Beothukan Family (from the tribal or
group name Béothuk,
which probably signifies 'man,' or 'human being,' but was employed by
Europeans to mean 'Indian,' or 'Red Indian'; in the latter case because
the Beothuk colored themselves and tinted their utensils and arms with red
ocher). So far as known only a single tribe, called Beothuk, which
inhabited the island of Newfoundland when first discovered, constituted
this family, although existing vocabularies indicate it marked dialectic
differences. At first the Beothuk were classified either as Eskimauan or
as Algonquian, but now, largely through the researches of Gatschet, it is
deemed best to regard them as constituting a distinct linguistic stock. It
is probable that in 1497 Beothukan people were met by Sebastian Cabot when
he discovered Newfoundland, as he states that he met people "painted with
red ocher," which is a marked characteristic of the Beothuk of later
observers. Whitbourne (Chappell, Voy. to Newfoundland, 1818), who visited
Newfoundland in 1622, stated that the dwelling places of these Indians
were in the north and west parts of the island, adding that "in war they
use bows and arrows, spears, darts, clubs, and slings." The extinction of
the Beothuk was due chiefly to the bitter hostility of the French and to
Micmac invasion from Nova Scotia at the beginning of the 18th century, the
Micmac settling in west Newfoundland as hunters and fishermen. For a time
these dwelt in amity with the Beothuk, but in 1770, quarrels having
arisen, a destructive battle was fought between the two peoples at the
north end of Grand Pond. The Beothuk, however, lived on friendly terms
with the Naskapi, or Labrador Montagnais, and the two peoples visited and
traded with each other.
Exasperated by the petty depredations of these tribes,
the French, in the middle of the 18th century, offered a reward for every
head of a Beothuk Indian. To gain this reward and to obtain the valuable
furs they possessed, the more numerous Micmac hunted and gradually
exterminated them as an independent people. The English treated the
Beothuk with much less rigor; indeed, in 1810 Sir Thomas Duckworth issued
a proclamation for their protection. The banks of the River of Exploits
and its tributaries appear to have been their last inhabited territory.
De Laet (Novus Orbis, 34,1633) describes these
Newfoundland Indians as follows: "The height of the body is medium, the
hair black, the face broad, the nose flat, and the eyes large; all the
males are beardless, and both sexes tint not only their skin but also
their garments with a kind of red color. And they dwell in certain conical
lodges and low huts of sticks set in a circle and joined together in the
roof. Being nomadic, they frequently change their habitations. They had a
kind of cake made with eggs and baked in the sun, and a sort of pudding,
stuffed in gut, and composed of seal's fat, livers, eggs, and other
ingredients." He describes also their peculiar crescent shaped birch-bark
canoes, which had sharp keels, requiring, much ballast to keep them from
overturning; these were not more than 20 feet in length and they could
bear at most 5 persons. Remains of their lodges, 30 to 40 feet in
circumference and constructed by forming a slender frame of poles
overspread with birch bark, are still traceable. They had both summer and
winter dwellings, the latter often accommodating about 20 people each.
Jukes (Excursions, 1842) describes their deer fences or deer stockades of
trees, which often extended for 30 miles along a river. They employed pits
or caches for storing food, and used the steam bath in huts covered with
skins and heated with hot stones. Some of the characteristics in which the
Beothuk differed from most other Indians were a marked lightness of skin
color, the use of trenches in their lodges for sleeping berths, the
peculiar form of their canoes, the non domestication of the dog, and the
dearth evidence of pottery making.
Bonnycastle (Newfoundland in 1842)
states that the Beothuk used the inner bark of Pinus balsamifera as
food, while Lloyd (Jour. Inst., Iv,1875) mentions the fact that they
obtained fire by igniting the down of the bluejay from sparks produced by
striking together two pieces of iron pyrites.
Peyton, cited by Lloyd, declares that the sun was the
chief object' of their worship. Carmack's expedition, conducted in behalf
of the Beothic Society for the Civilization of the Native Savages, in
1827, failed to find a single individual of this once prominent tribe,
although the island was crossed centrally in the search. As they were on
good terms with the Naskapi of Labrador, they perhaps crossed the strait
of Belle Isle and became incorporated with them.
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