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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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