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COLONIZATION

NEWFOUNDLAND.

To take a review of our colonies, beginning with Newfoundland. There, as in other parts of North America, it seems to have been, for a length of time, accounted a "meritorious act" to kill an Indian.[1]

On our first visit to that country, the natives were seen in every part of the coast. We occupied the stations where they used to hunt and fish, thus reducing them to want, while we took no trouble to indemnify them, so that, doubtless, many of them perished by famine; we also treated them with hostility and cruelty, and "many were slain by our own people, as well as by the Micmac Indians," who were allowed to harass them. They must, however, have been recently very numerous, since, in one place, Captain Buchan found they had "run up fences to the extent of 30 miles," with a variety of ramifications, for the purpose of conducting the deer down to the water, a work which would have required the labour of a multitude of hands.

It does not appear that any measures were taken to open a communication with them before the year 1810, when, by order of Sir. J. Duckworth, an attempt was made by Captain Buchan, which proved ineffectual. At that time he conceived that their numbers around their chief place of resort, the Great Lake, were reduced to 400 or 500. Under our treatment they continued rapidly to diminish; and it appears probable that the last of the tribe left at large, a man and a woman, were shot by two Englishmen in 1823. Three women had been taken prisoners shortly before, and they died in captivity. In the colony of Newfoundland, it may therefore be stated that we have exterminated the natives.[2]

  1. Cotton Mather records that, amongst the early settlers, it was considered a "religious act to kill Indians."

    A similar sentiment prevailed amongst the Dutch boors in South Africa, with regard to the natives of the country. Mr. Barrow writes, "A farmer thinks he cannot proclaim a more meritorious action than the murder of one of these people. A boor from Graaf Reinet, being asked in the secretary's office, a few days before we left town, if the savages were numerous or troublesome on the road, replied, 'he had only shot four,' with as much composure and indifference as if he had been speaking of four partridges. I myself have heard one of the humane colonists boast of having destroyed, with his own hands, near 300 of these unfortunate wretches."

  2. See Evidence given by Capt. Buchan.