Anglo-American Relations Before 1580 69
to this area by Queen Elizabeth). The probability of such
encounters was fully taken into account in the instructions
given to Frobisher before his deprture. He was to see that
his gold-miners “maye bee placed as well from daunger &
malice of the people as from any other extreamitie that maye
happen.”
He who drafted these instructions was above all things
clear that no chances should be taken with regard to the
natives that might result in further losses of men. Paragraph
13 reads as follows: “Item as you shall mistrust rather to
muche than any thinge to Htle towching the matter of your
salftie, when you happen to come to have conference with
the people of those partes wher you shall arrive: so agayne
wee requyre you, that in all your doynges you doe behave
your selfe, and to cawse your companie to doe the hke,
towardes the sayd people as maye gyve lest cawse of offence,
and to procure as much as in you shall lye to wynne bothe
frendshippe & likynge.” He also made provision (paragraph
16) for Frobisher to bring some of the Eskimos back to Eng-
land with him. “Item wee doe not thincke it good you should
bringe hither above the nomber of [“iij or Hif deleted] 8 or
tenne at the most of the people of that Contrie: whereof
some to be ould and the other yonge: whome wee mynd
shall not retume agayne thither, and therfore you shall have
great care howe you doe take them for avoidyng of offence
towards them and the Contrie.”15
In spite of the fact that Frobisher was “more carefull by
processe of time to winne [the natives], then wilfully at the
first to spoile them,” the second voyage resulted in much
trouble between the Engfish and the Eskimos. George Best’s
narrative is one skirmish after another, from the time of the
first landing of the English among the savages on July 18,