The Beothuk People from Newfoundland
January 17, 2025
Image Source: https://beothukinstitute.ca/the-beothuk/history/
Canada is a northern country and was a difficult country to settle. The early history of people who came to the part of North America we now call Canada includes a number of groups who, after some initial success, disappeared. Nevertheless, it is important for us to understand who these people were and where they came from as part of understanding our complete human history.
One such group of people who are now extinct were the Beothuk people who inhabited the island we now call Newfoundland. It is unknown when these people first inhabited the island. There is evidence that the first people to live on the island were there 5500 years ago. Archeological traces of several peoples: the Maritime Archaic First Nation; Groswater Pre-Inuit; Dorset Pre-Inuit; Intermediate First Nation; and Beothuk ancestors have been found on the island. At the time the Norse explorers led by Leif Erikson came to Newfoundland, in 1000 CE they had some interaction with indigenous people; these people, who the Vikings referred to as “skraelings" were likely the ancestors of the Beothuk people whose culture emerged around 1500 CE.
The Viking stay at L'Anse Aux Meadows was very short-lived, lasting perhaps ten to thirty years. It is likely the harsh conditions as well as a general disinterest in the settlement by others on the Island made the Viking settlement non-viable. Later in the 15th century with an expedition led by Italian explorer John Cabot, under the auspices of the British Crown, there was renewed European interest in the island.
This brought an increase in settlers who ultimately competed with the emergent Beothuk people for the island’s resources particularly its fish and game including salmon, caribou, seals and sea birds. Both groups would raid each other’s camps for food and other supplies. Most of the encounters were violent as the Beothuk showed little to no interest in establishing relations with the Europeans. The continued incursion of European settlers forced the Beothuk to move inland.
This forced migration cut the Beothuk off from some of their food sources (fish and seals) and they had to rely on caribou hunting as their main source of food. Over time the reliance on a single food source led to over-hunting and starvation.
By the turn of the 19th century there were likely no more than 3,000 Beothuk left alive in the interior of Newfoundland. By 1829 the people were declared extinct having been killed off by several causes including:
reduction of food sources leading to starvation;
exposure to infectious diseases including smallpox and tuberculosis; and
violent encounters with Europeans (trappers and settlers).
A woman named Shanawdithit (1801 – 1829), was the last known member of the Beothuk people. Remembered for her contributions to the historical understanding of Beothuk culture, including drawings depicting interactions with European settlers, Shanawdithit died of tuberculosis in St. John’s June 6, 1829.
During her adulthood she was captured and put to work as a servant. The colonial government tried to persuade her to help connect with the Beothuks but she refused asserting that the Beothuks would kill anyone who had been with the Europeans as a kind of religious sacrifice. In the year prior to her death Shanawdithit was relocated to St. John’s to live in the household of William Eppes Cormack, the founder of the Beothuk Institution1. A Scottish emigrant, Newfoundland entrepreneur and philanthropist, Cormack recorded much of what Shanawdithit told him about her people and added notes to her drawings. Her death in 1829 marked the extinction of the Beothuk people.
A number of theories have been put forward about the loss of the Beothuk people and their culture including the thought that they were exterminated as the result of a deliberate genocide effort. It has even been suggested that French settlers offered bounties to encourage the Mi'kmaq to kill Beothuk. This is disputed by most historians and has since come to be known as the "Mercenary Myth"
Regardless, it is clear that the loss of the Beothuks demonstrates just how devastating the impact of European settlement can be and has been on the indigenous people of North America. Not only competition for food, which led to starvation, it also created imbalances that disrupted indigenous economies and forced them to adapt in ways that were not sustainable.
Contact with Europeans who carried diseases that the indigenous people had never been previously exposed to also led to widespread death for entire populations of people. There is also no doubt that regardless of the improbability of any deliberate government sanctioned efforts to get rid of certain indigenous groups, it remains that competition for natural resources and for land led to violent confrontations. In the case of the Beothuk who refused to adopt firearms these clashes typically resulted in the significant loss of life and contributed to their extinction.
In Canada, the Beothuk are possibly the only indigenous group we know of that became extinct as a result of contact with Europeans. However, across North America many groups of people no longer exist and we have lost their cultures forever2. From the Beothuk experience we learn that there is no such thing as benign contact between European settlers and the indigenous people of North America. Moreover, European settlers tended to treat the indigenous people they encountered as curiosities. It is only retrospectively that we have begun to fully understand the disruptive and destructive effects of contact has been. The loss of the Beothuk is a tragedy that must be remembered as an important part of the history of Canada. It serves as an lesson on how contact alone has led to the disruption of economies, loss of traditions and customs as well as the loss of life.
The Beothuk Institute remains today committed to developing a better public knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the history and culture of the Beothuk, of their prehistoric ancestors, and of other First Nation Peoples of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. https://beothukinstitute.ca/
Interestingly in British Columbia one group who was declared extinct has made a comeback. In a 2021 Supreme Court of Canada ruling the Sinixt people, who had been declared extinct by the federal government after the presumed death of their last known member in 1956, had their status as an indigenous group reinstated.
The case revolved around surviving members of the Sinixt who reside in the U.S. who made a deliberate effort to challenge the declaration of extinction and to re-establish their traditional rights in Canada. We will dig into this case more in another article in the future.
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