Note XXXI‑1 — Chapter XXXI · PANAMÁ. 1672-1800.

Paterson, the son of a Dumfriesshire farmer, was born in 1658. There are no authentic records as to his early career. In Francis' Hist. Bank of England, and Strain's Inter. Com., 15, it is stated that he went out as a missionary to the West Indies and afterward joined the buccaneers. The statement is not so improbable as it may seem, for the freebooters while robbing and murdering the Catholic Spaniard imagined they were serving God, as did the Spaniard when he plundered and slaughtered the natives. Wilkes, Hist. Oregon, 48, says he was supposed to have been originally a South American buccaneer.