Shalt show us how divine a thing
A woman may be made...Worsworth
It is believed that they were one of the first to make contact with those outside of North America, when the Vikings landed centuries ago, and were also responsible for driving them off when they tried to encroach on their territory.
In the early seventeenth centuries, many Beothic Warriors joined forced with Peter Easton, a pirate who operated in Newfoundland, capturing any European vessels attempting to make their way to the shores of what is now Canada.
Equipped with French guns, the Mi'kmaq went on the hunt, and though not openly at war with the Newfoundland people, they just hoped to earn a little bounty. On one such expedition, the hunters felled two Beoethic, cut off their heads and were taking their prize back to the waiting merchants, when they were discovered and executed on the spot.
Since the Newfoundland Natives had no European allies, and hence no guns; they had use strategy to punish the Mi'kmaq's disloyalty. They first invited their 'friends' to a feast, arranging their guests so that each sat beside one of their hosts. Then, a signal was given and Beoethic slew the Mi'kmaq beside him. They then moved further into the interior, where life resumed as before.
They also continued the practice of offering rewards for any dead Boeothic; so hunters and soldiers had new prey to hunt and kill. However, in 1803, then governor, Admiral Gambier, decided on a different approach. He instead offered a huge reward to any one who would bring him back a live Boëothic, in hopes perhaps of negotiating a truce.
As a result, a young woman who was paddling a canoe in search of bird eggs, was captured by a fisherman, and carried kicking and screaming to the governor's quarters. Gambier treated her kindly, and offered her fashionable clothing, but the young woman refused to let go of her fur robe. Not wanting to push his luck, the Admiral requested that she be escorted back home safely, loaded down with many gifts as a show of good faith. Native women were often used by the Europeans in this way, recognizing that they held the real power within their communities. Nothing was heard of the young woman again, so I assume she wasn't overly impressed with the gesture.
Buchan then left two of his men as hostages, in exhange for four Boeothic men to act as guides and help transport their load. However, before long, they ran off and when the Englishman returned to the encampement the next day, he found the men he had left as hostages decapitated and lying stretched out on the snow. In their defense, the Boeothic people had been badly mistreated by all Europeans for centuries, so really trusted none of them, and rightfully so.
In the winter of 1819, a party of furriers met a woman of the tribe. They captured her; and when her her husband tried to rescue her, they shot him dead. The woman, whom they later named Mary March, was also escorted back with presents, on a vessel under Captain Buchan; but she died on board and he carried her body up the lake to where he thought her people were most likely to find it. (It is beleived that her tomb was later found)
Another skirmish occurred in the winter of 1823, on the ice near Notre Dame Bay; when a Native couple emerged from the forrest, weak from hunger, and surrendered themselves to the furriers. The Boëothic man was shot in mere sport; and the woman, who in despair fell onto the body of her husband, was shot through the back and chest. The furriers returned to their camp and boasted of felling two 'red foxes', the name given the aboriginal people by the English, since they wore the fur side of their coats on the inside and were deemed to be red in skin tone. More often than not though, they were simply referred to as 'Red Indians'.
"We were elated by other encouraging signs. The traces left by the Red Indians are so peculiar that they cannot be mistaken. This spot has been a favourite place of settlement with these people. Here are the remains of one of their villages, where the vestiges of eight or ten mamateeks, or winter wigwams, each intended to lodge six to eighteen or twenty persons, are close to each other; there are also the remains of several summer wigwams. Close to each mamateek, there is a square or oblong pit dug in the earth, about four feet deep, for the purpose of preserving stores. Some of these were lined with birch-bark. There was also the remains of a vapour-bath".
The group then spend the night at the house of some furriers, who were reluctant to share information about the whereabouts of the local people. He says "Indeed, we could hardly have expected any ; for these and such people, have been the unchecked and ruthless destroyers of the tribe, the remnant of which we were in search of."
during the past summer, they might at that time be stationed about the borders of the low tract of country before us, at the deer-passes, or employed somewhere else in the interior, killing deer for winter provisions.... the Indians kill great numbers of deer, with very little trouble, during their migrations. We looked out for two days from the summits of the hills adjacent, trying to discover the smoke from the camps of the Red Indians, but in vain...."
"In about ten days we got a glimpse of this beautifully majestic and splendid sheet of water. The ravages of fire, which we saw in the woods for the last two days indicated that man had been near. We looked down upon the lake, from the hills at the northern extremity, with feelings of anxiety and admiration. No canoe could be discovered moving on its placid surface....We approached the lake with hope and caution; but found, to our
mortification, that the Red Indians had deserted it for some years past. My party had been so excited, so sanguine, and so determined to obtain an interview of some kind with these people, that on discovering, from appearances every where around us, that the Red Indians, the terror of the Europeans, as well as the other Indian inhabitants of Newfoundland, no longer existed, the spirits of one and all of us were very deeply
affected. The old mountaineer was particularly overcome. There were every where indications that this had long been the central and undisturbed rendezvous of the tribe, when they had enjoyed peace and security. But these primitive people had abandoned it, after having been tormented by parties of Europeans during the last eighteen years."
" We spent several melancholy days wandering on the borders of the east end of the lake, surveying the various remains of what we now contemplated to have been an unoffending and cruelly extirpated people. At several places, by the margin of the lake, are small clusters of summer and winter wigwams in ruins. One difference, among others, between the Boëothic wigwams and those of other Indians is, that in most of the former there are small hollows, like nests, dug in the earth, around the fire-place, and in the sides of the wigwam, so that I think it probable these people have been accustomed to sleep in a sitting position. There was one wooden building, constructed for drying and smoking venison, still perfect; also a small log-house, in a dilapidated condition, which we took to have been a store house. The wreck of a large handsome birch-rind canoe, about twenty-two feet in length, comparatively new, and certainly very little used, lay thrown up among the bushes
at the beach. We supposed that the violence of a storm had rent it in the way it was found, and that the people who were in it had perished, for the iron nails, of which there was no want, all remained in it. Had there been any survivors, nails being very much prized by these people, they never having held trading intercourse with Europeans, such an article would most likely have been taken out for use again. All the birchtrees in the
vicinity of the lake had been rinded, and many of those of the spruce fir, or var (pinus balsamifera, Canadian balsam-tree), had the bark taken off, to use the inner part for food, as noticed before.
being narrow at this end, pursue the animals in their canoes, and kill them with spears. In this way they secure their winter provisions before the severity of the winter sets in.
" There were other remains of different kinds, peculiar to these people, met with about this lake. One night we encamped on the foundation of an old Indian wigwam, on the extremity of a point of land which juts out into the lake, and exposed to the view of the whole country around. A large fire at night is the life and soul of such a party as ours; and, when it blazed up at times, I could not help observing that two of my Indians evinced uneasiness and want of confidence in things around, as if they thought themselves usurpers on the Red Indian territory. From time immemorial, none of the Indians of the other tribes had ever encamped near this lake, fearlessly, and as we had now done, in the very centre of such a country; the lake and territory adjacent having been always considered to belong exclusively to the Red Indians, and to have been occupied by them. It had been our invariable practice hitherto to encamp near hills, and be on their summits by the dawn of day, to try and discover the morning smoke ascending from the Red Indians' camps; and, to prevent the discovery of ourselves, we extinguished our own fire always some length of time before daylight.
Badger Bay, Great Lake, towards the beginning of our excursion. During our descent, we had to construct new rafts at the different waterfalls. Sometimes we were carried down the rapids at the rate of ten miles an hour, or more, with considerable risk of destruction to the whole party, for we were always together on one raft.
" What arrests the attention most, in gliding down the stream, is the extent of the Indian fences to entrap deer. They extend from the lake downwards, continuous, on the banks of the river, at least thirty miles. There are openings left here and there for the animals to go through, and swim across the river; and at these places the Indians were stationed, and killed them in the water with spears out of their canoes, as at the lake.
" Here, then, connecting these fences with those on the north-west side of the lake, is at least forty miles of country, easterly and westerly, prepared to intercept all the deer that pass that way in their periodical migrations. It was melancholy to contemplate the gigantic, yet rude, efforts of a whole primitive nation, in their anxiety to provide subsistence, forsaken and going to decay.
" There must have been hundreds of Red Indians, and that not many years ago, to have kept up these fences and pounds. As their numbers were lessened, so was their ability to keep them up for the purposes intended, and now the deer pass the whole line unmolested."
However, we do know from his findings, that the aboriginal people of Newfoundland were industrious, and though they were considered hostile warriors, their ferociousness was necessary to protect their families and possessions. Most of their weaponry was primitive; bows and arrows, spears, hatchets, etc. and much of their defense strategies were meant to protect them from people with similar arsenals. Their birch covered framework canoes were similar to those in use by many Native Canadians, only built higher with a pigeon-breasted prow to protect them from enemy arrows and spears.
We know that they had a great respect for their dead, smoked meat to preserve it for future use, stored food for winter, and bathed regularly. They were strong and robust with beautiful teeth and exercised ingenuity in hunting and trapping.
Women were respected and highly revered. They loved their husbands and their children, and performed their arduous daily chores with a quiet reserve. The stories of two such women, Demasduit and Shaa-aan-dithit, provide us with a good insight into the inelligence and integrity of a lost people, hunted to extinction. Not a proud moment in Canadian history, but Canadian history, none the less.
