silk, also a great warm mitten." 



During the remainder of the 16th century we have only two brief notices of this peo- 

 ple. The first is by Martin Frobisher, in 1574. Having been driven by the ice on the 

 coasts of Newfoundland, some of the natives came 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 and carried him to England, where he died shortly after his arriral. 



The second is by Ed. Hayes, who wrote the narrative of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's 

 expedition in 1583. He says : " In the southern parts we found no inhabitants, which 

 by all likelihood have abandoned these coasts, the same being frequented by Christians. 

 But in the north are savages, altogether harmless." 



In the year 1610 was made the first attempt at colonization on the island ; a company 



' " The Portuguese on the N. E. Coast of America," in ' Transactions of Royal Society of Canada,' 1890. 



