Nonosbawsut watched in wonder as the whitefaces rowed his father, Ashsut, his sister, his two younger brothers, and many other members of the tribe out to the two mamashees9 which lay anchored a short distance offshore. He too had wanted to go, but by the time he got to the tapathooks10 they had already been filled and there was no room for him. He was enthralled by the mamashees’ strange shapes, the long poles that reached skyward from their decks, and above all else, their immense size. He had never seen anything even remotely like them before. He hoped that when the others were brought back, he would also have the opportunity to go out to examine one of them at close range and be able to explore its interior. Having gotten over his initial inhibitions toward the whitefaces, he felt eager and excited, and the small axe he had been given as a gift felt good in his hand. Little did he realize at that moment that he was witnessing the initiation of the persecution of his race that would continue unabated for the next three hundred and thirty years, until he and his people were eventually vanquished from the face of the earth.
The Beothuk Indians, Newfoundland’s aboriginal people, were doomed to extinction from the moment the Venetian explorer, Giovanni Caboto, stepped ashore, allegedly at Bonavista, on June 24, 1497, and claimed the New Founde Lande for Henry VII, the king of England. There is no suggestion that Caboto himself or any of his crew inflicted any harm upon the native inhabitants or intimidated them in any manner. Indeed, there is no firm evidence to indicate that they even encountered any natives during their brief stay there. It was the wave of Europeans that followed in Caboto’s wake that would initiate the carnage and brutality that would ultimately see the Beothuk nation driven to extinction.
It didn’t take long for the persecution to begin. In 1500, just four short years after Caboto’s landfall, King Manuel I of Portugal, encouraged by the discovery, sent his own explorers, Gaspar Corte-Real and his brother Miguel, westward in search of new territories and islands for Portugal. The Corte-Reals are thought to have reached Labrador sometime in 1501 before finally landing on the shores of Newfoundland later that same year. It is recorded that the Corte-Real brothers, unlike Cabot, did encounter Beothuk and managed to engage them in a friendly meeting, exchanging presents and sharing food with them. Having lulled the natives into their confidence, the Corte-Reals invited the Beothuk aboard their ships, the likes of which the natives had never seen and in which they showed great interest. Fifty-seven Beothuk, including most of Nonosbawsut’s own family, took the brothers up on their invitation and were rowed out to the two Portuguese ships which lay anchored a short distance from the shore. The rest, waiting on the beach, were puzzled when the rowboats, after unloading their kinsmen, were lifted on board. Their confusion turned to disbelief and bewilderment when the sails of the vessels were unfurled and the two ships sailed away into the distance.
Once on board, the unsuspecting Beothuk were quickly overpowered by the Portuguese crews, shackled, and locked away below deck before they realized what was happening. They were taken back to Portugal where the Corte-Real brothers presented them to King Manuel as a gift. Some of the natives died before reaching Portugal.They were, perhaps, the fortunate ones. Several others who did survive the voyage were employed as slaves in King Manuel’s court, while some, including Ashut, were put on display in carnivals and circuses throughout the country, where they were objects of ridicule and great curiosity. The captured Beothuk chieftain, if given the choice, would willingly have chosen death himself over the kind of life he was now forced to live.
It is believed that many of these Beothuk, removed from their natural environment and subjected to white man’s diseases like smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis, died within a very short time, and that none of them lived very long in their captivity. Thus the Corte-Real brothers would, in effect, be the first of a long succession of persecutors who would eventually see the Beothuk race driven to extinction.
Because of the tragic circumstances of the capture of Nonosbawsut’s people, he, having passed only twenty summers, suddenly found himself the leader of his tribe. With the loss of Ashut, their chieftain, and the other fifty-six members of the tribe who had been so cunningly spirited away, the remaining people instinctively turned to Nonosbawsut as their new chieftain. Their choice was based partly on the fact that Nonosbawsut was Ashut’s son and his logical successor. It was prompted more so, though, by their recognition of the young man’s ability to lead them through the difficult times ahead, for they realized that a new and terrible element had entered into their lives.
Nonosbawsut was equal to the task. Three attributes in particular marked him for the role. He was a natural leader, already wise in his ways, and he had learned much from his father. Secondly, he was extremely tall, towering well over the other men of his clan, and his strength and daring, despite his relatively young age, were already legendary. Lastly his eyes set him apart, unfathomable slate-grey pools which masked his emotions and lent him an air of aloofness and authority, and differentiated him from any other person in the tribe.
He led his tribe wisely until his death of natural causes eighteen years later. Under his guidance his people prospered and gradually recovered from the loss of so many of their members. Disciplined and resourceful, he made sure that they followed and respected the laws and ways of the ancestors, the ancient tenets that had sustained them for thousands of years, and when it was needed he meted out justice fairly and equitably. While he believed in and enforced the old ways, he had introduced one new cardinal rule: avoid the whitefaces at all costs. The kidnapping of his father and the others was never far from his mind and the ruthlessness he had observed that day had cemented his judgement of the white-skinned intruders.
His caution was well-founded, for that period saw the arrival of a succession of European ships which, following the lead of Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real, came to Newfoundland’s shores each year to capture Beothuk and bring them back to Europe as slaves. Several countries besides Portugal, including England and France, participated openly in this enterprise. The slave trade would undoubtedly have continued indefinitely but for one fact: the Beothuk people did not make suitable slaves. A chronicler of the time, Charlevoix, perhaps summed it up best when he said, “There is no profit at all to be obtained from the natives, who are the most intractable of men, and one despairs of taming them.”11 When that conclusion was reached by all concerned, the slave trade finally ceased. Nonosbawsut could be counted as perhaps the only Beothuk chieftain who had not lost a single person to this vile practise.
For more than a hundred years following Caboto’s landfall, long after Nonosbawsut had passed on to the afterlife, permanent settlement in Newfoundland was prohibited. The fishing industry carried on in Newfoundland waters by England, France, Portugal, and Spain was strictly seasonal, with the fish-laden ships of these countries returning home to Europe each fall. During this period, contact between the Beothuk and the European fishermen appears to have been sporadic. The natives, wary because of their earlier experience at the hands of the slave traders, avoided the Europeans and resisted most overtures made toward them for trading. They preferred instead to pilfer objects that interested them from the temporary fishing premises left behind each year by the Europeans. They were particularly attracted to anything made of iron, which could be melted and reshaped into other tools and implements.
Still, hostility did exist during this period, and there are many tales of bloody encounters and grisly acts of revenge and reprisal by both sides. Some historians, including noted Newfoundland politician and author Harold Horwood, assert that European fishermen routinely shot the native inhabitants on sight during these years, sometimes just for the sport of it. Despite this, however, there were also a number of successful attempts aimed at peaceful interaction between the Europeans and the Beothuk, although these seem to have invariably been negated by some subsequent hostile act of cruelty, all of which soured any lasting relationship between the groups.
It wasn’t until 1610 that the first attempt to establish a permanent European presence in Newfoundland was undertaken when John Guy, a Bristol merchant, was authorized by the English government to found a colony at Cupers Cove (Cupids) in Conception Bay. In the fall of 1612, two years after he laid the foundation of his Seaforest Plantation in Cupids, Guy organized an expedition from his new settlement into adjoining Trinity Bay based on information he had received that Beothuk Indians resided there. After exploring Trinity Bay for some time, he and his party eventually came upon a deserted native village in the area now known as Spread Eagle, where they left gifts and presents before resuming their search. Several days later, in the location now named Sunnyside, Guy was surprised when his vessel was approached by two canoes carrying eight Beothuk men waving white flags and making friendly overtures.
Although Guy and his men were unaware of it, their activities had been monitored during the previous three days. Beothuk eyes had carefully scrutinized their every movement. Much discussion had taken place among the elders of the tribe to decide what course of action should be followed. The decision, after much deliberation, was finally reached to make contact with the white settlers. The Beothuk’s covert observations had convinced most of the tribe’s members that the intentions of the visitors were amicable and that an opportunity existed to establish a new relationship with them and end more than a century of hostility. Eighteen-year-old Edusweet, the great-great-great grandson of Nonosbawsut, had watched with great interest as the debate unfolded around the night fires. Because of his age, he was not encouraged to participate in the dialogue. His slate-grey eyes did not betray his excitement, but stories about the whitefaces, passed down through the generations, rang in his mind, and more than anything else he wanted to be in one of the canoes when contact was made.
A friendly encounter subsequently ensued between the Beothuk and the whites which lasted several days, during which the Europeans exchanged hatchets, knives, needles, and other items for Beothuk furs, and the two parties even shared a number of meals together. Edusweet, successful in his endeavour to be part of the welcoming party, partook of bread and butter for the first time in his life, and had at one point been able to shake the hand of the white chieftain himself. Looking into the eyes of the white leader, John Guy, he saw nothing but honesty, friendship, and respect.
Upon parting, Guy made arrangements with the Beothuk to meet them again at that same location the following year, and Edusweet, exhilarated by his encounter with the whitefaces, vowed that he would once again do everything in his power to be present for the occasion.
The next year, at the appointed time, an English ship did appear in the designated area of Trinity Bay. The excited Beothuk, including Edusweet, eager to meet Guy again, approached the vessel in their canoes only to be met by a hail of cannon fire. From his position in the rear canoe, Edusweet watched in horror and disbelief as the bodies of his uncle, Shebohut, and two others disintegrated in an explosion of blood and viscera. The captain of the ship, who was unaware of Guy’s earlier meeting with the Beothuk and his commitment to meet them again, had thought that he and his crew were being attacked by the natives, and therefore opened fire. The Beothuk who were not slain fled, Edusweet among them, believing that they had been betrayed and deceived. This incident would virtually wipe out any chance of the Europeans ever establishing a lasting relationship with the Beothuk.
During the next century, the proliferation of European settlers arriving to set up permanent residence in Newfoundland, especially on the east and northeast coasts, made life for the Beothuk very difficult, and hostilities between the two groups escalated to new levels. Edusweet’s descendants, having now to contend with the settlers while harvesting coastal food supplies such as salmon, codfish, mussels, and seabirds, frequently found themselves embroiled in bloody encounters with the newcomers. Stories of barbaric acts perpetrated against the Beothuk by the settlers and retaliatory scalpings and beheadings of whites by the natives abound during this period.
It was for this reason that Mamasut, the chieftain of the tribe at that time, assembled his people on a hill overlooking Trinity Bay one fine summer afternoon late in the seventeenth century. The yoke of leadership weighed heavily on his tall shoulders, and his intent was to tell his people that they would soon be leaving this area to go farther inland where they would be safer from their white tormentors. It was his intention, as well, to convene a telling, the traditional recounting of the stories of their past. By these measures he would be fulfilling his responsibility to ensure the safety of his people and guarantee that their history was passed on and preserved for future generations.
As the elders of the tribe spoke about their origins and the exploits of their ancestors, Mamasut listened as raptly as the youngest child there, and his grey eyes never once strayed from the speakers’ faces. He was reliving the days of his ancestors. He was walking with his forebears, beside them every step of the way, lost in time.
Many of the stories told by the elders involved the whitefaces, for by then two hundred years of the Beothuk’s own history was intrinsically entwined with the barbaric encounters with the strangers who had come to their shores. Perhaps the most chilling of the stories told that day was the Trinity Bay tradition that four hundred Beothuk were once herded out unto a long point of land, which afterwards became known as Bloody Point, in Hant’s Harbour, where they were forced out into the water where every man, woman, and child was murdered by any means. As he listened, Mamasut could hear the screams of the victims and experience their anguish and terror as they were killed one by one in the bloodied sea. He had no way of knowing that within the space of three short years he too would become a victim of the white invaders.
The beginning of the eighteenth century saw little to improve the lot of Mamasut and his people or the rest of the island’s aboriginal people. Right from the outset, in 1700, a man named Cull, along with five companions, set the tone for much of what was to follow. They left Notre Dame Bay early one morning, rounded Cape Freels in their small shallop, and entered Bonavista Bay. Then, following the coastline, they made their way southward until they eventually entered a long narrow inlet known today as Alexander Bay, one of the smaller bays situated in Bonavista Bay’s southwest corner. The true purpose of their trip is unclear, but before it was over, it would result in an atrocity of the worse order.
When they reached the bottom of the inlet they went ashore near a location now known as Cull’s Harbour, today a small community of a hundred people or so. Their intention was to explore the surrounding countryside. The area they were seeing for the first time was bountiful almost beyond imagination. The small bay, bounded on both sides by massive stands of spruce, fir, birch, and pine, boasted rivers that teemed with salmon and trout, and evidence of pine martin, otter, beaver, and other fur-bearing animals was everywhere. Cull and the others would have undoubtedly recognized the fishing, trapping, and logging potential of the area.
And then they discovered something else. There was strong evidence of Beothuk habitation in the area. Cull and his men came across signs of the natives’ existence in several locations. With that knowledge, a malicious thing came alive in Cull, and, forgetting everything else, he wanted to hunt them down and destroy them. The others may not have been as eager as Cull for the venture, but nevertheless went along with him as he pursued his cruel quest. Although there were five of them, they were intimidated by Cull, knowing well his explosive nature and his volatility when things did not go his way.
They scoured the bottom of the inlet for two full days, taking care not to give away their own presence lest they themselves be ambushed, and in the early morning hours of the third day their persistence was rewarded. They came upon a Beothuk encampment whose eight occupants were just rising for the day. When the surprised natives attempted to flee into the nearby woods, Cull opened fire. His companions, whether they had intended on being willing participants in the subsequent massacre, now had no choice, and their guns too took part in the assault. When the barrage was over, the eight Beothuk lay dead.
The massacre at that point was cruelly routine, this sort of thing had been carried out countless times. It was the grisly scene that followed that made this one infinitely worse. Cull insisted that the bodies be dragged to the shore and loaded onto the shallop. Once again his companions complied with his wishes, and when the vessel began its homeward journey, the eight corpses lay in a tangled heap in its stern. Then the sadistic Cull went to work.
Pulling one of the bodies from the pile, he took out his knife, ran it across the dead man’s brow, cutting deep, and pulled the flesh and hair back until it came off in a bloody mess in his hand. Then he threw it overboard. In a similar manner, he desecrated the remaining seven bodies, cutting the throats of some of them as well, and mutilating others in unimaginably obscene ways. The wake of the shallop ran red with Beothuk blood. The other men, as hardened as they were, looked on in horror and disgust, nauseated by what they were witnessing. When Cull’s gruesome act finally ended, he washed his hands and his knife in the sea, and sat back on the aft thwart and rested. One of the mutilated bodies left in his wake was that of Mamasut, the prudent chieftain who had led his people from Trinity Bay to this part of the island where they would be safer.
Mamasut and his family were just a few of the natives to die at the white settlers’ hands. By that time hundreds of other Beothuk all around Newfoundland had fallen victim to the aggression of the ever-encroaching newcomers. The settlers had also brought with them diseases common to Europe, such as measles and tuberculosis, that had never before existed in Newfoundland, and countless natives succumbed to these new threats as well. And sometime during that century yet another nemesis entered the picture to make the Beothuk’s existence even more tenuous. Mi’kmaq Indians, who during some earlier period had made their way from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, and who had historically enjoyed good relations with the Beothuk, now became their enemy. This reputedly occurred because French fishermen from Newfoundland’s west coast, plagued by theft and damage by the Beothuk of that region, conscripted the Mi’kmaq to their cause, armed them, and paid them a bounty for every Beothuk head they brought to them.
Wadawhegsut, the chieftain of a Beothuk tribe in the St. George’s Bay area, was one of the first to find out about the treachery of their Mi’kmaq neighbours. One story recounts how a group of seven Mi’kmaq, travelling through Beothuk territory with the severed heads of a number of Beothuk hidden in their canoes, was invited by Wadawhegsut to partake of a feast with his people, traditional wilderness hospitality which the Mi’kmaq readily accepted. While the two groups were eating, some Beothuk children discovered the grisly contents of the canoes and informed their chieftain. Now wise to the Mi’kmaq’s deed, Wadawhegsut strategically placed one of his own warriors between each visitor. At his signal, his men fell upon the unsuspecting visitors and stabbed them to death with their knives. From that day forward, hatred and open warfare existed between the two races which would end only with the Beothuk’s eventual extinction.
Already beset on all fronts, the lot of the Beothuk people was soon to get worse – to deteriorate beyond their deepest fears. As European settlement proliferated and spread into Notre Dame Bay in the mid to late 1700s, the Beothuk were effectively denied access to their traditional coastal food resources and forced farther and farther back into the interior. Eventually, the entire Beothuk population, which some estimates place as low as three or four hundred by that time, ended up in the Red Indian Lake region at the head of the Exploits River.
The fur trade and the salmon fishery were by then flourishing in Notre Dame Bay, and increasing numbers of white settlers were attracted to the area to pursue these occupations. Valuable fur-bearing animals abounded in the forests of the region, and its rivers and streams teemed with the silver fish that the appetites of St. John’s and Europe craved and demanded. In the eyes of many, there was only one impediment to the success of these important enterprises – the Beothuk. Furriers and fishermen alike routinely found their traps and nets stolen or damaged or their boats and premises and other properties destroyed. The elusive native raiding parties wreaking this havoc were difficult to catch, and the entrepreneurs of the area resorted to other means to protect their property. There is some contention that it was during this time, the late 1700s and early 1800s, that the slaying of Beothuk became systematic. The random and sporadic killing that previously existed gave way to something more deliberate and organized. Excursions into the interior, often organized under the pretext of recovering lost gear, were routinely planned and carried out, usually with fatal consequences for the Beothuk.
It was during these years, as well, that a breed of men openly called Indian Killers, plied their deadly profession. Most of these men were fur trappers by occupation, and their intimate knowledge of Notre Dame Bay’s forests and wilderness areas enabled them to slaughter the native inhabitants whenever and wherever they encountered them. It is unclear whether these men operated on their own initiative or were employed by others for the task. Either way, the carnage they were able to inflict upon the already dwindling Beothuk population was enormous.
Included in this group were three men – Noel Boss, Old Man Rogers, and Tom Rousell–who together accounted for upwards of two hundred Beothuk deaths, possibly more. Boss openly boasted about his achievements, and kept count of his killings. His own stated objective was to kill an even one hundred Beothuk before he was through. Gender mattered little to him as he shot native men and women without distinction. Rogers, living near Twillingate at the time, admitted to killing “sixty or more of the savages,” while Rousell killed indiscriminately at every opportunity.
Despite the extent of their carnage, the Indian Killers were probably relatively few in number. Most people in Notre Dame Bay at the time, in fact, considered their actions reprehensible and barbaric. John Peyton, Jr., the renowned salmon merchant and magistrate from Exploits who is recognized in Newfoundland history as a benefactor of the Beothuk, is believed to have been such an individual. Astonishingly though, his own father, John Peyton, Sr., is reputed to have openly participated in the persecution and butchery. It is alleged that Peyton, Sr., often accompanied excursions into the interior and that on one such occasion he was among those who slaughtered an encampment of twelve sleeping Beothuk whose mamateeks they stumbled upon. It is said that Peyton himself bludgeoned one of the defenceless natives with the stock of his gun until the walls of the mamateek were slick with the man’s brains. Reports of his barbarity were so widespread and his reputation so fearsome that Magistrate John Bland of adjoining Bonavista Bay issued a standing order that Peyton never be permitted to set foot in any part of Bonavista Bay, and recommended that he should be ordered to leave the Bay of Exploits as well.
In 1810, the government of the day, which had hitherto turned a blind eye to the persecution of Newfoundland’s aboriginal people, enacted laws to prevent further slaughter. The killing of Beothuk by white settlers was at last made a crime punishable to the full extent of the law. Finally awakened to the fact that the Beothuk race was on the verge of extinction, the government scrambled for ways to restore these people to some semblance of their former state. To achieve this, they employed a strategy of trying to capture a small number of native men and women to immerse them for a short while in the white man’s culture, after which they would return them to their own people with the hope that they would assure their kinsmen of the government’s good intentions toward them.
But it was too late. In 1819, the last of a number of ill-fated expeditions into the Red Indian Lake area, this one organized to recover stolen property and sanctioned by the government, would prove to be the dying gasp of a doomed race.
At that point in their demise, another Nonosbawsut was the chieftain of the few Beothuk still surviving. A twelfth generation descendant of his ancestral namesake, he would be the last chieftain of his race, the leader of a mere twenty-seven individuals, many of whom were riddled with tuberculosis and other diseases. Like his ancient predecessor, his main strategy was to avoid the furriers at all costs, and to that end he and his handful of followers led a nomadic existence, moving from place to place to escape detection.
On the clear morning of March 5, 1819, he was lying awake in his mamateek on the frozen surface of Red Indian Lake, near North East Arm, contemplating whether he should arise or stay a little longer. Lying beside him was his wife, Demasduit, with their infant daughter nestled to her breast. Although the sun had risen some hours before, he and his family and others in mamateeks nearby were taking refuge from the frigid temperature outside. It was a typical March morning, and by resting and sleeping for long periods of time, Nonosbawsut and his people were able to keep warm and conserve their waning strength and energy. Embers from the night fire still glowed, waiting to be blown upon and fanned once again into flames, and the usual early morning sounds brought a small measure of comfort to his troubled mind. The dire plight of his people was never far from his thoughts.
Then, as he began to doze again, his senses were alerted by something that didn’t seem normal. Suddenly wide awake, he waited and listened, his nerves bristled and his body tensed. The small songbirds had stopped their usual morning choir, and stillness filled the air. His every instinct told him that something was wrong. Without disturbing Demasduit and the baby, he rose from the sleeping bench and left the mamateek.
What he saw filled him with dread. Seven armed white men, less than a thousand yards away, were rapidly converging on the encampment. Realizing that he had been spotted, he re-entered the mamateek, shook Demasduit awake and told her to get up and run. Then he shouted to warn the others. His roars reverberated in the early morning air, and curious heads popped out of the other mamateeks to see what was happening. Within seconds, the encampment was in chaos and confusion.
The Beothuk, including Nonosbawsut with his infant daughter in his arms, fled to the woods on the nearby shoreline, the invaders in close pursuit. Only Demasduit, still weak from having recently given birth, failed to reach the safety of the forest. Nonosbawsut watched in dismay as she fell to the ice, unable to run any farther. Before she could recover and move on, her pursuers reached her and pulled her to her feet. He saw her resist, and then, as she realized the futility of her situation, submit and passively permit herself to be led away. He watched her attempts to shake the hands of her captors, and her gestures as she tried to communicate with them. At one point she bared her breasts to indicate to them that she was the mother of a still suckling infant.
The sight of his wife being manhandled by the white men was more than Nonosbawsut could bear. He left the woods and approached her captors. He held the tip of a fir tree to his forehead, the traditional Beothuk symbol of peace, but the white men, ignorant of its significance, ignored his offering. Like Demasduit, he shook their hands, and let them know with gestures that he wanted his wife back. At that point he was doing everything within his power to recover her without resorting to violence. He approached the man holding her and attempted to extract her from his grasp. He was prevented from doing so by three of the man’s companions, who grabbed him and threw him off, knocking him to the ground.
Now angered, he arose and extracted a small axe from inside his cloak and, brandishing it over his head, ran to the nearest man and attempted to wrestle the man’s gun from him. Again he was pulled off, and with several guns now trained on him, he had no choice but to relinquish his weapon. Then, as his rage consumed him, he darted and took another of his tormentors by the throat. With Nonosbawsut’s iron grip on him, the man was sure of his intention to kill him unless his companions rescued him, which, with much difficulty, they were able to do. Failing to pull Nonosbawsut away as before, they resorted to battering him with the butts of their rifles. Even that did not work and he was deterred only when one of the white men sunk his bayonet deeply into Nonosbawsut’s lower back, and drove him to his knees.
He still wasn’t finished. By some monumental effort of will he ignored his injuries and got to his feet again and attempted to resume strangling the same man. Three shots were fired, and three bullets entered Nonosbawsut’s body, sending him to the ground for the third time. This time he did not rise. His shattered body shuddered for several seconds and then went still. The last Beothuk chieftain was dead, his slate-grey eyes staring vacantly into the morning sky.
One of his slayers, awed by Nonosbawsut’s size, insisted on measuring him. Taking a piece of line from his pocket, he tied a small knot in one end of it to denote the bottom of the slain warrior’s feet, and another at the top of his head. Later, when he was able to take a more accurate measurement, he asserted that the distance between the two knots was six feet, seven and one-half inches.
The slaying of Nonosbawsut was the death knell for the Beothuk race. Within ten years they would be extinct. His twenty-three-year-old wife, Demasduit, lived less than a year in confinement before dying of tuberculosis. Her niece, Shanawdithit, who surrendered herself to the white settlers four years later, survived six years in their world before succumbing to the same disease. Much of what is now known about Beothuk culture, their customs, traditions, and beliefs, was passed along by these two young women during their brief captivities.
When Shanawdithit drew her final breath in June 1829, the Beothuk people were no more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This fiction narrative touches briefly on the 330-year history of the Beothuk, from their first encounter with the Corte-Reals in 1500 to the death of Shanawdithit in 1829. The Beothuk names used in the initial periods of this account are fictitious. It was not until the early nineteenth century that the names of a few of the Beothuk people then living became known, such as Demasduit, Shanawdithit, and Nonosbawsut, which are names familiar to most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians today.
Newfoundland historians differ in their opinions regarding the extent to which persecution by white settlers contributed to the eventual extinction of the Beothuk Indians. The compilation of accounts and stories contained in James P. Howley’s The Beothucks or Red Indians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915) seems to suggest that its impact was very significant, perhaps the greatest contributing factor of all. This view seems to be supported in some measure by Joseph R. Smallwood’s Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John’s: Newfoundland Book Publishers Limited, 1967, 1981) and his Book of Newfoundland (St. John’s: Newfoundland Book Publishers Limited, 1967). Harold Horwood, in his article entitled “The People Who Were Murdered for Fun,” published in Maclean’s magazine (October 10, 1959) also asserts this to be the case. In his article, Horwood strongly contends that from the very beginning, seasonal European fishermen and white settlers routinely killed the Beothuk whenever an opportunity arose, and quite often it was done just for the sport of it. He further argues that during the late 1700s and early 1800s, when the stakes for ownership of lucrative water rights and prime fur locations became much higher, the random and opportunistic killing of the Beothuk became organized and systematic, carried out primarily by the furriers of Notre Dame Bay.
Some other historians take a different view. Frederick Rowe, in his Extinction: The Beothuks of Newfoundland (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1977), makes the argument that the impact of the white settlers on the demise of the Beothuk has been greatly overstated and suggests that the reputation of the Notre Dame Bay people, indeed all Newfoundlanders, has been much maligned because of this. Rowe dismisses the more extreme accounts of the massacre of the Beothuk as myths.
Ingeborg Marshall’s A History and Ethnology of the Beothuk (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1996) recognizes the seriousness of the slaughter of the Beothuk by the white settlers but concludes that the primary cause of their extinction was disease, as well as the lengthy hostility which existed between the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq Indians of Newfoundland whose hunting grounds and living areas often overlapped.
Information about John Peyton, Sr. and Jr., was taken primarily from River Lords: Father and Son by Amy Louise Peyton (St. John’s: Jesperson Publishing, 1987).
9 Mamashee is the Beothuk word for a large vessel. It is highly unlikely, however, that the Beothuk had ever seen anything as large as Corte-Real’s ships before that time.
10 Tapathook is the Beothuk word for canoe. Varying in length from sixteen to twenty-two feet, they were constructed of caribou skins sewed over a framework of laths and gunnels, and curved upward at each end.
11 James P.Howley, The Beothucks or Red Indians, p. 8