Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/350

330 as toys, it was enough for the white man to feel that he was able to hold his ground.

Again, the early colonial enterprises were all feeble, and with scarce an exception attended with sharp and almost extinguishing disaster, in which, if the Indians appear at all, it is simply to give relief. Often did they perform these acts of mercy to wretched white men in their extremities. As has been said before, these kindly acts of the savages were in every case ill requited. The Spanish invaders of the south of the continent and the first French voyagers at the north, after partaking of a gentle wilderness hospitality, both kidnapped some of the Indians and carried them across the ocean, leaving their intimidated relatives to wonder over their fate.

Neither had our English seamen to our own coasts failed to commit the same treacherous acts. Captain Weymouth himself publicly told the story in London of his kidnapping five Indians at Pemaquid, in 1605, though he said that he treated them well, and that his object was to promote civilization and trade. Again, in 1614, Captain Thomas Hunt, without the knowledge of Captain John Smith under whose orders he was, kidnapped twenty-seven Indians, in or near Plymouth harbor, who were sold in Spain for slaves. By the humanity of Spanish friars some of these were redeemed and sent back. Some of the tribe to which these belonged — the Nausits — were those who had the first encounter with the Plymouth Pilgrims on their landing. The Pilgrims in their first straits of hunger, while exploring for a permanent place of settlement, helped themselves to some of the buried corn-heaps of the natives. The justifying excuse for the act was necessity, and a sort of restitution was afterwards made to the owners.

First impressions made and received when strangers come into intercourse often decide the future relations between the parties. If we could learn how the natives were affected by their first knowledge of the whites, we should