Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/89
which had a long: passage of 33 or 24 days. She might have sailed from here some days ago if it had not been for a deep snow that fell while the furs were coming: down the river, so deep that it was with difficulty the horse was got in. We have sent all the furs and everything: received except about 60 lbs. Castor and a quantity of Musquash skins that could not be brought down. * * We have credited little or nothing: this winter as we shall not for the future, finding: upon examining our accounts that trusting seem ingly but little soon amounts to a large sum. We have by the nearest calculations we can make about £1,500 L.M., due to us from the English and Indians—about half that sum from each, which will be hard to collect tho we hope not much of it finally lost."
The Maliseet Indians, when the first English settlers established themselves on the St. John river, were a different race of people from their mild mannered and inoffensive descendants of today, and they sometimes assumed a very threatening attitude towards the settlers. Possibly their manners were not quite so barbarous as they were some twenty years before, when a party of unfortunate English captives were abused at the Indian village of Aukpaque in the manner which is thus described by one of the victims.[1]
"We arrived at an Indian village called Apoge [or Aukpaque]. At this place ye Squaws came down to the edge of the river, dancing and behaving themselves in the most brutish manner that is possible for human kind and taking us prisoners by the arms, one squaw on each side of a prisoner, they led us up to their villege and placed themselves in a large circle round us. After they had got all prepared for their dance, they made us sit down in a small circle about 18 inches assunder and began their frolick, dancing round and striking us in the face with English scalps till it caused the blood to issue from our mouths and noses in very great and plentiful manner, and tangled their hands in our hair and knocked our heads together with all their strength and vehemence ; and when they was tired of this exercise they would take us by the hair and some by the ears, and standing behind us, oblige us to keep our necks strong so as to bear their weight, then raise themselves, their feet off the ground and their weight hanging by our hair and ears. In this manner they thumped us in the back and sides with their knees and feet to such a degree that I am incapable to express it, and the others that was dancing round if they saw any man falter and did not hold up his neck, they dashed the scalps in our faces with such violence that every man endeavored to bear them hanging by their hair in this manner rather than to have a double punishment. After they had finished their frolick that lasted about two hours and an half we was carried to one of their camps."
The party of English captives referred to were
- ↑ The narrator was Wm. Pote, Jr., of Falmouth. He was master of the schooner Montague, which with her crew was taken at Annapolis by a party of French and Indians in the summer of 1745.