and by and by he married a wife from among them. Through the agency
of this John Gret, who always preserved an affection for the English,
a friendship was established between the buccaneers and the Indians.
Presents were made on each side, and a certain secret signal was
concerted whereby the Indians might recognise their English friends.
It happened that there was a Frenchman among one of the buccaneering
captain's crew. He was artful enough to commit this signal, whatever
it was, to memory, and on his arrival at Petit Guavres he communicated
what he knew to his countrymen there, and represented the facility with
which the South Seas might be entered now that he had the secret of
winning over the Indians to help him. On this one hundred and twenty
Frenchmen formed themselves into a troop, with the buccaneer, whom
Dampier calls Mr. la Sound, as their captain, and marched against
Cheapo, an attempt that proved unsuccessful, though the simple Indians,
believing them to be English, gave them all the assistance that was in
their power. “From such small beginnings,” adds Dampier, “arose those
great stirs that have been since made in the South Seas, viz.: from the
Letters we took and from the Friendship contracted with these Indians
by means of John Gret. Yet this Friendship had like to have been
stifled in its Infancy; for within few months after an English trading
Sloop came on this Coast from Jamaica, and John Gret, who by this time
had advanced himself as a Grandee amongst these Indians, together with
5 or 6 more of that quality, went off to the Sloop in their long Gowns,
as the custom is for such to wear among them. Being received aboard,
they expected to find everything friendly, and John Gret talkt to them
in English; but these English Men having no knowledge at all of what
had happened, endeavoured to make them Slaves (as is commonly done),
for upon carrying them to Jamaica they could have sold them for 10 or
12 Pound apiece. But John Gret and the rest perceiving this, leapt
all overboard, and were by the others killed every one of them in the
Water. The Indians on Shoar never came to the knowledge of it; if they
had it would have endangered our Correspondence.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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