A Narrative of an Extraordinary Escape out of the Hands of the Indians, in the Gulph of St. Lawrence; Interspersed with a Description of the Coast, and Remarks on the Customs and Manners of the Savages There: Also, a Providential Escape after a...
- Gamaliel Smethurst (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
A Narrative of an Extraordinary Escape Out of the Hands of the Indians, in the Gulph of St. Lawrence is an 18th-century first-person account by Gamaliel Smethurst, originally published in 1774 in London, recounting his experiences after being captured by Indigenous people in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The narrative describes their way of life, customs, and beliefs, as well as Smethurst’s attempts to escape and the dangers he faced — alongside a second account of a shipwreck survival. Edited and reprinted by W. F. Ganong for the New Brunswick Historical Society, the work is valued both as a tale of adventure and as a historical source on the customs of the region’s Indigenous people, the attitudes of French and Indigenous communities toward colonial government, and the hardships of travel in that era.
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.