quite remarkable that with all their bloodthirstiness in the New England wars there is no instance on record of the slightest rudeness to the person of any female captive. This fact should be remembered to their credit by those who most abhor their bloodthirstiness and cruelty. Nor were the savages without a certain sense of justice. This we learn from the following incident in the experience of the English captive John Gyles.

“While at the Indian village (Medoctec) I had been cutting wood and was binding it up with an Indian rope in order to carry it to the wigwam when a stout ill-natured young fellow about 20 years of age threw me backward, sat on my breast and pulling out his knife said that he would kill me, for he had never yet killed an English person. I told him that he might go to war and that would be more manly than to kill a poor captive who was doing their drudgery for them. Notwithstanding all I could say he began to cut and stab me on my breast. I seized him by the hair and tumbled him from off me on his back and followed him with my fist and knee so that he presently said he had enough; but when I saw the blood run and felt the smart I at him again and bid him get up and not lie there like a dog—told him of his former abuses offered to me and other poor captives, and that if ever he offered the like to me again I would pay him double. I sent him before me, took up my burden of wood and came to the Indians and told them the whole truth and they commended me, and I don’t remember that ever he offered me the least abuse afterward, though he was big enough to have dispatched two of me.”

The unfortunate conduct of some of the New England governors together with other circumstances that need not here be mentioned, led the Maliseets to be hostile to the English. Toward the French, however, they were from the very first disposed to be friendly, and when de Monts, Champlain and Poutrincourt arrived at the mouth of our noble river on the memorable 24th day of June, 1604, they found awaiting them the representatives of an aboriginal race of unknown antiquity, and of interesting language, traditions and customs, who welcomed them with outward manifestations of delight, and formed with them an alliance that remained unbroken throughout the prolonged struggle between the rival powers for supremacy in Acadia.