Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/90

taken to Quebec and regained their freedom about three years later. It was with these very Indians and their immediate descendants that Messrs. Simonds and White undertook to establish their Indian trade in the year 1764. James White was the principal hand in the bartering business, and the Indians had great confidence in his integrity. Three-fourths of their trade consisted of beaver, the beaver consequently became the standard to which everything else that was bartered had to conform. Mr. White himself was commonly called by the Indians Quahbeet, or "the Beaver." There is a tradition to the effect that in the Indian trade the fist of Mr. White was considered to weigh a pound and his foot two pounds, both in buying and selling. However, the same story is told of other Indian traders, including an old Scotch merchant of Fredericton named Peter Fraser,^[1] and it is not very probable there is much truth in it. The aborigines of New Brunswick, though simple minded, were not fools. It was customary in dealing with the savages to take pledges for the payment of debts, such as silver trinkets, armclasps, medals, iuzees, etc. A Machias privateer, whose captain bore the singular name of A. Greene Crabtree, in the autumn of 1777 plundered the store at Portland Point and carried off a trunk full of the pledges. This excited the ire of the Indian chiefs Pierre Thoma and Francis Xavier, who sent the following communication to Machias: "We desire you will return into the hands of Mr. White at Menaguashet^[2] the pledges belonging to us which were plundered last fail out of Mr. Hazen's store by A. Greene Crabtree, captain of one of your privateers; for if you don't send them we will come for them in a manner you won't like."

The associations between the little colony at the