“Never have I beheld a larger or more beautiful river. The Thames seems a mere rivulet in comparison with it; it is not disfigured by any swamps, but has firm land on each side. Fine groves of trees appear, not choked with bushes and undergrowth, but growing at intervals as if planted by hand, so that you might easily drive a four-horse carriage through the midst of the trees.” Governor Leonard Calvert had heard so many stories of the fierceness and cunning of the Indians that he did not land at once. After the two ships had cruised about the rivers and the bay awhile, he decided to settle at the mouth of a small river, which they named St. Mary’s, and built a group of cabins, calling this place St. Mary’s also. They were quite surprised to find their Indian neighbors friendly, bringing corn and provisions, and showing them all they could about planting and trapping and hunting. The settlers soon learned that the Indians were friendly because they wanted the white men to help them when they went to war with their savage enemies. The red men thought the strangers’ “firesticks” (guns) worked magic, like lightning and thunder from above. The children of young Maryland saw much to entertain and sometimes to frighten them. When the Indians painted themselves with red, black, and yellow stripes, they looked even uglier than before. The white people had heard of the savages’ war dances and scalp dances, but they now found the natives had also their corn dances, something like a harvest or Thanksgiving festival. The Maryland colonists were kind to the tribes and gained their friendship, as Champlain had done and as William Penn and the Quakers of Philadelphia were to do about fifty years later. The Indians in and around Maryland learned to believe in the goodness of the people of the Baltimore colony. Most of the trouble Governor Calvert had in settling Maryland was with a white leader named Claiborne, who had settled on the largest island in the bay. He claimed that this land, which was named Kent Island, was part of Virginia. Governor Calvert visited Jamestown, and the governor of that colony said that the island was part of Lord Baltimore’s land. Then Claiborne announced that Kent Island was not only separate from either colony, but that it belonged to him. He had made friends among the Indians, far and near, and began to boast that he was going to drive all the other white people out of that country.